Bishop Barron on The Book of Daniel

Why Should We Believe in Sin? (Advent Reflections)

The Climbing Japanese Panda

This is better than watching nightly news these days - especially campaign coverage.

Thomas Sowell: Wealth, Poverty, and Politics

O'Reilly: The Real Story About Syrian Refugees

This was posted on Western Journalism.com today.
They posted the following excerpts from O'Reilly's talking points memo.

“Fifty-four percent of American oppose taking in Syrian refugees even after they’ve been screened for security,” he said.

 “The reason most Americans do not want to accept Muslim refugees is not based on ethnicity or religion – it is based on security.”

“The majority of Americans have no confidence at all that the Obama administration can protect them from harm,” he said, noting that current leaders are “so liberal, so frightened and so chaotic that they cannot provide security for we the people.”

and concluded with this:

To help illustrate his point, O’Reilly cited two Obama policies – lax border security and the release of more than 36,000 convicted criminal aliens – as evidence that this administration has made America less safe.

1 Peter 5: The Pope, the Prelates and Braveheart

This is from 1 Peter 5 today:

The movie Braveheart dramatizes the heroic struggle, led by the commoner William Wallace, for Scottish independence. In one scene, the Scottish nobles gather after some initial victories by William Wallace over the English. The nobles begin bickering over how best to negotiate with the English King, Edward Longshanks, for they fear losing their lands and moneys if they push Longshanks too hard. Disgusted, Wallace begins to walk out of the room when he is stopped and asked his plans:

Wallace: I will invade England and defeat the English on their own ground.

Lord Craig: Invade? That’s impossible.

Wallace: Why? Why is that impossible? You’re so concerned with squabbling for the scraps from Longshanks’ table that you’ve missed your God-given right to something better. There is a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with possession. I think your possession exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

I’m often reminded of this scene when I see how Catholic leaders today – clerical or lay – act in relation to the world. Although the Catholic Church has been given the words of everlasting life, most Catholic leaders seem content to squabble over the scraps from the world’s table – working to make Catholicism palatable to polite society, simply satisfied with the continued existence of the Church and doing nothing to expand her footprint. When anyone suggests that perhaps we should “invade England,” i.e., resist the world’s lies completely and work for its total conversion to Catholicism, these same leaders are quick to say, “That’s impossible,” for all sorts of timid reasons – “No one will listen to us,” “We have to meet people where they are,” and “We can’t be triumphalistic.” But it is fear of rejection – and fear of losing their current comfortable positions – that is driving their timidity. All the while faithful Catholics are denied their God-given right to something better – a full and unadulterated proclamation and practice of Catholicism.

What would such a proclamation and practice look like? Here are some starters:

Full-throated defense of the Church’s moral teaching. No more tepid justifications for why we should go along with the death march that is our modern culture: “We must accompany people on their journey.” “We are just making a pastoral, not a doctrinal, change.” Instead we need a robust defense and explanation for why the Church’s moral teachings are the only sane ones in an insane world, and an exhortation to follow them, that we may find true joy and peace.

Condemnation of error and those that promote it. No more acting as if orthodoxy is an option, while souls are falling deeper and deeper into sin and error. Leaders need to treat theological error for the serious danger it is: something that can separate us from God for all eternity. Further, those who promote error need to be publicly and strongly resisted, not given tenured positions at “Catholic” universities (or promoted to Cardinalate dioceses).

A liturgy that reflects the grandeur of what it is celebrating. No more insipid, uninspiring liturgies that either would be more at home in a Gilbert & Sullivan show or reflect a deep-seated apathy toward the Faith. We need liturgical celebrations to be reverent, serious, and awe-inspiring. Did I mention reverent?

Proclamation of the superiority of Catholicism. No more acting as if every Tom, Dick and Martin Luther has more religious wisdom than Thomas Aquinas and Augustine put together. We need to start proclaiming that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ, and that eternal salvation comes through her. Souls are depending on it.

A concern for the next life more than this life. No more treating recycling campaigns and government social programs as if they are more important than the eternal destination of souls. Our sights have been set so low over the past few decades that we forget that it is only the Church that has the means to solve the greatest problems in existence: sin and death. The guiding principle of every action of a Church leader must be “Will this help or hinder souls getting to Heaven?”

For far too long Church leaders – again, lay as well as clerical – have thought that their positions exist to provide them with prestige, invitations to dine with the Important People, and as a means to book deals, TV shows, and speaking engagements. In reality their positions exist to provide people with the path to eternal life. Only if they stop squabbling for the world’s scraps and instead “invade England” –  i.e., confront the world head-on and work for its complete conversion – can the Church fulfill her mandate, given to her by Christ, to “make disciples of all nations” and thus conquer, instead of conform to, the world.

The Feast of Christ the King: VIVA CRISTO REY!

Father George Rutler's Homily on the Feast of Christ the King:

FROM THE PASTOR

  November 22, 2015 

by Fr. George W. Rutler

Our former church was begun in 1857 and rebuilt after a fire in 1892. When I kneel before the high altar, which was moved to its present location in 1907 to make room for the Pennsylvania Station, I think of how the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has been offered there through the Civil War with its Draft Riots and lynchings, and two World Wars, as well as Korea and Vietnam, with their victory parades and funerals for the young men killed in them. Workers and firemen who worshiped at this altar were killed at the World Trade Center. Every altar in the world is a focus of the human drama, and while Christ died once and rose in victory never to die again, his death transcends time in his merciful union with all human suffering. This is why Pascal said paradoxically in his Penséesthat the Risen Christ “is in agony on the Mount of Olives until the end of the world.”

   When the haters of remnant Christian civilization struck Paris last Friday the 13th, many kept saying that it was “unreal” and “inexplicable.” But the blood was real, and the cruelty was totally explicable by the history of false religion and its embrace of evil. Fittingly, when the attack began in that concert hall, the band was playing a cacophonous piece, barely distinguishable from gunfire, called “Kiss the Devil.” Only those afflicted with the illusion of secular progressivism as a substitute for the Gospel seemed bewildered. Evil is real and explicable by the Fall of Man. Through the battles that have been fought and endured as Mass was being said on our altar, those who knelt here have promised to renounce Satan, and all his evil works, and all his empty promises.

   It is different now that a whole generation has been taught to think that there is no evil to resist, and no holiness to attain. The highest ambition of our new “therapeutic culture” is no loftier than the desire to “feel good” about oneself. We were solaced by politicians telling us that ISIS has been “contained” and is less dangerous than climate change. While Christians in the Middle East were being slaughtered in what the pope himself called genocide, although our own State Department refused to call it that, coddled and foul-mouthed students on our college campuses were indulging psychodramatic claims of hurt feelings and low self-esteem. They are not the stuff of which civilization’s heroes are made, and when the barbarians flood the gates, their teddy bears and balloons will be of little use.

   Christ is the King of the universe because “He is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). To deny that is to be left in a moral whirlwind, thinking that evil is unreal and the actions of evil people have no explanation. 

2016 Kia Sorento Participation Commercial Built For Football Families

HAPPY 240TH BIRTHDAY UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

Sundays are for Beauty: Russian Orthodox Chant

The Choir of Moscow Sretensky Monastery

Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Doctrine

George Weigel, writing today at Catholic World Report, compares three men who had the opportunity to make Catholic social teaching viable though out the United States.

Over forty years of teaching and writing about Catholic social doctrine, I’ve gotten to know three men who had the opportunity to embody the Church’s social teaching for a national audience. Two of them couldn’t pull it off, for different reasons.

Those three men, as pictured above are: Sargent Shriver, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and now the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.  The opportunity was missed by Shriver and Moynihan, but Weigel has high hopes for Paul Ryan.  You can read the essay by clicking HERE.

Tom Wolfe on Intellectuals and People of Intellectual Achievement

Author Tom Wolfe was featured today in the Notable & Quotable section of the Wall Street Journal:

Nov. 1, 2015 5:06 p.m. ET

From an interview with author Tom Wolfe by the National Endowment for the Humanities, on the occasion of his being honored as the NEH’s Jefferson Lecturer in 2006:

"I make a distinction between intellectuals and people of intellectual achievement. . . .

"An intellectual feeds on indignation and really can’t get by without it. The perfect example is Noam Chomsky. When Chomsky was merely the most exciting and most looked-to and, in many ways, the most profound linguist in this country if not the world, he was never spoken of as an American intellectual. Here was a man of intellectual achievement. He was not considered an intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, which he knew nothing about. Then he became one of America’s leading intellectuals. He remains one until this day, which finally has led to my definition of an intellectual: An intellectual is a person who is knowledgeable in one field but speaks out only in others."

Sundays are for Beauty: The Bells of St. Mary's

Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman from the movie: The Bells of St. Mary's 1945.

Bishop Barron on Atheism and Assisted Suicide

Synod 2015: Traditional Catholics are The Prodigal Son's Brother

Two of the best thinkers and writers who regularly publish on The Catholic Thing, wrote today with their final impressions of the just completed Synod 2015 in Rome.

Professor Anthony Esolen's essay is entitled: "A Parable for the Synod," and is an astute response to the unfair, and unfounded, dispersions being cast from the Synod toward traditional Catholics: "People who try with all their hearts to honor the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage have been cast as the elder son in Jesus’ parable, who resents his brother, the penitent wastrel."

Fr. Mark Pilon, a priest in the diocese of Arlington, Virginia, offered his assessment in an essay entitled: "What a Strange Conclusion." Here's just a bit: "How did we arrive at the point where we are rejoicing that a Synod didn’t overthrow the teachings of the Church, and the Synod turned out to be much better than we had feared? That’s quite a commentary on the state of the Church today."

Interestingly, Fr. Pilon states that one of the most promising revelations at the Synod was the performance of the American Bishops "with one notable exception, and he was the first major U.S. appointment by our present pope."  Poor Francis Cardinal George (R.I.P.).  Remember his famous quote about how his successor would die in jail?  That's very much in doubt.

Finally, if you will click, HERE, you can read both essays.

When Politicians Fail Us: A Bonhoeffer Alternative to Doublespeak and Cunning

US President Barack Obama holds up a copy of the book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, given to him by the author Eric Metaxas during the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, February 2, 2012.

Lael Arrington (Published on October 28, 2015)

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?

"We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?"

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Germany, 1943-45)

Until you reach the last lines you might think this quote could be from political outsiders Ben Carson, or Carly Fiorina or, if it weren’t so eloquent and respectful, even Donald Trump. Simply substitute “political class” for “human beings.”

As a Christian who was passionate about forbearing with others, Bonhoeffer says we do not need “people who have contempt for others.” For Bonhoeffer, a lifestyle of contempt for people made in God’s image was a disqualifying display of pride. As the old hymn says, the place to pour contempt is on “all my pride.”

Any contemporary comparison of the current American political and cultural climate to that of Nazi Germany is automatically dismissed as overreach. But as we read what brave, thoughtful people said in 1940’s Germany we have to form our own opinions.

A fresh wind is blowing through our country. People are weary of the political class. Tired of their murky speech and cunning tactics.

How “truly and openly” did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak at the Women in the World Summit on April 29th?

“Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth,” she said. “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

The first, most revealing question we must ask in this climate of “obfuscation and equivocal speech” is, “What do you mean by that?”

Mrs. Clinton, what do you mean by advancing “critical access to reproductive health care”? Do you mean advancing abortion? Clearly we have to show compassion to women in crisis pregnancies and those who have chosen abortions. But we must speak simply, honestly and humbly about the evil of abortion too.

What do you mean by the phrase, “deep-seated … religious beliefs … have to be changed”? What “political will” do you intend to summon to make that happen? Passing laws and prosecuting violators? Fines, even imprisonment of those whose beliefs compel them to reveal or oppose the advance of abortion’s evils?

How can we rally “simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings” to speak “bluntly” in a nation that cannot name our common enemy as “Islamic fundamentalist terrorists?” If we cannot demand this honesty while we still enjoy great freedoms, how would we demand it if we were to lose our freedoms, like Bonhoeffer did? His simplicity and honesty landed him in Hitler’s prison.

The man who spoke so eloquently about forbearing with the personalities of others that grate on us drew a clear line in the sand for us. When we behold acts of evil we must speak up. We must take risks to oppose it. Bonhoeffer went so far as to join the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer, for which Hitler ultimately had him hanged, even as the Allies were pouring into Germany.

God has allowed the curtain to be drawn back on so many evils this year: the dismemberment of innocent unborns, the oppression of black people, the institutional approval of gay marriage.

May God grant each of us the courage to speak simply and honestly about “what is being forced on us.” Not in contemptuous rants to friends or on Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page. Not by “liking” or supporting candidates who pour contempt on others. We have plenty of respectful alternatives.

Like Bonhoeffer, may we speak truth with sincerity and respect. And sacrifice greatly to redeem the evils we see with actions that back up our words.

 (Adapted from Lael Arrington’s Faith and Culture Blog, “When Politicians Fail Us: A Bonhoeffer alternative to doublespeak and cunning … what you can do” originally published August 14, 2015.)

GAS HOAX

FROM YOU TUBE:

Published on Oct 1, 2015

A new short film by Phelim McAleer that debunks another fracking health scare by Josh Fox, director of GASWORK. 

GasHoax highlights how many of Fox's claims have been proven false, and it criticizes journalists for continuing to report new claims despite Fox's record of unethical and misleading journalism.

To watch a trailer for FrackNation, go HERE.

Sundays are for Beauty: Capital Children's Choir: "Who Is It"

"Who Is It": Choral tribute to Björk by the Capital Children's Choir

Fr. Robert J. Araujo, SJ (1948-2015)

Fr. Robert J. Araujo, SJ (1948-2015)

Roger Scruton: The Search for God

Roger Scruton, the man described by British MEP Daniel Hannan as "the man who, more than any other, has defined what conservatism is," is quoted today in the Wall Street Journal's "Notable & Quotable" section. The quote is from one of the three books he published in2014: The Soul of the World. 

Here's the quote:

There is a widespread habit of declaring emergent realities to be “nothing but” the things in which we perceive them. The human person is “nothing but” the human animal; law is “nothing but” relations of social power; sexual love is “nothing but” the urge to procreation; . . . the Mona Lisa is “nothing but” a spread of pigments on a canvas; the Ninth Symphony is “nothing but” a sequence of pitched sounds of varying timbre. And so on. Getting rid of this habit is, to my mind, the true goal of philosophy. And if we get rid of it when dealing with the small things—symphonies, pictures, people—we might get rid of it when dealing with the large things too: notably, when dealing with the world as a whole. And then we might conclude that it is just as absurd to say that the world is nothing but the order of nature, as physics describes it, as to say that the Mona Lisa is nothing but a smear of pigments. Drawing that conclusion is the first step in the search for God.