Red State: The Silver Lining
There are many, many people denying that gay marriage and religious freedom are incompatible. Many of those who deny it are, in fact, hostile to religious freedom to begin with or, when the fight becomes more clear, will be against the church. (...) Gay rights advocates are using liberal city councils in liberal areas to pass anti-discrimination laws that would prohibit churches from being able to say no to sin without running afoul of the law. It is an organized strategy. (...) >>>
27 March 2013
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Looking back, what happened? -
pOmoLanD has the philosophical analysis of the recent dust up between the Obama regime and its mandating of religious institutions to pay for contraception under cover of healthcare: individual rights are subordinated to collective rights. On a related subject Paul A. Rahe in "American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil" touches on a socialistic corruption of charity, for which all North-Western European confessionals fell, hook line and sinker: "the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity" -
Steyn Online: "The Church of Big Government"
Discussing the constitutionality of Obamacare's "preventive health" measures on MSNBC, Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post told Chris Matthews that she reasons thus with her liberal friends: "Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment, but they did."
Maybe. A lot of other constitutional types in the Western world have grown increasingly comfortable with circumscribing religious liberty. In 2002, the Swedish constitution was amended to criminalize criticism of homosexuality. "Disrespect" of the differently orientated became punishable by up to two years in jail, and "especially offensive" disrespect by up to four years. Shortly thereafter, Pastor Ake Green preached a sermon referencing the more robust verses of scripture, and was convicted of "hate crimes" for doing so. (...) >>>
Mar 6, 2012
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We Are All Catholics Now -
The Obama regime has opened the attack on religion and is using Obamacare as a club. Two articles: pOmoland compares it to an event the Netherlands and draws conclusions for freedom. David Goldman is looking beyond the assault on the Roman Catholic Church -
Spengler: "Memo to Jews: After They Come for the Catholic Church, They Will Come For Us"
Feb. 22, 2012
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The evil of false pomo equivalence -
Snapshots: "Another Example of the WCC’s Double Standard"
One of the most troubling aspects about the witness offered by the World Council of Churches about life in the Middle East is the double standard it uses to assess the actions of Israel and its neighbors. It has become axiomatic that when the WCC feels it necessary to condemn Israel, it speaks loudly and unequivocally about the terrible things done by the Jewish state. There is no confusion about what the WCC is trying to say. By way of comparison, when one of Israel’s neighbors does something obviously wrong, the WCC descends into pious incomprehensibility that leaves readers wondering exactly who did what to who? This phenomenon is highlighted in two posts the WCC’s Twitter feed. (...) >>>
Oct. 12, 2011
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truth, politics and demonology - FEATURE -
C ome by Origen, Augustine also at the attachment point for the theology of the political reality is a need for controversy. The fall of Rome in 410 by Alaric had called in the new field of pagan reaction: where are the tombs of the Apostles ever? they cried. They obviously were not able to defend Rome, the city that had remained unconquered until it was entrusted the protection of his gods patri. The defeat of Roma and proves that the handheld maker God, who loved the Christian faith, did not take care of political affairs, and this God could be responsible for human happiness in the afterlife, which was not competent for the scope of political reality, they had just shown effective events.
The policy clearly had its own structure of laws that did not concern the supreme God, must therefore also have their own political religion. This is where the mass aspired rather to a general feeling, I mean that in addition to the religion you were to give too high a religion of earthly things, and especially political ones, was something that could motivate even more deeply still starting from the philosophical convictions antiquity.
It was enough just to remember the axiom of Platonic thought formulated by Apuleius: "Between God and man there is no possibility of contact." Platonism was convinced in the deepest sense of the infinite distance between God and world, between matter and spirit, that God is working directly for the things of the world must have seemed completely impossible. The divine service to the world was treated to intermediate beings, by forces of a different nature, which we had to do, when it came to things of this world.
This excessive emphasis on the transcendence of God, meaning apart from the world, excluding it from the real life processes of it, Augustine rightly saw the real core of the resistance against the claims of all part of the Christian faith, which could not never tolerate marginalization of the political order of the one God the pagan reaction which tended to a restoration of the religious status of the polis, and thus to relegate the Christian religion a purely private in the afterlife, he first opposed two basic explanations. (...) >>>
Jan. 23, 2011
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Belgian authorities go over top, then roll over -
NCR: "Belgium a 'perfect storm' on sex abuse crisis", by John L Allen Jr
As a remarkable war of words between the Vatican and Belgium heated up over the weekend, one thing has become crystal clear: While there’s no good place for the Catholic church to experience a sexual abuse crisis, few places on earth are quite as combustible as Belgium. The June 3 raid, which reportedly included drilling holes into the tombs of two deceased archbishops of Brussels to see if any documents lurked inside, illustrates that when it comes to the sexual abuse crisis, Belgium represents a “perfect storm.” That’s the case for at least three reasons (...)
Over the weekend, Pope Benedict XVI called the raids “deplorable,” and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said the raids were “unprecedented, even in the old Communist regimes.” Bertone’s top deputy for foreign relations, French Archbishop Dominque Mamberti, called in the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See for a scolding. Avvenire, the daily of the Italian bishops’ conference, noted that the Belgian police nicknamed the raids “Operation Church,” asserting that the tag confirms that the real target was not individual guilty parties but the church itself. (...) >>>
Jun 29, 2010
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On 'neutral' atheists -
Stand to Reason: "It Is Why They Are Called Atheists", by Greg Koukl
Atheists no longer believe there is no God, apparently. Instead, they merely lack belief in the divine. They are not un-believers. They are simply non-believers. And non-belief is not a claim, so it requires no defense. This, atheists think, makes their job easier by relieving them of any responsibility to provide evidence for their view, er…their non-view. After all, no one is obliged to give evidence for the non-existence of fairies. Thus, atheism secures the inside lane as the default view for reasonable people. Or so atheists claim. (...) >>>
Jun 1, 2010
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News for postmodern Evangelicals - Greg Koukl is a Aristotlean (non-contradictory) philosopher and a Christian apologist who doesn't take kindly to the postmodern premise of "many truths" (we are in his debt) -
Stand to Reason/Solid Ground: "Author's Foreword", by Greg Koukl (PDF)
“Do you take the Bible literally?” is a question frequently asked about biblical interpretation. I answer that I try to take the Bible with the precision the particular biblical writer intended. I take the words at their plain meaning unless the writer has signaled me to do otherwise. When you think about it, this is the basic rule we apply to everything we read, whether novels, newspapers, periodicals, or poems. Ironically, Evangelicals who pride themselves on “taking the bible literally” often feel comfortable fleeing the plain, literal sense of a passage whenever “the Spirit leads.” (...) When verses can have different meanings for different people based on Holy Spirit “promptings,” it begins to undermine the truth of the “faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). [to them] There are as many “truths” as there are readers. That’s why I’ve devoted this issue of Solid Ground Enhanced to offering a biblical argument against this practice (...) >>>
May 5, 2010
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National Post: "Homosexuality to blame for abuse crisis: top cardinal"
(...) "Many psychologists, many psychiatrists have demonstrated there exists no relationship between celibacy and pedophilia," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, said in Santiago on Monday. "But many others have demonstrated, and have told me recently, that there is a link between homosexuality and pedophilia. This is true, this is the problem." (...) >>>
Related articles by Zemanta
- Gay outrage over Cardinal's child abuse comment (cnn.com)
- How Not To Argue Against the Catholic Church's Pedophilia Defense (queerty.com)
Apr 14, 2010
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he 'social justice' of liberation theology. More 'eisegesis' -
Townhall: "The "Social Justice" Fallacy? Wolves in Sheep's Clothing", by Mark W. Hendrickson
Many Christians over many years have been beguiled by the Religious Left’s use of the term “social justice.” This is because Christians rightly love justice and hate injustice. But “social justice”—or, at least, how it’s often used by liberal Christians—isn’t necessarily biblical justice.
The standard of biblical justice is equal treatment by law: “Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty” (Leviticus 19:15). Justice not only means that nobody is to be picked on because he is poor or favored because he is rich, but that (contrary to the doctrine of “social justice”) nobody is to be picked on because he is rich or favored because he is poor. Everyone’s rights deserve the same protection. Thus, nobody should be taxed at a higher rate than his neighbors, nor should anyone receive special government handouts.
The modern left’s “social justice” strives for economic equality. It endeavors to reduce, if not erase, the gap between rich and poor by redistributing wealth. This is “justice” more akin to Marx and Lenin, not according to Moses and Jesus. It is a counterfeit of real justice, biblical justice. Modern notions of “social justice” are often wolves in sheep’s clothing. (...) >>>
Apr 13, 2010
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Atheist hysteria and hyperbole -
Well, if there was any uncertainty of Richard Dawkins being a loose canon postmodernist with a counter cultural agenda, this most certainly puts it to rest -
Telegraph: "Richard Dawkins planning to have Pope Benedict arrested over 'crimes against humanity'"
Richard Dawkins, the atheist campaigner and evolutionist, is planning to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested when he comes to Britain later this year for "crimes against humanity". (...) >>>
Apr 11, 2010
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An Easter investigation -
Nourishing obscurity: "The problem of the Resurrection", by James Higham
That is sufficient to show, not definitive proof of something metaphysical in which He went out of the way himself not to establish it beyond doubt but instead to show that something pretty big did happen at the time and it was big enough to move thousands of people into actions they would never have undertaken, had He been a mere homespun philosopher. Why would He have not arranged for definitive proof to be available? Free Will and Faith are the answers here – with definitive proof, you kill off speculation. Without it, then if someone believes in you, there’s a certain piquancy to it. (...) >>>
Apr 4, 2010
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George Weigel is identifying the assault on the Catholic Church for what it is - just that. It's priests are by no means the sole perpetrators - It's part of our Easter feature "Easter Celebrations in a Storm of Postmodern Iconoclasm" -
First things/On the Square: "Scoundrel Times", by George Weigel
(...) Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests—a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members).
Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog’s behavior in Proverbs 26:11, the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today. That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this story line. For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down—and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy. (...) >>>>
Apr 1, 2010
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Duped again, but waking up -
Accuracy in Media: "ClimateGate and the “Green Dragon”
With the ClimateGate revelations of flimsy "science" behind the man-made global warming theory, the role of the religious left in promoting this fraudulent scheme now deserves serious media scrutiny. (...) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was quoted as saying that Catholic bishops will be promoting a new "Climate Covenant" and "take the message on the seriousness of climate change to every Catholic parish in America."
But what is the real agenda behind the fraudulent "science?" Is it something more than political and economic control over people's lives? (...) Dr. James Wanliss, Associate Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College, has written The Green Dragon, a book about how environmentalism is actually committed to "the reconstruction of a pagan world order" and "rejection of Christian spirituality." Wanliss argues that the environmental movement "is a religion with a vision of sin and repentance, heaven and hell. It even has a special vocabulary, with words like 'sustainability' and 'carbon neutral.' Its communion is organic food. Its sacraments are sex, abortion, and when all else fails, sterilization. Its saints are Al Gore and the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
"Both professing Protestants and Roman Catholics bear a burden of guilt for the current political mess we are in with the global warming and other hysterias," he argues. "If the church had not turned from the gospel of Jesus Christ it is unlikely the Green Dragon would have been able to so deeply sink its fangs into our lives." (...) t's a shame that evangelicals are being asked to jump on the global warming bandwagon right when the wheels are falling off because of the ClimateGate scandal. (...) "There has been, in past decades, a cosmic shift towards a social climate that begins to favor the environment--polar bears, trees, and bugs--over human beings." (...) >>>
Jan. 4, 2010
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Salvo: "Science and Imperialism"
The Wall Street Journal commissioned Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong to respond independently to the question, “Where does evolution leave God?” Their answers became an article in the Life & Style section last month called Man vs. God.
Richard Dawkins said of Darwinian evolution, “We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet.” Evolution, Dawkins concluded with his characteristic wit, is God’s “pink slip.” In other words, since science says Evolution is, we say God isn’t. (I discussed Dawkins’s argument for the non-existence of God in an earlier Salvo article.)
Karen Armstrong’s response was more artistic. (...) The questions I’m pondering and posing are (1) At what point do the proclamations of science become imperialistic? and (2) At what point does an appropriate respect for science morph into worship? >>>
Dec. 28, 2009
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The Roman-Red coalition alive and kicking ...
AiM: "Vatican Backs Obama’s Global Agenda"
Some pro-life Catholics reacted with shock to the news that the Vatican warmly greeted the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, who is pro-abortion. They don't seem to understand that the Vatican and Obama agree on most major international issues. This is the untold story-how Obama and the Vatican accept major ingredients of what has been called a New World Order.
Another untold story is how, despite a disagreement over abortion, the U.S. Catholic Bishops and the Obama Administration agree on major aspects of so-called health care reform. These topics are mostly taboo in the liberal and conservative media. Liberal and conservative Catholics alike would prefer not to discuss how the Catholic Church, here and abroad, functions like a liberal/left-wing political lobby. (...) >>>
Nov. 18, 2009
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The Left's 'eisegesis' ...
PJM: "Jesus the Capitalist - Michael Moore likes to claim that the Bible supports socialism. But God is not on his side", by Adam Graham
Michael Moore has been bashing capitalism, its excesses, and its lack of concern for workers and their exploitation. A story that backs Moore up comes from a reliable source. It’s a story of naked capitalism ignoring the rights of workers and arbitration. (...)
Moore’s statement is one of two grave theological errors that liberals commonly make when recruiting religion to their cause. At best, he’s doing eisegesis, where, rather than trying to figure out what stance the Bible takes on an issue, the debater comes to the Bible with a point of view and then cherry-picks scripture to support that view, ripped from any context.
Thus, passages written to explain how individuals ought to govern their lives are taken to explain what government ought to make individuals do. Scriptures that explain how the church should take care of the poor are used to show how government ought to take care of the poor. (...) >>>
Nov. 15, 2009
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NCR: "Vatican reveals plan to welcome disaffected Anglicans - Responds to request made by group known as Traditional Anglican Communion"
In a move with potentially sweeping implications for relations between the Catholic church and some 80 million Anglicans worldwide, the Vatican has announced the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to absorb disaffected Anglicans wishing to become Catholics. The structures will allow those Anglicans to hold onto their distinctive spiritual practices, including the ordination of married former Anglican clergy as Catholic priests. Those structures would be open to members of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the main American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. American Episcopalians are said to number some 2.2 million. (...) >>>
Oct. 26, 2009
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I knew that ...
NRC: "Insecurity not education determines church attendance", by Dirk Vlasblom
The long-standing theory has been that the higher educated someone is the less religious he will be. But new research in 60 countries proves otherwise. It is economic security that leaves churches empty. (...)
Stijn Ruiter, Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and Frank van Tubergen, a Professor of Sociology in Utrecht, compared religious participation in 60 countries. They found no effect of education, but instead came to the conclusion that social insecurity and the environment people grow up in have a significant impact. Results of their research will be published in the American Journal of Sociology next month. (...) >>>
Oct. 22, 2009
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Call me a philistine, but I remember having heard both (in an English or Greek version perhaps): "God separated Heaven and Earth" as well as "God created Heaven and Earth". Can one of the friendly Fathers help solving the mystery?
NRC: "First verse of bible was mistake, professor says"
The first sentence of the good old Bible has been misunderstood for centuries because of an error of translation, says a Dutch Catholic Professor of Exegesis. "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth," says the first verse of the first chapter of the first Bible book, Genesis. But a Dutch Professor of Old Testament exegesis now says this phrase was wrongly translated.
Ellen van Wolde, who holds her inaugural speech at the Radboud University in Nijmegen on Friday, says the Hebrew word bara should not be translated as 'created' but as 'separated'. So the first verse would read "God separated the heaven and the earth", indicating that there was something before Creation began. (...) >>>
Oct. 9, 2009
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Kudos for the Popes! On the day someone tweeted an 1891 document by Pope Leo XIII on early Socialism, then covered by the term "capital and labor," the present Pope is also working long hours to avert present day disaster:
- NCR: "Pope sends top diplomat to deal with Chavez", by John L Allen Jr
- NewsMax: "Catholics Fight Against Abortion in Obamacare Bills"
Aug. 18, 2009
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While we normally trust the analysis of Cliff Kincaid on secular matters without much hesitation, and while greatly appreciative of what must have been a heck of a job, given the philosophical precision wielded by Pope Benedict and the esoterics involved in Papal pronouncements, perhaps we should reserve final judgment on this one until exegesis is fully matured. As Kincaid admits, there are contradictions, a phenomenon on which we know Pope Benedict isn't wont to look kindly. Here's another view (which incidentally doesn't help in clearing up any of the contradictions).
Update: Further light on the issue, the G8 and the meeting on Friday of Pope BXVI with Barack Obama is thrown in a podcast interview with Vatican insider John L. Allan Jr.
Accuracy in Media: "Pope Endorses “World Political Authority”"
Some in the media are calling it just a statement about "economic justice." But Pope Benedict XVI's "Charity in Truth" statement, also known as an encyclical, is a radical document that puts the Roman Catholic Church firmly on the side of an emerging world government. In explicit and direct language, the Pope calls for a "true world political authority" to manage the affairs of the world. At the same time, however, the Pope also warns that such an international order could "produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature" and must be guarded against somehow. (...) >>>
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Papal spring cleaning ...
NCR: "Pope removes officials seen as responsible for Holocaust-denying bishop row"
In what could be seen as another piece of fallout from Benedict XVI’s January decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, the pope today restructured the Vatican office that handles relations with the traditionalist world -- and, in effect, gently fired the officials who presided over the earlier fiasco. As a result of a document issued by the Vatican today, titled Ecclesiae unitatem, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos, who had served as President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission since 2000, and Italian Monsignor Camille Perl, the number two official at Ecclesia Dei, are both out of work. The Ecclesia Dei Commission was created by the late Pope John Paul II in 1988 to manage relations with the Society of St. Pius X founded by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Both men played key roles in the decision to lift the ecxcommunications, including that of Bishop Richard Williamson, the traditionalist prelate who denied in an interview with Swedish television that the Nazis had used gas chambers and that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust. (...) >>>
July 8, 2009
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July 8, 2009
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Chiesa: "Double Disaster at the Vatican: Of Governance, and of Communication"
A few days after the events, the lifting of excommunication from the four Lefebvrist bishops is increasingly manifesting itself at the Vatican as a double disaster, of governance and of communication. In the disaster, Pope Benedict XVI found himself to be the one most exposed, and practically alone. Both within and outside of the curia, many are blaming the pope for everything. In effect, it was his decision to offer the Lefebvrist bishops a gesture of benevolence. The lifting of excommunication followed other previous gestures of openness, also decided personally by the pope, the last of which was the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum," dated July 7, 2007, with the liberalization of the ancient rite of the Mass. (...)
Then, to make the misunderstanding worse, there came the uproar over an interview with one of the four bishops granted clemency, Richard Williamson of England, in which he supported ideas denying the Holocaust. The interview was recorded by a Swedish television station on November 1, 2008, but it was broadcast on January 21 – the same day on which, at the Vatican, the decree was signed revoking the excommunication of Williamson, and of the three other Lefebvrist bishops. In the media all over the world, the news read as follows: the pope clears a Holocaust denier bishop from excommunication, and welcomes him into the Church. The tempest that erupted was tremendous. (...) The controversy calmed down only after Benedict XVI intervened in person, with two clarifications read at the end of the general audience on Wednesday, January 28: one about the Lefebvrists and their duty of "recognition of the magisterium and authority of the pope and of Vatican Council II," and the other about the Holocaust.
The question comes naturally: was all of this really inevitable, once the pope had decided to lift the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops? Or was the disaster produced by the errors and omissions of the men who are supposed to implement the pope's decisions? The facts point to the second hypothesis. (...) wasn't it the primary responsibility of these two cardinals to carry out an in-depth examination of Williamson's personal profile, and of the three other bishops? The fact that they did not do so seems inexcusable. (...)
Another serious lapse concerned the pontifical council for the promotion of Christian unity. Reversing the schism with the Lefebvrists is logically part of its competencies, which also include relations between the Church and Judaism. But the cardinal who heads the council, Walter Kasper, says that he was kept out of the deliberations (...) That's not all.The media release of the decision also seems to have been entirely negligent. The Vatican press office limited itself, on Saturday, January 24, to distributing the text of the decree, in spite of the fact that the news had already leaked out a few days earlier, and a fiery controversy was already growing around the statements denying the Holocaust made by Williamson. (...)
With Bertone, the curia seems even more disorganized than before, perhaps in part because he has never completely dedicated himself to fixing its problems. (...) Bertone's personal devotion to Benedict XVI is beyond all doubt. Not so that of the other curia officials, who continue to have free rein. It is possible that some of them deliberately oppose this pontificate. It is certain that most of them simply do not understand it, do not measure up to it. >>>
Feb 4, 2009
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Related
- Holy See official website
Related dossiers
- "Emergent Church" (pomo church)
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