I’m starting out with that line — and this great picture — because the stupidity and bias of the mainstream secular news media is the reason we have blogs. This Newsweek article would have us believe that “young women were missing” from last year’s anniversary of the Roe v. Wade commemorations in D.C. (I was there and the majority of the march was composed of young people both male and female). The author, Krista Gesaman, took the words of one of the police coordinators of the event to the effect that the original organizers of the March for Life were getting old and twisted it to try and imply that the young weren’t attending, and that, in fact, the majority of the participants in the march were over 60. Indeed, Nellie Gray, one of the original organizers of the March, has been there every year since 1974, and she and the other founders are certainly up there in years. But that means nothing in regard to the rest of the participants. You only need to take a look at the picture to see that young women were out in full force at this year’s march. (Photo source)
The rest of the article centered around a supposed lack of activism among young women on both sides of the abortion issue. To be fair, the author predicted a “surge” of young women this year because of the Mass for Life and Youth Rally sponsored by the Washington Archdiocese — though the same Mass and Rally were held last year and if I’m not mistaken, in previous years as well.
This nonsense is very typical of the MSM reporting on the March for Life and it’s repeated every year. This year, I was marching, and once again there were some 250,000 to 300,000 people surging up Constitution Ave singing and praying for life. I never saw a single pro-choice sign. As usual there were undoubtedly a handful of pro-choice demonstrators up around the Supreme Court building at the end of the march, but I didn’t see any of them, either this year or last year.
As usual, the media tried to pretend the march didn’t exist, and whenever the news even bothered to mention it, there was little to no reporting of the actual numbers on either side. Most MSM sources either were silent, or implied there might have been equal numbers on both sides. CNN as usual, was particularly bad. Steven Greydanus takes down the media coverage here.
Catholic and other religious news services were out full force (I went right past the EWTN cameraman). C-SPAN covered the march in some detail. I’m also told that Fox News was there. Other than that, the only people getting the news out there are the new media. Most people would not be able to see how big the march was if it weren’t for blogs and YouTube videos.
I hope to publish my account and video very shortly. I had a hard trip back from D.C. Friday because the bus was delayed, and because the pressure of work marches on, I’m having to make up some lost work time yesterday and today. But I’ll have the full story very soon.
Update, same day: Here’s a commentary from the Washington Post, by someone who — gasp! — actually went out and did some reporting on the march and who shows who really attended and what they think.
Looking back over the posts I’ve done this year, I think I made some hits and misses in reporting on the biggest stories of the 2009 in regard to events in the Catholic Church. But I think I got the top six. In order:
5. Pope Benedict’s new social encyclicalCaritas in Veritate creates discussion about world events to secure social justice — and more ludicrous misunderstanding than you can imagine.
Other stories I covered: Pope Benedict’s trip to the Holy Land and the controversy over the film of Dan Brown’sAngels and Demons. And this may be “hometown” news for me, but it does have a great impact on the Church in the U.S. as a whole: New York got a New Archbishop, Timothy Dolan.
Others - controversy over the death of Ted Kennedy and this pro-abortion Catholic’s highly public funeral Mass, the new priestly sex abuse crisis in Ireland — I sort of missed. I certainly followed them while they were happening, but didn’t have time to blog about them.
Prolife leaders are urging everyone to make this year’s March for Life on January 22 in Washington D.C. the largest ever. Our presence is greatly needed as Congress gears up to pass a so-called “health” care bill that is really an enemy to the unborn, the elderly and the terminally ill. The date that commemorates the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton will be a great day to make our opposition to this bill heard.
I will be there and video blogging again. I’ll be attending the Vigil Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Blogs4Life Conference, and of course the rally on the Mall and the March to the Capitol and the Supreme Court. I’m sure I’ll have interesting footage, so be sure to check back here. I’ll have more updates and links at January 22 approaches.
Interrupting my blogging hiatus for an urgent message: about Haiti where the suffering has been tremendous since Tuesday’s earthquake.
I just spoke to Ray Seabeck who runs the Missionary Servants of John Paul I (who I wrote about here). They work directly with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Haiti.
I have had a hard time contacting him, since his phone has been ringing off the hook constantly. But I did finally talk to him, and he said they have heard very little from inside Haiti. But they have learned that two of the convents of Mother Teresa’s sisters have been destroyed, and a third had to be evacuated because it was threatening to collapse. Nothing seems to be known about the six other convents, or how many sisters have been injured or killed. They are certainly desperately in need of help.
The Missionary Servants collect money, clothes, books, other supplies and Mass items regularly for the people of Haiti. Right now they are waiting to find out what is most needed and where it should be sent. But they especially want to get help right now to Mother Teresa’s sisters.
No doubt they will get help from other organizations, but Ray suggests that if you want to directly help Mother Teresa’s sisters with their relief work as well as caring for their own, you can make out a check to the Missionaries of Charity and send it Ray, and they will see that the sisters in Miami get it, so they can have the funds to provide what is most needed.
Ray and Lauretta Seabeck
The Missionary Servants of John Paul I
22 Boyd Hill Rd.
Gilford, NH 03249
They do so much good and are so desperately in need. Please keep them in your hearts and in your prayers. (I’ve already donated).
Update: Saturday, January 16.
If you want to help Mother Teresa’s sisters directly, you can also contact their regional offices in Miami:
Missionaries of Charity
727 N.W. 17th Street
Miami, FL 33136
USA
Tel.: 1-305-545-5699
Also the Holy Father has asked Catholic Relief Services to coordinate all the Catholic aid given in the crisis. You can find out more and donate to them here.
Archbishop Dolan of New York, who is also chairman of Catholic Relief Services, makes a plea for help here:
A recent discovery of a piece of cloth in Jerusalem has led to yet one more inane attempt to debunk the Shroud of Turin. Barrie Schwortz has nothing about this on his website yet, so I thought I would try to tackle it in detail.
The discovery in question is of part of the shroud wrapping the body of a leprosy victim in a tomb not far from the Field of Bood in Jerusalem, where Judas is said to have hanged himself. The tomb evidently belonged to a wealthy family and had remained undisturbed for 2,000 years.
Ordinarily, you wouldn’t think that the most important thing about this tomb discovery would be an ordinary piece of linen cloth, but it sure is in this case.
The most complete article I have found is the one by Mati Milstein in the National Geographic News. The headline trumpets “Shroud of Turin not Jesus’, Tomb Discovery suggests.” The story says:
“In all of the approximately 1,000 tombs from the first century A.D. which have been excavated around Jerusalem, not one fragment of a shroud had been found” until now, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson, who excavated the site for the Israel Antiquities Authority. . . .
The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern, a type of cloth not known to have been available in the region until medieval times, Gibson said.
For the author of the article, this casts doubt on the authenticity of the Shroud — the linen is the wrong type, so the shroud can’t be real.
For all the excitement over this news, even the author of the article had some doubts about this point:
Assuming the new shroud typifies those used in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus, the researchers maintain that the Shroud of Turin could not have originated in the city.
That’s perhaps a big assumption, given that there are no other known shrouds from the same place and time for comparison —though in one case clothing had been found in a Jerusalem tomb.
That’s right – only two first-century textile samples have ever been found in the Jerusalem area. In a place where thousands of people lived at the time, and where cloths of all makes and weaves must have common. No other shrouds have ever been found. That is a very small basis for declaring either that the weave in the shroud just found is “typical” or that twill weave could never have been used in a burial cloth in the area. (At the very most Gibson (who is quoted only indirectly on this point) can only say that the only twill weaves found in the area so far have come from medieval times. Other vague “researchers” cited remain completely anonymous.
How could anyone interested in the scientific viewpoint accept such blanket statements? (Answer: they are only acceptable when the purpose is to debunk Christianity).
In another story, archaeologist Gibson says (once again not a direct quote) that ancient writings and contemporary shrouds from other areas had suggested that there were always several cloths in a Jewish burial, including a wrapping around the head, and the Jerusalem shroud finally provided the physical evidence.
The article’s author takes this to mean that the Shroud, which is only a single cloth, is therefore a fake.
This is a very simplistic view, obviously made by someone who knows nothing about the vast amount of research that has been one on the Turin Shroud.
While carbon-dating in 1989 suggested a medieval age for the cloth, most sindonologists have always believed the wrong spot on the linen was chosen for the analysis. Just recently this was proved when fibers from the spot were analyzed and found to have come from a medieval re-weave. This seems to call for new Carbon-14 tests, which hopefully the Church will grant.
So the jury is still out on the age of the cloth. Nevertheless, the general consensus of scholars who have actually studied the Shroud is that the linen is ancient. Many details can be deduced about the cloth’s manufacture, and all of them, including the type of loom on which it was woven, the fact that the individual threads are hand-spun, that it was woven in narrow strips rather than a larger piece (in the exact way described by Pliny the Elder), the type of seam used on the side strip, which is the same used on cloths found at Masada – are identical with those of cloth woven in ancient time. Also the Shroud can be measured in exact cubits – an ancient unit of measure.
Herringbone twill weave like that on the Shroud has been found in ancient times (though unusual for linen). It was rare and expensive, but there is certainly no reason it could not have been found in Jerusalem, where goods were bought and traded from all over the known world at the time. In fact the Gospel of Mark says that Joseph of Arimathea “bought fine linen” for Jesus’ shroud (Mk 15:46). This suggests that it was bought locally, but that it was also expensive and not the ordinary material for a shroud.
In regard to the various cloths found in a Jewish burial, this new discovery doesn’t tell Shroud researchers they don’t already know. They have long been aware of what ancient writers say about Jewish burial customs. None of them has ever claimed that the Shroud was the whole of Jesus’ burial linen. It does represent the largest piece, the linen shroud that all Jewish people, rich and poor alike, were buried in. It is no surprise that over 2,000 years not everything that was present in the tomb was saved.
The Shroud itself has given researchers clues that other pieces of cloth were indeed present. There are bands where the image is absent between the side of the face and the hair, which suggests that there was was a cloth tied over the head to keep the jaw shut in death. A similar gap on the lower arms has been suggested as evidence that the wrists were tied together.
In fact, other parts of the burial linen may have been found. Some researchers have come to believe that the cloth of Oviedo, Spain was the cloth that covered Jesus’ face in the tomb.
Go here for more info about the Shroud as a textile, especially Sue Benford’s paper on the reweaving and Ray Rogers’ paper about the cloth of Oviedo.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing — direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child — I will not forget you — I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible — but even if she could forget — I will not forget you. And today the greatest means — the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in her Nobel Prize acceptance Speech, 1979
