More on Cardinal Kasper at Lambeth

Here's CNS Vatican correspondent Cindy Wooden's piece via Virtueonline.org:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Anglican Communion needs to find a way to affirm the dignity of all people and encourage the active role of women in the church while remaining faithful to the Christian tradition and Scriptures, said Cardinal Walter Kasper.

The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, spoke July 30 at a session for bishops attending the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference, which is held once every 10 years, in England.

Offering "Roman Catholic Reflections on the Anglican Communion," the cardinal told the bishops he spoke "as a friend" representing a church committed to dialogue with Anglicans and praying that the Anglican Communion does not split as a result of differences over ordaining women and over homosexuality.

The ordination of women bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of an openly gay bishop in some Anglican provinces are seen as practices that will make Roman Catholic-Anglican unity impossible, in addition to straining relations among Anglicans.

The text of his presentation was published in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

In his address, the cardinal said, "We hope that we will not be drawn apart, and that we will be able to remain in serious dialogue in search of full unity so that the world may believe."

Zenit has Kasper's full text here:

What we are talking about is not an ideology, not a private opinion which one may or may not share; it is our faithfulness to Jesus Christ, witnessed by the apostles, and to His Gospel, with which we are entrusted. From the very beginning we should, therefore, keep in mind what is at stake as we proceed to speak about faithfulness to the apostolic tradition and apostolic succession, when we speak about the threefold ministry, women’s ordination, and moral commandments. What we are talking about is nothing other than our faithfulness to Christ Himself, who is our unique and common master. And what else can our dialogue be but an expression of our intent and desire to be fully one in Him in order to be fully joint witnesses to His Gospel.

It has often been said, and is worth restating, that the dialogue was dynamized by the desire to be faithful to Christ’s expressed will that His disciples be one, just as He is one with the Father; and that this unity was directly linked to Christ’s mission, the Church’s mission, to the world: may they be one so that the world may believe. Our witness and mission have been seriously hampered by our divisions, and it was out of faithfulness to Christ that we committed ourselves to a dialogue, based on the Gospel and the ancient common traditions, which had full visible unity as its goal. Yet full unity was not and is not an end in itself, but a sign of and instrument for seeking unity with God and peace in the world.

and

I know that many of you are troubled, some deeply so, by the threat of fragmentation within the Anglican Communion. We feel profound solidarity with you, for we too are troubled and saddened when we ask: In such a scenario, what shape might the Anglican Communion of tomorrow take, and who will our dialogue partner be? Should we, and how can we, appropriately and honestly engage in conversations also with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular Anglican provinces? What do you expect in this situation from the Church of Rome, which in the words of Ignatius of Antioch is to preside over the Church in love? How might ARCIC’s work on the episcopate, the unity of the Church, and the need for an exercise of primacy at the universal level be able to serve the Anglican Communion at the present time?

Rather than answer these questions, let me remind you of what we stated at the Informal Talks in 2003, and have reiterated on several occasions since then: “It is our overwhelming desire that the Anglican Communion stays together, rooted in the historic faith which our dialogue and relations over four decades have led us to believe that we share to a large degree.” Therefore we are following the discussions of this Lambeth Conference with great interest and heartfelt concern, accompanying them with our fervent prayers.

and

Since it is currently the situation that 28 Anglican provinces ordain women to the priesthood, and while only 4 provinces have ordained women to the episcopate, an additional 13 provinces have passed legislation authorising women bishops, the Catholic Church must now take account of the reality that the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate is not only a matter of isolated provinces, but that this is increasingly the stance of the Communion. It will continue to have bishops, as set forth in the Lambeth Quadrilateral (1888); but as with bishops within some Protestant churches, the older churches of East and West will recognise therein much less of what they understand to be the character and ministry of the bishop in the sense understood by the early church and continuing through the ages.

I have already addressed the ecclesiological problem when bishops do not recognize other’s episcopal ordination within the one and same church, now I must be clear about the new situation which has been created in our ecumenical relations. While our dialogue has led to significant agreement on the understanding of ministry, the ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican Orders by the Catholic Church.

It is our hope that a theological dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church will continue, but this development effects directly the goal and alters the level of what we pursue in dialogue. The 1966 Common Declaration signed by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey called for a dialogue that would “lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed”, and spoke of “a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life”. It now seems that full visible communion as the aim of our dialogue has receded further, and that our dialogue will have less ultimate goals and therefore will be altered in its character. While such a dialogue could still lead to good results, it would not be sustained by the dynamism which arises from the realistic possibility of the unity Christ asks of us, or the shared partaking of the one Lord’s table, for which we so earnestly long.

and

In that vein, I would like to return to the Archbishop’s puzzling question what kind of Anglicanism I want. It occurs to me that at critical moments in the history of the Church of England and subsequently of the Anglican Communion, you have been able to retrieve the strength of the Church of the Fathers when that tradition was in jeopardy. The Caroline divines are an instance of that, and above all, I think of the Oxford Movement. Perhaps in our own day it would be possible too, to think of a new Oxford Movement, a retrieval of riches which lay within your own household. This would be a re-reception, a fresh recourse to the Apostolic Tradition in a new situation. It would not mean a renouncing of your deep attentiveness to human challenges and struggles, your desire for human dignity and justice, your concern with the active role of all women and men in the Church. Rather, it would bring these concerns and the questions that arise from them more directly within the framework shaped by the Gospel and ancient common tradition in which our dialogue is grounded.

More on Cardinal Kasper's address to Lambeth

I find it astonishing that this reporter notes that Kasper spoke in a room designed to hold 50 people. There are about 650 bishops at the Lambeth Conference.

The Guardian reports:

Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour that must be condemned, a Vatican
official said yesterday.

Walter Cardinal Kasper made the remarks during an
address at the Lambeth conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world's
Anglican bishops in Canterbury.

Kasper, who is president of the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity, reminded delegates of the catechism of the Roman Catholic church on homosexuality: "This teaching is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute."

Quoting from a key document on Anglican and Catholic relations he
said: "Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour. The activity must be condemned;
the traditional approach to homosexuality is comprehensive ... A clear
declaration about this theme must come from the Anglican Communion."
Such a statement would "greatly strengthen the possibility" of the two churches giving common witness regarding human sexuality, something that was "sorely needed in the world of today".

Kasper was saddened that dialogue between the Anglican
Communion and the Roman Catholic Church had been seriously compromised over the issues of women's ordination and homosexuality. These developments had also
caused the Communion to enter into a period of dispute, he observed.
"Many of you are troubled, deeply so, by the threat of fragmentation. In such a scenario, who will our dialogue partner be? How can we appropriately and honestly engage in conversations with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points
currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the
Anglican Communion or particular provinces?"

Great piece by Douglas Farrow on Humanae Vitae

Douglas Farrow is one of Canada's unsung prophets. Here's an excerpt of his piece at the National Post's Full Comment section. Read the whole thing.

Forty years ago, on 25 July 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his seventh and last
encyclical letter, which was addressed not only to the bishops, clergy and
faithful of the Catholic Church, but to all people of good will.

The letter was on “the regulation of birth,” and its promulgation was eagerly
awaited. A new and instantly popular method of contraception had appeared
ten years earlier –- the Pill was introduced in 1958 –- and many fervently
hoped the pope who oversaw the Second Vatican Council, in which the Church had
thrown open its windows to the modern world, would now signal his approval of
its use.

Their hopes were dashed. Humanae vitae reaffirmed the traditional
teaching of the Church: acts of artificial contraception are “intrinsically disordered, and hence unworthy of the human person, even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social well-being.”

The outcrywas overwhelming and is said to have broken the Pope’s heart. Among christian leaders of international standing, only the Ecumenical Patriarch rose to his defence. Most protestant denominations -- starting with the Anglicans at their 1930 Lambeth Conference -- had begun making their peace with artificial contraception some years earlier.

So of course had many Canadian Catholics, including the Québécois, who were already enjoying their Quiet Revolution. (Between 1959 and 1971 the birth rate in Quebec plunged from Canada’s highest to its lowest.) Consternation was felt right
across the country. On September 27th, barely two months after the encyclical’s
promulgation, Canadian bishops released their Winnipeg Statement as an act of
damage control.

B'nai Brith calls for overhaul of Human Rights Commissions

This just popped into my email box. I have bolded some of the release for emphasis. I think all of these recommendations would be excellent. But more needs to be done:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

‘Major overhaul of human rights commissions urgently needed,’
says B’nai Brith Canada

TORONTO, July 31, 2008 – B’nai Brith Canada, an organization long concerned with the defence and improvement of Canada’s human rights system, is calling for “urgent reform” of human rights commissions. The Jewish human rights group has successfully brought cases before human rights commissions and tribunals, which it says “have historically played an important role in combating Nazism and neo-Nazi ideologies”. B’nai Brith Canada has called on the Canadian Human Rights Commission to seize the opportunity provided by the current review it has undertaken to “make real changes that will ensure its relevancy into the future”.

“We are calling for a much-needed overhaul of the protections offered by the human rights commission system,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “We have to ensure that commissions do not become abusers of the very human rights they are charged with protecting.

“New challenges demand new solutions. Only through a process of modernization and reform can Canada’s human rights system continue to play its vital role in protecting Canadians from hatred.”

David Matas, B’nai Brith Canada’s Senior Legal Counsel and world-renowned human rights activist, has called on the commission system to “implement urgent reforms as a matter of top priority.”

Among the changes that B’nai Brith Canada is advocating, Matas highlighted the following:

“Commissions cannot become avenues of harassment in which complaints are simultaneously made in several jurisdictions. The remedy is to introduce rules that will allow for one jurisdiction only.

“Commissions do not operate in a vacuum and must have an understanding of the geo-political context within which they operate. The remedy for ignorance is education and training. Investigators must be required to undertake compulsory in-house courses that meet these needs. They must always be able to distinguish between hate and protected political speech.

“Costs must be levied against those whose clear aim is to abuse the system by launching attacks designed to harass bone fide respondents. This would be a deterrent against those who deliberately seek to hijack and corrupt the human rights system in pursuit of their own ideological bent.”

B’nai Brith Canada will shortly be submitting a full brief on this issue to University of Windsor Law Professor, Richard J. Moon, who was hired by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to conduct a review of the Commission’s mandate to combat hatred.

-30-

For further information contact Karen Lazar, Director of Communications:

416-633-6224 X 140 office / 416-312-9173 cell

B’nai Brith Canada has been active in Canada since 1875

as the Jewish community’s foremost human rights organization

Cardinal Kasper--the good cop of ecumenism--tells the hard truth at Lambeth

The Roman Catholic Church has finally ended all hope that Anglican priestly
orders will ever be recognised as valid.

In an address to the Lambeth Conference of 670 Anglican bishops from
around the world, the cardinal who heads the Council for Christian Unity said
the dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics would be irrevocably "changed" as a
result of the ordination of women and the recent vote to go ahead with
consecrating women bishops.

Cardinal Walter Kasper also reiterated the Vatican's stance that
homosexuality is a "disordered" condition.

In a well-attended closed session at the conference at the
University of Kent University, Canterbury, Cardinal Kasper said relations
between the two churches are now deeply compromised. He urged bishops to
consider their shared inheritance, which he said was "worthy of being consulted
and protected."

In 1896 Pope Leo XI issued a Bull, Apostolicae Curae, in
which he condemned all Anglican orders as "absolutely null and utterly void".
Soon after that bishops from both churches began talks in an attempt to achieve
reconciliation between the two churches, separated since the Reformation in the
16th century. When Archbishop Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI in 1966, hopes
were unprecedentedly high that some means could be found of achieving
full,visible unity.

Even today, the churches work closely together at the grass roots. Rome
is understood to be looking at way of receiving as a collective body the
Anglo-Catholics in England who might want to leave the Church as a result of
women bishops. A similar formula is being sought for traditional Anglicans in
the United States who have already left the Episcopal Church.

[My addition: The Vatican is also studying seriously a formal
request by the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) to come into corporate
communion with the Holy See]

Cardinal Kasper spoke yesterday afternoon in English but conference
organisers and the Vatican refused to release the text to the media, who were
barred from attending the event. His speech was subsequently posted by
L'Osservatore Romano in Rome in Italian. The Times has arranged its own
translation back into English.

According to this translation, the Cardinal said: "Although our
dialogue has led to a significant agreement on the idea of priesthood, the ordination of women to the episcopate blocks substantially and
finally a possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church."

You're a racist if you do not vote for Obama

Gateway Pundit lists the number of times Obama himself has implied that McCain is going to use race against him, thus implying that anyone who votes for McCain is a racist.

Sorry Barry, but I would love to have a black president of the United States. Just not you, because you seem to be channeling the same goofy weakness that animates Jimmy Carter. It is because you are on the far left, it's because for most of your life you have associated with people who hate America (or have never been proud of her until you came on the scene).

It amazes me that those who have fallen under Obama's spell think that he is going to unite Americans. No, comments like these are divisive and dangerous. There is something terribly dangerous about the hubris that Obama exudes, the presumptuousness. Like you are a terrible heretic if you fail to bow down and worship him.

Lots of Americans are tired of being called racist for merely disagreeing on policy matters.

If the guy loses, many will blame America's racism. But they will be wrong.

Mark Shea on the theology animating atheists like Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, in a fairly typical misreading of the Judeo-Christian tradition, is fond of pointing out that "the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay." Oblivious to the Church's entire tradition of the natural law, he fancies he's scored a crushing debate point when he informs us that the people with no access to revelation have always known that murder, theft, etc., are wrong, and therefore God is an unnecessary hypothesis. Indeed, Hitchens, like all the New Atheists (who are, in fact, creakily decrepit Old Atheists of a school that nearly died out), is well described by Pope Benedict in Spes Salvi:

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is -- in its origins and aims -- a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested.

St. Thomas can find only two good arguments for atheism in the history of human thought, and Hitchens et al. combine them to create the moralism Pope Benedict describes. The arguments can be paraphrase thus:

1. Bad stuff happens, so there's no God.

2. Everything works fine by itself, so there's no God.

Hitchens's we-don't-need-God-to-explain-morality is a sample of the second argument. Alloyed with his outrage about evils in the world, he displays precisely the sort of moralism Benedict describes above, becoming not merely an atheist but an "anti-theist."

Great piece in the Globe by Patricia Paddy

It's the ultimate irony.

A young man - co-host of a TV show - competing to determine "who can piss off the most people," commissioned a plane to fly over Canada's largest city trailing the message, "Jesus Sucks!"

All in a quest to create entertaining television.

It's ironic, because the people he chose to offend are those who follow the man who famously prayed for his persecutors: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And that while nailed to a cross.

Interesting review of George Weigel's latest book

The war against jihadism itself reflects a more fundamental war: the war between a faith, Islam followed by over a billion people around the world, usually seen as impervious to reason and the West, which increasingly trumpets a reason divorced from faith.

It is Weigel's contention that the West cannot win the war against terror unless and until it resolves its own internal metaphysical conflicts.

Here the author's potent analogy is the West's approach to Communism after 1945. We believed it was a bankrupt political system compared to ours and we believed that ordinary people behind the Iron Curtain would eventually come to know this if they did not do so already. Confidence, patience and diplomacy were to prove us right.

At first we need to understand and respect Islam, which is difficult when the US government is dominated, as Weigel says, by a "genteel secularity". In Britain it is less genteel than aggressive; both are inadequate responses. "Islam has given meaning and purpose to hundreds of millions of lives that have been nobly and decently lived,"he states.

What ideas of nobility and decency can we offer to Muslims when our western societies seem increasingly dominated by secularism, consumerism and moral relativism and when we "do not take religious ideas seriously as a dynamic force in the world's history"?

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg address, pointedly remarked that "a reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering the dialogue of cultures".

Zenit writes on the Cardinal Levada letter to the Archbishop Hepworth

VATICAN CITY, JULY 30, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is following with "serious attention" the request from the Traditional Anglican Communion for "full, corporate, sacramental union" with Rome.

This was affirmed by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, in a July 5 letter to the primate of the Anglican group, Archbishop John Hepworth.

The letter was written before the beginning of the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican leaders that is under way in England through Aug. 4. The Lambeth Conference is facing unprecedented controversy, and some bishops boycotted it altogether.

The conflict within the Communion has arisen over debate about the possibility of ordaining homosexual bishops and blessing homosexual marriages. A synod decision this summer to pave the way for the episcopal ordination of women has further alienated some Anglican leaders, many of whom were in disagreement with the Communion's decision to ordain women as priests.

According to Cardinal Levada's letter, "over the course of the past year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has studied the proposals which you presented on behalf of the House of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion during your visit to the offices of this dicastery on Oct. 9, 2007."

John L. Allen Jr. on the Pope vs. the Pill in the NYT

FORTY years ago last week, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church’s ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the “monarchical papacy” down with it.

Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

Down the centuries, Catholics have frequently groused about papal rulings. Usually they channeled that dissent into blithe disobedience, though occasionally a Roman mob would run the Successor of Peter out of town on a rail just to make a point. In 1848, Pope Pius IX was driven into exile by Romans incensed at his refusal to embrace Italy’s unification.

Never before July 25, 1968, however, had opposition been so immediate, so public and so widespread. World-famous theologians called press conferences to rebut the pope’s reasoning. Conferences of Catholic bishops issued statements that all but licensed churchgoers to ignore the encyclical. Pastors openly criticized “Humanae Vitae” from the pulpit.

In a nutshell, “Humanae Vitae” held that the twin functions of marriage — to foster love between the partners and to be open to children — are so closely related as to be inseparable. In practice, that meant a resounding no to the pill.

Read it all.

Today, many are taking a new look at Humanae Vitae and seeing how prophetic Paul VI was.
Mary Eberstadt writes in First Things magazine:

Let’s begin by meditating upon what might be called the first of the secular ironies now evident: Humanae Vitae’s specific predictions about what the world would look like if artificial contraception became widespread. The encyclical warned of four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.

In the years since Humanae Vitae’s appearance, numerous distinguished Catholic thinkers have argued, using a variety of evidence, that each of these predictions has been borne out by the social facts. One thinks, for example, of Monsignor George A. Kelly in his 1978 “Bitter Pill the Catholic Community Swallowed” and of the many contributions of Janet E. Smith, including Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later and the edited volume Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader.

And therein lies an irony within an irony. Although it is largely Catholic thinkers who have connected the latest empirical evidence to the defense of Humanae Vitae’s predictions, during those same forty years most of the experts actually producing the empirical evidence have been social scientists operating in the secular realm. As sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox emphasized in a 2005 essay: “The leading scholars who have tackled these topics are not Christians, and most of them are not political or social conservatives. They are, rather, honest social scientists willing to follow the data wherever it may lead.”

John Pacheco at SoCon has republished the encylical. Read it with an open mind.

Bishop Mouneer Anis of Eygpt on Lambeth

I find that many of our North American friends blame us and criticise us for bringing in the issues of sexuality and homosexuality but in fact they are the ones who are bringing these issues in. Here at Lambeth, you come across many advertisements for events organised by gay and Lesbian activists which are sponsored by the North American Church. If you visit the marketplace at the conference, you will notice that almost half the events promoted on the noticeboard promote homosexuality and are sponsored by the North Americans. And in the end, we, the people who remain loyal to the original teaching of the Anglican Communion, which we received from the Apostles, are blamed. They say that we talk a lot about sexuality and that we need to talk more about poverty, about AIDs, and injustice. They are the ones who are bringing sexuality into this conference. It’s not us. We want to talk about the heart of the issues which divide us, not only sexuality. That is just a symptom of a deeper problem.

They talk about the slavery and say that 200 years ago Christians were opposed to the freedom of slaves and they compare us to those Christians for our attitude to gay and lesbian practises. To be honest, I think this is inviting us to another kind of slavery, slavery of the flesh, to go and do whatever our lusts dictate.

More on the Traditional Anglican Communion and Cardinal Levada's letter

Here's the Catholic News Service version of the story I filed to Canadian Catholic News:

OTTAWA (CNS) -- The Vatican has assured a group of traditionalist Anglicans that it is studying seriously their request for full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, also linked the issue of corporate unity for the Traditional Anglican Communion to larger issues within the Anglican Communion.

"The situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex," Cardinal Levada said in a letter to Archbishop John Hepworth of Blackwood, Australia, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion. "As soon as the congregation is in a position to respond more definitely concerning the proposals you have sent, we will inform you."

Last October, Traditional Anglican Communion bishops from around the world met in plenary session in Portsmouth, England, and signed a letter "seeking full, corporate, sacramental union" with the Holy See.

The Traditional Anglican Communion, formed in 1990 as a worldwide body, represents so-called continuing Anglicans who left the Canterbury-led Anglican Communion over the ordination of women. It has been in informal talks with the Vatican since the early 1990s.

While the Traditional Anglican Communion seeks unity with Rome, the much larger Anglican Communion headed by the archbishop of Canterbury is wrestling with issues such as the ordination of active homosexual bishops, blessing same-sex unions and, more recently, a Church of England decision to ordain women bishops. At least twice during the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference that began in July, Vatican officials have warned of the consequences some of the Anglican decisions have on Anglican-Catholic unity.

Here's a Catholic News Agency report:

Blackwood, Jul 30, 2008 / 05:24 am (CNA).- An exchange of letters between Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion shows warming relations between the two Churches as they begin to consider proposals for corporate reunion.

Archbishop Hepworth, writing in the Messenger Journal, has announced that he has responded to a letter “of warmth and encouragement” he received on July 25 from Cardinal Levada. The archbishop said the entire Traditional Anglican Communion should be encouraged by Cardinal Levada’s letter, which was written to assure the archbishop that the Congregation is giving “serious attention” to the “prospect of corporate unity” raised in a 2007 letter from the Anglican primate.

In his letter, which was dated July 5, Cardinal Levada told Archbishop Hepworth that the Congregation has studied the proposals Archbishop Hepworth presented on behalf of the House of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion. The proposals had been presented during the archbishop’s October 9, 2007 visit to the Congregation’s dicastery offices.

“As the summer months approach, I wish to assure you of the serious attention which the Congregation gives to the prospect of corporate unity raised in that letter,” Cardinal Levada wrote.

The cardinal noted that the situation within the Anglican Communion in general “has become markedly more complex” since the archbishop’s visit. He wrote that the Congregation will inform Archbishop Hepworth as soon as the Congregation is in a position to “respond more definitively.”

Cardinal Levada closed the letter with a blessing, saying “I assure you of my continued prayers and good wishes for you and your brother bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion.”

To see the Levada letter and Archbishop Hepworth's response go here.

Some good fisking of Obama's Berlin speech

Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton does some great analysis of Barrack Obama's speech in Berlin. He writes:

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

But there are larger implications to Obama's rediscovery of the "one world" concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War's realities.

The successes Obama refers to in his speech -- the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism -- were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by "one-worldism." Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.

Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."

This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn't see all these "walls" as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that "walls" exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side -- our side -- defeated the other.

Frank Gaffney adds more:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s single most illuminating statement in the course of a just-completed overseas tour was his self-description during the stop in Berlin as a “citizen of the world.” Widely interpreted as nothing more than an innocuous expression of solidarity with his adoring, post-nationalist hosts, this declaration is actually just the latest indication that Senator Obama embraces a vision of his own country and its role in the world that should be exceedingly worrisome to America’s citizenry.

The appellation “Citizen” has a checkered past. French revolutionaries used it first to distinguish the common man from the reviled aristocracy, then to enforce their reign of terror on both. Orson Welles entitled his classic film modeled on the life of William Randolph Hearst Citizen Kane – depicting an unscrupulous demagogue who, despite his privileged background, nearly obtained high elective office on a populist platform.

Now Citizen Obama uses a turn of phrase with no less troubling overtones. The notion of world citizenship has become a staple of transnationalists who seek to subordinate national sovereignty and constitutional arrangements to a higher power. They are working to replace, for example, our directly elected representatives operating in a carefully constructed system of checks-and-balances, with rule by unaccountable elites in the form of international bureaucracies, judiciaries and even so-called “norms.”

Citizens of the world can have their rights circumscribed or even eliminated without their consent. For instance, in March the Organization of the Islamic Conference – what amounts to a Muslim mafia organization – demanded that the UN Human Rights Council (dominated by the OIC’s members) amend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The effect was to alter the foundational freedom of expression so as to prohibit speech that offends adherents to Islam.

h/t Scaramouche

Poking Christians in the eye takes real "daring"

So some jerk gets a plane to fly over Toronto with a sign that says a certain sacred-to-millions religious figure "sucks."

Well, you can just guess which religious leader it was extremely safe to say such a thing about.

Charles Lewis at the National Post has more here, plus a link to an interview with the puerile instigator of such a "daring" (read not daring at all) stunt.

Charles writes:

And just to be clear, I also think that you should be able to fly around with any banner you want. Including something that reads: “It’s Amazing What Passes For Humour.”

People should be able to laugh at anything they want, even Heil Hitler, but it’s the implicit double standard that bugs me. It’s not a case of being politically correct. That’s an easy way to dismiss anyone who doesn’t get the antics of a moron.

Maybe moron is going too far, but I’m paraphrasing what Mr. Hotz told the Post today.

“Our show is stupid and we’re stupid.”

Amen!

Now I wonder if the National Post would have run a picture of the plane's banner if another religious leader had been so, well, demeaned. I am inclined to doubt they would. Yup. Even though I think they are certainly within their rights to print the picture in this case. And while I would prefer people did not run banners saying stupid or nasty things about other peoples' religions, I do not think government should get involved in stopping it.

Interestingly, the cartoonist who did the New Yorker cartoon of Barrack Obama dressed in Muslim clothing in the Oval Office has now gone into hiding, according to this column by Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente.

She writes:

Should cartoonists get danger pay? Maybe it's time. Canada's own Barry Blitt has gone to ground after his infamous, satirical New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as gun-toting Islamic militants. Obama fans hated it. Other cartoonists hated it. But Muslim groups hated it even more. The Council on American-Islamic Relations declared it "inflammatory." A commentator for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram called it "racist" and Islamophobic.

Fortunately Mr. Blitt works in the United States, where the worst they can do is denounce you. Here in Canada, they can take you to a human rights commission. That's what happened in April when Halifax's Chronicle-Herald ran a political cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon. It shows a burka-clad figure identified as Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman who demanded a large amount of compensation after her husband was arrested in an anti-terrorism raid and later released. She holds a sign that says, "I want millions," and her speech bubble says, " I can put it towards my husband's next training camp." Outraged, a local Muslim group complained to the human rights commission, and, for good measure, called the police.

"Cartooning itself has become a bit of a dangerous area," says Dan Leger, the paper's news director. He invited the group in for a meeting and explained that a cartoonist's job is to make fun of everybody. The meeting ended on a friendly note, and with luck that will be the end of it. "Cartoons are meant to piss you off," says Mr. Leger. "Otherwise they're no good."

But it's Europe where cartooning and Islam really don't mix. In the Netherlands, eight police officers showed up recently to arrest an obscure cartoonist for sketching offensive drawings of Muslims that appeared mainly on his own website. He spent two nights in jail, and Dutch authorities are deciding whether to charge him with inciting racist hatred.

Interestingly, Obama himself said he thought Muslims would find the New Yorker cover offensive. Way to go, Barrack! A not-so-subtle message to all political cartoonists about what they may draw in the future.

In his first substantive talk about the magazine's inflammatory cartoon depicting him and his wife as fist-bumping terrorists, Obama told CNN's Larry King the image fueled misconceptions and insulted Muslim Americans.

"I know it was The New Yorker's attempt at satire. I don't think they were entirely successful with it," Obama said. "But you know what? It's a cartoon ... and that's why we've got the First Amendment."

The presumptive Democratic nominee said he wasn't personally stung by the cartoon.

"I've seen and heard worse," Obama said. "[Still], in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead."

-snip-

These fallacious e-mails and The New Yorker cartoon are "actually an insult against Muslim Americans," he said. There are "wonderful Muslim Americans" across the country, Obama said, and "for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate."

Of course the stated intent of the cartoonist and the New Yorker was the use the cartoon to lampoon those who tried to make too much of Obama's father's Muslim roots, or the fact that he for a time attended a Muslim school in Indonesia and attended mosque from time to time with this Muslim stepfather. Is the guy tone deaf to the danger he put this cartoonist in? Or was this deliberate?

Meanwhile on the Desecration of the Blessed Sacrament front, the Curt Jester has "desecrated" a microscope in the spirit of getting even. (H/t FFofF)

Heh heh heh. Great satire.

I find it absolutely abhorrent that some have resorted to death threats against Myers. I renounce those people no matter what faith they claim. No one who is serious about their Christian faith should ever do such a thing. It is unChristian.

Protecting our human rights

So....the human rights industry is busy making sure our human rights are not violated by various laws to protect us from terrorism, while at the same time acting to take away the human rights of people who make us aware of terrorists.

Does this mean the human rights of people who might endanger our country trump the rights of citizens to freedom of speech and freedom of religion?

Bizarre. I'm all for old-fashioned civil rights being protected. And even perhaps having the anti-terrorism laws checked out for that reason. But not by this illiberal bunch.

Laws to protect human rights urged for Canada's security agencies

Don Butler, Canwest News Service

Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008

OTTAWA - Current laws do not effectively protect against human rights violations by Canada's security intelligence agencies, concludes a study undertaken for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The commission asked four Toronto human rights lawyers to examine the extent to which the RCMP, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the bodies that monitor them are legally obliged to consider human rights issues when discharging their duties.

H/t BCF

My LOL video of today

Check out the Chimp video over at Little Green Footballs. It's hilarious. And no, it is not about George W. Bush.

Great minds think alike

From the Sheepcat:

There's no particular reason that different forms of disagreement with Church's understanding of human nature should be mutually consistent, and yet I can't help but be struck by the irony: in an era when some people are arguing that homosexual acts should be approved because gay and lesbian people are "born that way," other people (or occasionally the same people, just depending on whether the tides are high or low) are arguing that biological maleness and femaleness are basically irrelevant to what sort of people we are. To the latter camp, suggesting otherwise is the great sin of essentialism. "Biology is not destiny" was one of the classic feminist slogans.

Think about it.

We are sometimes asked, on the basis of far-from-conclusive evidence of "gay genes," to revise longstanding Church teaching on the morality of homosexual behaviour. It's simply not true that sexual "orientation" cannot be changed, even if most people's sexual tendencies remain relatively stable over time. But the significance of the incontrovertibly genetic matter of biological sex? So often, progressive folk both outside and within the Church treat differences between men and women as boiling down to culture and socialization.

Brian Lilley on helicopter parenting

My friend Brian Lilley has a great essay up on free-range kids vs. helicopter parenting. Enjoy.

I have long known that I should hang onto my ties, both fat and skinny ones, because eventually they would be in style again. I did not realize, however, that the way my wife and I bring up our kids -- a style closer to past generations than that of many of my contemporaries -- was something that might swing back into vogue, never mind being hailed as a radical new philosophy.

It seems that, without knowing it, my wife and I have been free-range parents, raising free-range kids. Those terms do not sit well with me. They generate images of the whole family heading outside to scratch in the ground for food, like the chickens on an organic farm. But as a series of recent articles point out, free-range parenting has nothing to do with chickens or any other farm animal.

The term comes from New York City writer Lenore Skenazy, who decided to let her nine-year-old son ride the subway home alone from a Bloomingdale’s store. The negative reaction of friends initially shocked her, but then provided plenty of fodder for a new blog -- on raising children without hovering over them at every turn. Skenazy says her childhood was spent without the fear of something ominous lurking around the corner; freedom and risk were just part of life and growing up.

Could Levada letter to Hepworth have wider implications?

Fr. Warren Tanghe of Forward in Faith International writes on the significance of Cardinal Prefect William Levada's letter to Traditional Anglican Communion Primate Archbishop John Hepworth:

On July 5th, the Prefect of the CDF, William Cardinal Levada, sent a letter to the Primate of the TAC, Archbishop John Hepworth, in which he assured the TAC "of the serious attention which the Congregation gives to the prospect of corporate unity raised in that letter", and assuring it that "as soon as the Congregation is in a position to respond more definitively concerning the proposals you have sent, we will inform you".

The simple fact that such a letter was sent might be thought significant. Rome rarely acts quickly, but it does not seem that it often proffers such an interim assurance. The fact that it did so in this case, would itself seem to confirms the CDF’s statement that it takes the TAC initiative seriously.

The reason the Cardinal gave for the Congregation’s delay seems peculiar: "the situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex during the same period". Despite its close relationship with Forward in Faith and with bishops in the Communion who have not compromised the historic faith, the TAC is completely outside the Anglican Communion. Why, then, should the situation within the Communion affect the Congregation’s handling of the TAC petition? That it has done so might seem to confirm the statements of several TAC bishops that their initiative is not simply about the TAC, but about opening a gateway for any and all Anglicans, within or outside the Communion, who may wish to live out their Anglican identity in communion with the Holy See. This would mean that the response must be set within the larger context of Rome’s ongoing relationships with the Anglican Communion.

The letter confirms that the TAC’s petition, or at least "the prospect of corporate unity" which it raised, has the "serious attention" of the Congregation. But a senior Roman Catholic source cautions against reading too much into the letter: it may really mean no more than, `we’re onto it, please be patient’.

There were three TAC bishops, including Hepworth, who presented the formal letter requesting full communion with the Holy See last October 9.

The desecration of the Blessed Sacrament

P.Z. Myers, an atheist professor, got someone to obtain a consecrated Host from a Catholic Church so that he could desecrate it. He threw it in the trash along with some torn pages of the Koran--desecration of the Muslim holy book.

So far the outcry against him is mainly from Catholics. Some are writing his university to get the professor fired from his job. Others refuse to link to the post because they find the picture of the Blessed Sacrament in the trash so offensive. Worse, some people have resorted to making threats.

This latest controversy offers a good opportunity for all of us to reflect on the Muslim cartoon controversy. From the perspective of some Muslims, who believe that any depiction of their prophet is blasphemous, the decision of a Danish newspaper to deliberately commission cartoons was on the same level as Myers' decision to desecrate a Host and publicize a picture of the deed.

I Googled Myers because I wanted to see a picture for myself. I read his blog post. Meh.

I believe Jesus Christ is physically present in the Blessed Sacrament, so Myers took aim at what is sacred to me. But maybe I'm desensitized. I am so used to anti-Christian and especially anti-Catholic vitriol in the news media and elsewhere, I frankly have no visceral reaction about this. I think what Myers did is sad. It reflects on his lack of faith and lack of civility.

But it also makes me reflect on the whole freedom of speech and freedom of religion issue. I think we all need to develop thicker skins and sharpen our awareness of how our actions affect others at the same time.

Remember that when the Mohamed cartoon controversy was raging, many Christians came forward to express their solidarity with offended Muslims. I believe we can stand up for freedom of expression while at the same time exercising personal restraint and sensitivity to the cherished beliefs of others.

I have read some tracts about Mohamed written by Muslims that are so full of devotion that they remind me of how Christians write about Jesus. I would not want to step all over that devotion through ridicule or by deliberately making disparaging remarks about their beloved prophet.

I do not agree, however, that Mohamed is on a par with Jesus, because I believe Jesus is the Son of God, which is blasphemy to Muslims. But when I state my faith in this way, it is because I am free to do so and I believe it is the Truth, but I do not do so to deliberately offend believing Muslims. I believe they should be free to say God has no son and that belief in the Trinity is tantamount to polytheism. I think we should be able to agree to disagree even on these most profound sacred truths and I think we can do so if we practice mutual respect for each other's humanity. We need to respect at the core human dignity and freedom of conscience.

Thus I think if I were the editor of that Danish newspaper, I would not have commissioned the cartoons but I also believe that newspaper still should have been free to do so.

I do agree, however, with Ezra Levant's republishing the cartoons once the embassies started burning and people started dying in riots. Those cartoons became news at that point. He was not deliberately setting out to be offensive, he was showing the public what the fuss was all about.

Thus if a news outlet decided to reprint Myer's photograph of the desecrated Host and Koran pages to show readers why this is so controversial, I would not lump the editors who do so in with Myers. They are showing the news.

I think we all need to practice a little more Golden Rule when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. To think not only about doing unto others as we would have done unto us, but also not doing unto others what we would not have done unto us.

The last thing I want though is some government body stepping in as referee on these issues.

I think a certain amount of self-censorship, also known as civility and tact, is a good thing. But that self-censorship needs to spring from freedom and virtue, not intimidation and cowardice.

It's too bad, really, that tolerance has become the only "virtue" our elites want to inculcate in us, but other virtues, the old-fashioned ones of prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice are getting undermined.

In the meantime, I send up a prayer for Myers. He sees a wafer and he wants to desecrate it because to him nothing is sacred. How sad. I see Jesus and He brings me great joy, peace and consolation.

The Anchoress on President Bush

She writes: I still like President Bush. And I don’t actually give a crap what anyone thinks about that.

Me too. In fact, as victory in Iraq is now in sight, maybe Bush's legacy will have to be rethought sooner. I expect though that in 20 years time he will be revered as one of America's great presidents.


There are some great pictures of President George W. Bush at that link. The Anchoress writes:

It is amazing to me that this president, who has a very full plate and carries the stigma of being “the most vilified and hated being in the entire world” - more hated than Mugabe, Chavez, Castro, A-jad, Kaddafi, Jong Il, or the rest - manages to keep his sense of humor and more importantly his humanity.

Obama could take a few lessons from Bush.

It is easy to be loved when you look good, give a great speech and do nothing, and it’s easy to be hated once you’re actually engaged in making decisions and standing by them. A real leader has to - like a parent - be willing to be hated. I’ve always thought Bill Clinton’s greatest weakness as a president was his need to be loved. It kept him beholden to polls instead of possibilities.

The thing is, one has to follow one’s own lights - do the best one can with whatever wisdom and sense the Holy Spirit has lain upon you - and not worry too much about polls and op-eds. Polls are both malleable and fickle, op-eds are designed to provoke. If you’re doing your honest best, you can sleep at night, and shake off the hate, day-by-day. If you’re not, and you know you’re not, the hate rankles.

McCain had it right; Obama had it wrong

Even Associated Press is now recognizing the victory in Iraq. (H/t SDA)

BAGHDAD (AP) — The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

U.S. presidential candidate John McCain:

Eighteen months ago, America faced a crisis as profound as any in our history. Iraq was in flames, torn apart by violence that was escaping our control. Al Qaeda was succeeding in what Osama bin Laden called the central front in their war against us. The mullahs in Iran waited for America's humiliation in Iraq, and the resulting increase in their influence. Thousands of Iraqis died violently every month. American casualties were mounting. We were on the brink of a disastrous defeat just a little more than five years after the attacks of September 11, and America faced a profound choice. Would we accept defeat and leave Iraq and our strategic position in the Middle East in ruins, risking a wider war in the near future? Or would we summon our resolve, deploy additional forces, and change our failed strategy? Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

Didn't I see something about Tibetans being responsible

You know those bombings on buses in various cities in China? The ones officials hinted might be due to violent Tibetans?

I always thoughts something was suspicious about that. Now a story comes out about a group claiming responsibility. And warning about taking their violent campaign to the Olympics.

A MILITANT Islamic group has threatened to attack the Beijing Olympics with suicide bombers and biological weapons and has claimed responsibility for a string of fatal bombings and explosions in China over recent weeks.

In a video released by IntelCenter, a terrorism monitoring group, a bearded man identified as “Commander Seyfullah” is seen reading a declaration of jihad against the Olympics and warns athletes and spectators, “especially Muslims”, to stay away.

It was issued by a group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic party. The group may be allied with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – designated a terrorist organisation by the US, China and several other countries – which seeks independence for the Muslim Uighur people of China’s far west province of Xinjiang, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan.

“Commander Seyfullah” said the group was responsible for three bombs last week on buses in the city of Kunming, which killed two people, and for two bus bombings on May 21 in Shanghai, which killed three.

What losing a shared conception of the common good means

Ron Dreher at his Crunchy Con blog has a most interesting post reflecting on the meaning of the breakdown in civility indicated by a professor's deciding to desecrate a Communion Host. (The professor also says he desecrated a Koran, but that seems to have been lost in the shuffle.)

Please read the whole essay because it touches on some themes that have animated my blogging on the whole freedom of speech issue. I firmly believe in civility and respect being granted to people with whom I disagree and I do not believe a pluralistic democracy can exist unless people voluntarily exercise their freedoms--including freedom of speech-- with restraint and a voluntary doing unto others as we would have done unto us.

Dreher tells of the ominous developments can take place if a kind of voluntary social consensus breaks down. We're seeing first draconian implications here in Canada with the widespread intrusion of so-called human rights commissions where government starts putting a muzzle on what people can say or not say, and of course that muzzle is ideologically motivated. Here's an excerpt of Dreher's post. Please read it all.

BTW, I do not support the government taking legal action against this offensive professor's action. I just wish he would experience some of the kind of censure that football player received when it was discovered he organized dog fights and didn't treat his animals well.

Yesterday while driving around, I listened on CD to a 2005 lecture given by James Davison Hunter, the University of Virginia sociologist who specializes in studying the culture war (it was Hunter who coined the phrase "culture war.") The thesis of the lecture was that the cultural conditions that brought about the founding of the American Republic no longer exist. Hunter explained that even though American at the founding contained people who believed religious faith was the source of ultimate authority for the government, and those who believed pure reason was, the American settlement was sufficiently opaque to accomodate both sides. The reason? A shared commitment to a broad understanding of what constituted the common good. Whether you believed an understanding of the Good derived primarily from religious dictates, or natural reason shorn of the distorting lens of religion, there was broad agreement on where society ought to be headed.

That's over, Hunter says. The Enlightenment dream that Reason alone can disclose authoritative truths to live by has been shown to have been empty. All Reason alone gives us is radical subjectivity. It has shown us how and why to doubt everything, but does not show us why we should believe in anything (other, I suppose, than the truths disclosed by science -- which aren't moral truths at all). Hunter says the students he teaches at UVA have never read the postmodernist philosophers, but they, by virtue of living in contemporary America, are as postmodern as any Derrida.

What does this mean for the future of democracy? Hunter says that we're at a pretty risky time right now. We've lost a shared understanding of the Common Good; and moreover, we're getting to the place where we don't have the civic conviction that life in a pluralistic democracy demands a certain degree of mutual respect, and respect of the forms we've developed for working out our differences in public.

America The National Catholic weekly looks at Lambeth and TAC

Neither of those questions is relevant if the bishops at Lambeth cannot agree to the proposals. If they can – and it would be because they believe they are on the cliff edge, and are shrinking back in horror -- this would mark a new departure for the Anglican Church, which has traditionally spurned a central doctrinal watchdog and “authoritarian” (as many would see them) ecclesiological structures.

It would be a huge vindication for Dr Williams, and delight Rome – this is precisely the path which the Vatican has been urging Anglicans to go down.

Conversely, if the proposals fail, the Anglican Church can expect a long dark night of balkanisation and Rome will all but give up on structured ecclesial dialogue. Whom would Catholics be talking to, and what would be the point?

If Dr Williams’s proposals fail, the way opens for serious negotiations with traditionalist Anglicans for some kind of corporate reception. Cardinal Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has written to traditional Anglicans here to tell them it is open to their ideas for some kind of “corporate unity” – but definitely not yet.

Read between the lines – and take a note of the letter’s timing. The Vatican will do nothing pro tem to interfere with Dr Williams’s attempts to tighten up his Church and everything to encourage them. But if the attempts fail, the Catholic Church will be open to the Traditionalist Anglican Communion (whose head is the Australian bishop John Hepworth) coming over en bloc.

Reaction and speculation begins on Levada letter to TAC

There is some interesting commentary here:

PKTP writes:

They have really accepted all Catholic teaching now. The only sticking point is that they have married bishops. But their Primate, John Hepworth, has signalled that, if need be, their 'bishops' will accept rank as priests so that the Pope can promote to bishop unmarried priests from among them.

They are seeking to be the first uniate Western Catholic Church. In my considered view, they will get this, probably by October. This is the logical way to bring in the conservatives from the Church of England, those who presently reject 'bishopettes' and inverted marriages. These new converts, led by the Church of England Bishop of Ebbsfleet and ten other Church of England bishops, could simply cross over into a uniate TAC (Traditional Anglican Church) under the Pope. This is the way to go. In the near future, the leader of the Third World Anglicans (GAFCON) will probably bring in about one-third of the world's Anglicans.

The Anglican Use in the U.S.A. is definitely NOT the way to go. A prelature for the recent Church of Englanders under a Catholic bishop in England is also definiately not the way to go.

The Holy Father will have to decide if he'll let them keep their married bishops. They will accept his decision on this.

They will get to keep most of their Anglican traditions but must submit to an acceptable Eucharistic Liturgy (already achieved) and the rule on confessing sins once a year, and the rule against divorce & re-marriage. These are no longer stumbling-block. They will have to 'lose' St. Charles the Martyr but might be able to 'keep' King St. Henry VI.

Marjorie Campbell reflects on children and sexuality

Please read the whole essay. Campbell writes:

Dawn Stefanowicz's Out from Under takes on gay parenting from one child's perspective. It is her candid account of life growing up "under" an exploitative father whose same-sex attraction blasted his life and the life of his wife and three children like a hurricane. Stefanowicz's early, explicit, and continuous exposure to sex-obsessed gay subculture generated the subtitle of her chronicle, "The Impact of Homosexual Parenting."

With an amazing, faith-driven charity, Stefanowicz offers explanation, even understanding, for the lifestyle her father imposed on the family:

In many ways, he seemed as stubbornly wedged in the confusion of early adolescence as I was. He was never content with himself and was constantly trying to improve his appearance. He was often narcissistic, self-absorbed, and very needy for male affirmation and affection. His ideal sexual partner was someone who would be very subordinate to his demands without being effeminate. He used power in these relationships, often with men ten years his junior. . . . He carried a lot of unresolved anger . . . and had numerous and anonymous sexual partners . . . involved in many different kinds of sexual behavior, including group sex. So, of course, there would be jealousy and hurt feelings from time to time . . . there was that legion of spurned ex-partners who would no longer come around.

The article is not about gay parenting, it is about a collapse in the moral consensus that used to protect children from undue exposure to adult sexuality. I am sure most gay parents go out of their way to protect the children under their care from exposure to adult sexual behavior just as conscientious heterosexual parents do. And there are, obviously, heterosexual parents who don't, who even exploit children through incest. But when you see sexualized images of young girls in advertising campaigns, you can see where society is moving.

Shrinkwrapped analyzes Obama's facility with words

When Barack Obama expressly contradicts himself within minutes of making a comment, there are several possible explanations for his facility with the language:

1) It is possible, perhaps likely, that Obama simply does not believe it is wise or necessary for him to admit an error. This is an accusation that has been made about President Bush on a regular basis, and has contributed to the tribulations of the Bush Presidency.

2) Obama may well be able to convince himself, probably post facto, that his words mean just what he wants them to mean, a la Humpty Dumpty, and therefore doesn't consider the contradictions to be significant.

3) He may believe that he still lives in a world dominated by the MSM, that they will continue to cover for him as they have done since the beginning of his campaign, and that there is no need for him to maintain any consistency or explain any contradictions.

4) In the worst case scenario, he may well be an opportunistic sociopath who lies because he thinks he can get away with it.

I suspect that his behavior represents a combination of these possibilities, plus some other possibilities I am probably neglecting. Since an intellectual educated in a post-modernist university starts from the premise that reality is constructed by those who have power, he assumes that his words, mellifluous and powerful, are enough to determine reality. This would fit with Obama's history; after all his most common vote while a State Senator was "present" suggesting that taking responsibility for actions was considered a liability rather than an asset. Now that the seat of greatest power lies within reach he is already behaving as if he has attained his goal. He acts as if once President, his descriptions of reality would trump reality. This is also in line with the world of George Lakoff who is very influential within the Democratic party for his theory that the problem of liberalism lies in the words and framing of their arguments rather than in the content of their ideas.

Reaping in actions what we sow in ideas

Some sobering reading out there in the blogosphere. Here are some links of posts that remind me how ideas have consequences and how sadly and dangerously truncated are views of the human being have become with awful results.

From Denyse O'Leary's Post-Darwinist blog--always a good source of thoughtful and challenging information about the real Intelligent Design debate, not the made-up one of mainstream media spin doctors--some quotes from Victor Frankl via historian Richard Weikhart who says:

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted," Frankl continued, "with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of 'Blood and Soil.' I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Ron Dreher at his Crunchy Con blog talks about athletes at a high school simulating gang rape on younger students in the showers, 20 feet away from the coach's office. He writes:

I don't know enough to say where the buck stopped in that school. But at some level, adults failed to protect these kids. At the end of our conversation today, I told the superintendent that I know there never has been a golden age of teenage boy behavior, but the idea of simulating anal gang rape is just off-the-charts bizarre. One mom told me she and her husband moved their family to Sunnyvale, which is an upscale community, to escape the rough environment in a more downscale suburb's schools. And look what those sicko athletes did to her kid!

The superintendent said he's about the same age as I am (I'm 41), and that if I haven't spent much time around teenagers since my high school and middle school years, I'd be shocked by the ideas and behavior that are normal now, but that weren't as recently as the 1980s, when we were in school. I should make it clear that he wasn't trying to blame anybody else for what happened in the school with this bullying, but was saying (as I heard him) that the restraints that used to be in place in this culture until almost yesterday are badly frayed.

I believe him.

So do I. What has happened to internal restraints that came from religious instruction? What has happened to virtues like self-control?

The more we have this kind of internal lawlessness, the more the busybodies in the Nanny state think they need to control our lives. The more we think freedom is absence of self-restraint, the more destruction we leave in our wake that almost demands that the state comes in to fix up the mess we've left behind.

Getting rid of human rights commissions is not going to be anything but a band-aid solution. We have to reclaim the notion of human freedom. We have to re-inculcate the old-fashioned meanings of what it means to be a human being---made in the image and likeness of God--and our notions of what freedom for that human being looks like in its highest and most noble aspect.

Jesus said the Truth shall make us free. That is freedom indeed, not the kind of libertine excess that is really slavery to animal appetites and addictions to ugly passions that we are afraid to admit about ourselves.

Cardinal Levada responds to the Traditional Anglican Communion

Cardinal William Levada, the Prefect for the Congregration for the Doctrine of the Faith, has written to the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion concerning the TAC's formal request to come into corporate unity with the Holy See.

There is more at www.themessenger.com.au

Note the letter was written July 5, well before the Lambeth Conference, but it is my understanding Archbishop Hepworth only received it yesterday via the Australian Nuncio.

25th july 2008

Mass man--Joseph Bottum looks at Ortega y Gasset's concept

Joseph Bottum revisits Ortega yGasset's "mass man" over at First Things.

Ortega’s accomplishment in that book was to identify a new sociological species: mass man. As The Revolt of the Masses explains, the mass man is not just an ordinary man, and he is not associated with any particular class. He is, rather, a product of European historical development, a kind of human being born for the first time in the nineteenth century.

The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and—as Ortega remembers from Goethe—“to live as one pleases is plebian.” The mass man “possesses no quality of excellence.” He demands more and more, as if it were his natural right, without realizing that what he wants was the privilege of a tiny group only a century ago. He does not understand that technological wonders are the product of an intricate cultural process for which he should be grateful. “What before would have been considered one of fortune’s gifts, inspiring humble gratitude toward destiny, was converted into a right, not to be grateful for, but to be insisted on,” The Revolt of the Masses claims.

What Ortega understood is that the nineteenth century created the kind of human being who would become the dominant social force in the twentieth century—and thus that there is no way back to the aristocratic style of politics that dominated history for millennia. Mass man, fortified by an array of rights, is in charge of historical destiny.

The danger of that fact, however, lies in mass man’s lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture. Here Ortega draws a critical distinction between civilization and culture. Civilization is the sum of the technical and technological tools that make life as we know it possible. And culture is that civilization’s underpinnings—the set of ideas, motives, and religious truths that gave birth to civilization.

So, for instance, mass man is oblivious to the fact that much of what is known in modern times as science started as a theoretical or theological game in the seventeenth century. The serious underpinnings of science were apparent to René Descartes, for instance. One of the founders of modern science, Descartes points out in several of his letters that his philosophical conception of God is indispensable for his new conception of science—since it is a view of God as capable of changing even the truths of mathematics.

Analyze this!

From one of Morgentaler's poems:

"Sometimes I would like to devour the breast that is feeding me, to tear at the nipple and bite it, but could not stand losing it. It feels so good to suck and suck and suck. Sometimes I feel that the nipple drips poison that goes straight to my heart and by a magic power keeps me from growing up, growing out of needing the breast. I spit and reject the poison milk. I hit and curse the breast and mother. I smash the goddess to bits, and then I look at myself, helpless, small and hungry and cry. And the mother goddess appears, the golden nipples full of milk and honey and I suck again, and drink again, and again I'm a little suckling."

Yech!

For more fascinating details gleaned from a hard-hitting interview by Evan Solomon, check out this LifeSiteNews.com story.

Ever since reading this post I've been a little freaked

The Anchoress goes into detail about Obama's logo and shows pictures of it. It has the upper ring of the O superimposed over a stylized stripes to represent the American flag.

She writes:

It is striking to note that Obama’s plane flys around the world sporting
an iiiiittty bitty American flag (out of camera range when he walks down to
tarmacs) and many prominent O symbols. I wrote to a pal yesterday:
“A tiny little flag near the serial numbers, the big Obama symbol everywhere - including, apparently, on HIS seat in first class. It’s starting to really make me uncomfortable. Obama is clearly trying to send a signal that he is a “citizen of the world’ type before he is an American. That Obamaland is a state unto itself. Or a state of mind."

Apparently the Great Seal of Obama was not a mere glitch in his
campaign. The O symbol takes precedence over the American symbol for this
candidate, and - to his credit - he’s being really up front about his
priorities.

And I thought Bill Clinton was a narcissist.

In fairness -to some extent, you do need a big ego to run for the American presidency, but on the other hand, this pre-dominant O symbol begins to make me uncomfortable. Is all of this meant to instill confidence in a man who has only 143 days working experience in the Congress (with no signature piece of legislation to his name) a whisper thin resume and some dubious policy ideas?

Now I see it on Obama's campaign literature and it pops out at me like the O on the cover of O magazine--some kind of modernist cross between the U.S. presidential seal and New Age touchy-feely one-world-government. Check it out and see if it doesn't start to freak you out, too, when you see it popping out at you from the campaign bumpf.

And the stuff leading up to his anti-climactic Berlin "I am a beginner" speech--that he would draw one million? More than the pope at World Youth Day in Cologne? I don't think so. Estimates say it was more like 100,000. Still a pretty big crowd. Don't think it'll play well in Peoria though. Those Reagan Democrats, the ones who wanted Hillary, are not going to like the idea of Germans telling Americans how to vote.

It appalls me that Obama is going around the world as if he is already president of the United States. I hope this is a big indication that he is--as they say in the bidness--peaking too soon.

I would LOVE to know what Hillary and Bill think of this.

This BBC piece talks about how Germans are looking for a political redeemer.

Geesh. We all know what happened last time they looked for one.

Hidden from the wise but revealed to children . . .

Xanthippa's Chamberpot has a magnificent cartoon series drawn by her 9-year old son based on Ezra Levant's famous interrogation before a "human rights" commissioner.

She writes:

So, even my young son could not remain unaware of the ‘free speech/Human
Rignts Commissions’ controversy brewing in our fair homeland of Canada.
Perhaps the most visible (certainly the most colourful) free speech advocate in
Canada right now - in my never-humble-opinion, is Mr. Ezra Levant. I
admit, I have become fascinated with the ‘gray dungeon’ Mr. Levant was
interrogated in by the Alberta HRC Inquisitoress in, seeing its ‘grayness’ with
the painting of the ’sunny, free outdoors’ as somehow symbolic of the whole
proces… I have gone as far as to paint my ‘impression’ of the dungeon, in
hopes of - sometimes soon - donating it to an auction benefiting the ‘free
speech’ defense fund.

Check out the cartoons her son drew. Hilarious. He gets it in a way that so many of our elites do not. And her painting of the interrogation room is most interesting, too.

Louisiana governor took part in an exorcism

Of course this will come back to "haunt" him if he's chosen as McCain's pick for vice president.
But it's not a problem for me.

Americans tend to be quite religious. Most tell pollsters they believe in heaven and hell (and assume they are heading upward, not downward, once they expire). Many tend to believe literally in the devil. But how will an amateur exorcism--that violated Catholic law (which allows only certified exorcists to perform the ritual in very limited circumstances)--play with, say, swing voters? No doubt, Jindal will have to discuss the episode. With Oprah perhaps? That would indeed be Must See TV.

Here's one excerpt of his article that an interviewer might want to ask about:

While Alice and Louise held Susan, her sister continued holding the Bible to her face. Almost taunting the evil spirit that had almost beaten us minutes before, the students dared Susan to read biblical passages. She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence "Jesus is Lord." Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities. In between her futile attempts, Susan pleaded with us to continue trying and often smiled between the grimaces that accompanied her readings of Scripture. Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed "Jesus is Lord."

With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, "Has something happened?" She did not remember any of the past few hours and was startled to find her friends breaking out in cheers and laughter, overwhelmed by sudden joy and relief.

As a vice presidential candidate, Jindal would be under great pressure--and ought to be--to make other participants in the event available for interview. In the article, he used fake names. But he insisted every single detail was true. Given that such an event must have had a profound impact on him--he came face to face with a real demon!-- this possible president-in-waiting would be obligated to prove that he got the story right, that he was not exaggerating. (Remember how the press and the GOPers went after Al Gore's claims in 2000 with a vengeance?) And the media, of course, would be on the hunt to find "Susan" to get her side of the tale. (Enquiring minds might want to know if her skin cancer is still gone.)

Michael Harris on the Morgentaler award

My friend Michael Harris has a great column on the Morgentaler award. Michael and I don't always agree about things, but he is one person who respects the idea of civility in the public square and agreeing to disagree without personal attacks, even permitting friendship across various divides. I respect his journalistic integrity. I also think he's got his hand on a populist pulse in Canada.

He writes:

I usually don't get worked up about who gets what in the world of public honours. Awards are usually conferred by narcissistic elites gazing into the vanity mirror of their own values and proceeding to reward the like-minded.

The Order of Canada, (along with sea trunks of honorary degrees, blue ribbons, and other proof of pedigree) is generally reserved for PLTs -- People Like Themselves. It's not exactly a blessing from the Pope, but it's not a coupon for a free Big Mac either. Think of the Order of Canada as a group hug from the Establishment. How else could Peter Mansbridge have been snowflaked and Andrew McIntosh ignored? It certainly wasn't about journalism.

By elevating Henry Morgentaler, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Co. have performed a majestic belly flop. They have bestowed a national honour on a mere personal favourite. They have also reminded us that the soft underbelly of the Establishment in Canada continues to be liberal, smugly self-satisfied, and contemptuous of those lacking in cultural evolution.

Meanwhile, the dumb old country doesn't want to give a group hug to Dr. Morgentaler.

Rome sends a prophet to Lambeth

Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, addressed the Lambeth Conference, scene of the slow motion break up of the Anglican Communion, and did not mince words:

The spiritual combat, described in the Books of Genesis and Revelation, has continued unabated all down the ages. St Paul described it in very vivid terms: “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). This combat rages fiercely even today, aided and abetted by well-known secret sects, Satanic groups and New Age movements, to mention but a few, and reveals many ugly heads of the hideous anti-God monster: among them are notoriously secularism, which seeks to build a Godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the Gospel. All of these seek to efface any reference to God or to things supernatural, and to supplant it with mundane values and behaviour patterns which purposely ignore the transcendental and the divine. Far from satisfying the deep yearnings of the human heart, they foster a culture of death, be it physical or moral, spiritual or psychological. Examples of this culture are abortions (or the slaughter of innocent unborn children), divorces (which kill sacred marriage bonds blessed by God), materialism and moral aberrations (which suffocate the joy of living and lead often to profound psychic depression), economic, social and political injustices (which crush human rights), violence, suicides, murders, and the like, all of which abound today and militate against the mind of Christ, who came that “all may have life, and have it in abundance” (Jn 10:10). Two vital institutions of the human society are particularly vulnerable to such a culture of death: the family and the youth. These must, therefore, receive the special attention, guidance and support of those whom the Holy Spirit has placed as shepherds of the flock entrusted to their pastoral care.

And then this, if they didn't get the message the first time:

For, in the present ecumenical framework in which Providence has willed to engage the Churches, a unity which binds them together in the apostolic faith is intrinsic to the Church’s mission of speaking and spreading the Gospel. Hence, when they are of one mind and heart notwithstanding their diversity, their missionary thrust is indeed enhanced and strengthened. But, when the diversity degenerates into division, it becomes a counter-witness which seriously compromises their image and endeavours to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities. For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s. And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson’s.

I blog on the life of a journalist over at The Master's Artist

Journalism is ideal for people who like to operate without a lot of structure and routine. The demands of the job provide the right amount of stress to get you motivated.

Yet, as much as I am someone who naturally resists routine and loves spontaneity, I have learned over the years the benefits of having routines, of training myself to develop good habits of prayer, of exercise, of spiritual reading.

That doesn't mean I do them on a regular basis. And being a journalist often gives me an excuse for ignoring my plans for spiritual quiet time, because, well, I get a call from Australia. Or I have to rush off to some press conference.

But it is interesting what happens when things do slow down. Without the routines, the habits, it is easy to just selfishly indulge my desire to sit around and read a magazine or blogs and still not do my prayers.

I know after years of trial and error that I do best when I devote the first half hour or so of my morning to God. But I have so gotten off that habit it's not funny. I have two newspapers that I start reading while I'm a little bleary-eyed, waiting for my coffee to brew. Then if I go on the 'net and check various blogs, I can end up feeling kind of outraged at what's going on in the world.

My work as a journalist allows me to address those wrongs, to write about them, to write about how intelligent, faithful people are responding. It's energizing. But it can be energizing from a wrong source. As I have probably said before, last time I looked being appalled was not one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Opposition to Morgentaler award grows

Here's my latest piece on the Catholic Register's web site:

OTTAWA - A scientific poll commissioned by Campaign Life Coalition shows a majority of Canadians do not think abortionist Henry Morgentaler should have been appointed to the Order of Canada.

Coalition President Jim Hughes said the poll’s results challenge the pervasive “lie” that Canada has “social peace” over the issue of abortion. “There will never be social peace as long as people believe they have the right to kill innocent human beings, whether inside the womb or outside,” said Hughes.

The KLRVU Research poll conducted between July 17-21 shows that 55.8 per cent oppose Morgentaler’s receiving the award. The question asked was: “Do you believe abortionist Henry Morgentaler deserves the Order of Canada?” The random poll contacted 157,115 households; more than 13,000 participants responded.

The results contrast those of a recent Ispos Reid poll commissioned by Canwest News that showed 65 per cent of Canadians supported Morgentaler’s appointment to Canada’s highest civilian honour.

Strange Lambeth

Theo Hobson has some interesting views on Lambeth:

So why aren't the liberals itchier? This is the big question. Is it because they are too weak to form a protest lobby? No: the answer is more complex. The reason is that the liberals have a deep trust that the communion's position on sexuality will liberalise, given time. Of course they cannot say this – because it contravenes the existing orthodoxy, and also because it would sound colonial – "let's wait for the developing nations to catch up". In other words, they follow their leader's example: bite your tongue and wait for the Holy Spirit to enlighten the communion.

This approach dominates the tone and structure of this conference. At Sunday's eucharist, the preacher was the Right Rev Duleep de Chickera, the Bishop of Colombo. He insisted that the church must make space "for everyone and anyone, regardless of colour, gender, ability, sexual orientation. Unity in diversity is a cherished Anglican tradition – a spirituality if you like." And the following night the bishops were addressed by an American theologian called Brian McLaren, who was careful not to say too clearly that he was a liberal on the gay issue.

This is the "unofficial official" line of the conference: reform must come, but slowly-slowly, so that the cause of global evangelism is not harmed, and Anglican unity not further broken. In theory of course, the conference has no "line" at all – bishops will listen to each other, and then a "reflection" statement will be produced that affirms the existing orthodoxy. This is why so many evangelicals have boycotted: they knew that this tacit reformist agenda would be present.

I hope this kind of hubris sinks him

Unbelievable.

At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

H/t Gateway Pundit

More speculation about expansion of Anglican Use

Fr. Eric L. Bergman, chaplain of the Thomas Moore Society in Scranton and chaplain of the Anglican Use Society, explained some of the changes that have been made in the Anglican Use.

"The Anglican Use and the Pastoral Provision are now open to Continuing Church Anglicans as well as members of the Episcopal Church," he said. "The [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] said the Pastoral Provision can apply to men in Continuing Churches and their communities."

Fr. Bergman also said a community in Kansas City is forming because of the new opportunities, but the Anglican Use remains in the United States only, for now.
"Whether it will be expanded to other countries is anybody's guess," he said.
Archbishop Myers suggested those who have benefited from the Pastoral Provision over its 28 years of existence should remember that it was granted "for an indefinite period of time."

"Catholic faithful who worship according to the Anglican Use must never see themselves as different from other Catholics or somehow privileged among other Christian communions," he said. "We are Catholics together, obedient to the Holy Father, to those bishops in communion with him and ever faithful to magisterial teaching."

"We long for an expansion of the Anglican Use that would welcome a body into communion," said Bishop David Moyer, a bishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion and rector of The Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont. "The Traditional Anglican Communion petitioned for that in October. Any move toward expansion of the Anglican Use by the Vatican is very welcomed."

There have been no official statements from the Vatican on the results of the continuing dialogue with various Anglican groups. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is scheduled to address the Lambeth Conference this week.

Red alert--but let's not forget what we're fighting for

Ezra Levant has received a death threat from an anonymous poster. The Binksmeister has more:

All friends of this blog and of Ezra Levant please be aware that Ezra has received what appears to be a serious death-threat. Any IP-nerds or web-hunters will want to know that Ezra has offered a bounty of $1000 for whoever can give him a specific name.

For those of faith our there, please pray God’s protection and the holy angels defend him and his.

I have some mixed feelings about this contest. On one hand, I hope that the blogosphere does some great investigative work that finds the perpetrator. On the other, let us remember one of the basic principles of our Western legal tradition---innocent until proven guilty. So I am really uncomfortable with people Google-earthing a certain residence based on some of the longitudinal information dug up. What if you have the wrong house? What if "anonymous poster" was using someone else's computer? Remember a certain gal whose WiFi was stolen and how it affected her to have her apartment building and other identifying information put on the Internet. The folks living in the house with that latitude and longitude may have nothing to do with the death threat.

I am with the folks who are advising Ezra in the comments section to contact the appropriate authorities. And we in the blogosphere can help keep up the pressure for those authorities to DO something.

One of the main reasons why the human rights commission process is so unjust is that it ignores the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Let's not forget about it ourselves.

As serious as this threat might be, let's please resist the temptation to jump to conclusions, to be hot-headed, to throw out prudence and principle and to start looking like our enemies.

We stand for something. Something good. Let's not forget it.

Ezra Levant on the Guy Earle comedy fundraiser

Guess who was there: Jason Kenney and his communications advisor Alykhan Velshi.

Ezra writes:

But the fact that a federal cabinet minister has attended this dissident event, in support of free speech and in solidarity with a Canadian who has been targeted by the illiberal human rights racket, is impressive to me.

I remain optimistic that the government will move from symbolic gestures, such as Kenney's appearance tonight, to substantive actions, such as gutting the Canadian Human Rights Act's section 13 -- the political censorship provision. It was the B.C. analog of that section that has trapped Guy Earle, and trapped me, too, in Alberta, for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed nearly three years ago.

UPDATE 1: I'm reminded somewhat roughly by a commenter that the actual complaint proceeding against Earle is not for "discrimination" in his communication, but "discrimination" in his "provision of a service". That's even nuttier. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will have a hearing about whether Earle's "service" -- how he responds to hecklers -- meets their standards of non-discrimination. It's actually more absurd than a section 13 "hate speech" case, if that's possible. Will will now have "jurisprudence" about the right and wrong way for comedians to reply to heckles.

Fire. Them. All.

UPDATE 2: I'm told the event was full to capacity. I inquired about the political nature of the jokes -- because entertainers often show their political bravery by attacking, oh, George W. Bush, rather than anyone who might actually hurt them, Theo van Gogh-style. I'm told the comedians were not in that cliched rut at all.

Denyse O'Leary's profound thoughts on the Guy Earle fundraiser

Read her whole account of the event. Here are some excerpts:

Guy Earle, readying himself to face the BC Human Rights Tribunal, was in fine form (celebrating his 40th birthday, I gather).

Still, I went away thoughtful, for two reasons:

Many attendees wore black tee shirts proclaiming their right to "be an [ice]hole." I was curious as to whether they understood clearly that they were actually making a profound statement, not a silly one. It goes to the heart of the fundamental difference between two styles of government - limited vs. totalitarian. A limited government exists for certain agreed purposes. It's not the government's business to change your thinking to match the preferences of social engineers.

Limited government is based on the idea that there is an indelible core in you that is you, and a similar core in me that is me. Traditionally, that was called a soul. See, I warned you. We are in deep waters here.

Totalitarian government - to which Canada's "human rights" commissions are rapidly taking us - takes a different view. You are a robot. The purpose of government is to fix everything social engineers identify as wrong with you. That includes punishing thoughtcrimes by whatever means necessary. Thoughtcrimes, after all, lead to facecrimes and speechcrimes - and remember, the government is responsible for absolutely everything, including everyone's feelings at all times.

Must read Charles Krauthammer column on Obama

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was a psychiatrist in a previous incarnation, so he knows something about narcissism from a clinical point of view. Here are some excerpts from a must read column on Barack Obama:

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

-snip-

Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down.

-snip-

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

Stephen Boissoin has appealed

You can read about it here at Stephen Boissoin's web site:

And I gotta say, he's got a good, experienced constitutional lawyer in Gerald Chipeur.

The Green Pope?

It's interesting how the mainstream news media has painted the pope as green on the environment, kinda like Al Gore in a white dress. But the key elements of his speech are ignored. Thanks to the folks at LifeSiteNews.com, the key elements have been highlighted.

"Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge," he said, "that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption." He then continued: "And we discover that not only the natural but also the social environment - the habitat we fashion for ourselves - has its scars; wounds indicating that something is amiss."

He noted problems, such as "alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the internet as entertainment."

The Holy Father returned to the theme of the "social environment" in the powerful conclusion to his remarks. He said: "But what of our social environment? Are we equally alert to the signs of turning our back on the moral structure with which God has endowed humanity? Do we recognize that the innate dignity of every individual rests on his or her deepest identity - as image of the Creator - and therefore that human rights are universal, based on the natural law, and not something dependent upon negotiation or patronage, let alone compromise?"

In the end, Pope Benedict offered a summary statement, which cuts to the heart of the liberal vs. faithful Catholic debate. While left-leaning Catholics do concern themselves with important 'social justice' issues, they eschew or minimize fighting for the right to life of the unborn, equating abortion with unemployment, poverty or environmentally damaging mining practices. Faithful Catholics, however, while recognizing the importance of caring for the poor, the environment and peace, understand that the right to life is preeminent.

"The concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity. They cannot, however, be understood apart from a profound reflection upon the innate dignity of every human life from conception to natural death: a dignity conferred by God himself and thus inviolable," he said.

It is interesting how a similar thing happened to the pope's important speech to the United Nations. The mainstream media painted him as a big UN fan, practically a promoter of the institution and one-world government type solutions. But no, if you paid attention to the speech he was talking about the ideals upon which the UN was founded and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an important document that did have a natural law basis despite its being crafted by people from many cultures and religious traditions.

Most interesting article by John Allen Jr. on sexual abuse crisis

John L. Allen Jr. writes:

Here's what the pope said, in English, according to the official Vatican transcript of his remarks:

"We have to reflect on what was insufficient in our education, in our teaching in recent decades. There was, in the '50s, '60s and '70s, the idea of proportionalism in ethics: It held that nothing is bad in itself, but only in proportion to others. With proportionalism, it was possible to think for some subjects -- one could also be pedophilia -- that in some proportion they could be a good thing. Now, it must be stated clearly, this was never Catholic doctrine. There are things which are always bad, and pedophilia is always bad. In our education, in the seminaries, in our permanent formation of the priests, we have to help priests to really be close to Christ, to learn from Christ, and so to be helpers, and not adversaries of our fellow human beings, of our Christians."

So far, Benedict's aside hasn't received much scrutiny amid overall gratitude for his candor. Eventually, however, it will have to be critically examined, which at one level is a task for specialists and historians. (Redemptorist moral theologian Fr. Brian Johnstone of the Catholic University of America, for example, points out that if nothing else, the pope's dating is off. Benedict referred to the influence of proportionalism "in the '50s, '60s and '70s," yet it didn't come on the scene, Johnstone said, until the mid-60s.)

The question is of broader importance, however, because finding a cure for the crisis depends upon accurate diagnosis. In that sense, what Benedict said about proportionalism -- even if most Catholics couldn't define the term -- concerns them all.

* * *

Before getting into that, some background on proportionalism is in order.

In the early part of the 20th century, a growing number of Catholic ethicists were voicing frustration with the tools and methods of moral instruction then in use, broadly known as the "manualist" tradition. At the time, manuals of Catholic morality were composed chiefly of rules derived from natural law and backed up by quotes from Scripture. Critics argued that such an approach was too abstract and impersonal, with principles often simply asserted rather than explained.

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the search began in earnest for a new framework. A German Jesuit named Fr. Peter Knauer offered one such approach, which would eventually come to be known as "proportionalism." In simplified terms, Knauer's argument was that actions are never morally good or bad in the abstract -- rather, their morality depends upon the circumstances, especially one's intent and the "proportion" of good versus evil the act is likely to produce.

Most interesting. Please read the whole thing.

The Binks nails the problem with the "everything is relative" crowd

“I think it’s really very dangerous when
someone stands up and says:
‘I have the way and I have the truth and I know how to
interpret holy scripture and you
are following what is the right way.’
It’s really very, very dangerous
and I think it’s demonic.”

–Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC
John Chane at the Lambeth Conference
of Anglican prelates

Welcome to political correctness, ‘dead-church walking’ style. The problem here? Basic logic. Mr. Chane is saying that it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth. Is that absolutely true? Then it’s not. This is self-contradictory weak-ass Logic 101. All circles are squares. All yellow things are green. All true things are untrue, and all untrue things are true. I always tell lies. I never tell the truth.

The left loves slagging, but not logic; forcing people to get in line with their ever-changing views, not convincing; abusing power, not using it as a privilige and responsibility. Like all soft-fascists, the hard-’progressive’ Anglican left figures the solution to ‘dissent’ is more enforcement, crack-down, and marginalization of opponents.

Strange but true

Paul Schratz writes in B.C. Catholic:

How is it that the Catholic Church - everyone's favourite scapegoat for intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and censorship - is defending the freedom to explore ideas, debate right and wrong, and search for truth, while the censors would shut down discussion in the name of human rights?

H/t Blazing Cat Fur

JibJab has a great satire of the U.S. presidential campaign

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A couple of interesting posts on women and the priesthood

John Pacheco the Socon has an interesting post on why women can't be priests:

First of all, it is important for everyone to understand that the feminist argument is predicated on the notion of human dignity and equality being based on utility and function. This underlying assumption is rarely discussed when the issue of women’s ordination and equality is raised. However, it is critical to appreciate and acknowledge this point so the debate can advance intelligently. Too often in these types of debates, obvious assumptions and presuppositions are not dealt with upfront which invariably means both sides waste too much time and effort talking past one another.

For the feminist, dignity and equality depends on allowing women to do the same things as men. And only in doing the same things - or at least have the capability to do so - can the two genders be equal in dignity. To deny a women the same function, under this rubric, would necessarily mean denying them equality and dignity. The connection is indeed logical, but the foundation itself is erroneous.

Contrary to this, the Christian worldview does not attach dignity and equality with function or utility. A human person is not any less dignified or equal to another person based on what they can or cannot do. Performing a specific function does not make anyone more worthy or dignified than someone who cannot perform that function. That is why the Church values all human life equally, independent of the supposed value that society attaches to a particular function or “quality of life” assessment. The Church values all human life equally, including the disabled or those bedridden with a serious sickness.

The rise of euthanasia and related “quality of life” ethic is also predicated on this feminist principle. One person decides that the utility and function of the disabled person does not meet the “quality of life” standard, and then proceeds to pull the plug or dehydrate the person to death. Instead of treating the individual with dignity and respect because of the intrinsic dignity bestowed by God, the arbiters of “equality”, through their dark lenses of utility and function, objectify the human person for their own base aspirations. Usually, this means unburdening themselves with the suffering of another human being.

This post was also interesting, about how Episcopalians decided on women's ordination down in the United States and what happened to the traditionalist priests and bishops who opposed it.
There is something oddly familiar about this story. Reminds me of the attempt to marginalize and dismiss as anti-Charter and anti-Canadian the 50% plus of the population who did not want same-sex 'marriage.'

When truth is no longer relevant, we are left with the cold logic of the political process. In the present case, the approval of female bishops, the determining principle is this: the Church of England cannot permit dissent by traditionalists and be true to its decision to ordain women to begin with. It doesn't matter that the reason for ordaining women to begin with is only now becoming manifest.

The decision to admit women first to the priesthood and then to the episcopate is based upon a principle of secular civil rights. In the words of American priest Mark Harris, ECUSA's decision to ordain female clergy in the 1970s, even apart from due process as specified in canon law, was based upon the "moral urgency" of the public demand for sexual equality. This "moral urgency" was self-evident to those whose superior judgment to that of the rest of the church was likewise self-evident. Hence the dawning of "manifest destiny" in the liberal Anglican West.

The civil rights claim of self-evident rights for women clergy had a flip side: anyone opposing female ordinations was opposing freedom and equality for all, making them an enemy of civil rights. Hence the refusal in the US to permit--or rather the impossibility of permitting--dissent once the novelty of female clerics began to fade. It was as impossible, given the assumptions of the revisionist church, to admit concerns of conscience regarding this issue as it would be to indulge constraints of "conscience" regarding the slave trade or child labor laws.

If Christian morality is merely the ecclesiastical expression of secular civil rights, then Christian traditionalism is the moral equivalent to reversing the Emancipation Proclamation. It cannot be admitted or even thought. It goes beyond friendly disagreements and sloppy rhetoric about inclusiveness in the big tent. It is a simple matter of principle.

Karl von Clausewitz, Prussian philosopher of war, taught that war is an extreme expression of politics. A corollary might be that politics is a moderated expression of war. The church has run the course of pleasantries like theological debate and the exchange of ideas. There is a terrible honesty about the political realism of the present moment, and at least one side gets it. The orthodox need not respond with the cynical expediency of raw politics, but a single-minded commitment to principle, come what may, is necessary before discipline and even truth can be reinstated.

The push for renewed "conversation" means something different to the revisionists than it does to traditionalists. To the former it is a stalling tactic--a tactic of war. To the latter it is pure conflict avoidance.

On the Traditional Anglican Communion and Rome

There is really nothing yet but massive speculation. There has been no response to the formal letter of request the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last October.

Read some of the comments to this post at Virtueonline.org to get some perspective.

Pope Benedict XVI greets youth with this . . .

Dear friends, life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose (cf. Gen 1:28)! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this - in truth, in goodness, and in beauty - that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.

Christ offers more! Indeed he offers everything! Only he who is the Truth can be the Way and hence also the Life. Thus the "way" which the Apostles brought to the ends of the earth is life in Christ. This is the life of the Church. And the entrance to this life, to the Christian way, is Baptism.

This evening I wish therefore to recall briefly something of our understanding of Baptism before tomorrow considering the Holy Spirit. On the day of your Baptism, God drew you into his holiness (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). You were adopted as a son or daughter of the Father. You were incorporated into Christ. You were made a dwelling place of his Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). Baptism is neither an achievement, nor a reward. It is a grace; it is God's work. Indeed, towards the conclusion of your Baptism, the priest turned to your parents and those gathered and, calling you by your name said: "you have become a new creation" (Rite of Baptism, 99).

Dear friends, in your homes, schools and universities, in your places of work and recreation, remember that you are a new creation! Not only do you stand before the Creator in awe, rejoicing at his works, you also realize that the sure foundation of humanity's solidarity lies in the common origin of every person, the high-point of God's creative design for the world. As Christians you stand in this world knowing that God has a human face - Jesus Christ - the "way" who satisfies all human yearning, and the "life" to which we are called to bear witness, walking always in his light (cf. ibid., 100).

The task of witness is not easy. There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image, and debate and policy concerning the public good will be driven more by consequences than by principles grounded in truth.

Yet experience shows that turning our back on the Creator's plan provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order (cf. 1990 World Day of Peace Message, 5). When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the "good" begins to wane. What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God's world.

Most interesting.....

Newark Archbishop Myers addressed a group of Anglican Use Catholics recently:

Some great strides have been made in the last two years in improving the mechanics of the Pastoral Provision. We are working on expanding the mandate of the Pastoral Provision to include those clergy and faithful of “continuing Anglican communities.” We are striving to increase awareness of our apostolate to Anglican Christians who desire to be reconciled with the Holy See. We have experienced the wonder of several Episcopal bishops entering into full communion with the Catholic Church and we continue to receive requests from priests and laity about the Pastoral Provision. I also take this opportunity to thank the Anglican Use Society for their work under the Pastoral Provision, and for the invitation to address this conference.

I know that some of you experienced difficulty and anxiety at the time you made the decision to leave what was so dear to you when you felt the Lord calling you to come to the Catholic Church. In some regard your journey has been heroic. The Church is enriched by your struggles for our Lord.

John Cardinal Newman, who is numbered among the more famous of former Anglicans to reconcile with Rome, was no stranger to such struggle. He felt he was abandoning family, abandoning friends and colleagues. People and places who were dear to him, full of memories and tradition, speaking the same language of faith – how would it be possible to leave such things?

The struggle is real. The choice is not always easy. However, the Holy See’s allowance of the Anglican Use liturgy for now might help to make the burden a little easier for some to bear. The mark toward which we press as Catholics and as Christians is Jesus Christ. He is our goal and we can only find Him through the Church he founded on Peter. The sentiments which Newman expressed in his poem “Lead Kindly Light” speak eloquently of how we bear the difficulties we experience in our faith lives and the Venerable Newman teaches us that the ultimate goal is Christ and it is His will, not our own, that we seek:

Damien Thompson has this to say:

This is big news, and makes nonsense of the claim that Pope Benedict wants to dissuade Anglo-Catholics from converting. The obvious interpretation of the Archbishop's words is that the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a "continuing church" which has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide (though few in the UK), will eventually be given its own Catholic parishes which use a Eucharistic Prayer incorporating Cranmerian language.

This possibility has existed since the 1970s, but Archbishop Myers indicates that it is only now - under a sympathetic Pope, and during the break-up of the Anglican Communion - that the Pastoral Provision is entering a new dimension.

If Rome is expanding its network of ex-Anglican parishes in America, then we can rest assured that it is sympathetic to the notion of group conversion in England. The Vatican is well aware that such a process is likely to be complicated and patchy; no one is naive enough to assume that entire parishes will "bring their buildings with them".

But the plan to found a priestly Fellowship of St Gregory the Great for ex-Anglican clergy and members of their flock seems eminently feasible, given imagination on the part of both sides - and the courage to defy the Tabletistas who would try to sabotage the scheme.

I don't usually agree with Dawg but on this I do

Concerning the Obama New Yorker cover, he writes:

Ordinary Americans reading about the controversy will grab the main
elements: the cover wasn't intended to be taken literally, but some nervous
folks in the Obama camp think it will be.

And those average American voters have every right to be offended,
not by the cartoon, but by the profound condescension and disrespect for them
that the Obama camp is nervously displaying.

But the real threat here is more general: we're watching our progressive
allies hammer yet another nail into the coffin of political debate. Anything
that rises above a dull literalism, or ventures into wit, or indeed requires
anything on the part of the masses except absorption, is to be avoided at all
costs. It'll be slapped down from all sides as "tasteless and
offensive" (McCain's folks know an opening for a high road dash when they
see one).

Should such fare be carefully labeled for the unwashed so they know what they're actually seeing, as Spike Lee felt constrained to do for his film Bamboozled? "The following cartoon, although intended to be humorous, contains images that some voters may find offensive or disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised."

This isn't politics; it's palliative care.

Amen!

It's also interesting that Dawg laments from the Left side of the spectrum the tendency of all candidates to play to the centre of the political spectrum so that ideas are watered down and real political debate doesn't happen. Well, of course the Right has many of the same laments.

So much of it becomes tactics rather than ideas. If you can get your opponent branded as over-the-top or racist for a statement then you do not need to debate his or her arguments, right?

Read this whole interview with Michael D. O'Brien

And buy his books and prints and read the rest of the wonderful material on his site.

Michael O’Brien: Your excellent question would need a book-length answer, but in brief we should understand that all totalitarian regimes reduce the absolute and eternal value of human life—each and every human life—to the level of objects. We become clever talking things, but still things, components in a social organism, and are thus ultimately disposable. Both Nazism and Marxism were political forms of such Materialism, yet as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have repeatedly taught, there are other forms of Materialism that can have worse long-range effects on the human community, such as the transformation of man into a consumer without conscience, propagandized softly and relentlessly without overt violence. The Popes have taught us that even democracies can degenerate into tyrannies, and are most vulnerable when they let themselves become ruled by materialist social philosophies. A telling symptom of the new totalitarianism is its de facto reduction of the absolute sacredness of the human person. This truth is now nearly universally denied or is neutralized by relativism in supposedly democratic nations. I am thinking here of certain initiatives of the European Union and the United Nations organization, but it manifests itself throughout the world in various disguises.

In a talk he gave in the year 2000 in Palermo, then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said that Marxism and Fascism prefigured the “the beast of the Book of Revelation” and are a warning to our generation (and those to come), about what would happen if man continues to live as if he is no more than “a cog in an enormous machine” and “no more than a function.” The end result of turning man into numbers, with the consequent loss of identity and name, will be the apocalypse, the global reign of evil.


The film Andrei Rublev says that “We arrive at the meaning of things only naming them by their real name”. Totalitarian regimes always try to manipulate language to distort reality. How we can today, in a world bursting with communication and media, come to use the real name of things?

Michael O’Brien: Silence—true silence, not merely the absence of noise—is the ocean from which all true language arises. Language is intimately connected to truth. Word have power—both true and false words, the small and the great words. Whenever language ceases to draw its life from the deep waters of truth, it becomes a weapon of manipulation and other forms of dehumanization. In order to recognize truth and to use it wisely, we must be grounded in humility—and this is a daily challenge for us all. Every genuine communication is a foretaste and a help along the path to the eternal communion of Paradise. Our every word will be weighed on Judgement Day. But how can we learn to speak words that give life unless we first learn to listen to the “still small voice” of God that spoke to the prophet Elijah? How can we listen if we do not permit ourselves to experience silence? How can we enter the Kingdom of God if we reject child-like open-heartedness in his Presence? How can we let him be our Father, if we refuse his authority over us and continue to live as if he did not exist?

About media, now more than ever we need intelligent, creatively gifted people of strong Catholic faith to enter those spheres of influence. But they must enter in prayer, and without presuming that their personal strengths alone can change things. Christ living in them can bring about good, but they must understand they are like Daniel in the lion’s den as well as St. Paul in the Areopagus of Athens. The lions and sophists of our times are deadly—and subtle.

Canadian priest leads prayer service in Sydney

On the eve before the opening of World Youth Day, Father Thomas Rosica, president of Salt + Light Television, and students from Catholic Christian Outreach in Canada hosted a beautiful prayer service and reflection on the life of at St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. In attendance at the service was the niece of Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Pilgrims filled the Cathedral, some sitting on the floor for the service. During the prayer service titled "Verso l'Alto," pilgrims prayed at the coffin of Pier Giorgio. Others prayed before the recently unveiled painting of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.

At the beginning of the service, those in the Cathedral sang the WYD theme song - "Receive the Power." Just as Father Rosica placed the Blessed Sacrament into the Monstrance and knelt, the pilgrims reached the verse "Lamb of God, we worship you...Holy one, we worship you...Bread of life, we worship you," and then the concluding "Alleluia." It was truly moving.

The Independent reports the Pope is riding to the ABC's rescue

The Pope is leading an unprecedented drive by the Roman Catholic Church to prevent the fragmentation of the worldwide Anglican Communion ahead of the once-a-decade gathering of its 800 bishops, which begins today, The Independent has learnt.

In his first public comments on the Lambeth Conference, Pope Benedict XVI has warned Anglican leaders that they must find a "mature" and faithful way of avoiding "schism". On top of this the Pope has:

* Sent three cardinals to the conference in Canterbury, including one of his top aides from the Vatican, to act as personal intermediaries between the two churches;

* Let it be known that he does not support the defection of conservative Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church;

* Given behind-the-scenes support to the Archbishop of Canterbury's attempts to hold together the conservative and liberal wings of the Anglican Church, including at face-to-face meetings in Rome.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, [the ABC] Rowan Williams, faces a near-impossible task as he prepares to preside over the conference, at which bishops from around the world are gathering today for prayer and reflection. The Archbishop is hoping to keep the conference focused on substantial issues facing the church and the world, but it is overshadowed by disputes over women bishops and homosexuality.

FYI, here's what Pope Benedict XVI actually said.

Question: Holy Father, while you’re in Australia, the bishops of the Anglican Communion, which is quite large also in Australia, are meeting at the Lambeth Conference. One of the principal subjects regards various means for reinforcing communion among the provinces and finding a way to ensure that one or more provinces don’t take steps which others see as contrary to the Gospel or to tradition. There is a risk of a fragmentation in the Anglican Communion and the possibility that some Anglicans will ask to be received in the Catholic church. What’s your hope for the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury? Thank you.

Benedict XVI: My essential contribution can only be prayer, and in my prayer I will be very close to the Anglican bishops who are meeting in the Lambeth Conference. We can’t, and we shouldn’t directly intervene in their discussions. We respect their own responsibility. Our hope is that schisms or new fractures can be avoided, and that a solution can be found that responds both to the needs of our time and also to fidelity to the Gospel. These two things must go together. Christianity is always contemporary and lives in this world, in a given time, but it makes present in this time the message of Jesus Christ, and therefore, it offers a true contribution for this time only by being faithful in a mature way, in a creative way that’s faithful to the message of Christ. We hope, and I personally pray, that they find together the path of the Gospel in our time. This is my wish for the Archbishop of Canterbury: that the Anglican Communion, in the communion of the Gospel of Christ and the Word of the Lord, finds responses to the current challenges.

Also, please note that the Traditional Anglican Communion, a worldwide body of Anglican Catholics, has not been part of the Canterbury Communion for a long time.

The way I read what the pope says is that he hopes the Anglican Communion will, as a whole, come to its senses, return to the Gospel and to following Jesus. We can all hope for that.

He was not saying that he hopes the Anglican Communion will just stay together, regardless of the basis for that unity.

More on the Traditional Anglican Communion

Damien Thompson writes:

More evidence this morning that Catholic liberals are panicking at the prospect of an influx of conservative Anglicans. They want us to believe that Pope Benedict is "shunning defectors" in an attempt to shore up the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not true.

On his way to Australia, the Pope was asked about the Lambeth Conference. He replied that the Catholic Church should not intervene in its deliberations and that he was praying that there would be no more schisms and fractures. Lambeth Palace and its liberal Catholic allies have now spun this into a papal message of support for Rowan Williams in his attempts to persuade Anglicans not to convert to Rome.

Liberals claim that Pope Benedict has "let it be known that he does not support the defection of conservative Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church". He has done no such thing.

The Pope is supporting moves by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to construct a model whereby a group of rebel conservative Anglicans, the Traditional Anglican Communion, can be received en masse and occupy their own structures inside the Roman Catholic Church. This model – which is being constructed in secret – could serve as a blueprint for mainstream Anglicans wanting to convert as a group.

Imagine if human rights commissions had to vet all our jokes

John Martin in the Chilliwack Times speculates on what the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal might do to comedian Guy Earle:

But one area that hasn't been discussed much is what can a human rights
tribunal actually do to people they convict. Indeed, Guy Earle even asked me the
worst-case scenario in the event he's found guilty, as he almost certainly will
be.

The actual remedies in the country's various human rights legislation
tend to be vague and open to a range of possibilities. To give an idea of what
could very likely be in store for Earle, a recent case in Alberta may provide
some insight.

Reverend Stephen Boissoin, a pastor and youth worker, had a letter
published in the Red Deer Advocate that was found to have exposed homosexuals to
"hatred and contempt." He was ordered to pay the complainant $5,000 plus
expenses. He was also instructed to publish an apology. We can't make Clifford
Olsen or Paul Bernardo apologize but the human rights bodies can demand a pastor
do so.

Most disturbing though, he was ordered to "cease publishing in
newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in
future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals."

The dictionary definition of "disparaging" is "to speak of in a
slighting or disrespectful way." The pastor is not specifically barred from
communicating hate speech; he must never communicate anything disrespectful
about gays. This is a lifetime ban that even covers private e-mails. Anyone
who's ever forwarded an offensive joke might want to think about this for a
moment.
Now, in an ideal world no one would ever be disrespectful to or about
anyone. But that's not how it works. Some may applaud that the reverend can
never be critical of gays. But a similar ruling could be made in the not too
distant future that prohibits criticism of Christians or Americans. The CBC
would sure have a tough job filling up its airtime under such a
prohibition.

Mark Mercer again over at Blazing Cat Fur

Mark Mercer writes a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books and says:

Nowadays in Canada, anyone who speaks on such topics as Islam or Muslims,
aboriginals, abortion, homosexuality or same-sex marriage, race, Israeli
policies or practices toward the Palestinians, the nature of the sexes, or the
place of women in society is at risk of being hauled before a commission.

Our commissions have had a profoundly chilling effect on expression and discussion
in Canada, extending from individual bloggers to newspapers and even to
universities. The disdain our commissions have for expression has also been a
great encouragement both to identity politics and to the cult of victimization,
two of the worst toxins affecting contemporary social and political life in this
country.

Of course, more than a few supporters of hate speech laws think the
chilling effects are really the whole point of the thing. The actual hate
mongers, we all agree, are few in number and entirely without influence. The
real damage done to members of marginalized and vulnerable minorities, say hate
speech law supporters, comes from negative characterizations in the respectable
media, and, they note, hate laws do a good job of deterring newspapers from
publishing such characterizations. This argument can be found in a book by
Richard Moon, the University of Windsor law professor the CHRC has asked to
prepare a report on its practices.

Waldron might well respond that these abuses are the result of poorly written laws, unfair procedures, and the zeal of ideologues, and he would be at least a little right. But Waldron is naïve to think a system such as the one he describes in his letter isn’t at great risk of quickly degenerating into the sort responsible for the censorship and chilly climate for expression that marks Canada today. After all, if you hire a censor,
he’s going to look for business, and anyone seeking to gain a bit of advantage
will be tempted to bring him some.

h/t Mark Steyn

Could it really be that simple?

I'm trying this out for high blood pressure, and dag nabbit, it seems to be working. It also means that I can't blame the stress of writing about 'human rights' commissions for numbers that suddenly skyrocketed after I started blogging regularly last December.

Could the cures to many of our physical ills be as simple as drinking enough water?

The Canadian Islamic Congress to appeal CHRC dismissal

So says Mark Steyn:

Since last we spoke, many readers have wanted to know the state of play re human rights: The Canadian Islamic Congress has publicly announced that it will appeal the Canadian Human Rights Commission's dismissal of their case. We'll see whether they follow through. Meanwhile, the pseudo-judges of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal are still deliberating on whether to pronounce us guilty or follow the feds and jump for the exit. However, Commissar MacNaughton, clearly impressed by Khurrum Awan's turn as Joketester-General in her courtroom, has now expanded her comedy brief and gone after stand-up comic Guy Earle for breaching the hitherto unknown human right to heckle. Mr Earle is having a big ol' fundraiser in Toronto on July 19th. Denyse O'Leary's misgivings about the event may well be borne out, but, if I weren't going to be several thousand miles away, I'd certainly be there myself - and I urge all freespeechers in the neighborhood to attend: Be there even if you're square.

Denyse O'Leary on the upcoming Guy Earle fundraiser

In our society today, the would-be neo-Nazi in the basement apartment (Aryan Storm Eagle on an obscure Internet site but in real life an unemployable schmuck whose landlady bullies him when he forgets which day of the week he is allowed to use the ironing board) - that guy is not a threat except to himself.

However, the social worker with a string of degrees and a self-imposed mission to wipe out hurt feelings everywhere IS a threat. Many in our society are bafflegabbed by her jargon, feel more secure when she is running their lives, and don't think that growing up is all that great an idea anyway.

For what it is worth, I have always thought that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was a better dystopian picture of our society than Orwell's 1984. Huxley got the most important thing right - infantilizing people is far more effective than terror for gaining control.

In my view, we need to aim at Nanny Monster, not at Aryan Storm Schmuck.

For more information on Guy Earle's freedom of speech fundraiser:

Madonna House returns foundress' Order of Canada

OTTAWA (CCN)—Members of the lay apostolate Madonna House returned the Order of Canada award their foundress received in 1976 to protest the appointment of abortionist Henry Morgentaler.

“The awarding of the Order of Canada to Dr. Morgentaler compels us to protest in the most forceful, peaceful way available to us,” said Mark Schlingerman in a prepared statement to media gathered at Princess Gate, the main entrance to the Governor General’s residence July 8. “Not only do we find his medical practice at the dark side of the medical profession but his inclusion in the awards diminishes them.”

Schlingerman joined a small delegation from the 200-member community headquartered in Combermere, Ontario, in presenting Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s snowflake medal and citation to Yves Bastien, a senior official representing the Chancellery of Honours in the Governor General’s office. Both CTV and CBC sent satellite trucks to the event, as did several other national media outlets.

Bastien received the medal and framed citation, and then quickly departed up the long tree-lined drive to the residence without comment to the media.

Ronald Sider on American religious life

Ronald J. Sider reports on a new PEW Research survey:

Secular people worried that fundamentalist religion is sweeping across the country can relax. Fully 70 percent of all Americans think many religions can lead to eternal life, and even a solid majority (57 percent) of evangelicals agree. Seventy-eight percent of Americans say they believe in absolute moral standards, but a majority (52 percent) say they rely primarily on practical experience for their moral norms. Personal experience seems to trump any external source for moral guidance.

"Liberal" people who care about helping the poor, caring for the environment and emphasizing diplomacy rather than military force can take heart. A solid majority in every large group thinks government should do more to help the poor, even if that means going deeper into debt: 57 percent of all evangelicals, 58 percent of mainline Protestants, and 63 percent of Catholics agree. Solid majorities in all three groups also think stricter laws to protect the environment are worth the cost. And substantially more people in all three groups think good diplomacy is a better way than military strength to ensure peace in the world.

Conservatives can rejoice that the largest single group (37 percent) of respondents identify their ideology as "conservative" (36 percent are "moderate," and only 20 percent are "liberal"). Democrats can celebrate the fact that 47 percent of all respondents (and even 34 percent of evangelicals) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party while only 35 percent are Republican.

There is also much in this massive survey to make almost everyone unhappy.

Secular Americans will have to live with the fact that the American people are overwhelmingly religious. Seventy-eight percent claim to be Christians, and 92 percent believe in a God or a universal spirit. Even 21 percent of those who say they are atheists reported such belief! And 55 percent of self-described "agnostics" say the same. Fifty-eight percent claim to pray every day. Seventy-seven percent of atheists think religion does more harm than good, but almost two-thirds (62 percent) of all Americans disagree with them.

Church leaders will find much to keep them awake at night. One would think belief in a personal God with whom people can have a relationship would be a given for all Christians. But only 62 percent of mainline Protestants and 60 percent of Catholics believe in this specific description of God. In fact, only 79 percent of evangelicals embrace this fundamental belief of historic Christianity. Large numbers (29 percent of Catholics, 26 percent of mainline Protestants) see God only as an impersonal force.

New Yorker satirizes the "politics of fear"

This cover for the New Yorkers July 21 issue is already getting the magazine a lot of attention.

'Scare tactic' — Obama slams Muslim portrayal

By MIKE ALLEN | 7/13/08 6:14 PM EST

Text Size:

Photo: Courtesy

The Obama campaign is condemning as “tasteless and offensive” a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife.

An American flag burns in their fireplace.

The New Yorker says it's satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news.

The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

The issue, which goes on sale Monday, includes a long piece by Ryan Lizza about Obama’s start in Chicago politics.

In fact, if it were published in Canada I bet it would be the subject of several human rights complaints, even though the people being satirized are not the Obamas, (only tone deaf people would see that) but fear-mongering about the Obamas.

Doing a cover like this takes courage, even in a country like the United States, not because of censorship but because of censure. If a right-wing magazine had done this same cover, its interpretation would be completely different and the condemnation would be even more universal. That the New Yorker is doing it, adds a layers of nuance.

But who gets nuance or humor or irony these days?

Tasteless? Offensive? Over-the-top?

Shrug.

You decide.

I definitely don't think such cartoons should be illegal or subject to government censorship or even government vetting as they would be in Canada, through punitive processes that make even those whose cases are dismissed losers.

This cover is going to stimulate lots of debate. That's a good thing.

A reductive notion of freedom. Uh huh.

Bruce S. Thornton takes a look at George Weigel's latest book:

The first eight essays explore the limitations of democracy when understood in “functionalist or proceduralist terms.” Such a view, Weigel writes, sees freedom as a “matter of willfulness or choice” and relegates “questions of personal and public goods” to private life—a reductive and impoverished perspective contrary to that of the American Founders. In contrast, Weigel recognizes that democracy depends on addressing “questions of public moral culture and civil society” and on tending to “the institutions of civil society and their capacity to form genuine democrats.” Catholic social doctrine provides a robust tradition for addressing these questions, but our current fundamentalist secularism seeks to banish religion from what John Courtney Murray called “the public argument.” Weigel reminds us that we face two urgent challenges, one domestic, the other foreign: a “pragmatic utilitarianism” that banishes such questions to the private sphere, thus leaving them hostage to bureaucratic technicians and the vagaries of political interests; and “political Islamism,” which answers the same questions in ways inimical to the fundamental goal of the American political order.

Weigel examines the implications that restoring Christian—and more specifically Catholic—philosophical and theological perspectives to our political discourse would have in a host of areas, including foreign policy, globalization, the problems of the Third World, the role of faith in politics, abortion, bioethics, the promotion of human rights and democracy abroad, and many others. Weigel’s analysis of political freedom is particularly valuable, for the starting point of all other political disputes is our understanding of liberty.

Weigel’s essay “Two Ideas of Freedom” begins by critically examining Isaiah Berlin’s influential notion of “positive” and “negative” freedom: the former is the freedom “to,” which allows us to pursue some perceived greater good; the latter is freedom “from,” particularly from governmental intrusion into private life and interference in the individual’s pursuit of happiness. But Berlin fails to address “the crucial question,” Weigel writes, which is “the truth about man—the truth about the human person—on which any defense of human freedom with real traction must ultimately rest.” Thus Berlin’s notion of freedom reduces it “to a matter of one human faculty—the will—alone.”

Pointing out that Berlin’s analysis is rooted in Enlightenment philosophy and ignores earlier thinkers, Weigel revisits pre-Enlightenment thinking in his discussion of William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, freedom “is a means to human excellence, to human happiness, to the fulfillment of human destiny,” Weigel writes. Freedom helps us to “choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit.” Only then can we pursue happiness suitable for a rational, moral creature and “build free and virtuous societies in which the rights of all are acknowledged, respected, and protected in law.”

Ezra's trip to Washington

Ezra Levant gave a must-read speech in Washington to the U.S. Congress' bi-partisan human rights caucus last week. He said:

Since then, Canada’s largest news magazine, called Maclean’s – our equivalent to Time magazine – was sued in three different human rights commissions for writing about the demographic growth of Islam in the West. And the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the largest newspaper in Atlantic Canada, is being pursued by Nova Scotia’s human rights commission for printing an editorial cartoon depicting a local Muslim activist in a niqab – even though that is how she dresses.

In other words, Canadian human rights commissions -- secular government organizations -- are prosecuting religious fatwas. It’s a soft jihad against any criticism of radical Islam. It’s called “lawfare”, and it’s a greater danger to our western values of freedom, religious pluralism and the separation of church and state than the hard jihad of terrorism is. Even if targets like Maclean’s eventually “win”, they lose; the process is the punishment – and the chill affects everyone else.

Canadian human rights commissions, however, are not respectful of the sensitivities of all religions. Less politically correct faiths are regularly prosecuted by them. This May, an Alberta pastor named Stephen Boissoin was given a lifetime gag order, never to say anything critical of homosexuality – not in a church sermon, not even in private e-mails. As well, in what can only be called a Maoist verdict, he has been ordered to renounce his religious beliefs, and to publish a self-denunciation in the local newspaper.

This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba.

How did this happen? How did Canadians lose their rights, on the one hand, to criticize radical Islam, and on the other hand, lose their rights to practice Christianity?

The answer is a combination of good intentions and bad intentions.

The good intentions came from do-gooders who, thirty or forty years ago, set up these human rights commissions with the noble ideal of promoting harmony amongst different religions and races. But those good intentions came with the power of the law to censor people who said rude, even racist things. So it became illegal in Canada to say anything that was regarded as hateful, even if it was non-violent. We invented “thought crimes”.

In a second post, Ezra explains what a spokeswoman for the Pakistani embassy to the caucus her country wants:

Asma Fatima is the Second Secretary of the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C. She was on the panel with me at the U.S. Congress's human rights caucus meeting yesterday.

(. . . .)

She wants Western countries to ban critical comments about Islam -- and she mentioned the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in particular. It was well pointed out by others on the panel that Western defamation law deals with the vindication of improperly besmirched reputations using the truth, as determined by courts of law -- but when it comes to clashing religions, the truth of any faith is in the heart of the beholder. The only legal system that would hold the Koran to be "the truth", and subordinate every other faith beneath the Koranic truth, would be a sharia legal system, such as that in Saudi Arabia. In other words, she wants to replace our secular legal systems with a Muslim legal system. I appreciated the honesty.

Western defamation law is also about vindication of an individual's reputation -- the individual must be indentified; he must have suffered measurable damage. Defamation is not about hurt feelings -- it is about the unjustified destruction of one's reputation in the eyes of another. It has nothing to do with tender feelings, though that was the grievance cited most often by Fatima.

Fatima's demands for an end to the "defamation" of "Islam" was undone masterfully by two of my fellow panellists. The first was Zia Meral, of Turkey, who pointed out that the real "hurt" we ought to be looking at was not Fatima's hurt feelings, but the real physical hurt suffered by Islam's dissidents and he described, in gruesome detail, how non-Muslims -- and worse, apostates -- are dealt with in Muslim countries from Sudan to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. I will not recount the horrific details.

Meral's strongest point, though, was to note that the gambit of Islamic countries to twist Western law to stop criticism of Islamic human rights abuses is merely the latest fashion in smoke screens deployed over the years. Earlier tropes hurled at the West have included charges of "Orientalism"; "Interventionism"; "Colonialism", etc. Whatever will momentarily put Islam's critics off balance, by appealling to the West's own lack of confidence.

But the single most revealing comment I heard all day about this matter was from a State Department lawyer on the panel (whose name I wish to confirm before publishing it.) She has done meticulous research on the Muslim campaign to ban criticism of Islam, and has helped develop the U.S. response to the idea in international legal forums.

She went deep into the issue: she looked at the Arabic word used by Muslim diplomats when describing the "defamation of Islam" that they sought to illegalize. She consulted scholars of Arabic who confirmed for her that the particular legal phrase had been coined very recently, especially for the international diplomatic campaign -- and that, when discussed domestically, Muslim countries used the real Arabic words they mean: the traditional words for blasphemy.

Still more speculation on Anglo-Catholics and Rome

Here's an excerpt from a Ruth Gledhill news story:

Some senior figures in Rome want to grant traditional Anglicans their own apostolic administration or bishop, making them a recognised fellowship within the Roman Catholic Church.

Initial recognition would be granted to a body called the Traditional Anglican Communion, which has parishes all over the world, including England, Ireland and the US. It became a refuge for many of the priests who left the Church of England after women were ordained in 1992. Rome is divided over how to respond.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wants to welcome Anglicans who feel called to convert. Sources in Rome said that the Pope supports such a scheme. But the Vatican's Council for Christian Unity is concerned not to exacerbate Anglican splits further. In England, bishops appointed to shepherd traditionalist congregations are at odds over how to respond.

The Right Rev Andrew Burnham, the "flying" Bishop of Ebbsfleet, who looks after about 100 traditionalist parishes in the Canterbury province, visited the Vatican in April for talks about transferring with many of his parishes to Rome.

The Prime Minister, Mark Steyn and me

At the Prime Minister's garden party on June 26. I only just received this official photo now.

The photo of Stephen Harper is great. But its so good it almost looks like one of those photo cut outs.

But, no, it was the real prime minister.

The photo is by Deb Ransom.

More speculation on Anglo-Catholics and Rome

All of this I find most interesting, since the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) made a formal request to come into full communion with the Holy See last October. There is nothing new on this front. Except recently some Anglo-Catholic bishops from the Canterbury Anglican Communion, upset about the Church of England's recent vote to approve the consecration of female bishops, went to Rome to ask for some provision to be made for them to convert en masse with their flocks.

Now these Anglo-Catholic bishops are already using the modern post-Vatican II Novus Ordo liturgy the Roman Catholics use, so they are not really asking for an Anglican Rite per se.
The TAC, however, is because we are Anglican Catholics who use the Book of Common Prayer. There is an Anglican Rite approved for Anglican Use parishes within the Roman Catholic Church.

Anyway, the web has been rife with speculation about what might be on offer for these Church of England bishops, and the TAC application is all but forgotten.

The Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill says sources are telling her Angl0-Catholics should not get their hopes up:

Being in a Resolution A parish myself, I am more sympathetic to their plight, but fear that those who fantasise a Flaminian Gate-style welcome are deluding themselves. A number of leading supporters of women bishops can't wait for them to up sticks and go to Rome, but they also might be counting their blessings too soon. Rome, it seems to me, is unlikely to want them much if at all. Better to look to the Bishop of London, summoning a 'sacred synod' in October to address the crisis in his intensely evo and trad diocese.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has an extremely strong rapport with Pope Benedict XVI. He was told clearly on a recent visit to Rome that the Pope will not deal with sub-groups, and that there are no back doors nor side doors to Rome. The Church of England might have effectively abandoned any realistic prospect of full visible unity, but it is still the Church of England that Rome will deal with.

Universalisation of some kind of Anglican Use in the UK is a possibility, but English parishes are not like American ones. US parishes use the episcopalian liturgy. Many English traditionalist parishes already use the Roman rite so it would be a bit hard for Rome to authorise an Anglican rite for them. Nevertheless, there is a possibility of that happening in some form, and there are whispers of some kind of announcement from the Vatican after Lambeth.

Rome knows however that the Catholics in the pews should not be upset too much. In England at least, these Catholics are by and large pretty liberal. Many of them would like women priests, or at the very least married ones. The last thing they want is a whole group of woman-bishop-hating clergy coming over, with their wives and families, and enforcing some kind of new doctrinal orthodoxy on dioceses that are working very well without them and finding their own accommodation with Catholic orthodoxy and modern life. Given the sacrifices their own priests have made in their embrace of celibacy, poverty and obedience in the service of Christ, they are unlikely to want our more-Roman-than-the-Romans alighting their vestry doors.

Damien Thompson disagrees with Gledhill:

In fact, her friend - whom I do not doubt for a moment is part of the liberal mafia of the Bishops' Conference - has told her a series of lies. For example, that "the Pope does not deal with sub-groups". Nonsense. It was Joseph Ratzinger who, ignoring ecumenical niceties, sent a message of support to conservative American Anglicans meeting in Dallas in 1993. He knows very well that there are only sub-groups in Anglicanism these days.

Another lie: "The Archbishop of Canterbury has an extremely strong rapport with Pope Benedict XVI." On the contrary, the two men barely know each other. As someone observes on Ruth's thread, if there was such a rapport "Rowan would not have been begging and pleading for months before getting a polite but distant audience, and the Pope would have invited him to open the Pauline Year with himself and the Patriarch. John Paul II had Carey with him for opening the Jubilee Year at St Peter's."

Then there is this priceless garbage: "Rome knows however that the Catholics in the pews should not be upset too much. In England at least, these Catholics are by and large pretty liberal. Many of them would like women priests, or at the very least married ones. The last thing they want is a whole group of woman-bishop-hating clergy coming over, with their wives and families, and enforcing some kind of new doctrinal orthodoxy on dioceses that are working very well without them and finding their own accommodation with Catholic orthodoxy and modern life."

It's true that the tiny proportion of Catholics who take their line from the Bishops' Conference bureaucracy and its house journal, the Tablet, feel this way. "Rome" doesn't, and nor do young Catholics, who are more conservative than their guitar-strumming grandparents, who are still boring everyone senseless reminiscing about Vatican II. The "new doctrinal orthodoxy" that terrifies the Sandalistas is taught by Pope Benedict and resonates loudly with more and more traditionalist Anglicans. It's called Catholicism.

Christian Unity--a perspective from a TAC bishop in the U.S.

The Traditional Anglican Communion has made a formal request for communion with the Holy See. Here's a good essay explaining why.

Christian Unity--it's not a matter of choice--by Bishop George Langburg:

Most of us have come to think of the Church more or less as we think of corporations and brand names, and a move from one denomination to another is seen as comparable to switching from Ford to General Motors or from Coca-Cola to Pepsi. Such a perspective is at odds with the sacramental nature of the Church. The Church may indeed look at first like other man-made organiza-tions, but its external and institutional component is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace — the mystical presence of the Body of Christ in the physical world. The Church is a sacramental entity designed and instituted by Christ himself, with unity as an essential attribute.

One can abandon the Ford Motor Company and continue to own automobiles or abandon Coca-Cola and continue to enjoy soft drinks, but it is impossible to keep oneself separate from the larger Body of Christ and at the same time be part of it. Paul’s comparison of the church to the human body fits perfectly with Jesus’ prayer for the unity of Christians. Just as an ear, arm, or leg, if it could detach itself from the body and continue to live, would no longer be the body of which it had been a part, a piece of the church which has broken away and which remains separate from the main body, regardless of its reason for doing so, is neither that body nor a separated but equal substitute for it. The Body of Christ, by definition, must be One Body. It can neither be replicated nor dismembered.

(. . . .)

Over the last 30 years, Anglicans have demonstrated time and again that they are much better at demolition than at building. Here in the USA, the rapid disintegration which followed the promising start made in St Louis in 1977 is only part of the story. Every 3-5 years, another group of Episcopalians seems to undergo a sort of “Rip Van Winkle experience,” waking up from a 20-year nap and realizing that their church has self-destructed while they were asleep. These people either believe that they are the first to recognize what has happened, or they decide for one reason or another that their earlier-awakened cousins are not to be taken seriously. In either case, a new “great white hope” for unity among discerning Anglicans like themselves is announced and launched, each with more fanfare than its predecessor, only to fizzle and fade before the pattern repeats itself a few years later. The end result of each of these cycles is usually just another addition to Anglicanism’s well-known “alphabet soup” and another argument about who the “real Anglicans” are.

Maybe the problem is that we have all been thinking way too small. If, in the light of John 17, we were trying to rebuild The Church, reconciling and uniting all of Christ’s followers, we would be forced to deal with the issues which define a follower of Christ, rather than the minor issues and major egos which keep various groups of Anglicans separate from one another. Even differences between Anglicans, Catholics, and Protestants melt away when we begin talking about what makes one a “follower of Christ,” rather than what defines a “true Anglican,” a “real Catholic,” or a “good Protestant” – all terms unknown to Jesus, we should remember. The inherent flaw in our multiple “Anglican unity” efforts may just be that we are putting our energy into trying to repair one dysfunctional piece of the Church, rather than the shattered Church itself.

(. . . .)

Conservative Anglicans, by even the broadest definition, comprise considerably less than 1% of the world’s Christians. If you were trying to repair an article of pottery which had been broken, would you begin by looking for small fragments to glue together? Of course not. The only logical way to rebuild the broken vessel would be to start with the largest intact piece and re-attach to it, one by one, the pieces which had broken off.

In its action last October, seeking “full, corporate, sacramental union” with the See of Rome, the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion sought to begin that process of reconstruction in the broken Body of Christ. The knowledge that their appeal was “cordially received” by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, and that a substantive response to it is being prepared, should fill every Christian with hope that the process to reclaim an undivided Christian Church is underway.

Want to read something inspiring?

Then read these words of Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan:

From the very first moment of my arrest, the words of Bishop John Walsh, who had been imprisoned for 12 years in Communist China, came to my mind. On the day of his liberation Bishop Walsh said, "I have spent half my life waiting."

It is true. All prisoners, myself included, constantly wait to be let go. I decided then and there that my captivity would not be merely a time of resignation but a turning point in my life. I decided I would not wait. I would live the present moment and fill it with love. For if I wait, the things I wait for will never happen. The only thing that I can be sure of is that I am going to die.

No, I will not spend time waiting. I will live the present moment and fill it with love.

A straight line consists of millions of little points. Likewise, a lifetime consists of millions of seconds and minutes joined together. If every single point along the line is rightly set, the line will be straight. If every minute of a life is good, that life will be holy.

Alone in my prison cell, I continued to be tormented by the fact that I was forty-eight years old, in the prime of my life, that I had worked for eight years as a bishop and gained so much pastoral experience and there I was isolated, inactive and far from my people.

One night, from the depths of my heart I could hear a voice advising me: "Why torment yourself? You must discern between God and the works of God - everything you have done and desire to continue to do, pastoral visits, training seminarians, sisters and members of religious orders, building schools, evangelising non-Christians. All of that is excellent work, the work of God but it is not God! If God wants you to give it all up and put the work into his hands, do it and trust him. God will do the work infinitely better than you; he will entrust the work to others who are more able than you. You have only to choose God and not the works of God!"

This light totally changed my way of thinking. When the Communists put me in the hold of the boat, the Hai-Phong, along with 1500 other prisoners and moved us to the North, I said to myself, "Here is my cathedral, here are the people God has given me to care for, here is my mission: to ensure the presence of God among these, my despairing, miserable brothers. It is God's will that I am here. I accept his will". And from that minute onwards, a new peace filled my heart and stayed with me for thirteen years.

Denyse O'Leary is going to the Guy Earle comedy fundraiser

Denyse O'Leary has some interesting posts about an upcoming comedy fundraiser for Guy Earle, a comedian who faces human rights complaints from some heckling lesbians.

First she writes:

Another friend said, "It'll just be a bunch of Chimpy McBushitler jokes, one after another."

Again, if so, too bad. Chimpy McBushitler is NOT responsible for the decline in freedom of expression in Canada. He would be as likely as anyone to tell our nanny monsters to go do something interesting with themselves and not come back to tell the rest of us the details*.

If we can fix our local problems, we can say what we like about Chimpy. Otherwise, well, can we all spell L-A-M-E together?

Most worrying was the person who stated flatly, "They will not have the nerve to actually provoke the Commissions. Most are washed up lefties with a chip on their shoulder who take themselves way too seriously to be really funny."

Ah but friend, consider: Once the government is turning on the screws, comics have a good reason to take themselves seriously. Some of the world's best jokes originate in opposition to oppressive regimes. And the regime never has any comparable jokes to respond with either.

So I am hopeful and encourage all who can make it to pack the place:

COMICS FOR FREEDOM RALLY to be held at The Comedy Bar (945B Bloor West) on Saturday, July 19 in Toronto. Canadian Comic, Guy Earle, is holding a benefit show, celebrating 40 years of stand-up comedy, to raise money for his impending Human Rights Tribunal. Guy is being taken before the Human Rights Tribunal based on his comebacks to a heckler during a Vancouver comedy night back in May 2007.

The show is UNIQUE in its format. 40 comics will hit the stage for one minute of raw, uncensored social commentary. Stand-up is the embodiment of FREE SPEECH and this show personifies our right to speak while we still can. The show, on July 19th, starts at 9pm and tickets will be available before the show and at the door for 20$. Comics are invited to register for the show at www.guyearle.ca. Supporters for the cause are invited to come to the show or donate at the same homepage. Come one, Come all, but REMEMBER there WILL BE offensive language!

Then Guy Earle responds:

I have been part of and seen HUNDREDS of amazing shows form coast to coast where REAL social commentary is being traded like precious stones. I haven't seen more ignorant hatred and unqualified statements than the ones that come from my detractors! they don't even know me or have seen me!

Losers, the whole whack of 'em

They don't know the first thing about comedy and should go f themselves!

But that's just me

For more on next Saturday night's event go here. Wish I could be there!

The coalition for freedom of speech continues to grow. We believe Canadians can agree to disagree and that the government does not have the right to decide what is funny, or what parents should teach their children.

Syed Soharwardy on human rights commissions

Pete Vere, who is writing a book with Kathy Shaidle on Human Rights Commissions, met with the Calgary Imam while he was on his cross-Canada walk to end violence.

Here's part of the statement:

Response to recent human rights decisions

by Syed Soharwardy

When I initiated my complaint against Mr. Levant, I saw human rights commissions as a non-violent means of resolving differences among Canadians.

I was not aware of the controversies between the commissions and Canada's faith communities. I am thinking specifically of my friend Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary.

Upon learning about the difficulties he and other faith communities have encountered with the commissions, I withdrew my complaint against Mr. Levant.

One of the reasons I chose Canada as my adopted homeland is because of our country's great respect for religious freedom.

In Canada, I am free to be good Canadian and a good Muslim. There is no contradiction between the two.

In listening to the experiences of Bishop Henry and Pastor Boissoin, I realized how precious religious freedom is to our country and how easily freedom is lost.

This is great news, folks. It's really good to see our coalition for freedom of speech and freedom of religion to include not only Muslims, but gays and comedians as well.

A PSAC local wants PSAC to do what unions are supposed to do:

Fight for its members, not engage in divisive political activity. Here's a resolution that I hope other union locals in PSAC and in CUPE and other unions take to heart.

RESOLUTION
LOCAL 70160
INDUSTRY CANADA
NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION

Language of origin English

Clarification of Political Agenda of the PSAC spokespeople

WHEREAS
The PSAC continues to make political statements that divide the membership and implies that the political agenda of the PSAC is representative of its members.

WHEREAS
The PSAC has lost perspective on issues that are clearly out of touch with the Canadian public. This holds us out to ridicule for maintaining extreme views that create a negative public perception of unions and makes many of our members uncomfortable with the idea of being part of the union.

WHEREAS
The PSAC has demonstrated that its political agenda supercedes its objective of workers rights; Issues such as, advocacy on the part of the PSAC, a union made up primarily of federal government employees, for separatist candidates in the Federal election, opposition to more border security when border guards are members of our union, which seems to be at odds with the basic objective of a union to retain jobs.

WHEREAS
The PSAC could speak with authority and integrity by stating that we are united on issues that improve working conditions, job security and wages. However, supporting candidates based on a political agenda unrelated to the workplace only serves to minimize the political clout that a union as large as the PSAC could have.

WHEREAS
The upper management of the PSAC has cancelled the NCR Joint Seminar, they have acted like a cabal by further distancing the membership from having a voice at the national level. Moreover, their denigrating characterizations of the actions of the Regional Vice-President served only to further divide the PSAC management with local executives and their members.

BE IT RESOLVED
That Local 70160 wishes to clarify that the political agenda of the PSAC is not representative of the members of Local 70160. Rather the members of Local 70160 wish to affirm that we are made up of members of various politics views, although, we are united and strong in seeking better working conditions, security and wages.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED
That the PSAC is reminded that the taking of mandatory union dues should not be seen as a vote in favour of an extremist political agenda.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED
that Local 70160 wishes to remind the PSAC upper management that the strength of a union lies in its ability to unite. Divisive political statements on social and political issues only serve to divide the membership and thus weakening our position at the bargaining table. This has resulted in insulting offers from the Treasury Board who are fully aware that the leadership of the PSAC is totally out of touch with its membership.

BE IT RESOLVED
That the PSAC refrain from endorsing political parties, positions or candidates without the clear support of the membership.

Should we get used to this look?

Daniel Pipes has an interesting collection of Western women--including Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth, wearing hijabs. He raises some interesting questions. In some parts of the world, including some parts of Europe, it is dangerous for any woman to be in public without her hair covered. Where are the feminists on this? Strangely silent. Of course, it can be argued the women shown in the photos did so as a sign of respect and of "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." I can understand that impulse. It is wonderful when that impulse is mutual, eh?

For fun, how about collecting those instances when female political leaders, especially leftist ones, don the hijab (Islamic headscarf)?

Oriana Fallaci, interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini in September 1979 in Qum, Iran. The interview lasted six hours and at one point, an indignant Fallaci removed her chador in and threw it at Khomeini.

Oriana Fallaci interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini, before she threw her chador at him.

Oriana Fallaci was an old-fashioned feminist. They don't exist any more, do they?

Most interesting debate ensues after non-Catholic journalist receives communion

I used to go forward occasionally to receive communion in Roman Catholic Churches. I believed in Real Presence, so why not? But as I began to learn more about the Roman Catholic Church and to respect her various teachings and strictures, I stopped. I belong to the Traditional Anglican Communion that has made a formal request to come into communion with the Holy See. We believe what the Church teaches on the Eucharist. We wait in hope for an answer from the Vatican.

Sometimes, because I am often attending Roman Catholic masses, this can be painful for me, especially if I have not been able to attend my own church recently. So I have found it interesting when I have seen a liberal Anglican journalist go forward to receive at Roman Catholic masses. And I find this post about Sally Quinn going forward to receive at Tim Russert's funeral mass most interesting.

Matt at GetReligion.org blogs:

The question concerns Quinn’s decision to knowingly violate Catholic tradition and law. If she didn’t know that she was violating Catholic tradition and law, then that raises another set of journalistic questions.

What do all of these panelists have to do with the question at the heart of the controversy?

If Quinn had chosen to visit a synagogue and break Jewish traditions, the relevant discussion would involve Jews in various traditions.

If she had decided to visit a mosque and do something totally contrary to Islamic law and custom, the relevant discussion would be among Muslims.

Matt quotes postmodern emergent church thinker Brian McLaren:

Tim Russert, it was clear, lived in this dynamic tension, and created this kind of space for his friends. He was a deeply committed Catholic who welcomed into his circle of friendship people who did not share — or even begin to understand — his commitment. My guess is that Tim would not have joined with those who took offense, interpreted her choice with a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” and who blasted Sally for taking part in communion.

Instead, I think that Tim would have interpreted her choice with a “hermeneutic of grace,” seeing in her action — which strictly speaking, did violate Catholic protocols — as a step of faith, and not as an act of disrespect for his religion. All priests and pastors and parishioners, it seems to me, face similar situations, and we all have four options:

A. To show this “hermeneutic of grace” in neither our personal lives nor in our church lives.

B. To show it in our personal lives but not our communal lives.

C. To show it in our communal but not our personal lives.

D. To show it in both.

Matt responds:

Protocols? In other words, if a Catholic pope, bishop or priest does not offer nonbelievers Holy Communion, then they are not gracefully taking part in their search for God, truth, etc. They are turning seekers away and, well, bad on them for doing that. Forget centuries of converts, martyrs and everyone else. But I am straying from the subject.

The bottom line: What does this have to do with the journalistic questions being raised? McLaren is a Protestant’s Protestant, although that statement will anger many Protestants. He is free to do whatever he wants in his church. The question is whether he would want, let’s say, some hardshell fundamentalists coming into his services and taking actions that directly oppose the teachings of his church.

I'd rather have censure than censors

Alan Ferguson on political correctness in The Province:

If I were to write that immigrants from a specific country of origin were
chiefly responsible for drug-gang warfare in B.C., I might anticipate an early
visit from the zealous inquisitors of the human-rights tribunal.

Likewise if I were to opine that the children of single parents do
worse in school, and are more likely to get into trouble, than other
children.

Imagine the outrage if I said that poor people get fat because they choose
cream pies over cauliflower, or suggested that smokers should be stripped of
their health cards.

I don't write these things, not necessarily because
they aren't true or shouldn't happen, but because I'm a coward and don't seek to
bring the newspaper into undeserved disrepute.
Political correctness, with
its embedded aim of avoiding any offence, has wrapped reality in a protective
cocoon that outlaws reasoned debate on important issues.

Well.....it's one thing to get a visit from the state-sponsored thought police, it's another to get a slew of letters and phone calls from an angry public censuring your opinion.

For a newspaper that depends on subscriptions, perhaps even the censure is a bad thing. But censure is far, far preferable to state-sponsored censors. In fact, censure can operate kinda like Adam Smith's invisible hand in the marketplace of ideas and marginalize bad and hateful ideas.
Of course censure can also marginalize good ideas, even prophetic ones, but censure is not the same thing as the state breathing down your neck, imposing huge fines or fake apologies or lifetime speech bans or threats of imprisonment if you fail to obey the censor's orders.

Margaret Somerville too controversial for an Order of Canada

Great column by Henri Aubin:

The Order's receptiveness to new, taboo-breaking social mores was evident
well before the Morgentaler appointment. The Order last year approved the
candidacy of Brent Hawkes, a Toronto cleric who performed Canada's first
same-sex marriage. Also last year, the Order appointed writer Jane Vance Rule,
lauding her specifically for "populating her novels with homosexual as well as
heterosexual characters." And when it honoured Jean Chrétien, the Order put a
curious emphasis on his support for same-sex unions.

Few people, even critics of gay rights, made a fuss. I think most Canadians thought the Order was making an effort to reflect a significant current of public opinion. It's hard to be against broad-mindedness.

Now, however, it suddenly turns out that the Order is not so broad-minded after all. It has refused admission to Margaret Somerville, the McGill University ethicist who is a leading critic of the social views that the Order welcomes.

An objective observer would say Somerville has unusually strong Order-worthy credentials. She breaks out of the ivory tower at every opportunity to contribute to legal and ethical debates over such issues as stem- cell research, euthanasia, biotechnology, animal research, nuclear-waste management and so on. Whether or not you agree with her, there's no denying that her calm and logical approach helps sharpen public debate.

Somerville did not, of course, apply for membership - no one ever does - but was nominated two years ago by a faculty member of the Toronto School of Theology, Carol Finlay.

Finlay says the Order told her it had turned Somerville down because she's
controversial.

That's hilarious. Morgentaler is many times more controversial.

Protest against Morgentaler Order of Canada continues

Joe Sinasac rounds up the reaction in the Catholic Register:

TORONTO - A firestorm of protest continues to sweep across Canada in the
wake of a July 1 announcement that abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler would
receive the Order of Canada.Catholic bishops from coast to coast joined numerous
pro-life groups in condemning the decision by Governor General Michaëlle
Jean to give the country’s highest honour to the man whose name is most widely
associated with the fact that Canada, almost alone among civilized nations, has
no legal restrictions on abortion.

At the same time, momentum is building in a nationwide campaign to push Prime Minister Stephen Harper into reversing the decision. Thousands have signed online petitions and letters are pouring into government offices.So far, two Order of Canada medals have been returned by recipients who feel the honour has been tarnished.On July 8, representatives of Madonna House in Combermere, Ont., returned the award given to the community’s founder, Catherine Doherty, a pioneer of social justice and Christian compassion.

Read the whole thing. There are also links to help you take action.

Time Magazine on Anglo-Catholics and Rome

Many "Anglo-Catholics" share Rome's opposition to female ordination. They have also historically hoped for a reunion with Catholicism, and correctly assume that female bishops would be a deal-breaker in any negotiation with Rome. So the move to ordain women bishops is more than some of them can stand. In a petition last week, some 1,300 Anglican priests and bishops stated that if the Synod voted along the lines that it eventually did on Monday, that "we will inevitably be asking whether we can.. Continue [with] the Church of England which has been our home."

Would they actually leave? This is where the Pope comes in. For an ordained clergyman to depart his cradle faith is a lonely endeavor, done individually. But that is probably not how things will roll out in this case. A Catholic Church official explained to TIME that the last time a situation like this arose (when the Church of England voted to allow women to become priests), "some 400 [dissidents] became Catholic priests or bishops." The issue, he says, is "whether there is some way for [the current crop] to come into the Catholic church in a corporate way, [with] their [congregations]." Along those lines, he notes, there are so-called "Anglican Rite" groups in the U.S. that maintain Anglican ritual, but recognize the Pope's authority and count as Catholics.

In fact, in a letter to the newspaper The Catholic Herald on Wednesday, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Eversfleet, announced his intention of converting to Catholicism - along with his diocese. According to the Herald, Burnham and another traditionalist Bishop have been discussing the migration of Anglo-Catholics with Cardinals William Levada and Walter Kasper, two of the Vatican's most powerful prelates. Burnham's letter requests "magnanimous gestures by our Catholic friends, especially the Holy Father, who well understands our longing for unity." According to the Herald, Burnham has been requesting a dispensation whereby Anglicans could remain in their parishes guided by Catholic bishops.

Terry Mattingly, for years an acute observer of the Anglican scene as founder of the popular religion blog Getreligion.org, and a religion columnist for Scripps Howard says, "I expect some of the old-school Anglo-Catholics to pack up and go to Rome, period." But if Benedict were to sweeten the pot by allowing an Anglican Rite Church in England, "that's gotta be huge." And when Mattingly says "huge," he doesn't just mean for the Anglo-Catholics. Rather, he believes that an exodus of that size could affect the worldwide Communion after all, by giving other dissidents, with entirely different grievances, a model with which to unravelling the fabric of Anglicanism.

William Wheatley on Roman Catholic exceptionalism

Many Roman Catholics don't understand us "bitter" Anglicans "clinging" to our guns and religion - and especially to our liturgy. They think that if someone is going to be Catholic, the only way is the Roman way. From their viewpoint, you're either an Anglican, in which case you are part of a pseudo-church, or you are Catholic, in which case you're part of the only True Church (although they would admit that the Eastern Orthodox churches are legitimate Churches, they would argue that the Orthodox are out of communion with, and therefore not a part of, the True Church. It's sort of a Roman Catholic "exceptionalism." They're happy to receive "converts" from the Anglican world, but do not consider them to be "returning" to communion.

They don't understand that we are already Catholic in our faith and just want to restore communion. From their view, the purpose of ecumenism is so that those outside the Roman Catholic Church will come to sufficient understanding of Roman Catholicism to be able to convert from their non-churches and their non-Catholic faith to the One True Church and the Catholic Faith. These same prelates tend to be the ones who are modernist in tendency.

The conservative Roman Catholics, on the other hand, admire the Anglican liturgy for its beauty, just as they admire the Tridentine Mass for its beauty. They admire the conservative Anglo-Catholics for their steadfastness to the Catholic Faith and encourage us to re-establish communion with Rome so we can serve as an example of good English-language liturgy and good conservative theology to the English-Speaking Roman Catholic world.

He also explains why the Anglican Use model that already exists in the United States has not been good for Anglicans if the local Roman Catholic Bishop is not friendly to the idea.

My father's people were Eastern Rite Catholics who came to the United States in the early part of the last century. The local Roman Catholic Bishop would not recognize them as Catholic because of their Byzantine liturgy and their married priests. So they sought protection under the Russian Orthodox bishop. Thus I was baptized Russian Orthodox.

Damien Thompson guesses at what the Catholic Church might offer Anglo-Catholics

Damien Thompson gives some informed speculation here:

The really good news, from the Catholic point of view, is that Rome and the two flying bishops seem to have agreed on the bare outline of a deal between Romeward-bound Anglicans and the Vatican. If it seems presumptuous for Anglicans to ask for a deal, remember this: in the mid-1990s, after the Church of England ordained women priests, many Anglo-Catholics drew back from union with the Holy See because the Bishops of England and Wales were so unwelcoming, and because they were so depressed by the low standard of liturgy in our parishes.

The situation now is very different. Pope Benedict XVI is an old friend of conservative Anglo-Catholics in England and America; he shares their dismay at the shoddy state of the liturgy in many churches, and he is seeking to renovate the vernacular Mass by exposing Catholics to the treasures of pre-1970 Latin worship. All this would have been inconceivable in 1994, as would a Ratzinger papacy, and old-fashioned "Sandalista" liberals are still hoping to wake up from their bad dream. The cheering from the Anglo-Catholic sidelines at these developments has been hearty and loud - much louder, I'm sorry to say, than that from the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales. Yet it is now looking less likely, thank God, that our diocesan bishops will dig in their heels and refuse to allow special measures for former Anglicans. Roma locuta est, I suspect - quietly and diplomatically, but decisively. (One thing I do know, though it is a different issue, is that Ecclesia Dei has instructed the English and Welsh hierarchy to implement the Motu Proprio.)

So what might an agreement between Rome and former Anglo-Catholics look like? Here are some informed guesses:

1. Rome will set up an "apostolic administration" under a Catholic bishop to offer pastoral care to former Anglican priests and their parishioners.

2. The ex-Anglicans will form an umbrella organisation called something like the Fellowship of St Gregory the Great. The Fellowship, under the guidance of their new Catholic bishop, will consist of former Anglican priests who have been ordained into the Catholic priesthood. Their parishes, though open to anyone, will consist largely of ex-Anglicans.

The rest.

Damien Thompson's take on Anglican bishopesses

What the Anglo-Catholics have lost tonight is their standing in the Church of England. They are no longer honoured traditionalists who have been allowed to preserve an (almost) watertight communion of their own, nurtured by powerful bishops who sustain their sacramental purity.

From now on, they will be the C of E's granny in the attic, whose eccentricities are tolerated only at family get-togethers. If, that is, they are silly enough to stay.

Some interesting news about Anglicanism

Hilary White reports at LifeSiteNews.com:

The news that a group of "senior" Anglican bishops are in talks with Rome during the crisis came as a surprise to representatives of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, attending the Synod as observers. Gledhill reported that Monsignor Andrew Faley, ecumenical officer of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, had "no information" that such talks had taken place. The Telegraph reports that the Rowan Williams was also not told of the talks that are reported to have been with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's highest doctrinal authority after the Pope himself.

The talks come with a backdrop of a difficult history. In 1992, when the Church of England voted to ordain female clergy, a similar crisis ensued in which a large number of Anglican ministers applied to Rome to create a provision to retain the traditional Anglican style of worship but seek communion with the See of Rome. At that time, under Pope John Paul II, some "Anglican Use" parishes were established in the US, but the episcopate of the Catholic Church of England and Wales obstructed the solution. Hopes were dashed when the Catholic bishops of England and Wales announced that converts would only be accepted individually, not en masse, and there would be no provision made for the retention of 500 year-old Anglican liturgical traditions.

It was noted that the heavily liberalised Catholic leadership did not relish the thought of a massive influx of doctrinally and liturgically traditional and highly educated clergy into their midst.

But since the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made unprecedented moves to reconcile traditionalists in the Catholic Church, and who was strongly supportive of the Anglican traditionalists before his election, hope has been revived that a path may be cleared.

Mark Mercer asks 'Where is the Outrage' on the Boissoin case?

Great guest blog post by St. Mary's philosophy professor Mark Mercer at Blazing Cat Fur:

Now it might be that people don’t know about Mr Boissoin and the Alberta commission. Few newspapers outside Alberta have reported the story. Yet it is a story of national importance. It involves a government agency penalizing a person financially for commenting on matters of public interest and seeking to make him a pariah in his community. Worse, it involves a government agency stripping a Canadian citizen of his freedom to speak his mind. That government agency, moreover, is a human rights commission, and so has siblings all across the country.

The case might well have an additional significance. The Alberta government has remained mute on it. Further, as with all governments in Canada, it has remained mute on the general matter of suppression of expression by human rights commissions. Mr Boissoin will most likely appeal the remedy to the courts. We could be about to witness another sad affair of politicians shirking their responsibilities by allowing law to be set by judges.

The case of Stephen Boissoin is not the only case being ignored by main-stream media. Peace, Earth and Justice News, an online journal, has been harassed by the BC Human Rights Commission. A complaint against Catholic Insight magazine was only recently dropped by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, after costing the magazine $20,000. The mayor and town counsellors of Truro have been frogmarched into sensitivity training by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. This case, having to do with the town’s refusal to fly a gay pride flag and the mayor’s comments on the matter, is particularly important, for the commission has usurped both the prerogative of Truro’s elected officials to set policy and the responsibility of Truro’s citizens to discipline—or not—those officials, as they see fit. No doubt this bit of meddling will boost our politicians’ resolve to speak to us candidly.

Please reread the above paragraph. This is only a fraction of the ongoing litany of abuses by human rights commissions, abuse that has been going on for decades. We must commit this litany to memory and make sure we do not forget these people and institutions that are being persecuted by our own government agencies.

Not enough outrage on Morgentaler

I heard from a source inside the Tory government that the Prime Minister's office has only received about 2,500 emails and or letters on the Morgentaler Order of Canada.

That's not a whole lot. If there is a similar level of letters to the Governor General, which my source had no numbers on, the powers that be can easily assume people don't really care, that this issue will blow over, that it is already dying.

Today a delegation from Madonna House will return the medal awarded to their founder Catherine de Hueck Doherty in 1976. I plan to be there to take pictures and write up a report.

Charles Lewis writes in the National Post:

An Order of Canada given to a woman now being considered by the Vatican for sainthood will be returned by the religious community she founded as a protest over the same honour being given to abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a Russian aristocrat who started Madonna House more than 60 years ago in rural Ontario, was given the award in 1976 in recognition of a "lifetime of devoted services to the underprivileged of many nationalities both in Canada and abroad." Ms. Doherty died in 1985 and her cause for canonization as a saint was started in 2000.

"We're not out to bash anyone," said Susanne Stubbs, an executive director of the Catholic community of about 200 lay people and priests in Eastern Ontario, who was a friend of Ms. Doherty.

"We're trying to focus on the award in the understanding of most people that it's for someone who has done a good thing for Canada. The medal itself, which I have in front of me, was received with gratitude. The unanimous opinion [here] is that he did not do something good for our country.

"The medal has been dishonoured."

Tomorrow Campaign Life Coalition will organize a demonstration outside the Princess Gate. I will be there as well.

OTTAWA, July 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Since the news about Henry Morgentaler's nomination for the Order of Canada was made public, people who believe in the dignity and sanctity of human life have been outraged. Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), the political arm of the pro-life movement, has been overwhelmed with requests from supporters to take action. In response, CLC has organized a protest at the residence of the Governor General, Rideau Hall (1 Sussex Drive), Ottawa, which will take place on Wednesday July 9 from noon until 2:00 pm.

Countless organizations are speaking out against this honour being given to someone whose primary interest has been making a profit from the killing of children in their mothers' wombs. Morgentaler was arrested and jailed for his activities in Quebec and continued to flout the law in all the other provinces.

Campaign Life Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that they have been informed that busloads of people from surrounding cities will be participating in the demonstration Wednesday.

Polls in newspapers across the country show that grassroots Canadians are opposed to Morgentaler receiving this award. "Rather than being a unifying and positive step it is creating division across the country," said CLC. "Even the NDP premier Gary Doer of the Province of Manitoba has publicly stated his opposition to this."

CHRC dismisses complaint against Catholic Insight

My story on this has been posted at the Catholic Register's site:

OTTAWA - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed an anti-homosexual hate speech complaint against Catholic Insight magazine.

“We are of course very cautious,” said Catholic Insight editor Fr. Alphonse de Valk, CSB, whose small-circulation magazine already faces more than $20,000 in legal bills. “A judicial review is still possible. We’re not out of the woods yet. “It is chilling to think that a publication can be hauled before a government tribunal simply for reporting to interested citizens developments in these areas of controversy,” said de Valk in a July 4 statement. “This matter underscores once again the necessity of urgent reform of the Canadian human rights system.”

Edmonton-based homosexual activist Rob Wells filed the nine-point complaint against Catholic Insight in early 2007. Catholic Insight is going to see whether it can take legal action to recoup its costs because of “harassing and financially burdening” nature of the complaints. Catholic Insight has maintained it has always adhered to Catholic teaching on human sexuality.

The commission also dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress’ (CIC) complaint against Maclean’s magazine for running an excerpt of Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, entitled The Future Belongs to Islam. The CIC called the article “flagrantly Islamophobic.”

The rest.

Morgentaler round up

Fr. Tom Rosica on the Morgentaler award in the Sunday Toronto Sun:

Henry Morgentaler began his crusade for the legalization of abortion in the 1960s. The 1988 Supreme Court decision that bears his name removed all legal barriers to abortion at any stage of pregnancy -- since then, nearly two million future citizens have lost their lives to abortion.

Morgentaler, himself a survivor of the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps where he fought for his own survival, said he has performed more than 100,000 abortions. One may wonder if he ever took to heart the teaching of his own Jewish faith that says: "To destroy a single life is to destroy an entire world and to sustain a single life is to sustain an entire world."

When Canada honours someone who took the Hippocratic Oath and has wreaked such hurt, havoc, sorrow and grief, something is wrong with the Canadian government commission that grants medals and a Governor General who, claiming Catholic roots when convenient, shows herself to be spineless, politically correct and without respect for human life.

The recent controversy has also shed light on another dark area of Canadian society: The membership of government commissions that consist of patronage appointments who advance personal agendas, reward friends, lurk in shadows of "confidentiality" and hide behind structures and institutions. They pass themselves off as "government officials" when in reality they are not elected and do not represent the public.

That's not all. Please read his whole column.

Fr. Raymond de Souza also has an excellent column in today's National Post:

The abortion party lathered itself up every so often with passionate public calls to let it snow upon the eminence grisly of abortion politics. In the end, it turned out that the customary selection procedures had to be modified in order to ram it through for Morgentaler, but finally it was done, and the grasping hands will soon clutch his prize.

Yet if Morgentaler's award was supposed to put the vice-regal seal of ordinariness upon unlimited abortion in Canada, his snowflake turned out to be unique indeed. It provoked widespread revulsion in some quarters, but more noteworthy, Rideau Hall conducted itself as if the matter left an embarrassing stench in the air.

"For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations."

That's the brief citation explaining what Morgentaler's qualifications are. Notice anything missing? The man's name is synonymous with abortion; one doesn't drop into a Morgentaler clinic for a bad back. He does one thing, and one thing only, and yet Rideau Hall could not bring itself to even mention it.

And Rabbi Reuben Bulka, has an interesting take in today's Ottawa Citizen on the Ben Stein movie Expelled, and the importance of keeping life sacred. Something, obviously, the Morgentaler award does not do.

As Stein points out, to his consternation, there is a "religion" of scientism which prevails in academia, to the extent that the poison of intelligent design is so dangerous that anyone espousing such a preposterous idea has compromised job security and almost certainly doomed any chances for tenure.

You are left wondering why seemingly intelligent people have zero tolerance for intelligent design. It is not as if intelligent design is any less scientific than the gaping hole in how life began that Darwinists greet with an "I do not know" shrug. By the way, for the record, I have no problem with evolutionary ingredients in creation. This can co-exist quite comfortably with intelligent design, or God's design, which is stretched out on an evolutionary canvass.

Mr. Stein takes the viewer on a Columbo-like journey trying to get to the bottom of this visceral and categorical rejection by the Darwinists. He skillfully shows how Darwinism moves people to reject religion, and some of the major tenets of faith, such as the notion of afterlife and the meaning of existence, including having a code of values. In a Darwinist system, with everything happening on its own, we are bereft of values. And the scientists seemingly want it that way. If nothing is sacred, anything goes - there are no restrictions.

We often hear of how much evil is perpetrated in the name of religion. What we hear less often is what the world would look like without religion, without eternal, transcending, immutable values, like, say, the absolute and inviolable sanctity of life itself.

That brings us to ask whether we ever had such a world, a Godless world, and yes we did. Stalin killed in the tens of millions, Hitler's evil is well documented, and there are others who in the absence of any values wreaked immeasurable havoc.

Some are guilty before proven innocent

Interesting. In Jonathan Rosenthal's Wikipedia entry it says:

Rosenthal refuses to defend accused pedophiles or child molesters. Rosenthal is also one of a handful of Canadian Lawyers who has an AV rating (the highest rating possible) from Martindale Hubbard (www.martindale.com).

Does this mean there are classes of crimes for which the presumption of innocence no longer applies?

Obviously any time someone is accused of child molestation, he is guilty, right?

Don't mess with the EZ

Well, I just watched Ezra Levant vs. Jonathan Rosenthal on this CTV News debate concerning social services' removing children from a home after a little girl showed up in school with a swastika drawn on her arm.

There is apparently no evidence the mother neglected or abused the children, save passing on her white power views. Clearly, Ezra abhors white supremacists. So do I. But he makes a point that he also abhors black supremacists, Islamists and others. Do we want to have the state go in and take their children away, too?

Don't mess with the EZ. The biggest mistake the lawyer made was insulting Ezra in his first answer and making it personal. Don't make Ezra angry, because in an insult trading match, not only will he clean your clock with rapid fire insults, he will make the audience laugh at your expense, and drive home some pretty cogent arguments about the danger of political tests for parenthood.

Rosenthal came back with a denunciation of white supremacism. Sure -- no disagreement from me, there. But then Rosenthal went a little screwy -- bringing my own family into it. Weird.

He said he thought my wife ought to recommend that I take "counselling". For disagreeing with him!

I admit I was surprised. I had Googled Rosenthal, and read his vanity entry on Wikipedia -- I thought I'd be up against a thoughtful debater. But besides showing his moral righteousness by denouncing swastikas ("an emblem of hate") he had nothing but ad hominem attacks. Telling me I was unfit to be a parent, and needed counselling, because I disgreed with him?

And then I remembered his Wikipedia entry: he lectures at Osgoode Hall Law School, home of Khurrum Awan and the other anti-free-speech sock puppets who have fronted Mohamed Elmasry's censorship suit against Maclean's magazine. Rosenthal's paucity of arguments all makes sense to me now.

I shot back a bit myself, saying that in Canada, everyone has the right to have children, we don't need a license -- even pompous, arrogant, liberal Toronto lawyers have the right to be dads! It wasn't my prettiest debate. But my point stands: if we have a political test for the state to break up parents, no-one is safe.

Ezra is totally right about this. And Christians especially have to take note of the dangers in this, as disgusting as white supremacists are. You see, there are many within the politically correct, secular fundamentalist crowd who think that religion--any religion, but especially the Christian religion---is hateful and therefore a form of child abuse if religious beliefs, particularly creationism or sexual morality views, are passed on to children. I could just imagine soon some social worker taking away children because they wore a crucifix around their neck and calling it an emblem of hate.

We've already seen children taken out of Christian homes. In Canada because of the way parents disciplined their children. In Germany for homeschooling them!!!

The other thing was how convinced Rosenthal was that his arguments were self-evident and all he had to do was assert the same thing over and over.

This is typical among people who only associate with fellow believers and especially problematic among the ruling elites in Canada. I run into this among journalists. For them there can't possibly be any arguments against same-sex marriage, or abortion. It's a matter of equality in the first instance and a matter of a woman's right to choose and have control over her body. Period. Only a nutcase or a defective human being could possibly not agree with them.

So they don't bother to develop arguments. They just resort to ad hominems because they really do believe that anyone who disagrees is a bad person who must be motivated by evil. This is how totalitarianism is born. This attitude is contrary to genuine pluralism.

People like Rosenthal are scary because they project all their absolutist tendencies onto others and they have state power to enforce their worldview. Rosenthal came across as the hater.

People like him make a mother with a terribly misguided and hateful perspective into a martyr and a victim. That's sad.

Marriage Commissioner appeals human rights ruling

On May 30, 2008 the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission fined marriage commisioner Orville Nichols $2,500 because he refused to perform a gay marriage 3 years ago based on his religious beliefs. The tribunal decided that if you work for the government you can't exercise your religion.

The head of the Sask Human Rights Commission said, "...to allow public officials to insert their personal morality when determining who should and who should not receive the benefit of law undermines human rights in Saskatchewan beyond the issue of same-sex marriages."

At the time, Nichols referred the couple to someone who would do the marriage. The commissioner Nichols recommended did in fact do the marriage at the time, place, and location convenient for the couple. Yet, Nichols was levied a $2500 fine, partly due to the "pain and suffering" of the couple.

Nichols appealed the case on June 18, but could still use help with legal costs. Please consider adding your voice and dollars to the cause. Click here to find out how to help!

Kneel to Allah--British school children told

Diversity training coming soon to a school near you?

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.

You bet this is.

It would be an outrage if Muslim or Jewish children were forced to take part in a Christian Nativity play, or to kneel to pretend to receive the Eucharist in a school setting. It is also an outrage that Christian and Muslim children are forced to hear the sexual dogma of homosexual activists in public schools, contrary to their parents' wishes.

H/t Gay and Right

Morgentaler Order of Canada Protest Set for July 9 in Ottawa

Morgentaler Order of Canada Protest Set for July 9 in Ottawa

OTTAWA, July 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Campaign Life Coalition is organizing a demonstration for concerned Canadian citizens to protest the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortionist Henry Morgentaler and to seek its revocation.

WHERE: Rideau Hall – official residence of the Governor General of Canada

WHEN: Wednesday July 9, 2008 from 11:00am to 2:00pm.

CONTACT: Paul Lauzon clcottawa@rogers.com 613-729-0379

Do you think 2 million abortions is a good thing?

I met Dr. Dawg at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing last March 25. I kind of liked him. He seemed a cordial sort of chap, someone with whom I could agree to disagree with in a civil fashion. But I am saddened by his display of joy--indicated by a bright picture of fireworks--over the Order of Canada award to abortionist Henry Morgentaler. So I left the following in his comments box:

Seriously, Dawg, do you think 2 million abortions is a good thing?

Do you think it's a good thing that abortion has become a method of birth control?

Do you think it's a good thing that some are aborting healthy girls because they would prefer a boy?

Do you think it's a good thing that many women have abortions because they think they have no other choice? Do you think it's a good thing because their husbands and boyfriends tell them they have no other choice--that they don't want the child and will not help raise it??

Do you really think abortion is a pro-woman? Or is it really pro the unfettered sexual appetites of men who can sow their wild oats with impunity, knowing that Morgentaler and his ilk will just vacuum those "seedlings" out of their latest sex partner's womb, relieving them of the responsibility to look after their offspring.

No consequences for men, but grievous ones for women. The breast cancer link to abortion/coupled with the use of birth control pills is real.

I bet if men were the ones who had to undergo abortions for unwanted pregnancies, we'd see a whole different attitude towards the procedure. It would kinda go the way of men's birth control pills. Men decided they didn't like the hormone cocktail limiting their fertility so the idea got ditched.

It bothers me a great deal to see the glee expressed by so many of the male left-wing bloggers, the same bloggers who are quick to adopt vicious, misogynist slurs against women who disagree with them. Not saying you are guilty of this, but some of your fellow bloggers reek with anti-women hatred.

I fear for the future of human rights and especially the hard won freedoms that women have gained in the West. But abortion is not a human right, nor is it freeing for women. It is a bill of goods. It has taken away choice from women and forced women to betray their very natures to satisfy the appetites of predatory men.

This award is a sad day for Canada. A sad day for baby girls and their mothers.

Even those who don't want to return to the days of overly restrictive abortion laws and back alley abortions view abortion with a degree of sadness.

Not you?

CHRC dismisses complaint against Catholic Insight

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint against Catholic Insight Magazine.

Stay tuned. I will have more later.

This is good news. It means that the political campaign for freedom of speech and freedom of religion is working. It means the CHRC does not want to be seen to treat big fish differently from little fish. It does not want to be seen as operating outside the rule of law. That is a good thing. It means the CHRC wants the scrutiny to go away and fast.

But Catholic Insight is still reeling under $20,000 of legal bills. The process is the punishment.
Thus the process--the ability for the CHRC and its provincial counterparts to pass judgment on speech or religious doctrine even to the extent of vetting and dismissing complaints---has to be removed.

But given that much of the persecution of Christians has to do with other aspects of human rights law, aspects that interfere with the rights of religions to determine morality codes among participants who work for charitable organizations or churches for example, the whole system needs to be investigated and reformed. Of course the Ontario Human Rights Commission is to blame for the draconian decision on Christian Horizons, violating that charity's ability to make sure its workers adhered to its evangelical religious mores.

We need a Royal Commission to not only look at the laws governing these bodies and how they have co-opted real human rights but also how the system has become corrupted by ideologues and unaccountable practices.

When social workers introduce fascism . . .

Denyse O'Leary writes:

Don't be fooled by the absence of jackboots and rigid salutes. When soldiers introduce fascism, it comes in battledress, with guns. When social workers introduce it, it comes in claims about hurt feelings, with crippling fines, imposed speech bans, and forced reeducation.

If you care about the country our young people are growing up in, write to your member of Parliament. Let him or her know that you are watching. And by all means, support those who are currently under assault in your community.

Watch my 100 Huntley Street Interview online

If you missed me on 100 Huntley Street yesterday, you can watch the program via the Crossroads website.

Scroll down to July 2 and click on the speed you want, or download the program. The interview with me is in the last half hour of the program.

The pictures show me with 100 Huntley St. co-host Moira Brown and an "action shot" with Johanna Webster who books guests for the program.

I spoke about the positive things I see in the work that I do.

It is important in light of what's happening to our civil liberties, especially the most basic civil liberty of all, the right to life, to maintain our hope.

Crossroads Television System and the many programs it provides, from 100 Huntley Street to Michael Coren Live is an institution of hope and Christian love, a countercultural expression that really does make Canada a better place.

Too bad its founder David Mainse has never been named to the Order of Canada before Morgentaler tainted the award.

Great Catholic Register editorial on Morgentaler

Read the whole thing here.

It's almost impossible to think of a ruder present for Canada's 139st birthday. On July 1, the Governor General of Canada announced that Dr. Henry Morgentaler would receive the Order of Canada, the nation's highest honour. We know Morgentaler as an icon of the pro-abortion movement. Through his efforts, Canada has no abortion law of any kind today. Each year almost 100,000 abortions are reported; our abortion rates are almost 30 per cent higher than most European countries. Since 1988, when Morgentaler won his legal battle before the Supreme Court of Canada, nearly two million unborn children have been aborted.

Make no mistake, by the Governor General's decision this is what the country is honouring — two million unborn children aborted. Not Morgentaler himself, or his courage, tenacity, perseverance or any of the other admirable characteristics he may have displayed during his decades-long battle to rid the country of any legal restrictions on abortion.

In fact, this distinction bestowed upon Morgentaler is really not about the man himself. It is another battle in the long, long campaign to exalt abortion rights as a “Canadian value” — a notion so embedded in the self-identity of Canadians that no one can question its rightness. It is an attempt to put the right to unfettered access to an abortion in the same pantheon of other “Canadian values” as universal health care, tolerance for diversity and being a helpful fixer on the world stage. Those who dare to to challenge the morality of abortion rights court a deluge of condemnation from the country's opinion makers and movers and shakers.

The Catholic Register stays on top of Morgentaler reaction

The Catholic Register is going to be doing daily updates on the growing revulsion in the wake of the Morgentaler's appointment to the Order of Canada.

The Register has this hard-hitting story Momentum builds against Morgentaler Order of Canada

TORONTO - Momentum is building in a nationwide campaign to push Prime Minister Stephen Harper into reversing a decision to give an Order of Canada to abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler.

Since the July 1 announcement by Governor General Michaëlle Jean that Morgentaler would receive Canada's highest distinction for contributions to the nation, Catholics and other pro-life advocates have been uniform in their denunciations. On July 2, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops called on the “appropriate authorities to reconsider this nomination and not to award this distinction to Mr. Morgentaler.”

Here's a story to which I contributed headlined Archbishop Collins denounces Order of Canada for Morgentaler.

“Canada's highest honour has been debased,” said Collins. “We are all diminished.”

The archbishop said that “a community's worth is measured by the way it treats the most vulnerable, and no one is more vulnerable than in the first nine months of life's journey. No person may presume to judge the soul of Henry Morgentaler, but it cannot be denied that the effect of his life's work has been a deadly assault upon the most helpless amongst us.”

I am working on a political reaction piece.

Can you believe the ego of Morgentaler?

"I think that finally now the government has recognized my contribution to Canadian women and I am very proud of it," Dr. Morgentaler said.

He said that in the 20 years since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal law against abortion in the case that bears his name, abortion has become one of the safest surgical procedures. Women are no longer killed, injured or left infertile because of abortions, he said, and violent crime has become much rarer due to a decline in unwanted pregnancies.

"There are people out there who would otherwise have been murdered. That makes me very happy indeed," he said.

That kind of has the whiff of eugenics about it, doesn't it.

Actually, abortion has made women less free. It has freed men, like the many Liberal male bloggers applauding the decision, to have sex without responsibility and women to have no support from their boyfriends or husbands in an unwanted pregnancy except half the cost of an abortion. It frees men from having to be responsible for their offspring, for their sexual behavior.

Women are left holding the bag. And a terrible bag of greatly increased breast cancer rates, infertility, depression and other problems, including a shrinking cadre of men who see women as whole human beings and not sex objects or playthings. And abortion is not a risk-free procedure, even the ones in clinics like Morgentaler's.

Women can persuade themselves all they want that they are liberated sexually, too, but the kind of liberation that grants you multiple sex partners but no men willing to commit to a lifetime of love through thick and thin and to the protection and rearing of your mutual offspring is a bitter trade off, a horrendous bill of "goods."

No....freedom in the sexual arena is not being a libertine, it is through self-control and restraint.

This award must not stand--Toronto Archbishop

Toronto Archbishop Collins has released a blistering call to action.

I already spoke with Ottawa Archbishop Prendergast for the story I filed on this and I bet he's got a statement out, or will have one out, soon.

"This award must not stand," Archbishop Collins says.

This reaction has gone WAY beyond the usual pro-life groups.

And it is going to reverberate around the country.

Morgentaler named to Order of Canada for ....

health care!!!!!!

The citation reads:

For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations.

GAAAACK!!!!!!

Okay, now I'm starting to laugh and I'm on a train.

No, it's not funny, but sometimes when struck with monumental absurdity all one can do is laugh.

And his leadership in civil liberties organizations? Well, I dunno, but it seems to me that if you don't get that the right to life is the most basic civil liberty there is, and that right to life includes the most vulnerable persons in our society, including the unborn, then this is just about as ridiculous as abortion equaling health care.

Tell that to all the young women in their late 30s and 40s getting breast cancer. Tell it to all the ones who suffer depression and infertility after their abortions. Health care. Civil liberties.




Oh my.

This is a sorry day. I expect Rideau Hall is going to need a room for all the Order of Canada medals that are going to be sent back.

Creation of "liberated zones" new strategy

When a British Anglican Bishop talked about no-go zones in his country, he was widely condemned as alarmist. But check out this New York Post column about an new jihadist strategy:

Islamists in the "wilderness" must create parallel societies alongside existing ones, Naji says - but not set up formal governments, which would be subject to economic pressure or military attack.

These parallel societies could resemble "liberated zones" set up by Marxist guerrillas in parts of Latin America in the last century. But they could also exist within cities, under the very noses of the authorities - operating as secret societies with their own rules, values and enforcement.

But they could also take shape in Western countries with large Muslim minorities: The jihadis are to begin by giving areas where Muslims live a distinctly Islamic appearance, by imposing special styles of dress for women and beards for men. Then they start imposing the shariah. In the final phase, they create a parallel system of taxation and law enforcement, effectively taking the areas out of government control.

Hat tip Gay and Right.

The Globe reports on Morgentaler award

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The divisive debate about abortion rights in Canada is poised to erupt once again as Henry Morgentaler, the country's best-known abortion-rights crusader, is expected to be named to the Order of Canada.

Even before the official announcement, Dr. Morgentaler's name attached to the highest honour in the land ignited a firestorm of controversy yesterday, with online blogs, people opposed to abortion and pro-choice supporters wading into the Order of Canada committee's decision.

A spokeswoman for Dr. Morgentaler declined to comment on the award. "I just can't be the one to say anything," Shayna Hodgson said yesterday.

A government source told The Globe and Mail last night Dr. Morgentaler would be appointed to prestigious national order, which is announced by the Governor-General on the recommendation of an advisory panel. The award had been expected to be unveiled yesterday, however, so it was not clear whether the delay signalled second thoughts.

Pro-lifers are mobilizing to be on the Hill

The Socon has more in a post entitled Morgentaler might not receive the Order:

For those of you who can make it, 4MYCANADA is organizing a group of people to place themselves in strategic places with pro-life signs on Parliament Hill where the Governor General will be present. We may even be fortunate to line the path where she will be shaking hands with people. This will give us an opportunity to politely but firmly communicate to her our displeasure and rejection of what she is intending to do.

Please read the instructions below.

Although it is late, if you get this email before 11AM, please consider coming out anyway.

We need as many people - and particularly families - to come out and show her that Canadians do not approve of awarding the Order of Canada to a man who has made millions in exploiting women and murdering unborn babies.

I'll be on a train to Toronto shortly after noon, but if I can get the WiFi to work, I'll be there virtually via my laptop.

The modern day inquisitors

When I took Philosophy 101, one of the debates that, according to our professor, had never been solved was whether God existed or not.

Even Christian mystics and philosophers like Blaise Pascal have granted that you really cannot prove definitively one way or the other. That's why Pascal's famous wager says you have far less to lose if you choose to believe God exists and live as if He does and discover after death that He is in fact real, than to believe He doesn't exist, live as if He doesn't and discover, whoops! you are going to hell.

Even if you believe in God and discover after death He does not exist, you have at least led a good life.

We live in a universe of unsolved mysteries. I can look at the heavens and like the psalmist say they testify to God's glory, that they and all the beauty of nature are like a book that testifies to God's design and God's laws. But others look at the same universe and see primordial slime and nothingness and random chance natural selection.

In other words, we both base our beliefs on a priori assumptions about existence that cannot be proven, even though we could both say there is evidence to support our views. My a priori assumptions are religious, Christian, and rely on revealed truth in holy Scripture and holy Tradition. The a priori assumptions of secular humanists are based on Darwinism, and materialism that are just as much faith-based as my beliefs, though God is not in the picture for them.

As Ezra Levant points out today, we have a new state religion. We can't really call it a theocracy because God is missing from the creed. But it is a faith nonetheless with its own strictures, its own moral code, its own high priests and priestesses and its own inquisitors. And these new inquisitors share a similar zeal for enforcing their dogma on heretics and schismatics.

Today I read about auto-da-fe, literally "act of faith". It was the penultimate step in a trial of the Spanish Inquisition. After conviction, the guilty infidel would declare his faith, as a sort of penance. And then he'd be killed.

Which, other than the gravity of the sentence that followed, is exactly what Lori Andreachuk of the Alberta Human Rights Commission ordered Rev. Stephen Boissoin to do. The Spanish auto-da-fe was an act of Christianity; Andreachuk's order is an anti-Christian auto-da-fe, in which Rev. Boissoin must renounce his faith. That's a 21st century twist.

Well maybe in Canada the gravity of the sentence is not as severe, but in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Maoist China (and for members of Falun Gong and Christian house churches the persecution continues) the sentence could be as bad.

We need to take back our country from the modern-day witchhunters and inquisitors.