If you enjoy theatrically baroque and erudite prose, hie thee to Fr. Geo. Rutler’s “Speaking Well of the Dead.” Terrific read.

No such favor was granted on July 29 [1997] in St. Matthew’s Cathedral [at the funeral of Justice Wm. Brennan] when a priest asked from the pulpit: “How does a young man, son of immigrants, rise to such a position of judicial pre-eminence, with almost the entire government present to honor him on the day of his burial?” It would have been lovely if St. Thomas More had dropped from Heaven right then. A brief glimpse of the saint’s head would have been a sufficient reply.

Once in a press conference in which he distanced himself from the angels on significant points of behavior, Senator Edward Kennedy said that St. Thomas More had been “intolerant.” The saint indeed had been intolerant, but of falseness. The logician in him would have found grotesque the Orwellian doublethink of the priest-eulogist who said that one way to honor Brennan’s memory would be to help “a young pregnant girl.” The jurist in him would have raised an eyebrow when the priest declared: “The Brennan mind met the Brennan heart, and in their perfect match was the secret greatness of our friend.” A meeting of mind and heart is anatomically difficult when there is a spine; and when More insisted on this point, his King obliged with an ax. In the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade, Brennan concurring, mind and heart congealed to produce the words: “If the human race is to survive, pregnancy will always be with us.” The twentieth century has taught that such banality can be the diction of cruelty incarnadine.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.