Ring the bells against climate change?

Got this in my mailbox this morning.

As nations are spelling out their bargaining positions for thenegotiations
on a new international climate deal to take place inCopenhagen next month,
churches around the world are trying toring home the message that climate
protection is an ethical andspiritual issue.The 7-18 December United Nations
summit in the Danish capitalCopenhagen will set the agenda for the next stage of
the fightagainst climate change. "This is the last chance the world has tokeep
global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius," saysAlexi Barnett,
campaign officer for Scottish CatholicInternational Aid Fund, explaining the
importance of churches'support for a successful outcome in Copenhagen.That is
why her organization has teamed up with Christian Aidand the [Presbyterian]
Church of Scotland to get congregations inthe northern part of the United
Kingdom to heed a call by theWorld Council of Churches (WCC) and ring their
bells on Sunday,13 December.On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the
WCC inviteschurches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs orwhatever
their tradition offers to call people to prayer andaction in the face of climate
change.By sounding their bells or other instruments 350 times,participating
churches will symbolize the 350 parts per millionthat mark the safe upper limit
for CO2 in the atmosphereaccording to many scientists.Groups ranging from the
Open Sanctuary at Holy Trinity AnglicanChurch in Tilba Tilba, Australia, to the
Lutheran congregation inSibiu, Romania, have already pledged their
participation. Somelink the climate action with their traditional
adventcelebrations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Epiphany Church inHamburg,
Germany, that will invite children to draw stars of hopewhile the bells will be
rung and 350 drum beats will be soundedahead of the congregation's advent
concert.

I don`t know. This makes me uncomfortable. Why? Because I fear the churches will be ringing in statism on a massive scale and are being enlisted in what is in effect a socialist and hence quasi-utopian agenda. It smacks of the kind of ecumenism that lacks discernment that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Why don`t the churches ring the bells for the respect for life from conception to natural death? That`s not a politically popular or politically correct cause, eh? Many of the same groups that want us to be coerced by law and the power of the state to change our lifestyles to reduce our carbon footprint also promote population reduction, abortion and artificial birth control.

That`s not to say we should not be stewards of the earth and the environment. But look at the record of socialist countries on the environment. Former Soviet Union? Horrible.

You need a free society with a free press to hold freely innovative companies and governments accountable. And sorry, but I can`t get that excited about carbon dioxide, which is what we exhale. And the Kyoto Accord has done more to destroy the rain forest through its pushing of agri-fuels and ethanol than any SUV driver in North America.

I hope I hear no bells ringing. There is much more to be alarmed about that climate change. Our spiritual climate change is much more urgent. Without a change in our inner spiritual climate, from our frostyhearts being transformed into loving, ardent hearts of flesh, we will never have the inner discipline and freedom to lead lifestyles that will care for all life on earth, especially the most vulnerable among us. Without the inner climate change, the only way outer climate change can be stopped (and frankly, I think man made climate change is overblown) is through heavy state coercion and the Savior state.

The churches should know better. It makes me sad.

Evangelical and Catholic kitsch

Oh boy oh boy. This Evangel blog is quite interesting. A new daily stop.

Last week I spent a few minutes in a Roman Catholic religious paraphernalia mart, and had that uncanny feeling that I was in a parallel universe where all the Christian knick-knacks are the same but different. Like Bizarro Family Bookstore. There’s a different aesthetic, a different visual culture, more crucifixes, fewer quilted Bible covers. But it felt like home, in the pejorative sense of the term “home” that teenagers use.

Two corollaries: First, aesthetically sensitive souls in either tradition share a highly developed sense of irony, and they employ it skilfully in navigating the visual cultures of their churches and subcultures. Kitsch, camp, and nine kinds of understated eye-rolling are their second language. These “way too cool for grandma’s sentimental picture of Jesus” people are certainly annoying as they contort their faces and postures to transmit their signals of disapproval and superiority. But they are not entirely motivated by pridefulness. Their ability to generate layers of ironic distance from sentimental religious kitsch is a survival mechanism they developed as they struggled to maintain some scraps of aesthetic integrity.

Second, those same aesthetically sensitive souls are also subject to devotional guilty pleasures. That is, they have plenty of testimonies about standing in front of a terrible piece of art, whether an evangelical billboard or a Catholic lawn statue, and feeling a pang of spiritual force that the art itself is not worthy of having provoked. If you’ve caught yourself crying over a sentimental portrait, or choking back a lump in your throat over a cheesy scene, or remembering that God is merciful to you while trying not to sing along with a song you love to hate, you know the devotional guilty pleasure. Nobody is safe from them. At least not the evangelicals and Catholics together in kitsch.

Camille Paglia hears Richard Dawkins on the radio

Heh heh heh

On other matters, I was recently flicking my car radio dial and heard an affected British voice tinkling out on NPR. I assumed it was some fussy, gossipy opera expert fresh from London. To my astonishment, it was Richard Dawkins, the thrice-married emperor of contemporary atheists. I had never heard him speak, so it was a revelation. On science, Dawkins was spot on -- lively and nimble. But on religion, his voice went "Psycho" weird (yes, Alfred Hitchcock) -- as if he was channeling some old woman with whom he was in love-hate combat. I have no idea what ancient private dramas bubble beneath the surface there. As an atheist who respects and studies religion, I believe it is fair to ask what drives obsessive denigrators of religion. Neither extreme rationalism nor elite cynicism are adequate substitutes for faith, which fulfills a basic human need -- which is why religion will continue to thrive in our war-torn world.

As usual, her whole Salon essay is most insightful and entertaining.

H/t Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury

Parody about Kate's "Allahu Akbar: the new cry for help."

This is the best parody of Obama I have heard. Kathy Shaidle reports on how her co-defendant Kate McMillan makes the big time:

Today, Rush Limbaugh's in-house parodist/impressionist, "white comedian" Paul Shanklin, introduced a fake PSA, using Kate's line about "Allahu Akbar" being the new "cry for help."

Thanks to the SDA commenter who snatched the audio clip.

Is it a problem to put God before the State?

Here's another interesting post on Evangel by John Mark Reynolds:

People who should know better, good people, have said to me, “These Islamic terrorists are a problem . . . and the problem is that they are Muslims first and Americans second.”

Evidently religion is only safe if it conforms to whatever the political consensus in Washington happens to be at the moment. The teaching authority of the church should follow the election returns or at least not encourage its members to use religion as a reason to defy them.

Christians have good reason to fear this kind of nonsensical thinking. It has often been the prelude to the persecution of the pious. The long standing religious exemption to oath taking in court and to military service were a recognition that for a Quaker or any other pacifist Christian Caesar, even a duly elected Caesar, could never be Lord.

The reason the Founders supported weak and small central government (compared to today’s leviathan state) is that the larger the state the more people and the more places it will begin to make demands that a free man will find in mortal conflict with his conscience.

And in America a man must follow his morality even against the dictates of the federal government. Nobody wants to do this, anarchy is a dreadful thing, but worse than the threat of anarchy is the state that tyrannizes over the consciences of men.

How best to deal with poverty?

Here's an interesting look at the issue from the Evangel blog over at First Things:

Through the centuries, some leaders have declared that all Christians should become poor themselves in order to best help those who are in poverty. As Dallas Willard has observed, however, in “The Spirit of the Disciplines,” “Being poor is one of the poorest ways to help the poor.” Willard seems to believe that most persons who have the ability to make money but who become willfully poor are, perhaps, sinning because they have rejected their God-given opportunity to help not once but rather in an on-going way. The clear message of the totality of Scripture (and not just a few cherry-picked passages) is that all Christians, especially those who have means, are to help poor persons for the sake of the Gospel. Making a choice to “become” poor is, in fact, a luxury; most poor persons do not have such a choice.

In some ways, I think that trying to solve “poverty” is the epitome of absurdity. Poverty is a byproduct of the Fall (whether it is related to drought, political turmoil, chemical dependency, or illness and bad luck). As such, no matter how hard we may work at ending it, it will persist on this side of heaven. Even Christ Himself said, “You will always have the poor among you” (John 12:8). Why, then, should we even try to do anything about it? Isn’t it absurd to try to fix what is irreparable?

As I’ve been pondering this issue, though, I keep coming back to a rather famous quotation from Elie Wiesel; lamenting the dehumanization of the Jews by the Nazis, he implied that we do the same thing in our discussions of the Holocaust. Six million Jews were not killed by the Germans, Wiesel observed, rather “one Jew was killed by one German six million times.” I think that we could alter that with great effect in considering our calling to help poor persons: “Poverty will not be solved by Christians; rather, one poor person or family should be helped by one Christian or Christian fellowship at a time.”

What I mean is that we can have all of the grand visions for benevolence that we can conceive of, but until we stop seeing “poverty” or “the poor” as faceless nouns and begin seeing “poor” as an adjective applied to individual persons who bear the imago dei, we will never be effective in our outreach.

Commentary on the Apostolic Constitution

Rather, the surprise in the Apostolic Constitution is how far Pope Benedict has been willing to go, short of compromising Catholic teaching on the invalidity of Anglican orders, to maintain the current structure of Anglican bodies entering into full communion with Rome.

Thus, while a married Anglican bishop (of which there are quite a few) will not be eligible to receive episcopal ordination in the Catholic Church, he will, like other married Anglican priests, be eligible for priestly ordination. Even beyond that, however, he will be "eligible to be appointed Ordinary" (since orinaries can be drawn from the ranks of either bishops or priests), in which case he (like any other ordinary) would have quasi-episcopal authority and may even "request permission from the Holy See to use the insignia of the episcopal office."

On a pastoral level, this provision is really quite brilliant; it will ease the transition of Anglican communities into the Catholic Church, while maintaining the Church's tradition that bishops must be unmarried.

One other interesting element of the Apostolic Constitution is the possibility of allowing married men who were not previously ordained in the Anglican Church to become priests. While, "as a rule," the ordinary "will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter," he may also

petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1 [which establishes the norm of clerical celibacy in the Roman rite], for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

Maybe this is why I'm having trouble finding Vitamin D on the shelves

Read this.

A bishop writes to his pro-abortion Congressman

Bishop Tobin explains the meaning of being Catholic to Congressman Kennedy.

There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

---

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin

Bishop of Providence

More "kill the messenger" news

On the Acorn scandal, Breitbart's Big Government has this about the young conservative filmmakers who busted ACORN by posing as a pimp and prostitute seeking help in a scheme to bring in underage girls from Central America for the sex trade:

Lagstein notes that the Attorney General is a “political animal.” He states that he has been in communication with Brown’s office and assures the crowd that “the fault WILL be found with the people that did the video — not ACORN.”

If that’s true, then the fix is in and Brown’s investigation is just a scam on the public. But, targeting the filmmakers will also put Brown’s office in an especially difficult position. Just today, we learn that one of Jerry Brown’s chief aides secretly recorded phone conversations with at least 5 reporters

Yup. The folks that uncovered the scandal will be guilty.

Yeah, sic the IRS on those Catholic bishops!

You don't think the left is totalitarian? You don't think the left wants to crush freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion? Check this out. The Democratic Party has been seized by this impulse. Gateway Pundit reports:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey wants the Catholic Church audited after the House voted to defund abortion in their nationalized health care bill.
The legislation to refuse abortion funding will likely be stripped from the bill during negotiations with senate democratic leaders.

He links to The Politico which quotes Woolsey:

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.

When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything “non-political” to protect their tax-exempt status.

The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections.

Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn’t be.

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

Of course we had this in Canada during the marriage debate when there were calls to have Calgary Bishop Fred Henry's charitable status revoked for being an outspoken defender of traditional marriage.

Iowahawk rounds up the headlines

At least he will make you laugh.

Yup. It is craven weakness on our part

David Kupelian writes:

We need to understand that a certain percentage of us, when we're intimidated and upset, start to emotionally gravitate toward and agree with whatever is intimidating us. Not just superficially, as a temporary tactic of placating a bully so he won't hurt us, but more profoundly, deep down in the inner sanctum of our being where our thoughts and feelings germinate and our loyalties bloom.

Intimidation – that is, causing others to react with upset and fear – is a fundamental principle of mind control, fully capable of causing the victim's loyalties to shift toward the intimidator, whether a schoolyard bully, gang leader, child molester, hostage-taking bank robber or Islamic radical.

"Political correctness" – which is basically a low-grade Stockholm syndrome playing out on a broad societal stage – is actually a subtle form of brainwashing. Even establishment mouthpiece Newsweek, in its famous Dec. 24, 1990, cover story on the then-new phenomenon of political correctness on college campuses (titled "Thought Police") conceded this truth when it reported: "PC is, strictly speaking, a totalitarian philosophy."

Bottom line: We're intimidated, bullied, threatened, terrorized – and so we capitulate, not just in word and deed, but in thought. Get it?

Most of the time, of course, this occurs below the radar of our own consciousness. We don't understand what's really happening. So we interpret our growing sympathy and affinity for whatever intimidated us as evidence of our loving, open-minded, enlightened nature. In reality, it's the result of craven weakness on our part.

Mark Shea on the refusal to connect the right dots

He writes on the double standard that blames Christianity as a knee-jerk impulse but refuses to see other religious motivation:

Of course, that same media culture has absolutely no trouble painting Christians as dangerous fanatics (no doubt due to the roving gangs of gun-toting Methodists who shout "Jesus is Lord" as they blast away at defenseless people). We live in a culture where Larry David can piss on Jesus, but we are continually lectured on the need to respect the sensitivities of butchers who get invited to participate in the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute Presidential Transition Task Force and who return the favor by murdering the sons and daughters of the nation that gave him a great education and such high honors.

Meanwhile, the Religion That Can't Grow Up beholds the carnage wrought by another Son of the Prophet and naturally blames . . . somebody else, while feeling sorry for itself:

"When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal," said Victor Benjamin II, 30, a former member of the Army. "But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad."

Um, no. When the Muslim calls it jihad, we call it jihad, just as when a Christian used to call it a crusade, we call it a crusade. (And, by the way, when the rare Christian does something heinous in the name of Jesus, Christians condemn the evil act and the one who committed it, not the world for being upset by the evil act.) But in the world of our crazy media, the first response to mass murder by an Islamic killer is moaning that somebody made fun of the shooter. Poor widdle butcher. Boy, I'm sure lucky that nobody in our culture ever mocks us mackerel snappers or says we are the greatest force for evil in the whole wide world. If they did, I guess we'd be perfectly justified in opening fire on innocent human beings.

My hymn of praise this morning

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

This is He Whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!

Righteous judge of souls departed, righteous King of them that live,
On the Father’s throne exalted none in might with Thee may strive;
Who at last in vengeance coming
Sinners from Thy face shalt drive, evermore and evermore!

Thee let old men, thee let young men, thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens, with glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

Music here.

Sub Tuum blog warns of the backlash to come

Sub Tuum, before the Apostolic Constitution was revealed, warned of the kind of news coverage that will follow now that it has been made public. Brace yourself, because while the initial coverage is very positive, I doubt it will stay that way. Sub Tuum writes:

As traditional Anglicans inside and outside the official Anglican Communion begin to declare their intentions to join the proposed Anglican ordinariates, get ready for a wave of negative news profiles and blog-o-sphere inuendo about those who say they're coming. Here are some of the things we're likely to hear in the next few months:

• Bishop A is a well-known Freemason.
• Fr. X. is twice-divorced/lives with a man/has a mistress.
• Deacon Y has been involved in some questionable financial schemes.
• Archdeacon Z is a malcontent who has belonged to numerous Old Catholic and Anglican churches.
• Mrs. G., who is a pro-life leader, seems reluctant to speak about contraception.
• Miss W. can be tied to a number of fringe right-wing groups.
• Mr. Q. was once a member of a very dodgy sedevacantist group.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head. Some of these stories will prove to have from a small bit to a good bit of truth in them.

Here are some of the people, again off the top of my head, who will be circulating these kinds of stories:

• Progressive Catholics who don't want all of these conservatives and want a shot at the Holy Father by association.
• Progressive Anglicans who don't want all of these conservatives either, but don't want to miss having a last go at them and a go at the Holy Father to boot.
• Conservative Catholics who think these Protestants aren't going to be real Catholics.
• Conservative Anglicans who are staying behind and feel betrayed by their parting brethren.
• Conservative Anglicans who haven't made up their minds and feel the need to show that the people jumping ship immediately have a history of precipitous action.
• Anglicans joining the ordinariates who are jockeying for position and settling old scores.
• Reporters with an ideological ax to grind.
• Editors win no ax to grind, but with papers to sell.
• Those of us sitting at our computers with nothing better to do.

Given that the ordinariates are being created for people--sinful fallen people like the rest of us--there will be plenty of laundry to air and plenty of people who are eager to hang it out. We are likely to hear about current subjects of scandal as well as sins long atoned for. We are likely to hear things that will discourage us. We will likely (and selfishly) hope that certain people won't come. I assure you that could probably come up with a name or two for a bouncer's list at St. Peter's myself, but, in his wisdom, God has made the Catholic Church for everyone who's willing to try.

Ruth Gledhill is also amazed

She writes:

Tremendous day. The Apostolic Constitution has been published. It is all that Catholic Anglicans hoped for and more.While it officially keeps the door closed on any relaxation of the norms on celibacy - former Catholic priests who became Anglicans, married or no, will not be permitted to join the new Ordinariates - it is clear from Article 11 that former Anglican bishops can become Catholic bishops in all but name, even where they are married. They will officially retain the status of presbyter, but will be allowed to be the Ordinary or head of the Ordinariate, will be allowed to be a member of the local Bishops' Conference with the status of retired bishop and, significantly, will be allowed to ask permission from Rome to use the seal of episcopal office. This leaves the path clear for Bishop of Fulham Father John Broadhurst, married father of four, to head the new Ordinariate in Britain. Heady stuff indeed - and I mean that theologically and metaphorically.

This document is in essence a practical working out of the embracing spirituality expressed in Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.

It shows once again a passionate man, this time one who is passionate for unity.

It will be some time before we fully grasp the enormity of its implications and the breadth of its imaganition.

For example, it reintroduces the concept of worker priests, banned in France in the 1970s. Because how will these Ordinariates be paid for? The Holy See cannot afford to finance them. With the ongoing financial crises besetting the Church Commissioners, however, many Anglican priests have been financed by their congregations for nearly a decade, especially in London where the majority of defections are likely to take place.

The treasures of Anglicanism

Damian Thompson writes:

I’m also very struck by the Constitution’s insistence on the “treasures” of Anglicanism, which it values very highly and wishes to see brought into the fulness of the Church. The Constitution is a very big deal indeed.

I remember one of the Traditional Anglican Communion bishops who had brought the letter to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) back in 2007 saying how ironic that there they were petitioning the Holy Father to preserve the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible.

But here we are. A very big deal indeed? Yes.

Damian has highlighted the sections of the AC that allow for married Anglican bishops to become ordinaries within the new structure. Though they will not be bishops, they will have the status of retired bishops at episcopal conferences and "may request permission to use the insignia of the episcopal office."

Cool.

Vitamin D and the flu

A short while later, a group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone - a hormone most of us take for granted - was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body's production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D.

All of the patients on my ward had been taking 2,000 units of vitamin D every day for several months or longer. Could that be the reason none of my patients caught the flu? I then contacted Professors Reinhold Vieth and Ed Giovannucci and told them of my observations. They immediately advised me to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 units of vitamin D, not just the ones on my ward, to see if the results were statistically significant. It turns out that the observations on my ward alone were of borderline statistical significance and could have been due to chance alone. Administrators at our hospital agreed, and are still attempting to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 or more units of vitamin D at the time of the epidemic.

Four years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it's the only known precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D - like all steroid hormones - damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic expression in hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks.

Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass.

The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements.

Of course the first news stories are in Italian

You can find one here.

Damian Thompson is on "Anglicanorum coetibus" and so is Archbishop Prendergast

Damian Thompson's blog has posted the full text here.

And Archbishop Terrence Prendergast has excerpts of a press release on his blog:

On October 20, 2009, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced a new provision responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.

The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus which is published today introduces a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow the above mentioned groups to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony. At the same time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is publishing a set of Complementary Norms which will guide the implementation of this provision.

This Apostolic Constitution opens a new avenue for the promotion of Christian unity while, at the same time, granting legitimate diversity in the expression of our common faith. It represents not an initiative on the part of the Holy See, but a generous response from the Holy Father to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups. The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church.

The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy within the Personal Ordinariates does not signify any change in the Church’s discipline of clerical celibacy. According to the Second Vatican Council, priestly celibacy is a sign and a stimulus for pastoral charity and radiantly proclaims the reign of God (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1579).


Full text of the Apostolic Constitution here; of the Complementary Norms here.

The Apostolic Constitution is out

O Happy Day!

The Apostolic Constitution has been published on the Vatican website.

In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately. The Apostolic See has responded favorably to such petitions. Indeed, the successor of Peter, mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches,[1] could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization.

The Church, a people gathered into the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,[2] was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as “a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all people.”[3] Every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists; in fact, “such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause, the preaching the Gospel to every creature.”[4] Precisely for this reason, before shedding his blood for the salvation of the world, the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father for the unity of his disciples.[5]

It is the Holy Spirit, the principle of unity, which establishes the Church as a communion.[6] He is the principle of the unity of the faithful in the teaching of the Apostles, in the breaking of the bread and in prayer.[7] The Church, however, analogous to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, is not only an invisible spiritual communion, but is also visible;[8] in fact, “the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, the visible society and the spiritual community, the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches, are not to be thought of as two realities. On the contrary, they form one complex reality formed from a two-fold element, human and divine.”[9] The communion of the baptized in the teaching of the Apostles and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread is visibly manifested in the bonds of the profession of the faith in its entirety, of the celebration of all of the sacraments instituted by Christ, and of the governance of the College of Bishops united with its head, the Roman Pontiff.[10]

This single Church of Christ, which we profess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic “subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”[11]

In the light of these ecclesiological principles, this Apostolic Constitution provides the general normative structure for regulating the institution and life of Personal Ordinariates for those Anglican faithful who desire to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church in a corporate manner. This Constitution is completed by Complementary Norms issued by the Apostolic See.

It's amazingly short, clear and sweet.

The Complementary Norms are here. Also brief.

By Pastor Penn Clark

An ecumenical day of teaching and fellowship

Saturday, November 14, 2009 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Annunciation Cathedral 289 Spencer St. Ottawa, ON K1Y 2R1

“Pastor Penn Clark (www.penn-clark.com) is among the most credible men I have ever met who teaches on and operates in supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. Do not miss this opportunity! You will love his message. ”

--Deborah Gyapong www.deborahgyapong.com

Based in New York State, Penn has been involved in church-planting, ministering to fellow pastors and leading mission trips to some of the neediest places on earth for the past 25 years.

A sandwich lunch will be served

All are welcome!

Please RSVP by leaving a comment in the comments section (will not be published)

Comfort from the Anchoress as we sit in the "shadow of the jackboot"

She writes:

We who are surrendered to Christ and thus exiled have already freely given ourselves over to the Constant Reality of Christ, therefore while we may suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” reflected -often painfully and frighteningly- in our material circumstances, we are nevertheless untouched in our deepest selves, which belong to God alone; it is there we exist in freedom and peace, and where we persevere. The very real power that comes from the interior life -from prayer, quiet and contemplation- is a most subversive and devastating weapon. It will, in the fullness of time, “awake the dawn.”

Brilliant analysis

But I think the real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.
[...]

Sarah Palin takes a clear shot at yesterday's health care vote

On Facebook no less (via Gateway Pundit) She writes (her bolds):

We’ve got to hold on to hope, and we’ve got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country.

The same government leaders that got us into the mortgage business and the car business are now getting us into the health care business.

Despite Americans’ decisive message last Tuesday that they reject the troubling path this country has been taking, Speaker Pelosi has broken her own promises of transparency to ram a health “care” bill through the House of Representatives just before midnight. Why did she push the 2,000 page bill this weekend? Was she perhaps afraid to give her peers and the constituents for whom she works the chance to actually read this monstrous bill carefully, if at all? Was she concerned that Americans might really digest the details of a bill that the Wall Street Journal has called “the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced”?

This out-of-control bureaucratic mess will be disastrous for our economy, our small businesses, and our personal liberty. It will slam businesses at a time when we are at double-digit unemployment rates – the highest we’ve seen in a quarter of a century. This massive new bureaucracy will cost us and our children money we don’t have. It will rob Americans of more of our freedom and further hamper the free market.

Make no mistake: we’re on course to have government commandeer one-sixth of our economy. The people who gave us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now want to run our health care. Think about that.

All of us who value the sanctity of life are grateful for the success of the pro-life majority in the House this evening in its battle against federal funding of abortion in this bill, but it’s ironic because we were promised that abortion wasn’t covered in the bill to begin with. Our healthy distrust of these government leaders made us look deeper into the bill because unfortunately we knew better than to trust what they were saying. The victory tonight to amend the bill and eliminate that federal funding for abortion was great – because abortion is not health care. Now we can only hope that Rep. Stupak’s amendment will hold in the final bill, though the Democratic leadership has already refused to promise that it won’t be scrapped later.

We had been told there were no “death panels” in the bill either. But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care.

The first fruits of the Apostolic Constitution

The Apostolic Constitution outlining the offer the Holy See is making to faithful Anglicans who wish to become officially Catholic I hear will be released tomorrow at noon Rome time, 6:00 a.m. our time.

The first fruits of the offer are members of the Traditional Anglican Communion in the United Kingdom, who voted "Yes!" to the offer, even without seeing the details.

Here are members of the TAC in Britain praying the Angelus, led by Canada's retired Bishop Robert Mercer.

The video may take time to load, so be patient. It starts with a boy soprano singing the Ave Maria. It really does take a long time, like five minutes maybe more, so leave it open in a window and go do something else. You may have to click the picture a few times to jog it into running. You may even need to right click on the picture and click on play or hit back and then return to the site. But if you love the Angelus with lots of smells and bells and reverence, then this is for you.

Please listen to Bishop Robert's prayers at the end.

We are seeing these prayers come true tomorrow.

Interesting article about the Holy See's offer to Anglicans

A personal ordinariate, according to Cardinal Levada, “will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.” It would allow for their “pastoral oversight and guidance” under an ordinary to be appointed from among former Anglican clergy—either an unmarried bishop or a married or celibate priest. Within this structure, with boundaries like that of a bishops’ conference, Anglicans seeking Petrine authority without renouncing their traditions can do so corporately, continuing to use the High Anglican liturgy, subject to Rome’s approval of specific texts. The ordinariate would have its own formation houses for seminarians, and if these seminarians will be able to marry, the proposal would guarantee in perpetuity the continuation of a distinct Anglican-Catholic structure.

It falls short of a uniate church, which has its own canon law, rite and authority structure, but is a “cumulative jurisdiction” within the Latin Rite, much like a military ordinariate, Archbishop Nichols told journalists. The constitution would be an attempt to achieve a “balance between a corporate identity and the need to be embedded locally,“ he went on, adding that the details could only be worked out once an ordinariate were established following an application to the relevant bishops’ conference. Whole dioceses or parishes could transfer, but not with their buildings, which in the British case would remain property of the church “by law established” in England.

Divisions and Dialogue

Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster at the time of the Church of England’s decision to ordain women as priests in the early 1990s, would not countenance corporate reception at that time. He was happy to reordain Anglican married clergy but not to sanction a distinct Anglican structure under a separate bishop. The four English and Welsh bishops who went to negotiate with the C.D.F. at the time agreed that such a move would be divisive and would undermine the efforts of the official Catholic-Anglican dialogue process toward unification. In the end, some 480 Anglican priests crossed over. Many became parish priests and bishops in the Catholic Church. About 80 later crossed back. The married former Anglican priests were generally parked in chaplaincies, away from mainstream parish life. The path of conversion was individual, not corporate, leaving the Church in England and Wales enriched but unaltered.

The current proposal, by contrast, establishes a universal juridical structure that could see ordinariates in Papua New Guinea and Australia as well as England and Wales. It is a response as much to the 400,000-strong Traditional Anglican Communion—which does not recognize Canterbury—as it is to the Anglo-Cath

olics in the Church of England (although no one doubts that the latter are the true prize).

A "lonely" battle against the changes to the English missal

Father Z does a good fisking of a National Catholic Reporter article. This made me laugh:

He said his struggle for a more coherent and proclaimable text is sometimes a “lonely” battle, [ahhhhh…. sniff….] but he is encouraged by the number of people, especially pastors, who ask him to keep at it. Within days after the first report on his talk appeared on NCRonline.org, he said, he received about 50 to 60 e-mails expressing support and only a handful objecting to the talk. [WOW! 50-60 e-mails? I suspect that after posting this I will get twice that in support of what I am writing. Folks, drop me a note with this in the subject line: "In support of APPROVAL". That is, the Bishops should vote to approve the translations during their meeting.]

He said the few who objected focused on his criticism of arcane or archaic words, which is a much smaller issue than his main concern—the liturgical use of bad grammar and convoluted, unproclaimable sentences.

The new English translation of the Roman Missal has many good aspects, but “there is much more that still needs improvement to make the text grammatical and accessible to the people,” Trautman said in his Oct. 22 lecture.

I dunno. I kind of like this translation because it was done when English speakers had an ear for the poetry of the language. But toss the 39 Articles.

What are they afraid of? Graffiti?

In response to Blazing Cat Fur's post on the cluelessness of the Globe and Mail, Seraphic Spouse comments:

Incredible, especially when you consider that the only Muslims killed in the USA on 9/11 and in Britain on 7/7 were killed by Muslims.

Muslims may have as much to fear from radical Muslims as any other American, Briton or Canadian. It's not like the Toronto 15 had come up with a plan to make sure none of Toronto's thousands of Muslims were around when they triggered their bombs.

I'm rather sick of the MSM interrupting our grieving to tell us that, to add Muslims' insults to a Muslim's murderous injury, they suspect us of wanting to attack their mosques now, even though we didn't the last ten times a Muslim killed innocent people in the name of Islam. What are they scared of? Graffiti?

"A traitor who took up arms against his nation"--Jules Crittendon

Traitor. A good old-fashioned word that needs to be revived.

Jules Crittendon writes:

Combat Wounded, Combat Dead

… deserve Purple Hearts. Their killer probably deserves desertion, treason and terrorism charges if, as all indicators seem to very strongly suggest, he was engaged in jihad, from his violence-inciting, hateful rants about the Koran, his denunciation of the United States as “the aggressor” in arguments with fellow soldiers, to his shouts of “Allahu Akhbar,” to what they believe were his Internet defenses of suicide bombings, to his choice of targets, the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood. If al-Qaeda is an amorphous enemy, an idea made situationally manifest by the will of its adherents, and he was in fact an adherent of its violent agenda, then he is the enemy, his actions were acts of war, and they bled and died under enemy fire.

Is any of the above very likely to be offically recognized? No. No matter what is learned about his motivation, in all likelihood he will be treated as a murder defendant in either a civilian or a military court … possibly with an insanity or bullying defense such as we’re already seeing explored on his behalf … rather than as a committed jihadi, an unlawful combatant, a terrorist, a deserter who aided and abetted the enemy, and a traitor who took up arms against his nation.

Ralph Peters on the worst terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9-11

He writes (my bolds):

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.

This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.

When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."

But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ#ixzz0WBI0X3VP

Go read the rest. I saw him on Bill O'Reilly's show last night and he ended his interview with something to the effect that he wanted to throw up over the way this horrible event is being treated. I totally agree. O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo is great on this, too. Check it out.

Mark Steyn on the Fort Hood shooter

As Bill O'Reilly said last night, he's either a jihadi or a nut, but even nuts are informed by the zeitgeist or pernicious ideologies that filter down to the paranoid schizophrenic or whatever. And what Mark Steyn takes on in this must-read column is the ideology we are fighting and our authorities refuse to name, all in the name of another ideology--multiculturalim, that kudzu-like is overgrowing and stealing our civilization:

Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy – a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

And he's a U.S. Army major.

And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity – as if believing that "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the "noble" "heroism" of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

How a bishop is chosen and Judy Savoy in Ottawa

Archbishop Prendergast explains how bishops are chosen as he welcomes two new auxiliary bishops for Toronto.

At least every three years, the Bishops of an ecclesiastical province meet to draw up a list of priests who are suitable candidates for the episcopate. This discussion is limited to the merits of individual priests proposed by their bishops as possible candidates for the episcopate. After this meeting, the list is sent to the Apostolic Nuncio (based in Ottawa) who in turn forwards it to the Holy See (Vatican).

When an auxiliary bishop is needed, the diocesan bishop puts forth his own recommendations and prepares a list of at least three candidates from either inside or outside of the diocese. He sends this to the Apostolic Nuncio, who in turn forwards it to the Holy See, after reviewing the list and adding his own opinion. This list can incorporate candidates from his own diocese, candidates discussed by the bishops of the ecclesiastical province to which he belongs or he may suggest names of possible candidates for the first time.

There is more. Go check it out. You don't often get to read about this kind of thing.

And he puts in a good word for Judy Savoy's upcoming comedy show Tuesday night here in Ottawa. He writes:

* * * * *


GET ME BACK TO THE GARDEN-I'M CHOKING ON THE WEEDS IS A ONE WOMAN COMEDY SHOW performed by Judy Savoy of Halifax. I had the chance to see it during the "Women of Grace" conference at the Lord Nelson Hotel in 2007. It was a remarkably humourous, even electrifying reading of God's plan for our salvation through people such as Mrs. Noah, the Samaritan Woman and others. You will laugh and cry--sometimes at the same time.

Show time is Tuesday, November 10, at 7:00 p.m. at the spanking new Shenkman Arts Centre, 245 Centrum Blvd., Orleans. Cost: $12 adults; $8 students. Tickets: available at the door or by calling (613-841-4141).

Short Michael Novak: secular=good; secularlism=bad

He writes at Inside Catholic about the important distinction between the pernicious mindset of secularism and the secular:

A wide chasm yawns between the two terms "secular" and "secularism." By contrast with modern terms such as "secularism," "secularization," and "secular humanism," the term "secular" is actually a Latin Christian word, following up on Christ's rebuke to the Pharisees: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (Mt 22:21). Not everything belongs to Caesar. The same text further suggests that neither the state nor the Church is a total institution, embracing everything. Each is limited. Each has its own habits, practices, institutions, and realms of discourse.

This teaching is the first great barrier to the totalitarian tendency of states, since not everything belongs to Caesar. It is also a barrier to the Church, since not everything comes under the jurisdiction of religious authorities. In secular things, as St. Thomas Aquinas writes in Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, it is better to obey the secular authorities than religious authorities.

John Finnis suggests three different meanings for "secularism," which I will restate in my own words: (1) The belief that there is no God; (2) the belief that there may be a God, but he is utterly indifferent to humans, their destiny, and their actions; (3) the belief that God's concern for humans is easily appeased, so that no demanding reform of human morals is required. In this third version, no ultimate divine judgment is to be feared, and having liberal opinions on social policy pretty much exhausts the obligations of religion. Briefly stated, these are three variants of atheism -- an intellectual and willful atheism in the strict sense, a pallid deism, and not necessarily an intellectual but, rather, a practical atheism.

Some secularists in America today prefer to call themselves agnostics rather than atheists, on the grounds that no one can prove, one way or another, the existence of God. Yet it soon becomes apparent that, in practice, no one can act agnostically. Action implies a choice. Either one acts as if God exists, or one acts as if God does not exist. In practice, agnostics usually act like atheists. Some agnostics, however, are quite opposed to atheism and would like to believe in God, but simply feel they have not been given that insight, that gift, that privileged way of seeing.

Secularism in all of these senses is an ancient, a medieval, an Elizabethan, and indeed a perennial system of belief. Plato was moved to argue against it, as were philosophers and moralists in every subsequent era.

By contrast with "secularism," the word "secular" arose in Christian circles by way of contrast with the sacred. The secular marks off what properly belongs to this world as opposed to the kingdom of God, the Church, and the larger external world, within which time and space and human history are enveloped.

And this week's Nincompoop award goes to . . .

Randy Cohen of the New York Times for this piece of advanced nincompoopery:

Last week the Vatican invited Anglicans who are, as The New York Times put it, “uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops” to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church. If a secular institution, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example, made a similar offer — Tired of leadership positions being open to women and gay employees? Join us! — it would be slammed for appealing to bigotry. Some criticism was directed at the church, but it was faint. Are we right to speak softly when discussing a subject as sensitive as religion?

????

Don't bother reading the whole thing, he's a bigot and a jerk and a nincompoop who does not know what he's talking about when it comes to religion, or closer at hand, what the offer to Anglicans really means.

Randy Cohen is also a smug secularist fundamentalist.

But don't bother reading that either, unless you like someone preaching their black and white vision of radical one-size fits all equality.

From Kate at Small Dead Animals

"Allahu Akbar!"

It's the new "cry for help".

The 400 year history of Anglican/ Catholic efforts at unity

Most interesting article in the Catholic Herald:

Years before Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, and absolved the people of England from their allegiance to her (at a stroke turning Catholics into traitors), years before the threat of a Catholic invasion and plots to unseat her, Pope Pius IV had invited the Queen to send Anglican bishops to the Council of Trent, and, it was rumoured, was willing to approve the use of the Book of Common Prayer in the English Church.

The next initiative came not from Rome but from King James I, who wrote to Pope Pius V offering to recognise his spiritual supremacy and reunite the English Church to Rome, if only the Pope would disclaim political sovereignty over kings. The offer was rejected. Too late would a new pope, Urban III, succeed to the papacy two years before James died, and declare: "We know that we may declare Protestants excommunicated, as Pius V declared Queen Elizabeth of England, and before him Clement VII the King of England, Henry VIII... But with what success? The whole world can tell. We yet bewail it in terms of blood. Wisdom does not teach us to imitate Pius V or Clement VII."

Read it all.

Father Z comments on John Allen Jr.'s latest column

You can find the whole thing here:

My friend John Allen, the nearly ubiquitous fair-minded columnist of the sadly ultra-liberal National Catholic Reporter has good analysis in his regular Friday piece. Let’s have a look with my emphases and comments.

Benedict’s ongoing battle against secularism
by John L Allen Jr on Nov. 06, 2009


Much has been made lately [by liberals] of Pope Benedict XVI’s apparent lenience for "cafeteria Catholicism" on the right. Two developments have fed the perception: talks between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X, the "Lefebvrites," who broke with Rome in protest of liberalizing currents after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65); and new structures to allow Anglicans to become Catholic while preserving their heritage, with the most likely takers being conservative Anglicans opposed to homosexuality and women’s ordination. [These are both nightmare scenarios for liberals.]

Though it’s not clear how many Lefebvrites or Anglicans will walk through the doors Rome has tried to open, the effect on both fronts will be to inject new pockets of traditionalist believers into the Catholic circulatory system.

What’s the underlying logic for such moves? While it may at first blush seem unrelated, [Allen makes a good connection here…] a controversial decision on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights, which held that displaying crucifixes in Italian public school classrooms violates freedom of conscience, can help provide some context.

In effect, Benedict’s outreach to Lefebvrites and dissident Anglicans forms part of a trend I’ve described as "evangelical Catholicism." One cornerstone is to reassert markers of Catholic distinctiveness [good phrase] – such as Mass in Latin, and traditional moral teaching – as a means of ensuring that the church is not assimilated to secularism. At the policy-setting level of the church today, this defense of Catholic identity is job number one. [Mr. Allen is right. Pope Benedict has some goal for this pontificate. If we are going to fight the dictatorship of relativism, we need a strong Catholic identity. If we are going to evangelize, we need a strong Catholic identity. If we are going to engage in true ecumenism, we need a strong Catholic identity. Liturgy is the key component in his "Marshall Plan" for the Church. Remember what the Marshall Plan was supposed to promote. The parallel for the Church is clear.]

Historically, "evangelical Catholicism" is a creative impulse rather than something purely defensive, with roots in the papacy of Leo XIII in the late 19th century and his effort to bring a renewed Catholic tradition to bear on social and political life. [so that we, as Catholics, have an influence in the public square.] Nevertheless, fear that secularism may erode the faith from within is also a powerful current propelling evangelical Catholicism forward.

To over-simplify a bit, Benedict XVI is opening the door to the Lefebvrites and to traditionalist Anglicans in part because whatever else they may be, they are among the Christians least prone to end up, in the memorable phrase of Jacques Maritain, "kneeling before the world," meaning sold out to secularism. [Not to mention the fact that they are Christians who are separated from clear unity with the Church. Pope Benedict stresses the importance of his role as Pope as being one of promoting unity. It is not just that they a Christians who tend to agree with him. They are separated. He is trying to reintegrate them.]

Archbishop Hepworth addresses Forward in Faith

The Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion addresses Forward in Faith. Here's a recap of what he said.

Archbishop Hepworth made a very successful speech praising the Holy Father's generosity, assuaging doubts and taking naysayers. He actively put the best possible face on the future for the delegates saying that they had be assured that they would be treated as Anglican Catholics, just as there are Roman, Ukranian, and Maronite Catholics--that while the ordinariates were not a rite, they looked an awfully lot like one. He said that they had been offered an ecclesial body for Anglicans that protects those crucial elements of spirituality, liturgy, theology, history, and discipline, that are part of the distinctive Anglican patrimony. He says that TAC national synods will be asked to begin voting their acceptance of the Holy Father's offer immediately.

Most importantly, Archbishop Hepworth assured the assembly that they would continue to be able to have married priests by way of dispensations which would be given generously. The early statements on this point were less clear than this. Obviously, this is a bombshell, not just for those gathered but for the entire Latin Rite. Progressive analysts had already seized on this point after the initial announcement of the apostolic constitution and we can count on much, much more being said in days to come.

Archbishop Hepworth had to reassure the assembly and those listening that this was what they had asked and prayed for for decades and now it had been generously given to them. To Catholics and to especially my fellow converts, since we often carry the biggest chips on our shoulders, who want to rage about the evils of Anglicanism and want people to come crawling, chastened, and cowed, remember that it is the Holy Father himself who has chosen to kill the fatted calf. It seems that the least we can all do is make merry. Reviewing the parable of the wages of the laborers in the vineyard might do us all some good.

David Horowitz asks: "Is everybody out of their mind?"

You freakin' betcha (my bolds).

And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged. But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. And so, after calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is everybody out of their mind?

Yup. And those who aren't out of their mind get banned from university campuses and tracked by human rights commissions.

As Jim Treacher tweeted recently:

1. 
   
2. JTlol
   If this idiot had been wearing an I Kill Unbelievers 4 the Glory of Allah t-shirt, they'd still be going, "Whuh-whuh-why did he do this?"

Our culture is suicidal, folks. Somehow the part of us that is still awake has to rouse the lethargic body and grab the phone and call 911.

As I said, this is NOT about Muslims. It is about the decay of western civilization and its embrace of some strange death wish. We're the ones who love death---our own.

It has to stop.

Victor Davis Hanson on the Fort Hood massacre

He writes (my bolds:)

In reaction officials and news people often opt for therapeutic exegeses — stress, often of the post-traumatic sort, ill-feeling and bias shown Muslims, family problems, or brainwashing by nefarious outside actors — to explain the cold-blooded nature of the murdering. (I am watching on the news a family member eagerly explain past prejudice shown the killer and, despite his adept handling of firearms to shoot over 40 people, the murderer's being ill-at-ease with firearms.)

Far more rarely do they ever suggest that the Islamist notion abroad that America is to blame for mostly self-induced pathologies in the Islamic world mostly goes unquestioned here at home — and as a result filters down to the lone angry and violent here as the belief that there is some sort of cosmic justification that can amplify their own outrage at a sense of personal failure or setback.

If it is shown that the present killer openly in the past expressed sympathies for or tolerance of Islamist violence abroad, one would have expected, in the current climate of fear of being seen as illiberal or judgmental, little repercussions or formal preemptory action to preclude the possibility of future violence.

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

Damian Thompson snarks deliciously on Stephen Fry

He writes:

Every year the Edenbridge Bonfire in Kent sets fire to a celebrity effigy on Guy Fawkes’ Night. Previous victims include John Prescott, Anne Robinson and Saddam Hussein. This time it’s Jordan. Bad choice. Mine would be Stephen Fry. Yup, let him fry. Or, rather, melt, since this particular guy would be made of wobbly, self-pitying blancmange. [Ooof!]

I think I’d call it “burning at the stake” rather than a bonfire, because that is what Catholics do, according to the caricature Stephen Fry has constructed of us. That’s when they’re not herding Jews into Auschwitz, which, you may recall, was Fry’s imaginative reconstruction of the Nazi atrocity. Polish “rightwing Catholicism” was to blame, he argued, from the perspective of “those of us who know a little history”. Later, he apologised to the Polish people (though I’ve been unable to locate any apology to Catholics). “I mean, what was I thinking? Well, as I say, I wasn’t. The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will,” he wrote on his blog.

How very typical of Stephen Fry: he says or does something stupid, then issues an apology which, though fulsome, is intended to leave his critics loving him even more than before he screwed up. Please, Stephen, spare us. Not just the apology, but the winsome references to “words” tumbling about and lining up and whatever else they do as you’re rolling them fruitily around your mouth before they pop out smugly.

Fry could give masterclasses in the art of dishing it out but not taking it. If he comes out with something wildly offensive, then he says “silly old me” and moves on - but when critics savage him or even take the mickey out of his tweets then we’re treated to the hissiest fit in luvviedom.

Maybe I shouldn't be enjoying this so much.

If the Fort Hood killer had been Christian . . .

you bet your booties it would be relevant to the story. Especially if this Christian shooter had posted apocalyptic material on the Internet praising, say, the bombing of abortion clinics, we would never hear the end of it.

But even on Fox News last night, nothing was mentioned about the "alleged" shooter's faith, not that I heard. [Update: it was mentioned on Fox, but not during the short window I watched last night] Yeah, suspect Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan--an army psychiatrist-- was opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he could have been a crazed Mennonite pacifist for all I knew, even while watching the most likely mainstream news source to connect the dots. [Again, I only watched briefly last night as I was out enjoying face to face Christian fellowship, what a concept.]

I had to find out via a reliable blog the alleged shooter is a devout Muslim.

The account in my Ottawa Citizen this morning speculates about contagious post traumatic stress disorder ---the shrink getting affected by the traumatized men he treated--rather than speculating about possible sudden jihad syndrome signaled by favorable online writings about suicide bombings.

And in the sidebar story quoting a relative, it speculated the motive could be his being treated shabbily for his Middle Eastern origins since 9/11. You know---here's the meme---it's all the west's fault of any Muslim ever behaves badly, whether it is rooted in colonialism or in the case of this guy, his getting all his training through the U.S. military. It's the "chickenssssss coming home to roost," to quote Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Hasan was born in the U.S. but put his nationality down as Palestinian. Even his own Iman thought that was a little strange.

Really, if I were a soldier coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq with post traumatic stress disorder, I would not want to go to see a psychiatrist who held the same views of the people who were blowing up markets and using mentally challenged women and children to do so. [And of course, most Muslims do not support suicide bombing. Muslims are the most frequent victims of suicide bombing. But then most Muslims are not shrinks in the U.S. military writing pro-suicide bombing posts on the Internet. I was going to say "heads should roll" over this, but the metaphor has bad connotations so let's replace it with I hope there is a thorough investigation of the security failure that allowed this guy to stay in his job. But fearful political correctness probably prevented anyone from taking any action until it was too late.]

It would be bad enough to have a shrink who told me, yeah, your mental stress is due to the fact you were involved in a meaningless, evil war.

But to have a shrink who talked like someone on the other side of the battle in Fallujah would have pushed me over the edge. It might make me want to shoot myself because it would seem like the world was playing a friggin' cruel joke on me and the devil was laughing up his sleeve and there is no God.

I don't know. I have a feeling this is another sign of multiculturalism run amok more than it has anything to do with the guy's Muslim faith gone to crazy extremes.

We have to be able to name things and speak about the truth.

Robert Spencer is not afraid to do so:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, “shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting.” Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.” The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that “there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab.”

Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.

And take a look at President Obama in this clip. He is profiling and smiling for two minutes before he even mentions the Fort Hood attack, again from Gateway Pundit:

After two minutes of smiling, pointing and dithering… Barack Obama finally got around to mentioning the massacre at Fort Hood in Texas.
The president then went on to tell the audience what great admiration he has for the men and women in uniform…
Except, of course, for those serving in Afghanistan who he refuses to support.

Gosh, Obama makes me feel secure.

We are entering a world where the truth is the enemy and if we pretend certain evils do not exist, they do not exist. Hence the war on freedom of speech. Instead of tackling real evil, our political leaders give us two minutes of hate towards Christians (especially B16 type Catholics who have gone off the liberal reservation) and other American citizens who happen to be of a conservative (not Republican) disposition as they rally the parade into the statist abyss.

Spencer compares the Fort Hood massacre to a foiled plot aimed at a New Jersey base and concludes:

Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.

Read the Spencer piece, it reveals Hasan was actively proseltyzing on the job and had to be disciplined for that. Think of the double standard. If a Christian psychiatrist was caught preaching the Gospel to his patients while serving in the military, do you think he or she would last long?

I repeat. Muslims are not the problem. We are the problem because this guy was sending off signals right and left apparently that should have caused any leader in their right mind to do something about his being able to walk freely on a military base.

UPDATE: FORT HOOD SHOOTER WAS A MEMBER OF HOMELAND SECURITY PANEL ADVISING OBAMA

Feel safe?

The archbishop wins! sigh

Even though I got my post up on Justin Press first, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast's blog post this morning is far more complete and more pictures. Is the blogging bishop morphing into a digital journalist?

He even has posted a picture of me at the launch to rub it in.

Head on over to check it out. He lists the impressive offerings of this fledgling publishing house that promises to serve up nourishing, meaty servings of Catholic culture and apologetics.