“The Power of Self-Delusion”, Mark Crutcher, September 3, 2010

Warfront With Jihadistan: Obama’s Speech

The teleprompter in chief

Tuesday evening, the Whiner-in-Chief gave yet another prime time speech, this time about ending the war in Iraq. Or was it about the war in Afghanistan? Or the “Bush” economy and joblessness? Whatever the point, Obama declared that combat operations in Iraq are “over” and that it was time to “turn the page” on the war.

Obama did give a strong tribute to U.S. troops, saying that they had “completed every mission they were given. They defeated a regime that had terrorized its people.” Indeed they did, no thanks to Obama. Of course, if removing a terrorist regime is a good thing, then why did Obama oppose doing so? Perhaps Obama could ask the Kuwaitis about how the old Iraqi regime had terrorized people outside of Iraq, as well.

Ignoring the surge that turned the war around, Obama said of his predecessor, “[N]o one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.” Too bad that can’t be said of Obama himself. He continued, “As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.” While he’s right that there are patriots who honestly opposed the war from the outset, Obama skipped over how the political talking points of congressional Leftists who opposed the war — after initially supporting it — undermined our mission and emboldened our enemies.

We suppose it’s no wonder that he ignored the surge. After all, in 2007, he pontificated, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” Later that year, he said of the surge, “The president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he’s been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed.”

Now that it has succeeded, Obama naturally wouldn’t be eager to remind everyone of his position then. The same can be said for his refusal to even mention Saddam Hussein in his speech. One can only wonder, therefore, whether Obama believes the world is a better place — and the U.S. more secure — without the brutal tyrant.

Moving on to Afghanistan, Obama seemed to hedge a bit on his July 2011 withdrawal timeline, saying, “The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground.” He also spoke of his own Afghan troop surge, saying, “I have ordered the deployment of additional troops who … are fighting to break the Taliban’s momentum. As with the surge in Iraq, these forces will be in place for a limited time.” Limited time being the goal, of course.

“Turning the page,” then, Obama dispensed with national security in his speech about national security and moved into campaign mode on his economic agenda, though he tied it together with crocodile tears about the cost of the wars. Quite rich coming from someone whose one-year “stimulus” plan cost more than seven years of war in Iraq. If he wants us to “turn the page” to his economic policy, we’ll have a chance to give a scathing review of that whole book on Nov. 2.

http://patriotpost.us/edition/2010/09/03/digest/

Yid With Lid: In a meeting with the Washington Times Editorial Board, White House Counter-Terror Adviser John Brennan was forced to contradict his contention that Jihad had nothing to with violence and immediately stormed out of the office.

Brennan caused a stir at the end of May when he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies that we should not describe the terrorists in religious terms. During his speech Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms.”

By Karna Swanson, Zenit News Agency , 9/3/2010

Father Szymczak explained the fullness of the encyclicals’ teaching within the teaching of the Church concerning Spousal love as the gift of self. “Only through this gift of self does a man develop as a man, and a woman develop as a woman. When a person becomes a gift of self, he or she enriches himself or herself. Additionally, the one who gives himself as a gift to another, matures”.

http://catholicexchange.com/2010/09/03/134002/print/

By George Weigel, Catholic Exchange, September 3, 2010

Thirty years ago, on Aug. 31, 1980, an electrician named Lech Walesa signed the Gdansk Accords, ending a two-week-old strike at that Hanseatic city’s Lenin Shipyards. Walesa signed with a giant souvenir pen featuring a portrait of Pope John Paul II. The choice of pen was not, as Marxists might have said, an accident. Neither was the distinctive revolution that unfolded in the wake of the Gdansk Accords, which were forged over two weeks of high drama on Poland’s Baltic coast.

Gdańsk Shipyard, strike, August 1980. Signing the August Agreements by the Lech Wałęsa. Communist Deputy Prime Minister, Mieczysław Jagielski, is sitting next to Wałęsa. Foto Erazm Ciołek.

The Accords were the pivot between John Paul’s Polish pilgrimage of June 1979 and the rise of the “Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity” in September 1980.

Fourteen months before the strike, John Paul II had ignited a revolution of conscience that had inspired countless numbers of people to “live in the truth,” to live “as if” they were free—as the period’s mottoes had it. “Living in the truth” gave a special texture to the Gdansk Accords, which in turn led to the unique social and political phenomenon that was Solidarity.

There had been labor unrest in Poland in 1953, 1956, 1968, 1970, and 1976. In each instance, the Polish communist regime pacified the workers (in whose name these Marxists putatively ruled) by a combination of divide-and-conquer tactics, economics bribes (usually involving food prices), and brutality.

1980 was different, and the difference that made 1980 different was the John Paul II difference—a moral difference.

I try to capture that difference in “The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy,” which Doubleday will publish on Sept. 14:

“[This] moral difference showed itself almost immediately as the Gdansk shipyard strike broke out on Aug. 14, 1980.  It was an occupation strike, in which the workers took over the entire shipyard complex, thus creating an oasis of free space in the totalitarian system. Rigorous discipline was maintained, aided by an absolute ban on alcohol in the yards. Religious seriousness was manifest, publicly evident in open-air Masses and confessions. Perhaps most crucially from the point of view of what followed, the workers, having been tutored by John Paul II in the larger meaning of their dignity as men and women, refused to settle for the economic concessions the regime quickly offered.

“Thus on the night of Aug. 16-17, the Inter-Factory Strike Committee [MKS] was established to publish a broader set of demands, including the establishment of independent, self-governing trade unions…The famous ’21 Points’ agreed upon by the MKS presidium…emphasized economic change while including a full menu of basic human rights, specifically mentioning, among others, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and an end to discrimination against religious believers ‘of all faiths’ in terms of access to the media. The goals of dissent had been enlarged and deepened; as one worker-poet would put it a few months later, ‘The times are past/when they closed our mouths/with sausage.’”

Solidarity’s tumultuous path over the next nine years paved the way for the Revolution of 1989, the (largely nonviolent) collapse of European communism, and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. There were endless arguments as Walesa and the Solidarity leadership wrestled with the inevitable turbulence of a new trade union that was also a mass social movement and a de facto political opposition—in a society where the communist party and the state apparatus it controlled tried to occupy every available inch of social space. That the Catholic Church in Poland had tenaciously maintained its independence for 35 years in this suffocating social and political environment helped make Solidarity possible; the Church’s independence also helped provide a protected space in which the movement could continue after Solidarity-the-trade-union was dissolved, under the martial law imposed on Poland on Dec. 13, 1981.

During its epic period, Solidarity was a unique blend of moral and intellectual conviction, economic good sense, political shrewdness, and personal courage, all of which were shaped by the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and the personal witness of John Paul II. Its example should inspire free people, and those who aspire to freedom, everywhere.



Jesus gave the following promise to Saint Margaret Mary for souls devoted to His most Sacred Heart:

“I promise you, in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the first Friday for nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they shall not die in My disgrace nor without receiving the sacraments; My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in that last moment.”

http://stclementshrine.org/index.php?id=2

.…Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco: the family is a “school of humanity and faith.” . . . One learns to love by being loved, one learns to trust in oneself, one discovers “the beauty of the different ages,” he said. And in the family, one sees firsthand the values of acceptance, humility, reliability and the “miraculous power of forgiveness given and received, of the ability to endure.”…

SOURCE: Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Courageous Priest

http://www.courageouspriest.com/cardinal-angelo-bagnasco

ENTIRE ARTICLE BELOW.

SOURCE: Courageous Priest

ROME, Italy (Zenit.org) – A culture without children and without elderly people is seriously warped and unable to function, says the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco Making His Point

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa, made this affirmation Sunday when he celebrated the solemnity of the Madonna della Guardia with a Mass at the shrine of Liguria at the top of Mount Figogna.

The prelate reflected on the beauty of fidelity and on the family as the “womb of life.”

Speaking of Italy’s negative birthrate (-0.047%), the cardinal asserted that “demographic balance is not only necessary for the physical survival of a community — which without children has no future — but is also a condition for that alliance between generations that is essential for a normal democratic dialectic.”

He said the Church’s long-time assertion that a demographic crisis points to a “serious cultural catastrophe” is because of this.

A lack of children creates not only a bleak future, the cardinal reflected, but also a “lack of balance between generations” and an “educational poverty.”

“Boys and girls and young people, in fact, constrain us to engage in discussions, make us come out of ourselves, we who, because of age and feebleness, tend to fall back on our own immediate needs,” the cardinal proposed. “It is not only parents that, having children, must change their points of view and styles, they must plan and organize themselves in relation to the children in their various ages.”

“A society without babies and children,” he continued, “just as a society without the elderly, is seriously mutilated and unable to function.”

Cultural shift

Cardinal Bagnasco observed that the issue of falling birthrates is linked to cultural values.

“If we look at the sacred image of Our Lady with the Child we do not have to make an effort to imagine the life of Nazareth: they lived in absolute simplicity, in the joyful toil of daily work, at home and in the carpenter’s shop; they lived the life of the village, relationships with their next door neighbors, participation in worship, the presence of God,” he reflected.

“Everything makes one think of a profound and positive adherence to life as a gift that is given and which is not our absolute property,” the cardinal said. “It makes one perceive the awareness of being within the history of generations, of a tradition that does not coerce but helps. In a word, we feel the breath of hope.”

On the contrary, Cardinal Bagnasco contended, in the cultural climate of today, couples and families seem to collapse before “the blows of life and of relationships.”

“The efforts of every day seem tedious and without meaning, hence unbearable,” he considered. “The future loses value and polish, the present is emphasized for what it promises of immediate satisfaction.”

In this context, the prelate said, “fidelity is understood as something repetitive, tedious, deprived of thrills.”

But fidelity is the condition of growth, Cardinal Bagnasco affirmed. Love in family life is transformed over time: “from the initial effervescence, it changes into something more profound and rooted, strengthened by joys and efforts.”

“In this growth, the daily repetition of so many little and great duties, of so many actions that seem grey, is like the tranquil and continuous rain that bathes the earth and fertilizes it,” he suggested. “It is not the storm of great passions and impetuous transports that make one grow or that measure the substance of love, but daily and humble fidelity in the sign of love.”

Learning to live

The Italian prelate affirmed that the family is a “school of humanity and faith.”

One learns to love by being loved, one learns to trust in oneself, one discovers “the beauty of the different ages,” he said. And in the family, one sees firsthand the values of acceptance, humility, reliability and the “miraculous power of forgiveness given and received, of the ability to endure.”

In the family there is also “prayer made together every day, participation in Sunday Mass, liturgical festivities with their traditions, pilgrimages to shrines, sacred images in the home,” the cardinal added. Every word is a lesson of faith, a “moment of that school that will leave a sign in the heart.”

“Can a mother turn away from the gaze of her children?” Cardinal Bagnasco reflected. “We know it is impossible, and this is sufficient to look ahead with trust.”

http://www.courageouspriest.com/cardinal-angelo-bagnasco

By Roger Hedgecock, Human Events, 09/03/2010

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38828

ENTIRE ARTICLE FOUND BELOW.

…The rejection of liberal culture has begun; the rejection of liberal politics will follow . . . The Obamacare debate awakened what Nixon called the “Silent Majority.” . . . the Tea Party gatherings starting in the summer of 2009 galvanized American grassroots opposition. Liberal attempts to scold, denigrate, and marginalize this movement backfired….

For decades, liberals won the culture wars and, consequently most of the elections that reshaped America. More than politics is changing in this crossroads year of 2010—Americans are reasserting traditional culture. You won’t read or see it in the mainstream media, but this fact is driving the political story.

The Republican Party is not resurgent (although it may be the beneficiary); America is resurgent.

Generations of Americans have never known any culture except the progressive, politically correct left.

Beginning in the 1960s, God was driven out of American public life because liberals said the Constitution demanded a separation of church and state.

Planned Parenthood was part of a campaign that convinced many Americans that killing unborn babies was really a defense of a woman’s constitutional right to choose.

The ACLU sued to define “free speech” to include vandalism, sacrilegious art, and spitting on returning veterans of the Vietnam War.

Even more depressing, the drive for equal rights for liberated slaves, begun by Republicans during and after the Civil War, morphed into a liberal affirmative action program which reintroduced privilege based on skin color.

In 2010, the tide has turned.

This year, liberals demanded Americans respect the triumphalist mosque near Ground Zero as an expression of American commitment to religious freedom. At the same time, liberals sued to remove a cross in a remote area of California’s Mojave Desert and sponsored hate crime legislation that would put Christian pastors in jail for reading Biblical passages condemning homosexuality.

The hypocrisy had gone too far. Americans noticed the one-sidedness; they saw “The Agenda” at work. Americans by 70% oppose the Ground Zero mosque and Obama’s support of it has hurt him and his party going into November. The liberals lost the culture conflict and, consequently, the political momentum.

In the 2008 campaign, liberals promised Planned Parenthood that healthcare “reform” would include all “reproductive services” (read: federally funded abortions). But in the debate over healthcare legislation, Rep. Bart Stupak and a small band of pro-life Democrats joined with Republicans in demanding the continuation of a ban on federally funded abortions.

Based on promises made by Pelosi and Reid, Stupak and enough others caved and the “reform” passed. But the “ban” was watered down in the final bill drafted in secret; abortion coverage was made subject to further rule-making by the federal bureaucracy.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given the power to write regulations governing required coverage in all health insurance plans under the Obamacare bill. A notorious pro-abortion advocate, Sebelius prepared to require abortion as a covered procedure, with federal funding for those who could not afford it.

The deception was too obvious. Americans noticed. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi would say or do anything (or bribe anyone) to advance a federal takeover of our healthcare choices.

Americans by 60-70% want this “reform” repealed. Obama and Co. won the legislative battle, but lost the culture. Now they are losing the politics as well.

The Obamacare debate awakened what Nixon called the “Silent Majority.” Silent no more, the Tea Party gatherings starting in the summer of 2009 galvanized American grassroots opposition. Liberal attempts to scold, denigrate, and marginalize this movement backfired. Now, incumbents of both parties are being thrown out of office in a political bloodbath that will reach a crescendo in November.

Al Sharpton’s pathetic counter demonstration to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event in D.C. is only the latest highlight of the perversion of the civil rights movement by its current self proclaimed “leaders.” More and more American blacks have come to realize that the Democratic government plantation is not so different from the Democrat’s original version in the pre-Civil War South. Dependency is dependency. A welfare check and food stamps are doled out by the new “massa”—same as the old “massa”.

Americans of all backgrounds have noticed. Equality of opportunity has degenerated into new privileges based on skin color. Most Americans want a return to an opportunity society with “equal justice for all.” The Voting Rights Act should apply to the New Black Panthers, too.

Too many commentators have looked only to the economy and Obama’s failed economic policies to explain the Democrats swift fall from grace and the growing belief that the November election will turn the House, and maybe the Senate, over to the Republicans.

Underlying all politics is the culture. It is changing. The dominant liberal culture has yielded division and decay in American society—and a government-directed economy destroying our standard of living. The rejection of liberal culture has begun; the rejection of liberal politics will follow.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38828

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Justice Department is requesting a federal judge stay his order stopping the National Institute of Health’s embryo-destroying stem-cell research pending an appeal, saying that cutting off the money to scientists would harm their research efforts.

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last week that embryonic stem cell research projects funded by the NIH violate the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which prohibits federal dollars from going to research that destroys human embryos.

Congress attempted to pass a bill permitting funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in 2007, but that legislation was vetoed by President George W. Bush.

“The issuance of a stay is necessary to prevent the irreparable harm that is certain to occur if … NIH is forced to cease all activities pertaining to [hESC] research that is subject to government funding,” stated the Justice Department’s emergency motion filed Tuesday.

Written testimony from NIH head Dr. Francis Collins stated that $546 million dollars had been invested by the NIH in hESC research since 2002, and that $54 million to 24 research projects will be prevented by Lamberth’s order. Collins said that the injunction would mean the whole effort since 2002 “will have been wasted” by stopping experiments and research prematurely.

In March 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order rescinding President Bush’s executive order that limited federal funds to hESC lines already in existence, giving the green light to finance the creation of new hESC lines and trials.

Two scientists involved in adult stem cell research, Drs. James Sherley of Boston and Theresa Deisher of Seattle, sued the Obama Administration on the basis that the NIH was favoring hESC researchers, starving ethical researchers such as themselves for grants.

“We have a responsibility and are taught to do ethical research,” Sherley told The Wall Street Journal. “This is impacting the quality of science in this country.”

Critics have pointed out that, aside from destroying human lives at a very early stage of development, hESC research has yielded little therapeutic benefit. It has been outstripped by breakthroughs in adult stem cell research, which has yielded dozens of therapies and benefits for previously untreatable conditions.

Judge Lamberth struck down the Obama policy on August 23, saying it conflicted with “unambiguous” US statute.

“If one step…of an ESC [embryonic stem cell] research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment,” Lamberth’s preliminary injunction order stated.  “Because ESC research requires the derivation of ESCs, ESC research is research in which an embryo is destroyed.”

The Obama Administration is appealing the decision, and said that a stay “should not be denied for the benefit of two scientists whose only alleged harm is increased competition from other meritorious research projects that may ultimately save lives.”

As a result of the injunction, NIH has cut off funding to its eight “intra-mural” hESC research projects.

NIH officials say “extramural” projects by researchers outside NIH may keep grant money already appropriated to them, but they will have no additional funds pending the injunction. The NIH has also suspended all applications to hESC researchers requesting funding. (see order here)

“We think it’s a start,” Steven Aden, Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview.

ADF is co-counsel in the lawsuit, Dr. James L. Sherley et. al. v. Kathleen Sebelius et al., along with Samuel Casey of Advocates International. Aden told LSN that the legal advocacy group intends to file opposition papers with Lamberth’s court on Friday responding to the Justice Department’s request for a stay.

Aden said that the “original intent as expressed by Congressman Dickey and others” was to “prohibit all research involved in the destruction of human life.”

“We believe that is what the Dickey Wicker amendment means today.”

“As the case goes forward, we expect Judge Lambert to clarify the meaning and scope of the injunction,” said Aden.

Aden predicted that Lamberth should rule fairly quickly, and then the matter would head to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which could render its own ruling within weeks.

Click here for more information on stem cell research.

See previous and related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Congressmen Seek to Undermine Embryonic Stem Cell Ruling by Changing Law
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/aug/10083005.html

U.S. Court Halts Obama Admin Stem-Cell Research Guidelines
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/aug/10082306.html

Adult Stem Cell Treatment Leaves College Student Free of Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022407.html

“Embryos are Humans” Says U.S. Government Report on Stem Cell Research
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011009.html

“Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed.”

–Thomas Jefferson, on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 1814

Luke 5: 33-39

The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them, “Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And he also told them a parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ´The old is good.´”

Introductory Prayer: Lord God, I come from dust and to dust I shall return. You, on the other hand, existed before all time, and every creature takes its being from you. You formed me in my mother’s womb with infinite care, you watch over me tenderly. I hope at my dearth you will embrace my soul to carry me home to heaven to be with you forever. Thank you for looking upon me and blessing me with your love. Take mine in return. I humbly offer you all that I am.

Petition: Rejuvenate my spiritual life, Lord.

1. Judging by the Wrong Standards Once again, we have Jesus at a meal, this time with Levi (Matthew) and his friends. The scribes and Pharisees have come along to scrutinize Jesus and his followers, as they were wary of his teachings which were not in accord with the legalism and formalism to which they were accustomed. Their statement here about fasting contains an implicit judgment: You and your followers are not following our traditions of fasting; therefore, you cannot be truly holy. They present it not as a question, but as a statement, an accusation. They are not open to looking at things in a new way. We, too, can be guilty of rash judgment, even with other people in the Church who do not do things the way we do. Our reference point has to be not what we are used to, but what the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, teaches and approves, be it ancient traditions or new manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church.

2. For Everything There Is a Season Jesus’ answer is simple: there is a time and place for both fasting and feasting. Some people have a special vocation to a life of unusual abnegation, but for most of us, the liturgical year provides us with a natural cycle of rejoicing and penance. At times we rejoice with the “bridegroom” – like Christmas and Easter when we celebrate the coming of Christ and his resurrection. At other times we practice more penance – as in Lent when we focus more on making reparation for the separation from the Lord caused by sin in our lives, or in Advent when we purify our hearts to receive the Lord at Christmas. Ordinary Time has its own feasts and occasions of particular significance one way or the other. The question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we living these liturgical realities, or are we neglecting them? Do the feasts and fasts of the Church affect my life, or are the liturgical seasons at best curiosities that I hardly notice?

3. The New You Then, Jesus offers all those present a challenge in the form of the parable. Both images – the cloth and the wineskins – emphasize the idea that in order to embrace his message we need to think “outside the box”. We easily get settled into a routine, becoming complacent and tepid in our faith. It’s even worse if we have habits of sin. To follow Christ and his “Good News” truly, we need to leave behind what St. Paul called the “old self” in order to be new creatures in Christ (Colossians 3:9-10). For the Pharisees, that would have meant leaving behind their strict formalism and judgmental attitude. For Levi and his friends it meant abandoning their worldliness and sinful lifestyle. Making a break with our old self is difficult – the “old wine” is what we’re used to – but we have to take the step of recognizing in what our old self consists and deciding to leave that behind to embrace Christ’s message, which is always challenging, ever new.

Conversation with Christ: Lord Jesus, help me to focus more on following you than on judging others. Show me who I am, and whom you want me to be. Grant me the grace to live the life of the Church – feasts and fasts – with enthusiasm, so you can transform me into a new creature.

Resolution: I will make it a point to live today, Friday, as a memorial of the death of Our Lord by offering a small sacrifice as a penance for my sins, and I will live this coming Sunday with real joy as the celebration of his resurrection.

http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302

“If we knew at what time we were to depart from this world, we would be able to select a season for pleasure and another for repentance. But God, who has promised pardon to every repentant sinner, has not promised us tomorrow. Therefore we must always dread the final day, which we can never foresee. This very day is a day of truce, a day for conversion.” – St. Gregory the Great

Gregory was born in Rome around 540, into the family of a wealthy Roman Senator who converted and became one of the seven deacons of Rome.

Gregory, who was known for his intelligence and capacity for work, was appointed Prefect of Rome by the emperor at the very young age of 34. However, a year later, on the death of his father, Gregory became a Benedictine monk, and founded seven monasteries, one in his own home in Rome.

His monastic life was interrupted, much to his regret, in 590 when he was elected Pope by all the clergy and faithful of Rome and carried to his consecration at St. Peter’s on September 3.

His achievements in his 14 years as Pope are almost astounding. His biographer, Paul the Deacon, explaining his phenomenal work output, said that he never rested. All the more remarkable when one considers that he was always in ill health, physical suffering being a constant companion throughout his entire reign as pope.

He introduced liturgical reforms and brought chant into the Church, now known as Gregorian chant, after him. He sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury and a company of monks to evangelize England, and wrote many works on faith and moral subjects.

Saint Gregory’s influence on the future shape of Catholicism should never be underestimated. His reforms and organization of the Church’s relationships with the temporal order set the tone for succeeding centuries.

Most significantly, he became the model of the medieval Pope. With regard to things spiritual, he impressed upon men’s minds, to a degree unprecedented, the fact that the See of Peter was the one, supreme, decisive authority in the Catholic Church.

He is one of the four great Latin doctors of the Church, one of only two Popes to be called ‘great’ (the other being Pope Saint Leo the Great) and the patron saint of music.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great once said, “The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.”

Saint Gregory died on March 12, 604.

My children,  I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one.

He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.

The way we may be sure  that we know him is to keep his commandments.

Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live (just) as he lived.

Beloved, I am writing no new commandment to you but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.

And yet I do write a new commandment to you, which holds true in him and among you,  for the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.

Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him to cause a fall.

Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

I am writing to you, children, because your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have conquered the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.

Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world.

Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they were not really of our number;  if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.

But you have the anointing that comes from the holy one,  and you all have knowledge.

I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth.

Who is the liar? Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Whoever denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist.

No one who denies the Son has the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.

Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father.

And this is the promise that he made us: eternal life.

I write you these things about those who would deceive you.

As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him.

And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming.

If you consider that he is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him.

SOURCE: the New American Bible

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/1john/1john2.htm

By Kyle-Anne Shiver, American Thinker, September 02, 2010

You know liberals are scared whenever they use the O-word — “obsession” — to smear a conservative’s effectiveness in an important argument. So when the Los Angeles Times published an editorial yesterday by Tim Rutten called “Glenn Beck’s Liberation Theology Obsession,” I was quite intrigued.

Since I spent a whole year studying James H. Cone’s Black Liberation Theology in the context of Latin America’s liberation theology developed within the Catholic Church, I was quite curious to see what an esteemed LA Times columnist had to say about Beck’s so-called “obsession.”

After reading Tim Rutten’s column, I must admit I was completely flummoxed. How could someone with such an impressive bio write such errant tripe and get paid big bucks for it? Only in Obama’s America, folks.

So, in the interest of public enlightenment, I’ll just throw a few substantiated facts into this little fray, which will demonstrate to anyone with a grain of Christian education exactly why Beck’s “obsession” with Black Liberation Theology is indeed thoroughly justified.

First off, our esteemed Mr. Rutten makes the astonishing claim that there is no “evidence” that ties our current president to Black Liberation Theology. It’s an astonishing claim because the only theology to which Barack Obama has ever been exposed (outside the Muslim training of his youth) is indeed Black Liberation Theology.

Wise observers already know this. But for the record, let’s remember that Barack Obama was raised by an anthropologist mother who openly disdained the “bitter clingers” of religion.

In Barack’s own words, from his chapter on “Faith” in The Audacity of Hope (page 204), speaking of his mother’s teachings on religion:

Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.

Writing on “Faith,” in The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama went to great lengths to explain that his own “conversion” was enabled not by orthodox Christian awakening, but by the explicitly political nature of the Black Liberation Theology preached by Jeremiah Wright, Jr. And the thrust of Obama’s entire chapter on faith in his own book was to show how his own liberation theology should not frighten secular progressives because it bore little to no resemblance to the religion of those Bible Belt “bitter clingers.” And as observant Americans know well, Barack Obama was so ardent a follower of Jeremiah Wright’s brand of Christianity that he named his book after a Wright sermon, The Audacity of Hope. While it is true that Barack Obama never (that I know of) used the explicit words “Black Liberation Theology” in his speeches or his books, everything about his claims to faith in his writing, his speeches, and his current actions as president is filled with the tenets of this fringe system of beliefs.

And what was that “hope” to which Wright referred? It was not the hope of individual salvation, which is the bedrock of orthodox Christian belief. No, Wright’s hope, the same hope where Barack Obama found his “conversion,” was in “collective redemption” through a political, material redistribution of power and wealth from the “white oppressors” to the “black oppressed.” Quite contrary to Mr. Rutten’s assertion that no “evidence” ties Barack Obama to liberation theology, Obama himself has used the phrase “collective redemption” regularly.

When Jeremiah Wright, Jr. was a guest with Sean Hannity in March 2007, the Reverend Wright waxed eloquent on his devotion to Black Liberation Theology. When Hannity asked Wright to explain the “black value system” to which his congregants were asked to pledge allegiance, Wright used Black Liberation Theology as his explanation:

If you’re not going to talk about theology in context, if you’re not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the ’60s, (inaudible) black liberation theology, that started with Jim Cone in 1968, and the writings of Cone …

Wright went on to badger Hannity about his apparent lack of familiarity with Cone’s Black Liberation Theology, saying that if anyone wanted to understand Trinity United Church of Christ and its particular brand of “black value system” Christianity, then a thorough understanding of Cone’s writings was necessary.

Well, I was so intrigued that as Barack Obama was about to seal the Democrats’ nomination for the presidency, I went to Chicago and visited Trinity myself, heard Jeremiah Wright, spent time in the church bookstore, and returned home with my own stack of Cone’s books. If only Mr. Rutten had done likewise, he might have wisely steered clear of the topic altogether. Instead, he has dug himself into a pit of theological quicksand.

Contrary to Mr. Rutten’s assertion that Cone is not, as Beck has stated, “one of the founders of Black Liberation Theology,” the truth is that Cone credits himself with being “the founder.” When NPR (perhaps Mr. Rutten has heard of this outfit) interviewed James H. Cone in March, 2008, as the founder of Black Liberation Theology, Cone was attempting to put a genial spin on Jeremiah Wright’s “G*d-damn[ing]” America from his “Christian” pulpit. Cone’s books belie that spin, however.

As Wright was never coy in his hate for “white oppressors” in America, neither is Wright’s mentor, James H. Cone.

Cone, writing in Black Theology and Black Power:

Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity. God cannot be white, even though white churches have portrayed him as white (p. 150).

The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us (p. 150).

Negro hatred of white people is not pathological — far from it.  It is a healthy human reaction to oppression, insult, and terror. White people are often surprised at the Negro’s hatred of them, but it should not be surprising (p. 14).

James Cone, Author Black Theology and Black Power

Cone, writing in God of the Oppressed:

Black people must be aware of the extreme dangers of speaking too lightly of reconciliation with whites. Just because we work with them and sometimes worship alongside them should be no reason to claim that they are truly Christian and thus part of our struggle (p. 222).

Cone, writing in Speaking the Truth:

Liberation is not simply a consequence of the experience of sanctification.  Rather, sanctification is liberation. To be sanctified is to be liberated — that is politically engaged in the struggle of freedom. When sanctification is defined as a commitment to the historical struggle for political liberation, then it is possible to connect it with socialism and Marxism, the reconstruction of society on the basis of freedom and justice for all (p. 33).

And Cone, writing in A Black Theology of Liberation:

What need have we for a white Jesus when we are not white but black? If Jesus Christ is white and not black, he is an oppressor, and we must kill him. The appearance of black theology means that the black community is now ready to do something about the white Jesus, so that he cannot get in the way of our revolution (p. 111).

Now, Mr. Rutten rightly asserts that the original liberation theology sprouted within Catholicism during the 1960s in Latin America, but he strangely omits the fact that both Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI have strenuously denounced all liberation theologies as purely political perversions of the Catholic faith, which are inherently intertwined with Marxism (as Cone’s quote above reiterates).

Mr. Rutten claims that Glenn Beck has condemned liberation theology as “demonic.” While Rutten gives us no Beck source for his claim, I happen to know the source of the  ”demonic” quote quite well, since I’m the first person to have unearthed it, and I used it in a column I wrote in February 2008, “Obama’s Politics of Collective Redemption.”

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.

The original quote comes from the book Truth and Tolerance, p. 116, written by Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (2003). Writing under a sub-heading, “The Crisis for Liberation Theology,” the Cardinal is expounding upon the failure of Marxism and all the liberation theologies that came from it. He goes to great length explaining Marxist liberation theology as man’s eternal quest to grapple with real “poverty, oppression, unjust domination of every kind, the suffering of the righteous and of the innocent” as these are “the signs of the times — in every age.”

In man’s attempt to make sense of a suffering world that seems not “to correspond to a good God,” there arose in the 20^th century a political ideology which joined itself to Christian language and seemingly Christian precepts. The only thing Cone did — and he admits this himself — was to join Latin American liberation theology with the black power political movement in the United States.

And anyone who had taken the trouble to visit Trinity United Church of Christ would have known all about it prior to the election of 2008. But as we know now, liberal journalists actually conspired to hide this story from public view and do all they could to help Barack Obama bamboozle the American public, using his Wright-mentored “Christianity” in a bold gambit to close the God-gap among voters.

That Glenn Beck is now reviving this issue and spreading a little truth on Obama’s bold religious claims makes liberals understandably nervous. And it would take a ninny living under a rock in Los Angeles not to have noticed that the only church at which Barack Obama has ever — before or since — regularly worshiped was the one that unabashedly preached nothing but Black Liberation Theology.

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/becks_obsession_with_black_lib.htmlJim Wallis

G. Tracy Mehan, III,  American Spectator,  9.2.10

Maybe this is what John Paul II had in mind when he referred to the “culture of death.” Yesterday, a fellow, a xenophobe and eco-terrorist, if his explicit statements are to be taken at face value, stormed into the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Maryland, gun in hand, with rather disturbing, bomb-like devices attached to his person.

This man, believed to be James Lee, was eventually shot by police after talking with him for several hours. He took three hostages, although 1,900 people, including children in a day-care center, were evacuated.

Good thing for the kids in the day-care center. Evidently, Lee had posted a manifesto on a website registered in his name, making several demands of the Discovery Channel. He demanded that the channel broadcast a commitment “to save the planet” and air shows promoting curbs on population growth, solutions to global warming and the dismantling of “the dangerous US world economy,” as reported by Dan Morse, Christian Davenport and John Kelly of the Washington Post. It seems that Lee used a Canadian post office box address.

But what caught this father and environmental consultant’s eye was that part of Lee’s statement which demanded that Discover Health programs quit encouraging “the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions.” The statement also makes reference to “Malthusian science” and “disgusting human babies.”

The authorities believe the hostage taker is the same person who operated a site at http://www.SavethePlanetProtest.com.

Besides calling for the end of war, the site excoriates “immigrant pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that.” Indeed, “nothing is more important” than saving animals.

“The planet does not need humans.” You get the point.

Thankfully, no one was hurt other than Lee himself.

Let’s stipulate that Lee was a man with mental problems. He had been in court for causing problems at this same building. But it is interesting, possibly revealing, that a diseased mind such as his would latch on to such misanthropic ideas, in the context of the environment, which views human beings as antithetical to it rather than an active part of it.

Lee’s attitude, at least the one expressed on his website, displays a distorted view of humanity’s place in the world, one in which men and women only consume but do not create, only destroy but do not restore, only bring death rather than life.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated worldview in Western society, although it is one that, mercifully, does not often express itself in such violent ways. It is all very sad.

G. Tracy Mehan, III served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the administrations of both Presidents Bush. He is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/02/parasitic-human-infants

We Are in Two Wars (Part 1) – Archbishop Fulton Sheen

We Are in Two Wars (Part 2) – Archbishop Fulton Sheen

We Are in Two Wars (Part 3) – Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Ask for His Mercy.

God wants us to approach Him in prayer constantly.

SOURCE:  http://www.praytherosaryapostolate.com/thedivinemercy.htm

By  A.W.R. Hawkins, Human Events, 09/02/2010

Unemployment is hovering around 9.6%, our national debt is over $13 trillion, one-in-six Americans are receiving some type of government help, and Barack Obama just wrapped his sixth vacation in less than two years as President.

It was a waterfront vacation in Martha’s Vineyard that cost around $50,000 for the rental property alone. (This doesn’t count the cost of staff, of Secret Service protection, or the transport and fuel for the 20-vehicle caravan that traveled with the President all over the island.)

If a sixth vacation of this magnitude seems a bit pretentious to you, you’re not alone. Even David Letterman, the decidedly liberal host of the “Late Night Show,” thought the trip so ostentatious at a time like this that he said: “[Obama will] have plenty of time for vacations after his one term is up.”

Letterman is right on the mark here. With AP polls showing that 56% of voters disapprove of the way Obama has handled the economy, he’s courting political disaster by continuing his smug trek from beach house to golf course to beach house again, during a summer when many Americans didn’t even get one vacation. (Nor is Obama’s image helped by the fact that he has played more rounds of golf in less than two years than President George W. Bush did in two whole terms.)

But this is a teachable moment: For we have to understand that “hope and change” was every bit the façade that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin warned us it would be. Obama doesn’t care about the plight of the average Joe anymore than he cared about the plight of the now-famous “Joe the Plumber.”

This is because Obama is part of the ruling class. As such, he is literally against the people. And his wife is right there with him (she may actually be more smug than he).

Who, but the wife of a member of the ruling class, could take a $375,000 European vacation at time when the American people suffer as they now do? Moreover, who but the haughtiest of ruling class members could do so knowing that the American taxpayer was going to be stuck holding tab?

I’m aware that the Obama has tried to lessen the criticism hurled at Mrs. Obama by announcing that she would pay for all “personal expenses” out of pocket, but, as with Martha’s Vineyard, that doesn’t include the cost of staff, Secret Service, etc. In fact, estimates place the cost of simply flying Michelle and her entourage to Spain and back at $178,000, and that’s $178,000 which taxpayers are going to pay.

There’s always been a strong hint of entitlement swirling around Mr. and Mrs. Obama. Now that the media has crammed picture after picture of the first family’s sixth vacation down our throats, the hint is so strong as to become repugnant.

We the people have been duped. There is no hope and change. There is only the growing feeling of a Carter-like malaise that threatens to overtake the American people even as “Obama the most merciful” plans his seventh vacation.

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HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Military History from Texas Tech University. He will be a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal during the summer of 2010.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38813