Tag: religion

Do keep up, evangelicals

Even rabbis are publicly teaching that there is no longer a covenant between the Jewish nation and the God of the Old Testament.

At the synagogue where I belong, Shaarey Zedek Congregation in suburban Detroit, Rabbi Aaron Starr  sermonized on Shavuot  that there no longer is a Covenant between the Jews and their God.

He quoted Richard Rubenstein, author of Beyond Auschwitz, who wrote: “I believe the greatest single challenge to modern Judaism arises out of the question of God and the death camps.  I believe that our problem is how to speak of religion in an age of no God.”

He also quoted Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, who wrote: “What then happened to the covenant?  I submit that its authority was broken.”

That settles that, then. But I’m pretty sure that particular covenant was broken a long time before Auschwitz.

God and the pursuit of happiness

Religious faith is not a psychological problem. To the contrary, it is the lack of religious faith that appears to be the psychological problem.

In the United States, 36 percent of the actively religious describe themselves as “very happy,” while only 25 percent of the inactively religious and 25 percent of the unaffiliated self-identify in this way, Pew revealed.

Similarly, in Japan, those who are religiously active are significantly happier than the religiously inactive and the unaffiliated, with 45 percent, 34 percent, and 31 percent respectively being “very happy.”

In Australia, the gap is wider still, with 45 percent of the religiously active reporting being very happy, as compared with only 33 percent of the religiously inactive and just 32 percent of the unaffiliated.

Man is not made to live without limits, purpose, or meaning. And religion provides all three.

The actions speak volumes

The response of the Vatican leaves no doubt whatsoever that the Fake Pope is guilty of the charges that have been laid by Archbishop Viganò.

Though the Vatican may be trying to ignore the tempest generated by explosive allegations from a former papal ambassador that Pope Francis knew about misconduct allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and ignored them, that didn’t stop reverberations being felt in Rome on Wednesday.

True to his pledge in an in-flight press conference Sunday night to not “say a word” about the charges, Pope Francis during his regular Wednesday general audience didn’t allude to the McCarrick charge. He did recall his weekend trip to Ireland, which featured an apology for the “sins, scandal and sense of betrayal” of the clerical abuse scandals, said that his meeting with survivors left a “deep impression,” and called for “honesty and courage” in facing the situation.

Yet despite the Vatican’s apparent strategy of riding out the storm, there were at least four aftershocks from the earthquake triggered on Sunday, when an 11-page letter from Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was released claiming he informed Francis in June 2013 that McCarrick had “corrupted generations of seminarians,” that the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops has a thick dossier on the ex-cardinal, and that Pope emeritus Benedict XVI had imposed restrictions as a result.

  • Vatican spokesmen were compelled to issue a public denial after Italian news agencies moved a story claiming close aides to the pope described him as “embittered” about the Viganò affair.
  • Two American archbishops on Tuesday and Wednesday became the latest prelates in the country to endorse Viganò’s credibility.
  • Viganò himself gave an interview to one of the journalists who originally broke the story of his letter, among other things rejecting suggestions that he’s lashing out at Francis now out of sour grapes.
  • At the end of Francis’s General Audience on Wednesday, a group in St. Peter’s Square could be heard chanting, and many observers thought they heard “Viganò!” A priest in the square later said it was actually a pilgrimage group chanting the name of their local bishop, but the fact people immediately thought of Viganò illustrates how much his name is in the air.

Late on Tuesday, the Italian news agency Ansa carried a story citing “close collaborators” of Francis describing the pontiff as embittered by the Viganò affair. On Wednesday, Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, published a story citing “authoritative Vatican sources” to the effect that the claim the pope is embittered “isn’t news,” it’s a “scheme” and a “vulgarity.”

It might seem amusing that the incompetents handling the Vatican PR appear to believe that having the Fake Pope refuse to say a word about charges this explosive, then lashing out about “schemes” and “vulgarity” on his behalf is going to help their cause at all. But then, consider how much worse they must know the actual situation to be if they don’t dare to even deny the accusations, let alone give them a fair and public hearing.

Dark prophecy

The Jewish obsession with “the six million” long precedes the WWII-era Holocaust, apparently for reasons of religious prophecy. There are dozens of pre-1941 references to it. But we now know, as a result of the death toll at Auschwitz-Birkenau being reduced from 4 million to 1.5 million, that the number of Jews who died in their victorious war against the Nazis, though still in the multiple millions, appears to have fallen short of the prophesied number.

Now, laws can be passed and history can be revised and fictions can be maintained, but none of that is relevant from a prophetic perspective; either the prophecy has been fulfilled or it has not. And in this case, it apparently has not. This makes an amount of sense, as the State of Israel obviously exists, but it has not yet been fully established and recognized as the one true Jewish nation by the world, as the current controversy over the location of the U.S. embassy tends to demonstrate.

So anyone who takes the prophecy seriously must be looking at where the prophesied sacrifice of the six million is going to take place. And the fact of the matter is, in part due to what appears to have been a precursor to the prophesied event, there are only two places on Earth where there are sufficient Jews to qualify: Israel and North America.

This tends to suggest that from the prophetic perspective, the next Holocaust, the true Holocaust, is going to take place in the United States of America and Canada, because there aren’t enough Jews to qualify anywhere else in the world. It can’t be Israel, because the purpose of the prophecy concerns the establishment of Israel in its present location.

Then again, the prophesy could be utter nonsense. But given the way in which the USA appears to be rapidly heading for a violent dissolution inside of the next 20 years, it’s not hard to imagine why the Learned Elders of Wye were giving serious thought to relocating more than a decade ago, or why the current Prime Minister of Israel has been so insistent that all Jews must return to Israel now.

Calling out the Pope

Although they stop short of calling him a heretic, a group of faithful Catholics are calling out the Holy Father and issuing “a filial correction” to the him.

A group of clergy and lay scholars from around the world have taken the very rare step of presenting Pope Francis with a formal filial correction, accusing him of propagating heresies concerning marriage, the moral life, and reception of the sacraments.

Entitled Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis, meaning ‘A Filial Correction Concerning the Propagation of Heresies,’ the 25 page letter was delivered to the Holy Father at his Santa Marta residence on Aug. 11.

The Pope has so far not responded to the initiative, whose 62 signatories include the German intellectual Martin Mosebach, former president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay (he learned of the document only after it had been delivered to the Pope and signed it on behalf of the Society).

The letter begins by saying that with “profound grief but moved by fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ, by love for the Church and for the papacy, and by filial devotion toward yourself” the signatories feel “compelled” to take this action “on account of the propagation of heresies.”

They cite in particular Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family, Amoris Laetitia, and “other words, deeds and omissions.”

They accuse the Pope of upholding seven heretical positions about “marriage, the moral life, and the reception of the sacraments” which, they say, has “caused these heretical opinions to spread in the Catholic Church.”

The clergy and scholars “respectfully insist” that Pope Francis condemn the heresies that he has directly or indirectly upheld, and that he teach the truth of the Catholic faith in its integrity.

The filial correction, the first to be made of a reigning Pontiff since Pope John XXII was admonished in 1333, is divided into three main parts.

In the first, the signatories say they have the “right and duty” to issue such a correction. They make clear the doctrine of papal infallibility has not been contradicted as the Pope has not promulgated heretical opinions as dogmatic teachings of the Church, but they maintain that Francis has “upheld and propagated heretical opinions by various direct and indirect means.”

The second part deals with the correction itself. Written in Latin, it lists the passages of Amoris Laetitia in which, they argue, the Pope insinuates or encourages heretical positions. They mention those who claim these texts can be interpreted in an orthodox way, but the correction lists examples of when it is clear “beyond reasonable doubt” that the Pope “wishes Catholics to interpret these passages in a way that is, in fact, heretical.” In particular, they say the Pope has advocated the belief that obedience to God’s moral law can be impossible or undesirable, and that Catholics should sometimes accept adultery as compatible with being a follower of Christ.

In the third part, the signatories highlight two causes of this crisis: modernism and the influence of Martin Luther. They argue that the embrace of modernism, which they define as the belief that God has not delivered definite truths to the Church which she must continue to teach in exactly the same sense until the end of time, means that faith and morals become “provisional and subject to revision.” Such thinking, they point out, was condemned by Pope St Pius X. Regarding Martin Luther, they show how some of the Pope’s ideas on marriage, divorce, forgiveness, and divine law correspond to those of the German Reformation monk, and draw attention to the “explicit and unprecedented praise” the Pope has given the 16th century heresiarch.

I don’t pay much attention to Catholic theology or politics, but I will say that the Church has survived worse popes and worse leaders, so I expect it will survive this one too. That being said, I think Catholics would be wise to purge their SJWs and throw out all of the changes since Vatican II. It’s been pretty much straight downhill since that pernicious council took place.

Mailvox: the New Puritans

BA muses on the observably religious character of the SJWs:

Is it atheism per se or is it a mindset that may or may not include atheism? Or perhaps the old time heretics didn’t quite have the nerve to go full bore atheist.  Specifically, I’m wondering if  the West’s, and in particular America’s, current political/cultural rift goes back to the Reformation and even earlier. Runciman discusses some on his Medieval Manichee.

 Adherents to the older Christian faiths accept and embrace the obligation of doing the right thing in both private and public life.  Live, stumble, sin, repent, pray, try through good works to be a better person because the final judgement is rendered at the end of life, so one had best be on the qui vive at all times.  One must also constantly examine  if what one is doing is right, and accept that all too often it will not be.

By contrast, for a certain kind of 16th and 17th century Protestant, grace, like perfect pitch, is a lucky attribute. One is born of the Elect or not, and nothing can change that.  For those with a guaranteed first class reservation to Heaven so long as they profess the faith, there is a whole lot of leeway in day to day life.  Better yet, there is a whole lot of self examination that one can dispense with.That sword of uncertainty simply does not hang over head.

 Which gets us to the modern secular True Believer.  If all is fore ordained and one’s place is secure (or non-existent, in the case of atheists), criticism (or destruction), the easier path, rather than creation, the harder, becomes the standard. Marching and emoting and punching Nazis is more fun than, say working the soup kitchen or helping building habitats for the poor or teaching the illiterate to read.*  Making errors (much less making up for errors) scarcely enters into the equation.

How  wonderful a faith is that?  No real effort involved, and if there are inconsistencies or temptations to act like a jerk, well, not really a problem because, you see – One is one of the Elect.   Too bad about the rest of you sinners.  Perhaps you should move down south with the rest of your heathen kind. Or just die.  And by the way, where’s my check?

Not surprisingly, for those few Elect who do create, the results are, shall we say, not sublime. And their jokes are terrible.

The roots for this mindset go deep and, no surprise, go deepest in states like Massachusetts. That it screws up the individual in small and society at large in any number of ways is obvious, but if one is a true believer, inconvenient facts are there to be ignored. They have to be. If acknowledged, they are shattering. I’ve seen it happen, as no doubt you have as well. Not pretty.  So rather than face up to failure, one must blame failure onto others.

Case in point – an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago gave a whole litany of LBJ’s 1960’s Great Society acts and then observed that every single one of the problems they were meant to address had all gotten worse.  Mea Culpa?  Of course not.  The writer blamed Nixon’s 1970’s law and order policies. Can’t have been anything else.  It was a question of Elect and Non-Elect.  The writer’s solution was to get Republicans to join with Democrats and double down the policies of old.

There is only one answer to the ongoing question so often asked by the Right of the Left: are they evil or are they stupid?

The answer, of course, is “yes”. As I mentioned yesterday, all of the Left’s ideologies, from Marxism to Gramscian cultural marxism to feminism to atheism to multiculturalism to neo-liberal globalism are nothing more than the various skinsuits worn by the Neo-Babelists as suits them at the time. These diverse and incoherent ideologies are nothing more than rationalizations encouraging the adherent to condemn and attack Christendom on whatever grounds happens to appeal most to him.

And Neo-Babelism is more than a superset of useful ideologies, it is a religion, indeed, one could go so far as to say that it is the first religion.

Our Islamo-Christian heritage

Hey, it worked for the Jews, right? Why shouldn’t it work for the Muslims too? Or, for that matter, the Hindus and ancestor-worshipping pagans?

CNN rewrites history to claim that Islam was part of America’s founding

For CNN, the argument that Islam has “always” been present in the U.S. rests largely on the claim that a significant minority of black slaves were Muslim. On Saturday, CNN correspondent Dean Obeidallah claimed that “Islam has been here since the time of slavery, because ten to fifteen percent of the African slaves brought were Muslim. So Islam was here before the creation of the United States. It was actually part of the creation of the United States of America.” Bell’s interviewee raises the estimate, claiming that “during the slave trade, up to about 25 to 30% of the slaves came from areas where there were predominantly Muslim populations.”

Ironically, the Muslims have got a much stronger claim to America than the Jews do, as there were considerably more of them present at the time of the American Revolution. The Jewish population of America is estimated at about 1,500 in 1790, which is considerably less than the conservative estimate of 95,000 Muslims. Furthermore, given that 9,000 blacks were among the 200,000 soldiers who fought for the Revolution, it is statistically probable that more Muslims (90 to 2,700) fought for American independence than Jews (90 to 100).

From time to time, people have asked me why I consistently criticize the ahistorical mythology of Judeo-Christian America; the primary reason is because it is almost entirely false. That being said, this Islamo-Christian heritage nonsense is exactly the sort of consequence I expected if the previous historical revisionism wasn’t seen by the public for the false historical propaganda that it is.

To paraphrase the linked article, while both Jews and Muslims were present at America’s founding, neither Judaism and Islam — as coherent, self-conscious religious and political civilizations — were. America is a Christian nation. Its heritage is Christian and its values are Christian. Those are the historical facts, and be very wary of the objectives of anyone who attempts to revise them. If they are doing so, rest assured they have a purpose that is at best self-serving, and quite possibly nefarious.

UPDATE: It has been suggested that the black Muslim population was considerably lower than the estimated 10 to 30 percent. In which case, I propose that we revise history once more and henceforth refer to America’s Pagan-Christian heritage and values.

Mailvox: Breivik: saint or monster?

A Norwegian asks about St. Breivik:

What I still not have clear for me, is your standing concerning AB Breivik, and that actually troubles me somehow. I am self a Norwegian, I live in Oslo, and what happened 22/7/11 made a deep and difficult impression on my mind. Breivik shot down in cold blood 69 people on that island, and the majority of the victims were  teenagers (children, I could say), which «guilt» was to be an offspring of a member of the social democrat party (Arbeiderpartiet). I have indirectly heard an eyewitness reporting about a child scared to death, and with blood pouring from a wound in the throat while slowly dying.

For me, Breivik doesn’t represent any positive and decent quality, and he neither represent any legitimate way of doing resistance against a fallen political class and elite. Maybe I have misunderstood, but if you somehow make a hero out of Breivik, that makes it so difficult for me to do what I much would like to do: to make you one of several good teachers in my life.

Somehow I can look at Breivik (and other terrorists) as (almost impersonal) expressions of tidal waves in our history. But simultaneously, I can do nothing else than look at their actual actions as utterly horrific. As I see it (and feel it), no one devout to God would never ever could have done what Breivik did, and no one would neither could defend his actions.

First, let me say that I have family members who are a) devout Christians, b) good men, and c) are responsible for killing considerably more people than Anders Breivik. I also have a number of friends whose confirmed kills are in double-digits. Nor am I at all persuaded by the notion that the God who loved David, who slew “his ten thousands”, or the Jesus who praised the faith of the Roman centurion, is anywhere nearly as appalled by war as most men would like to believe.

From a philosophical perspective, I tend to regard the Norwegians, and the “Norwegians”, killed by Breivik as having been more culpable on average than the average Japanese, Korean, or Chinese infantryman were. And don’t forget, the Viet Cong were no more professional soldiers than were the Quisling Youth on Utoya, and most of them were even younger.

Breivik did not target innocents. He didn’t attack teenagers at a pop concert or families enjoying a night out on a public promenade. He struck a highly effective blow against the political machine that is still actively engaged in attacking his people and attempting to eradicate them. If you don’t believe violence is a legitimate way of resisting invasion, if you don’t think that making war on those making war on you is permissible, that’s your prerogative, but your opinion is both ahistorical and irrelevant.

The fact is that Anders Breivik not only gave up his freedom to strike back at the quislings who are actively seeking to destroy your nation and your people, but he did so alone, and in the full knowledge that he would be hated for it by many of the very people he sought to save.

You may recall that someone once said something about the quality of the love that such a self-sacrifice requires. Can you honestly say that it was nothing but simple hatred that inspired him?

Of course, those who are not religious cannot fathom that kind of love, which is why they simply deem him mad, and a monster, and try to avoid thinking about the future. I don’t expect you to simply accept my perspective, but it might give you some food for further thought. While he did a terrible thing, it is far more terrible that he was put into a position where he felt the need to do it in the first place. Focus your anger, and your disgust, for those who knowingly created the untenable situation.

In any event, my expectation is that if the West, and Norway, survive the ongoing clash of civilizations, Breivik will be considered its first hero. And if it does not, well, then Breivik will be regarded in much the same way that Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard are presently regarded in New Orleans, as an evil monster who was “on the wrong side of humanity.”

And just to be clear for the excessively slow, although I am not a Catholic, I am aware that Mr. Breivik has not died, been beatified, or canonized. Nor do I believe in praying to intercessors.

UPDATE: It is clear to me that a few readers here simply do not understand what war is. I direct your attention to Clausewitz and ask you this: was Breivik practicing “politics by other means” or not?