Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, October 5-6, 2010

Unintentionally hilarious critique of a pro-Lesbian movie which is not pro-Lesbian enough for the critic!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/its-not-all-right/story-e6frg8n6-1225930639218

Long, but worth reading if you have five minutes to spare and need a good laugh. (It occured to me that the article might really have been satirical, but, looking at the article overall, I think that it's supposed to be a genuine critique.) A sample:

Despite, or perhaps because of, the present energetic push towards normalising homosexuality (let's all get married, have babies and not rock the Judaeo-Christian boat), gays remain a menace. Heterosexual men and the society over which they have power are threatened every which way by homosexuality. Lesbians, and lesbian couples in particular, limit male sexual access. Men don't like that.

Dr. Gray on euthanasia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/choosing-ones-time-of-death-is-a-basic-human-right/story-e6frg6zo-1225934570662

Here's another article from The Australian which had me wondering at several points whether it was really a satire. Points like this:

If we take away the labels such as euthanasia, kill, murder, suicide, we can look at the issues.

The people who join the Dying with Dignity movement simply want to die with dignity. ...

So one euphemism (euthanasia) is replaced with another euphemism--'dying with dignity'. But euthanasia isn't just any old kind of dying; it really is killing (a term to which Dr. Gray objects), either of oneself, or assisting someone else to do it.

And also at this point (Dr. Gray's conclusion):

The reason for wanting choice is that this is one's own business, no one else's. We should not have to give reasons. It may indeed be a terminal disease and one may have consulted a doctor, or one may have gone bankrupt, or the wrong team may have won the grand final, but these are not relevant to anyone else. A personal decision, which is made as a human right, is all that is required. The necessary legislation should be simple enough.

What a disconcerting thing it is to live in a world in which one can no longer be quite sure whether a text is serious or satirical.

Remnant opinion piece on monarchy and democracy

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=382178#382178

This article looks interesting (though off-topic for the AQ thread in which it was posted), but unfortunately its author thinks that "the will of the people ... should determine the shape of any political order", which is too much like one of the condemned errors in Quanta cura for my liking. Nevertheless, the article might be interesting to read in full, which I'll do if I have time.

Book(let?) on the evidence that St. Peter was in Rome ...

After posting yesterday's edition of Notes, in which I mentioned the testimony of Caius to the death of St. Peter (and St. Paul) in Rome, it occured to me that the book which that Catholic Encyclopedia article cited (St. Peter in Rome) might be available on-line. So I searched for it using the N.L.A.'s Trove search service, and though it is apparently not available on-line (though the search results show that there are copies of it, or of books very much like it, to be found in several Australian libraries, including The University of Sydney's one), I found the following booklet, published in 1874 by one John Stewart M'Corry:

http://www.archive.org/details/a591190500mcoruoft

It looks very interesting, though I haven't read it all yet (though it's not too long).

... and a very old letter-to-the-editor citing Protestant affirmation of that Tradition

Found while doing that Trove search:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/25656734?searchTerm=St. Peter in Rome&searchLimits=

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bruno, Confessor, A.D. 2010