Dear Father Jenkins/What is blasphemy?

(I sent the following letter to the President of Notre Dame. The fact that a Catholic university could manifest such grave moral confusion in regard to the one intrinsic evil which is the very substance of Christianity, only highlights the inherent dangers of succumbing to "the relativism of our times.")

Fr. Jenkins:

You are in grave error in your rationalization concerning Obama's invitation. It is an act of blasphemy on a par with the Israelites "golden calf." Why? Christ said, "I AM the way, the truth & the life;" Life, Being Itself, is our God, a communion of personhood, a divine relationship; love is only possible within the context of being, life. As a catholic university, you are His disciple. Yet, by honoring an individual, no matter his secular office, king or pauper, you are highlighting and lauding someone who pro-actively fights for the very antithesis of God, whose actions in the Illinois State Legislature were a mortal sin, justifying infanticide through his argument and vote. This is a grave matter for the university, for your soul and for our country as a whole. It is not the equivalent of inviting him for a debate or even to express his opinion in honest intellectual repartee. He has proven through his actions, which are anything but honest, to represent a direct assault on Life..."I AM." Your letter only illustrates a grave confusion between what is an "intrinsic evil" as opposed to views and arguments on resolving various ethical and political issues which are open to compromise and disagreement. "Life" is our God. Do not choose to dance around the golden calf; it is not the Holy Spirit here, it is the antithesis propelling the university in this action. Please do not grieve the heart of our Savior. To honor a secular official whose highest priority, demonstrated by his very first actions in office, are to commit sacrilege and blasphemy against the womb by militantly supporting murder of the innocent there, is spiritually catastrophic. In Christ, Sue Langstaff

"Pauper, Pauper"/The Power of Humility

One of the most beautiful Communion hymns is Panis Angelicus, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr9Do5ZxPZA, this is a beautiful version on youtube .)

Part of the translation into English is, "Pauper, Pauper... your humble servant; you have given us the Bread of Angels, the Bread of Heaven, O, the miracle!"  

After waking up tomorrow morning, you will start your day with certain intentions, plans and responsibilities.  Things may be going according to expectations, then, oops, you spill your morning cup of java all over the floor, your clothes.  Now, you’re running late, you rush through the door at work, flip the switch on your computer and as you’re reviewing your e-mail with little enthusiasm, suddenly there is a crying co-worker standing next to you.  She needs your support.  These are very simple disruptions that all of us encounter in our daily life, seldom does your day end with every plan and expectation met perfectly, no surprises.  Sometimes the interruptions are more serious, occasionally, utterly shocking and life changing.   

 One day, as I was pondering this inevitability, a thought occurred to me.  

Suppose we look at our daily plans as an internal force propelling us along a straight line, like the straight beam of Our Lord's cross.  

Furthermore, as the inevitable obstacles begin to cross our path,  suppose we liken them to the cross bar on which Our Lord's arms were stretched and nailed.   

Suddenly, it was as though He was entering the "conversation."  What does that "crossbar" do for you?  Do you see it as an opportunity?  It places you at the center of salvation, where man meets God, where the mystery of love acts.

It reminded me of a section of Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamozov: 

Dostoevsky’s character, Zosima, in The Brothers Karamozov, states, …”Loving humility is a terrible force:  it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.”  Father Kallistos Ware in The Orthodox Way, continues, “whenever we give up anything, or suffer anything, not with a sense of rebellious bitterness, but willingly and out of love, that makes us not weaker, but stronger. 

So what are we saying here?  Yes, something as small as a spilled cup of coffee can have an altering and salutary effect on the world, depending on the degree of love with which it is born.  Father Ware also states that love is creative, transforming, an objective reality, just as hatred, is de-structive.  It is a mystery, the mystery. 

Next time, the dog surprises your morning with a dastardly deed...don't let that "crossbar" go to waste.  Offer it up into that great mystery of Love, it may be the most creative act of love in your day!

Pauper, Pauper...in your weakness is your strength.

 

"America is a Christian and Moslem Country"/What?

Arveh Spero, (It's Foreign Policy Stupid! at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31014): perhaps a prophetic piece about Obama's blundering foreign policy.


Apparently, in an interview with Al Arabia, Obama said, "America is a country of Christians and Moslems." What? We have all been living under the mistaken notion that our founding and our history are Judeo-Christian! Boy, where are the "re-education" centers when you need them?

Spero explains the long list of catastrophic errors this administration is making which are weakening our security, while Rome is burning and nobody is paying too much attention, not the least of which is reneging on defensive missile shields for our Eastern European allies, in hopes Russia will help us stop Iran's nuclear intentions.

I'm certainly no historian, but even I can reasonably conclude that per history, whenever the poison of anti-semitism begins to seep into the rhetoric of any western country, watch out! It's like the canary in the mine...the next thing you know there's an explosion somewhere.

No, Barack, we are a Judeo-Christian country!

But, there may be good news on the horizon; after reading today's Gatewaypundit.blogspot.com, apparently General Petraeus is giving a commencement speech...in Iowa, in 2010!

"We the People"/A gathering place

“We the People”

Boy, Glen Beck is emotional on this week's show on Fox. But, it’s all about his patriotism; the back drop on the set is a copy of a mosaic “We the People,” carrying the American flag. Enlarged it is thousands of faces of ordinary Americans.

The theme is about bringing back the American values still prescribed and lived in our military, most notably in the ranks of Navy Seals, Green Berets, etc. His interviews with these two heroes, truly inspiring!

Beck is promoting a new website as a gathering place for American Americans, a place where we can get together, discuss our values and how these values can bring back the country we love. Watch out NEA, “truth” is getting its “boots on!”

The website is:http://www.the912project.com/ The server went down tonight because of all the hits but they're fixing that problem.


Here are the Values and Principles: Go to the website, participate.

The Nine Principles
1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

The 12 values Americans must embrace:

Honesty
Reverence
Hope
Thrift
Humility
Charity
Sincerity
Moderation
Hard Work
Courage
Personal Responsibility
Gratitude

He asks you to make a choice.

The Three Temptations/"Lo, I will be with you, even until the end of time"

The three temptations in the wilderness, suffered alone by the 33 year old Jesus after His baptism in the Jordon, are so substantively layered, one could use a lifetime to deliberate on their meaning, not less, their practical implications.

Father George Rutler, Rector of the Church of Our Savior in New York City, took up the subject this week; in so doing, he applied them to our own time, especially now, as the culture tumbles into catastrophy.

Father Rutler reminds us that Our Lord knew these same temptations would “assault” every generation, in fact each individual existentially; his current thoughts spell a prophetic warning.

The first temptation can easily be discerned in the “justice for the poor” campaign which has literally taken over so many Christian Churches and congregations. One of the most conspicuous examples is the Rev. Wright Church, profiled during the last election campaign. Rev. Wright preached social justice, worse, he de-christianized his rhetoric to the extent that the individual became no more than a self-pitying victim of the rich.

Why would the force of Evil in the world desire this seemingly virtuous intention, tending to the poor, to usurp the Church?

“Satan first tempts the Church to turn stones into bread: to reduce the Church to a human creature devoid of supernatural charisms. The Church is the world’s greatest feeder of the poor, but unless she feeds souls, she is redundant in a materialist culture. Satan wants to replace Communion lines with bread lines, as if the Body of Christ were nothing more than temporal sustenance. But Christ is Our Saviour and not Our Philanthropist. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you” (John 6:53). “

If the Church is no more that a philanthropist, among others, she has no eternal power, no mystery.

The second temptation, and I think, Fr Rutler puts this so well…the temptation is that Christ (always applying to each one of us as well) mock the Church. To mock, is an egregious form of cruelty. I have always hated it, hated it growing up in school, when groups of kids would mock others, hated it as it erupts in work or social situations, etc. It is a terrible form of blasphemy and arrogance. How dare I, a mere creature, from dust to dust, mock the creative wisdom of the Divine?

Will Jesus jump from the pinnacle?

“Secondly, Satan tempts the Church to mock herself, as he wanted Jesus to jump from the pinnacle of the Temple and survive. This test will see whether Christians will take up the daily crosses of life with Christ in a broken world, or engage grace as a kind of New Age energy arrogated to ourselves without moral obedience to natural law. To fly against nature is to live in an unreal world, claiming to be Catholic without living as Catholics”

Will Christians take up their daily crosses; take on themselves the suffering, in union with Our Lord, to sanctify it from the inside out. That is the way Christ redeemed his own in the world. It is not love to flaunt miracle after miracle, even though possible, Christ, in His divine nature, could, if He had so willed, lifted Himself off the cross…He did not. He suffered and died, demonstrating the nature of love, only through love would He bring us Home.

Or, are we more inclined to demand proof, now, of God’s power?

I often picture Christian healing in a mystical sense; what if a doctor was told, "the only way you can heal this patient is to mystically get within the very heart of it, take it on your own being; then, yourself being the remedy, literally push it from the inside out." There would be a lot of sick people!

I have known human beings who actually had this inner intuitive and mystical connection with their patients. Kim, my older brother, had it. It was instructive, though filled with pathos, to watch his interaction with patients. It made him an extraordinary diagnostician. It also made him a suffering disciple of Christ.

Finally, the third temptation per Fr. Rutler:

“Thirdly, the Church is tempted with earthly power. Cardinal Consalvi reminded Napoleon that the Church’s power is not from earthly rulers. Pius XII said that Stalin would be able to count the Church’s divisions only after he died. The two Thomases, Becket and More, made similar remonstrances with their own blood. In the history of the Church,Judas was the first to accept a government grant in exchange for doing evil. The Church is entering a time of severe testing, and she will be crucified in ways more tortuous than nails, for she will be jeered by journalists and patronized by politicians and menaced by false messiahs, but in the end the Church’s despisers will hear severe words: “You could have no power at all against me, were it not given you from above; so he who delivered me to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11).v

A time of great testing awaits us all, versions of these temptations will assault our culture and our hearts. Everything the Obama Administration is thrusting upon us, is based not on truth, but on worldly power.

Humility is the key to discernment. If we seek Truth in honesty and humility, we will be guided through the tempest.

We must be “men” not wimps. What is a man? (I speak universally here, refusing the collar of political correctness, where, truth is the first casuality), Human "manhood," is not being unreachable, remote, tough; or winning your first fight.

How does one know, he is a "man?"

It’s when we can recite these words, as our own existential truth, on our deathbed. It is not impossible...such souls are everywhere among us.

IF
If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt youBut make allowance for their doubting too,If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winningsAnd risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breath a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;If all men count with you, but none too much,If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

End

"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandie, Yankee Doodle, do or die; Born on the 4th of July...!"

A lot has happened since my last post.

The “unthinkable” happened, Obama was elected, woe to the public school system in the last few decades who founded, for the most part, his constituency. Our founding fathers warned their descendents that two things were required in order to retain what, in effect, was a political miracle in world history, a free republic based on the human dignity of each individual; an educated populace and a consensus of morality based on the Natural Law, ordained by the Creator, God.

Both of these requirements have systematically been driven out of our public consciousness. There are, of course, many dedicated, well intentioned, teachers, but they have essentially been held hostage on the Titanic as it merrily heads toward disaster.

Americans, who are not euphoric eunuchs of Obama, have a seriously uneasy feeling in the pit of their stomachs. Are we on the edge of something dire? The new man added to the roster on Fox News, Glen Beck, even had a show this week on different catastrophic scenarios across America should one of several forms of tyranny converge on its citizens.

While running errands this weekend, I was listening to a weekly radio show called “Around the House.” The host answers any question from how to fix a broken toilet to how to discourage wasps in your attic. This week he did something a little out of the ordinary.

He, like many others, suffers from a sense of discomfort, anxiety, about the future of our great country. Making every attempt not to politicize a home improvement show, never the less, he had to make a comment about the attitude of the new administration toward its own citizens.

Most recently, our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, who has his own checkered past in regard to courageous stands against the unethical, ie., the Marc Rich pardon, commented that Americans are essentially “a nation of cowards.”

Beautiful! I’m sure our nation’s enemies were elated, what a propaganda tool! It’s a little reminiscent of Michelle Obama’s comments during the campaign about “finally being proud of her country.” The current administration reeks of this condescending attitude toward ordinary Americans.

Mr. “home improvement” put it very simply…”we are Yanks!” We can solve any problem. Where is the God given faith in the principles, the virtues, the courage, the “can do” attitude that has always characterized our view of ourselves?

It hit me. Obama, and his crew of self-congratulatory elitists, have absolutely no sense of being “Yankees” at all. They have no pride, no confidence in the bare bones; gut level, “exceptionalism” of the American experiment. They might as well be a bunch of Frenchmen at the rudder of State!

The term “Yankee” reminds me of a 1964 movie starring James Garner and Julie Andrews, “The Americanization of Emily,” a comedy, about an American Naval Officer who upsets the English sensibilities of a WWII widow, during the time frame of Normandy. It is a funny love story, Garner was at his best. During the movie Julie Andrews, initially repelled by Garner’s shocking “Yankee ways,” eventually falls in love with his true “manliness,” demonstrated through a deep seated and intractable courage and optimism. She soon realizes there is much more to this American than his love of Hershey Bars!

The term “Yankee” has evolved and no one is certain of its origin. The British used it derogatorily against Americans in 1775 after the Battle of Concord and during the Civil War, it took on a distinctly Union flavor, but by the time of WWII, Americans had positively internalized the term to embrace all that makes the United States of America a uniquely noble adventure, imbued with God’s grace, destined for His favor.

Political correctness has stripped us of this little symbol of our heritage, our vocation.

I’m with the weekly host of our local home improvement show. We are Yankees! No one, not even a misguided group of “Washingtonians” will take that away. We mere ordinary citizens, the ones who give our blood, sweat and tears, everyday to make this country work, will take back the dignity and patriotism, bequeathed to us by our founding fathers.

It shall not parish from the earth as long as one brave heart stands up for God and country!

America will come back to its senses, because truth is “getting its boots on,” lest the world underestimate the Spirit which animates this gentle Lion!

God Bless America, may each one of us work every day to revive the truth which underlies her patriotism!

Go rent "The Americanization of Emily!"

Lincoln v. Obama on Life

Today, is highly ironic, as President Bush has proclaimed it, "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." The media is agog with the celebrity innauguration, hardly a mention has been made about the catastrophic crises, the responsibility of which, lays directly at our nation's feet!

I predict, President Bush's Declaration of Life, will hold exponetially more significance 100 years from now, than anything you will see or hear through the national media this week regarding the Innauguration, especially Obama's speech.

If one peruses history, it becomes very clear that it is the ordinary, almost unnoticeables which eventually rock centuries and people, not the trendy splashes of "the times." This week there will be ample celebrity adulation, autographs, balls, empty speeches, superficiality and hypocrasy. Man loves to make much of himself!

Like the confetti and gas-filled balloons, 100 years from now it will only illustrate man's vanity, as Shakespeare so brilliantly articulated in Macbeth.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing."

But there is something happening this week which will hold up well against the onslaught of time; it is the effort, the sacrifices of prayer and fasting, marching and speaking out on behalf of life and truth, made by a remnant of souls, who may be feeling a little despair in some corner of their hearts tonight.

Yes, you will be haughtily ignored, ridiculed, and mocked by the worldly, you will see no substantive or transcendent victory this week.

But, do not despair, and, as Pope John Paul said so many times, "Do not be afraid." If God is with you, who can be against you?

You are heroes, you are the ones who will be remembered because you stand on the side of "truth," of "right and wrong." You are the ones who can't figure out why the TV anchor interviewing some member of the Obama transition team spouting off about "pay to play" politics in Chicago, isn't compelled to ask the only pertinant question worth asking? Do we not even care about right and wrong anymore? Is there no shame left?

Obama loves to compare himself to Lincoln, he is using the Bible Lincoln used for his oath. He, of course, did the same train ride, etc., so I decided to look back at the circumstances and speech Lincoln made at Gettysburg.

If it gives hope to anyone, it should not be to Obama, but to you, the remnant, you are holding true to "right and wrong" to the dignity of each human life, to the sanctity of marriage and the family and to the transcendent necessity of worship and gratitude to our God.

Drawing my history from this historic site; http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/sites/gettysburg.htm

here are a few words to give you strength on your journey...

Lincoln only stayed in Gettyburg for 24 hours.

The speech was delivered on "cemetery hill," an old cemetery; adjacent were new burials from the horrific battle; Lincoln's wagon ride to the hill top went past the remnants of battle; "all about were traces of fierce conflict, rifle pits, cut and scarred trees, broken fences,...scrapes of blue and gray clothing, bent canteens...

The main speaker that day was Everett, a nationally famous speaker, who gave a two hour speech. Lincoln gave only the "dedicatory remarks at the end," approximately 2 minutes.

(Lincoln's) "effort was the product of a lifetime, from a man known for deep study and reflection."

If Abraham Lincoln stood for anything, he stood for Truth, and you, who are still standing against relativism, secularism and utilitarianism, and standing for "life," have Lincoln as your unfailing advocate, you stand on his mighty shoulders. Mark your place and go on until your dying breath.

Obama and Michelle may have made an appearance at the Lincoln Monument today, again, in an attempt to parallel their ascent to power, to his. But, remember, life is full of irony. A sign standing on "Cemetery Hill" before the battle at Gettysburg, read: "All persons found using firearms on these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law."

With Obama it is all about "perception", with Lincoln it was reality.

Many remarked that day at Gettysburg the sad lined face of the President...I can see his deep reflective eyes still...mourning for the unborn.