An alert reader pointed me to a post at the UK’s Daily Telegraph with one of the best, attention-grabbing titles I have see in a long time.
I’d go to church just to reduce the probability of spending eternity in Hell with Richard Dawkins
An alert reader pointed me to a post at the UK’s Daily Telegraph with one of the best, attention-grabbing titles I have see in a long time.
I’d go to church just to reduce the probability of spending eternity in Hell with Richard Dawkins
The unhinged lefty liberals are having a spittle-flecked nutty about Sen. Rick Santorum.
Liberal hack Richard Cohen of the WaPo:
Mullah Rick has spoken.
He wants religion returned to “the public square,” is opposed to contraception, premarital sex and abortion under any circumstances, wants children educated in what amounts to little red schoolhouses and called President Obama a “snob” for extolling college or some other kind of post-high school education. This is not a political platform. It’s a fatwa. [Liberals control the education system, of course. It is a chief method of indoctrination. Liberals want to make sure that all kids are under their aegis for as long as possible. That way they can suck kid’s brains out and pump their skulls full their lefty … detritus.]
But that’s not all. On the Sunday shows, he even lit into John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to Protestant ministers, in which he called for the strict separation of church and state. Santorum said the speech sickened him. [In regards to his Faith, Kennedy was a faithless traitor. Of course the writer would like him.]
“What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum asked on “This Week.” “That makes me throw up.” Earlier, he said, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” not noticing that he was speaking from what amounts to the public square. [Apparently the writer doesn’t realize is that the White House is trying to shift the notion of freedom of religion to freedom of worship.]
Kennedy’s speech is actually a sad document, a necessary attempt to combat the bigoted and ignorant notion that a Catholic President might take orders from the Vatican. [That was the writer’s attempt to make you think he himself is open-minded.]
Oddly, the assurances that Kennedy offered that day are ones that I would like to hear from Santorum. He, too, is a Catholic, although not of the Kennedy variety. [A little less adultery, perhaps. But the writer apparently has a certain affinity with adultery.] Santorum is severe and unamusing about his faith, and that is his prerogative. But he has shoved his beliefs in our faces, leaving no doubt that his presidency would be informed by his extremely conservative Catholicism. [That’s it, folks. The writer is freaked out that Santorum actually believes what the Church teaches. But the writer is also lying to you. Santorum has given NO indication that he would “take orders from the Vatican”. The Know Nothing writer is simply trying to scare liberals into hating Santorum more than they do already.]
This is a perilous and divisive approach. We have all of world history to warn us about what happens when religion takes too prominent a role. The public square gets used for beheadings and the like. While that is not likely to happen now — zoning rules and such forbid it — we do know that layering religion over politics is dangerous. [Beheadings? Really? Repeat after me: spittle-flecked nutty.]
Santorum cannot impose — and should not argue that — his political beliefs come from God. That closes all debate and often infuriates those who differ. [Because … why? Because… God doesn’t exist?]
This belief that religion has been banished from public discussion is a conservative trope that is without foundation. New York City is now recovering from a frenzy of celebratory publicity regarding the elevation of Timothy Dolan to cardinal. We have applauded the feats of Tim Tebow, the so-called praying quarterback. As any European can attest, the American public square is soaked in religion or religion-speak. [Moronic. Those are flashy blips on the screen. Real religion in the public square shapes how people think and live. The fact that Dolan is now a Cardinal or that a quarterback prays is lana caprina.]
Santorum’s views on the place of religion and his quaint ideas about education are so anachronistic they would be laughable. But whenever I start to giggle a bit, I find that some absurd statement resonates with Republican primary voters. [“Boy, those Republicans sure are stupid. Aren’t they amusing?” This is how liberals think.]
For nutty ideas, Santorum is a one-man band. His intellectually abhorrent defense of what might be called blue-collar culture — no education past high school — is a prescription for failure. [Liberals hate men like Joe the Plumber. ] What he calls blue-collar “desires and dreams” is a sucker’s game: Welcome to an economy that can provide few if any jobs for the minimally educated. [The flaw in what he is saying here is that the education system doesn’t actually provide an education. Kids come out of school stupider than they were when they went in. But they do get that lefty cant shoved down their throats on a daily basis, I guess.] And his gibe at Obama for wanting to do something about it is not politics as usual — it’s just plain irresponsible.
Rick Santorum is not, as some would have it, the Republican Party’s problem. The GOP is half the political equation, and so its inability to offer candidates of sound views and judgments is everyone’s problem. We have to vote for someone after all. [Useless paragraph. That’s a few seconds of my life I’ll never have back.]
But when I mull Santorum’s views on contraception, the role of women, the proper place for religion and what he thinks about education, I think he’s either running for President of the wrong country or marooned in the wrong century. The man is lost. [And the writer is a leftist loon.]
cohenr@washpost.com
Bigot.
I suspect Cohen hates Catholics because he is pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality.
It is timely to haul this old PODCAzT out of cold storage. In light of presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comments about Pres. Kennedy and Catholicism and the public square, let’s review Archbp. Chaput’s outstanding address in Houston in 2010.
This could be very helpful for your own discussion of what is going on in the MSM.
The other day Sen. Santorum made a comment about Pres. Kennedy’s speech in Houston on 12 September 1960 to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in which Kennedy effectively said that he would isolate his Catholic identity in solely the private sphere of his life, thus establishing a terrible precedent. Santorum said that the idea behind JFK’s speech sickened him. The MSM got out their knives.
What about JFK’s speech was so bad? Do you even know about that important speech, during which a Catholic candidate tried to allay the anti-Catholic suspicions of Protestants in the South?
Here is your chance to find out.
Archbp. Chaput hits the nail on the head… eloquently.
_____
On Monday evening, 1 March 2010, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver gave a speech at Houston Baptist University called “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life”.
The lecture was presented in coordination with the Pope John Paul II Forum for the Church in the Modern World at the University of St. Thomas.![]()
He criticized President John F. Kennedy’s historic campaign speech on his faith impacting his possible presidency as “sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong.” ![]()
I think this was a very important address. As such, I decided to make a PODCAzT by reading the text of the Archbishop’s speech (yes, it is available also on Youtube) with by comments before and after. I received the link to the Youtube page while I was making this, but decided to post anyway. And my rendering of the talk section is a bit short that the original. Check the page of the Archdiocese of Denver.
https://zuhlsdorf.computer/podcazt/10_03_02.mp3
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Kennedy’s speech:
[wp_youtube]mBNlS8Zg1WA[/wp_youtube]
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
From a reader:
Someone told me that it is wrong to do penance on Sundays during Lent. Are Sundays part of Lent? The “forty days” seem to be the week days only. Also, we hear that every Sunday is like Easter. So, do we have to do penance on Sundays during Lent?
When we look at the calendar, we see “1st Sunday of Lent”, not “1st Sunday During Lent Which Doesn’t Have To Be Treated As If It Were Lent”.
Sundays during Lent are during Lent, right? Lent is a penitential season, right?
During Holy Mass yesterday, for the 1st Sunday of Lent, I read (in the Extraordinary Form) about abstinence (in the Collect), fasting (in the Epistle), the Lord fasting (in the Gospel), fasting and refraining from bodily pleasures (in the Secret), bodily fasting and curbing vices (in the Preface) … get the point? This is for the Sunday Mass.
Sundays of Lent are also imbued with a penitential spirit, though we can see that Sunday, being an echo of Easter, isn’t going to be as penitential as, for example, Friday.
As far as the “forty” is concerned the days of Lent are forty, excluding the Sundays. The Triduum is also apart. But the whole season, from Ash Wednesday on, is Lent.
The joy of a Sunday during Lent has to be penitential joy, or rather joyful penitence.
The Sundays of Lent do not have a Gloria or Alleluia. Perhaps that should be reflected in our lives and meals as well? There are the Solemnities of St. Joseph and of the Annunciation, which liturgically have the Gloria, though not the Alleluia. Take your cue from that. We are not obliged to do penance on solemnites. However, we are still within the penitential season of Lent.
We celebrate these solemnities, but let us not forget that it is Lent.
Moreover, even if on a Sunday we decide to relax somewhat our penitential physical mortification, we can perhaps perform even more corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Some people have a custom of feeding the poor on the Feast of St. Joseph.
St. Pope Leo the Great in sermons on Lent reveals that for our ancient Roman forebears people fasted and abstained and cut back on what was necessary, not on what was in excess, so that they could give the difference to the poor.
We can have some festive joy, but perhaps the best way to preserve our penitential spirit on these exceptions to the rule is to engage in corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Let Lent be Lent.
This is what Huffington Post is offering on 24 February from the pen of the self-amused Larry Doyle.
Larry Doyle is supposed to be a humor writer, a humorist. He writes for sophomoric TV shows.
I don’t know if he was trying to be funny in this column, but this doesn’t sound to me as if he were joshin’.
This is pretty high test bigotry, worthy of the Know Nothings (which class is making a come back) or the KKK.
The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum
It’s time to take a good hard look at Rick Santorum’s faith.
Many of you will be shocked to learn what our possible future president believes, who he answers to, the bloody jihads his so-called church has carried on for centuries, and its current role as the tactical arm of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
As a former member of same sect (an Irish-Catholic, the worst kind), I have read the texts, participated in the rites, and even seen behind the curtain, as it were, as a one-time altar boy, so help me. I managed to escape, but then, Santorum is in much deeper than I ever was.
Unlike Christians, Santorum and his fellow Roman Catholics participate in a barbaric ritual dating back two millennia, a “mass” in which a black-robed cleric casts a spell over some bread and wine, transfiguring it into the actual living flesh and blood of their Christ. Followers then line up to eat the Jesus meat and drink his holy blood in a cannibalistic reverie not often seen outside Cinemax.
[…]
Ordinarily I would be loathe to discuss all this, feeling that issues of faith and religion should be kept out of politics. But it’s far too late for that, and I have an obligation to expose this phony theology that threatens to supplant Christianity as our official national religion.
Need I remind you that only once in our great history has a Roman Catholic been elected president, and how tragically it ended.
Was that a subtle suggestion that Rick Santorum should be assassinated?
Irish ex-catholic anti-Catholic bigot. I’m guessing he isn’t voting GOP these days.
There’s more in his urine-yellow screed, which I will spare you.
Oh, before I forget: Benedict XVI is a Nazi.
I would not get overly worked up about this. Consider the source. What other view of the Catholic Church or of Rick Santorum could these numbskulls have? It’s Huffington Post, after all.
My suggestion is, rather than write angry notes, right now pray Psalm 68 (Douay). This is one of the Maledictory Psalms:
[1] Unto the end, for them that shall be changed; for David.
[2] SAVE me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul. [3] I stick fast in the mire of the deep: and there is no sure standing. I am come into the depth of the sea: and a tempest hath overwhelmed me. [4] I have laboured with crying; my jaws are become hoarse: my eyes have failed, whilst I hope in my God. [5] They are multiplied above the hairs of my head, who hate me without cause. My enemies are grown strong who have wrongfully persecuted me: then did I pay that which I took not away. [6] O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my offences are not hidden from thee: [7] Let not them be ashamed for me, who look for thee, O Lord, the Lord of hosts. Let them not be confounded on my account, who seek thee, O God of Israel. [8] Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. [9] I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother. [10] For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up: and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. [11] And I covered my soul in fasting: and it was made a reproach to me. [12] And I made haircloth my garment: and I became a byword to them. [13] They that sat in the gate spoke against me: and they that drank wine made me their song. [14] But as for me, my prayer is to thee, O Lord; for the time of thy good pleasure, O God. In the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. [15] Draw me out of the mire, that I may not stick fast: deliver me from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. [16] Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up: and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. [17] Hear me, O Lord, for thy mercy is kind; look upon me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. [18] And turn not away thy face from thy servant: for I am in trouble, hear me speedily. [19] Attend to my soul, and deliver it: save me because of my enemies. [20] Thou knowest my reproach, and my confusion, and my shame. [21] In thy sight are all they that afflict me; my heart hath expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none. [22] And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. [23] Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumblingblock. [24] Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always. [25] Pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. [26] Let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles. [27] Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds. [28] Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice. [29] Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written. [30] But I am poor and sorrowful: thy salvation, O God, hath set me up. [31] I will praise the name of God with a canticle: and I will magnify him with praise. [32] And it shall please God better than a young calf, that bringeth forth horns and hoofs. [33] Let the poor see and rejoice: seek ye God, and your soul shall live. [34] For the Lord hath heard the poor: and hath not despised his prisoners. [35] Let the heavens and the earth praise him; the sea, and every thing that creepeth therein. [36] For God will save Sion, and the cities of Juda shall be built up. And they shall dwell there, and acquire it by inheritance. [37] And the seed of his servants shall possess it; and they that love his name shall dwell therein.
I think it is within the bonds of charity to pray for a sweeping failure of all of Huffington Posts’ servers. Also, for HufPo and for Larry Doyle personally, parking tickets and car towings, flats and transmission problems, unrecoverable hard drive failures for every computer of every employee at work and at home, toothaches and chilblains, an invasion of bedbugs, incessant diarrhea, relentless dandruff and all manner of mange for their pets and for their pets’ offspring.
May they all be given special thorns until they come around.
Seriously … pray that psalm. You might also consider an additional offering of a fast. Some demons are dealt with through prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21).
I also recommend to priests and bishops that they consider using the old “Leonine Prayers” after Masses in their parishes, cathedrals, etc.
And there is this.
UPDATE 29 Feb 14:10:
I see that the young papist, Tom Peters picked up on this story also.
He makes a good point: “the double-standard the Huffington Post applies: a standard which allows their writers to publish literally anything offensive about catholics, however untrue or mean-spirited, while other “protected” groups are never portrayed negatively (just compare the HuffPo Religion section and the HuffPo LGBT section to see what I mean).”
But then again, hating Catholics is the Last Acceptable Prejudice.
Since it was the 1st Sunday of Lent, I have no doubt but that you heard a spiffing good sermon during Holy Mass.
Tell us some good point!
From a reader:
Tonight the cantor (instead of the priest) sung the part between the our father and the doxology. Is that something I should be writing the bishop about, since I have a hunch it happens every week at this parish?
It may be that Father doesn’t sing very well, but that’s too bad. It may be that Father had laryngitis that day, but that’s too bad.
That part is the priest’s part and no one else’s. The priest says it or sings it, not the cantor or deacon or mob of meerkats.
But a “hunch” isn’t enough. You need facts, not hunches.
In matters like these, don’t write to authorities about specific priests or events if you don’t have facts.
From a reader:
Reverend and dear Father:
I would like to thank you and all priests.
Because of your blog and other priests’ blogs on the net I have gone to a full and complete confession for the first time in years.
It is really nice to get notes like this.
I, too, thank priests who talking up the Sacrament of Penance.