Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge) on Monasticism and Relations with the Roman Catholic Church

The outstanding Swiss theologian and patrologist Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Bunge) has met with the brethren of the Dormition Kiev Caves Lavra. The meeting took place on October 18 as part of Archimandrite Gabriel’s pilgrimage to the Holy places of Ukraine, reports Lavra.ua.

The distinguished guest was introduced by Archimandrite Amvrosy (Makar), rector of the Church of St. Ambrose of Milan in the Italian city of Milan. The priest told the brethren about the life of Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel, his thirty-six years of ascetic life in the mountains of Switzerland and that today he is abbot of the Monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross in Lugano (southern Switzerland), and author of a number of books on monasticism, and pastor to many spiritual children.

The talk began with questions on Fr. Gabriel’s life in the mountains. The schema-archimandrite related how he got acquainted with the Orthodox tradition and Orthodox monasticism.

“My first contact with Orthodoxy was in 1961 in Greece. By that time I had already joined a Benedictine monastery and nearly half our brethren followed the Eastern liturgical tradition. That monastery wanted to become a bridge between the East and the West. I studied a great deal and read the writings of the holy fathers. With the blessing of my confessor I became a hermit in the ‘80s and I still live in a skete which is located 900 meters (c. 2952.76 feet) above sea level. I tried to imitate the fathers of olden times in my life. I wrote and published books to inspire Western people—all of us need to return to our roots. From the very beginning I realized that the West was separated from the East. Even many hierarchs of the Roman Catholic Church referred to the teachings of the fathers of the Eastern Church, but, nevertheless, the Roman Church went its own way,” said Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel.

In 2010 Fr. Gabriel (Bunge) was received into the Orthodox Church, but, according to him, in spirit he had always been Orthodox before and had always wanted to partake in the holy sacraments of the Orthodox Church.

“I stood with one foot in the East, the other in the West. For many years I longed to visit the Kiev Caves Lavra, and to venerate the Kiev Caves fathers, and to pray to them. Once in some antique shop I bought a cross with particles of relics of twelve Kiev Caves saints in it. Their names were written there. The cross dated back to 1791. It is a mystery how that cross ended up in the West, but the relics which it contained were of no particular value for the shop staff. Now that cross stands on my table and I pray to the Kiev Caves fathers every day. And today I am very happy and delighted to have this opportunity to visit the Kiev Caves Lavra,” he continued.

Answering the question on the prospects of the reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches, Fr. Gabriel emphasized that “there is no theological sense in the dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics must return back to the Church. My teacher and professor who later became Pope Benedict XVI understood many things but did nothing. The Orthodox Church has preserved the Liturgy and the monastic tradition, while the Roman Catholic Church is currently moving towards Protestantism rather than returning to Orthodoxy. The real problem of this division is not in the differences—it is in the incompatibility. The Greek and Roman cultures in the first millennium were different yet compatible with each other.”

The theologian also drew the brethren’s attention to the vital topic of the place of monasticism in the modern world: “Modern people want monks to answer their spiritual questions, not national and political ones. Monks are separated from this world and they live their own lives which are different from the life in the world. Such life enables them to gain wisdom which is not of this world—and this is precisely what people are waiting for. Many come to me too and expect me to answer their questions. And I have to tell them what they need to do and what not to do.”

Speaking on whether modern monasticism should take the anchoretic or cenobitic path, Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel explained: “Monasticism began not with the cenobitic tradition. The first monks were anchorites, but they always had a teacher. Both paths are good. It all depends on the calling from God in each case. The Church has a place for everybody! And the Lord saves us not individually, but all together!”

At the end of the meeting assistant abbot of the Kiev Caves Lavra Archimandrite Anthony thanked Fr. Gabriel for his visit and for answering the topical questions and conveyed to him greetings from the monastery’s abbot, Metropolitan Paul. After that a general picture was taken to remember the meeting.

Source.

Pope in Sweden could break ground on inter-communion, bishop says

The English bishop William Kenney is a key figure in the official Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, and will be with Pope Francis in Sweden at the end of the month. He believes unity is a matter of decades away, and it's possible that Francis may use the trip to make a gesture on inter-communion.

To describe English bishop William Kenney as an “auxiliary of Birmingham” doesn’t capture the depth and range of his longstanding roles in pan-European church bodies - for two terms, for example, he was president of Caritas Europe, and he played a key role in organizing relief efforts for former Soviet countries following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Next week he will be part of a small, inner core at the joint Catholic-Lutheran commemoration of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation for which Francis will be going to Sweden. It’s the first visit by any pope to Scandinavia since John Paul II’s 1989 visit, which Kenney, incidentally, coordinated.

A fluent Swedish-speaker who spent 37 years in Sweden, Kenney  - who also speaks good German -  has long been involved with ecumenical dialogues at the inter-Nordic level, especially in the formal dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. In 2013 he was appointed by the Holy See as co-chair of the international dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Recently he sat down with Crux in London to talk through the background to the event, the dialogue that’s expected to take place, and what Pope Francis might do or say to take it to a new level...

Read the rest here.

Hiking in Bear Country

You are gonna want to click on and enlarge this to read the sign.

The Latest Electoral Map

Source.
Click on image to expand view.

For those who will be watching the elections returns, keep an eye on Georgia. This is a culturally and politically conservative state that in any normal election year would be a safe state for the GOP. While the odds still suggest it will fall into the Republican column, it is not a given. If Georgia turns into a surprise win for Clinton it could be an early indicator that Trump is not just going to lose (all but certain), but that he is gong to lose badly. It would mean a lot of Republicans are staying home or at least not supporting the top of the ticket. That could spell serious trouble down ticket and endanger the GOP's control of Congress.

'EU is Impossible to do Deals With'- Canada Gives Up After 7 Years of Negotiations

The EU is "impossible" to do deals with, the Canadian government said as a major trade agreement appeared to be on the brink of collapse.

In a sign of how difficult Britain's Brexit negotiations will be, the Canadians walked out of talks on Friday after a major trade deal was put on hold because of a tiny region in Belgium.

The region of Wallonia, population 3.5 million, is blocking the Canada-EU trade deal, which was due to be signed next week after seven years of talks.

Under the Belgian political system, major international deals need to be signed off by regional parliaments.

Wallonian farmers are opposed to the deal because they fear that the country will be flooded with cheap agricultural imports.

It raises the prospect of a tiny region like Wallonia attempting to block whatever deal Britain emerges with during Brexit talks.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's international trade minister, said: "It's become evident for me, for Canada, that the European Union isn't capable now to have an international treaty even with a country that has very European values like Canada. And even with a country so nice, with a lot of patience like Canada."

She added: "I've worked very, very hard, but I think it's impossible. "We have decided to return home. I am very sad. It is emotional for me."

Read the rest here.

‘Lions Hunting Zebras’: Wells Fargo Bankers Preying on their Customers

Mexican immigrants who speak little English. Older adults with memory problems. College students opening their first bank accounts. Small-business owners with several lines of credit.

These were some of the customers whom bankers at Wells Fargo, trying to meet steep sales goals and avoid being fired, targeted for unauthorized or unnecessary accounts, according to legal filings and statements from former bank employees.

“The analogy I use was that it was like lions hunting zebras,” said Kevin Pham, a former Wells Fargo employee in San Jose, Calif., who saw it happening at the branch where he worked. “They would look for the weakest, the ones that would put up the least resistance.”

Read the rest here. 

Banks are the enemy. The big ones need to be broken up under the various anti-trust laws and the people running them need to be jailed if it can be proven that this kind of behavior occurred under their watch. And it is way past time to put the Glass Steagall Act back on the books. Enough is enough!

Scandals

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo receives Pat. Athenagoras award

Convicted felon Bp. Demetri returning to ministry in the US 

I don't like using the blog as a scandal sheet, but sometimes you gotta say this isn't right.

 

Chicago’s new cardinal embodies the Pope Francis idea of a bishop

Poor Chicago. You would think they have enough problems and that sooner or later they might catch a break. Apparently not.

Read the story here.

The Second Waltz (Shostakovich)

Demetrios Tselengidis: On the Surpassing Value of the Spiritual Unity of the Church, Its Brutal Abuse in Crete and the Identification of the Church with its Administration

The well-known and respected Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Demetrios Tselengidis, has issued an important and timely three part analysis of the Cretan Council and the ecclesiological problems and issues surrounding it. The letter was sent to all of the hierarchs of the Church of Greece at the end of August and has been included in the recent publication dedicated to the "Council" of Crete, which we mentioned in an earlier post...

Read the letter here.

Archbishop Chaput: About Those Unthinking, Backward Catholics

Back in 2008, in the weeks leading up to the Obama-McCain presidential election, two young men visited me in Denver.  They were from Catholics United, a group describing itself as committed to social justice issues.  They voiced great concern at the manipulative skill of Catholic agents for the Republican Party.  And they hoped my brother bishops and I would resist identifying the Church with single-issue and partisan (read: abortion) politics.

It was an interesting experience.  Both men were obvious flacks for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party — creatures of a political machine, not men of the Church; less concerned with Catholic teaching than with its influence.  And presumably (for them) bishops were dumb enough to be used as tools, or at least prevented from helping the other side.  Yet these two young men not only equaled but surpassed their Republican cousins in the talents of servile partisan hustling.  Thanks to their work, and activists like them, American Catholics helped to elect an administration that has been the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers, institutions, concerns and liberty in generations.

I never saw either young man again.  The cultural damage done by the current White House has – apparently — made courting America’s bishops unnecessary.

But bad can always get worse.  I’m thinking, of course, of the contemptuously anti-Catholic emails exchanged among members of the Clinton Democratic presidential campaign team and released this week by WikiLeaks. A sample:  Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, emailed John Podesta, now the head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to ask about whether “the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage” could be the tinder for a revolution. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship,” Newman writes.

Of course, Newman added, “this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests who count on it for their maintenance.” Still, he wondered, how would one “plant the seeds of a revolution”? John Podesta replied that “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this . . . likewise Catholics United” (emphasis added).

Another Clinton-related email, from John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, mocks Catholics in the so-called conservative movement, especially converts: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” In a follow-up, he adds “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what . . . they’re talking about.”

On the evening these WikiLeaks emails were released, I received the following angry email myself, this one from a nationally respected (non-Catholic) attorney experienced in Church-state affairs:

“I was deeply offended by the [Clinton team] emails, which are some of the worst bigotry by a political machine I have seen.  [A] Church has an absolute right to protect itself when under attack as a faith and Church by civil political forces. That certainly applies here . . .

 “Over the last eight years there has been strong evidence that the current administration, with which these people share values, has been very hostile to religious organizations.  Now there is clear proof that this approach is deliberate and will accelerate if these actors have any continuing, let alone louder, say in government. 

 “These bigots are actively strategizing how to shape Catholicism not to be Catholic or consistent with Jesus’ teachings, but to be the ‘religion’ they want.  They are, at the very core, trying to turn religion to their secular view of right and wrong consistent with their politics.  This is fundamentally why the Founders left England and demanded that government not have any voice in religion.  Look where we are now.  We have political actors trying to orchestrate a coup to destroy Catholic values, and they even analogize their takeover to a coup in the Middle East, which amplifies their bigotry and hatred of the Church.  I had hoped I would never see this day — a day like so many dark days in Eastern Europe that led to the death of my [Protestant minister] great grandfather at the hands of communists who also hated and wanted to destroy religion.”

Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails. All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful.

In the meantime, a friend describes the choice facing voters in November this way: A vulgar, boorish lout and disrespecter of women, with a serious impulse control problem; or a scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.

In a nation where “choice” is now the unofficial state religion, the menu for dinner is remarkably small.

Source (Reposted in its entirety with permission)

Concerning Burning

The burning of books is objectionable on principle. Indeed, whenever I hear of books being burnt, I always think of the famous quote by Heinrich Heine, who was born a Jew but converted to Christianity, and who died 1856. He said, “Where they burn books, in the end they will burn people.” (There is a fine irony in his far-sighted wisdom, since his books were among the many consigned to the flames by the Nazis in the 1930s.) The reason that book-burning is objectionable is that consigning something to the flames means not just its destruction, but in many circumstances its renunciation, and asserts its total lack of value. And pretty much all books have value—even the books the contents of which we disagree with. We may disagree with the ideas some books contain, but the idea of a book itself—that is, offering ideas from one person to another—is valuable and good, for all books involve sharing and dialogue, and all human dialogue has value.

In the same way that burning books is bad, burning people is bad also. Put another way, cremation is not a part of our Christian Tradition. Asserting this flies in the face of much modern North American culture, where cremation is rapidly becoming the preferred method of dealing with the bodies of the dead, but Orthodoxy continues to make this assertion nonetheless. As far as the historic practice of the Church is concerned, cremation involves the burning of people.

Modern secular culture denies this. It says that people—human persons—are to be sharply differentiated from their bodies, so that cremation burns not the person, but the body of the person. The person—the real person—is identified with the soul, and this soul resides in the body in the same sort of way that a letter resides in an envelope. In the case of letters and envelopes, the envelope has no real and lasting function apart from the safe delivery of the letter, and after the letter is received, the envelope may be thrown away. After all, it is the letter which is of value, and it is the letter which we keep. In the same way, modern secularism holds that the soul is the real person, and the body only the temporary container or vehicle for the soul. When the soul departs from the body at death, the body has no more lasting value than the envelope has after the letter is removed. Both may be thrown away, or burned.

Read the rest here.

Amazing Color Home Movies of New York During the 1940's

Elliot Abrams on the scandalous UN vote denying Jewish (and Christian) connections to Jerusalem

There is little to be added to the scorn rightfully shown in the United States and in Israel (which has cut all ties to UNESCO) toward the UNESCO vote this week that in essence wipes out Jewish and Christian history in Jerusalem by referring to it only in Muslim terminology.

UNESCO’s own director general, Irina Bokova, criticized the vote, saying, “Jerusalem is the sacred city of the three monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site.”

Read the rest here.

In case there was any doubt

The Episcopalians are still wallowing in pagan apostasy.

A Quick Note

I apologize for the silence but I have been somewhat busy lately. On top of that I am fighting a cold that has been trying to turn into the flu. I realize that I have a backlog of emails but I just groan every time I even look at my computer these days. Hopefully I will get caught up by the end of the week.

On TV Tonight

So I have just been told over on another blog that Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) at about the same time that every other channel will be showing the 2016 version. I believe I will watch the fictional one.

The other may give me nightmares.

Dodging a Bullet

So I'm sitting here in the southwest corner of the Sunshine State under overcast skies with a stiff breeze pondering what might have been, and how very lucky we have been (so far). My part of the state was never in the projected danger zone so the worst I have had to deal with has been a sharp uptick in traffic and large crowds of temporary evacuees from the other side of the state. To whom I say welcome and enjoy your stay.

But all of this brings to mind those who proudly declared they would not evacuate despite being told they were potentially in the path of a category 4 hurricane. I'm going to hazard an educated guess that most of these morons have never been in anything close to a major hurricane in their lives. No rational person with a clue about the real danger of something as powerful as Matthew was when I went to bed last night (sustained winds of 140 mph) would deliberately put themselves in front of one. It's rather akin to being told there is a Great White Shark swimming just off the beach and going in for a dip anyways. Maybe the hurricane will miss you. And maybe the shark has moved on or isn't hungry.

Okay, I will concede an exception for those seeking a novel method for self murder. Suicide by hurricane would provide an interesting topic for gossip among neighbors and relatives.

But I doubt that was the intent here. In many cases this was just for bragging rights.  My guess is that a lot of these folks will be found in their favorite watering hole this weekend telling everyone within earshot about how they rode out Hurricane Matthew and that it was no big deal.

Except they didn't.

That's because Hurricane Matthew has thus far not hit land in the United States (Deo gratias). If it had hit land as a cat 4, anyone in it's immediate path along the coast would would have been fortunate to survive. And if they did, my guess is that whatever tales they told would have begun with something along the lines of "what a  bleeping idiot I was!" (I don't think they would use the word bleeping.)

The worst thing is that this dodged bullet is likely to reinforce the bone crushing stupidity exhibited by these people and encourage others to do the same the next time we have a dangerous storm rolling in our direction. And there will be a next time. Florida is geographically pretty much a natural bulls-eye for hurricanes. That we have not had a big hit in more than a decade is a small miracle that I fear has also given a false sense of security to many. More than two million have moved here since the last hurricane (including yours truly) and most probably lack an appreciation for just how devastating a bad one can be. Last night Matthew was more or less the same size and power as the Great Hurricane of 1900.

There are times I think everyone who wants to live within ten miles of the Atlantic coast south of Cape Hatteras, or anywhere at all along the Gulf of Mexico should be required to watch this or something similar.

The Pope in Georgia: Showing Respect Without Ecumenical Compromise

From Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 Pope Francis visited the ancient Orthodox nation of Georgia, celebrating Mass in a Tbilisi stadium on Saturday, Oct. 1 for the capital’s small Catholic population.
Hierarchs of the Georgian Orthodox Church were noticeably absent.

As it should be.

The media is variously reporting the absence of any official Georgian Orthodox delegation as a “shun,” a “snub,” and that the Pope was met “with disregard.” That such headlines are false and inflammatory is obvious in that the pope visited the nation by the invitation of the president and His Holiness Patriarch-Catholicos Ilia II himself, who greeted him at the airport and met with him in an official capacity.

Moreover, the pope was welcomed to the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta where he exchanged speeches with His Holiness in the presence of a number of hierarchs, clergy, monastics, and faithful.
What we see is that, in fact, the pope was met with the same respect given to any visiting dignitary. The pope himself, upon his departure, expressed his gratitude at being so warmly received. But His Holiness Ilia II also respectfully maintained his own integrity and that of the Orthodox faith and Church, given to us by Christ through His Apostles.

At Saturday’s Mass, Pope Francis declared: ““We should work together. We should respect each other and pray together. This is ecumenism.”

It is precisely this ecumenism that the Georgian Orthodox Church understands, and rightfully rejects, not out of any hatred or chauvinism, but the righteous desire to preserve intact the deposit of faith entrusted to the hierarchs and all the faithful.

The Church and its faithful are guided by the dictum “lex orandi, lex credendi”—the rule of prayer is the rule of faith—that is, the Church believes what it prays, and prays what it believes, and therefore, unity of faith is an obvious and necessary presupposition for unity in prayer.

The absence of unity of faith between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic confession is obvious, and so should be the absence of unity in prayer. Mutual respect is not enough to bind us together in Christ, for respect that disregards truth is no respect at all, and it certainly is not love.

In his Oct. 1 speech at Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, the pope invoked the holy Apostle Paul, saying, “Those baptized in Christ, as Saint Paul teaches, have been clothed in Christ. Thus… we are called to be 'one in Christ Jesus' and to avoid putting first disharmony and divisions between the baptized, because what unites us is much more than what divides us.”

In the eyes of the media, the Georgian Orthodox Church’s seeming rejection of the ideal of unity and harmony is a “shun” and a “snub,” but what Pope Francis failed to mention, and which, naturally, the secular media fails to understand, but which those of an Orthodox consciousness can never forget, is that St. Paul spoke not merely of unity in baptism, but rather of One Lord, one faith, one baptism, which bind us together in one body, and one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4, 5). Baptisms not of one faith are indeed not one baptism. Baptism is unto union with the Body of Christ, and therefore, naturally, cannot happen outside of that Body of Christ.
In a statement on the Georgian Patriarchate’s website, the Church reminded the faithful that: “As long as there are dogmatic differences between our churches, Orthodox believers will not participate in their prayers,” which is entirely in keeping with the God-breathed universal canonical Tradition of the Church.

Canon 10 of the Holy Apostles reads: “If one who is not in communion prays together, even at home, let him be excommunicated,” and Canon 45: “A Bishop, or a Presbyter, or a Deacon that only prays together with heretics, should be excommunicated; if he has permitted them to perform anything as Clergymen, let him be defrocked.” Thus, we can see that His Holiness preserved his own good standing in the Church and the resilient witness of the Orthodox faith. Many later canons confirm and expound upon the norms laid down here.

For his part, the Catholic pontiff overlooked the vital dogmatic differences, insisting at his Tbilisi Papal Mass that Catholics ought never to proselytize the Orthodox, which would be “a grave sin against ecumenism,” in light of his belief that Orthodox and Catholics are brothers and sisters in the faith.

For the Orthodox, it would be precisely the notion that we must never seek to bring Catholics into the saving enclosure of the Orthodox Church that would be a sin, and a grave one at that, wholly lacking in love.

The Pope was met with respect and dignity, but not as a right-believing bishop of the true Church. He was neither invited to homilize during any Orthodox divine service, nor to bless the Orthodox faithful, nor was he seated upon any episcopal throne, nor was the liturgical Kiss of Peace exchanged—actions which would only wound the Orthodox conscience of the faithful, causing confusion and anger.

As a wise and discerning shepherd, Patriarch-Catholicos Ilia II maintained a balance between respect for his guest and respect for his own flock and Church, and his own ordination, with all its ensuing responsibilities, setting an example for Orthodox-Catholic interactions, and giving voice to the Orthodox truth in his own speech at Svetitskhoveli Cathedral:

“True faith, humbleness and our traditions—these are the ancient treasures that we preserve and will continue to do so in future. We greet you again and confess that our unity is in the true faith. Only true faith and love will open the path towards our communion.”

-Jesse Dominick

Source

Is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Orthodox?

Go here and discuss.

Hungarian Referendum on EU Refugee Quotas: "No!" in a landslide

Hungary has voted emphatically against accepting EU migrant quotas, exit polls suggest, in a cry of defiance against Brussels that is likely to cement the country’s status as the leader of a “counter-revolution” against the bloc’s central powers.

As many as 95 per cent of voters voted “No” to the quotas in Sunday’s referendum, though there were fears last night the result could be declared invalid due to a low turnout.

One opinion poll by the Nézőpont Institute put turnout at just 42%, while a Hungarian government source it was unlikely to have been higher than 45%.

The referendum was the brainchild of Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, who cast the “No” vote as being in defence of the country’s sovereignty and independence.

Read the rest here.

Pope Presses Orthodox Agenda in Georgia Despite Resistance

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- Pope Francis' efforts to improve relations with the Georgian Orthodox Church suffered a setback Saturday after the patriarchate decided at the last minute not to send an official delegation to his Mass and reminded the Orthodox faithful they cannot participate in Catholic services.

Francis still pressed on with his agenda, insisting that Catholics must never try to convert Orthodox and bowing in prayer alongside the Orthodox patriarch after they both lit a candle in the Orthodox cathedral.

Francis called for the historical divisions that have "lacerated" Christianity to be healed through patience, trust and dialogue.

"We are called to be one in Jesus Christ and to avoid putting disharmony and divisions between the baptized first, because what unites us is much more than what divides us," he told Patriarch Ilia, amid the Aramaic chants and hypnotic bells tolling at the cathedral in the spiritual capital of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Saturday's developments on the second and final day of Francis' visit to Georgia reflected the "one step forward, two steps back" progress that often accompanies the Vatican's outreach to the Orthodox Church, which split from the Catholic Church [cough cough A/O] over 1,000 years ago over issues including the primacy of the pope.

Read the rest here.

Britain Prepares First Steps in BREXIT

Theresa May will on Sunday announce she will repeal the 1972 European Communities Act in a move that will formally begin the process of making Britain’s Parliament sovereign once again.

Addressing the Conservative Party Conference for the first time as leader, Mrs May will declare that her government will begin work to end the legislation that gives European Union law supremacy in Britain.

In its place, a new “Great Repeal Bill” will be introduced in Parliament as  early as next year to put power for the nation’s laws back into the hands of MPs and peers.

The announcement is Mrs May’s first firm commitment on Brexit since becoming Prime Minister in July and marks a major step on the road to ending the country’s EU membership.

Read the rest here.

Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos on the Church of Greece and the Recent Cretan Council's Documents

It's a tad long and I am not going to excerpt it. Go here to read it.

Enough already!

Can I be court-martialed for urging mutiny 20 years after I got out? I loathe this president. I despise the political hacks he has put in charge of our country's military. I spit on the knaves ramming their politically correct idiocy down the throats of our servicemen and women.

This

This

This

This 

And now this

To hell with you Barack Obama, you and your Communist fellow travelers!

Enough is enough!

Georgian Church reassures believers—Pope's visit not to cross into ecumenism

 In response to some strong reactions among the clergy and faithful to the Pope's upcoming visit to the country of Georgia, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, which will include meeting with His Holiness Patriarch Ilia II, the Patriarchate has released a statement aimed at reassuring those concerned.

"We note that prayerful-sacramental communion between us and the Catholic church of Rome has been severed since medieval times and as long as there are dogmatic differences between us, according to Church law, Orthodox believers do not take part in their services," the statement reads.

The release notes that Pope Francis' visit to Georgia is by invitation of President Margvelashvili and Patriarcha Ilia and aimed at strengthening multilateral relations towards peacekeeping in the region.

Referring to some excited public statements of clergy and laity, the statement calls upon all to remain calm, stating that "It is obvious that the Pope will serve Mass only for Catholics, which means it can’t be considered proselytism, as some people claim."

It should be noted that Pope John Paul II also visited Georgia in November 1999, meeting with Patriarcha Ilia, although no ecumenical prayers took place. The Georgian Church has taken a strict stance on matters of ecumenism, ceasing activity in the World Council of Churches in 1983 and abstaining from the recent pan-Orthodox gathering on Crete, offering critiques of its documents as well as the joint statement stemming from the recent Orthodox-Catholic meeting in Chieti, Italy.

Source.

Rod Dreher's Latest on Boundaries and the Limits of Acceptable Diversity of Opinion

This is a really excellent piece. Not going to excerpt it. Just go here and read it all.

HT: Dr. Tighe

The Debate

No dog in this fight, I’m not voting for either one. But I actually watched the whole thing. My impression; with a few exceptions where he did get in some zingers, I think the wicked witch was clearly dominant and in control through most of it. This was not a good night for the Donald.

Welcome to the NFL Mr. Trump. Practice is not optional at this level of competition. Your lack of debate prep showed, badly.

Besieged Globalists Ponder What Went Wrong

Until recently, you didn’t hear people being referred to as “globalist” very often. But in a time of rising nationalism, those who see the upside of globalism have become a distinct — and often embattled — tribe.

Last week, the globalists had a big family reunion in New York. The gathering was focused on the United Nations General Assembly, but a growing array of side conferences and summits and dinners also attracted concerned internationalists of every stripe: humanitarians, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, donors, investors, app peddlers, celebrities.

But an absence haunted the week. Almost by definition, nationalists and localists are underrepresented at these global gatherings. Their paucity was especially notable this time, because the rising signs of nationalism — whether in the form of Donald J. Trump’s winning the Republican nomination, the British vote to leave the European Union, or the German backlash against Angela Merkel’s welcome to refugees — hovered like a specter over many of the discussions.

The globalists have lofty aims, of course, like working toward a climate-change agreement, finding a solution for the refugee crisis, and deepening cross-border trade. But there seemed to be a growing realization that solving the problems of the world’s commons becomes harder when the globalists neglect their own backyards.

Again and again, in private conversations and in public forums, the globalists spoke of feeling besieged. Take the valedictory address of former President Bill Clinton, the paterfamilias of the globalist reunion. The Clinton Global Initiative is one of the major factors in helping to transform what had been a week centered on United Nations diplomacy into a broader Davos-on-the-Hudson for international aspirations...

Read the rest here.

A Sad Day in the Sports World

First this morning there was the shocking news that Jose Fernandez, a 24 year old Cuban immigrant with an arm like greased lightning, who pitched for the Florida Marlins was killed in what looks like a tragic boating accident. And now just breaking, the news that golf legend (and a true gentleman) Arnold Palmer has reposed at the more respectable age of 87. We should also remember that two other young men whose names are not yet known were killed in the same accident with Jose.

May their memory be eternal.

New Church Consecrated and Hierarchical Divine Liturgy Celebrated With Sign Language

A Whiff of Schism

At a Catholic parish in Athy, Ireland, a lesbian couple who resigned from parish ministry after entering a legal marriage has returned to active participation—and to loud applause. So now everyone is welcome in St. Michael’s parish, right?

Wrong.

Anthony Murphy, the editor of Catholic Voice—the man who objected to the lesbian couple’s prominent role in parish life—has received so many threats that he is, on the advice of the local police, staying away from the parish. But then again, if you know the whole story, you may wonder why Murphy would ever want to attend Mass at St. Michael’s.

The bitter dispute in this Irish parish is an extreme example of a sort of conflict that has become sadly familiar within Catholic communities. These conflicts erupted in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, then subsided for a few decades. They have escalated again during the past three years, since the election of Pope Francis. They involve fundamental disagreements about what it means to be Catholic: debates between people with irreconcilable views, who sometimes suggest (and sometimes forthrightly proclaim) that their adversaries must be excluded from the Church. These conflicts pose a clear and present danger to the unity of the Catholic faith, and they will continue until the fundamental questions that are now in dispute have been resolved.

Many good Catholics, motivated by the best of intentions, have sought to downplay these tensions, to avert a showdown. But the conciliatory approach cannot succeed when two sides are irreconcilable. A healthy Church cannot long accept a situation in which some members anathematize what other members endorse. (The worldwide Anglican communion, desperately fighting to avoid formal recognition of a schism that is already apparent to the world, illustrates my point.) Fundamental questions cannot be ignored and finessed and explained away indefinitely. Eventually the failure to answer a question is itself a sort of answer: a judgment that truth and integrity are less important than temporary peace and comfort. Such an answer is unworthy of Christians.

Since the shocking case of St. Michael’s in Athy is the starting point for this essay, let me recount the story:

Read the rest here.

The New German Catholic Bible is... problematic

GERMANY, September 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The German Bishops have presented a new “Unified Translation” of the Bible that follows a significant modernization of the language and will be binding for all German-speaking areas starting in 2017.

On Tuesday, the German Bishops Conference (DBK) presented in Fulda the fruit of many years of scientific work: a new edition of the so-called “Unified Translation” (Einheitsübersetzung) of the Bible into German. It’s called “unified” because, from the original published from 1962 onward, these editions are supposed to be used ecumenically, unifying Catholics and Protestants in Germany. The original aim, however, was thwarted in 2005 when Protestants reverted to the Luther translation.

The leader of the research project was the bishop (now emeritus) of Erfurt, Joachim Wanke, who explained that the new edition is a “moderate revision” of the older text. Wanke added that a translation is always also an interpretation. The new edition shows more “braveness” to present “biblical jargon,” he said, reported by kath.net.

According to Jewish tradition, the personal names of God cannot be pronounced, so “Yahweh” is substituted by “Lord” in the new edition. In fact, every paragraph has a change, explained Michael Theobald, president of the German Bible Association.

When the apostle Paul calls two new followers, they are not two men anymore, Andronicus and Junias; rather, a new discovery showed that apparently it was one man and one woman, hence Andronicus and Junia. This led to the discussion that the word “apostle” must be applied to women as well as men (Author’s note: In German, different genders of the word exist and usually gender-ideologists insist on using male and female forms).

Other changes are more ideological.

Most frightening is the change to the iconic Isaiah passage (7:14): “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son” (NIV) will now read: “The virgin has conceived and gives birth to a son.” The change seems to suggest that the virgin is not at all a virgin anymore (after having conceived) and at the same time removes the prophetic impetus by putting the words from the future into the past. This trend continues and a note from the translators explains that the Hebrew word “almáh” means “young woman” instead of “virgin,” as it has been reported. This change goes back to an old — and refuted — disputation of Hebrew apologists:

Read the rest here.

Ireland in 1902

A fascinating glimpse of life in Ireland around the turn of the previous century. Most of the video was shot in Cork with the last few minutes in Wexford. It's as close to a time machine as we are likely to find.

Former Archbishop Peter Leo Gerety, world's oldest Catholic bishop, dead at 104

From here.

I remember this guy from the early 80’s when I was still a (very young) trad Catholic. His name was a pejorative. He was solid on abortion but in every other respect he was a moonbat hippie Vatican II says we can do whatever we want guy, right down to the tie dye vestments and Mass for bongo drums in G minor. In politics, foreign policy and economics he was only slightly to the left of Gus Hall. His favorite color was definitely red and this predates our modern, very weird, inversion of the normal political color associations. Any hint of conservative (forget Traditionalist) Catholicism was ruthlessly suppressed.

I am surprised that John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not send him to an early grave. But he hung on, long enough to see his ideological soul mate sitting on the throne of Peter.

UN Sounds Alarm Over Global Debt

The third leg of the world's intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history.

It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-market orthodoxies promoted for almost forty years by the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, and the Davos fraternity.

"Alarm bells have been ringing over the explosion of corporate debt levels in emerging economies, which now exceed $25 trillion. Damaging deflationary spirals cannot be ruled out," said the annual report of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Read the rest here.

Why the U.S. Can’t and Shouldn’t Try to ‘Police’ the World

Anders Fogh Rasmussen essentially wants the U.S. to govern the planet:

In this world of interconnections, it has become a cliché to talk about the “global village.“ But right now, the village is burning, and the neighbors are fighting in the light of the flames. Just as we need a policeman to restore order; we need a firefighter to put out the flames of conflict, and a kind of mayor, smart and sensible, to lead the rebuilding.
Only America can play all these roles, because of all world powers, America alone has the credibility to shape sustainable solutions to these challenges.

Rasmussen’s op-ed makes many familiar mistakes here. For one thing, the entire “village” isn’t burning, and the vast majority of the world is at peace. The need for both “policeman” and “firefighter” is exaggerated to make it seem as if the world will fall into chaos unless the U.S. acts as the author wants, but that isn’t the case. For another, it can’t possibly be the responsibility of any one government to do all of the things mentioned here. No government has the right or authority to do these things, and there is no single government with either the resources or the competence to police the world. Besides, there simply isn’t enough political support for such a role here in the U.S. Even if the U.S. could competently fill the role Rasmussen describes, it would be a mistake to do it.

The costs of such a role are not only exorbitant, but there is an inherent danger in justifying U.S. actions in these terms. Setting the U.S. up as the enforcer of order around the world effectively puts the U.S. above the rules that all states are supposed to follow, and it gives it an excuse to trample on the sovereignty of other states when the enforcer deems it appropriate. Even if our leaders had consistently good judgment, that would create many opportunities for abuse. Since we know our leaders often make poor choices about how and where to intervene, it opens the door to one disaster after another. We also know our government’s “enforcement” is arbitrary and selective, and when its allies and clients break the rules the U.S. is usually helping them or covering for them. Most of the world doesn’t need and presumably doesn’t want a “policeman” that can do what it likes, shield its clients from punishment, and never has to answer to them, and most Americans don’t want their government to act as one.

Read the rest here.

Swedish church leaders oppose support for persecuted Christians

Liberal Church leaders in Sweden have opposed an initiative aimed at showing support for persecuted Christians. After the murder of French priest Father Jacques Hamel by jihadists in July three Swedish priests started an initiative called Mitt kors (“My cross”) in which Swedish Christians took “selfies” with a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians. However, the initiative has been attacked by liberal church leaders apparently concerned that it might offend Muslims! The head of communications for the Church of Sweden even called it “seditious and un-Christian”. The Church of Sweden's attacks on the "My cross" initiative continued until one of the priests who had started it publicly left the Church of Sweden. In a newspaper article, Johanna Andersson, the priest who has resigned wrote:

"Church leadership has for several weeks been running a campaign against us who started the group 'My cross.' In this campaign, I have been discredited, called 'questionable', 'unclean', 'agitator', 'un-Christian' and attributed xenophobic hidden agendas."

Read the rest here.
HT: Dr. Tighe

You just can't make this up.

Nigel Farage: Going out with a bang

Nigel Farage, Britain's ordinary Joe politician who lead a political party and then his country out of the European Union (without ever being elected to Westminster) has resigned as the head of UKIP. Famous for his low key style and loathing of all things PC he smoked and drank (sometimes excessively) in public. If Nigel wasn't where he was expected to be, the first place everyone looked for him was "down the pub." It has now emerged that on his last night as leader of UKIP he did what more than a few of us might fantasize about doing on retirement or quitting a job we never liked.

He got loaded and went for a midnight dip, au naturale according to at least one source, off the Bournemouth pier.

Anyways, best wishes wherever life takes you Nigel. And if by some fluke we should ever meet, the first round is on me.

UK armed forces 'could not withstand attack by major power like Russia'

 The UK’s armed forces would not be able to protect the country from a full-scale attack by Russia or another major military power, the recently retired commander of joint forces command has said.

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, who stepped down in April, delivered a scathing assessment of the UK military in a 10-page private memorandum to the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon.

It comes despite the government’s decision to increase defence spending by nearly £5bn by 2020/21 and to meet Nato’s target of 2% of GDP for the rest of the decade.

In his memo, Barrons said: “Capability that is foundational to all major armed forces has been withered by design.

“There is a sense that modern conflict is ordained to be only as small and as short term as we want to afford, and that is absurd.

“The failure to come to terms with this will not matter at all if we are lucky in the way the world happens to turn out, but it could matter a very great deal if even a few of the risks now at large conspire against the UK.”

Read the rest here.

I have posted on this before, but it's worth repeating. Britain has effectively joined most of the rest of Western Europe in becoming a military protectorate of the United States.

Pandas aren't cute, they're death-loving oxygen-thieves. Let's just eat the idiot-bears

Let me get straight to the point. Pandas are pointless, wasteful and silly. They should die.

Let’s look at the facts here. A lot of conservationists argue that pandas are the victims of man’s actions, that urbanisation and industrialisation is killing the precious bamboo they need to live.

Eh? Bamboo? They are bears, but they eat leaves. Hello, excuse me? Panda bear. Bear. You know, large, aggressive carnivore. Big teeth, claws. Grrrr. You’re supposed to eat meat.

What on earth is with the bamboo thing? A panda’s digestive system is still set up to digest meat. The reason they can only eat only one of the hundreds of different types of bamboo the world has to offer is that their guts aren’t supposed to break down bamboo. It’s elevating fussiness to the level of suicide. It’s like me eating only car tyres and gravel and then asking for sympathy when I starve to death. Idiots.

Read the rest here.

Happy New Year!

For those who hew to really really traditional church calendars, today is the first day of the year 7525 since the creation of the world.

NY Times Posts anti-Russian Orthodox Hit Piece

There really is no other way to describe it. The lack of balance and naked journalistic bias is breathtaking, even for the Times. How dare a church that doesn't support the pan-sexual dogma of the enlightened West build churches and preach conservative values in... FRANCE! Reading the article one can almost feel the editorial board on the verge of a collective stroke.

Anti-Semitism and the British Left

LONDON — Opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing leader of Britain’s Labour Party, usually claim one of two things about him: that his politics are extreme and will lead the party to electoral oblivion, or that his values are admirable but he is too incompetent to put them into effect.

These two arguments seem contradictory, but in Mr. Corbyn’s handling of an anti-Semitism scandal that has hung over the Labour Party, they have converged. In April, after months of accusations of anti-Semitism among party members, particularly on social media, Mr. Corbyn ordered an inquiry and asked Shami Chakrabarti, who had just stepped down as the director of Britain’s leading civil liberties organization, Liberty, to head it. So far, so good.

The aftermath of her report, however, has aggravated the very wounds it was supposed to heal. It was inauspicious that, at the news conference in June for its publication, Mr. Corbyn looked on in silence as one of his supporters accused Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish member of Parliament, of conspiring against the party leader. Ms. Smeeth left the room in tears.

Worse followed when, a few weeks later, Mr. Corbyn broke his vow not to create any new members of the House of Lords by nominating Ms. Chakrabarti for a peerage. Whatever justification there might be for this award, it gave the impression of a quid pro quo: that Mr. Corbyn was willing to compromise his lifelong hostility to Britain’s system of unelected privilege in return for an inquiry that pulled its punches.

Read the rest here.

The problem is not confined to the left in Britain. It is widespread in Europe and among progressives here. Indeed it is rampant in the lefty circles that dominate our college campuses.

Woman Sexually Assaulted by Sailor in 1945 Dies

Greta Friedman, the woman in white kissed by a sailor in New York’s Times Square in a photograph symbolising the end of the second world war, has died aged 92.

Her son, Joshua Friedman, said she died on Thursday in Virginia after suffering a series of ailments, including pneumonia, NBC News reported.

CBS News said she would be laid to rest with her late husband, Mischa Elliot Friedman, at Arlington national cemetery in Virginia.

Read the rest here.

Memory eternal.

Kaine Predicts Catholic Church Will Change its Teaching on Gay Marriage

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a practicing Catholic, on Saturday described his evolution on same-sex marriage and predicted that his church would change its views as well.

“My full, complete, unconditional support for marriage equality is at odds with the current doctrine of the church that I still attend,” Kaine said at a dinner celebrating gay rights. “But I think that’s going to change, too.”

Kaine, a senator from Virginia, spoke to a crowd of about 3,700 attending the 20th Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in Washington, at which he also touted reasons why his running mate, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, was far better on equality issues than Republican Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump is no friend to this community, and he’s no friend to the value of equality.”

Kaine said he wanted to be honest about his own struggles with reconciling his advocacy of equal rights with the teachings of a church that restricts marriage to a man and woman.

Read the rest here.

This man is a heretic.

Civil Rights Commission: ‘Religious Liberty,’ ‘Religious Freedom’ Code Words for Bigotry

A new report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights supports the majority on the federal commission, who say that efforts to protect religious liberty and freedom are really a way for individuals and entities to discriminate against people who don’t share their beliefs.

“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance,” Martin Castro, chairman of the commission, said in a statement included in the 296-page report.

“Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others,” Castro said. “However, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.

“In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws,” Castro said. “We now see ‘religious liberty’ arguments sneaking their way back into our political and constitutional discourse (just like the concept of ‘state rights’) in an effort to undermine the rights of some Americans.

“This generation of Americans must stand up and speak out to ensure that religion never again be twisted to deny others the full promise of America,” Castro said.

Read the rest here.

The Kremlin Really Believes That Hillary Wants to Start a War With Russia

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, the world will remember Aug. 25 as the day she began the Second Cold War.

In a speech last month nominally about Donald Trump, Clinton called Russian President Vladimir Putin the godfather of right-wing, extreme nationalism. To Kremlin-watchers, those were not random epithets. Two years earlier, in the most famous address of his career, Putin accused the West of backing an armed seizure of power in Ukraine by “extremists, nationalists, and right-wingers.” Clinton had not merely insulted Russia’s president: She had done so in his own words. Worse, they were words originally directed at neo-Nazis. In Moscow, this was seen as a reprise of Clinton’s comments comparing Putin to Hitler. It injected an element of personal animus into an already strained relationship — but, more importantly, it set up Putin as the representative of an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to the United States.

Even as relations between Russia and the West have sunk to new lows in the wake of 2014’s revolution in Ukraine, the Kremlin has long contended that a Cold War II is impossible. That’s because, while there may be differences over, say, the fate of Donetsk, there is no longer a fundamental ideological struggle dividing East and West. To Russian ears, Clinton seemed determined in her speech to provide this missing ingredient for bipolar enmity, painting Moscow as the vanguard for racism, intolerance, and misogyny around the globe.

The nation Clinton described was unrecognizable to its citizens. Anti-woman? Putin’s government provides working mothers with three years of subsidized family leave. Intolerant? The president personally attended the opening of Moscow’s great mosque. Racist? Putin often touts Russia’s ethnic diversity. To Russians, it appeared that Clinton was straining to fabricate a rationale for hostilities.

Read the rest here.

70 Year Old Man Robs Bank- Preferring Jail to His Wife

A 70-year-old man charged with robbing a Kansas City, Kan., bank said he did it because he preferred a jail cell over living with his wife.

Lawrence John Ripple is charged in federal court with the Friday afternoon robbery of the Bank of Labor at 756 Minnesota Ave.

According to court documents, Ripple handed a teller a note that read, “I have a gun, give me money.”

The teller complied.

But instead of fleeing, Ripple took the money and then took a seat in the bank lobby, according to the documents.

When a bank security guard approached him, Ripple told the guard, “I’m the guy you’re looking for.”

The guard took the money from Ripple and held him until police arrived, which wasn’t long, because Kansas City, Kan., police headquarters is on the same block.

When he was questioned later by investigators, Ripple told him that he and his wife had argued and he “no longer wanted to be in that situation,” according to the documents.

“Ripple wrote out his demand note in front of his wife … and told her he’d rather be in jail than at home,” an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit filed in support of the robbery charge.

Read the rest here.

The judge should sentence him to house arrest.

76 Years Ago: The First Day of the Blitz

RIP: Phyllis Schlafly

Memory Eternal

350 Years Ago: The Great Fire of London As it Happened

It is now 350 years since the Great Fire of London razed the city's medieval heart to the ground. But at such a distance it is easy to forget the human drama which played out as thousands of people lost their homes, their livelihoods, and in some cases their lives.
 
This is the story of a city on knife's edge, riven by religious and political tensions,  made vulnerable to disaster by its own neglect and avarice. It is a story of official blunders which turned a minor, commonplace accident into an all-consuming conflagration. It's a story of chaos, mass hysteria, profiteering and racist violence – but it is also a story of some heroism and charity, from royal and commoner alike. It unfolds over 72 hours, beginning at midnight on September 2, 1666, and ending at the climax of the fire's worse day. Of course, in an era without reliable watches, all timings are approximate.

For this account I am indebted to the Museum of London, as well as the following sources:

• The Diaries of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn
• Thomas Vincent –  God's Terrible Voice In The City
• Walter George Bell – The Great Fire of London In 1666
• Adrian Tinniswood – The Great Fire of London: The Essential Guide.

Read the rest here.

Catholic priest suspended for homosexual advocacy

A New Jersey priest has been suspended from public ministry because of his persistent homosexual advocacy.

Father Warren Hall revealed on Twitter that he had been suspended by Archbishop John Myers of Newark, because his public statements and actions are “confusing the faithful.” Last year Father Hall had been removed from his post as chaplain at Seton Hall University because of his outspoken support for homosexual causes.

Father Hall indicated that he thought his suspension showed that Archbishop Myers was out of step with Catholic thinking. He wrote on Twitter that “@Pontifex’s Reform are taking too long.”

From here.

Rod Dreher: Would you encourage faithful orthodox Christians to serve in the US military?

Dreher's post on the military and the mess it has become.

My answer...

No. There is a difference between tolerance and compulsion. It is one thing to say we might tolerate homosexuals in the ranks provided they keep their personal affairs to themselves. Some might well argue against even that. (And for the record I never cared for the barracks room talk/boasting by my heterosexual shipmates either.) But it is altogether another thing to demand not just tolerance of someone's private life, but actual affirmation of it. The last straw for me was the decision to permit, and demand affirmation of transgenderism in the military. The armed forces are not the place for people with personality disorders to sort out their issues. And the demand that people affirm lifestyle choices that are flatly incompatible with Christian morality and faith is unacceptable. If I were still in and only one more hitch from retirement I'm not sure what I'd do. But I can't in good conscience encourage anyone to enlist under the current conditions.

I suggest that they do their recruiting in the Castro district of San Francisco.

Deaconesses: This is Not That

...Orthodox feminists often collapse the office of deacon and deaconess into a single office, referring sometimes to “male and female deacons”, as if the office were identical for both. It is true that Chrysostom referred to “woman deacons”, but he also knew that the two offices were utterly different in kind and function. The feminists pushing hard for the creation of an order of female deacons often emphasize that the rite wherein the candidate was made a deaconess was a true ordination (as opposed to a simple blessing), a true cheirotonia, not a mere cheirothesia, and that it took place at the altar. That is true, but the anachronistic distinction between ordination and blessing hides the profound distinction between the two ordinations, and therefore the office to which the candidate was ordained. That is, both male deacons and female deaconesses were given the ceremonial orar (which was rapidly becoming customary among subdeacons also, indicating that the bestowal of the orar did not indicate sacramental parity between deacon and deaconess), but the deaconess wore it differently than did the deacon. The deacon was given the chalice during his ordination, so that he could help administer it during the Eucharist that followed, while the deaconess immediately returned the chalice, expressing her exclusion from Eucharistic administration. Also, the deacon was ordained while kneeling on his knee, resting his head on the altar, while the deaconess stood and merely inclined her head. Most significantly of all, the prayers of ordination for the two orders were entirely different. These liturgical differences were not merely stylistic; they reveal that the two orders are different in kind.

Read the rest here.

Spain Threatens Four Catholic Bishops With Criminal Prosecution

MADRID, Spain August 31, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Only weeks after a failed attempt to secure the prosecution of the Archbishop of Valencia for denouncing the gay political agenda, homosexual groups are calling for the prosecution of four other Spanish bishops for criticizing a new homosexual “protection” law recently passed by the Province of Madrid.

Three of the bishops are being threatened with a criminal complaint for having written and published a condemnation of Madrid’s new “Law of Integral Protection against LGTBIphobia and Discrimination for Reasons of Orientation and Sexual Identity,” which prohibits all “degrading” and “discriminatory” statements regarding homosexuals and transsexuals. The fourth bishop is being criminally investigated for expressing support for the statement of the first three.

The Madrid LGBTI “protection” law “seeks to prohibit the public teaching of the Bible” and to “prohibit, even, public prayer for those people who ask for prayer for a change of orientation in their lives,” according to the bishops of the dioceses of Alcalá de Henares and Getafe, Juan Antonio Reig Pla and Joaquín María López, as well as an auxiliary bishop of Getafe, José Rico Pavés.

The law constitutes “an attack against religious liberty and liberty of conscience,” an “attack and censure against the right of parents to educate their children in accordance with their own beliefs and convictions,” and “an attack against freedom of expression, freedom of teaching, the freedom of scientists and professionals in search of the truth, and the freedom of people to orient their lives or to ask for help, including religious help, for that which they need,” the bishops write.

The bishops are referring to provisions in the law prohibiting any speech that constitutes “degrading expressions” regarding homosexuals or transsexuals, and outlaws “acts that imply isolation, rejection, or public and notorious disrespect for people because of their sexual orientation and their gender identity or gender expression.” The law also prohibits any form of therapy, even for religious reasons, for those who suffer from same-sex attraction.

Those who violate the statutes of the law can be fined up to 45,000 Euros ($50,382 USD) and may be deprived of all government benefits for up to three years.

Read the rest here.

I am beginning to think that the Communists won the Civil War.

Congrats to the World Champs!

The kids from my home town became the first Little League team from New York since 1964 to win the National Championship on Saturday and yesterday they beat three time world champion South Korea to bring the title home to the US for the first time since 2011.

Good Luck to Maine Endwell Little League

The ME boys Little League team plays Tennessee at 3:30 PM (EST) for the US National Championship today. To say this is the biggest thing to hit my home town in... well forever, would be a gross understatement. If they win, they would become the first Little League US Champion team from New York since 1964. They would also go on to play for the LL World Series championship title.

Msgr Charles Pope: Comfort Catholicism Has to Go; It is Time to Prepare for Persecution

There is a growing consternation among some Catholics that the Church, at least in her leadership, is living in the past. It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom.

It is long past dark in our culture, but in most parishes and dioceses it is business as usual and there is anything but the sober alarm that is really necessary in times like these.

Scripture says, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1). Preparing people for war — a moral and spiritual war, not a shooting war — should include a clear setting forth of the errors of our time, and a clear and loving application of the truth to error and light to darkness.

But there is little such training evident in Catholic circles today where, in the average parish, there exists a sort of shy and quiet atmosphere — a fear of addressing “controversial” issues lest someone be offended, or the parish be perceived as “unwelcoming.”

But, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now.

The Church of the 1970s-1990s was surely well described as the era of “beige Catholicism” (a term coined by Bishop Robert Barron, and not by way of flattery either). Those of us who lived through that era, especially in the 1970s, remember it as a time when many parish signs beckoned people to “come and experience our welcoming and warm Catholic community.” Our most evident desire was to fit in and be thought of as “normal.” Yes, Catholics were just like everyone else; and we had been working very hard to do that, at least since the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy was elected. Catholics had finally “made it” into the mainstream; we had been accepted by the culture.

Church architecture and interiors became minimalist and non-descript. Music and language in the liturgy became folksy. Marian processions, Corpus Christi processions, many things of distinctive and colorful Catholicism all but disappeared. Even our crucifixes disappeared, to be replaced by floating “resurrection Jesus” images. The emphasis was on blending in, speaking to things that made people feel comfortable, and affirming rather than challenging. If there was to be any challenge at all it would be on “safe” exhortations such as not abusing the environment or polluting, not judging or being intolerant, and so forth.

Again, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture. And while we may wish to blame any number of factors for the collapse, we cannot exclude ourselves. We who are supposed to be the light of the world, with Christ shining in us, have preferred to hide our light under a basket and lay low. The ruins of our families and culture are testimony to the triumph of error and the suppression of the truth.

Read the rest here.

I think this is an excellent article with many points that can be applied by non-Catholics.

French support for the EU crumbles on the Left and Right

The drama of Brexit may soon be matched or eclipsed by crystallizing events in France, where the Long Slump is at last taking its political toll.

A democracy can endure deflation policies for only so long. The attrition has wasted the French centre-right and the centre-left by turns, and now threatens the Fifth Republic itself.

The maturing crisis has echoes of 1936, when the French people tired of 'deflation decrees' and turned to the once unthinkable Front Populaire, smashing what remained of the Gold Standard.
Former Gaulliste president Nicolas Sarkozy has caught the headlines this week, launching a come-back bid with a package of hard-Right policies unseen in a western European democracy in modern times.

But the uproar on the Left is just as revealing. Arnaud Montebourg, the enfant terrible of the Socialist movement, has launched his own bid for the Socialist Party with a critique of such ferocity that it bears examination.

Read the rest here.

University of Chicago Affirms Freedom of Speech and Thought

Incoming first-years received a letter from the College today making clear that the University of Chicago does not condone safe spaces or trigger warnings.

“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” reads the letter from Dean of Students Jay Ellison.

In May, Student Government (SG) passed on an opportunity to reaffirm the University’s commitment to free speech when members voted to indefinitely table a resolution that would have condemned any student who “obstructs or disrupts” free speech.

The resolution, which was presented to SG by the president of the College Republicans club, second-year Matthew Foldi, came in the wake of three high-profile incidents in which speakers invited to campus were shut down or interrupted by protesters.

Read the rest here.

A breath of fresh air from the ivory tower which has become little more than a network of left-wing re-education camps in recent years.

Gay Anglican clergy to defy church's official stance on same-sex marriage

A group of gay Church of England clergy are set to reveal that they have married their partners, defying the official line taken by church leaders on same-sex marriage.

A dozen gay ministers are to sign an open letter that also urges the church to allow clergy to carry out blessings for parishioners entering into same-sex marriages.

Half the signatories have already declared themselves to be in a gay marriage, including Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who was one of the first priests to openly defy the ruling.

The letter is likely to reignite the heated debate on the issue, which has divided the church since same-sex marriages were legalised in England and Wales in March 2014.

Following the change in the law, church leaders, headed by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Justin Welby and John Sentamu respectively, decided that clergy must not enter into a same-sex marriage and that those in a gay marriage would not be ordained.

While canon Jeremy Pemberton had his permission to officiate revoked after marrying his partner in April 2014, Foreshew-Cain was not removed from his post as vicar of two churches in north London after openly marrying his partner, Stephen Foreshew in June 2014.

Read the rest here.

Germany to Revive Civil Defense

Germany will introduce its first civil defence strategy since the end of the Cold War, calling on the population to stockpile enough food and water for several days, according to a report Sunday.

The plan, which makes civilian backing of troops a priority while boosting the resilience of buildings and increasing capacity in the healthcare system, is due to be adopted by the government Wednesday, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily.

Contacted by AFP, an interior ministry spokesman confirmed that the cabinet was due to adopt a civil defence strategy but declined details about the concept or comment on the newspaper report.

The strategy noted that "an attack on German territory requiring conventional defence is unlikely," but said the country should be "sufficiently prepared in case of an existence-threatening development in the future that cannot be ruled out," according to the 69-page strategy quoted by the FAZ ..

"The population will be encouraged to stockpile food for ten days," it said, adding that five days' worth of water -- at an estimated two litres per person per day -- should also be set aside.

Read the rest here.

When is the last time this country paid even lip service to the idea of civil defense? The risk today is less global thermonuclear war, where civil defense would probably not help the vast majority of our population, but rather attack by terrorists or a rogue state that decides to set off a dirty bomb or figures out how to lob one or two missiles with an atom bomb onto our soil. The loss of life from fallout could easily equal or exceed that from the bomb(s). They used to designate certain buildings as emergency shelters and require food and water to be stockpiled in them. I am not sure that has been done since the 1980's. We are woefully unprepared for this kind of disaster.

Update

I am still traveling so blog posts will continue to be sparse for another week or so. In the meantime I invite the reader to peruse the sidebar where you will find many blogs and websites that might be of interest.

ELCA approves Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical document

​NEW ORLEANS (Aug.10, 2016) – The 2016 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly took several significant steps Wednesday moving forward the mission of this church as a church for the sake of the world.

By a vote of 931 to 9, the assembly overwhelmingly accepted the "Declaration on the Way," a unique ecumenical document that marks a path toward greater unity between Catholics and Lutherans. Following the vote, an emotional assembly stood to applaud the momentous decision.

At the heart of the document are 32 "Statements of Agreement" that state where Lutherans and Catholics do not have church-dividing differences on topics about church, ministry and the Eucharist. More tentatively, the document also explores differences that remain.

Read the rest here.

Michael Phelps Wins (another) Gold Medal

OK, excepting the great American pastime, I'm not the world's biggest sports fan. And to my mind swimming pools are for lounging around on a hot day with while sipping your favorite liquid refreshment. But come on! Twenty one gold medals? That's insane. This guy is to swimming what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Like Ruth, many of his records may fall over time, but not all at once and not to one swimmer. He is quite simply the best in his field.