Of course you do.
“two-all-beef-paties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a sesame-seed- bun.”
Do you know all the 10 Commandments?
Mmm.

HT: CNS

Survey: More Americans know Big Mac ingredients than Ten Commandments
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Quick. Name each of the Ten Commandments. OK. Now name the ingredients in a Big Mac hamburger sold at McDonald’s. According to a new survey, the Big Mac wins the memory contest. In truth, the Big Mac has advantages. There are only seven ingredients to remember, and they have a catchy jingle behind them. McDonald’s Corp. has poured enough money into commercials that the decades-old jingle remains familiar today. The survey of 1,000 Americans, by Kelton Research, was undertaken to help promote the new animated movie “The Ten Commandments,” which will open Oct. 19. The vast majority of those surveyed could easily name the primary ingredients in a Big Mac: two all-beef patties (80 percent), lettuce (76 percent), sesame-seed bun (75 percent), special sauce (66 percent), pickles (62 percent) and cheese (60 percent). By comparison, “You shall not kill” was known to fewer than six in 10 respondents. Less than half (45 percent) could recall the commandment to “Honor your father and mother.”

From today’s NY Times.  Discuss:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared
torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush
administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly
unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s
arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department
issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different
document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive
endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided
explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of
painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping,
simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey,
the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising
clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the
opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at
the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world
eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman
and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret
opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former
officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of
the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden
legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the
Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White
House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies
on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the
last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the
administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most
extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in
effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more
recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has
succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh
tactics.

Here’s a wacky one–at least to me. Perhaps you Minnesota readers are up on this story, but thanks to the Dallas Morning News blog I just read the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages story about the University of St. Thomas rescinding an invitation to Nobel laureate and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu because of remarks he has made criticizing Israel policies on the Palestinians.

Desmond Tutu as Anne Lamott? Hmmm…This does not sound like a reaction to some groundswell movement by the Jewish community.

From what I have read, my thoughts would coincide with those of Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor within the Justice and Peace Studies program at St. Thomas, who told the paper:

“This is pure bullshit,” says Davidov. “As far as fighting for civil rights, I consider Tutu to be my brother. And I consider Cris Toffolo to be my sister. They’re messing with my family here. If Columbia permits a Holocaust denier [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to speak at their university, why are St. Thomas officials refusing to let Tutu, an apostle of nonviolence, speak at ours?”

Only alt-weeklies can get away with such descriptive language, alas.

The trial of the former accountant for the Diocese of Cleveland, Anton Zgoznik, ended yesterday when the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all 15 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice.  The defense had argued, apparently unsucessfully, that the Diocese of Cleveland knew about and encouraged Zgoznik’s activities.  The trial of the former chief financial officer and lawyer for the diocese, Joseph Smith, is expected to start in the spring.

The Plain Dealer story can be found here.

No, it’s not a new beach novel. It’s a very abstruse theological doctrine–with new relevance in today’s world.

When can Catholics –institutions and individuals–contribute to wrongful actions on the part of other agents? Moralists in the Catholic tradition have discussd this under the heading of “cooperation with evil.”

Fr. Greg Kalscheur, SJ, has organized an interdisciplinary panel on the topic at Boston College Law School on October 11, as part of BC’s Church in the 21 Century Program. We’ll be talking about the general terms and history of the doctrine (Fr. Keenan), the application to Catholic hospital systems (Fr. Smith), the application to Catholic judges and lawyers (Prof. Hartnett) and the broader theological context that makes it work (me).

So if you’re in Boston, and not busy, stop by!

Blog reader Bob Nunz suggested that we start a new thread on the news yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case of Catholic Charities in New York, which opposes a state law requiring its health care plan to pay for, among other things, contraceptives.

Lower courts ruled that Catholic Charities is not a church, but a social services agency.

At the America Web site, John Donahue, SJ, has some shocking news about the latest Church investigation of an unorthodox thinker. Have things always been this bad? Well, maybe…(Satire alert.)

Paul Lauritzen is back with his latest podcast: an interview with longtime friend of Commonweal, Sidney Callahan. You may recall that Sidney’s new book Created for Joy was positively reviewed by dotCommonwealer Robert Imbelli. Give a listen below, download it directly, or subscribe via iTunes.

From the BBC:

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has
told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with
HIV deliberately.  Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some
anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly
the African people”.

The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.  Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them “nonsense”….“Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two
countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on
purpose,” [the Archbishop] alleged, refusing to name the countries.