St. Pius XII?

I've always found the allegations against Pope Pius XII to be motivated by either an animosity against the Catholic Church or by a significant misunderstanding on the historical record. Could Pope Pius XII have done more, certainly, but he nonetheless accomplished a great deal.

Ultimately the historical record will justify his actions. The Church in considering Pius XII for sainthood has declared his life to be one of heroic virtue. In the end, the real judgement lies with that Ultimate Arbiter, Jesus Christ. Yet, I would think (though I cannot know the will of God), that it will be a judgment found in his favor.

Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel said upon Pope Pius XII's death: "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Albert Einstein said of the Church: "Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church . . . stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."

Even the New York Times, today that bastion of enmity toward the Catholic Church, spoke glowing words about Pope Pius XII's heroic witness. They identified him as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent"

Under the Roman Sky is a small movie that is attempting to defend the Pope and provide a glimpse at his heroic virtue.

O Death, Where is Thy Sting?

St. John Chrysostom or the Golden-tongued was a Doctor of the Church, one of the most important Eastern Fathers, and the Patriarch of Constantinople in the 4th Century. He is famous both for his work on the Divine Liturgy, but also the large collection of his preaching that has survived.

I have personally found the Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom to be especially powerful and one that captures the meaning of Easter. I post it in its entirety below (Thanks to the EWTN website where I pulled it from).

Let all pious men and all lovers of God rejoice in the splendor of this feast; let the wise servants blissfully enter into the joy of their Lord; let those who have borne the burden of Lent now receive their pay, and those who have toiled since the first hour, let them now receive their due reward; let any who came after the third hour be grateful to join in the feast, and those who may have come after the sixth, let them not be afraid of being too late; for the Lord is gracious and He receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes on the eleventh hour as well as to him who has toiled since the first: yes, He has pity on the last and He serves the first; He rewards the one and praises the effort.

Come you all: enter into the joy of your Lord. You the first and you the last, receive alike your reward; you rich and you poor, dance together; you sober and you weaklings, celebrate the day; you who have kept the fast and you who have not, rejoice today. The table is richly loaded: enjoy its royal banquet. The calf is a fatted one: let no one go away hungry. All of you enjoy the banquet of faith; all of you receive the riches of his goodness. Let no one grieve over his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed; let no one weep over his sins, for pardon has shone from the grave; let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has set us free: He has destroyed it by enduring it, He has despoiled Hades by going down into its kingdom, He has angered it by allowing it to taste of his flesh.

When Isaiah foresaw all this, he cried out: "O Hades, you have been angered by encountering Him in the nether world." Hades is angered because frustrated, it is angered because it has been mocked, it is angered because it has been destroyed, it is angered because it has been reduced to naught, it is angered because it is now captive. It seized a body, and, lo! it encountered heaven; it seized the visible, and was overcome by the invisible.

O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen and you are abolished. Christ is risen and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen and life is freed. Christ is risen and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for Christ, being risen from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.

Good Friday

Good Friday is Good because it accomplishes what Jesus Christ set out to accomplish by becoming incarnate in the Flesh through the Virgin Mary. It is Good because the act is made complete with His Resurrection from the Tomb. It is Good because it was the singular act that was for the expiation of the sins of the world. It is Good because it is the Act that brings Heaven and Earth together.

It is indeed Good, despite all the pain and suffering He endured. What He accomplished by it for us made it Good.

The Passion of the Christ is an excellent movie but my favorite part is how Mel Gibson ties together the Last Supper with the Crucifixion. Just as every Sacrament of the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ's supreme sacrifice, so the Last Supper is a pre-presentation of that gift. The movie more than any other, through the eyes of the Apostle St. John, makes that unmistakable link between the Eucharist and the Cross of Calvary. It is indeed Good.

It’s Allawi, or is it?

The final IHEC results for the 2010 Iraqi Parliamentary Elections are in and Ayad Allawi has pulled off a surprising win. His Iraqiya List has according to reports earned a total of 91 seats. But now comes the difficult task for the former Iraqi Prime Minister. He has to prove that he is able to organize a government ruling-coalition.

This will be made difficult by the efforts of the current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki’s State of Law List finished a close second with 89 seats. This is certainly a victory for Iraqi Nationalism, as both candidates campaigned and ran as tough-on terrorism Nationalists who are able to rise above sectarian ties. The two Prime Ministers do not like each other and the close second of the Shi’a Maliki will enable him to provide stiff competition when it comes to forming a ruling coalition.

The surprise winner of the election was the unexpectedly strong showing (albeit a distant third) by the Iraqi National Alliance with 70 seats. They performed strongly throughout the Shi’a south, including wins in three provinces, but were trounced in Baghdad and elsewhere. This list combined the Iranian-backed Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) and BADR with the religious Shi’a clerical nationalism of Muqtada al-Sadr. They ultimately become the king-maker and will likely demand a sultan’s ransom for their support.

The logical coalition would be between Maliki and Allawi, but their personal animosity precludes this possibility. The Kurds would bring with them 43 members, but this pales to the 70 within the INA. Ultimately the Iraqi Nationalism of Maliki and Allawi unnerve the Kurds and their desire for an autonomous Kurdistan. There are 32 miscellaneous members, but as Bill Roggio notes at the Long War Journal, their disparate views make it impossible to form them as a group.

This leaves the Iraqi National Alliance in a powerful position, but even their alliance can be splintered. The Sadrists hate Maliki for his operations against the Mahdi Militia in Basra. ISCI is angry at Maliki’s for his movement away from the Shi’a bloc, but is also leery of the secularism of Allawi. Allawi’s Iraqi nationalism might appeal to the Sadrists, but no-one wants a government that ultimately rests on the irrational impulses of Muqtada al-Sadr. Allawi has reached out to Syria and Iran and might be seen as an appealing alternative to Maliki, but his largely Sunni coalition will inspire distrust in Iran and among Shi’a partisans.

The INA has seemed to indicate that any coalition with the State of Law List would come with the precondition that Maliki would NOT be the Prime Minister. While Maliki is an Iraqi Nationalist, he is first and foremost, a Maliki partisan and would be loathe to accept such a precondition.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Maliki will find a way to form another grand Shi’a alliance with the INA to reach the required majorities in the Parliament. I find that outcome plausible, but I think an Iraqiya-INA coalition is just as likely if not more so. Wishful thinking would be for Allawi and Maliki to rise above personal animosity for the good of Iraq, but Iraq’s democracy has yet to reach that point where that is a probable outcome. There will still be a lot of drama as the situation in Iraq develops. Stay tuned.

The Death of the Pro-Life Democrat

With all apologies to Representative Dan Lipinski (D-IL), the Pro-Life Democrat is dead. Certainly there will still be some pro-lifers who try to remain in the Democrat Party, but ultimately the party has no place for their politics and many of them will surrender for a seat at the table (both Al Gore and Dan Kucinich used to be Pro Life for example).

William McGurn has written a powerful editorial in the Wall Street Journal that is both scathing in its condemnation of so-called Pro-Life Democrats like Rep. Bart Stupak, but also incredibly sad in the fact that the Democrat Party no longer has a discernible place for pro-lifers. This means that rather than being a bipartisan issue, pro-life concerns ultimately become completely partisan.

McGurn writes:

When Bart Stupak announced Sunday he was now a "yes" on the health-care bill, six Democrats stood with him. Even that handful would have been enough to defeat the bill. Instead, they accepted the fig leaf of an executive order—and threw away all the hard-won gains they had made.

Amid the recriminations it's easy to overlook what Mr. Stupak had cobbled together. His amendment restricting federal funding for abortions, passed in November, marked the only bipartisan vote in this whole health-care mess. For the first time since Roe v. Wade, pro-life Democrats had seized the legislative initiative in the teeth of their leadership's opposition—and brought the party of abortion to heel.

Now Mr. Stupak has thrown it away. By caving at the last hour, he discredited all who stood with him. (What does it say about Ohio's Marcy Kaptur and Pennsylvania's Chris Carney that they had already agreed to vote yes even before the fig leaf of the executive order had come through?) In addition to undermining an encouraging partnership with pro-lifers across the congressional aisle, Mr. Stupak signaled that, in the end, you can't count on pro-life Democrats. (For the Rest please read at the Wall Street Journal).

The truth is, Representative Stupak and the other Pro-Life Democrats threw away their ability to make the Health Care Reform Pro-Life. The promise of an Executive Order has an expiration date and doesn't carry the power of a legislative act. Bart Stupak and the Stupak Dozen had an incredible amount of power because their votes were required for passage in the House. Yet, one by one (with the exception of Rep. Dan Lipinski) they bought into the "segregated funding" of the Senate Bill.

It also turns out that Rep. Bart Stupak has recently obtained $750K for airports in his district. One cannot help but wonder if that was his price. One also cannot help but compare Rep. Stupak to Sir Richard Rich.



It is sad to see even the Pro-Life Democrats cave at a time when they had real power to positively impact an otherwise horrible bill by making it uncompromisingly pro-life.

Representative Stupak meet Sir Richard Rich, Sir Richard Rich meet Bart Stupak.

Still Too Close to Call

The Iraqi Elections were on March 7th. Today it is March 16th and the results are still too close to call. I am sure the Iraqis have more regularly updated results, but IHEC (Independent High Electoral Commission) indicated that the 85% returns would be forthcoming by March 18th.

In Iraq many people are accusing the government of corruption and electoral fraud in the elections. However, I think the still tight vote count indicate that Iraq will not see a repeat of the massive voter fraud of its Iranian neighbor. Both the Wall Street Journal and Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal have been doing yeoman's work in ensuring that junkies like myself can follow the election.

Prime Minister Maliki' State of Law List is the early vote leader, however, his list is confined to Baghdad and the Shi'a South. Initial results (60%) indicate that Maliki will win a majority in Baghdad and all but three of the Shi'a provinces in the South.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi appears to be the strong candidate across all of Iraq. This is like Wisconsin State elections where the Republican candidate can win across most of the state, but ultimately lose due to the Democratic strength in Dane County (also known as the People's Republic of Dane County). Allawi has won in the Sunni north by overwhelming margins and has even reached double digits in four of the Shi'a provinces to the South (by comparison Maliki is in single digits in every Sunni province except Diyala).

The Iraqi National Alliance (the Iranian list) is a distant third overall and they have reached 50% in only one province. This underlines the overall decline of religious parties (the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party has been destroyed by Allawi in the Sunni provinces of Ninewa, Salahadin, Diyala, and Anbar), but also a stigma attached to things seen as too Persian (Iranian). One report also indicated that the strongest party in the INA was actually Sadr's bloc, which while perhaps friendly to Iran, is uncompromisingly nationalist.

The unpredictable and close events will likely result in quite a bit of jockeying extending over a few months. Maliki will have to reach out to the INA and the Kurds for an alliance, though he has angered the Kurds as of late and the Sadrists would be loathe to join a Maliki coalition. Allawi would have to reach out to the Kurds (who don't trust his Arab Nationalism) and the INA (though Sadr despises his secularism). If the Sadrists are truly the dominant party in the INA it will make it difficult for the INA to join a coalition involving either Maliki or Allawi due to Sadr's ability to exert control over the alliance.

This is all an indication that Iraq has developed an actual representative democracy, that while imperfect, is a beacon for the entire Arab World and their Persian neighbor.

For an excellent province by province breakdown with percentages follow this link. Though recent reports indicate Allawi has moved into second in Baghdad. The Wall Street Journal also has an updated electoral breakdown here.

Iraqi Election Turnout Report

Though it hasn't received the attention it deserved, Iraqis took to the streets to vote in their first national election since 2005.

A few words about how it operates. There are 325 seats in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. The COR is the unicameral legislative body of the Republic of Iraq. 310 seats were at stake in this election with the other 15 being given to minorities (like Christians) and the dominant political parties based off of results.

I owe the following seat breakdown to the Institute for the Study of War, this site is the academic gold standard for higher level breakdowns of the Long War. They produced a pre-election write-up that is worth reading as well.

Al Anbar -- 14 Seats (Sunni)
Babil -- 16 Seats (Shi'a)
Baghdad -- 68 Seats (Mixed)
Basra -- 24 Seats (Shi'a)
Dahuk -- 10 Seats (Kurd)
Dhi Qar -- 18 Seats (Shi'a)
Diyala -- 13 Seats (Mixed)
Irbil -- 14 Seats (Kurd)
Karbala -- 10 Seats (Shi'a)
Kirkuk -- 12 Seats (Mixed)
Maysan -- 10 Seats (Shi'a)
Muthanna -- 7 Seats (Shi'a)
Ninewah -- 31 Seats (Sunni/Kurd)
Qadisiyah -- 11 Seats (Shi'a)
Salah ah Din -- 12 Seats (Sunni)
Sulaymaniyah -- 17 Seats (Kurd)
Wasit -- 11 Seats (Shi'a)
Compensatory and Minority Seats -- 15 Seats

I plan to make some comments later in the week when the initial results are published, but for now, I want to provide some analysis of the provincial turnout.

I owe these numbers to Michael Rubin over at National Review Online who pulled them from this Arabic website.

Duhok- 80%
Erbil - 76%
Sulaymania - 73%
Kirkuk - 73%
Salah Al Deen - 73%
Ninewa (Mosul)- 66%
Babil - 63%
IRAQ - 62.4%
Diyala - 62%
Karbala - 62%
Diwaniya - 62%
Al Anbar - 61%
Najaf - 61%
Al Muthanna - 61%
Dhi Qar - 60%
Wasit - 60%
Basra - 57%
Baghdad - 53%
Maysan - 50%

I agree that the Duhok results are suspicious and there is a chance that the KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party) and PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) engaged in some ballot stuffing.

What stands out is the low turnout in Maysan, Basra, Wasit and Dhi Qar Provinces. These four provinces all have turnout of 60% or below. These are predominately Shi'a provinces that in the past were dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI, formerly SCIRI). ISCI and its Badr and Sadrist allies united under the Iraqi National Alliance. This is the most Iranian friendly and the most sectarian of the political lists. Low turnouts in the Shi'a south likely indicate that like the 2009 provincial election, the extreme Shi'a religious parties fared poorly.

I really don't know what to make about the low turnout in Baghdad. I read anecdotal evidence of good turnout in Adamiyah, a Sunni stronghold in East Baghdad. Low turnout in Baghdad likely will hurt Maliki's State of Law list, but could also impact Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List. I think despite the turnout, Maliki will win Baghdad and Allawi will finish a very close second.

The Sunni provinces (with the exception of Al Anbar - though Al Anbar is so monolithic, the Sunni representation from the province will not be negatively impacted), Diyala, Salah ah Din, Ninewa and Kirkuk had high turnouts. This bodes well principally for Ayad Allawi's list as the Sunnis have more willingly embraced his secular list.

I think Maliki's list will finish first in the election, but Ayad Allawi's list will finish a close second. This will make for some entertaining jockeying as the two lists attempt to be the first to form a governing coalition. This will require doing business with either the INA, the Kurds, or the Sunni List. Stay Tuned.