When the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Christopher Hitchens, citing insights of science or the rise of sectarian violence, denounce the very idea of God, fundamentalists strike back by attacking pillars on which such modern criticism stands.
In this mode, Pope Benedict XVI last week issued two unexpected decrees, restoring the atavistic Mass of the Council of Trent and resuscitating an outmoded Catholic exclusivism - the notion of a pope-centered Catholicism as the only authentic way to God.
The Council of Trent, whose Mass and theology (including its anti-Judaism) Pope Benedict wants to reestablish, was summoned about the time Copernicus published his On the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies - the beginning of the scientific age.
The Roman Catholic Church made a terrible mistake in rejecting Copernicus, one from which it has only lately been recovering. Pope Benedict is repeating that mistake, as Mr. Dawkins and company think religious people are bound to do. But believers need not follow. Indeed, many of us, including Catholics, have moved on from such thinking, if you can call it thinking.
- The Boston Globe
Legislation passed by Congress last year loosened curbs on the involvement of lawyers in representing veterans, including enabling them to enter the appeals process at an earlier stage.
But in its approach to putting the law into action, the Department of Veterans' Affairs wants to force lawyers to pass an examination before they can represent veterans in making benefits claims. This is ostensibly to satisfy another congressional concern, that the veterans get qualified help.
But in the real world, the rule is likely to have the opposite effect. Here's why: Many of the people who represent veterans are attorneys from big firms doing the work pro bono.
These lawyers give up lucrative billable hours to do the VA work.
Forcing them to prepare for, schedule, and take a VA-devised examination might prove to be just enough annoyance to persuade many of these attorneys to take their pro bono hours elsewhere.
The rule seems to be a classic case of a well-meaning bureaucracy putting up needless obstacles; the VA should drop it.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer