I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.
I, along with many others, almost died listening to Mark Steyn — from laughter. It’s rare to hear somebody make so much sense in such an entertaining fashion, although his cover of 1970s disco hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ probably won’t trouble the YouTube hit parade. But then again, you never know. Particularly if he sticks to that dazzling tie and ‘kerchief combo."Silence this Infidel" by Rowan Dean, The Spectator, Australia.
Wow. That's dedication. Good on her--and good on her doctors for supporting her and helping save her children. Some doctors would have told her it wasn't worth it, and she should just "start over". May she and her family thrive.
A Polish woman endured what's being called "the longest labour ever" to ensure that her premature babies would survive. And they did.Joanna Krzysztonek spent 75 days in labour lying nearly upside down in an effort to save her two unborn children after the third, born at 22 weeks, died.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The brave middle-age schoolgirl had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else pay for her sex life..
Which brings us to another great “relevance” of Benedict’s pontificate: his desire to ensure that more Catholics understand the actual content of what they profess to believe.
It’s no great secret that Catholic catechesis went into freefall after Vatican II. It’s true that much pre-Vatican II catechesis was characterized by rote-learning rather than substantive engagement with the truths of the Faith. But as early as 1983, Joseph Ratzinger signaled his awareness of the lamentable post-Vatican II catechetical state of affairs in two speeches he gave in Paris and Lyons. Much to the professional catechists’ displeasure — but to the delight of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger and every young priest present — Ratzinger zeroed in on the huge gaps in the catechetical text-books then in vogue.
Hence, as one French commentator recently observed, at least one sub-text of Benedict’s Year of Faith is that “doctrinal break-time” for the Church is over. This point was underscored by the recent Note issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Along the other practical suggestions it gives for furthering the Year of Faith, the Note emphasizes “a profound bond between the lived faith and its contents” (i.e., true ortho-praxis can only be based on ortho-doxy). It also stresses that Catholics need to know the content of the Catechism and the actual documents of Vatican II (rather than, sotto voce, the ever-nebulous “spirit of Vatican II” that seems indistinguishable from whatever’s preoccupying secular liberals at any given moment in time).
Far more troubling than Rush Limbaugh's comment about Sandra Fluke is the cowardice of country club Republicans who refuse to join the talk show host in denouncing Obama for his war on religion. If anybody deserves an apology from Rush, it is prostitutes. They pay for their birth control themselves, and, unlike Fluke, they don't demand that the clergy underwrite their carnal activities.
Let's cut the PC crap: college and law school students who demand that priests and nuns finance their fornication deserve searing satirical treatment. This is the sorriest collection of arrogant snots in the history of academia.
In other words, the flaky modern Jesuits DeGioia represents stand ready to give Fluke an allowance for her pre-marital sex. Somehow I can't imagine the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, describing a demand from one of his students for subsidized sin as an "expression of conscience."
"Certainly, the tribulations of running a home were never to be openly compared with a man's daily travails. He earned money, she didn't; thus his work was important."In our enlightened modern times, we dumb old housewives are privileged to have men and women tell us our work is unimportant.
"We're trying to determine if there's a nexus on what she does on her own time and what she does in the classroom," [School District Superintendent Jeff Chancer] said.
[...] On Tuesday, the district sent a letter to parents of students at all three of its junior high schools, asking that their children not search Internet sex sites for the teacher's image.
When [Adam] Carolla tweeted sympathetic thoughts when news of Breitbart’s death broke (“You can question Breitbart’s politics, but never question his love for his family and his country”), he said he got swarmed with vitriolic anger in response by many.
Has the City of Ottawa violated your human rights if it won't let you park in front of your house?
According to New Edinburgh resident Pamela Howson, the answer is yes - if, like her, you have three young children in car seats and your vehicle is too wide to easily negotiate the narrow laneway that leads to your backyard parking spot.
In a novel case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in Ottawa Monday, Howson argued that the city discriminated against her on the grounds of family status by not letting her build a parking pad in front of her house.
But city lawyers argued that Howson has never applied for a minor variance from the city's committee of adjustment - the body legally able to consider her request - so has never actually been denied anything.Now, what could give someone the idea that, after freely choosing to buy this particular house and a car that can't fit in its driveway, her human rights were being violated by not being excused from parking bylaws? Let's sift through the clues:
Two years ago, Howson - a former investigator with the Ontario Human Rights Commission - approached the city to see if it would grant an exemption based on her family's "special circumstances."Someone who used to work for the OHRC wants to leapfrog (or should that be "kangaroojump"?) over legal processes and have her wishes granted by a rights tribunal? I'm shocked - shocked, I tell you!
The family was willing to eliminate its parking spot in the rear, she said, if the city would permit them to park in front of their property. "We proposed a number of reasonable solutions, all of which were dismissed," Howson said.
...
Howson said city officials told her to apply to the committee of adjustment, an arms-length panel that considers minor variations to zoning bylaws.The nerve of them.
But once she raised her human rights concerns, she said she was warned that every city department would oppose her application. Moreover, she was told the committee of adjustment wouldn't consider human rights arguments, she said.
Given that, and the $1,500 cost of an application, Howson said she concluded that going to the committee of adjustment would be a "useless but expensive and time-consuming process."No doubt she's seen her share of those, having worked for the OHRC.
"Merkel and the Commission should think hard before putting their hand into the sovereignty of this country – or any other – because it will be burned and the citizens are not going to consent".Interesting.
Free speech is the greatest of gifts for humanity. It unleashes the best of billions of brains. The internet is changing the power-structure of societies, and the ruling class don’t like it at all. The fact that their ideas are so weak and that they are so defenseless against sharp observations, is is exactly why they have to regulate it.
"The result of all that work? It really came out nil...."That could be a great government slogan. I hope they form a committee to look into it.
They can breach our security, but we cannot breach theirs – the vast impregnable psychological fortress in which what passes for the Pushtun mind resides. Someone accidentally burned a Quran your pals had already defaced with covert messages? Die, die, foreigners! The president of the United States issues a groveling and characteristically clueless apology for it? Die, die, foreigners! The American friend who has trained you and hired you and paid you has arrived for a meeting? Die, die, foreigners! And those are the Afghans who know us best. To the upcountry village headmen, the fellows descending from the skies in full body armor are as alien as were the space invaders to Americans in the film "Independence Day."
[...]
Before the election in 2010, the New York Post carried a picture of women registering to vote in Herat, all in identical top-to-toe bright blue burkas, just as they would have looked on Sept. 10, 2001. We came, we saw, we left no trace. America's longest war will leave nothing behind.
"The Kantale hospital said a post-mortem could not determine the cause of death"
A paper proposing use of the term ‘after birth abortion’ to refer to the killing of both disabled and apparently healthy new-born babies, was published recently in the Journal of Medical Ethics, arguably one of the world’s leading bioethical academic publications. As the editor of a similar (though far less prestigious) journal, I very clearly appreciate the right of the current JME editor, Professor Julian Savulescu, to publish his former colleagues’ views. Academic journals should be a place where open and robust debate on controversial issues can occur.
What has surprised me though is the apparent naiveté of both Drs Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, the young authors of the paper, who were reported as being shocked at the hostile reaction to their opinions. Whilst not in any way condoning the cheap and harmful anonymous death threats and hate mail against them both, which are indefensible and deplorable, I find it astonishing that, as philosophers, they should express bewilderment at it and protest that their paper “has no relevance outside the bioethics community” and is “pure academic discussion”.
The idea of the internet-age philosopher being a latter-day Aristotle, musing to his disciples among the leafy colonnades of the Lyceum and isolated from the rest of the world is completely untenable -- certainly since Karl Marx’s emphasis on the sublation of philosophy from theory into practice (praxis). To put it in plain English, every social revolution begins with an idea and Giubilini and Minerva’s ideas are no exception and have every relevance in the world beyond academia. If we did not expect our ideas to be noticed and, if we believe they are good ones, to be acted upon, there would be little point in putting them in print in the first place.
The gravity of this sin varies according to the duties that we neglect. It often affects the generosity with which people devote time to their spiritual life. For example, the Rosary takes about fifteen minutes to say, but it is seen as a great chore compared with three hours watching television or aimlessly surfing the internet. [Ouch!]
[...]
Hence the spiritual writers teach that a primary remedy for sloth is an intellectual conviction concerning the duty to use our time wisely and well. This forms a motivating foundation for that sustained and intelligent effort by which we sometimes see individuals of ordinary background, means and ability achieve so much. Overcoming sloth does not mean that we have no leisure time; in fact a well-ordered Christian diligence helps us to relax with greater profit. Again, prudence based on a sensible assessment of how we need to be refreshed can help to use that time to the greatest benefit. Undoubtedly the value of giving time generously to prayer is one of the best uses of any time that we have spare.
He was a human run-on sentence who showed deference to no punctuation mark save the exclamation point, a conservative Tasmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons we both grew up on, whirling and whizzing through anything in his path. [...]
He rejected in the marrow of his bones the idea that conservatives needed to apologize for being conservative or that liberals had any special authority to pronounce on the political decency and honesty of others. [...]
He believed, rightly, that much of establishment liberalism hurls such charges as a way to bully opponents into silence, and he would not be bullied.
| Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Please pray for his family (wife and 4 children), and also --especially-- for those on the Left who are shrieking in glee (I kid you not) at his passing. Lord have mercy. . |
