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PLEASE NOTE:THE POPE FRANCIS LITTLE BOOK OF INSULTS CAN NOW BE READ AT ITS OWN WEBSITE, click link below: THE POPE FRANCIS LI... -
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Who can we thank but God for this wonderful priest? His name is Msgr Charles Pope and his explanation of Catholic teaching on issues of fa...
13 comments:
Thanks Laurence.
Spot on regarding the excommunication of these pro-abortion so-called 'Catholic' leaders.
Satire and parody are my favorite forms of comedy. And they're powerful forms of discourse in both the political and religious arenas. Our adversaries (both secular and clerical) go absolutely ape when they realize we're laughing at them!
Well done, Sir!
Jimmy Webb's song 'Galveston' was a hit for Glen Campbell in 1969 as I well remember - that was the year I left school for university.
The United States was in turmoil with the war and heavy bombing of Vietnam, rioting on American campuses and the Counter Culture scaring Middle America.
So the song with its allusion to Galveston, Texas, became associated with young American men going off to war and very possible death.
What the song's status was with the Woodstock generation and the draft resisters is another story.
The hippies and yippies thought Glen Campbell pretty un-hippy but his artistic honesty was beyond doubt.
I have just started reading Max Hasting's monumental history of Vietnam so the memory of 'Galveston' is all the more haunting.
Who then could have predicted the America of today?
Who could have foreseen the crashing of liberal elites?
Who could have predicted all the poor angry Americans who have turned against what Bishop Robert Barron calls 'the cultural elite' (watch Bishop Barron's YouTube talk on Edward Kennedy) and embraced populist politics?
Reflecting on the political, economic and cultural uncertainty of our times, I enjoyed watching three YouTube talks.
1) Jordan Peterson finally asked about the Catholic faith (Patrick Coffin Media) February
6 2019.
2) Douglas Murray in conversation with Jordan Peterson (UnHerd) 4 September 2018.
3) Jordan Peterson - There was plenty of motivation to take me out! It Just Didn't Work. (British GQ) 30 October 2018.
Mr. Peterson is highly strung and allows himself to be wrung out like a thespian in crisis.
Yet he reminds me of the excitement I once felt (in very different times) on reading R.D. Laing, Paul Goodman, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag and Mary McCarthy.
Here at last is a man of sonar depth and lightning intellect ready to address both the public and private turmoils.
And he doesn't care two cents what the chattering P.C. crowd think.
Like G.K. Chesterton Mr. Peterson knows that the worst of all fates is to be a child of one's time.
Recommended to all who visit this place:
YouTube: Mercy - Saint Faustina's Lifestyle, Evenings with the Merciful Jesus (Saint John Paul II National Shrine) June 1 2018.
Sister Gaudia Skass speaks about Saint Faustina's prayer life.
Two YouTube meditations from the good sisters of the Merciful Jesus:
In His Will is our Happiness: Evenings with the Merciful Jesus (St. John Paul II National Shrine) with Sister Inga Kvassayova. 16 January 2018.
The Wound We Are Born With: Evenings with the Merciful Jesus.
With Sister Gaudia Skass. September 5 2015.
An article by Jonathan Meades in the February edition of 'Standpoint' magazine talks about the moral and social 'balkanisation' of the West.
Pastoral moral teaching from Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed and liberal Christians is going to be of vital importance in offering people an alternative to racism, despair, poverty and social collapse.
Lectures on YouTube by Os Guinness deal with such grave issues.
Mr. Guinness is a professor of sociology (he studied under Peter Berger) and a committed Christian.
His first book, The Dust of Death, dealt with the crisis of the early 1970s when the war in Vietnam was escalating and industrial and social unrest was everywhere.
Watch Paul Auster, a serious American writer.
He said that the slogan Make America Great Again really means 'make America white again'.
See on YouTube: 'I am scared out of my wits' - Paul Auster on U.S. Elections BBC Newsnight.
Please watch on YouTube:
The Vortex - Burning at the Stake? Church Militant.
Premiered just a few hours ago.
In my comment I demonstrated sympathy for Paul Auster's fear of populist politics.
However, in the interest of balance, please visit the American Catholic blog.
There is a video entitled: 'Pat Condell Makes the Case for Trump.'
On YouTube Mr. Condell makes me think he is an English H.L. Mencken.
Mencken (1880-1956) was the brilliant Baltimore newspaper columnist who enjoyed poking fun at (among many other things) the Bible belt.
Pat Condell's YouTube post 'Britain's Hate Speech' has a brilliant Menckenite line about British police being 'all over social media, combing out thought-crime like head lice' while down-grading real crime such as robbery and assault.
And he treats the burka with the same savage wit as he treats the Bible or indeed The Guardian - see 'The Ugliest Newspaper in Britain'.
And I can't think of anyone with the courage and honesty to see that Britain First may just have one or two genuine grievances. I rather think George Orwell would have sided with him on this issue as much as Mencken. Whatever Pat is, only a blinkered Trotskyist could call him fascist.
The multi-culturalist agenda has made mealy-mouthed fools of us all.
Long may we enjoy Pat Condell's jokes and his wrecking-ball anti-PC sanity.
The proper title of Pat Condell's YouTube video is 'Britain's Hate Speech Police'.
Mr. Condell fears that Britain is a volatile enough society without this Orwellian legislation which he thinks is framed in loose, subjective terms.
According to his understanding, there is no need for evidence in a Hate Speech trial; the perception of the 'victim' is the defining factor.
And a great many people have now been prosecuted under Hate Speech.
Jordan Peterson says that Britain has gone down a dangerous road in drafting Hate Speech in criminal law. But he would say that, wouldn't he?
To quote from a speech by that kindly old Fabian, Uncle Joe Stalin:
'Every day and in every way our society gets better.'
To my astonishment I have just found a recording of H.L. Mencken who died over 60 years ago.
It is on YouTube and is downloaded by Gottfried Leibniz.
Mencken's speaking voice sounds a bit like Al Jolson.
(Listen to Jolson introducing the song Some Romantic Evening on YouTube.)
Like any man who loves his country Mencken begins by rubbishing it.
Walk down two or three blocks in Baltimore, he says, and there isn't a single object that isn't hideous, not even a picture or a carpet or rug.
This is America's 'delight in ugliness for its own sake'.
Gene Kelly played a Mencken-like journalist in the film 'Inherit the Wind' which is about the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' and also stars two great actors, Spencer Tracy and Frederick March.
In the final scene of this court-room drama Tracy is standing alone with the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species as though unsure which one to choose.
Then he puts both books together and walks off into legend.
Mr Haggerty, your comments about Dr. Peterson reminded me of this blogsite. Perhaps you will relate to it as well. https://sarmaticusblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/why-we-catholics-need-to-follow-dr-jordan-peterson-religiously/
I'd forgotten about Pat Condell. I will check on him and get a dose of honesty wrapped up nicely in satire. Thank you for reminding me of him.
Dear Anonymous: Thanks for the blogsite; I shall check it out.
It is hard to understand the animosity young feminists have for Jordan Peterson.
He is not a 'phenomenon' (as some say) but has a voice rather like that of Hannah Arendt who wrote, like him, 'for love of the world'.
In an interview with British television Mr Peterson described himself as a classic liberal.
In a YouTube interview he said he could not give an immediate answer to the question of whether he believed in the resurrection of Christ.
Like Aldous Huxley he sees something unfathomable in both the resurrection narratives and the early church's resurrection faith.
I am reminded of the Italian psychiatrist who said that when he read the New Testament he had the feeling that the New Testament was also reading him.
Although always entertaining Pat Condell can be glib in his understanding of the New Testament.
If possible I would give him a first-rate book titled 'But Is He God? - A Fresh Look the Identity of Jesus' by David J Lambourn (a teacher at the Yamaha Music School in Basingstoke) as well as Paul Barnett's book 'Finding the Historical Christ' and Geoffrey Grogan's 'The Christ of the Bible and the Church's Faith'.
Sadly the late Christopher Hitchens never bothered his head reading scholarship (or testing his unbelief) though his brother Peter is as close to G.K. Chesterton as anyone now writing.
Roger Scruton shows real understanding on matters of faith and is a good antidote to the shallow anti-Christian posturing of the media.
Thomas F Torrance's valuable work, 'Incarnation - The Person and Life of Christ' is always on my bedside table next to the Bible, my prayer book, Kierkegaard's Journals and Augustine's Confessions.
Professor Torrance (1913-2007) was professor of Christian Dogmatics at New College, Edinburgh.
See on YouTube:
Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind - Ending.
Tracy gave a stellar performance as an attorney based loosely on Clarence S Darrow.
The actor reminds me of my father who at the age of 84 died in the Catholic faith as did my mother at the age of 97.
And here am I worshipping in a Reformed Baptist Church where we sing such glorious hymns as 'There is a Fountain Filled with Blood Drawn from Emmanuel's Veins' (YouTube).
Life is indeed a puzzle. As Somerset Maugham used to say, 'We storytellers have come too late to a world too old.
See on YouTube: W Somerset Maugham's 140th Birthday.
Maugham's biographer said that if Maugham had lived another few years he would have converted to the Roman Catholic faith.
Read the blogsite Veritas Forum:
How Oxford and Peter Singer Drove Me From Atheism to Jesus by Sarah Irving-Stanebraker, May 22 2017.
Ms Stanebraker is an academic historian.
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