Sunday, June 27, 2010
Emma Kirkby - "Laudate Dominum" - W. A. Mozart
In selecting today's hymn, I wanted to find the best possible complement to the homily I also posted today by my dear and esteemed former pastor, Father Franklyn McAfee. He eloquently explains that the Triune God "created beauty, sustains beauty, and is beauty." Emma Kirkby's sublime voice and Mozart's ineffable music reflect that truth and provide a glimpse of heaven.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Charlton Heston: 'Remembering Great Men'
Charlton Heston, recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Ben-Hur in 1959, has also received many international acting and directing awards. He served six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, was chairman of the American Film Institute, and was a member of the National Council on the Arts. In 1978, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
We hope you will agree that Mr. Heston provides valuable insight into the nature of leadership and the importance of recognizing and honoring the extraordinary.
As the century closes, great men seem an endangered species. Indeed, in the minds of many, they are less than that; they are figments of our imagination. It’s even been suggested that greatness is in itself…somehow undemocratic. We live, after all, in the century of the common man. True enough…but I believe in the uncommon man, perhaps because I’ve played so many of them.Certainly, we have many good men…gifted men. God knows we have plenty of famous men. But that’s not the same thing. Great men move the world not only by what they do in it but by what they tell us about it…Of all the great men I’ve had the good fortune to explore, the most towering, both in the record of his life and his impact on human history, was Moses—lawgiver to the Jews, warrior prophet of Islam for Muslims, and first among the prophets for Christians, the man of whom Christ said, “If ye believe Moses, so shall ye believe me.”
Playing Moses marked my life. To assume the role of any great man is a daunting experience. Playing Moses, I felt like a tiny figure stretching to fill the giant shape he cut in the sky.
We began filming The Ten Commandments at the Monastery of St. Catherine on the lower slopes of Mt. Sinai. It is the oldest Christian monastery in the world. It contains the shrine of the burning bush, where God spoke to Moses from the fire. The monastery is also sacred to Muslims, because of their reverence for Moses. During the Crusades nine centuries ago, Christian knights on their way to Jerusalem to take the city from the Muslims rested there in perfect safety, knowing the Muslims would never attack the shrine of Moses. For the last two generations of conflict, that same truce has held, on that mountain only, between Jews and Arabs. That’s how far the shadow of Moses reaches. He was flawed, as all of us are, but he still speaks to us as no other mortal has done.
One of the reasons Moses’ voice is heard across the centuries is that he preached the powerful truth that we are all brothers. But he realized that brotherhood is a condition that thrives best in times of hardship and danger. William Shakespeare—who knew more of the human heart than any man who ever lived—has an English king, Henry V, say to a tiny band of his countrymen on the eve of battle with an overwhelming French host:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother: be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
Contemporary examples from the Persian Gulf War to Hurricane Andrew prove the same point. Americans cast in harm’s way have joined together, regardless of rank, race, gender, or condition. Of course, Moses stood for something more important than brotherhood. Moses and the Exodus he led stood and still stand for freedom. For more than twenty-five centuries, he has inspired those who search for liberty. It’s no coincidence that the first tide of our Protestant forefathers in America bore the names from the Exodus: Moses and Aaron, Abraham, Joshua and Isaac. Two centuries later, generations of black American men bore those names, too, first searching for freedom, then celebrating it. In New England those same names are cut into the gravestones of our revolution. The words the Lord spoke to Moses before the Israelites crossed over Jordan, free at last, are cut in the rim of our Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
The instinct for freedom seems to be part of the human condition. Yet history tells us that freedom is fragile. I remember coming back from overseas in the sunny morning of victory at the end of World War II; we G.I.s thought freedom would soon spread around the whole world. The world would be free from war and tyranny. We were wrong. It was tyranny that prospered, for more than forty years. It’s important to remember: there was an Evil Empire, there was a Cold War… and we won.
I don’t know what the outcome of all the current world crises will be, but I do know that, like Moses, we must have faith and we must keep fighting for freedom, not just for ourselves but for all of the brotherhood of man. Our country is still a shining example to the world: Men can live free. The American Dream is not success but liberty. Other countries have cherished this dream and lost it. Why have we been able to hold onto it? I think one reason lies in the vast richness of the land itself, that broad swell of continent between those shining seas.
From the very beginning, we were captivated by America. “We belonged to the land before the land was ours,” Robert Frost wrote. Many of our poets, writers, and painters have tried to express this idea…to capture something of the spirit of our nation. While I was thinking of how I might do the same, I was flipping through a file of index cards where I’d copied some of my favorite quotations by great Americans. Spanning two centuries of our history, few of these men ever met, yet their words ring fresh and true today, as if spoken in a single voice:
I have a dream. I refuse to accept the end of man. I believe he will endure. He will prevail. Man is immortal, not because alone among God’s creatures he has a voice but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance. Among America and Americans this is particularly true. It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country, where miracles not only happen, they happen all the time. As a nation we have, perhaps uniquely, a special willingness of the heart—a blind fearlessness—a simple yearning for righteousness and justice that ignited in our revolution a flame of freedom that cannot be stamped out. That is the living, fruitful spirit of this country. These are the times that try men’s souls. The sunshine patriot and the summer soldier will in this crisis shrink from service. But he who stands and bears it now will earn the thanks of man and woman. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in. Let us bind up the nation’s wounds. We must disenthrall ourselves…and then we shall save our country.
Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
Friday, June 25, 2010
10-Year-Old Boy Used as Grand Marshal of Arkansas Homosexual Fest
From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert
A 10-year-old boy is being used as Grand Marshal of an Arkansas homosexual pride parade this weekend. The move has attracted opposition from pro-family leaders, who have decried the movement's exposure of the boy to the lewd festival of sexual deviancy as "a form of child abuse."
The boy, Will Phillips, attracted national media attention last year after he refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school, saying that homosexuals are refused "liberty and justice" because the government defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Phillips, who later accepted a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Award on behalf of his CNN interviewer, complained that he was harassed at school for his views. The claim prompted Comedy Central host Jon Stewart to hire as Phillips' bodyguard at the media award event professional wrestler Mick Foley, who warned: “If I find out that anybody has hassled this young man or teased him or called him a wad of any sort, I and perhaps a few of my friends will come to his school and bring a world of pain."
But pro-family leaders say that the homosexual lobby is the true bully for flaunting the boy at the head of a homosexual pride parade - which are renowned for their lewd displays of transvestitism, sado-masochism, and other sexual deviations.
“It’s shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,” said American Family Association president Tim Wildmon. “He’s obviously just parroting the nonsense he’s been told by manipulative adults. For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse."
The use of the child media darling has attracted opposition to the normally low-key event from across the country: Mayor Lionel Jordan, who plans to deliver the city's endorsement to the event Saturday, says he has received over 300 emails urging him to withdraw support as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Fayetteville Flyer.
Brian Camenker, the leader of MassResistance, a pro-family group in Massachusetts, told LifeSiteNews.com that saying Phillips is being "indoctrinated" is "not a strong enough word."
"They are taking these kids who are in a very vulnerable and formative time in their lives, and basically telling them they're gay or what have you," he said, adding that "the kinds of things that go on in these parades ... are just really gross and hideous."
"Transexual, S&M, they're getting more into young kids," he said.
Camenker related the story of a MassResistance volunteer whose daughter similarly drew media attention when, after being pressured by the gay-straight alliance at her high school, declared that "she's a lesbian, hates her mother and father, [and] has this lesbian girlfriend."
"The gay newspapers of course wrote it up, because she was involved with us, and they were inviting her to be involved with the gay pride parade ... even the Boston Globe called her up to interview her," he said. Things changed, however, when the girl's mother removed her from the school and sent her to an out-of-state Christian school. The girl is now preparing to marry her male fiancé in August, and, according to Camenker, now dismisses her youthful flirtation with lesbianism.
"She wasn't lesbian any more than I was a lesbian," he said. "I think that happens with a lot of kids. So this is really dangerous."
Limbaugh: 'What Would Saul Alinsky Do?'
By David Limbaugh
Remember the popular motto "What would Jesus do?" which was invoked by many Christians as a moral guidepost for daily living? President Barack Obama more likely adheres to "What would Saul Alinsky do?" as most recently evidenced by his apparent defiance of a federal court order on his moratorium on offshore drilling.
Politico reports that the drilling companies who secured the court order blocking the moratorium say the administration indeed is going to defy the court order. I'm quite sure that Alinsky would applaud this move: If at first you don't succeed through proper legal channels, proceed anyway, because nothing is more important than the radical ends you seek, including the means that must be trampled in the process.
Of course, shrewd Alinskyites like Obama will always have a plausible excuse for their deceitful tactics. In this case, they are alleging newly discovered facts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he intends to reimpose the drilling moratorium based on information that wasn't "fully developed" in May, when the six-month moratorium was imposed. Quite convenient.
The administration is also sending mixed signals, probably to introduce sufficient confusion to cover its disobedience. The government's brief filed with the court insisted, "Of course, until a further order of this Court or the Court of Appeals granting relief from this Court's Preliminary Injunction Order, Defendants will comply with the Court's Order." But attorneys for the drilling companies warn that "Secretary Salazar's comments have the obvious effect of chilling the resumption of (outer continental shelf) activities, which is precisely the wrong this Court sought to redress through its Preliminary Injunction Order."
The companies' point, notes Politico, is that Salazar's public announcement that the administration will reinstitute the moratorium will have the same practical effect as actually doing it because companies are not about to prepare rigs for drilling when they might be shut down in a few days. The administration predictably pooh-poohs the companies' concerns and says these new "facts" present an entirely different scenario. How convenient. Whenever you can't advance the football, just move the goal posts your way.
Can't you just hear an irate Alinsky-schooled Obama behind closed doors learning of the court order audaciously purporting to limit his plenary executive authority? "Just find the damn loophole -- or say you did -- and I don't want to see you again in this office until it's done."
Defying court orders is just one of many ways Obama abuses his authority. When Congress failed with its initial efforts to impose cap-and-tax legislation designed to suppress traditional energy production and consumption in the United States for the ostensible purpose of reducing global temperature an imperceptible amount over the next century, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency just issued ultra vires regulations to accomplish similar results. It didn't matter that every literate and intellectually honest person had to concede that the EPA had no statutory (or any other) authority to issue such sweeping regulations. What mattered were the administration's radical environmental goals.
When Obama wanted to secure for his favored unions a stake in his new General Motors far exceeding their actual ownership interest and rob secured creditors of their preferred-creditor status and the value of their investment, he used the power of his office to strong-arm a restructuring of the company to accomplish his aims. When Democratic Party donor and super-lawyer Tom Lauria opposed this plan on behalf of his client, the White House, according to Lauria, threatened to destroy his client's reputation. One unnamed source described the White House as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group he had ever encountered. Another attributed Obama's negotiating tactics to a "madman theory of the presidency," saying Obama wants to be feared as someone who is willing to do anything to get his way. In return for standing up for their legal rights as secured creditors and not bending to Obama's horrendously unfair demand, er, offer, Obama maligned the recalcitrant creditors as "a small group of speculators."
When inspector general Gerald Walpin blew the whistle on the corruption of an Obama friend and supporter, Obama fired Walpin and sought to discredit him as a senile misfit -- a charge wholly unsupported by the facts.
And I won't begin to recite the many ways (e.g., reconciliation) Obama sought to circumvent the legislative process en route to Obamacare.
Alinsky is surely beaming from the other side.
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