Moe Lane

As God is my witness, the pun was unintentional.

Any, Megan McArdle, on the Left Just Not Getting  It about why it’s impolite to try to force the Catholic Church to provide financial support for contraception to its workers:

I’ve seen several versions of Kevin’s complaint on the interwebs, and everyone makes it seems to assume that we’re doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public.  Why, we’re really coddling them, and it’s about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we’ve done for them!

These people seem to be living in an alternate universe that I don’t have access to, where there’s a positive glut of secular organizations who are just dying to provide top-notch care for the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed.

I’m a bad Catholic myself.  An awful one, in fact.  But the fact that I disagree with the Church on contraception does not mean that I will tolerate the government bullying her on contraception.  As Megan later notes, the government assists Catholic and other religious organizations in their charitable activities because religious organizations tend to be very good and very efficient about providing them; and, like it or not, the Catholic Church has very serious ethical and moral issues about birth control.

It’s also older than the Left, and fully expects to still be here when the modern liberal/progressive movement consists of footnotes in dusty books.

(Via Instapundit)

Moe Lane

…they need to have their writers do a little more research.  Case in point:

But America is far from the only nation worried about meeting ET. Even the Vatican is devoting serious thought to an idea formerly relegated to trailer parks and hill-folk. Father Jose Funes, speaking for the Vatican after its official conference on astrobiology (wait, what?), stated that the church has concluded that the existence of life on other planets would not invalidate anything in the Bible. And Guy Consolmagno, one of the pope’s astronomers (wait, double what?) said that he would be delighted to baptize any extra terrestrial life that comes his way, but “only if they asked.”

The Roman Catholic Church has been interested in astronomy as a scientific discipline for over four hundred years, which makes sense when you consider the Gregorian calendar reform.  They’ve had official observatories since the 18th century: the current Vatican Observatory is based out of Tucson, Arizona.  The Jesuits alone have been significant contributors to astronomy (and other sciences) for that entire period.  I understand that relying on the historical narrative of the Galileo affair (which is not inaccurate so much as it is highly simplified) can obscure things, and that Cracked.com is a humor site, but… still.  Google, madam.  Google.

Moe Lane

Via Jim Geraghty, and note that it’s the title to her article:

Woolsey: IRS should look at bishops

But I’m curious: which Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) wants to have the IRS investigate the Roman Catholic Church in response to the latter’s support of the Stupak Amendment?

• Is it the Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) who is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus?  If so, is it now the CPC’s official position that the IRS should investigate the Roman Catholic Church?
• Is it the Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) of California’s Sixth Congressional District?  If so, will she be campaigning next year on the need for investigating the Roman Catholic Church?
• Or is it just private citizen Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.)?  If so, then why did the Politico think that her opinion on investigating the Roman Catholic Church was relevant?

Moe Lane

PS: Is Rep. Woolsey’s position that the IRS should investigate the Roman Catholic Church shared by Vice President Joseph Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?

Crossposted to RedState.