ConstantinesRant

Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect - YouTube

2011-09-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect - YouTube

Whose Country Is It, Anyway? - HUMAN EVENTS

2011-09-19T21:36:00.000-07:00

Whose Country Is It, Anyway? - HUMAN EVENTS

For the third straight year, the median income of the typical American family fell in 2010. Adjusted for inflation, it is back where it was in 1996, the longest period of zero growth since the Depression.

And the poverty rate has inched up to 15.1 percent.

Both figures, however, should be put in perspective.

For example, a family can be classified as poor and own a car, a flat-screen TV and a computer, and have a washer-dryer and a garbage disposal.

Folks below the poverty line have their kids educated free in Head Start, for 13 years in public schools, then get Pell grants for college. They get free food stamps and health care through Medicaid. They get subsidized housing and earned income tax credits, are eligible for all other safety-net programs, and can earn $23,300 in pretax income and pay no income taxes.

Poverty in 21st century America is not poverty in the Paris of "Les Miserables" or the London of Oliver Twist or the Dust Bowl of Tom Joad.

The 15-year stagnation in the median income of the American family, however -- a vanishing of the American Dream that one's children will know a better life -- is a more serious matter.

For there are causes of the stunted growth in the standard of living of the American family that neither party is willing to address, if either of them even recognizes those causes.

First is the immersion of the U.S. economy in a global economy. This plunged U.S. workers into direct competition with workers in Asia and Latin America willing to do the same jobs for far less, in factories where regulations are far lighter.

U.S. corporate executives leapt at the opportunity to close plants here and relocate abroad. This explains the 50,000 factories that disappeared in the Bush decade and the 5.5 million manufacturing jobs that vanished.

You cannot have a rising standard of living when your highest-paid production jobs are being exported overseas.

Now, to buy the goods of the foreign factories that used to be here, we are shoveling out more and more of America's wealth. Our national bill for imported goods and services is $2.5 trillion a year. The U.S. trade deficit is back up to between $550 billion and $600 billion a year.

If President Obama wishes to know why his $800 billion stimulus bill didn't have the kick he expected, he should look at the "seepage" problem.

How do you stimulate the U.S. economy when the workers you retain or rehire with your stimulus billions head for Walmarts on Saturday to buy goods made in Japan, Korea and China?

Our $6 trillion in trade deficits in the Bush decade stimulated economies all over the world, just not our own. Indeed, the most successful economies of the last decade were China and Germany. Not coincidentally, they were the world's two largest exporting countries.

There are time-honored ways that nations have turned around such situations. What prevents us from adopting them? An ignorance of our own history, the immense investment of our transnational corporations in the new global arrangement, and the opposition of a World Trade Organization to which we have surrendered our national sovereignty.

A second reason why the median income of American families is back to 1996 levels and sinking is mass immigration, legal and illegal.

According to analyst Ed Rubenstein of VDARE.com, the United States, despite an unemployment rate above 9 percent, imports 100,000 immigrant workers every single month. Numbers USA contends that 125,000 foreign workers are brought in every month.

Thus, well over a million workers are added annually to our labor force when 14 million Americans are looking for work.

Why are we doing this?

Is it xenophobic to say our own citizens should come first, that the importation of foreign workers must halt until our own unemployed have found jobs?

A huge share of our immigrant population is Hispanic. And Rubenstein finds that for every 100 Hispanics employed in the United States in year 2001, 126 are employed today. But for every 100 non-Hispanics employed in 2001, only 98 are working today.

What prevents our politicians from putting Americans first, deporting illegal aliens and suspending the importation of foreign labor until our own workers are back on the job?

Politics is one reason. Democrats see illegal aliens and their children as future Democratic voters. Republicans are terrified of being called racists and alienating the ethnic lobbies.

Crass commercial interest is another reason.

U.S. companies see immigrants, legal or illegal, as an endless source of cheap labor to keep wage costs down. And they are right.

But who is looking out for the national interest, for all of the members of the American family, especially the unemployed?

If the median income of the American family is falling, already back to where it was in Bill Clinton's first term, Middle America is one of the big losers in the global economy. And who are the big winners?

Constantines Comment:These are the questions Americans have to ask themselves. These are the questions that are forbidden to be asked. Big government/Globalist 'conservatives' like Rick Perry and George W. Bush are not patriots and are not looking out for US National Interest. I disagree with Pat that Republicans are afraid of being called 'Racist'. For the most part, they hold the people who vote for them in contempt and are happy to sell out the traditional American people.

The Democracy Worshipers - HUMAN EVENTS

2011-09-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

The Democracy Worshipers - HUMAN EVENTS

SA@TAC - Is Ron Paul Weird?

2011-01-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

SA@TAC - Southern Secession and the Liberal Mind

2010-12-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

SA@TAC - Mark Sanford Revisited

2010-12-21T14:34:00.000-08:00

Porter Stansberry Research - The End of America

2010-12-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

Christian Rout in the Culture War : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-12-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

Christian Rout in the Culture War : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

A Democratic Congress, discharged by the voters on Nov. 2, has as one of its last official acts, imposed its San Francisco values on the armed forces of the United States.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is to be repealed. Open homosexuals are to be welcomed with open arms in all branches of the armed services.

Let us hope this works out better for the Marine Corps than it did for the Catholic Church.

Shocking!

2010-08-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Tea Party Infiltrator Caught on Camera

By Bob Ellis on August 10th, 2010

For several months we’ve known liberals were so desperate to smear the Tea Party movement they were willing to infiltrate Tea Party events and behave in a racist or otherwise negative manner. A few of these desperate Leftists have even been confronted and exposed.

The latest one seems to be a fellow by the name of Tyler Clay Collins who showed up over the weekend at a Fancy Farm gathering in Kentucky. This liberal nitwit tried to portray himself as a tinfoil hat-wearing Rand Paul supporter.

Liberals always fancy themselves the smartest person in any room (and in their own mind they really are), so he probably thought no one would ever see through his beautiful “emperor’s clothes.”

Unfortunately for him, the conservative patriots he loathes so much were just a little bit smarter than he was and nailed him in no time. As you will see in the video below, they later caught him accompanying some Democrat Jack Conway supporters. Busted twice in one day; what a terrible day for the liberal cause. He’s so bad, even the liberal Slate is holding him at arm’s length

Continued at source

TAC TV » Mel Gibson’s Greatest Sin

2010-07-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

Political Correctness is intellectual fascism.

Goldman reveals where bailout cash went - USATODAY.com

2010-07-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Goldman reveals where bailout cash went - USATODAY.com

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."

He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on ... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."

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Government for the Banks and by the Banks.

Disney Villains - Prince John

2010-07-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Prince John as President Obama.

Raising Taxes to Combat Recession: The Ultimate Fiscal Folly

2010-07-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Raising Taxes to Combat Recession: The Ultimate Fiscal Folly

07/20/10 Tampa, Florida – When I saw that Illinois cleverly solved its budget crisis by just not paying its bills, I knew that the end is near, or would be, if we still had a dollar that was not a stupid fiat currency, because nowadays it would be child’s play for the Federal Reserve to just create as money as any state wanted! And they can do it in less time than it takes to tell you about it, too!

And then the Federal Reserve can turn right around and use that money to buy up all the state debt out there! Wipe debt completely out! And flood the economy with money!!!

The American Conservative -- Wards of the State

2010-07-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

The American Conservative -- Wards of the State

The best book on Obama’s America has already been written. The president has two more years in office, six if he’s lucky, but already we know enough about the contours of his mind, his governing instincts, to predict that the volume in question will not be bettered. This is a large claim for a book that never once mentions Obama or America or the gushing wells of oil and words that seem to be, so far, his chief gift to us.

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During the bank bailouts a couple of years ago, I bought the Servile State as a friend of mine told me that he believes how all of this is going to play out. I then picked up Utopia of Usurers. I agree with the author that Belloc saw Bush/Obama coming.

I have found that Servile State should be read in conjunction with ‘Utopia of Usurers’ by Chesterton. They are both critiques of Capitalism/Socialism and Communism. They argue for Distributism which in theory makes a lot of sense to me. It is based on Catholic social and economic theory. Of course it would be very difficult to implement in the United States now but the basic premises make sense to me. More private property, more control of our own labor and more small business versus the capitalism model and the statism model. Chesterton was more charitable to Socialists. He points out that honest socialists would never go along with the servile state. Of course the problem is that most socialists today are not honest and not really socialists.

What he should remember is that Belloc was writing as an Englishman/Frenchman. His solutions are more applicable to European nations Pre-World War 2. On the other hand, my belief is that the devolution of power to the localities and allowing more property rights than less is the way to begin to turn things around. Our government now is going the opposite direction. They are centralizing power and attempting to establish the servile state from DC and New York. It is a situation that cannot last.

My posts on the debate between Hoste and Trifkovic at Alt Right

2010-07-20T10:02:00.001-07:00

Hoste :

"As for Christians who go on about Islam's bloody history, “why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?" The religion that gave us the rack, the Inquisitions, burning at the stake, witch hunts and the Crusades has little room to talk. A body count comparing the two faiths wouldn't even be close."

Constantine:

These kinds of statements are more typical of people on the Left or Neoconservatives. Anyone who wishes to defend the West and preserve our Culture and Traditions would never make such statements. The Inquisition was desperately necessary (I find it funny that Mr. Hoste who seems not to be a fan of Jews is making that statement). All one has to do is read the history of Spain and see that his points are silly at best. As for 'Body Counts', the Inquisition had a lower body count than most people think. Over hundreds of years there were about 3,000 people executed by the State (not the Church). That's about the same body count that Muhammadans pulled off on one day on 9-11. As for the Crusades, they were defensive wars after the Muhammadan horde conquered half of the Christian world and pushed into France. Constantinople was threatened, Spain was mostly lost, Arab raiders were harassing Christians and there was a need to strike back. Mr. Hoste really needs to brush up on History of the West if he wishes to discuss these things.

Islam is foreign to the West and it is an alien body within it. Only by rejection of Islam will the West survive. We should leave them alone and insist that they stay out of our nations.

Later I went on to say:

I quite agree with you. I have observed that people feel the need to 'choose sides' between Jews and Muslims. It is a false dichotomy. The Muhammadans have been the enemy outside they gates and the Jews many times have been the enemy inside the gates. Mr. Hoste should read about the Jews in Spain and why there was a need for an Inquisition and how they conducted themselves before, during and after the Muhammadan conquest. When he decides to be a serious commentator about the History of the West, he should start to read a bit deeper into the History of Spain, Jews, Conversos, and the indigenous population.

The problem with people like Hoste and to a lesser extent Trifkovic is that they wish to ignore the problem of the people whom they see as 'allies'. Leftists and people whom object to Jewish power (I would hate to use 'anti-Semite' as it is over-used) have a rosy vision of Islam, even to the point of fantasy. The Ottoman Empire was a nightmare, as was Islamic Spain. Only Jews, Muslims and self hating Westerners see Islamic Spain or the Ottoman Empire as a good thing. Sorry, I can't go there. Give me Queen Isabella and Constantinople over the Caliphate and Suleiman the Magnificent.

On the other side you have neocons and Christian Zionists who absolutely cannot see the cancer that is Jewish power in the West. The police state that is being erected, the insane foreign policy that seeks to further Israeli interests, not American. The secularization of the nation. The forced multiculturalism and anti-White stance of the government is not due to Muhammadans. Jews have pushed for these things and the WASP elite sold out long ago.

It is time that Westerners stop buying into the false choice of being a fan of Islam or a fan of the Jews. Know that we are Westerners. We are culturally and hopefully someday again religiously Christian. Our traditions are as precious to us as others traditions are to them. Our traditions are Christian, not 'Judeo-Christian'. Once we return to knowing who we are and have a vision of where we must go rather than just obsessing on pop culture and idiotic sports matches, we might actually save the West. Until then we are done.

Bias and Bigotry in Academia : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-07-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

Bias and Bigotry in Academia : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

To achieve even these percentages, however, the discrimination against white and Asian applicants, because of the color of their skin and where their ancestors came from, is astonishing.

As Nieli puts it, “Being Hispanic conferred an admissions boost over being white . . . equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1,600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310-point SAT advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points.”

“To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550.”

Was this what the civil rights revolution was all about—requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?

What are the historic and moral arguments for discriminating in favor of kids from Angola and Argentina over kids whose parents came from Poland and Vietnam?

Constantine -The American system is broken and is actually hostile to the historical American people. Once Americans figure that out they must work to re-claim their nation. Until them they are going to continue to be pushed aside, discriminated against and ultimately dispossessed of their own nation.

The Fall of Obama : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-07-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Fall of Obama : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

'It is not Obama’s fault that for 30 years, America’s policy under Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton has been to export jobs permanently to the Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer here in the homeland and never will be. They’re in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India and Indonesia.

No stimulus program giving money to cement contractors to fix potholes along the federal interstate highway system is going to bring those jobs back. Highly trained tool and die workers, the aristocrats of the manufacturing sector, are flipping hamburgers—at best—for $7.50 an hour because U.S. corporations sent their jobs to Guangzhou, with the approval of politicians flush with the money of the “free trade” lobby.

It is not Obama’s fault that across 30 years more and more money has floated up to the apex of the social pyramid till America is heading back to where it was in the 1880s, a nation of tramps and millionaires. It’s not his fault that every tax break, every regulation, every judicial decision tilts toward business and the rich. That was the neo-liberal America conjured into malign vitality back in the mid-1970s.

But it is Obama’s fault that he did not understand this, that always, from the get-go, he flattered Americans with paeans to their greatness, without adequate warning of the political and corporate corruption destroying America and the resistance he would face if he really fought against the prevailing arrangements that were destroying America. He offered them a free and easy pass to a better future, and now they see that the promise was empty.'

Exactly.

I'm here to chew bubblegum...

2010-07-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

The American Conservative » The War on Arizona

2010-07-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

The American Conservative » The War on Arizona

"In communist countries in the Cold War, all understood that the government did not represent the people. The state was at war with the nation.

That idea is taking root in America — the idea that our government no longer seeks to represent us. And as one watches Obama and Congress take the side of a foreign leader attacking an American state, and the government refuse to do its duty and defend the borders or send the illegals back home, questions arise.

In this ongoing invasion of the United States that has brought 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens into our midst, whose side is the government on? Ours or theirs? What is the reason for the refusal to secure our border?

Why do Democrats insist that the illegal aliens be put on a “path to citizenship”?

Is the real objective the abolition of the old America we grew up in?"

Another great article by Pat. Of course the real objective is to abolish the old America we grew up in. That's the whole point of multi-culturalism.

TAC TV » Is Palin a Puppet?

2010-07-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

TAC TV » Is Palin a Puppet?

FOXNews.com - University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs

2010-07-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

FOXNews.com - University of Illinois Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs

Latin Mass

2010-07-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Orthodox Bulgarians call for unity with Catholics "urgent"

2010-07-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

Pope Leo XIII

2010-07-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

Ringo Starr to celebrate 70th birthday, isn't moved by Vatican praise | OnTheRedCarpet.com

2010-07-06T13:33:00.000-07:00

Ringo Starr to celebrate 70th birthday, isn't moved by Vatican praise | OnTheRedCarpet.com

"It didn’t affect me in any way, but I do believe that the Vatican have better things to deal with than forgiving the Beatles - Ringo Star

I quite agree. Why the Vatican is bothering to discuss a bunch of drug addled fools who are completely over-rated is beyond me.

WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Barack Obama: The great jobs killer - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com

2010-07-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Barack Obama: The great jobs killer - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com

As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."

The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.

RCP: Biden Calls Manager Who Told Him To Lower Taxes A "Smartass"

2010-06-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Strange Words for Strange Days : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-06-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

Strange Words for Strange Days : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

by Clyde N. Wilson

June 28th, 2010 • Related • Filed Under

[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].

Charity.

Old version: Open-handedness toward our neighbour in need.

New version: Getting the government to spend other people’s money on politically favoured groups, at home and abroad.

All Men are Created Equal

OV: We are all made in the image of God and deserve respect. (Besides, an Englishman over here is just as good as an Englishman over there and we want none of your prissy dukes and earls who never did an honest day’s work.)

NV: The government should force people to pretend that we are all alike and interchangeable.

Serial Killers

OV: None of the notorious serial killers of the 20th century were Southern white men.

NV: When shown in the movies, all serial killers must be Southern white men.

National Defense

OV: Guarding the country against attack.

NV: Killing foreigners for Democracy.

Justice

OV: What is fair and right.

NV: What produces the most lucrative outcome for politically favoured minorities.

Truth

OV: What accords with reason and evidence.

NV: What produces the best outcome for politically favoured minorities.

Famous Person

OV: Someone who has done something noteworthy.

NV: Someone who is on television a lot.

Constitution

OV: What was ratified by the people to define and limit government.

NV: What changes society in a way that judges want.

Promoting the General Welfare

OV: Doing what seems best for society.

NV: Reimbursing the richest people in the country for their bad investments which harmed society.

Free Trade

OV: Minimising government interference and taxes on the free exchange of goods so that different peoples may mutually prosper from comparative advantage.

NV: Shipping people and money around so that certain interests who produce no goods may get even richer.

Douay-Rheims Bible, Epistle Of Saint Paul To The Romans Chapter 1

2010-06-21T19:22:00.001-07:00

kuhugyfuggtygy ccxj fxbcyufsiuhvgyugbyugbtrbgfsrjbrbgbbgbfbhhbfvfbfgbevfhbfhbhgbbgbhbbvgbbbhtbggbnrhgfyuegfoijnbbgiufvhgygfvgfbbbbDouay-Rheims Bible, Epistle Of Saint Paul To The Romans Chapter 1

Douay-Rheims Bible, Epistle Of Saint Paul To The Romans Chapter 1

2010-06-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

kuhugyfuggtygy ccxj fxbcyufsiuhvgyugbyugbtrbgfsrjbrbgbbgbfbhhbfvfbfgbevfhbfhbhgbbgbhbbvgbbbhtbggbnrhgfyuegfoijnbbgiufvhgygfvgfbbbbDouay-Rheims Bible, Epistle Of Saint Paul To The Romans Chapter 1

Journalist held up at gunpoint, 2 others robbed - Yahoo! News

2010-06-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Journalist held up at gunpoint, 2 others robbed - Yahoo! News

MAGALIESBURG, South Africa – A Portuguese photographer was held up at gunpoint early Wednesday and two other journalists also were robbed at the same World Cup hotel.

Antonio Simoes said he woke up around 4 a.m. and found two men entering his room at the Nutbush Boma Lodge outside of Magaliesburg, 75 miles northwest of Johannesburg.

"One of the guys pointed a hand gun at my head, and then they took all my gear — cameras, lenses, laptop," said Simoes, who works for the Portuguese daily O Jogo. "Then they told me to lie on the bed and they covered me with a blanket, pressed the gun against my head and told me to sleep.

Lift the Siege of Gaza : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-06-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

Lift the Siege of Gaza : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

SA@TAC - Israel, the World and Us

2010-06-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-05-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Yet another great American never spoken of:

Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

Nathaniel Macon summed up his philosophy in advice to a young Tar Heel: “Remember, you belong to a meek state and a just people, who want nothing but to enjoy the fruits of their labour honestly and lay out the profits in their own way.”

By the end of his life Macon had realised that the cause of republicanism was lost at the federal level, and also that the North was determined to exploit and rule the South. South Carolina tried in 1832 to use “nullification,” state interposition, to force the federal government back within the limits of the Constitution. After he read Andrew Jackson’s proclamation against South Carolina, Macon told friends that it was too late for nullification. The Constitution was dead. The only recourse was secession—there was nothing left but for the South to get out from under the “Union” and govern itself.

Thirty years later, in the spring of 1861, the North Carolina convention met to ratify secession unanimously. Nathaniel Macon’s son-in-law, Weldon N. Edwards, was in the president’s chair.

Nathaniel Macon left us a invaluable legacy from which we can learn much about the way things should be.

The Wailin' Jennys - The Parting Glass

2010-05-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

Our Vitriol, and Theirs by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com

2010-05-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Our Vitriol, and Theirs by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com

"Frum, the pompous hypocrite, is about as “moderate” as a rattlesnake, reserving his poison for advocates of individual liberty and anyone who opposes his agenda of perpetual war. As co-author of a book with Richard Perle which advocated invading practically every country in the Middle East – and instituting a quasi-dictatorship on the home front in the name of fighting the “war on terrorism” – his “moderate” disguise is about as convincing as that of a wolf out of the Brothers Grimm.

How’s that for “vitriol”?"

Great stuff as usual from Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com

Maxims for American Intellectuals : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-05-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Clyde Wilson is one of the best commentators I know of. A true gentleman and scholar.

Maxims for American Intellectuals : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

by Clyde N. Wilson

May 3rd, 2010 • Related • Filed Under

[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].

(good for putting down right-wing bigots at cocktail parties or in the classroom)

Taking off your shoes at the airport is patriotic and makes you safer.

If college athletes fail academically it is obviously society’s fault.

HIV is an unfortunate virus and not caused by human behaviour.

Presidents are good and do what is best for us, except Nixon.

Poverty causes crime and if we eliminate poverty we can eliminate crime.

America has always been a nation of immigrants.

Diversity is a wonderful thing. Everybody should be required to accept it.

Excellence in education and equality in education are the same thing.

We are bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. We ought to be, and soon will be, doing the same for Iran.

Freedom means that all forms of non-coercive sexual activity are equally acceptable, as is declared in the Constitution.

In our Constitution, the Founding Fathers established for all time that “all men are created equal.”

Our Constitution demands a “wall of separation” between church and state. Churches should never interfere in politics unless it is to support progressive causes.

There is no such thing as race, but some races deserve special advantages.

Crime and social dysfunction in Northern metropolises are caused by slavery in the South that ended a century and a half ago.

Slavery in the South was the greatest atrocity in history except for Hitler’s killing of the Jews.

People oppose Obama only because he is black.

Bigotry is totally unacceptable except anti-Catholicism and anti-Arabism.

Terrorism mostly is to be feared from right-wing bigots.

The volcano eruption in Iceland was caused by rising right-wing extremism.

We are Better than That!!!!!

2010-05-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

I will be voting for this man for President

Rand Paul: Unprincipled Hero : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

2010-05-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

Rand Paul: Unprincipled Hero : Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

Tom Flemming always gives an interesting analysis. I like Flemming, would vote for Paul and voted for his Dad but this is a great critique.

FOXNews.com - Top Official Says Feds May Not Process Illegals Referred From Arizona

2010-05-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

FOXNews.com - Top Official Says Feds May Not Process Illegals Referred From Arizona

A top Department of Homeland Security official reportedly said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.

John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, made the comment during a meeting on Wednesday with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper reports.

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If you had any doubt that we have a government that is ruling against the will of the American people you are simply not paying attention.

Who has a right to live in U.S.? | illegal, people, live - Opinion - The Orange County Register

2010-05-24T17:13:00.001-07:00

Who has a right to live in U.S.? | illegal, people, live - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Posted using ShareThis

Christendom’s Great Defeat (This Rock: March-April 2010)

2010-05-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

Christendom’s Great Defeat (This Rock: March-April 2010)

The official history we are all taught in school is from an Anglo-Protestant point of view. I have jumped into the history of Spain and now see that most of the history I learned was BS.

SA@TAC - Rand Paul Revolution

2010-05-24T17:02:00.000-07:00

Sorority Girls Gone Wild - May 24, 2010

2010-05-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sorority Girls Gone Wild - May 24, 2010

I see college parties are not much different than when I was there.

Are Liberals Anti-WASP? - HUMAN EVENTS

2010-05-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Are Liberals Anti-WASP? - HUMAN EVENTS

Are Liberals Anti-WASP?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

05/14/2010

"A chorus of black commentators and civic leaders has begun expressing frustration over (Elena) Kagan's hiring record as Harvard dean. From 2003 to 2009, 29 faculty members were hired: 28 were white and one was Asian American."

CNN pundit Roland Martin slammed "Kagan's record on diversity as one that a 'white Republican U.S. president' would be criticized for."

This is an excerpt from the Washington Post about the rising anger in a black community, which voted 24-1 for Obama, that one of their own was once again passed over for the Supreme Court.

Not since Thurgood Marshall, 43 years ago, has a Democratic president chosen an African-American. The lone sitting black justice is Clarence Thomas, nominated by George H. W. Bush. And Thomas was made to run a gauntlet by Senate liberals.

Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?

But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.

Not in living memory has a Democratic president nominated an Irish, Italian or Polish Catholic, though these ethnic communities once gave the party its greatest victories in the cities and states of the North.

What happened to the party of the Daleys, Rizzos and Rostenkowskis?

And not in nearly half a century has a Democratic president nominated a white Protestant or white Catholic man or woman.

The last was Byron "Whizzer" White, the all-American running back from the University of Colorado, nominated by his friend Jack Kennedy. White cast one of the only two votes against Roe v Wade.

What of the record of Republican presidents?

Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford made seven nominations. All were white Protestant males: Warren Burger, Clement Haynsworth, Harrold Carswell, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist and John Paul Stevens.

The diversity Nixon sought was first to put a Southerner on the court. He succeeded in his third try, with Powell. And he sought to put the first woman on the court, but pulled back from nominating Judge Mildred Lillie of California when the American Bar Associated rated her unqualified.

With Ronald Reagan and Bush I came Republican diversity.

Reagan's first choice was Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman ever nominated. His second was Antonin Scalia, the first Italian-American. When his third nominee, Robert Bork, a Protestant, was rejected, Reagan chose Bork's Jewish colleague on the U.S. Appellate Court for the District of Columbia, Douglas H. Ginsburg. When Douglas Ginsburg was pulled because of a marijuana incident in college, Reagan chose the Irish Catholic Anthony Kennedy.

George H. W. Bush picked David Souter, a Protestant from New Hampshire, and Clarence Thomas, the second African-American to sit. George W. Bush chose John Roberts, a Catholic; Harriet Miers, the first Evangelical Christian of our era; and Sam Alito, the second Italian Catholic.

If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will consist of three Jews and six Catholics (who represent not quite a fourth of the country), but not a single Protestant, though Protestants remain half the nation and our founding faith.

If Kagan is confirmed, three of the four justices nominated by Democratic presidents will be from New York City: Kagan from the Upper West Side, Sotomayor from the Bronx, Ruth Bader Ginsburg from Brooklyn. Breyer is from San Francisco.

What kind of diversity is this -- either in geography or life experience?

While Sotomayor went to Yale Law School, the other three liberals went to Harvard, though Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia. Seems a fairly narrow range for a party that once claimed to be America's party.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg tied for first in her class at Columbia, but neither Obama nominee is academically distinguished. Sotomayor called herself an "affirmative action baby" who, at Princeton, was urged to read children's books in the summer to improve her reading and writing skills. Kagan never served as a judge, never litigated a case before being named solicitor general, never wrote a book or anything else anyone has turned up that manifests real legal scholarship.

From her Princeton thesis on the sad demise of 20th-century socialism, to her tears at the defeat of the radical liberal Senate candidate Elizabeth Holtzman in 1980, to her hostility to the U.S. military on the Harvard campus while dean of the law school, Kagan has revealed herself to be one more Ivy League leftist anxious to use a lifetime seat on the court, winning the plaudits of her peers by imposing her ideology on a nation that has never voted for it.

Conservatives will not soon get another opportunity like this to take down Ivy League pretensions to represent and rule America.

04-07-2010 Sobran

2010-05-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

04-07-2010 Sobran

Liquidating the Empire

2010-02-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

Liquidating the Empire

A decade ago, Oldsmobile went. Last year, Pontiac. Saturn, Saab and Hummer were discontinued. A thousand GM dealerships shut down.

To those who grew up in a “GM family,” where buying a Chrysler was like converting to Islam, what happened to GM was deeply saddening.

Yet the amputations had to be done—or GM would die.

And the same may be about to happen to the American Imperium.

Its birth can be traced to World War II, when America put 16 million men in uniform and sent millions across the seas to crush Nazi Germany and Japan. After V-E and V-J Day, the boys came home.

But with the Stalinization of half of Europe, the fall of China, and war in Korea came NATO and alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan and Australia that lasted through the Cold War.

In 1989, however, the Cold War ended dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the retirement of the Red Army from Europe, the break-up of the Soviet Union and Beijing’s abandonment of world communist revolution.

Overnight, our world changed. But America did not change.

[continued at website]

Catholic-School Comeback?

2009-04-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Patrick J. McCloskey

City Journal

Inner-city kids would be the big winners.

6 April 2009

Since Catholic education in America peaked in 1965, half of the nation’s Catholic schools have shut their doors, with an average of 250 closing per year. Many of these schools have been in inner cities, making the closings a particularly tragic development for disadvantaged students, who’ve benefited tremendously from the orderly environment and first-rate instruction that these institutions provide and who now have no educational alternative but failing public schools.

The usual suspects for the school closings are the loss of religious teaching orders, demographic shifts, rising costs, and falling enrollments. The current economic crisis will push closings to epidemic proportions in the next few years, according to National Catholic Education Association president Karen Ristau. First to go, in even larger numbers, will be inner-city schools serving vulnerable populations, since they depend heavily on philanthropic and diocesan support. The Catholic school system might end up becoming an elite consortium for affluent Catholics.

Thus far, the Catholic response has been far from adequate. In fact, most bishops haven’t even begun contemplating how to deal with the closings crisis comprehensively. Astoundingly, last May a Church official responded with indifference to Catholic philanthropists’ proposal of a $100 million national campaign to save parochial schools. The proposal eventually grew to $1 billion but was shelved because of the weakening economy and the Church representative’s discouraging reaction.

But hope remains. Some lay leaders and bishops have begun working together to effect local change that could apply across the country. In 1998, Memphis bishop J. Terry Steib boldly announced that he’d reopen eight inner-city schools serving a student population that was over 90 percent non-Catholic. But the diocese had no funds, and its bureaucracy was typically inefficient. “We were the problem,” said Mary McDonald, the superintendent of Catholic schools in Memphis. “We had to move from a bureaucratic to an entrepreneurial way of thinking.” And McDonald did. Instead of hitting up donors to cover deficits (the usual Catholic approach, which philanthropists find unattractive), she developed a fiscally sophisticated business plan. Seeing the Catholic schools as investments in Memphis’s future—lowering drop-out rates significantly reduces crime rates and dependence on social services—foundations and local businessmen, mostly non-Catholic, responded by providing over $70 million to date, enough for an endowment guaranteeing long-term survival.

Some other dioceses are finally developing strategic plans that aim to reestablish their schools’ vitality. Like most big-city districts, those in New York have relied too heavily on wealthy donors, whose investment portfolios have shrunk considerably in the downturn. At the same time, job losses in a struggling economy prevent parents from paying rising tuitions. But a New York philanthropist has initiated a project, the Catholic Alumni Partnership (CAP), to track down elementary school alumni in several northeastern dioceses and solicit donations. If successful, CAP’s backer will lend other dioceses funds to institute their own CAP programs.

In Wichita, Kansas, the emphasis is on “stewardship,” the practice of involving all Catholics, which originally built the entire nexus of Catholic institutions. Wichita’s parishioners agree to give “their time, talent, and treasure as the spiritual way of living Christian discipleship,” explained Father John Lanzrath, Wichita’s stewardship director. “Treasure” means 8 percent of parishioners’ gross salaries, which support all diocesan ministries, including tuition-free schools. It took over 20 years to get all Wichita’s parishes on board with the practice, since it applies whether or not a parish has a school or a family has school-age children. But the result is high-quality schools with strong Catholic identities that most Catholic children, rich and poor alike, attend. (It helps that 75 percent of Wichita’s Catholics attend church regularly.)

Catholic colleges and universities are also stepping in, shouldering more responsibility with increased research and training of teachers and principals, as well as “adopting” nearby inner-city parochial schools—forming partnerships to improve their academic quality and helping with fund-raising. For the first time, the newly formed Catholic Higher Education Collaborative brings together elite Catholic universities like Boston College and Notre Dame to work on behalf of parochial schools.

Finally, the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management (NLRCM) sends highly accomplished lay (and some Church) leaders in business, finance, academia, and philanthropy to consult with dioceses in crisis. These experts supply data-driven strategic planning on all diocesan managerial, financial, and human-resources issues. Consequently, though it is engaged in just 18 diocesan consultancies so far, NLRCM has become the leading organization with the sanction and potential to implement real change in Catholic education.

So amid the dreary news of school closings, some bright spots exist for Catholic education. The question now is whether enough bishops and their superintendents will adopt successful models before massive numbers of parochial schools close.

Patrick J. McCloskey is the author of The Street Stops Here, a book about inner-city Catholic education published by the University of California (Berkeley) Press.

Iraqi Christians Wary of Withdrawal

2009-04-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Christians Wary of Withdrawal, Says Prelate

Doubt Ability of Native Police to Provide Security

VIENNA, APRIL 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- According to the archbishop of Kirkuk, Iraq's Christians are worried about a forthcoming withdrawal of international troops from the country since security is still lacking.

Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako spoke of the security issues and the inability of the Iraqi police to handle the situation on their own at a press conference in Vienna sponsored by Aid to the Church in Need and the organizations Christian Solidarity International, Austria, and "Pro Oriente."

"Under Saddam's regime we had security but no freedom," he said. "Today we have freedom, but the problem is security."

According to a Tuesday report from Aid to the Church in Need, the prelate said that another problem is the tendency of many Iraqis to equate the U.S. troops with Christians.

During the conflict, there has been a mass exodus of Iraqi Christians from Iraq. "Some 200,000 Christians have left the country. This is a tragedy for us," Archbishop Sako lamented.

Nevertheless, the archbishop affirmed, "We have many problems, but we also have great hope. We are not afraid, but rather we want to be able to live together with the Muslims in Iraq in peace."

Archbishop Sako expressed the conviction that a dialogue with Muslims is still possible -- "not a theological dialogue, but a 'dialogue of life.'"

At the same time, the prelate stressed the importance of Muslims finding an understanding of the "responsible freedom" of man. Muslims, he said, should find an interpretation of the Koran for the present time. Instead "the Muslims are living as though in the 7th century, and that is a problem."

Catholic bishops plan to forcefully confront Obama

2008-11-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

Catholic bishops plan to forcefully confront Obama

By Manya Brachear |Tribune staff reporter

8:38 PM CST, November 11, 2008

BALTIMORE - In a direct challenge to President-elect Barack Obama, America's Roman Catholic bishops vowed on Tuesday to accept no compromise for the sake of national unity until there is legal protection for the unborn.

About 300 bishops, gathered in Baltimore for their national meeting, adopted a formal blessing for a child in the womb and advised Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, president of the conference, as he began drafting a statement from the bishops to the incoming Obama administration. That document will call on the administration and Catholics who supported Obama to work to outlaw abortion.

"This is not a matter of political compromise or a matter of finding some way of common ground," said Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio. "It's a matter of absolutes."

The bishops, long one of the leading political forces against abortion, spent the first part of Tuesday behind closed doors reportedly debating the merits of "Faithful Citizenship," a nuanced guide for Catholic voters issued last November.

Though the document made clear that "the direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many," it also advised Catholics to weigh issues like poverty, war, the environment and human rights when choosing candidates.

But some bishops said they were surprised to see Catholics cite the document as justification for selecting candidates--like Obama--who support abortion rights. A slim majority of the nation's Catholics voted for the Democratic candidate.

Several bishops said that Catholics could not in good conscience vote for a candidate who favored abortion rights after Obama pledged to pass legislation that would overturn state's restrictions on abortion such as late-term abortion bans and requirements of parental consent.

"Any one of us here would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow--die tomorrow!--to bring about the end of abortion," said Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis.

Bishops Thomas Paprocki of Chicago said such legislation could threaten laws that allow health-care workers to refrain from carrying out procedures that violate their conscience, putting Catholic health care institutions in jeopardy.

"There are grave consequences," Paprocki said in an interview. "If Catholic hospitals were required by federal law to perform abortions, we'd have to close our hospitals."

"I don't think I'm being alarmist," Paprocki told the bishops.

George agreed that losing federal funds would put Catholic health care facilities, which make up a third of the nation's hospitals, out of business. Closing Catholic hospitals would put many patients seeking charitable care from those facilities at risk, he added.

In crafting the statement to Obama, the bishops urged the cardinal to indicate a desire to work with the administration in areas of economic justice, immigration reform, health care for the poor and religious freedom. But they stressed the church's "intent on opposing evil" and "defense of the unborn child."

They vowed to oppose any law or executive order that might loosen restrictions on abortion.

They emphasized that efforts to advance abortion rights would "permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans and would be interpreted by many Catholics as an attack on the Church." They also urged Catholics in public life to be committed to the teachings of the church.

Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton, Pa., vice president-elect Joe Biden's home town, called on his brother bishops to be more punitive against Catholic officials who are "stridently anti-life."

"I cannot have the vice president coming to Scranton and saying he learned his values there when those values are utterly against those of the Catholic Church," Martino said.

Sister Jamie Phelps, a theologian at Xavier University in Louisiana, also served on Obama's National Catholic Advisory Board. She applauds the bishops for issuing the statement. But she said the Faithful Citizenship document made it clear that while the rights of an unborn child are a priority voters should consider a whole range of issues regarding the preservation and quality of life.

"That child has no voice if it's not the voice of the bishops and the voice of Catholics," she said. "But you can not pick and choose an intrinsic evil."

George said the Faithful Citizenship document remains the guiding principle for Catholic voters. But he said future versions should be tweaked so portions are not "misused and misinterpreted." He said Catholics seemed to overlook the "whole question of proportionate reason."

George has attributed Obama's victory to the economy, insisting that it was not a referendum on moral issues such as abortion rights.

The bishops also approved a blessing on Tuesday devoted to a child in the womb, intended to support parents, unite parishes and foster respect for human life within society.

"Obviously it's a very tangible way for us to witness pastorally and sacramentally to the life of an unborn child," said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville. "It's very consistent with the priorities we've raised."

Head of Vatican's Highest Court: Ministers Have "Obligation to Deny" Communion to Pro-Abortion Politicians

2008-09-08T21:12:00.000-07:00

Head of Vatican's Highest Court: Ministers Have "Obligation to Deny" Communion to Pro-Abortion Politicians

By John-Henry Westen

ROME, August 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The head of the highest court in the Vatican has given an interview with a Roman magazine in which he notes that when dealing with pro-abortion Catholic politicians, "the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny It (Communion) to him."

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Raymond Burke, formerly the Archbishop of St. Louis, as the Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, which is the highest judicial authority of the Catholic Church besides the Pope himself. In an interview published in the current edition of the Italian magazine Radici Cristiane, Archbishop Burke addresses the issue which has caused great controversy among the hierarchy in the West.

In the interview, parts of which were translated by Catholic News Agency, the Archbishop noted first that pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be publicly corrected and told not to receive: and, if they persist, they should be denied. He spoke of dealing with "public officials" who contravene Divine and Eternal law such as "if they support abortion, which entails the taking of innocent and defenseless human lives."

"A person who commits sin in this way should be publicly admonished in such a way as to not receive Communion until he or she has reformed his life," the archbishop said. "If a person who has been admonished persists in public mortal sin and attempts to receive Communion, the minister of the Eucharist has the obligation to deny it to him. Why? Above all, for the salvation of that person, preventing him from committing a sacrilege," he added.

The Archbishop explained that the Church does this "not with the intention of interfering in public life but rather in the spiritual state of the politician or public official who, if Catholic, should follow the divine law in the public sphere as well," reported Catholic News Agency.

"We must avoid giving people the impression that one can be in a state of mortal sin and receive the Eucharist," the archbishop continued. "Secondly, there could be another form of scandal, consisting of leading people to think that the public act that this person is doing, which until now everyone believed was a serious sin, is really not that serious - if the Church allows him or her to receive Communion."

"If we have a public figure who is openly and deliberately upholding abortion rights and receiving the Eucharist, what will the average person think? He or she could come to believe that it up to a certain point it is okay to do away with an innocent life in the mother's womb," he warned.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Archbishop scolds pro-choice Biden

2008-08-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

Archbishop scolds pro-choice Biden

Valerie Richardson and Julia Duin
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

DENVER | Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived at the Democratic National Convention on Monday amid rumblings over whether his pro-choice Catholicism would help or hurt the Democratic ticket.

An Irish-Catholic from a working-class upbringing, Mr. Biden won the nod as presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama's running mate in part because of his appeal to blue-collar Catholics, the same voters who swung during the primary for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Although he represents Delaware in the Senate, Mr. Biden grew up in Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Democrats in November.

But the party's hopes of winning the critical Catholic vote took a hit Sunday when Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver said Mr. Biden should avoid taking Communion as a result of his pro-choice stand on abortion.

Archbishop Chaput, who was scheduled to lead a pro-life candlelight vigil Monday night here in front of Planned Parenthood, called Mr. Biden's support for abortion rights "seriously wrong," said archdiocese spokeswoman Jeanette De Melo.

"I certainly presume his good will and integrity," said the archbishop, "and I presume that his integrity will lead him to refrain from presenting himself for Communion if he supports a false 'right' to abortion."

The archbishop, who was not invited to speak at any convention events in what appeared to be a deliberate snub, told the Associated Press that he would like to speak privately with Mr. Biden.

The debate underscored what has emerged as a central theme of this year's convention: the tension between the Democratic Party's renewed outreach to religious voters and its long-standing support for unfettered access to abortion.

At a panel discussion Monday sponsored by Google on "The Shifting Faith Vote: What It Means for the Election," panelists said that concerns over social issues, such as poverty, are moving some faith-based voters away from the Republican Party.

At the same time, they haven't aligned with the Democrats, primarily because of the abortion issue.

"The push for the Democratic Party is to have a new position on abortion," said Steve Waldman, editor of the religious Web site beliefnet.com. "When you look at Catholics and evangelicals, you see that they agree with 80 percent of what [Mr. Obama] says, but there's this stumbling block with abortion."

Whether pro-choice Catholics should take Communion became a major issue in 2004 during Democrat John Kerry's run for the presidency when more than a dozen bishops, including Archbishop Chaput, publicly asked the senator from Massachusetts not to present himself for the Eucharist.

Their stance may have given a boost to President Bush, who increased his share of the Catholic vote from 47 percent in 2000 to 52 percent in 2004.

Catholics, the nation's largest religious voting bloc, represent 26 percent of the electorate. Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, said that 11 percent of those this year are considered "swing voters," more than in any recent election year.

Catholic advocacy groups didn't wait long before weighing in on the "wafer wars." The conservative Catholic group Fidelis condemned the selection of Mr. Biden.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the running mate of Sen. Barack Obama, has a cup of coffee Monday at a surprise appearance in Wilmington, Del., his home state. (Associated Press)

"Now everywhere Biden campaigns, we'll have this question of whether a pro-abortion Catholic can receive Communion. ... Selecting a pro-abortion Catholic is a slap in the face to Catholic voters," said Fidelis President Brian Burch.

• Julia Duin reported from Washington.

----------

Constantines Comment: - Joe, you can advocate the right to slaughter children in the womb or you can be a Catholic. You can't be both.

India: Hindu extremists Burn One Nun Alive, Rape Another

2008-08-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

ndia: Hindu extremists Burn One Nun Alive, Rape Another

By Nirmala Carvalho
8/26/2008

Asia News (www.asianews.it/)

All Christian institutions are now in danger because mobs of Hindu radicals are roaming the streets, breaking down doors and smashing windows, including Christian homes.

BUBANESHWAR (AsiaNews) – A Catholic nun was burnt alive by a group of Hindu fundamentalists who stormed the orphanage she ran in the district of Bargarh (Orissa), this according to Police Superintendent Ashok Biswall.

A priest who was at the orphanage was also badly hurt and is now being treated in hospital for multiple burns.

Another nun from Bubaneshwar’s Social Centre was gang raped by groups of Hindu extremists before the building housing the facility was set on fire. Sources also told AsiaNews that elsewhere one priest was wounded and two other were abducted. The list of violent anti-Christian acts is thus getting longer.

For the past two days the state of Orissa (north-east India) has been racked by violence following the assassination of radical Hindu leader Swami Laxanananda Saraswati.

Churches, community and pastoral centres, convents and orphanages have been attacked yesterday and today by mobs shouting “Kill the Christians; destroy their institutions.”

Tensions in the state are in fact still running high. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has planned demonstrations for today and tomorrow. Gangs of Hindu fanatics from the VHP as well as Sangh Parivar are roaming roads and villages, setting up road blocks, sending their own members on raids of plunder and violence.

According to firsthand accounts the archdiocese’s social centre was attacked and torched. Before that the attackers raped Sister Meena, a nun working at the centre.

The local pastoral centre, which has escaped destruction in last December’s violence, is now a total wreck. Father Thomas, who ran the facility, is in hospital with serious head injuries.

Speaking to AsiaNews Fr Ajay Singh also said that a nun was burnt alive in an orphanage she ran in the district of Bargarh.

Elsewhere Sisters of Mother Teresa have been attacked by stone-throwing Hindu militants with one seriously injured.

All Christian institutions are now in danger because mobs of Hindu radicals are roaming the streets, breaking down doors and smashing windows, including in some cases Christian homes. Many priests and nuns have had to escape.

In Bubaneshwar Hindu militants stoned the Archbishop’s residence, but did not dare invade the place because of police presence.

In Phulbani the parish church and the home of local clergy were attacked and set on fire. All local priests fled and found refuge in the homes of some of members of the local congregation.

The youth hostel that houses students who study in Phulbani has also been torched.

Some missionaries of Charity who were attending a health course in Brahamanigoan were blocked for hours in the village.

Elsewhere nuns left their convent finding shelter in some school buildings.

The End of White Flight

2008-07-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

For the First Time in Decades, Cities' Black Populations Lose Ground,
Stirring Clashes Over Class, Culture and Even Ice Cream

By CONOR DOUGHERTY
July 19, 2008; Page A1

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close.

In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents.

"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."

From the Collection of the Ali family

Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington has become a melting pot as the area's racial mix changes.

For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably -- and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.

The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities -- minority-owned restaurants, book stores -- are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.

Part of the demographic shift is simple math: So many whites had abandoned cities over the past half-century, there weren't as many left to lose. Whites make up 66% of the general U.S. population, but only about 40% of large cities. Sooner or later, the pendulum was bound to swing back, and that appears to be starting.

From the Collection of the Ali family

Ben's exterior in 1958

The Census data "suggests that white flight from large cities may have bottomed out in the 1990s," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

For instance, while most of the 50 largest cities continue to see declines in the share of whites, it is at much-reduced rates. In Los Angeles the share of the white population declined only about a half a percentage point between 2000 and 2006, compared to a 7.5-point decline the previous decade. Cities including New York, Fort Worth and Chicago show a similar pattern.

'Natural Decrease'

Demographic readjustments can take decades to play out. But if current trends continue, Washington and Atlanta (both with black majorities) will in the next decade see African-Americans fall below 50% for the first time in about a half-century.

Meantime, in San Francisco, African-American deaths now outnumber births. Once a "natural decrease" such as this begins, it's tough for the population to bounce back, since there are fewer residents left to produce the next generation. "The cycle tends to be self-perpetuating," says Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Ramin Rahimian/WpN for The Wall Street Journal

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, from the book "Harlem of the West" by Elizabeth Pepin & Lewis Watts, Chronicle Books

San Francisco's Fillmore (top) is losing black businesses; the same corner in the mid-1940s (bottom).

There are myriad factors driving the change. In recent years, minority middle-class families, particularly African-Americans, have been moving to the suburbs in greater numbers. At the same time, Hispanic immigrants (who poured into cities from the 1970s through the 1990s) are now increasingly bypassing cities for suburbs and rural areas, seeking jobs on farms and in meat-packing plants.

Cities have spent a decade tidying up parks and converting decaying factories into retail and living space. That has attracted young professionals and empty-nesters, many of them white.

The shift has put the future at odds with the past. New York City's borough of Brooklyn has seen its proportion of whites grow to 36.1% in 2006 from 35.9% in 2000 -- the first increase in white share in about a century.

Hoarding Computers

While the root of neighborhood conflicts is often money or class differences between white-collar and blue-collar workers, it often unfolds along racial lines. About two years ago Public School 84, in a largely Hispanic section of Brooklyn, meetings of the Parent Teacher Association started drawing a more professional, wealthier and whiter group of parents.

Soon, disagreements spilled into the open. Arguments concerned everything from how PTA money was spent, to accusations that some white parents were hoarding computers for their kids.

Even ice cream became a point of contention: In the past year, a group of mostly white parents took issue with a school tradition of selling ice cream to raise money. They felt the school shouldn't be serving sugary foods to kids, but the break with tradition angered many minority parents who felt the sales were an important source of money and that ice cream is a harmless treat.

"It was a gigantic fight," says Brooke Parker, who is white and whose daughter attended the school last year. "If the school is saying 'It's OK to give out ice cream' while at the same time they're holding workshops on how to deal with your kid's Type 2 diabetes, maybe we should rethink the message we're sending."

Relations got testy enough that about 20 kids, most of whom were white, transferred to private schools or other public schools. "I don't think the battleground against gentrification should take place in the schools," says Ms. Parker, who withdrew her own daughter from P.S. 84 as tensions built. "It seemed nothing could get accomplished," she said.

Cries of 'Segregation'

Patrice Gilbert for The Wall Street Journal

The Rev. John Blanchard (right) at his Washington church, which plans to woo whites.

A few months later, a small group of families, most of them white, proposed establishing a new public school, to be located inside the existing P.S. 84. Hundreds of minority parents reacted by putting out a press release calling it de facto segregation. The proposal is "clearly discriminatory," the release said. "Children will suffer the effects of negative stigma as a result of this segregation which will send our City back 120 years!"

"I honestly felt like they didn't want to mix our children with their children," says Virginia Reyes, vice president of the PTA at P.S. 84 who has two foster children at the school. "It upset me a lot."

A spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education says, "We obviously would not and could not open segregated schools." The department says the new school didn't get the go-ahead because it didn't have broad enough community support.

Backers of the new school couldn't be reached.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, in a majority African-American section of the borough, Councilwoman Letitia James says a handful of predominantly white parents last year asked her if some of their local tax money could be steered to schools in a nearby neighborhood. The parents wanted their kids in schools with a more diverse racial mix, Ms. James says, rather than the majority-black schools in her district.

The parents felt "tax dollars should follow the children, and not the school," Ms. James says. She denied their request.

There's a century's worth of history behind the ebb and flow of whites and minorities in urban America. Rural blacks began flocking to cities more than a century ago, lured by factory jobs. After World War II, whites headed for the suburbs as the great postwar building boom got rolling, while African-American families stayed in the cities, partly because they were often denied access to home loans that whites could get. In the 1970s Hispanic immigrants surged into cities, chasing service jobs and further diluting the share of whites. By the 1980s, as cities hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs, blacks and whites both left -- but whites at a higher rate.

Cities Get a Makeover

Today, cities are refashioning themselves as trendy centers devoid of suburban ills like strip malls and long commutes. In Atlanta, which has among the longest commute times of any U.S. city, the white population rose by 26,000 between 2000 and 2006, while the black population decreased by 8,900. Overall the white proportion has increased to 35% in 2006 from 31% in 2000.

In other cities, whites are still leaving, but more blacks are moving out. Boston lost about 6,000 black residents between 2000 and 2006, but only about 3,000 whites. In 2006, whites accounted for 50.2% of the city's population, up from 49.5% in 2000. That's the first increase in roughly a century.

Tracking population shifts is an inexact science. Changes in how Census data are tallied makes for imprecise comparisons across decades. Hispanics, for instance, were mostly lumped in with whites until 1980, potentially overstating the white population in earlier decades. Also, losses of African-Americans from cities are often disproportionate to other minorities because unlike, say, Hispanics or Asians, the inflow of black immigrants into the U.S. isn't big enough to offset the loss of African-Americans to the suburbs.

Washington -- where African-Americans have been in the majority for a half-century -- has lost about 80,000 black residents between 1990 and 2006. Whites had been leaving, too, but recently they've started coming back. Between 2000 and 2006, Washington gained 24,000 whites and lost 21,000 blacks. Whites are now 32% of the population, up from 28% in 2000.

Churches Take a Hit

This is a problem for Washington's African-American churches. The past few years, numerous black churches have relocated to suburban Prince George's County, Md., to follow their parishioners. Later this year, Metropolitan Baptist Church (founded by freed slaves during the Lincoln administration) plans to leave town as well.

Some of the remaining black churches are now courting white members. On a recent Sunday, the Rev. John Blanchard, the 64-year-old pastor at Ebenezer United Methodist Church, preached to a thin crowd; several pews were empty. About half his parishioners now live in the suburbs and drive into the city for services. High gasoline prices aren't helping attendance.

So Mr. Blanchard says he's planning to add a white intern to preach with him, in hopes of filling more pews. "You've got to love the one you're with," he says, "but you also need to adjust to the environment you're in."

While his church flounders, the predominantly white Capitol Hill United Methodist Church just down the street is flourishing. There the average attendance on Sundays has doubled to about 120 people the past five years. "Demographics are in our favor. We're attracting the folks that are moving in," says the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, 38, who headed the church for five years before recently leaving for a position elsewhere.

In San Francisco, the African-American population has fallen by a third, or about 30,000 people, since 1990, largely due to surging housing costs and redevelopment that destroyed some public housing. Mayor Newsom's African-American Out-Migration Task Force, set up last year, has a two-pronged strategy: keep African-Americans from leaving, and promote affordable housing and cultural institutions like a jazz center to try to lure blacks back. "The greatness of our city and region is in its diversity," Mayor Newsom says.

So far, his efforts have focused on residents of public housing, about half of whom are black. The city is trying to prevent evictions by building new community centers where residents can get job training and help with the rent. The city is also giving residents displaced by redevelopment, many of whom are black, an inside track on affordable-housing units.

From Poor to Poorer

As middle-class African-Americans have left San Francisco, the remaining black population has gone from poor to poorer. In 1990, half of the city's African-American population was very low-income; by 2005, that number swelled to about two-thirds. The number of black-owned businesses fell 25% between 1997 and 2002.

As blacks migrated to San Francisco's suburbs, so too have many social activities centered on the community. The San Francisco Chapter of the National Black MBA Association has started hosting many of its events across the bay in Oakland.

The Western Addition, a historically black neighborhood in San Francisco once home to many jazz clubs, has lost much of that character. Powell's Place, an iconic soul-food restaurant that had been located in or around the neighborhood since the 1970s, has moved to Bayview-Hunters Point. Charles Spencer, who owns a barbershop catering to black men, says he has lost many of his customers and is trying to diversify. His Web site has a picture of a white client to go with three black faces.

'An Act of Faith'

The city has celebrated its traditional black culture by designating a stretch of Fillmore Street the "Fillmore Jazz Preservation District," yet the businesses that defined the era are now gone or dying. Raye Richardson, owner of Marcus Book Stores -- its motto is "Books by and about black people everywhere" -- has been in the Fillmore district since 1946. She remembers the clubs, the black tailor shops and the many black residents who supported her shop. Today, Ms. Richardson says her store is losing money; much of her business comes from mail-order traffic.

"San Francisco has so few blacks now, that it's just an act of faith to stay open," says Ms. Richardson, 88.

Sherri Young, executive director at the African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, is one of the few blacks at her theater company who still lives in San Francisco. "I'm a single woman in my late 30s," Ms. Young says. "Culturally, it's difficult."

Recently, she says, her production of "The Comedy of Errors" drew a mostly white audience. It's the first time that's happened since she founded the company 14 years ago.

Write to Conor Dougherty at conor.dougherty@wsj.com

The Modern Atheists….

2008-07-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Modern Atheists….

(Are not terribly different than the old ones. The difference is how believers answer them.)

There is a new wave of Atheists that have hit the scene. Well not so new anymore but they think their ideas are new, which they are not. In our popular culture they are seen as ‘cutting edge’ and ‘deep’ but an analysis of their beliefs, attitudes and actions shows that they are actually more like a bunch of petulant adolescents that have yet to get smacked in the mouth for talking back to their parents. They are of course products of our time where very weak thinkers play to ignorant people and think themselves clever as they preach to their own choir. This is of course a symptom of what Dennis Prager calls the ‘Age of Stupidity’. This is an age where foolishness passes itself off as wisdom and fools pass themselves off as prophets.

James White, someone whom I rarely find myself in agreement with made an interesting statement that Richard Dawkins is not a deep thinker. He of course is correct (which pains me to say). Dawkins is not a deep thinker. When ever he is pressed on his views he throws a temper tantrum or makes some sort of flippancy. He is a rather weak thinker. At least someone like James White, whom I have very little respect for, makes his points and defends them rationally. Dawkins on the other hand demonstrates that in our modern world what passes for deep thought is generally a flippant retort that gets a few giggles from pimply faced college freshmen who think it’s clever to annoy their parents at the dinner table by regurgitating what they hear from Dawkins, Hitchens or any of the other cookie cutter atheist cranks. When White posted that comment on Youtube atheists were quick to show just how silly and classless they tend to be. There were comments about ‘bible-thumping idiots’ and that 'There are no Christian intellectuals' other high brow commentary. Sadly, that is what one should expect in a discussion with atheists.

Here is a humorous clip from Dawkins:

For the record I am not a Creationist but the thought of this man being passed off as an intellectual giant is rather funny.

It was cute to see that Dawkins made statements about ‘Cultural Christianity’ and his delight in signing Christmas Carols. When I read this I thought ‘If I thought Christianity were a crock I would think Christmas Carols a waste of time.’ But then I thought more (which is something atheists should try once in a while). I thought about the fact that Mr. Dawkins simply doesn’t understand the world around him. He doesn’t understand that a Civilization is a fragile thing. He goes about swinging his atheistic club as if it will have no ramifications for the Civilization he inhabits. You see, even when I was an agnostic I understood the Christianity, in particular Catholicism, made Western Civilization what it is. I defended the Church before I believed in it because I knew that without Christianity the West would not be the West. As Mr. Dawkins gets his way and the West loses its soul we will stop being who we are. Christmas Carols will simply be stupid reminders of our past. We will look to our future. A future that, thanks to secularism, is far more bleak than it ever has been. Women murder their children in the womb and think it an advancement in society. People embrace materialism because it is all that really matters to them. Westerners no longer care about making the future what it needs to be. We are more concerned with our 401ks, cheap crap that we go into debt for and making sure that we tax other people to take care of us in our old age since we are killing our children in the womb. Wow, what a brave new world. We have no purpose in the West anymore. We are a soulless entity treading water. I remember reading about the Reconquista of Spain and how the Christians had been bushed up into the mountains and over a 700 year period fought inch by inch to re-claim what was theirs. You don’t do that for materialism. You do that because you have a sense of purpose. You are willing to sacrifice for that purpose. Because of people like Dawkins or the eminently more interesting HG Wells we no longer have that purpose. What Dawkins does not see is if he were to ever truly get his way Christmas could simply be done away with as a foolish reminder of our previous 'superstition'. Yet even he is fond of what that sliver of culture that Christianity produced. Again, not very deep thought. He simply relies on emotion and anger. Yet humorously his blog has a subtitle of ‘A Clear Thinking Oasis’ I do not blame Dawkins though. His ability to use reason has been damaged by his atheism. Atheism destroys reason. It pretty much destroys thought. GK Chesterton pointed this out in ‘Orthodoxy’ (a book I am sure none of the modern atheists have bothered to read):

In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

Christopher Hitchens whom, unlike most of his co-religionists, is somewhat of a deep thinker is another example of the modern atheist. Unlike many others though he is a very bright man. Unfortunately, he is constantly wrong. This is a man who is a (former?) Trotskyite. He got the Cold War wrong. He then buddied up with the Neoconservative movement. He backed the Bush Administrations war on Iraq. These are big things to have gotten wrong! Unfortunately, despite is quick wit, brilliant insights into literature, and obvious intelligence he is completely irrational and violently abusive toward anyone or anything having to do with religion. This is a man that from what I can tell has never written a book attacking Trotsky and the furious carnage Trotsky and his fellow Bolsheviks wrought upon the people of the former Soviet Union, but has managed to write a book attacking Mother Theresa.

Even if I were an atheist I would take a step back and see that I would not want to buy what Christopher Hitchens is selling. He is literally out of his mind when it comes to religion. Take a look at this exchange from ‘An evening with Christopher Hitchens’ (copied from Takimag)

FATHER RUTLER: I have met saints. You cannot explain the existence of saints without God. I was nine years chaplain with Mother Teresa [inaudible]. You have called her a whore, a demagogue. She’s in heaven that you don’t believe in, but she’s praying for you. If you do not believe in heaven, that’s why you drink.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Excuse me?

FATHER RUTLER: That’s why you drink. God has offered us happiness, all of us. And you will either die a Catholic or a madman, and I’ll tell you the difference.

And secondly, I’m an officer with this club. And this conversation has been beneath the dignity of this club.

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: No it hasn’t been.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, it is now.

DAVID HOROWITZ: Okay. I–

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: It is now.

FATHER RUTLER: And I’d just say that…

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Fine host you turned out to be.

FATHER RUTLER: …this club, we’ve had very open discussion. But we’ve never heard such vulgarity and bigotry.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Till now.

FATHER RUTLER: And I am, I don’t want to see this in this club again. And I think I represent the officers of this noble…

DAVID HOROWITZ: All right.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Your claim to know what a [saint] is or what heaven is is as absurd as your [inaudible] arrogance, your unkindness and your lack of hospitality.

DAVID HOROWITZ: See? Everybody –

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: You should be ashamed.

FATHER RUTLER: [inaudible]

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: And you are supposed to represent a church of charity and kindness?

DAVID HOROWITZ: I said this evening was going to be interesting and unpredictable.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Especially [inaudible].

DAVID HOROWITZ: And anyway, thank you all for coming. And to all a good night. (”An Evening with Christopher Hitchens”)

It was after the above exchange that the real fireworks started, according to witnesses. This blog has obtained a written account of the incident by one eyewitness, which states the following:

“At the end of the event as he staggered, sweating and red faced, out of the room, he [Hitchens] advanced on Father Rutler in a threatening and physical manner, screaming that this beloved pastor and brilliant scholar whom he had never met was ‘a child molester and a lazy layabout who never did a day’s work in his life’. His behavior was so frightening that a bodyguard put himself between Hitchens and Father Rutler to protect him. Several of the event organizers then escorted Hitchens to the men’s room and when he emerged he continued his psychotic rant, repeating the same calumnious and baseless screed as before. It was then that Father Rutler, in the most charitable manner, told Hitchens [for the second time] that he will `either die a madman or a Roman Catholic’. … Unless he faces his alcoholism soon, I am betting on the ‘madman’ ending for him.” (Private communication, name of source withheld by request, 17 September 2007)

Evidently, Mr. Hitchens never met Father Rutler before their May 1 encounter, and did not know who he was. It happens that Father Rutler is a hero of 9-11. He holds a special place in the hearts of New York City’s police and firemen, for he was with them that day at Ground Zero. Before Father Mychal Judge was struck dead by a body falling from the burning towers, Father Rutler stood side-by-side with Father Judge, hearing confessions and giving the last rites to firemen en route to their deaths.

[/quote]

Let’s see…..Father Rutler who gave last right to people at ground zero on 9-11 or a drunken Trotskite with bad manners and mental illness…..

It shows how absurd the world is that the man is still taken seriously about religion.

Also amusing was a discussion I heard between Dennis Prager and Hitchens. Prager prefaced his question by saying that most religious people question their beliefs throughout their lives. He then asked Hitchens if he ever doubted his atheism. Hitchens responded ‘No’. Of course Prager pointed out that he is just as blind in his ‘faith’ that there is no God as any religious person. Hitchens then said that he never said no! He twisted and turned whining that he never said it despite the fact that it was right there on tape. It was sort of amusing in a pathetic kind of way. It reminded me of when I told my Mother to ‘shut up’ in front of my Father. As he was getting ready to smack me I told him that I had not actually said that. Sadly, Dennis is too good natured and too much of a gentle debater to have given Hitchens the smack he needed.

Hitchens unlike the others reminds me of a young St. Augustine. St. Augustine prided himself on being able to out debate people, especially Catholic priests, when he was a Manichean. Later in life when he ‘sobered up’ so to speak, he looked back and saw that he was a fool, but a good rhetorician.

I recently came across a web posting by ‘PZ Meyers’. From what I can see he is trying to be the poor mans Richard Dawkins. Mr. Meyers pretty much embodies the modern atheist movement. He’s ignorant of what he is speaking of. He’s classless. He is a coward both intellectually and physically. And of course he has a gaggle of college kids that think he is clever. Let’s look at what passes for thought with Mr. Meyers.

Right out of the box he shows off his ignorance:

Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.

The humorous thing is that if he were not an ignoramus he would have a better case against Catholicism to the average Atheist. But as we all know that an imbecile and his opinion are often parted. Catholics do not believe that the Eucharist is the ‘symbolic’ body of Christ. Any introductory theology book would let him know that. Catholics believe it is actually the body of Christ. But hey why bother to actually know about the topic you are discussing when you can repeat ‘cracker’ over and over and curse a lot so that you look cool to your college students.

As a side note it is interesting that Mr. Meyers obviously has a strange need for acceptance. He is not a man that is acting his age. When I originally read his post I assumed he was 18 but in his picture he appears to be physically well past 20 which shocked me.

He goes on to say:

It’s a frigging Cracker!

Any person who reads his post sees that he repeats this over and over. An interesting thing is that I have taken communion over and over and I would not consider it a ‘cracker’. I would describe it more like styrofoam. But I digress. He is obviously trying to drive home the point that he finds Catholic beliefs foolish. Okay well fine. But let’s face it, he is not exactly the modern Voltaire. His silly taunts may go over well with his students but he comes across as someone who has not thought out his positions and just wants to ride the coat tails of other atheists who have made lots of money selling books about what they don’t believe.

More of his insights:

There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.

There is one way that you can tell if a person is stupid. That is to see if they use the word ‘stupider’. Yes, I know it is technically a word but only teenagers and trailer trash use it. Which goes into my theory of Mr. Meyers and the fact that he has the mind of a child. Either his atheism has retarded his thought or he seems intent on showing that his doctorate is not in English or Philosophy.

He also struggles with consistency. He is complaining about people being hateful all the while calling people names. He is arguing that people are acting petty while he is acting petty (see his quote later on in this post). The entire post is a pathetic attempt for him to discuss topics that are obviously over his head.

He goes on:

This isn't the stupid part yet. He walked off with a cracker that was put in his mouth, and people in the church fought with him to get it back. It is just a cracker!

While I think death threats are deplorable and I think people have over-reacted I must say that this statement shows what Catholics have come to expect from Atheists, ignorance and childishness. People have desecrated the Eucharist in the past. There are strange superstitions that people have about torturing and desecrating the Eucharist. I encourage Mr. Meyers to actually read some history before he advertises to the world his ignorance of both theology and history. Again, Mr. Meyers shows that he struggles with consistency of thought. He is outraged that Catholics would worry about someone stealing the Eucharist to desecrate it and later in his post he advertises that he would like someone to steal the Eucharist and he would like to desecrate it! To say that he is a fool is unfair to fools. The man is stupid (but not stupider).

More wisdom from from the Mr. Meyers:

Oh, beyond hate speech. Where does this fit on the Shoah scale, Bill? It shouldn't even register, but here is Wild-Eyed Bill the Offended calling for the expulsion of a student…for not swallowing a cracker.

I actually dislike Bill Donohue. I hate that he is trying to be the Catholic Abe Foxman. And I actually hate the notion of ‘hate crimes’. I also agree that the student should not be expelled. But again this shows Mr. Meyers inconsistent thought. Of course this does not register in the ‘shoah scale’ but does it need to? In our modern world if someone were to walk into a Jewish synagogue, steal the Torah scroll and burn it they would be charged with a hate crime. There is no doubt that Abe Foxman would fly into a tantrum and call for the expulsion of the student. That is simply the world we live in. That is what Meyers is asking someone to do for him. If he had any understanding of Catholicism he would know that. But to Mr. Meyers as long is it is not the equivalent of the Holocaust it is not a big deal. To him Catholics should just sit back and take it. They have no right to defend what is sacred to them.

And this man teaches at a University?

He goes on to say:

That's right. Crazy Christian fanatics right here in our own country have been threatening to kill a young man over a cracker. This is insane. These people are demented fuckwits.

And here we have a grown man acting like a child. Yes, Meyers keep saying ‘fuck’ and your students will think you are really cool!

He even has people in his blog comments section making really thoughtful comments like:

All you people who say that PZ shouldn't do this because it is insulting to the devout, all of you should just fuck off.

And the part of the article that should make all atheists proud:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.

Here is where we see the ultimate in atheist thought. He is asking for someone to ‘score’ (again, act your age Meyers) him some consecrated Eucharists. This is the most sacred thing in the world to Catholics. He wants to desecrate it for all to see. He then preemptively mocks people for being upset by this. The man is a child. He is a old shriveled up bitter child that has a need for attention from other children. If it were not so pathetic it would be funny.

He then goes on to demonstrate his stupidity (or is that more stupider??) further by stating this in his com box:

No Jews have threatened me over my beliefs or what I choose to do in my own home. Neither have any Hindus or Buddhists. If someone tries to tell me that I can't throw away any bagel and lox I can't finish, then, well, it'll be time to desecrate rather than nosh.

Only a very stupid person would equate throwing away bagels and desecrating the Eucharist. The fact that the people of Minnesota are forced to pay his salary is a disgrace. It shows lack of standards American universities now have in their hiring practices.

Now, another interesting aspect of this is Mr. Meyers is in all actuality a coward. He is looking to pick a fight with Catholics because he knows deep down that they will not do anything to him. He sits there mocking Catholics because he knows he can get away with it. If he were really a man and not a boy he would pick bigger fish to fry. If he really wanted to demonstrate his point he would post attacking Islam in the same manner he is attacking Catholicism. If he were not a coward he would encourage people to go into a Mosque, steal a Koran and he would desecrate it on his website (please note that I do not suggest he do this as it would be very wrong). Some people on his com box claim he intends to do that but we know he won’t. No, he is too scared to do that. Instead he picks on Nuns and people who just want to go to Mass without atheist fools desecrating what they hold sacred.

As you can see the key ingredients to the modern atheist movement is both childishness and ignorance. I once had a discussion with an atheist who thought himself clever. After the usual non-sense about God being like ‘the Easter Bunny’ and ‘Santa’ and all other things Atheists find to be really strong arguments he finally just said ‘There is no proof of the existence of God’. I simply smiled and said ‘What have you read from the other side?’. Of course he was full of bravado and said ‘Just because the Bible says something doesn’t make it true!’. My response was ‘Okay but what have you read from the other side?’. After a bit of silence I asked ‘Have you read the Summa Theologia and were you able to dismiss all of the arguments made in that work?’ My friend the atheist responded ‘What’s that?’. The pathetic thing is that these people really are quite ignorant and should be mocked. They never actually engage the arguments. Instead they rely on childish statements that when examined end up being rather stupid..

I long for Catholics like Hiliare Belloc and GK Chesterton who exposed the foolishness of people like the modern atheists and defended the faith masterfully. Sadly, Catholic Apologists are too busy worrying about disproving ‘Sola Scriptura’. It is time that they wake up and realize they are literally kicking a dead horse. The intellectual enemy is no longer Protestantism. It is dying. The mainline Churches drank the kool-aid of modernism and are struggling to stay relevant. The ‘Fundamentalists’ are falling into the ‘health and wealth Gospel’ trap and will soon be irrelevant as well. It is time for Catholic Apologists to stand up and fight these intellectual midgets. These people may come across as bullies but like most bullies they are actually cowards and will run from a good fight. It’s time to stand up.

Heavy metal monk in second album

2008-07-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Heavy metal monk in second album

Brother Cesare in action with his band

At first glance, Cesare Bonizzi looks like the archetypal Capuchin monk - round-faced, stout, with twinkling eyes and a long flowing white beard. But beneath his robes beats a heart of metal.

Brother Cesare is the lead singer in a heavy metal band which has just released its second album.

A former missionary in the Ivory Coast, he lives in a small friary in the Milan hinterland.

The 62-year-old monk's love affair with heavy metal began when he attended a Metallica concert some 15 years ago.

"I was overwhelmed and amazed by the sheer energy of it" he says.

Brother Metal

Hard rock and heavy metal have, over the years, been criticised as the work of the devil.

It's a claim which Brother Cesare, also known as Brother Metal, says is nonsense.

He started playing and recording cassettes, firstly with "lighter" metal music, but gradually he realised that what really moved him was the hard core.

People think that I am in fancy dress, they can't believe a robed monk is on the stage playing their music

Brother Cesare Bonizzi

The members of his band were at first sceptical at the idea of teaming up with a Capuchin monk but their doubts soon evaporated.

"Five minutes after meeting Brother Cesare I decided to go ahead, because he manages to convey so much energy, that other musicians and youngsters often don't manage to express," lead guitarist, Cesare Zanotti, told Reuters.

Sex, drugs and alcohol

Brother Metal recently appeared in the Gods of Metal festival in Italy, along with giants such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Slayer, playing to a crowd of leather-clad hard-core metal fans.

"It was wonderful being there among all these young people" he told the Rome newspaper La Repubblica.

"The only problem was that at one stage out slipped a "what the f…" because each time some people think that I am in fancy dress, they can't believe a robed monk is on the stage playing their music".

With a booming voice, Brother Metal belts out lyrics that are decidedly gritty, talking about real-life issues and not shying away from sex, drugs and alcohol.

He does touch on faith and religion but is adamant that he is not seeking to draw people to Catholicism through his stage performances.

Video clips of his performances on YouTube have helped spread his popularity and fan base.

Devotion to God

His second heavy metal album, "Misteri" (Mysteries) has just been released.

In a sign of Brother Metal's eclecticism, it drew inspiration from a group of women in southern Italy who sang about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and a heavy metal version of that song is on the CD.

Other songs talk about how alcohol warms the heart but excess drinking can damage the liver, and how important sex is to man.

Brother Cesare says he has never had any trouble with his superiors over his choice of musical career and would like to send his new album to the Pope. "He is a music lover and metal is music!" he says.

While Brother Cesare always wears his traditional brown robe and sandals as a reminder that he has chosen a life of devotion to God, he is keen to distinguish established religion from faith, and from proselytising.

"I do it to convert people to life, to understand life, to grab hold of life, to savour it and enjoy it. Full stop" he says.

----------------

Constantines Comment:

Speechless....

Ex-Anglican communities to become Catholic, Rome confirms

2008-07-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

Ex-Anglican communities to become Catholic, Rome confirms

Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 01:08 PM GMT [General]

The Catholic Church will expand its provision of "Anglican Use" parishes in the United States in order to allow whole communities of traditionalist Anglicans into the Roman fold, a senior Catholic archbishop has announced.

Pope Benedict on a recent visit ot the Yankee Stadium in New York

The Most Rev John J Myers, Archbishop of Newark and Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision, told a conference of ex-Anglicans on Friday that "we are working on expanding the mandate of the Pastoral Provision [of Catholic parishes using Anglican-inspired services] to include those clergy and faithful of 'continuing Anglican communities'.

"We are striving to increase awareness of our apostolate to Anglican Christians who desire to be reconciled with the Holy See. We have experienced the wonder of several Episcopal bishops entering into full communion with the Catholic Church and we continue to receive requests from priests and laity about the Pastoral Provision."

This is big news, and makes nonsense of the claim that Pope Benedict wants to dissuade Anglo-Catholics from converting. The obvious interpretation of the Archbishop's words is that the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a "continuing church" which has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide (though few in the UK), will eventually be given its own Catholic parishes which use a Eucharistic Prayer incorporating Cranmerian language.

This possibility has existed since the 1970s, but Archbishop Myers indicates that it is only now - under a sympathetic Pope, and during the break-up of the Anglican Communion - that the Pastoral Provision is entering a new dimension.

If Rome is expanding its network of ex-Anglican parishes in America, then we can rest assured that it is sympathetic to the notion of group conversion in England. The Vatican is well aware that such a process is likely to be complicated and patchy; no one is naive enough to assume that entire parishes will "bring their buildings with them".

But the plan to found a priestly Fellowship of St Gregory the Great for ex-Anglican clergy and members of their flock seems eminently feasible, given imagination on the part of both sides - and the courage to defy the Tabletistas who would try to sabotage the scheme.

Hat tip to Perpetua for drawing my attention to Archbishop Myers's announcement, a truly remarkable development.:

---------

Constantines Comments:

As the Mainline Protestant Churches implode because of drinking the Kool-Aid of Modernism, expect more Christians to cross the Tiber.

Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News Anchor, Dies at 53

2008-07-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I hate the Bush Administration. I hate what they stand for and I hate where they have taken the country. I hate that they have destroyed the conservative movement in the United States.

That being said, Tony Snow was a good guy. When I heard of his death this morning I was truly depressed.

I wish his talents and good nature were used for better purposes. He did serve the Bush White House well and was the best face for a bad Administration.

May God bless him in his journey. My God strengthen his wife for the trials that lay ahead of her. And my God grand strength to his children. They had a very fine father.

God Bless you, Tony.

Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News Anchor, Dies at 53

2008-07-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tony Snow, the former White House press secretary and conservative pundit who bedeviled the press corps and charmed millions as a FOX News television and radio host, died Saturday after a long bout with cancer. He was 53.

A syndicated columnist, editor, TV anchor, radio show host and musician, Snow worked in nearly every medium in a career that spanned more than 30 years.

• Click here for photos.

"Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of our dear friend Tony Snow," President Bush said in a written statement. "The Snow family has lost a beloved husband and father. And America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character."

Snow died at 2 a.m. Saturday at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Snow joined FOX in 1996 as the original anchor of "FOX News Sunday" and hosted "Weekend Live" and a radio program, "The Tony Snow Show," before departing in 2006.

"It's a tremendous loss for us who knew him, but it's also a loss for the country," Roger Ailes, chairman of FOX News, said Saturday morning about Snow, calling him a "renaissance man."

STORIES
VIDEO
PHOTO ESSAYS
- Tony Snow

• Click here to watch Brit Hume's tribute to Tony Snow.

• Click here to read Adam Housley's blog about Tony Snow.

As a TV pundit and commentator for FOX News, Snow often was critical of Bush before he became the president's third press secretary, following Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. He was an instant study in the job, mastering the position — and the White House press corps — with apparent ease.

"One of the reasons I took this job is not only to work with the president, but, believe it or not, to work with all of you," Snow told reporters when he stepped into the post in 2006. "These are times that are going to be very challenging."

During a tenure marked by friendly jousting with journalists, Snow often danced around the press corps, occasionally correcting their grammar and speech even as he responded to their questions.

"Tony did his job with more flair than almost any press secretary before him," said William McGurn, Bush's former chief speechwriter. "He loved the give-and-take. But that was possible only because Tony was a man of substance who had real beliefs and principles that he was more than able to defend."

As he announced Snow as his new press secretary in May 2006, Bush praised him as "a man of courage [and] a man of integrity." Snow presided over some of the toughest fights of Bush's presidency, defending the administration during the Iraq war and the CIA leak investigation.

"I felt comfortable enough to interrupt him when he was BSing, and he kind of knew it, and he'd shut up and move on," Snow said.

His tenure at the White House lasted 17 months and was interrupted by his second bout with cancer.

• FOX Facts: Tony Snow's Battle With Cancer

Snow had his colon removed and underwent six months of chemotherapy after he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2005. In 2007 he announced his cancer had recurred and spread to his liver, and he had a malignant growth removed from his abdominal area.

He resigned from the White House six months later, in September 2007, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. He was replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino, Bush's current press secretary.

After taking time off to recuperate, Snow joined CNN as a political commentator early this year.

At the White House, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president's policies. During daily briefings he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

"The White House has lost a great friend and a great colleague," said Perino in a statement released to the media. "We all loved watching him at the podium, but most of all we learned how to love our families and treat each other."

Critics suggested Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

As a commentator, he had not always been on the president's side. He once called Bush "something of an embarrassment" in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush's "lackluster" domestic policy.

A sometime fill-in host for Rush Limbaugh, Snow said he loved the intimacy of his radio audience.

"I don't think you ever arrive," he said. "I think anybody who thinks they've arrived or made it, anywhere in the media — they're nuts."

Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955, in Berea, Ky., the son of a teacher and nurse. He graduated from Davidson College in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and he taught briefly in Kenya before embarking on his journalism career.

Because of his love for writing, Snow took a job as an editorial writer for the Greensboro Record in North Carolina and went on to run the editorial pages at the Newport News (Virginia) Daily Press, Detroit News and Washington Times. He became a nationally syndicated columnist, and in 1991 he became director of speechwriting for President George H.W. Bush.

"He served people, and we can learn from that. He was kind, and we can learn from that. He was just a good person," the senior Bush told FOX News.

• Remembering Tony Snow

Snow played six instruments — saxophone, trombone, flute, piccolo, accordion and guitar — and was in a D.C. cover band called Beats Workin'. He also was a film buff.

"He was a great musician," Ailes said. "And he loved movies."

More than anything, said Snow's colleagues, he was a joy to work with.

"He was a lot of fun," his former FOX News producer Griff Jenkins said. "This is a loss of a family member."

FOX News Chief Washington Correspondent Jim Angle called Snow a "gentleman."

Snow is survived by his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, whom he married in 1987; their son, Robbie; and daughters, Kendall and Kristi.

Comments on Medjugorje

2008-07-02T10:28:00.001-07:00

I am personally not a believer in the apparitions at Medjugorje. I think it is a ruse and should be avoided by all Catholics. Thank being said I want to be fair. In the comments section there was a note about the article on Medjugorje being inaccurate.

While I am not convinced yet that it is inaccurate I welcome anyone to view the comment section attached to that post and decide for themselves.

The fact that the article originated from a British paper makes me think that at the very least it is inaccurate on some level as the British media generally is wrong about the Catholic Church through ignorance and in other cases lies about the Church.

I encourage the readers to do more digging.

Medjugorje "work of the devil": Ex Vatican exorcist

2008-07-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

Former Vatican exorcist Bishop Andrea Gemma has denounced alleged visions of Our Lady in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje as the "work of the devil" and a "diabolical deceit".

The UK Daily Mail reports that the Vatican has rejected claims made by the six Bosnian 'seers' that they have seen the Virgin Mary more than 40,000 times over the past 27 years

Bishop Andrea Gemma, 77, once the Vatican's top exorcist, told a magazine in Italy: "In Medjugorje everything happens in function of money: Pilgrimages, lodging houses, sale of trinkets.

"This whole sham is the work of the Devil. It is a scandal."

He predicted that the Vatican would soon crack down on the group.

The Medjugorje phenomenon began on June 25, 1981, when six children told a priest they had seen the Virgin on a hillside near their town. Some of the children also claim to have received ten secrets from Our Lady.

A church investigation dismissed the vision, and the Vatican banned pilgrimages to the site in 1985. But many Catholics ignored the ban.

Today, the seers own smart houses with security gates and tennis courts and expensive cars. One is married to a former US beauty queen.

Is the Catholic Church sliding towards civil war?

2008-06-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Damian Thompson on the bitter feud between the new young defenders of the recently reinstated Latin Mass, and Britain’s ‘magic circle’ of liberal bishops

While Church of England bishops recoil from the prospect of gay ‘weddings’ with no precedent in Christian history, their Catholic counterparts are wringing their hands at the growing popularity of services that are too traditional for their tastes.

On Saturday 14 June Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, one of the most senior figures in the Roman Curia and an ally of the Holy Father, celebrated a Pontifical High Mass at Westminster Cathedral. The bishop of the diocese, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, did not attend; nor did any of his four auxiliary bishops. Pope Benedict is rumoured to be furious at this display of bad manners.

What can explain such a breach of protocol? The answer lies in the content and style of the liturgy being celebrated. Cardinal Castrillón processed into the cathedral wearing the cappa magna, a scarlet cape with a 20ft train of watered silk. It is many years since this vestment has been seen in the cathedral — for, although it was never abolished, it is associated with the Tridentine Mass, the ancient Latin rite in which the celebrant faces east, reciting its main prayer in a voice so low that the church falls silent. And that was the Mass that His Eminence celebrated on 14 June, becoming the first cardinal to do so in Westminster Cathedral for 40 years.

Last summer — to the horror of the liberal English bishops — Pope Benedict issued an apostolic letter, Summorum Pontificum, that granted universal permission for the old Mass, which had been effectively banned from normal parish life after the Second Vatican Council. England’s Latin Mass Society seized its chance. It invited Cardinal Castrillón, head of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which is responsible for the old liturgy worldwide, to celebrate the society’s annual traditional Mass at Westminster Cathedral, normally a low-key affair regarded with amused condescension by diocesan liberals.

He accepted, leaving liberal bishops with only one course of action: pleading pressing engagements elsewhere. Hence the absence of Westminster bishops at the Pontifical Mass, though diocesan spies were spotted craning their necks to see if any local clergy had sneaked in (thereby scuppering their chances of promotion). Walking down the nave, I was greeted by a young priest sitting at the back dressed as a layman. ‘I can’t really afford to be seen here, but I couldn’t resist,’ he whispered.

Many Mass-goers are unaware of the fact, but the Catholic Church in England and Wales is sliding towards civil war. A mixture of anticipation and panic is in the air. For worshippers used to the low-calorie ceremonial of Westminster Cathedral, the sight of a curial cardinal presiding over the cruelly complex rubrics of the old Missal must have been thrilling or distasteful, depending on their point of view.

But the evidence of traditionalist revival is not confined to church services: it is scattered over Facebook, of all places, where there are dozens of groups pressing for the return of the ancient liturgy or mocking the caterwauling pseudo folk music favoured by trendy clergy. The internet allows traditionalists in different countries to burst out of the ghetto to which they had been banished by ‘the spirit of Vatican II’. Conservatives hunt down video clips of ‘Sandalistas’ performing arthritic liturgical dances and upload them to YouTube, where they become comic classics. Bloggers share photographs of Corpus Christi processions, and publish private letters in which ‘progressive’ bishops reveal the depth of their hostility to Pope Benedict’s liturgical reforms. These blogs are widely read in the Vatican, where the andante tempo of the day leaves plenty of time for internet surfing.

It was thanks to the internet that Westminster Cathedral was completely full for Cardinal Castrillón’s Mass. (The cathedral, needless to say, had done nothing to promote the event.) Significantly, the average age of worshippers was lower than that for ordinary Masses. ‘And they were so normal, too,’ commented one journalist.

That wouldn’t have been the case 20 years ago. In the 1980s, many adherents of the Tridentine Mass were so bitter and paranoid that one could hardly blame the bishops for giving them a wide berth. In contrast, the young people at the cathedral have grown up with the vernacular Mass; they are happy to attend it, when it is reverently celebrated, but they are also delighted that Pope Benedict has given them the choice of attending an older, more numinous liturgy — and indignant that their own bishops seem to want to restrict this choice.

The authorities’ effective boycott of Cardinal Castrillón’s visit will have done nothing to ease their frustration. In the words of one visitor to a traditionalist website, ‘This situation is comparable to the chief of staff of the army coming down to the 101st Airborne Division as the guest of honour at a division-level parade, and the division commander — and his brigade commanders — does not show up for the parade. Instead, he sends a terse welcoming note to be read by a battalion commander.’

The use of military imagery is significant. In many parts of the world, the response of liberal bishops to the Pope’s plans to revive the traditional Mass has verged on the mutinous. And the sense of impending conflict is particularly strong in England and Wales, which is unique among Western Churches in that not one of its 33 serving bishops is identified with the Benedictine reforms. Indeed, until the last conclave, ‘Ratzinger’ was a swear word in the left-wing circles from which the bishops have been chosen.

John Paul II was not interested in England and, for the most part, allowed the Bishops’ Conference to nominate its own members. Benedict, in contrast, is interested in this country. He has to find a successor to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and is not inclined to appoint one of the ‘magic circle’ of Tablet-approved bishops opposed to the reintroduction of the older form of Mass.

On the other hand, he knows that the appointment of a traditionalist outsider carries huge risks. The Archbishop of Westminster has negligible jurisdiction over other sees; even if the national Bishops’ Conference secretariat were disbanded, liberals would still control the bureaucracy of individual dioceses, with far-reaching implications for worship. Paul Inwood, a leading composer of banal Catholic ditties, has used his position as Portsmouth’s ‘director of liturgy’ to try to ban congregations even from asking for the older form of Mass. And, depressingly, similar situations exist all around the world.

Speaking at a press conference in Westminster before the big Mass, Cardinal Castrillón said that the Holy Father wanted to introduce the traditional liturgy into every parish, not just those that ask for it. But, he added, such a process would take a long time and would have to be handled carefully in order not to cause division. The problem is that the only man with the gifts to carry through such a revolution is an 81-year-old Bavarian who — as Catholic liberals are fond of pointing out — suffered a small stroke a few years ago. The traditional greeting to a Pope on his birthday is ‘ad multos annos!’ He’s going to need them.

Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald.

***********Constantines comment:

From the article:

Walking down the nave, I was greeted by a young priest sitting at the back dressed as a layman. ‘I can’t really afford to be seen here, but I couldn’t resist,’ he whispered.

This shows how much the liberal Bishops have used Vatican II to further their revolution against the Church. Can one imagine 50 years ago hearing about a priest who cannot afford to be seen at the traditional mass! Under the fog of 'tolerance' the modernists have supressed the traditionalists wherever they can.

But the evidence of traditionalist revival is not confined to church services: it is scattered over Facebook, of all places, where there are dozens of groups pressing for the return of the ancient liturgy or mocking the caterwauling pseudo folk music favoured by trendy clergy. The internet allows traditionalists in different countries to burst out of the ghetto to which they had been banished by ‘the spirit of Vatican II’.

Yes. Which leads one to ask how the Catholic Church could allow the outright suppression of the Mass in favor of a ‘Liturgy’ that includes folk songs, dancers and clowns? The problem is that people outside of the Church do not understand that John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II were outright liberals and either aided in or looked the other way as Modernists attacked the Church from within using the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’.

It was thanks to the internet that Westminster Cathedral was completely full for Cardinal Castrillón’s Mass. (The cathedral, needless to say, had done nothing to promote the event.) Significantly, the average age of worshippers was lower than that for ordinary Masses. ‘And they were so normal, too,’ commented one journalist.

This is the case everywhere that the Traditional Mass is offered. As hippy dippy churches are having vocational crisis, low attendance and needs for ‘outreach’ the Traditional Chapels are bursting at the seams. I am told that the SSPX seminaries are full as are their chapels. When one attends mass at one of their Chapels they see lots of young families with lots of children. This is true where I attend the Traditional Mass as well. Which is why the Traditionalists will win in the long run. We are reproducing while the modernists are dying off as the Vatican II generation dies off.

John Paul II was not interested in England and, for the most part, allowed the Bishops’ Conference to nominate its own members.

Yes indeed. John Paul II was not interested in many things outside of ecumenism and apologizing to everyone he saw. He let the foxes guard the hen houses and by the end of his pontificate there was a crisis of liturgy, faith and most importantly a mishandling of the sex abuse scandal. Benedict XVI unfortunately has to spend a great deal of his pontificate cleaning up JPIIs messes. May God grant him many more years.

Internet Debate and Thought Control

2008-06-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

I recently have had an interesting series of debates online with an Orthodox Jew who has been known to scream anti-Semite when he is losing debates and knows that he is defending the indefensible.

He applies an interesting series of tactics in his debates. Here they are:

Attack the source. If it is a non-Jewish source it is either ‘anti-Semitic’ or ‘biased’ or doesn’t give the Jewish side properly. If it is a Jewish source that proves that he is wrong they will be attacked for being ‘too liberal’ or in the case of Reformed Jews commenting on the Talmud they ‘don’t really understand it’. (Haaretz and the Forward are evidently anti-Semitic to this gentleman). When I posted an article by The Chicago Tribune about the USS Liberty attack he stated that it is a 'biased source just looking to sell papers' but the Jewish Encyclopedias article on it is an unbiased source that gives a fair shake to all.

Up is down down is up.

If that does not work, he will change the subject. If you point out that a Jewish Rabbi wrote a book about the supremacy of Jews to Gentiles he will attack the Catholic Church (no kidding….really). Next thing you know you will be wondering how you got from discussing the topic you posted about and ended up hearing about the suffering of Jews under the Spanish Inquisition. He will then inform you that the Gospels are anti-Semitic and all of the Church Fathers were anti-Semites. But you had better not comment on anything found in the Talmud or comment that there are people who hold supremest views in the Jewish community because that would make you an anti-Semite. George Orwell could not have created a character as delightfully dishonest and hypocritical.

If you refuse to allow him to change the subject he will attack you personally. If you respond to his attacks on your faith in kind he will type ‘anti-Semite’ until his fingers ache. He is allowed to attack Christianity at will but you must not post articles by Rabbis discussing if you should wash after touching a ‘goy’. That’s anti-Semitic.

He will then lie about your beliefs to make you feel the need to defend them. He even made the pathetic claim that Christians believe that God manifested himself physically to produce a child (Jesus) and that Christians believe that ‘God made a mistake’ and thus Christ was needed. That is so absurd and so heretical that I actually asked where on Earth he got his information from. I asked for a single theologian who stated this. He of course had none but fell back to saying that is how Jews see it. So lying about Christian teachings is okay but pointing out that some rabbis teach that Gentiles have animalistic souls is anti-Semitic…..okay.

If that does not work he turns everything you say about him into an attack on Jews. So if you joke that he enjoys sex with farm animals, he says that you are attacking Jews as being deviants. He then screams ‘anti-Semite’. It's interesting, I had never heard that about Jews. You learn something new by interacting with extremists of all shades.

Recently, he spun and spun acting as if Jews did not play a significant role in the Bolshevik slaughter of Russians during the Stalinist nightmare. He even went so far as to claim that Synagogues were not blown up as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was in Moscow because they were too hard to get to.

He said:

As for why Jewish clergy did not suffer to the same extent- simple geographics. The Jews had been forced into ghettoes for centuries, seperated from the general population.

And:

Yep- you got it. The Paleof settlement was isolated, Jewish communities were poor and not associated with the ruling classes and they simply did not attract the ire of the bolsheviks. You want to try and create something more sinister- hey, thats your issue and one that is not supported by any historical facts.

This is something so asinine that it is hard to imagine how one can actually state it. Notice that there is a personal attack because he knows that what he is stating is idiotic. If he can make things personal he can then get his opponent censored or banned, which he does regularly on this particular forum due to the fact that he has intimidated the moderators there. The sad fact is that the fury unleashed upon the Orthodox Church is pretty shocking. Nothing like it happened to Jews by the Bolsheviks. Gladly I was able to point out later in the discussion Moscows Choral Synagogue operated throughout the Soviet period, however, at least twice (1923, 1960) authorities annexed parts of original building for secular purposes.. That kind of ended his non-sense that all religion was persecuted equally in the USSR. He then admitted that Jews did not pose a threat to the Soviet regime.

When I pointed out that YNet (an Israeli publication) stated that In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin.

He again relies on personal attacks by stating:

As I said, you will create whatever fantasies you wish. Go ahead, nobody can stop you fantasising and creating facts with no historical basis.

And there it is. Ignore facts you don’t like and attack people who present them.

I then asked if when it became clear that the Soviet Regime was slaughtering people by the millions was there a move by the synagogues to help the people being targeted. He then responded

What would you expect them to do? They had no power, religious Jews were barely tolerated (and in fact were heavily oppressed and discriminated aginst after WWII) and they were doing their best not to go the way of everyone else. Stalin's Rssia was a place of fear where people did their best to survive and not end up on the wrong end of an accusation which led to death or exile to one of the gulags. Keeping their heads down didn't help the Jews much though- millions ended up in the gulags anyway!

So the Jews were actually victims of the Bolsheviks after all and they were powerless to help the people who were being slaughtered by the regime. Fair enough. However, that’s an interesting position to take especially for a guy who has attacked the Catholic Church for not speaking out enough against the Nazis during their regime. As usual, one standard for he and his group and another for the rest of humanity. The sad thing is that he is so filled with bigotry and anger that he does not see it. Daniel Goldhagen would be proud.

One of the sad things about our modern world is that there is extreme thought control and suppression of ideas. When cowards are intellectually bankrupt and unable to defend their positions they have key words that they can scream in order to shut down discussion. In this persons case it is 'anti-Semite' but it could also be 'homophobe' or 'racist'. If you can convince people that the person stating things that you don't like is a bigot then their ideas do not have to be taken seriously. 'Victim' groups no longer have to engage in rational discussions. They can just scream [insert PC whine title here] and they no longer have to discuss the issue. Don't like the fact that the US Government is heavily influenced by AIPAC, a group that represents another countries national interests? You're an anti-Semite. Don't think we should allow millions of illegal aliens into the country? You're a racist. Don't think we should re-define marriage against the will of the people? You're a homophobe. And so it goes.

It is time to end this non-sense.

Benedict XVI's Message to the United States

2008-04-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

From Zenit

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the United States of America,

The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you! In just a few days from now, I shall begin my apostolic visit to your beloved country. Before setting off, I would like to offer you a heartfelt greeting and an invitation to prayer. As you know, I shall only be able to visit two cities: Washington and New York. The intention behind my visit, though, is to reach out spiritually to all Catholics in the United States. At the same time, I earnestly hope that my presence among you will be seen as a fraternal gesture towards every ecclesial community, and a sign of friendship for members of other religious traditions and all men and women of good will. The risen Lord entrusted the Apostles and the Church with his Gospel of love and peace, and his intention in doing so was that the message should be passed on to all peoples.

At this point I should like to add some words of thanks, because I am conscious that many people have been working hard for a long time, both in Church circles and in the public services, to prepare for my journey. I am especially grateful to all who have been praying for the success of the visit, since prayer is the most important element of all. Dear friends, I say this because I am convinced that without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavours would achieve very little. Indeed this is what our faith teaches us. It is God who saves us, he saves the world, and all of history. He is the Shepherd of his people. I am coming, sent by Jesus Christ, to bring you his word of life.

Together with your Bishops, I have chosen as the theme of my journey three simple but essential words: "Christ our hope". Following in the footsteps of my venerable predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, I shall come to United States of America as Pope for the first time, to proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture and social condition. Yes, Christ is the face of God present among us. Through him, our lives reach fullness, and together, both as individuals and peoples, we can become a family united by fraternal love, according to the eternal plan of God the Father. I know how deeply rooted this Gospel message is in your country. I am coming to share it with you, in a series of celebrations and gatherings. I shall also bring the message of Christian hope to the great Assembly of the United Nations, to the representatives of all the peoples of the world.

Indeed, the world has greater need of hope than ever: hope for peace, for justice, and for freedom, but this hope can never be fulfilled without obedience to the law of God, which Christ brought to fulfillment in the commandment to love one another. Do to others as you would have them do to you, and avoid doing what you would not want them to do. This "golden rule" is given in the Bible, but it is valid for all people, including non-believers. It is the law written on the human heart; on this we can all agree, so that when we come to address other matters we can do so in a positive and constructive manner for the entire human community.

[The Pope continued in Spanish]

I direct a cordial greeting to Spanish-speaking Catholics and manifest my spiritual closeness, in particular to the youth, the ill, the elderly and those who are in moments of difficulty of feel themselves in need. I express my heartfelt desire to be with you soon in this beloved nation. In the meantime, I encourage you to pray intensely for the pastoral fruits of my imminent apostolic trip and to keep high the flame of hope in the resurrected Christ.

[Translation by ZENIT]

Dear brothers and sisters, dear friends in the United States, I am very much looking forward to being with you. I want you to know that, even if my itinerary is short, with just a few engagements, my heart is close to all of you, especially to the sick, the weak, and the lonely. I thank you once again for your prayerful support of my mission. I reach out to every one of you with affection, and I invoke upon you the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Que la Virgen María les acompañe y proteja. Que Dios les bendiga. [May the Virgen Mary accompany and protect you. May God bless you.]

May God bless you all.

Top Vatican Cardinal Tells the Jesuits to Clean Up their Act

2008-01-07T21:19:00.001-08:00

Top Vatican Cardinal Tells the Jesuits to Clean Up their Act

Repeatedly spoke about his "sorrow and anxiety" at the state of the Jesuit order in terms of infidelity to the teachings of the Church.

By John-Henry Westen

ROME, January 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The top Vatican official who deals with religious orders, Cardinal Franc Rode, addressed the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) today. Cardinal Rode who was installed by Pope Benedict XVI as Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life spoke repeatedly about his "sorrow and anxiety" at the state of the Jesuit order in terms of infidelity to the teachings of the Church.

Cardinal Rode recalled the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius and his primary formula for the order: "To serve the Lord and his Spouse the Church under the Roman Pontiff"

"It is with sorrow and anxiety that I see that the sentire cum ecclesia (thinking with the church) of which your founder frequently spoke is diminishing even in some members of religious families," he said.

The once illustrious Jesuits, the great defenders of faith, have over the last 40 years been steeped in dissident controversy. Jesuit priests have featured prominently in the homosexual priest scandal and Jesuit universities and their theologians have been hotbeds of dissent on Church teachings especially those on life and family.

Pope Benedict has put an end to some of the scandal issuing public corrections of several prominent Jesuit theologians. Last year, the editor of the U.S. Jesuit flagship publication 'America', Thomas J. Reese was abruptly resigned after a career of increasing hostility to Church teaching.

The Cardinal's address is being seen by Vatican watchers as another move in the Pope's efforts to restore the order to its former glory.

Later in his address, the Cardinal added, "With sadness and anxiety I also see a growing distancing from the Hierarchy." He explained: "The Ignatian spirituality of apostolic service 'under the Roman Pontiff' does not allow for this separation. In the Constitutions which he left you, Ignatius . . . wrote 'we must always keep our mind prepared and quick to obey' . . . the Hierarchical Church"

Addressing specific areas the Prefect said, "May those who, according to your legislation, have to oversee the doctrine of your magazines and publications do so in the light of and according to the "rules for sentire cum ecclesia", with love and respect."

Cardinal Rode did not content himself with correction but challenged the Jesuits to avant-garde position in the culture war - the very area where there have been so many traitors within the ranks of the Jesuits.

"The Tradition of the Society, from the first beginnings of the Collegio Romano always placed itself at the crossroads between Church and society, between faith and culture, between religion and secularism," said the Cardinal. "Recover these avant-garde positions which are so necessary to transmit the eternal truth to today's world, in today's language. Do not abandon this challenge."

Constantines Comments:
Deo Gratias!

The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom

2007-12-13T20:51:00.000-08:00

The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom

By SIMON CALDWELL -

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

His remarks will be made in his annual message for World Peace Day on January 1, but they were released as delegates from all over the world convened on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali for UN climate change talks.

The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.

Adrift: Polar bears on melting iceberg

"Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message entitled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace".

"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

"If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.

"Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken."

Efforts to protect the environment should seek "agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances", the Pope said.

He added that to further the cause of world peace it was sensible for nations to "choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions" in how to cooperate responsibly on conserving the planet.

The Pope's message is traditionally sent to heads of government and international organisations.

His remarks reveal that while the Pope acknowledges that problems may be associated with unbridled development and climate change, he believes the case against global warming to be over-hyped.

A broad consensus is developing among the world's scientific community over the evils of climate change.

But there is also an intransigent body of scientific opinion which continues to insist that industrial emissions are not to blame for the phenomenon.

Such scientists point out that fluctuations in the earth's temperature are normal and can often be caused by waves of heat generated by the sun. Other critics of environmentalism have compared the movement to a burgeoning industry in its own right.

In the spring, the Vatican hosted a conference on climate change that was welcomed by environmentalists.

But senior cardinals close to the Vatican have since expressed doubts about a movement which has been likened by critics to be just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion.

In October, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, caused an outcry when he noted that the atmospheric temperature of Mars had risen by 0.5 degrees celsius.

"The industrial-military complex up on Mars can't be blamed for that," he said in a criticism of Australian scientists who had claimed that carbon emissions would force temperatures on earth to rise by almost five degrees by 2070 unless drastic solutions were enforced.

3 Archbishops and 2 Bishops: Growing List of Hierarchy Condemning Golden Compass

2007-12-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

"Baltimore Archbishop "grateful" USCCB withdrew positive movie review because "it caused much confusion in the Catholic Community"

By John-Henry Westen NEW ORLEANS, December 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Archbishops of Baltimore and New Orleans can be added to the growing number of US Catholic bishops expressing public opposition to the anti-Christian, anti-religion film 'The Golden Compass'. Late Monday the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) withdrew a positive review that was published on the film by the USCCB Office of Film and Broadcasting. (see coverage: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/dec/07121102.html )In his November 24 column in the Clarion Herald, New Orleans Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes warned that the film is based on the "His Dark Materials" books by Philip Pullman, books which the archbishop said, "surreptitiously lead children to atheism and pose a special threat to Christianity."Archbishop Hughes warns moreover that the subtlety with which the books and film promote anti-Christianity may be a greater danger than a more frontal attack. "The kingdom of Satan is at war with the Kingdom of God," he said. "His weapons are violence and deceit. In some ways, violence is easier to fight against. It is more obvious and more abhorrent, even though we have a great deal of difficulty in containing it today. Deceit, however, is subtler and more subversive. It fosters rebellion through half-truths." (see the full column here: http://www.arch-no.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&... )In comments sent by email to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien remarked on the USCCB withdrawal of the positive review for the film. "The Archdiocese of Baltimore is grateful that the Conference withdrew the review because it caused much confusion in the Catholic Community," he said. "From all reports, the review failed to adequately warn parents about the movie's widely recognized dark themes and anti-Catholic imagery." (see coverage: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bal-to.compass12de... )LifeSiteNews.com reported yesterday that Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput panned the film as having an unmistakable "aggressively anti-religious, anti-Christian undercurrent." In a thinly veiled criticism of the just pulled positive review by the USCCB office for film, he added that "The idea that any Christian film critics could overlook or downplay these negative elements, as some have seemed to do, is simply baffling." (see: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/dec/07121105.html )LifeSiteNews.com reported last week that La Crosse Bishop Jerome Listecki instructed the priests of his diocese to warn the faithful against the film. (see: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/dec/07120403.html )In a November 9 statement on 'The Golden Compass', Austin Texas Bishop Gregory M. Aymond said: "The upcoming movie version of "The Golden Compass" has led to questions about the trilogy of books by Philip Pullman. Catholic schools and religious education programs should not encourage children to read any of these books and they should not be held in their libraries. "The Golden Compass" attempts to devalue religion, especially Christianity. Our children deserve better education than what is in these books and movie." See it online here: (http://www.austindiocese.org/newsletter_issue_view.php?id=13... )"Life Site.com

Just a funny video.

2007-11-20T18:53:00.001-08:00

Pope gets radical and woos the Anglicans

2007-11-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

Pope gets radical and woos the Anglicans

By Damian Thompson

Two and a half years after the name "Josephum" came booming down from the balcony of St Peter's, making liberal Catholics weep with rage, Pope Benedict XVI is revealing his programme of reform. And it is breathtakingly ambitious.

The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away. This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they covert en masse.

The liberal cardinals don't like the sound of it at all.

Ever since the shock of Benedict's election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, is in the thick of it.

"Pope Benedict is isolated," I was told when I visited Rome last week. "So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely." Yet he is ploughing ahead. He reminds me of another conservative revolutionary, Margaret Thatcher, who waited a couple of years before taking on the Cabinet "wets" sabotaging her reforms.

Benedict's pontificate moved into a new phase on July 7, with the publication of his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum.

With a stroke of his pen, the Pope restored the traditional Latin Mass - in effect banned for 40 years - to parity with the modern liturgy. Shortly afterwards, he replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies who turned many of John Paul II's Masses into politically correct carnivals.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was most displeased. Last week, he hit back with a "commentary" on Summorum Pontificum.

According to Murphy-O'Connor, the ruling leaves the power of local bishops untouched. In fact, it removes the bishops' power to block the ancient liturgy. In other words, the cardinal - who tried to stop Benedict issuing the ruling - is misrepresenting its contents.

Alas, he is not alone: dozens of bishops in Britain, Europe and America have tried the same trick.

Murphy-O'Connor's "commentary" was modelled on equally dire "guidelines" written by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds with the apparent purpose of discouraging the faithful from exercising their new rights.

A few years ago the ploy might have worked. But news travels fast in the traditionalist blogosphere, and these tactics have been brought to the attention of papal advisers.

This month, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, a senior Vatican official close to Benedict, declared that "bishops and even cardinals" who misrepresented Summorum Pontificum were "in rebellion against the Pope".

Ranjith is tipped to become the next Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in charge of regulating worldwide liturgy. That makes sense: if Benedict is moving into a higher gear, then he needs street fighters in high office.

He may also have to reform an entire department, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which spends most of its time promoting the sort of ecumenical waffle that Benedict abhors.

This is a sensitive moment. Last month, the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a network of 400,000 breakaway Anglo-Catholics based mainly in America and the Commonwealth, wrote to Rome asking for "full, corporate, sacramental union".

Their letter was drafted with the help of the Vatican. Benedict is overseeing the negotiations. Unlike John Paul II, he admires the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is thinking of making special pastoral arrangements for Anglican converts walking away from the car wreck of the Anglican Communion.

This would mean that they could worship together, free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers' conservatism and would rather "dialogue" with Anglicans than receive them into the Church.

The liberation of the Latin liturgy, the rapprochement with Eastern Orthodoxy, the absorption of former Anglicans - all these ambitions reflect Benedict's conviction that the Catholic Church must rediscover the liturgical treasure of Christian history to perform its most important task: worshipping God.

This conviction is shared by growing numbers of young Catholics, but not by the church politicians who have dominated the hierarchies of Europe for too long.

By failing to welcome the latest papal initiatives - or even to display any interest in them, beyond the narrow question of how their power is affected - the bishops of England and Wales have confirmed Benedict's low opinion of them.

Now he should replace them. If the Catholic reformation is to start anywhere, it might as well be here.

------------------

Constantine's Comments:

This is a very good article. It is refreshing to see the Traditional Catholic position given in the mainstream media. Especially the British media as Britain has a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry.

It should be noted that Bishops are resisting the reforms that Benedict XVI is implementing.

This also shows that Ecumenism in the form that John Paul II engaged in is a complete waste of time at best. The more Catholic we are the more converts away from the Protestant heresy we will attract.

I believe that Benedict XVI and his Pontificate will be more influential than his predecessors.

Pope says Christianity not just legacy of Europe, but way to future

2007-09-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VIENNA, Austria (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Austria for a three-day pilgrimage, saying Christianity was not just the legacy of Europe's past but "the way to the future."

The pope stepped off his chartered Alitalia jet Sept. 7 in heavy rain at the Vienna airport, where he was welcomed by Austrian President Heinz Fischer, who quickly ushered the pontiff into a hangar.

After an honor-guard salute, the pope said in a speech that he felt at home in Austria, a country "deeply imbued with the message of Jesus Christ." His voice was still somewhat rough after a recent bout of hoarseness.

The pope said the focus of his journey, a visit to the Marian shrine at Mariazell, would take him to the "maternal heart of Austria" and underline the role of Mary throughout Central Europe.

The Marian sanctuary, the pope said, "reminds us of an essential dimension of human beings: their capacity for openness to God and his word of truth."

"Mariazell does not only represent 850 years of history, but shows us on the basis of that history -- as reflected in the statue of the Blessed Mother pointing to Christ her son -- the way to the future," he said.

The pope said he also wanted to encourage renewed interest in pilgrimages, especially among young people seeking space for reflection and meditation. The important thing, he said, was to make a connection between these spiritual excursions and daily life.

"Pilgrimage means more than just journeying to a shrine. The journey back to our everyday life is also fundamental," he said.

A group of uniformed Viennese schoolchildren stood next to the papal podium, waving shyly to the pope when he arrived and bursting into a welcoming song when he finished his talk. The pontiff rose and went over to greet them, making their day.

After the airport formalities, the pope traveled to the center of Vienna for two important ceremonies: a prayer before a Marian pillar and a silent tribute to Holocaust victims.

In the historic Am Hof Square, hundreds of young people in plastic yellow rain slickers cheered when the pope arrived in his glass-walled popemobile. A pop group with trumpets, guitars and drums belted out a lively rendition of "Jesus Christ, You Are My Life," the song known to many Catholic young people through World Youth Day celebrations.

The pope, who stood on a large covered balcony next to the square, beamed in appreciation. Then he faced a bronze statue of Mary that stands atop a tall column in the center of the square and prayed for "pilgrim intentions" that summed up several themes of his visit:

-- Devotion to Mary as part of Austria's Christian history.

-- Overcoming tensions in the country's increasingly multicultural population.

-- Commitment to protection of human life "from the moment of conception."

-- A call for priestly and religious vocations.

-- Protection of Sunday as a day of rest and worship.

-- Appreciation of the church's charity network.

In a brief talk, the pope said Christians have turned to Mary from earliest times as a figure whose maternal love extends to all humanity. Above all, Marian devotion can help lead people to the truth of salvation in Christ, he said.

"If we continue to bring our everyday concerns to the Immaculate Mother of Christ, she will help us to open our little hopes ever more fully toward that great and true hope which gives meaning to our lives," he said.

The pope's talk was interrupted by technical problems with the public address system set up in the rain-drenched square. The pope stopped partway through his talk, smiled broadly and listened as the young people began chanting, "Benedikt! Benedikt!"

Then the pope entered the Am Hof Church and knelt before the Blessed Sacrament. The pews were crammed with about 1,000 faithful, most of them ethnic Croats; the church has been used by the Croatian Catholic community in Vienna since the 1960s.

Standing before the altar, the pope began a prayer to Mary that Austrian young people were to continue to recite throughout his three-day visit.

Afterward, the pope rode around the corner to the "Judenplatz" or Jews Square, where he stood next to Vienna Chief Rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg and prayed silently in front of a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, including the estimated 65,000 Austrian Jews killed by Nazi extermination efforts during World War II.

The memorial, in the form of a concrete cube, was built in 2000 on the site of a Jewish synagogue that was destroyed during a pogrom in 1421. At that time, some 200 Jews were burned alive on a pyre on the outskirts of the city.

On the plane taking him to Vienna, the pope told reporters he was stopping before the monument to demonstrate "our sadness, our repentance and also our friendship with our Jewish brothers."

A plaque overlooking the monument, placed by Austrian Catholic leaders, acknowledges that Christian preachers of the early 15th century spread superstitious anti-Jewish ideas, and that Vienna Christians generally accepted the destruction of the synagogue without resistance.

During World War II, the plaque says, some Christians fought in vain against the Nazi racial policies, but "they were too few."

"Today, Christianity regrets its share in responsibility for the persecution of Jews, and realizes its failure," the inscription states.

Most of Austria's approximately 200,000 Jews left the country after it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938; about 10,000 Jews live in Austria today.

When he arrived at the monument, the pope greeted the president of the Viennese Jewish community, Ariel Muzicant, and then, under a cluster of umbrellas, took time to shake hands with several older members of the community.

Crowds welcoming the pope into Vienna were thin in the inclement weather, and the papal program in Austria included no big-venue events. The biggest crowd of the visit was expected at the papal Mass Sept. 8 at the Marian shrine of Mariazell, which can accommodate only 50,000 pilgrims at one time.

Turkey Bars Meeting of Orthodox Leaders

2007-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

NICOSIA, Cyprus, AUG. 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Orthodox Church of Cyprus announced that the Turkish government cancelled a visit between two Christian leaders in Ankara.

The meeting between Chrysostomos II, Orthodox archbishop of New Justiniana and All Cyprus, and Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, was to take place last Friday.

Chrysostomos II declared that with this refusal Ankara "has shown its real face," a press release from the Cyprus Embassy to the Holy See reported.

He is ready "to edit a letter addressed to the Holy See and to the World Council of Churches, in order to inform them," and "to awaken the international community on how unreliable the Turkish government is about human rights."

Chrysostomos II said he is prepared to meet the ecumenical patriarch elsewhere, "in order to show his solidarity with him and to thank him once again for its contribution in the solution of the problems arisen within the Greek-Orthodox Church."

The archbishop of Cyprus confirmed there are no disagreements between Greek-Orthodox people and their Turkish-Cypriot brothers.

The problems, he said, are from "the interferences by the Turkish government, which stops any attempt of integration between the two communities in mutual respect."

Zimbabwean president warns country's bishops are on 'dangerous path'

2007-08-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has warned his nation's bishops that they are treading "a dangerous path" by criticizing the government.

He said he was angry about the Easter pastoral letter in which the bishops said Zimbabwe was in "deep crisis" and "extreme danger" because of the country's "overtly corrupt" leadership.

Mugabe, a Marist-educated Catholic, told the London-based New African magazine that he was not at Mass on Easter to hear the bishops' letter read.

"If I had gone to church and the priest had read that so-called pastoral letter, I would have stood up and said 'nonsense,'" he said in an interview in the May edition of the magazine.

Mugabe, 83, said the letter is not "something spiritual, it is not religious," and the bishops "have decided to turn political."

"And once they turn political, we regard them as no longer being spiritual, and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities, and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves," he said.

"For our bishops, this is a sad, sad story," Mugabe added.

Mugabe confirmed that he would soon be meeting with the bishops to discuss their concerns but did not give a date. He said he would refuse to speak to Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, who has been severely critical of Mugabe.

Mugabe said Archbishop Ncube has "long been a lost bishop."

"He thinks he is close to God, that's why he says he is praying for me to die," said Mugabe. "But, unfortunately, God has not listened to him for all this duration. I don't know how many times a day he is saying that prayer: 'Please God, take that man Robert Mugabe away from us.'

"I have said it once at a Catholic gathering that being a bishop does not place one next to God, nor does it make one a chosen person for sainthood.

"No. A bishop can go to hell while an ordinary person goes to heaven, depending on the character of the person," he said, adding that he will say more when he meets with the bishops.

Mugabe, who has been president since the nation became independent from Great Britain in 1980, has been accused of destroying Zimbabwe's prosperity and oppressing the people, particularly those he suspects of voting against him.

Unemployment is running at more than 80 percent and the country's annual inflation rate of 1,700 percent is the highest in the world.

Food shortages are acute; large numbers of people are migrating to the neighboring countries of South Africa and Botswana; and, with elections approaching in March, political violence has intensified.

"Ancient Baptists" and Other Myths

2007-08-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

By Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.
Illustration by Maria Korusiewicz

Nicea, August 24, A.D. 325, 7:41 p.m. "That was powerful preaching, Brother Athanasius. Powerful! Amen! I want to invite any of you folks in the back to approach the altar here and receive the Lord into your hearts. Just come on up. We've got brothers and sisters up here who can lead you through the Sinner's Prayer. Amen! And as this Council of Nicea comes to an end, I want to remind Brother Eusebius to bring the grape juice for tomorrow's closing communion service . . ."

Ah yes, the Baptists at the Council of Nicea. Sound rather silly? It certainly does. And yet, there are those who claim the Church of Nicea was more Protestant in belief and practice than Catholic. I recently read an article in The Christian Research Journal, written by a Reformed Baptist apologist, who argued this very point. No, I'm not making this up. The article, "What Really Happened at Nicea?" actually claimed the Fathers of the Council were essentially Evangelical Protestants.

As a trained patristics scholar, I always feel a great deal of sadness and frustration when I encounter shoddy historical "scholarship," whether it be in the pages of The Watchtower, a digest of Mormon "archaeology," or a popular and usually well-produced Evangelical Protestant apologetics journal. But this article was so error-laden, so amateurishly "researched," and so filled with historical and theological fallacies, that I simply couldn't let it stand without response.

All the classical Protestant confessions of faith expressing the beliefs of the various Reformation branches include the doctrinal proclamations of the ancient Catholic Council of Nicea, whereby Christ is professed to be "of one essence" with the Father. The original Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1531, for example, and the later Formula of Concord of 1576-1584, each begin with the mention of the doctrine of the Nicene Council.

Calvin's French Confession of Faith of 1559 states, "And we confess that which has been established by the ancient councils, and we detest all sects and heresies which were rejected by the holy doctors, such as St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Cyril." The Scotch Confession of 1560 deals with general councils in its 20th chapter. The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, both the original of 1562-1571 and the American version of 1801, explicitly accept the Nicene Creed in article 7.

Even when the particular Protestant confessional formula does not mention the Nicene Council or its creed, its doctrine is nonetheless always asserted, as, for example, in the Calvinist Scotch Confession just mentioned, or in the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of 1647.

At first glance, this all seems rather odd to the Catholic reader. After all, every branch of Protestantism professes the absolute and sole sufficiency of Sacred Scripture for establishing the fundamental points of doctrine. Why, then, do these various Protestant confessions bother to bring up the early councils (or any councils) when establishing their core teachings? Well, we shouldn't be too quick to accuse them of inconsistency just yet, for all of these confessions make it abundantly clear that the councils of the Church have no authority of their own, but only insofar as they teach things which have a clear warrant in the written Word of God.

For a Protestant, then, the general councils of the ancient Church and their creeds provide useful historical references for the expression of orthodox, biblical doctrine. They don't have any particular infallible status as councils of the Church. Even less are the doctrines of the early councils proposed as sound because they reflect the Church's Tradition as a source of knowledge of revealed truth.

So far so good. A Catholic may not agree with it, but such a view at least isn't internally inconsistent. Classical Protestants accept the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation as scriptural, and so refer to the early councils which taught these dogmas. They pick and choose from the riches of Christian teaching, and sometimes they get it right. A Catholic can only be content that they do; we are not stingy with the good things we enjoy. As Pope Pius XI said of the various Protestant groups, "Stones cut from gold-bearing rock themselves bear gold."

But there's a bigger problem here. The words of Calvin quoted above give us an example of it. He refers to "the sects and heresies rejected by the holy doctors, such as St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Cyril." Protestant apologists want to claim for themselves the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as well as the early councils. Some even go so far as to claim that the Fathers held to the principle of sola scriptura (by Scripture alone)! A brief look into the events surrounding the great Nicene Council should suffice to dispel this foolishness.

Things were hard for the Church in A.D. 325. A certain Arius, a wildly popular presbyter in Egypt, was publicly denying the full divinity of Christ. In his view, Jesus was godlike, but not God Almighty (Jehovah's Witnesses are the modern day purveyors of this position). A charismatic figure, Arius gathered about himself a school of followers, and his influence spread. The local Catholic bishops condemned him, yet his activities continued. Finally, fearing that perhaps a split in Christendom would lead to disruption in the empire, the Emperor Constantine called a general council of bishops. There is some question as to whether the emperor acted on his own, or in concert with Pope Sylvester. While the accounts contemporary to the event mention only Constantine, a statement made in the Third Council of Constantinople (A.D. 680) indicates Nicea was called by both the emperor and the Pope. It is interesting to note this statement was made during the general session, and was received as true without question or objection. Surely they would have known better, were it not true.

Most of the Nicene Council's 318 episcopal attendees were representatives of eastern churches, like Ephesus, Jerusalem and Antioch. Pope Sylvester, too ill to make the journey himself, sent two legates. According to the ancient historian Gelasius, the Roman Church was represented by Hosius, bishop of Cordova (Spain) and the leading proponent of the orthodox position regarding Christ's divinity. Not only was Hosius representing Rome, but it seems he also presided over the council after Constantine's introduction. St. Athanasius, an attendee and tireless defender of orthodoxy, wrote admiringly about Hosius, "What council can be mentioned in which he did not preside?" (Apologia de Fuga, 5).

So the Council proceeded, led by a bishop officially representing the Church of Rome. The debate was heated, but the outcome was clear: Christ is not some kind of minor deity, but He is one in Being with the Father — God, in the fullest sense of the term. An important question, then, arises: Just how did the Council arrive at this position?

The Reformed Baptist author of the Christian Research Journal article claims, "The council had no idea that they (sic), by their gathering together, possessed some kind of sacramental power of defining beliefs: they sought to clarify biblical truth, not to put themselves in the forefront and make themselves a second source of authority." This statement, though brief, is littered with errors.

First, even if the proceedings of the Council were nothing more than a debate on Scripture, it is thunderingly clear that the participants believed they had the authority to give the definitive interpretation of the data. According to the position of the Protestant apologist, the Church had no final interpretive authority; if an individual Christian believed the conciliar arguments to be unbiblical, he could reject them. How different this is from the position of the Council itself. The very end of the original Nicene Creed reads: "And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before He was begotten He was not, or that He was made of things that were not, or that He is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that He is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them."

Again, recall that the real issue is whether or not the Council believed itself to be the final authority in interpreting the data regarding Christ's deity. Clearly, the Church that anathematizes (cuts off) those who disagree with its findings is a Church that believes itself to have the last word.

But there is another problem with the claim that the authority of Nicea rests solely on biblical authority. The Council did not declare that the doctrine it proposed was simply a restatement or clarification of the Scriptures, but that "the Catholic and Apostolic Church" believes it, and condemns the contrary. The Scriptures are not cited even once in the Fathers' definition, hardly a likely thing had they been adherents of some "Bible only" ideology. To be sure, the Fathers of Nicea were certain that the orthodox doctrine was found in Scripture, but because they most assuredly did not hold to sola scriptura, it never occurred to them to separate the Church's authority from the interpretation of Scripture. Rather, if anyone at that time held to a view akin to the "Bible only," it was the heretical Arians, who rejected the Church's definition because it used terms not found in Sacred Scripture, but rather taken from Greek philosophy.

The absurd, and the outrageously absurd.

In trying to make his argument that the Council attendees were Protestant, our apologist makes the outrageous claim that, "Convinced that Scripture is 'sufficient above all things,' Athanasius acted as a true 'Protestant' in his day." Oh really? Did Athanasius hold to the doctrine of sola scriptura? Everywhere in his writings, St. Athanasius takes the Church's faith as the rule whereby the Scriptures are to be rightly interpreted. This rule of ecclesiastical faith (Greek: ho skopos tes ekklesiatikes pisteos) he adopts as a canon for rightly establishing the sense of the sacred text. The Arian heretics, on the other hand, use their private opinion (Greek: ho idios nous) as their rule or canon of interpretation.

Glancing through St. Athanasius' Discourses Against the Arians, one will quickly see how classically Catholic his use of Scripture is: "[S]ince they allege the divine oracles and force on them a misinterpretation according to their private sense, it becomes necessary to meet them just so far as to vindicate these passages, and to show that they bear an orthodox sense" (Discourse 1, 37).

"This then I consider the sense of this passage, and that a very ecclesiastical sense" (Discourse 1, 44).

"This then is what happens to God's enemies the Arians; for looking at what is human in the Savior, they have judged Him a creature . . . But for them, learn they, however tardily, that 'the Word became flesh;' and let us, retaining the scope of the faith, acknowledge that what they interpret ill, has a right interpretation" (Discourse 3, 35).

"Had Christ's enemies thus dwelt on these thoughts, and recognized the ecclesiastical scope as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made shipwreck of the faith" (Discourse 3, 58).

And these are just snippets. Repeatedly throughout his discourses, St. Athanasius gives the Church's rule of faith, and then applies it to the passages of Scripture misinterpreted by the Arians. There is simply no other way to understand his defense of the Faith against them.

In his Letter to Serapion on the Death of Arius, St. Athanasius distinguishes the orthodox Faith from widely held opinion, not by reason of its Scriptural basis solely, as a Protestant would, but because it is the teaching of the Church. Thus, the dictum "Athanasius against the world" points out his defense of the Nicene Faith against those who reject the Church's interpretation of Scripture, not his defense of Scripture against the "established church" (as our Protestant friend claims in his article).

Athanasius declared: "For the Lord Himself judging between the threats of Eusebius and his fellows, and the prayer of Alexander, condemned the Arian heresy, showing it to be unworthy of communion with the Church, and making manifest to all, that although it receive the support of the Emperor and of all mankind, yet it was condemned by the Church herself" (Letter to Serapion, 4).

Perhaps our Protestant apologist is a bit disappointed that I have not yet engaged him in any quibbling about Greek. Well, he's offered me a beauty of an instance; in fact, it's his very favorite quotation from Athanasius, the one in which he pretends that Athanasius professes the doctrine of sola scriptura over and against Church councils. Speaking of the Arians, St. Athanasius says:

"Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded councils for the faith's sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a council is needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in the divine Scriptures" (On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia, 6).

Does St. Athanasius' original Greek really say that Scripture is "sufficient above all things"? No. In a very simple sentence which a first-year Greek student should be able to translate correctly, St. Athanasius declares "For divine Scripture is more sufficient than all [other writings, councils, etc.]." The sentence in transliterated Greek reads Esti men gar hikanotera panton he theia graphe. Here we do not have an absolute statement, but a comparative one. To say that Scripture is the primary source of doctrine is not to say that it is the sole source of doctrine. I do not know of any Catholic theologian, doctor, or council of prelates of any period in the Church's history who would not view arguments from Sacred Scripture as the more authoritative among various sources of doctrine. This quotation gives absolutely no support to the Protestant error of sola scriptura. The issue here in the Greek is subtle, yes, but seemingly too subtle for the Protestant apologist to have caught.

Athanasius' entire anti-Arian corpus is nothing if not a scriptural refutation of heresy. The heretics claim Scripture as their guide. Fine, then let's show them how they err from Scripture itself. St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, all the doctors of the Church, patristic and scholastic, prefer scriptural authority. In doing so, they do not reject, but rather assert, the teaching of the Church.

But there's more. The very context of this alleged Athanasian "Bible-only" proof-text (which just went "poof" as a proof) shows that even with the mistranslating, it demonstrates the exact opposite of the Protestant apologist's thesis. Immediately preceding the passage cited, and in the very same paragraph, St. Athanasius rejects the Arians' call for new councils based on the already sufficient expression of the Church's authority. He writes: "What need is there of Councils when the Nicene is sufficient, as against the Arian heresy, so against the rest, which has condemned one and all by means of the sound faith?" (On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia, 6).

In other words, the Council of Nicea has decided the matter; the authoritative interpretation of the data has been given. The progression of the holy doctor's reasoning is clear: "Why do the Arians call for further councils when the Church's definition at Nicea suffices? Indeed, why do they want a council at all since Scripture, on which they claim to base their teaching, is so clear on this point? In any case, Nicea is enough for clarifying the true faith found in the Scriptures. Nicea is sufficient, and Scripture is more sufficient still, but either one would be enough." This, ladies and gentlemen, is a traditional Catholic argument through and through.

St. Athanasius wrote the famous Life of Antony, the semi-biography of the patriarch of monks — a work that later spurred St. Augustine on to his full conversion to Catholicism. In it, Athanasius gives St. Antony's dying words, a fine summary of the Catholic attitude toward Sacred Scripture, Tradition and the Church in the face of heresy: "Have nothing to do with the Arians, for the irreligion of these is plain to everyone . . . Therefore keep yourselves clean from these and watch over the tradition of the Fathers, and above all, the orthodox faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, as you have learned it from the Scriptures, and as you have often been put in mind of by me" (Life of Antony, 89).

So was St. Athanasius a "true Protestant," as the Baptist apologist claims? The Athanasius who believed that a Christian could lose his salvation through mortal sin (cf. Discourses Against the Arians 3, 25)? The Athanasius who venerated Mary as "the Mother of God" (Greek: theotokos; cf. Treatise on the Incarnation of the Word, 8)? The Athanasius who believed in Mary's perpetual virginity (cf. Discourses Against the Arians II, 70)? The Athanasius who believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Sermon to the Newly Baptized)? If indeed Athanasius can be called a Protestant, then the word "Protestant" has no meaning at all.

But what about the other Fathers of Nicea? Did they give evidence of any Protestant leanings? Not even remotely. The Council of Nicea was a Catholic Council in the fullest sense, Catholic in the sense commonly understood today. If someone were handed the canons of this council for examination, he would immediately recognize the things treated there as matters of Catholic Church order, and not applying to any recognizable Protestant group.

The Council of Nicea dealt with many of the same canonical issues in 325 that are dealt with in the Church's current canon law, both Eastern and Western. Its decrees concern the qualifications, precedence and jurisdiction of bishops and priests (canons 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 19), the proper role of deacons at the celebration of the Eucharist (canon 18), measures to ensure the validity of the ordination of bishops (canon 4), uniformity in the celebration of the Church's Eucharistic Liturgy (canon 20), the preservation of the celibacy of the clergy (canon 3) and the treatment of penitents and their reconciliation (canons 11, 12, 13, 14). It's worth quoting a few of these canons that show the Council's Catholic character quite unambiguously.

Canon 3 states: "The great Synod has stringently forbidden any bishop, presbyter, deacon, or any one of the clergy whatever, to have a subintroducta dwelling with him, except only a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons only as are beyond all suspicion."

In this way, the Council forbade any woman to dwell in the house of a member of the clergy, except mothers, aunts, sisters or those "beyond all suspicion." It's interesting that there is no mention of wives here. Obviously, the clergy was by this time largely celibate. Perhaps even more significant, however, is the description of the sacrament of holy orders being divided into three levels of ordained ministry: bishop, presbyter (priest) and deacon. The Church of the Council of Nicea had all three, just like the Catholic Church today. The Baptist apologist who wrote the article we're critiquing does not agree with the Catholic teaching on the sacrament of holy orders (ie. bishops, priests, and deacons). In this, he is typical of most Evangelical Protestants, who likewise reject this sacrament.

Canon 18 states: "It has come to the knowledge of the holy and great Synod that, in some districts and cities, the deacons administer the Eucharist to the presbyters, whereas neither canon nor custom permits that they who have no right to offer should give the Body of Christ to them that do offer. And this also has been made known, that certain deacons now touch the Eucharist even before the bishops. Let all such practices be utterly done away, and let the deacons remain within their own bounds, knowing that they are the ministers of the bishop and the inferiors of the presbyters. Let them receive the Eucharist according to their order, after the presbyters, and let either the bishop or the presbyter administer to them . . . And if, after this decree, any one shall refuse to obey, let him be deposed from the diaconate."

Let's think this through. Does it seem likely that a council of "Evangelical Protestants" (which, remember, is exactly what the Baptist writer of that article in the Journal was arguing they were) would issue a canon laying out the liturgical order for the distribution of the Eucharist? Not likely. Of course, one would expect such a thing at a Catholic council. And that is precisely why we see this and similar canons emanating from this council: It was a Catholic assembly, not a Protestant one.

Another revealing canon is the 13th. In regard to the granting of Holy Communion to penitents at the point of death, it says: "Concerning those about to die, the ancient canon law is still to be maintained, namely that those who are departing are not to be deprived of their last, most necessary viaticum . . . As a general rule, in the case of anyone who is departing and seeks to share in the Eucharist, the bishop upon examining the matter shall give him a share in the sacrifice."

Is there any Protestant who would view the Holy Eucharist as "most necessary viaticum" at the hour of death? Would the Baptist apologist recognize the Eucharist as a "sacrifice" or oblation in which he shares? Do Protestants, for that matter, concern themselves with episcopal jurisdiction, the dates of feasts and the proper posture for liturgical prayer? When was the last time you heard of a Protestant pastor giving absolution and holy viaticum to a repentant excommunicate in order to ensure his eternal salvation?

No Protestant apologist attending the Council of Nicea would recognize it as an organ of his denomination or as anything resembling his version of "biblical" Christianity. The issues discussed and the conclusions reached are common only to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Of course none of the 318 council Fathers would be familiar with the expression "Roman" Catholic, since this pejorative expression was invented by the Protestants of the 16th century, and later humbly adopted by orthodox Christianity in the West. Nevertheless, the Council of Nicea bears the unmistakable mark of Catholicism. Not surprising, since the Council was Catholic.

"But wait," a Protestant might respond. "What about Canon 6 of the Council of Nicea? Doesn't that demonstrate there was no papal primacy in the early centuries of the Church?" This claim is always presented in polemical discussions of the Nicene Council.

Canon 6 reads: "Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop. If, however, two or three bishops shall from natural love of contradiction, oppose the common suffrage of the rest, it being reasonable and in accordance with the ecclesiastical law, then let the choice of the majority prevail."

Are we to understand from this that the bishop of Rome is no greater in authority than the bishop of Alexandria? Indeed, our Baptist apologist writes, "This canon is significant because it demonstrates that at this time there was no concept of a single universal head of the church with jurisdiction over everyone else." Is this true? Not at all. The first thing one must do is note the context. What is the nature of the "jurisdiction" mentioned here? It is, primarily, the authority to ordain bishops. Notice that after laying out the territory for each of the metropolitans, the canon explains what is to take place within those limits: the selection and ordination of bishops. This point also fits the context of the preceding canons, paraphrased here:

Canon 4: Bishops are to be chosen by bishops of their province, and their choice is then to be ratified by the metropolitan having jurisdiction over that area.

Canon 5: Those excommunicated by one bishop are not to be re-instituted by a bishop of a different territory. Every province should have regular synods to decide these issues.

Canon 6: The metropolitans have jurisdiction over their respective territories. No one is to be made a bishop without their final approval.

Notice the function of canon 6 in context with the preceding two canons: It sets out territorial boundaries for more efficient administration. Recall that the pope is also the bishop of the city of Rome. He has a special administrative jurisdiction over Rome, whereas the bishop of New York has the same jurisdiction over New York, the bishop of Alexandria over Alexandria, etc. But this is not to say the Roman bishop has no authority over the Church; these are two different kinds of jurisdiction. So a plain reading of canon 6 in context shows it is hardly a blow against Roman primacy.

In the end, there is no way to avoid the inescapable fact that the Council of Nicea was Catholic in every sense of the term. Unfortunately for the Protestant author of the Journal article, no amount of cut-and-paste patristic work, no feats of "scholarly" gymnastics, no grotesque historical contortions can change that.

8:12 p.m.

"Brothers and sisters, I want to announce to you all that we've just had 23 people saved up here. Keep on coming! I see some more folks in the back. Let them through. Sister Pearl, can you make your way to the piano and do 'Onward Christian Soldiers'? It's the Emperor Constantine's favorite, you know . . ."

Evangelical Protestants at the Council of Nicea? The idea would be funny, if it weren't so sad that some people actually believe it.

The Players
Major Figures at the First Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) Arius A popular Alexandrian priest who, under the influence of Lucian of Antioch, denied the divinity of Christ. According to Arius, Jesus was the first "creation" of God, but was not God Himself. This false teaching was rebuked at a local Egyptian synod of bishops, but Arius refused to submit to their correction and was excommunicated. After several appeals, his heretical views were aired, debated and formally condemned by the bishops of the Catholic Church assembled at Nicea. St. Athanasius A priest from Alexandria (who would become the bishop in 328) and tireless defender of the Trinity and Catholicism. Along with Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and Bishop Hosius of Cordoba, he stood as Arius' chief and most formidable opponent. Constantine Roman Emperor and convert to Christianity. The growing tension between the orthodox Catholics and the Arians on the matter of Christ's deity compelled him to call the Council to settle the issue. Hosius Bishop of Cordoba, and presider over the Council. He played a central role in Constantine's conversion, and acted as the Emperor's theological advisor. A vocal opponent of Arius, Hosius represented the Church of Rome, along with two Roman priests. Vito and Vincentius The two Roman priests sent by Pope Sylvester (who was too sick to travel) to represent the Church of Rome at the Council of Nicea. They, along with Bishop Hosius, signed the acts of the Council before the other convened bishops did — which was a remarkable thing for mere priests to do, unless they had special authority as legates of the pope. Major issues addressed by the Council of Nicea The relationship of the Son to the Father was the primary issue of dispute. Arius claimed the Son was a creation of the Father; the orthodox argued the Son was one with the Father (homo-ousion, one in being). The orthodox position was adopted and the defenders of the Trinity prevailed. The 20-year-old Meletian schism was brought to an end. Its instigator, Meletus, was returned to his see in Lycopolis but was forbidden to ordain any more bishops. The ordinations he had previously performed were declared null and void. The traditional date of Easter held by the Church of Rome was adopted by the universal Church. The extent of the penance required of apostates before readmittance to the sacrament of the Eucharist was settled. Several qualifications for ordination to the office of bishop were outlined. Deacons, priests and bishops were to remain in their diocese. The jurisdictions for ecclesial ordinations were set forth.

The Players

Major Figures at the First Council of Nicea (A.D. 325)

Arius
A popular Alexandrian priest who, under the influence of Lucian of Antioch, denied the divinity of Christ. According to Arius, Jesus was the first "creation" of God, but was not God Himself. This false teaching was rebuked at a local Egyptian synod of bishops, but Arius refused to submit to their correction and was excommunicated. After several appeals, his heretical views were aired, debated and formally condemned by the bishops of the Catholic Church assembled at Nicea.

St. Athanasius
A priest from Alexandria (who would become the bishop in 328) and tireless defender of the Trinity and Catholicism. Along with Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and Bishop Hosius of Cordoba, he stood as Arius' chief and most formidable opponent.

Constantine
Roman Emperor and convert to Christianity. The growing tension between the orthodox Catholics and the Arians on the matter of Christ's deity compelled him to call the Council to settle the issue.

Hosius
Bishop of Cordoba, and presider over the Council. He played a central role in Constantine's conversion, and acted as the Emperor's theological advisor. A vocal opponent of Arius, Hosius represented the Church of Rome, along with two Roman priests.

Vito and Vincentius
The two Roman priests sent by Pope Sylvester (who was too sick to travel) to represent the Church of Rome at the Council of Nicea. They, along with Bishop Hosius, signed the acts of the Council before the other convened bishops did — which was a remarkable thing for mere priests to do, unless they had special authority as legates of the pope.

Major issues addressed by the Council of Nicea

The relationship of the Son to the Father was the primary issue of dispute. Arius claimed the Son was a creation of the Father; the orthodox argued the Son was one with the Father (homo-ousion, one in being). The orthodox position was adopted and the defenders of the Trinity prevailed. The 20-year-old Meletian schism was brought to an end. Its instigator, Meletus, was returned to his see in Lycopolis but was forbidden to ordain any more bishops. The ordinations he had previously performed were declared null and void.

The traditional date of Easter held by the Church of Rome was adopted by the universal Church. The extent of the penance required of apostates before readmittance to the sacrament of the Eucharist was settled. Several qualifications for ordination to the office of bishop were outlined. Deacons, priests and bishops were to remain in their diocese. The jurisdictions for ecclesial ordinations were set forth.

From Envoy Magazine

Constantine's comment: I love this article. I demonstrates the absurdity of the "Constantine the great invented Catholicism" position.

Disgraceful

2007-08-12T21:05:00.001-07:00

MOSQUE VISIT
Catholics from Putnam County visit Masjid Al-Noor in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., to learn about Islam. (CNS photo/Jillian Murphy)

Constantine's comment:

The fact that Catholics would enter into a house of heresy is disgraceful enough. The fact that Catholic women would willingly cover themselves in the manner that Muhammadan women do shows how far we are willing to embrace barbarism and stupidity in the name of 'learning' and 'ecumenism'.

Kosovo

2007-08-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

Constantine's Comment: The Albanian barbarians are desecrating Churches and Monastaries. It's a good thing we had such a great president like Clinton to bring this about!!

Cardinal Bertone backs canonization for Knights of Columbus founder

2007-08-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Nashville, Aug. 8, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (bio - news), the Vatican Secretary of State, offered his support for the cause of canonization of Father Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, as he addressed the group on August 7 at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

Cardinal Bertone celebrated the opening Mass for the 125th annual K of C convention, and in his homily he praised Father McGivney as a priest who "found the faith and the courage to walk steadfastly towards Christ, and to inspire others by his leadership." The Italian cardinal-- who ranks second only to the Roman Pontiff at the Vatican-- noted that a cause for canonization is underway for Father McGivney, and said "I'll personally work on this."

The Vatican Secretary of State conveyed the greetings of Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) to the Knights, assuring them of "the Holy Father’s spiritual closeness and of a special remembrance in his prayers at this time." In a separate message to the group's convention, the Pontiff praised the Knights ofr Columbus for "wholeheartedly accepting the summons to discipleship."

Cardinal Bertone-- who was awarded the Gaudium et Spes (doc) award by the K of C-- addressed the convention in Italian. The cardinal's lack of familiarity with English was once considered an obstacle to his selection as Secretary of State.

From Catholic World News

Constantine's Comment: This is wonderful news!

Why Belloc Still Matters

2007-08-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

Was Hilaire Belloc sometimes careless? Yes. Impolitic? Certainly. Is he irrelevant to 21st-century concerns? Never.

By R. J. Stove

American Conservative

An author too robust and significant to be wholly un-personned can still be marginalized. Consider this elegant pasquinade, which years ago won a parody-contest award in Britain’s New Statesman and which employs the same rhyme scheme and meter as Hilaire Belloc’s own “The chief defect of Henry King”:

The chief defect of dear Hilaire
Was not the clothes he used to wear,
The curious hat and monstrous cloak,
Paraded as some kind of joke.
No, Hilaire’s fault, and well he knew it,
Was, all he did, he’d overdo it . . .
There’s more—he held the strongest views
On politicians, and on Jews,
Such as, today, might give one cause
To think of Race Relations Laws.
But that of Belloc is the worst
That can be said. His comic verse,
His Cautionary Tales, his Peers,
His Beasts will last for countless years,
Delighting readers old or young
Who share Hilaire’s adopted tongue.

Well, that’s put Dear Hilaire back in his box, hasn’t it? If Belloc’s entire literary merit lies in his having catered to the A.A. Milne and Edward Lear demographic, we need no more bother ourselves with his wider aims than seek deep epistemological insight from re-reading about Pooh Bear or The Dong With The Luminous Nose. But then the New Statesman has never claimed theological expertise. Others, who do possess such claims, and who in many instances share Belloc’s Catholicism, have been at least as hostile. Malcolm Muggeridge complained, “although he has written about religion all his life, there seemed to be very little in him.” Six years before the Latin Mass’s recent anti-Belloc enfilade, St. Louis University’s James Hitchcock (in the May 1996 issue of Crisis) likened Belloc to “a man with a machine gun—by spraying shots everywhere he inevitably hit some targets, but many of his bullets went astray.” This allegation can at any rate be argued over, unlike certain antics of the occasional self-confessed Belloc fan. (Such as John Anderson, who passed as the doyen of Australian philosophy during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and who labored with surrealistic persistence to reinterpret Belloc’s Servile State as a sacred text for antipodean atheist head-kickers. When Belloc’s friends included historical illiterates like Anderson, he hardly needed foes.)

How stands the case for the prosecution? In particular, was G.M. Trevelyan, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge 1927-1940, justified in having flatly called Belloc “a liar”?

Occasionally, alas, yes. Belloc confided as much himself, to a co-religionist at that: the British historian, newspaperman, and editor Douglas Woodruff. While going several debating rounds in print against his merciless ultra-Protestant detractor, the once-celebrated controversialist G.G. Coulton, Belloc came out with one assertion so breathtakingly implausible that it moved Woodruff to inquire, “But is it true?” “Oh, not at all”, Belloc retorted. “But won’t it annoy Coulton?” Such a deliberate, impolitic falsehood clearly sprang from insensate bravado rather than from malice. It is doubtful, moreover, whether the historian who hastily and occasionally deceives others is half as dangerous as the historian who consistently and lucratively deceives himself. (Many a reader obligated to plow through the unrelenting sanctimony of more recent and more fashionable gurus than Belloc—Arthur Schlesinger expounding the immaculate conception of JFK; Eric Hobsbawm assigning a similar redemptive role to the proletariat; Francis Fukuyama hyperventilating about free-market dogma’s limitless appeal to any polity, however Lower Slobbovian—must have felt increasingly inclined to welcome from these sources an honest lie or two.) Still, Belloc’s mendacity at that juncture defies excuses and leaves behind a singularly nasty odor.

An even graver sin, curiously slighted by Belloc’s most recent biographers, A.N. Wilson (Hilaire Belloc, 1984) and Joseph Pearce (the shorter, more reverential Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc, 2002), occurs repeatedly in Belloc’s analyses of the French Revolution. Notwithstanding the fervor with which pope after pope—especially, in Belloc’s youth, St. Pius X—had declared support for Jacobins and indeed Girondins to be incompatible with the most basic Christian decency, Belloc remained as eupeptic as any Charles James Fox about the entire pageant of French politics from the Bastille’s fall via Robespierre to Napoleon. Revolutionary genocide against the Vendéens and Chouans scarcely touched Belloc’s consciousness. On his last (1937) tour of the U.S., he accused Americans of wanting to hear “48,376,277 times . . . that war is all wrawng and why cahunt everyone in Yurrup live peaceably same as us; that Religion don’t count same as it useter ’cos there’s more enlight’nment now.” So he could perceive, and denounce, lunatic world-saving Wilsonian optimism when it fell from his hosts’ lips. Why that optimism somehow became acceptable when the increase in “enlight’nment” had been effected by the guillotine, instead of by American presidential overreach, Belloc never explained.

This all amounts to a grim indictment. What case for the defense can outweigh it? There actually exist two such cases: first, Belloc’s daunting percipience; second, his equally daunting versatility as a poet.

Given Belloc’s prophetic skill, it comes as a severe jolt to recollect that he was born back in 1870. (He died in 1953, but a stroke robbed him of his authorial powers in 1942.) Almost every major political trend of the last hundred years—whether the Third Reich, or the bipartisan welfarism familiar from our own experience, or the socialization of agriculture, or incessant Middle East massacres, or the spirit of jihad, or the willful confusion between legitimate private enterprise and piratical paper-shuffling, or the sexual revolution, or mad-scientist genetic technology—Belloc predicted. His output retains an immediacy for our time that is impossible to discern in most of his journalistic confreres. At a time when H.G. Wells, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell counted as forward-looking thinkers—while notching up an almost 100 percent failure rate when it came to even the least contentious prophesying about global trends five weeks, let alone five years, down the track—Belloc plodded on, fortified by nothing more glamorous than preternatural energy and a worldview too European and synoptic to countenance the least parochialism. Plodding of that type seldom facilitates benignity, genial tolerance towards opponents, or leisurely musings on the joys of artistic creation. Nor does life in the House of Commons, where Belloc sat for four dispiriting years (1906-1910) as a maverick Liberal parliamentarian.

Little wonder that Belloc at times bullied when he should have insinuated, at times cut corners on fine detail when he should have checked and rechecked a specific datum. His antagonists went to town when they caught him crediting the early-seventeenth-century Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo with having influenced France’s Joachim du Bellay, who perished two decades before Quevedo was born, or citing a monastic chronicler dead since 1259 as an authority on conflicts occurring in 1265. They would have benefited from devoting equal attention to this passage, the closest approach Belloc ever made to explicating his historiographical outlook:

[Coulton] does not appreciate the weight of a whole stream of tradition, supported by a parallel stream of documentary evidence. If these combined make for a certain conclusion which no rational man can doubt, he would think it sufficient to bring out against it one isolated exception. Many generations hence there will be a broad stream of tradition and document to show that Englishmen in the nineteenth century did not eat human flesh, but I am sure that if Dr. Coulton were on the other side he would triumphantly quote the shipwrecked mariners of the Mignonette and continue to say that the Victorians were cannibals.

Where on occasion Belloc grew careless in small (although still important) matters, his mixture of erudition and depressive realism made him authoritative in large ones. True, he overestimated Russia’s liberal imagination to the disastrous extent of buying Kerensky Government bonds. Yet his comprehension of Bolshevism, when that plague-germ started on its pandemic course, surpassed not only anything Wells or Beatrice Webb or Bernard Shaw revealed—not that outsmarting those sages on the Soviet issue required notable effort—but much official scholarship as well. Naïfs might well have spent the Cold War unable to grasp how every Kremlin boss from Lenin to Gorbachev enjoyed the shameless backing of Armand Hammer and allied plutocrats on Wall Street. At such an outcome Belloc felt no surprise whatever. Spain’s civil war merely confirmed him in his realization that the capitalist and the communist alike have always hated any Catholic society far more than they have ever hated each other. Thanks partly to Cardinal Manning’s pronouncements, and to Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum encyclical, Belloc had learned this simple truth by 1902. It continues to elude the typical Republican Party apparatchik in 2002.

Because neither on this topic nor on any other did mealy-mouthedness come naturally, or at all, to Belloc, a veritable heavy industry has arisen for the specific purpose of forever associating his name with Nazi racialist hatred. Mere facts like Belloc’s loud and clear condemnations of Hitler from 1933 onwards —and of wider Teutonic militarism from, it often seems, the very day he learned to talk—have achieved little momentum against this industry, which has ensured that millions who have never read a line he wrote consider it as natural to link the words “Belloc” and “anti-Semitism” as to link “Gilbert” with “Sullivan” or “Abbott” with “Costello.” (Sometimes his aversion to Nazism led him into anti-Pius-XII rhetoric little different from John Cornwell’s and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s diatribes nowadays. “The Pope continues to be mum,” he lamented in 1940, “and to confine himself to generalities. He is to be blamed.”) A good answer to myths of Belloc’s Jew-baiting is the 1922 book, which he actually called The Jews, and which Pearce rightly deems “an exercise in carefully considered and controlled restraint.” Here Belloc overtly reprehends Jew-baiters’ driving obsession: “The Anti-Semite will confuse the action of any particular Jew with his general odium for the race . . . [he is] so absorbed in his subject that he at last loses interest in any matter, unless he can give it some association with his delusion, for delusion it is.”

Worse still, The Jews maintains, is the glutinous progressive doublethink that lets Anglophone Gentiles imagine in 1922—and long afterwards—that Central and Eastern Europe would overnight become as easily governable as New England or New Zealand, if only their peoples could be administered an adequately stiff dose of pagan laissez-faire. Belloc’s pan-European credo—“The Faith is Europe,” he observed, “and Europe is the Faith”—sharpened his awareness of the emotional allure that nationalism possessed for other minds more flaccid and less educated than his own. Far from advocating anything like the Final Solution, The Jews, if properly pondered by Europe’s leaders, would probably have done more than any other English-language book to prevent the Final Solution. Its Chapters XI and XV also foresaw (a generation before the world had heard of Irgun) the price that Zionism would extract in Jewish blood.

Just as The Jews and its sequel The Battleground (1936) can illustrate far more about the Middle East’s current anguish than the collected works of Dick Cheney, so a better-known and wider-ranging production of Belloc’s, Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), furnishes—in its scrutiny of militant Islam—-a far better guide to what makes Osama run than any State Department verbiage. Even some of the pamphlets Belloc churned out to propitiate his children’s alleged “howl[ing] for pearls and caviar” contain more useful information than many a lesser scribe’s life work. The Free Press (1918) can teach us much more of the Rupert Murdoch mentality’s fundamentally nihilistic spite than is obtainable from any journalism degree course. And this is to leave out the travel books: particularly The Path to Rome and The Cruise of the “Nona,” whence epigrams stay in the mind long after the more conventional scene-painting fades from memory.

It would nevertheless be a bold reader who actually preferred such books to Belloc’s collected poems. Though Belloc has been dead for half a century, the charm, tang, and inspired mischief of his children’s verse—Cautionary Tales, The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, More Peers, and the rest—remain as addictive to many a primary-school child in our own era as they were to us, and to our parents, and to their parents. Yet only the ill-informed would assume that those volumes constitute Belloc’s main, let alone his sole, poetical achievement. His muse’s many-sidedness is hair-raising. The finest tributes he lavished on his (platonically) adored friend Lady Diana Cooper display, even at the lowest possible reckoning, an exceptional aptitude for Elizabethan pastiche:

That I grow sour, who only lack delight;
That I descend to sneer, who only grieve;
That from my depth I should
condemn your height,
That with my blame my mockery you receive—
Huntress and splendor of the woodland night—
Diana of this world, do not believe.

Elsewhere he evokes seventeenth- rather than sixteenth-century idioms, as in “Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa”, which could almost be by one of the Metaphysical Poets:

Lady and Queen and Mystery manifold
And very Regent of the untroubled sky,
Whom in a dream St. Hilda did behold
And heard a woodland music passing by:
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold . . .
Prince of the degradations, bought and sold,
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold
And publish that in which I mean to die.

Often he matches A.E. Housman’s freakish gift for achieving permanent and dignified memorability while using precious few words of more than one syllable. Who can happily contemplate life in the average nursing home after reading Belloc’s description—which, in its lucid pathos, even Housman might have envied—of decrepitude?

You find that middle life goes rushing past.
You find despair; and at the very last
You find, as you are giving up the ghost,
That those who loved you best despise you most.

Evelyn Waugh noted the Housman resemblance in 1954: “He [Belloc] was a Christian Shropshire Lad and, by that enrichment, immeasurably Housman’s superior.”

Did Belloc fail? In terms of personal wealth, of stemming history’s tide, he failed miserably. But perhaps a stray phrase from Ezra Pound’s Cantos best sums Belloc up: “a failure worth all the successes of his age.”

____________________________________

R. J. Stove lives in Melbourne, Australia and contributes regularly to Chronicles and the New Criterion. He is the author of The Unsleeping Eye: A Brief History of Secret Police and Their Victims.

Constantine's comments:

Belloc is my favorite writer. His work on the great heresies, the Jews and the Reformation are some of the best works that I own.

Iraqi Christians were safer under Saddam, says Vatican official

2007-08-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although Iraq has a democratic government, Iraqi Christians were safer and had more protection under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, said the future head of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue council.

During the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who will become head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Sept. 1, had criticized the U.S. government's plan of preventative war and said a unilateral war against Iraq would be a "crime against peace."

In a recent interview with the Italian magazine 30 Giorni, the cardinal said his early criticisms had been prophetic.

"The facts speak for themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push for war) was a mistake," he said in the magazine's Aug. 10 issue. A copy of the interview was released in advance to journalists.

He said an "unjust approach" was used to unseat Saddam from power, resulting in the mounting chaos in Iraq today.

"Power is in the hands of the strongest -- the Shiites -- and the country is sinking into a sectarian civil war (between Sunni and Shiite Muslims) in which not even Christians are spared," he said.

Christians, "paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship," he said.

Cardinal Tauran is a longtime veteran of the Vatican's diplomatic service and a specialist in international affairs. He was Pope John Paul II's "foreign minister," the official who dealt with all aspects of the Vatican's foreign policy from 1990 to 2003.

He said his new appointment as head of the interreligious dialogue council carries "great responsibility" but that he also sees it "as a new chapter in my service to the Holy See." The cardinal will be responsible for overseeing the Vatican's dialogue efforts with representatives of non-Christian religions, including Islam.

His June 25 appointment alleviated concerns that Pope Benedict XVI's temporary merger of the presidencies of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue council with the Pontifical Council for Culture indicated a downgrading of the Vatican's interfaith efforts.

Cardinal Tauran told 30 Giorni, "We have to do everything so that religions spread brotherhood and not hatred."

The Vatican's efforts at bridge-building with Muslims hit a speed bump when the pope's remarks on Islam in a September speech in Regensburg, Germany, prompted negative reactions across the Muslim world.

When asked if the pope's Regensberg address had compromised the Vatican's dialogue efforts with Muslims, the cardinal replied, "At first, yes."

"But later, especially during his subsequent trip to Turkey, the pope explained himself very well," the cardinal said.

He said Pope Benedict has great respect for Muslims.

The controversies that arose after Regensburg only highlighted the importance of having a specific Vatican department dedicated to dialogue with Islam and other religions, he said.

"Thank God the erroneous interpretations of the Regensburg speech did not stop the development of relations -- diplomatic, too -- with Islamic nations," he said, giving the example of the recent establishment of full diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and the Vatican.

Cardinal Tauran said that as head of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue office he would use as his guide the Second Vatican Council's declaration on relations with non-Christian religions, "Nostra Aetate."

"To examine everything humanity has in common ... and to appreciate how much truth and holiness there is in other religions" would be some of the council's goals, he said.

But the quest to understand others will leave room to courageously pay witness to "the way, truth, and life" of Jesus, he said.

"In this sense," he said, "our road map is obviously the declaration 'Dominus Iesus,'" the 2000 document of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which said Christ and the church are necessary for salvation.

Interreligious dialogue should not promote the idea that all religions are equal, he said, but that all religions "which are seeking God must be respected because they have the same dignity."

-----------------------------

Constantine's Comments - The War in Iraq has been catastrophic for Iraqi Christians. They are being cleansed from their ancestral homeland. This war which toppled a secular tyrant will likely result in the establishment of a Shi'a theocracy. Even under the best case scenario Christians are the big losers.

Prospects improve for Pope-Patriarch "summit"

2007-08-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

From Catholic World News:

Moscow, Aug. 7, 2007 (CWNews.com) - After an August 7 meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray (bio - news) said that the prospects for a "summit meeting" between the Orthodox prelate and Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) are steadily improving.

The cardinal cautioned that no plans were underway for a summit meeting, but important steps were being taken to strengthen the ties between Rome and Moscow, particularly through cooperative efforts to affirm the role of Christianity in European society. The veteran Vatican diplomat said that a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch would likely be the fruit of these cooperative ventures.

Cardinal Etchegaray went on to say that Pope Benedict has cultivated a personal friendship with Patriarch Alexei, even at a distance. During his meeting with the Russian prelate he handed over a personal letter from the Roman Pontiff, which Alexei read. The Russian Orthodox leader expressed his thanks for the Pope's thoughts and promised a full reply.

Cardinal Etchegaray stopped in Moscow to meet with Patriarch Alexei as he traveled to Siberia, where he will participate in ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of a Catholic cathedral in Novosibirsk. The French-born cardinal has frequently carried out sensitive diplomatic assignments for Holy See since retiring from his post as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. As he approaches his 85th birthday he continues to be a valued papal envoy.

Book recommendation

2007-08-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

I highly suggest that anyone who desires to understand the blessed sacrament pick up "How Christ Said the first Mass".

It is online at Google

I found this book to be one of the most informative books I have seen concerning the establishment of the Eucharist. Flip through the google post and buy the book. You will not be disappointed.

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