North Korea publishes racist attack on Obama

It could have been written by the Klan. Read the story here. I decline to quote it.

Antioch severs communion with Jerusalem

It's been widely reported, but the official communique from the Holy Synod can now be found here.

Italian Media: Pope Paul VI to be beatified

The Vatican has recognised a supposed miracle attributed to Paul VI's intercession and will beatify the late Italian pope in October, a Vatican source said on Tuesday.

According to the Italian news agency ANSA, the apparent miracle identified by the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints was the healing of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.

ANSA said the beatification could occur on 19 October after the synod of bishops' meeting.

Paul VI, who reigned between 1963 and 1978, was praised for his efforts to seek closer ties with other Christian denominations but his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae was controversial for spelling out a ban on all forms of artificial contraception.

Source.
Via: The Deacon's Bench

Hundreds sentenced to death may be innocent

(Reuters) - As many as 300 people who were sentenced to death in the United States over a three-decade period were likely innocent, according to a study published in a leading science journal on Monday.

Dozens of defendants sentenced to death in recent years have been exonerated before their sentences could be carried out, but many more were probably falsely convicted, said University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross, the study's lead author.

"Our research adds the disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been sentenced to death have not been exonerated," Gross wrote in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, he stressed that this did not indicate a jump in the number of people believed wrongly executed because some had had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and others lingered on death row.

In their research, Gross and his colleagues examined the 7,482 U.S. death sentence convictions between 1973 and 2004.

Read the rest here.

Nigerian Islamist Leader: Kidnapped school girls are our slaves and we may sell them

DAKAR, Senegal — In a video message apparently made by the leader of Nigeria’s Islamist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls nearly three weeks ago, called the girls slaves and threatened to “sell them in the market, by Allah.”

“Western education should end,” Mr. Shekau said in the 57-minute video, speaking in Hausa and Arabic. “Girls, you should go and get married.” The Islamist leader also warned that he would “give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of 9. We would marry them out at the age of 12.”

Read the rest here.

Rome severely criticizes dissident nuns

By the warm and fuzzy standards of the post Vatican II era, this is a positively blistering indictment. I think it's as close as I have seen any document issued by the Holy See in decades come to throwing out the H Bomb. Read the report at Fr. Z's blog.

Washington Post: GOP is likely to retake the US Senate

According to the model, which was built for The Post by political scientist and Monkey Cage blog author John Sides, Republicans have an 82 percent chance of claiming the six seats they need to move back into the majority.

Read the rest here.

If irony were a holy virtue...

...This Anglican Church would glow in the dark. Yes, that's Judas hanging in a stained glass window.

HT: Blog reader Tim.

Supreme Court OKs Prayer at Government Meetings

A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that legislative bodies such as city councils can begin their meetings with prayer, even if it plainly favors the religion of the speaker.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that Christian prayers given before meetings of an upstate New York town council did not violate the constitutional prohibition against government establishment of religion.

Read the rest here.

Russian troops mass with Ukraine near civil war

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine suffered its bloodiest day in nearly three months on Friday, with at least nine people killed when the army launched its first major assault on a rebel stronghold and 34 killed in clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian mobs in the Black Sea port city of Odessa.

The Ukrainian army attacked Slovyansk in the east of the country at dawn, provoking the heaviest military fighting since a pro-Russian uprising began a month ago. The army took control of the major checkpoints outside the city but was unable to force its way into the center, and two of its helicopters were shot down. 

Read the rest here.

See also this map showing disposition of military forces.

The Politics of Nostalgia: A critical examination of democracy

...It was not always so. The greatest philosophers of antiquity—Plato and Aristotle—both considered democracy a rather inferior form of political life. Plato has Socrates claim that democratic citizens are dominated by licentious passion rather than reason: “they call insolence good education; anarchy, freedom; wastefulness, magnificence; and shamelessness, courage” (Republic 560e). He says that it is the sort of regime favoured by children and women—i.e. those in whom reason is weak (Republic 557c). Aristotle distinguishes between good forms of government, in which the rulers have the common good of the whole city as their goal, and bad ones, in which they rule for their own private interests. He gives the name “democracy” to one of the bad regimes: that in which the poor rule for the private advantage of their own class (Politics 1279a-b). In the Christian Middle Ages monarchy rather than democracy was the most common form of government, and to many medieval thinkers this seemed perfectly reasonable.[1]

A very interesting read via The Young Fogey and Modestinus.
Read the rest here.

Caution: This a long post and it's not light reading. Also it is heavily Roman Catholic in its reasoning, but many of the points are sound.

Cops and robbers

Collado was one of more than 20 bodega and corner-store owners who independently told the Daily News in its 2009 series "Tainted Justice" that narcotics officers had destroyed their video cameras and then pocketed cash, helped themselves to food and drinks, and walked out with armfuls of merchandise.Several merchants told reporters this week that they were angry - and puzzled: How could U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger close the case without conducting, in their minds, a thorough investigation? 

Read the rest here.
HT: dualstow

Britain: Secret files show concern that Lusitania wreck may hold explosives

Previously secret files reveal government fears that "high explosives" would be found by divers surveying the wreck of RMS Lusitania - discrediting the premise on which the Americans were drawn into the First World War

The sinking of RMS Lusitania was one of the most tragic – and pivotal – events of the First World War. It was also one of the most controversial.

More than 1,000 civilians – including 128 Americans – died when the liner was torpedoed by a German submarine eight miles off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915.

British propagandists exploited the attack, arguing it was an unprovoked assault on a civilian ship, and it helped swing popular opinion in the United States against Germany - paving the way for America's entry into the conflict two years later.

However newly released documents show that in 1982 the government feared attempts to survey the wreck would reveal an illegal stash of ammunition, which almost 70 years on, would discredit the premise on which the Americans were drawn into the war.

Read the rest here.

The end of employer provided health insurance?

By 2020, about 90 percent of American workers who now receive health insurance through their employers will be shifted to government exchanges created by the health law, according to a projection by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm serving the financial industry.

Read the rest here.

The racist(s) in our spiritual home

Forget the LA Clippers and Donald Sterling. We have a brewing scandal involving an overt racist in the Orthodox Church here in the United States. And it is generating a firestorm on the internet. It appears that on Lazarus Saturday a young man with well known connections to the White Supremacist movement was received into the Church without first abjuring this serious sin. Making things even worse, he has been publicly promoting Orthodoxy as the logical home for his fellow wing nuts. Apparently others are claiming to have joined. I must say that I was not surprised to discover that he had come through the Roman Catholic ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, which has a long track record of tolerating extremists, especially anti-Semites. In my experience, a lot of these fringe types quickly get disillusioned with real Orthodoxy and start looking for the "pure faith," leading them into one or another of the Old Calendarist sects, which are often just as racist and anti-Semitic.

This is pretty much burning up the Orthodox blogosphere right now but the essentials can be found on Fr. Oliver Herbal's excellent blog.

Note: This post has been reviewed and slightly edited for tone after a comment suggested, I think fairly, that it was a bit too sensational.

Oklahoma Postpones Double Execution After First Is Botched

McALESTER, Okla. — What was supposed to be the first of two executions here Tuesday night was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to twitch and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “man” and “something’s wrong,” according to witnesses.

The administering doctor intervened and discovered that “the line had blown,” said the director of corrections, Robert Patton, meaning that drugs were no longer flowing into his vein.

At 7:06 p.m., Mr. Patton said, Mr. Lockett died of a heart attack.

Mr. Patton said he had requested a stay of 14 days in the second execution scheduled for Tuesday night, of Charles F. Warner.

It was a chaotic and disastrous step in Oklahoma’s long effort to execute the two men, overcoming their objections that the state would not disclose the source of the drugs being used in a newly tried combination. 

Read the rest here.

Sterling banned for life by the NBA

NEW YORK -- Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA in response to racist comments the league says he made in a recorded conversation.

Commissioner Adam Silver said he would call on the owners to vote to force Sterling to sell the team, which would require approval of three-quarters of the current owners. Sterling has also been fined $2.5 million, and Silver made no effort to hide his outrage over the comments, calling them "deeply disturbing and harmful."

"I fully expect to get the support I need from the other NBA owners to remove him," Silver said.

Read the rest here.

Can war be a good thing?

...Thinkers have long grappled with the relationships among peace, war and strength. Thomas Hobbes wrote his case for strong government, “Leviathan,” as the English Civil War raged around him in the 1640s. German sociologist Norbert Elias’s two-volume treatise, “The Civilizing Process,” published on the eve of World War II, argued that Europe had become a more peaceful place in the five centuries leading to his own day. The difference is that now we have the evidence to prove their case.

Take the long view. The world of the Stone Age, for instance, was a rough place; 10,000 years ago, if someone used force to settle an argument, he or she faced few constraints. Killing was normally on a small scale, in homicides, vendettas and raids, but because populations were tiny, the steady drip of low-level killing took an appalling toll. By many estimates, 10 to 20 percent of all Stone Age humans died at the hands of other people.

This puts the past 100 years in perspective. Since 1914, we have endured world wars, genocides and government-sponsored famines, not to mention civil strife, riots and murders. Altogether, we have killed a staggering 100 million to 200 million of our own kind. But over the century, about 10 billion lives were lived — which means that just 1 to 2 percent of the world’s population died violently. Those lucky enough to be born in the 20th century were on average 10 times less likely to come to a grisly end than those born in the Stone Age. And since 2000, the United Nations tells us, the risk of violent death has fallen even further, to 0.7 percent.

Read the rest here.

Ross Douthat: The Pope's phone call and the real risks of this pontificate

A rather thoughtful piece on the strengths and weaknesses of this Pope's style.

At a New York Gala, the Return of White Tie

As at most fancy dress parties, the role of men at the Costume Institute gala has traditionally been to serve as a neutral backdrop for their partners and dazzling displays of the dressmaker’s art. Somehow that seemed unfair. Why, the question seemed to ask itself, should women (and Marc Jacobs) get to wear all the fun stuff? Beginning this year, they won’t.

Never one to let sartorial injustice go uncorrected, Ms. Wintour instituted a radical change in the dress code for an event celebrating both the inauguration of a rebranded Anna Wintour Costume Center and an exhibition on the great designer Charles James. She stipulated full evening dress and decorations for the men. That, for the benefit of those who grew up under the dark cloud of Casual Friday, means a black tailcoat, a waistcoat, a wing-collared shirt and white bow tie. Let’s not forget the sheer silk socks, patent leather evening pumps, medals and rosettes.

True, the closest most American guys are likely to have come to this archaic get-up is playing Monopoly. That is probably just as well, since it turns out the new sartorial ideal for Costume Institute dandies comes fairly close to that of the game board’s icon, Uncle Milburn Pennybags.

...Go out on the street, Mr. Halevi advised a reporter, and ask a passer-by to describe white tie and tails. “They’ll have no idea,” he said.

His dismal view was shared by others in the business who had little trouble identifying the source of sartorial ignorance: decades of guys dressing as if they plan to mow the lawn. “Think back to a black-and-white photo of Yankee Stadium in 1960, and every man is wearing a suit and a hat,” said Glenn Eisenberg, president of Eisenberg & Eisenberg, providers of formal wear to New Yorkers for 116 years.

Read the rest here.

From Royal Tutor to Orthodox Missionary: The Life of Charles Sydney Gibbes

Charles Sydney Gibbes was an Englishman who served as English tutor to the children of Nicholas II. Inspired by the kindness and spirituality of the Imperial family, he followed them even after their capture by the Bolsheviks. He later underwent a religious conversion, becoming the first English Orthodox abbot, before returning to his homeland to set up an Orthodox church.

Read the rest here.

Archbishop of Wales: We ‘have evolved’ from the Bible’s teaching on divorce, why not gay ‘marriage’?

LLANDUDNO, Wales, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Anglican Church’s “views have evolved and changed” on the nature of marriage “a subject which Jesus pronounced very clearly,” the head of the Anglican Church in Wales said this week; therefore, it can also change its teaching on homosexuality.

In an address to the governing body of the Church in Wales, Dr. Barry Morgan, the Anglican Archbishop of Wales warned of the danger of the Anglican Churches being “seen as homophobic.” Morgan said that the Church’s views “evolve and change” as it responds to the changes in the secular world.

Read the rest here.
Caution...

A quick note about the blogroll

If you use the blogroll in the side bar please don't assume that the date shown for the last update of any given blog is accurate. For unknown reasons some just don't show recent updates or newly added posts. I have noticed that this is most common on blogs that have gone through a period of extended inactivity. I think the blog just sort of falls off the update radar after a while.

Bloody royal relic probably a fake

A sample of blood long thought to belong to French King Louis XVI is probably not authentic, scientists say.

An elaborately decorated gourd was thought to contain a handkerchief that had been dipped in the king's blood after he was killed by guillotine by French revolutionaries in 1793. 

But scientists have now sequenced the genome of the sample and say it is unlikely to belong to the monarch.

Read the rest here.

Americans still overrate homeownership

Some people never learn: Polls show that Americans still view their homes as the best and safest place to invest their hard-earned cash.

Gallup asked Americans this month to choose the best “long-term investment.” Real estate was the most common pick, ahead of mutual funds, bonds and other options. Similarly, Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey asked Americans to assess whether various kinds of assets amounted to a “safe investment with a lot of potential.” As has been the case since before the financial crisis, “buying a home” beat out all the alternatives.

The fact that Americans still financially fetishize homeownership baffles me. Never mind that so many people lost their shirts (among other possessions) in the recent housing bust. Over an even longer horizon, owning a home has not proved to be a terribly lucrative investment either. Don’t take my word for it; ask Robert Shiller, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics who previously became a household name for identifying the housing bubble.

Read the rest here.

Slow Posting

Sorry about the lack of posting. I am bouncing back from a touch of the grippe that has turned into an unpleasant spring cold. Also I will be traveling over the next couple days. Normal blogging should resume Friday. Blessed feast to everyone...

Christ is risen!

Bright Week

The icon for Bright Monday

Bright Week and the forty days of Pascha (Easter) are a period of celebration as we rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In recognition of this we observe certain customs, and relax various disciplines as an expression of this joy. To whit there is no fasting until the second Wednesday following Pascha.  Penitential disciplines of any kind are a no no during Bright Week as we are feasting with the Bridegroom. This is true even in monasteries. While monastics will keep their abstinence from meat, they too will be feasting on fish, cheeses and sweets.

In our church temples the royal doors will be open throughout Bright Week, even during liturgies.

And finally both kneeling and prostrations, whether at home or in church, are prohibited for forty days following Pascha.

Christ is risen!

The Lamentations

Romanian Orthodox

15th Antiphon from Great & Holy Friday

Chanted by Archbishop Job of blessed memory.

Great and Holy Friday

For the love of money

A powerful blog post by Fr. Stephen Freeman (OCA). If this doesn't make you a little uncomfortable you probably didn't read it.

Dramatic last minute pardon

It's a scene repeated in countless Hollywood B movies, only this time it actually happened, in Iran of all places. A terrified young man convicted of murdering a 17 year old boy (the killer was also 17 at the time) is lead from his cell to the public gallows in front of a large crowd. The noose is waiting, and a chair the condemned will be made to stand on, presumably to be kicked out from under him at the right moment. At the last moment an old woman steps forward and slaps him across the face, and then pardons him. The woman is the victim's mother. Under Islamic law only the closest living relation to a murder victim can grant a pardon.

Read the story here.

Quote of the day...

"After fighting the sea and its terrors for thousands of years, man has at last succeeded in conquering the sea, this wildest and most unruly of nature's children. Against the modern iron or steel ship, which is equipped with every measure of protection that science and engineering can devise, the sea is almost powerless. Smaller vessels and sailing craft still feel its fury occasionally, it is true, but the enormous ships of the present day forge their way through the oceans at high speeds.

...The accounts of the dangers of ocean trips in former times, the primitive and unhealthy accommodations, and insufficient catering on board ships of earlier periods are very disquieting to intending travelers. This has now, however, all been done away with so that the modern steamers of today have so many safety devices, and the perfection of the instruments for the navigation of the ship, and the reliability of the charts, the number of light houses, have been brought to so perfect a standard that a voyage on a modern steamer entails less danger than a journey by train.

 -The Scientific American Handbook of Travel (1910 edition) pgs 2-3

Retired army general wants Egypt's St. Catherine's Monastery demolished

A retired army general says he has filed a court case pushing for Egypt's historic Saint Catherine's Monastery to be demolished and its Greek monks deported on the grounds that they pose a threat to national security.

In May 2012, Ahmed Ragai Attiya obtained 71 administrative orders regarding the demolition of the monastery's multiple churches, monk cells, gardens and other places of interest on the grounds, which he claims were all built in 2006 and thus not historic, according to Ihab Ramzy, the monastery's lawyer.

However, in an interview with private channel ONTV on Thursday, Attiya said that he has now used the 71 orders to file an official demolition suit with Ismailiya's Administrative Court against the monastery and 10 of the Egyptian authorities concerned, including the president, ministers of tourism and antiquities and the governor of South Sinai, where Saint Catherine's is located.

In the same ONTV interview, Attiya levelled a host of accusations against the monastery's monks, alleging that they have changed the names of landmarks in the surrounding area and tried to hide an underground water source known as Moses' Well (Oyun Moussa).

He also took issue with them supposedly raising the Greek flag on Egyptian land and turning the site into an area occupied by foreigners, both which he says are a breach of national security and Egyptian sovereignty.

Most of the Saint Catherine's 37 monks are Greek.

Read the rest here.

Lazarus Saturday

Commemoration of the dead at Optina.

Great and Holy Week

Blogging will be light over the next few days and probably nonexistent starting on Great and Holy Thursday.

From the "you can't make this up" file

In Louisiana a state legislator has proposed that the King James version of the Bible be declared the state's official book.

Thousands losing tax refunds to parents’ old debt

A few weeks ago, with no notice, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. Grice had no idea that Uncle Sam had seized her money until some days later, when she got a letter saying that her refund had gone to satisfy an old debt to the government — a very old debt.

When Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them.
 
Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. Why the feds chose to take Mary’s money, rather than her surviving siblings’, is a mystery.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis hints at relaxation of mandatory clerical celibacy

...“I told him that as bishop of Brazil’s largest diocese with 800 church communities and 700,000 faithful I only had 27 priests, which means that our communities can only celebrate the Eucharist twice or three times a year at the most,” Bishop Kräutler said. “The Pope explained that he could not take everything in hand personally from Rome. We local bishops, who are best acquainted with the needs of our faithful, should be corajudos, that is ‘courageous’ in Spanish, and make concrete suggestions,” he explained. A bishop should not act alone, the Pope told Kräutler. He indicated that “regional and national bishops’ conferences should seek and find consensus on reform and we should then bring up our suggestions for reform in Rome,” Kräutler said.

Asked whether he had raised the question of ordaining married men at the audience, Bishop Kräutler replied: “The ordination of viri probati, that is of proven married men who could be ordained to the priesthood, came up when we were discussing the plight of our communities. The Pope himself told me about a diocese in Mexico in which each community had a deacon but many had no priest. There were 300 deacons there who naturally could not celebrate the Eucharist. The question was how things could continue in such a situation.

"It was up to the bishops to make suggestions, the Pope said again.”

Read the rest here.

Note: The source is a publication with a well known liberal bias. Take it for what it's worth.

Report is harshly critical of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — From the 73-story skyscraper that just broke ground downtown (the tallest in the West), to the blizzard of office, shopping and apartment complexes rising from there to the Pacific, construction is bustling in Los Angeles. Home prices are up, and the foreclosure rate is declining. Crime is down. There is a new mayor in City Hall. In many ways, Los Angeles, like many once-beleaguered cities across the nation, seems on the upswing.

Yet at this presumed moment of promise and potential, Los Angeles is enduring a series of blows that have challenged its self-esteem and even its long-term stability. Some appear more symbolic, like the departure of “The Tonight Show” for New York, followed by the plaintive appeal by Mayor Eric M. Garcetti that CBS move “The Late Show” to Los Angeles when David Letterman retires next year. Others are beyond its control, such as the disconcerting wave of earthquakes that have rumbled the region in recent weeks, reminding residents of how unprepared Southern California is for a cataclysmic temblor.

Read the rest here.

Good news (so far)

Dad is out of surgery and resting under sedation in the critical care unit. Of course this is just the beginning. There will be at least a week in the hospital followed by another week in a cardiac rehab facility. As always I am deeply grateful for the many prayers and expressions of concern posted in comments and sent by email.

It never rains but it pours

Only a month after the passing of my step-father, my dad is going under the knife tomorrow for urgent double bypass and heart valve replacement surgery. At 78 there are obviously significant risks. Yet again, I beg for your prayers.

Israel threatens Palestinians if they pursue appeals to the UN

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke his silence on the collapsing peace talks Sunday by blaming Palestinian leaders for the current crisis and threatening retaliatory steps to punish the Palestinians.

In remarks at his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that just as the parties were nearing an agreement last week to extend the U.S.-brokered negotiations through the end of 2014, the Palestinian leaders announced their decision to sign on to 15 treaties and conventions under the auspices of the United Nations. 

Read the rest here.

Sad News

One of the most beautiful churches in Canada, St. Elias The Prophet (Ukrainian Greek Rite Catholic) was completely destroyed by fire yesterday. Please keep the parishioners in your prayers.

The Archperson of Canterbury has gravely offended the Anglican left

The Cathedral is not amused. See here and here.

Patriarch Kirill condemns transgenderism

In a meeting with Russian business leaders, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church criticized transgenderism.

“The fact that marriage is considered to be between a man and a woman and that gender choice is not an intellectual choice, but God’s choice is being disputed,” said Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow, according to an Interfax news agency report. 

“Probably, some sick fantasy exists,” he added. “Of course, it can be said that this is a clinical case. And probably, this will be the most reasonable reaction. But this clinical case is protected by law in some countries. And children are taught this and are told: you should choose yourself whether you are a boy or a girl.” 

Source

If the allegedly forthcoming Great and Holy Council wants to do something extremely useful, how about anathematizing the modern heresy of pansexualism from which all sorts of bizarre errors, like female ordination and homosexual marriage, flow.

Senate Panel Votes to Reveal CIA Torture and Abuse

WASHINGTON — The public will soon get its first look at a voluminous report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation practices during the George W. Bush administration, after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Thursday to declassify key sections of it.

“The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the committee, said in a written statement after the vote.

It continued, “This is not what Americans do.”

The committee voted to declassify the report’s executive summary and conclusions — more than 480 of its 6,200 pages. The next step is President Obama’s approval. Mr. Obama, who opposed the C.I.A. program as a presidential candidate and discontinued it once he took office in 2009, has said he wants the findings of the report made public.

Read the rest here.

David Letterman announces plans to retire

He will be stepping down sometime in 2015.

Talk of Freeing Spy for Israel Divides Jews in U.S.

WASHINGTON — Each year, just before Passover, Malcolm Hoenlein writes a letter to President Obama, requesting that he grant clemency to Jonathan J. Pollard, the American sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for passing suitcases stuffed with classified documents to Israel.

This week, with his goal suddenly within reach, Mr. Hoenlein, the leader of an umbrella group of American Jewish organizations, has held off on sending the letter. He is waiting to see whether Mr. Obama will release Mr. Pollard as part of a prisoner exchange with Israel that would extend peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Even now, nearly three decades later, Mr. Pollard’s case bedevils American Jews. While more and more of them believe the time to release him is long past — he spied for an ally, not an enemy, they say, and has expressed remorse — they are deeply divided over whether he should be used as a chit in a diplomatic transaction with Israel.

Read the rest here.

Mozilla CEO is sacked for his opposition to homosexual marriage

A little over a week after becoming chief executive of Mozilla, Brendan Eich is stepping down after an intense debate over his belief that gays should not be allowed to marry.

After his appointment as the company’s new chief, Mr. Eich came under heavy fire from employees and the public for making a $1,000 contribution in 2008 to support a ban on gay marriage in California under Proposition 8.

Read the rest here.

San Francisco on the Eve of the Great Earthquake and Fire

A drive down a major street in San Francisco April 16th 1906. Fantastic film footage. I am guessing the camera was mounted on the front of trolley car. Ignore the title claiming 1900. It's wrong.

Glenn Beck sued for defamation

On a mid-April day last year, Glenn Beck was in a full lather. Less than one week had passed since a pair of bombs had exploded at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds more. The FBI had just identified the Tsarnaev brothers as primary suspects behind the attack. But to Beck, cloaked in a gray button-down and a sheen of indignance, this wasn’t enough.

In attendance at the marathon had been a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian student named Abdulrahman Alharbi. He was on a full ride to study at the nearby New England School of English. He’d been injured at the marathon, later questioned by police, and ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.

Beck, however, had suspicions. The radio host urged the U.S. government to release information on Alharbi or Beck would “expose” him. “Let me send this message very clear,” said Beck, who left Fox News in 2011. ”We know who this Saudi national is. … We know who this man is and, listen to me carefully, we know he is a very bad, bad, bad man.”

Beck continued days later: “While the media continues to look at what the causes were [behind] these two guys, there are, at this hour, three people involved,” he said, alleging the U.S. government had “tagged” Alharbi as a “proven terrorist.”

The broadcaster eventually called Alharbi an al Qaeda “control agent” and the “money man” behind the attacks. “You know who the Saudi is?” Beck asked. “He’s the money man. He’s the guy who paid for it.”

“Is this speculation or are you reporting something?” a co-host asked.

Beck ignored the question. “He’s the money man.”

Read the rest here.

GOP readies a tough election year budget

WASHINGTON — Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Tuesday will lay out a tough, election-year budget that purports to come into balance by 2024, in large part through steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and the full repeal of President Obama’s health care law, just as millions begin to see its benefits.

But even with those cuts, Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is counting on a boost of economic growth to balance the budget, a boost he says will be gained by reducing the deficit. Many economists believe such dramatic spending cuts — especially those affecting the poor — would have the opposite effect, slowing the economy and lowering tax receipts.

Read the rest here.

Israel agrees to peace talks with Palestinians, if US releases spy

JERUSALEM — Officials involved in the fraught Israeli-Palestinian peace talks said on Tuesday that an agreement was near on extending the negotiations through 2015 in exchange for the release of Jonathan J. Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. The agreement would also include the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including citizens of Israel, and a partial freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.

Read the rest here.

What exactly is a partial freeze on settlements? How does one partially stop stealing what does not belong to them?

France sees a conservative backlash

PARIS — Steeped in conservative rage and tasting of grass roots, a political backlash has traditional politicians and the news media asking the once-unthinkable: Is le tea party brewing in France?

If it were, it would be populated by the likes of Catherine Mas-Mezeran, a Parisian mother of three who wrinkles her nose at the mention of President François Hollande. She calls him “the Socialist,” which, technically, he is. But if President Obama had the birthers, Hollande now has the baptismists.

Read the rest here.

Damian Thompson: Pope Approves "Ecumenical Missal" for English Language Catholics...

Complete with a Eucharistic Rite that will be uniform among most of the English speaking Christian denominations with a liturgical tradition.  Read the story here.

(Yes, for the better part of a minute to a minute and half my reaction was "WHAT THE BLEEEEP!" Then I remembered the calendar has already shifted over in England... I tip my hat to Mr. Thompson. This one is going to be hard to top.)

Is the stock market rigged?

If you have to ask that question then you need to stay very far away from investment securities until you have done a lot of research.

Rumor: Former Met Jonah released to ROCOR

No sources are cited but Joseph over at Byzantine Texas is well connected and doesn't have a track record of posting inaccurate reports. Assuming this is true, I can't say I am surprised.

The End of an Era

Metropolitan Philip is laid to rest. During his long tenure as the head of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese he established his place as one of the most important, and controversial, figures in the history of American Orthodoxy. May his memory be eternal!

Met. Hilarion in a frank interview on the Ukraine

Read it here. Please leave comments there.

Italy's liberal Catholic clergy are coming out of the closet

...Most of all, the new pope’s words and deeds have emboldened liberal Italian priests to push boundaries they never would have under Benedict XVI.

From his perch at the millennia-old Sant’Alessandro parish nestled high above the olive groves of Tuscany, for instance, the Rev. Giorgio Mazzanti has long baptized the children of unmarried parents and offers the Eucharist to divorced worshipers. But he recently set a new standard for progressive clerics here by authorizing local actors to stage a production of “Bent,” the 1979 Martin Sherman play about the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany.

The four sold-out shows — performed in a hall that shares a common wall with this village’s ancient Catholic church — depicted two men who fall in love at the Dachau concentration camp. At one point, the two male leads kiss.

“It seemed to me to be the right thing to do, to give space to this issue now,” said Mazzanti, 66, the longtime pastor at Sant’Alessandro. “The atmosphere created by our new pope has, in a sense, made it official for us to have a more open door.”

Read the rest here.

In India a revolt against a culture of political privelege

NEW DELHI — A prominent Indian lawyer was stuck in traffic for nearly two hours, waiting for dozens of VIP motorcades to sail by on their way to a politician’s funeral. If he ever got out of the jam, Harish Salve vowed, he would do something about a phenomenon that has spun out of control.

In India these days, everybody is a VIP (or, if you’re lucky, a VVIP).

Politicians and bureaucrats have privileges that civil servants in other countries can only dream of: private lounges and ticket counters at railways and airports and seats in roped-off sections at cricket matches and concerts. Political figures travel in motorcades of dozens of vehicles. For those who get in scrapes with the law — a surprisingly high number — there are even VIP jail cells.

Read the rest here.

Ask me again why I am a monarchist

These are the people who will choose the next Congress and the next President of the United States.

Jimmy Carter slams Catholic (and by extention Orthodox) rejection of female ordination

“The fact that the Catholic Church, for instance, prohibits women from serving as priests or even deacons gives a kind of a permission to male people all over the world, that well, if God thinks that women are inferior, I’ll treat them as inferiors,” said Carter. “If she’s my wife, I can abuse her with impunity, or if I'm an employer, I can pay my female employees less salary.” 

From here.

Robinson and Spong - Birds of a feather

An unnecessarily nuanced observation about Mr. Robinson and his theological relationship to Mr. Spong, followed by an even more pointless expenditure of words in the comments section. They are both apostate hierarchs in an apostate church. Everything beyond that is just details.

HT: T-19

Did Nixon try to cover up My Lai?

...The documents, mostly hand-written notes from Nixon's meetings with his chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, lead some historians to conclude that President Richard Nixon was behind the attempt to sabotage the My Lai court-martial trials and cover up what was becoming a public-relations disaster for his administration.

One document, scribbled by Haldeman during his Dec. 1, 1969, meeting with Nixon, reads like a threatening to-do list under the headline "Task force - My Lai." Haldeman wrote "dirty tricks" (with the clarification that those tricks be "not too high a level") and "discredit one witness," in order to "keep working on the problem."

Read the rest here.

Are the super wealthy the enemy?

Anti-Gnostic has an interesting and provocative post up suggesting the answer may be 'yes.' I have long seen banks, or at least the really large ones, as entities that do far more harm than good and are often little more than criminal cartels that have figured out how to game the system. But banks are usually run by the wealthy, on behalf of the very wealthy. Follow the money...

Liturgy for the Sunday of the Holy Cross

Vigil for the Adoration of the Precious and Life Giving Cross

Quote of the day...

Religion is founded on a notion that it has teachings or scriptures from a divine (supernatural) source, and this source is provides insights into ultimate truths which can not be discerned by mere mortals investigating nature.

Any religious institution which believes it needs to modernise its beliefs is admitting that its beliefs have never had such a divine source - they are man-made and, like all man-made things, need to be modernised periodically. Consequently, that institution no longer represents a spiritual belief system, but is simply a political organisation [sic] which pretends to be founded on spiritual beliefs.

That pretty much sums up the C of E.

From here.
Via MCJ

Adoration of the Holy and Life Giving Cross

O Lord, save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians, over their adversaries. And by virtue of Your Cross preserve Your habitation!

Islamic law is adopted by British legal chiefs

Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills. 

Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether. 

The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs. 

Read the rest here.

Britain's cultural suicide continues apace.

Unwilling to Allow His Wife a Divorce, He Marries Another

LAS VEGAS — The wedding was a modest affair, held in a reception hall overlooking an artificial lake tucked behind a suburban strip. But just minutes after it ended, the bride and groom hurriedly scurried past dozens of protesters here who were chanting “Bigamist!” and “Shame on you!”

One of the wedding guests on Thursday evening glared at the demonstrators, repeatedly hissing: “Mazel tov. Mazel tov. Mazel tov.” The bride, in a lace and sequin floor-length gown, grasped the hand of her husband and looked at the crowd in silence.

Meir Kin, the new husband, has been divorced for more than seven years, under California’s civil law. But he has refused to give his previous wife the document known as a “get,” as required by Orthodox Jewish law to end a marriage. In the eyes of religious authorities, the woman he married in 2000 is what is called an agunah — Hebrew for chained wife. Without the get, the woman, Lonna Kin, is forbidden under Jewish law to remarry.

Read the rest here.

Kenya legalises polygamy without wife's consent

Nairobi (AFP) - Kenya's parliament has passed a bill allowing men to marry as many women as they want, prompting a furious backlash from female lawmakers who stormed out, reports said Friday.

The bill, which amended existing marriage legislation, was passed late on Thursday to formalise customary law about marrying more than one person.

The proposed bill had initially given a wife the right to veto the husband's choice, but male members of parliament overcame party divisions to push through a text that dropped this clause.

"When you marry an African woman, she must know the second one is on the way, and a third wife... this is Africa," MP Junet Mohammed told the house, according to Nairobi's Capital FM.

Read the rest here.

A comment and a reply

A comment recently added to an old thread...

lannes said...

There are others less cowardly than you who will publish my comment about same-sex marriage.

lannes
I think maybe you should take a careful look at the guidelines for commenting that I have long had linked in the sidebar of the blog. Your commentary of late has become decidedly uncivil. I have no issues with strong opinions, or with criticism. But I do have limits. If you are just coming here to be obnoxious or provoke an internet fight, perhaps you should start your own blog. That's not what this one is for.

Here is the bottom line though. My blog = my house = my rules. When you comment here, you are doing so as a guest. Comport yourself accordingly or you will be asked not to return. For now you are welcome to continue to comment. But tone it down.

Under the mercy
John

Pope Francis launches fierce attack on Mafia

Pope Francis has launched a stinging attack on the mafia, warning gangsters that they will go to hell unless they repent and stop doing evil. "Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can't bring it with you to your next life. Repent," he said.

He was speaking at a prayer vigil for relatives of those killed by the mafia.

Read the rest here.

Fred Reed on the Crimea

Now, about this Crimea thing: What I figure is, the top part of the Feddle Gummint got dropped on its head when it was little, and the rest is just asleep, or might as well be. We look to be ruled by a bus-station of dumb-ass rich brats in a constant state of martial priapism. I can’t understand it. Out of three hundred million Americans, and lots of them went to school and can pretty much read, we get a slick minor pol out of Chicago for President and Pickle-Boy Kerry for Secretary of State, God knows why. Before that, we had Hillary, former First Housewife. Even god couldn’t explain that. And they throw their weight around just like they had some.

Now Obama’s threatening Russia about the Crimea. He may know where it is. I admit the possibility. We live in a strange world, and unexpected things can happen. What I can’t see is, why he thinks the Ukraine is Washington’s business. Last I heard, the Crimea was hung off into the Black Sea by the Isthmus of Perekop, like a hornet’s nest from a peach tree.

Why do we care about it? I guess if it gets to be part of Russia, Arkansas is next to go.

Read the rest here.

Usual caveat: Approach at your own risk. Brother Fred does not mince words or particularly care who he offends.

Fred Phelps has died

Notorious Westboro cult leader Fred Phelps has died at 84. No one should celebrate another persons death, nor call down Divine Judgment, lest that judgement be applied to ourselves. But if anyone is searching for tears at his passing, I don't know where to suggest looking. I think even the Klan had harsh words for the man. For my part, I will confine myself to the venerable prayer uttered by judges when pronouncing death sentences. May God have mercy upon his soul.

Memory Eternal: Metropolitan Philip

A (sometimes controversial) giant in the history of American Orthodoxy has passed. May his memory be eternal!

WWI bomb kills 2 workers in Flanders Fields

YPRES, Belgium — An armament from World War I has exploded at an industrial site in the former Flanders battlegrounds, killing two construction workers and injuring two more.

Johan Lescrauwaert of the Ypres prosecutor’s office said a shell or grenade from the 1914-1918 war exploded near the workers. The circumstances were unclear because there was apparently no digging at the site, the usual cause of such accidents, he told VRT network.

Read the rest here.

A Roman Catholic critique of the Orthodox discipline pertaining to divorce and remarriage

Divorce and Remarriage, Oikonomia, and the peril of following the Greeks 

Generally forgotten, or at least downplayed, when discussing the myriad issues which divide Rome from Orthodoxy, and firmly ignored by the "our only real difference is the Papacy" crowd, is the reality that restoration of communion with Rome would require us to excommunicate a sizable percentage of Orthodox Christians. Many thanks to Fr. Dylan for pointedly thrusting this issue back into view.

News from Greece

Via the excellent blog Mystagogy...

• Two of the innumerable schismatic Old Calendarist groups are moving towards unity.
• The Holy Synod of Greece has reiterated its longstanding condemnation of Free Masonry.

Consecration of the Altar and Chapel of St. Michael the Archangel at Optina

700 Years ago today; Jacques de Molay is burned at the stake

The bloody suppression of the Knights Templar makes for fascinating reading.

HT: TEF

Fred Reed: Education then and now

Despite much wringing of teeth and gnashing of hands about the decline in schooling in the United States, I have seen very little concrete comparison between then and now, whatever one means by “then.” In my small way, as a mere anecdote in a sea of troubles, I hereby offer an actual comparison. Permit me to preview the result: Much of the United States has sunk to the level of the lower ranks of the Third World.

As an example of documented current practice in urban schools—I have seen similar from Detroit, Chicago, and Mississippi—here are a few emails sent to the New York Post by students of Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers. These have been posted by various horrified writers, but I repeat them here in case the reader hasn’t seen them. They concern the students’ support for something called “Blended Learning,” in which one watches a video, answers a few questions, and gets credit. The Post had written a piece critical of same, putting the students into an uproar.

A junior wrote: “What do you get of giving false accusations im one of the students that has blended learning I had a course of English and I passed and and it helped a lot you’re a reported your support to get truth information other than starting rumors . . .”

Right out of Milton, that.

Read the rest here.

As usual, approach at your own risk. Brother Fred pulls no punches and doesn't care who is offended.

Consecration of a church and a bishop

On the Feast of St. Gregory Palamas, the parish church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a new bishop are consecrated.

Feast of St. Patrick Enlightener of Ireland

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my fellow Irish in blood and spirit.

An assassin still divides 100 years on

(Reuters) - The woman paused before a photograph of a young man with dark eyes and a tightly trimmed moustache.

"That's that Serb terrorist those Chetniks (Serb nationalists) are praising," she said to a journalist inspecting the image. "He started that war. They started all the wars."

Gavrilo Princip stared down from the outer wall of a museum at the riverside spot in Sarajevo where on a summer's morning in 1914 he opened fire on the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, lit the fuse for World War One, turning out the lights on an age of European peace and progress.

Empires crumbled and more than 10 million soldiers died. The world order was rewritten. Yet 100 years on, in Princip's native Bosnia, time, in many ways, has stood still.

A hero to some, a harbinger of destruction to others, the assassin is being fought over anew as Sarajevo prepares to mark the June 28 centenary of his act.

Read the rest here.

Notorious cult leader Fred Phelps reportedly near death

The estranged son of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church said his father is "on the edge of death."

Fred Phelps Sr. became famous for organizing picket lines of brightly-colored signs carrying hateful messages against tolerance during the funerals of military personnel and famous figures. His actions led to at least two federal and several state laws restricting protests during military funerals.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Nathan Phelps, who has been estranged from his father for 30 years, said the senior Phelps was dying in hospice care in Topeka, Kan., and that he had been excommunicated from his own church in August of 2013.

"I'm not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to his god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made," Nathan Phelps wrote.

Read the rest here.

Crimea votes to join Russia

In a referendum widely dismissed as a farce by the international community, residents of the Crimea have allegedly voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The semi-autonomous province of Ukraine has been under Russian military occupation since February 26th.

Caution: SPAM Alert

Over the last week or so I have received a number of indications that my email account may have been compromised and someone has gotten hold of my email address book. If you receive strange email, even if it appears to be from me, please treat it with some caution. Especially if it has any links or attachments.

God's Traitors - The Protestant Inquisition in Elizabethan England

Post-Reformation England was jittery with fears of a Catholic revival. Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster and priest-hunter at the court of Elizabeth I, regarded Jesuits as a sinister sect involved in popish attempts to dethrone his patron-monarch. Spain’s ill-fated attack on England in 1588 intensified Walsingham’s clampdown on perceived traitors. In the paranoid post-Armada years, Jesuits and other “Romish” suspects were smoked out of hiding and publicly executed.

Historian Jessie Childs won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography with her first book, Henry VIII’s Last Victim. Now she has written a superb account of cloak-and-dagger religious intrigue in Tudor England. God’s Traitors describes a John le Carré-like world of political double-dealing and “spiery” (as the Elizabethans called it). This was a time when moles were planted in Catholic seminaries abroad and Elizabethan diplomacy created a looking-glass war in which priest was turned against priest, informant against informant.

The brutal and insistent Protestant dogma under Elizabeth I had much in common with the anti-Protestant Inquisition in Spain. The Spanish courts of inquiry controlled by Philip II, like the Tudor courts of inquiry controlled by his arch-enemy Elizabeth I, extracted confessions by means of the rack or burning tongs. Its methods of intimidation and control were designed above all to spread fear and suspicion.

Read the rest here.
HT: T-19

Russian troops seize gas plant in Ukraine

Russian troops have seized a natural gas plant inside Ukraine hours after Moscow's ambassador vetoed a League of Nations... er I meant UN resolution condemning Sunday's referendum in the Crimea as illegitimate and illegal. Russia's was the only dissenting vote.

Rethinking Capital Punishment

The year was 1573, and 19-year-old Frantz Schmidt was beheading stray dogs in his back yard. He was not a troubled teenager in need of psychological attention. Frantz was practicing for his life's calling.

Unlike teens today, Frantz didn't have to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. Male teens followed in their fathers' footsteps. For Frantz, that meant becoming an executioner. It also meant having to live with enormous social stigma.

Despite the shame, Frantz, a Lutheran, believed his executioner's role was divinely sanctioned. Martin Luther wrote that "the hand that wields the sword and strangles is … no longer man's hand but God's." Executioners, he believed, are "very useful and even merciful," since they stop villains and deter crime. Historian Joel Harrington (The Faithful Executioner, Macmillan, 2013) called Luther's comment "a celebrity endorsement for the profession." If there is a lack of hangmen and you are qualified, Luther urged, apply for the job.

Luther believed that civic order is divinely ordained. The cities of Frantz's native Bavaria had been plagued by bandits, feuds between noble houses, and roving knights who supported themselves by pillaging. Bavaria needed a justice system to curb such violence and discourage vengeance and vendettas.

Nevertheless, Luther's endorsement was sharply at odds with the teachings of the early church Fathers. They didn't oppose the state's use of capital punishment. They didn't even address that question, since Christianity was still a countercultural minority with an ethic for "resident aliens."

 But as Ron Sider noted in The Early Church on Killing (Baker Academic, 2012), those Fathers who discussed capital punishment found it unthinkable that a follower of Christ could take a life, even as part of a judicial sentence. Lactantius said that a Christian should not even accuse someone of a capital crime, "because it makes no difference whether you put someone to death by word or by sword since it is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited." Origen, recognizing that capital punishment had a place under the Old Covenant, drew a stark contrast between the law of Moses and the law of Christ. Christians, he said, cannot "condemn [someone] to be burned or stoned." Tertullian asked whether a Christian could be a civil magistrate and concluded that believers must avoid "sitting in judgment on someone's life."

Read the rest here.

Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine?

There is growing alarm as Russian troops mass on Ukraine's border.

More commentary on the Great and Holy Council

An interesting article from First Things and a post from Dr. Adam DeVille over at Red River Orthodox soliciting comments on what people would like to see come out of the Council. I tried repeatedly to post a comment on the latter, but it would not go through.

HT: Byzantine Texas for the First Things article

A pleasant thought...

)
We are halfway through the second week of Lent after what for many has been a tough winter. But summer is coming!

Some Roman Catholic commentary on our forthcoming Great and Holy Council

Well worth a read with some good points though there are areas of respectful disagreement obviously.

Louisiana admits wrongful conviction of man who spent 30 years on death row

Ooops. Sorry about that chief. No hard feelings?