Jacque Chirac: making things worse since 1982

With Catholics in fear for their lives, with churches being shot at, nuns getting murdered, and the pope burned in effigy, we can always count on good old Chirac to make things worse.

There is something stupendous about the negation of logic at work in Militant Islam: Stop calling us violent or we'll blow you up.

I have been ambivalent about the Catholic Church of my upbringing for two reasons. The first has been its criminally negligent (and sometimes criminally conspiratorial) response to the church pedophilia scandal, something it was decades late in responding to, and even now has yet to make a full accounting. The second was its morally obtuse handling of the great challenge of the new century: the clash of civilization with those who would destroy it.

Of the first I can still say nothing. Of the second, there is this to say: welcome to the fight, Vatican, for you're in one whether you want to be or not.