Buy, Buy American Pie

This is too good not to post however I really frown on the song writer's lack of doing their homework so to get their facts straight (as the video disclaimer indicates).

My challenge to you though is, did you get the "hidden" message from the video? The words do not directly proclaim The Source but the video does. That Source is #1 because we make them our choice - it is up to us to start making better choices.

To Know the "Goodness" of the "Good" in Good Friday is Paramount

Reflecting on this and other events - for me things just in my own life, small ones to larger ones, I am noticing more and more anger and resentment everywhere and I bet you are likely experiencing this as well. The world seems to be suffocating under this "air" of madness - of resentment - of having to justify myself by attacking another. One can almost feel, if one stops long enough from our own efforts of projecting-off-of-ourselves-this-same-resentment, the increase in density that this resentment has grasped us by. Listening to what René Girard teaches from his understanding of the Gospel he uses the term "ressentiment:" meaning a suppressed desire for revenge that carries over into perpetual judgment against the other describing this human tendency that so often leads us into acts of sinfulness and violence.

It becomes difficult for those who seek to understand, as they are found whirling around faster and faster in this vortex of ressentiment, especially when they self-identify with the victimizing group, to listen to and to learn from it. In countering such desire for revenge, a helpful approach is to recognize the deeper roots of ressentiment. These roots are found in our tendency to make scapegoats out of others, a tendency to project blame for the ills that afflict us onto the other. Instead of being about the activity of flinging revengeful and hurtful ressentiment we need to be about bringing a level of calm and groundedness that can only be birthed from a conversion, daily if not in each moment - a death of the self enmeshed in the swirling vortex of violence (Good Friday) to a resurrection of new life (Easter).

THIS is Easter!

At one level, Easter is a personal conversion and resurrection from a life based in self-centeredness where we are brought to a moment of recognition - where we can see the "old self" based in a false individuality linked to the contours of the scapegoat mechanism vividly displayed in our own heart. It seems to me that such recognition is what Girard appreciates about some scriptural texts like the Joseph cycle from Genesis. This model of recognition provides an example of a preparatory step that may be necessary for our personal Easter - our personal resurrection into Christ.  It starts first with the recognition of own "old self" grounded in the ressentiment of the scapegoat mechanism and then the experience of our conversion - a personal grafting of our self into the New Creation as St. Paul writes in Galatians 6:14-16 (The New Jerusalem Bible):

But as for me, it is out of the question that I should boast at all, except of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  It is not being circumcised or uncircumcised that matters; but what matters is a new creation.  Peace and mercy to all who follow this as their rule and to the Israel of God. After this, let no one trouble me; I carry branded on my body the marks of Jesus.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my brothers. Amen.

This is a life journey of daily conversion - it is making the personal choice - the YES of Mary - to being members of this new creation - it is living Good Friday to Easter moment to moment.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Fr. Barron comments on the Vampire craze

Some interesting themes touched on by Fr Barron.

Two-Stepping to Hell

From Verum Serum, via Gil Bailie:

Now I realize that the editors at these MSM institutions are probably following some style-guide which tells them that a baby inside a mother is fetus and a fetus in the hospital is a baby. What this case points out so clearly is that it’s a distinction without a difference. If we wanted to lay aside the style-guide we’d have to admit it was a baby when it was kidnapped and it was a baby when it was discovered alive in the hospital. Calling it a fetus didn’t change anything about it except its implied location. So why do it? I think the answer is obvious. You don’t have to look any further than yesterday’s NY Times hagiography of George Tiller for an answer. From the Times story:

[T]he other 2,800 abortions involved viable fetuses. Some had serious but survivable abnormalities, like Down syndrome. Many were perfectly healthy.

Those were healthy babies Tiller dismembered. Babies. More >>

I would love simply to call the prevarication by the MSM on abortuarial murder cowardice: merely fear of losing advertizers, or readership, or viewers, or the like. But at heart it stems from a baser motive: fear of the rising tide of the primitive Sacred. That is, it is hypocritical turning away from human sacrifice, lest all of us face the horror of cultural collusion that became a staple of United States cohesion since Roe v. Wade. Or, perhaps it is one and the same after all.

If our country, like so many other western nations formerly informed by the Judeo-Christian ethos, faces cultural meltdown it will be because we turned our collective back on that Judeo-Christian ethos for a heinous, softcore, "professional" - even suburban - version of human sacrifice: an antiseptic, stainless steel and latex medical "procedure".

But is it hypocritical? I fear that our collective consciousness about abortion has truly changed. It is no longer horrible. It is now "routine" for a vast majority of Americans. It is clearly a political chit in the Washington "two-step" for all but a very small minority on either side of the aisle. And if we are so blinded to the abomination of abortion, what others have become "normalized"? (Fill in the blank.)

And so I say, batten down the hatches. I fully believe in the consequential judgment of God against idolatry and paganism. Particularly when those who knew better reject what once was espoused and cherished as God's revelation and truth.

H8 or sacred trip wire

This kind of statement will be illegal in the United States if this is made law. But, lest we forget, some animals are more equal than others.

Saruman Ring-maker @ ND

A must read.
Athos comes through again.

"…about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a cold sigh dissolved into nothing. …long years of death were suddenly revealed in [the body], and it shrank, and the shrivelled face became rags of skin upon a hideous skull."

Saruman's death: Shippey suggests that Saruman represents a character 'eaten up inside' by his desires. —The Return of the King, p.363

Don't miss this link to Athos' link HERE

Whether this scenario is one that I Wun will face directly or not I don't know but we who are following in his shadow will certainly witness to the many deaths.

We must remember that responsibility is ours as we voted him into office and even after his 100-days we continue to swoon over him as if he truly were Saruman. The problem seems to me to be that we hold truths to be self-evident only in terms that are governmental and not religious. The Church claims truths and yet we (and that includes many clergy and bishops) seem to think that they are optional. How does a Church pray for unity and yet strives not to help its members come to unity in the most basic of truths?

Get the message straight Mr President

Tip to Athos. At least this house seems not divided.

It's a magnificent thing: The only newly-originating life in the universe that comes in the image of God is Man. The only newly-originating life in the universe that lasts forever is Man.

This is an awesome thing.

And, as everyone knows, that reverence is not shared by our new President, over whom we have rejoiced.

He is trapped and blind in a culture of deceit. On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he released this statement,

We are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.

To which I say:

No, Mr. President, you are not protecting women; you are authorizing the destruction of 500,000 little women every year.
No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom; you are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year.
No, Mr. President, killing our children is killing our children no matter how many times you call it a private family matter. You may say it is a private family matter over and over and over, and still they are dead. And we killed them. And you, would have it remain legal.
Mr. President, some of us wept for joy at your inauguration. And we pledge that we will pray for you.

We have hope in our sovereign God.
(From the sermon: "The Baby in My Womb Leaped for Joy.")

Catholic identity at issue NOT President's agenda

Another GREAT video. I hope this scandal will help awaken our - the Catholics in the US - need to address what it means to be Catholic in the US. Currently a strong majority of US Catholics, including ND students as well as US bishops have not opposed the invitation afforded to I Won by officials of ND.



It is obvious that the evil addressed in this and other videos are NOT apparent to the majority of Catholics in the US or they simply are CHOOSING which Catholic teaching to follow and which to ignore. How long is the American Catholic - the cafeteria Catholic?

Conflicted and Divided Catholics need a strong voice or does the majority soon it all go away?

Everyplace I read I do not see where the majority of Catholics agree with this position, however I think that Fr. Corapi delivers a very strong and powerful message.



It is always so easy to point fingers at "I Won" or others for who we disagree yet the body of Christ continues to be fragmented. It seems to me that this scandal at ND points to our huge problem, that of not passing on the faith. Clearly we in the US are divided, conflicted and prefer choice and therefore struggle to understand what it means to be Catholic, even on such a critical issue as life - no wonder that we are doing such a minimum or modest job of passing on the faith.

Stand up for what is Life

"I am supportive of all efforts by NDResponse or any other prayerful and dignified demonstrations by Notre Dame students."
- Bishop J. M. D'Arcy

Go HERE to get more information on ND Response
Tip to Athos @ Chronicles of Atlantis who is always a step ahead.

Yes and No at the feet of Our Lady

History consists – in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar and as I heard first from Gil Bailie – of "the mutual intensification of the Yes and the No to Christ."

So it is stunningly appropriate that the "No to Christ" in the form of an invitation accepted by our current, pro-abortion agenda president, Barrack H. Obama, to speak at a commencement exercise take place at the feet of Our Lady of the Golden Dome, the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.

For precisely here, of all places, is the intensification of saying "Yes to Christ" and "No to Christ" at its most historically appropriate congruence.

The abortion industry, given the huge effort to further promulgate itself globally and made a "key" to United States foreign policy, is in effect the same hypocritical reaction that we see in the crowd that stoned to death our first Christian martyr, Stephen: they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.

What do I mean? I mean that there is indeed in nearly every person the whispering, sometimes howling, awareness that abortion is a travesty against life and against the One Who created us, the Word (Jn 1). The only thing to do now, in light of the genocide of the unborn unimaginable numbers of infants killed since Roe v. Wade, is increase it, shout its justifiability, "cover" the "ears" of more and more people, make more and more people accomplices.

To face the consequences of such massive slaughter of the unborn is far, far worse than Germany had to face following WWII. If it is wrong, evil, a mortal sin (it is), then, "Lord, who can stand?" Since this cannot be faced, it must be neurotically transvalued to be the "key" of American foreign policy. Oh? So if we all shout it and stomp our feet, that will make it right?

So the "No to Christ" of this tragedy of humanist "progress" comes, symbolically in the man most committed to furthering abortion, to the campus of Notre Dame, Our Lady, who modeled for us the perfect "Yes to Christ," full of grace.

What a moment it may be.

Evangelical 'Buyers' Remorse'

A member of President Obama's faith-based advisory council says President Obama has yet to show any signs that he plans to follow through on his pledge to find "common ground" on the issue of abortion.

Dr. Frank Page, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, says he is disturbed that President Barack Obama is "moving quickly" to remove the few pro-life protections that remain in the U.S.

Page admits he is irritated that some of the evangelicals who voted for President Obama are now having "buyers' remorse." He says they should not be acting surprised when they see Obama simply fulfilling promises he made during the campaign.

"Nothing he's done surprises, because he promised these things," observes Page. "But the rapid pace with which he has done it has been very concerning to me."

Read all …

I can only hope that Catholics who voted for I Won also are experiencing a similar remorse. I Won represented a consortium of bristling desires - the object of longing embodied in one mere man. His self-understanding is very questionably Christian, defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But that did not make any difference to the voters last Fall. Last fall.

Tolkien's Dark Lord at the UN (and do we say US?)

Hobbit Alliance Brings Triumph of Hope

But the armies of darkness were strong and seemed invincible. China, Great Britain, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Spain and Germany could be expected to
promote this language. The United States, under its new administration bound to the culture of death, would use all of its might to advance the reign of Planned Parenthood. All seemed lost.

Then help came from an unexpected quarter. Iran took the floor and protested that the "right to sexual and reproductive health" could not be substituted with "sexual and reproductive health and rights."

We can only thank that one nation with the moral fortitude to refuse to be hoodwinked allowed a crack to open into the darkness. Obviously that one nation is NOT the US because we are not a Christian nation for our values are not shaped by a faith - we kinda like to pick and choose whatever or wherever the wind blows. Thankfully in this issue of pushing the abortion platform globally Iran stands firm. Interesting where the alliances form, isn't it?

Evil effects still rampant from teaching that no evil exists

tip to Tim at Old World Swine.

Growing up non-religious, and most certainly not Catholic, I eventually invested my time in the link between education and violence. Along with running my family business I gained an understanding of structural violence within our institutions. Next I found myself gravitating toward local, regional and national leadership programs which helped me appreciate the victim from new perspectives. And finally tying all these loose-ends up I reached a melting point in my personal study of violence and I was brought home to the Church (certainly a-round-about way to get home I am sure) for there we touch the truth with Christ on the Cross about human violence.

Sadly a lot of what I gleaned, a lot of which was spewed out by liberal Catholic religious who were sold a bill of goods by practitioners of humanistic mumbo-jumbo, feel-good therapists of the '60s and early '70s, still holds authority in the line of thought for most educators (both secular and religious), spiritual direction (as many SDs are religious who trained in post-Vatican II era) and intellectuals today. Though there are little signs of hope as Athos posted I am afraid that any true resurgence of "teaching" with an authority to Truth will come, as Belloc predicted, in Africans or Asiatics or in some civilisation yet unborn.

Dr. William Coulson writes how many religious orders, and many within the Church and including generations within society continue to be ravaged by the destructive effects of humanistic psychotherapy, the kind that had virtually taken over the Church in America, and dominates so many forms of aberrant education like sex education, and drug education, which holds that the most important source of authority is within you, that you must listen to yourself - and most importantly for you to accomplish this you must expelled all influences from any authority outside of yourself. As a Girardian I see this nonsense as it is today but not until I experienced the horrors of broken relationships, one after another, from trying to live free from any external authority.

This article is from 1994 but just pick up any self-help book or spiritual direction manual and you will still feel the ever lingering echo of Rogers, On Becoming a Person or for those who worship Oprah, Eckhart Tollie's new-age rendition of 'being'. Or sit around a group of teachers, it doesn't matter whether they teach at a Catholic program or in our public institutions and you will catch yourself nodding to methods that rely on reaching this authority from within - avoiding at all cost those 3 nasty words, thou shalt not... and never, never alluding to any sort of evil that may be within.

Coulson brings up how easy it was to infect this gnostic virus into the diet of American life and particularly the Catholic religious as they were caught up in the excitement coming from interpretations of Vatican II that seemed to give permission to explore whatever means to "open the windows and let in the fresh air."

Yes I acknowledge that many parishes, hopefully including the parish I belong to, are turning to the Church and proper authority to instruct our youth today, however with all the influences of higher education, media, entertainment, sports, business and politics that shower them with anti-religious, new-age, you-can-have-it-now messages it will be difficult to reverse the evil effects that ran rampant in my generation and after.

Walter Hoye - Valor and Truth

How can praise adequately be raised for the likes of the Rev. Walter Hoye? After rejecting a deal from a judge to keep 100 yards from an abortuary - abortion "clinic" - he was sentenced to 30 days jail. From jail, he writes:

"Here my thoughts turn towards my brothers, men of the cloth, men who are called and sanctified by God the Father. Men who are preserved as the bondservants of Jesus Christ. Men who serve as the holy burden bearers of God's word. Men who are the watchmen on the wall. It is now in the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel, I write to my fellow watchmen on the wall."

Noting the statistics on abortion of African Americans, Rev. Hoye writes: "Brothers, in Black America alone every seventy-two seconds a black baby is murdered in the womb of his or her mother. This holocaust is genocidal to the point that today a black child has less than a fifty-percent chance of being born. According to the 2006 U.S. Census, Black Americans are below the replacement level.

"In other words, death in Black America outpaces life. Abortion alone accounts for three times more deaths in our community than HIV/AIDS, Violent Crimes, Accidents, Cancer, and Heart Disease combined. There is no question pre-natal murder, abortion, is the number one issue in not only Black America, but in all of America today."

Encouraging his brother pastors to keep the scourge of abortion prevalent in the minds of their congregations, Rev. Hoye urges them to "speak regularly and boldly from our Sunday morning pulpits, from our mid-week Bible studies and from our small group meetings on the weekend against abortion."

"We must inform, educate and activate God's people to take public stands against the sin of legalized murder in America today..."

Read more here.

Zmirak - Catholics lost it

John Zmirak itemizes the current anti-Catholic wave of multiculturalist venom, and who is truly to blame (hint: look in mirror).

How the hell did this happen? How did the largest single religious organization in the country, the oldest continuously functioning human institution on earth (after the fall of the Chinese monarchy in 1905), the heir to Roman law, the preserver of Classical learning and the creator of the university system, end up toothless and humiliated, basically begging for basic rights? Should Catholics see this as the fruit of an ugly conspiracy? Are the Protestants finally getting their revenge? Or are these just first hints of the persecutions to come pursued by the evil secularists whose creed is the “Culture of Death”?

There’s some truth in each of these notions, but giving them credence is really just a way for Catholics to let ourselves off the hook. The fact is, we had power and influence which we could have used in the service of the community, uniting Christian witness with civic duty. And we blew it ...

Continue reading …

Presidential Balderdash

One Michaela Kingston - pen-name of a stem cell researcher - writes at Mercatornet regarding the Big I Won's recent full speed ahead on embryonic stem cell research in Pardon me, your ideology is showing.

Signing executive order will relieve suffering & promote healing - do you really think so?

tip to neo-neocon

In this excerpt Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is addressing Christ, who has returned to earth but is arrested and imprisoned again:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Slaves to Choice

Moloch has a new name for these new and improved times. His name now is Choice. His minions are Legion.

Leadership in America - Deliberate Barbarism

Michael Leunig's Leadership Political Cartoon

Obama lifts Bush restrictions on embryonic stem cell research

"As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research* -- and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

"We will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research," Obama said to vigorous applause at a White House gathering.

"We will also vigorously support scientists who pursue this research. And we will aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield."

Shares of companies specializing in stem cell research burst upward on the news, with Geron Corp up by as much as much as 35 percent and StemCells Inc up 73 percent at one point. Other related company shares rose, too.

* (my comment) Obama's Will-to-pursue is the new way of saying Nietzsche's will-to-power and as "René Girard has shown us what the god-making laboratory looks like. It looks like Golgotha, but one that ends, not with the realization of the victim’s innocence and the dispersal of the confounded mob, but with the mob’s celebration of its victory in a holy cause." This is the age of 'deliberate barbarism'.