SUNLIT UPLANDS

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Proud Obamunists at the Left-Wing Rally in Washington

Mick Zais Endorsed by SC Realtors

Few groups are more sensitive to the need for high quality public schools than are realtors. They well know that a school district's reputation can make or break a home sale. Therefore, it is not surprising that Mick Zais today received the endorsement of South Carolina Realtors.

In their endorsement letter, the association says, “After careful consideration of your qualifications and responses to our questions, it is very clear that you share our vision for making South Carolina a better place to work, live and raise a family. It is with great pleasure that the South Carolina REALTORS endorse your candidacy for the office of Superintendent of Education.”

The organization represents more than 16,000 realtors in the Palmetto State.

The Battle of Britain

Will Catholicism or atheism prevail?

From Catholic World Report
By George Neumayr

In World War II, Great Britain survived an atheistic assault from outside the country. Today’s “Battle of Britain” comes from an atheistic assault inside it. British culture is crumpling under the growing weight of a fervent secularism that appears religious and an exhausted state religion that appears secular. The once-claimed sturdy Anglican bridge between Christianity and the modern world has largely collapsed, leaving those thrashing around down below it to swim from the Thames to the Tiber or drown.

The Catholic Church in the United Kingdom, to be sure, has her own problems, but, as Pope Benedict’s historic September visit to Britain suggested, the country’s future could end up looking like its distant Catholic past. Pope Benedict stepped into the battle for that future not as a triumphant warrior but as a humble witness to the truth and grace contained in Christ’s Church.

The tone of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain was set even before he got there. Asked by a reporter on the flight over what he could do to make Catholicism appear more “attractive” and “credible” to secularists and atheists in Britain, the Pope responded by challenging the premise of the question. He noted that a Catholicism which thought in those superficial terms would become just one more dangerous ideology and power grab in a world that needs fidelity to Christ:

One might say that a church which seeks above all to be attractive would already be on the wrong path, because the Church does not work for itself, does not work to increase its numbers so as to have more power. The Church is at the service of Another; it does not serve itself, seeking to be a strong body, but it strives to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths, the great powers of love and of reconciliation that appeared in this figure and that come always from the presence of Jesus Christ. In this sense, the Church does not seek to be attractive, but rather to make herself transparent for Jesus Christ. And in the measure in which the Church is not for herself, as a strong and powerful body in the world, that wishes to have power, but simply is herself the voice of Another, she becomes truly transparent to the great figure of Jesus Christ and the great truths that he has brought to humanity…

It is for this reason, he continued, that the Church’s outreach to Anglicans and non-Catholics is not the competitive poaching of a man-made organization but the apostolic work of a divine one:

If Anglicans and Catholics see that both are not there for themselves, but are rather instruments of Christ, “friends of the Bridegroom,” as Saint John says; if both follow together the priority of Christ and not themselves, they draw closer together, because the priority of Christ brings them together, they are no longer in competition, each one seeking greater numbers, but are united in commitment to the truth of Christ who comes into this world, and so they find themselves also placed reciprocally in a true and fruitful ecumenism.

Ironically, the direct but civil Pope Benedict appeared to win over many non-Catholics in Britain while the self-consciously irenic Cardinal Walter Kasper proved too divisive to come. The former head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity stayed behind after saying that flying into increasingly ethnic Britain makes him feel like he is entering a “Third World country.” Yet in a way Kasper’s “gaffe” was accidentally prophetic: British police arrested, though later released, six men of North African descent thought to be planning an attack on the Holy Father—a sobering reminder during the papal visit that the confusion of modern British life is due not just to wan and corrupted Christianity but also to the creeping Islamization aided by atheism that could take its place.

At a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, Pope Benedict recalled “how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.” Benedict added that as “we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion, and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny.’”

The Holy Father returned to this theme of the battle of Britain several times over the course of his visit, gently impressing upon the British elite that the moral relativism and de facto atheism which they invoke in the name of democracy only imperils it. Standing not far from the spot in Westminster Hall where Thomas More was condemned to death, Pope Benedict made the unpopular point that democracy can turn tyrannical too, unless it rests on truths not subject to democratic vote, truths which reason apprehends and revelation reinforces.

Whether the English can win that battle against the 21st-century tyranny of the “dictatorship of relativism” remains in doubt, but the Holy Father through his speeches has certainly left behind in Britain a powerful light with which to dispel atheism’s darkness.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report.

Obama the Christian Mocks God

In response to Barack Hussein Obama's outrageous mocking of the Word of God, Vision to America has launched a petition demanding that Obama apologize to God and to Christians for his statements.

Can anyone imagine Obama making such comments in regard to the Koran? That book is riddled with contradictions, but Muslims are taught by their founder that the later, hateful and murderous passages are to supersede earlier passages.

Had Obama made such comments about the Koran, it would not be a petition drive that this thug's coreligionists would be launching.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

A New Idea of the Ordinariate is Emerging

It should no longer be seen as a halfway house for disaffected Anglo-Catholics ‘defecting’ from the Church of England

From The Catholic Herald

The plans for the Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans are gathering pace. One of the last things Pope Benedict XVI said before leaving Britain, and one of the most important, was to emphasise that the Ordinariate is the next step towards Church unity. It was not the step that we were led to expect during the years of negotiation with Anglicans about corporate unity. But it is prophetic – and the prophet in question is our present Holy Father, who believes that Anglicans who already accept the Magisterium of the Church should be given freedom to worship and evangelise in communion with Rome as a matter of urgency.

A new image of the Ordinariate is emerging. When Anglicanorum coetibus was first published, the media and some religious commentators depicted it as a halfway house for “disaffected” Anglo-Catholics who were “defecting” from the Church of England and other Anglican churches around the world. That language is increasingly redundant. The leaders of the Ordinariate project have passed through their stage of disaffection. As the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, the Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet and one of the architects of the scheme, made clear at an Anglo-Catholic synod held immediately after the Pope’s visit, we will soon see the formation of “small congregations, energetically committed to mission and evangelism and serving the neighbourhood in which they are set”. Similar plans are being drawn up in other countries with a strong Anglican presence: last week, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington was chosen to oversee the formation of Ordinariate parishes in America.

It is time to set aside, for the time being, the much-debated question of how many Anglicans will take advantage of the Apostolic Constitution. Let us focus instead on the core words of Bishop Burnham’s message: his flock is “energetically committed to mission and [local] evangelisation”. Future members of the Ordinariate are offering to help revitalise the Christian mission of the Catholic Church in England and several other countries. It is a wonderful prospect, made possible by their faithful witness to the Gospel over many years and the vision of the Holy Father. Ignore the cynics and hand-wringers who see only difficulties in this historic development: we live in exciting times.

The Catholic Herald is a Catholic newspaper based in London. It was founded in 1888.

Bryn Terfel - "Ave Verum Corpus" by W. A. Mozart

This sublime Eucharistic hymn dates from the 14th century and is attributed to Pope Innocent VI (d. 1362). It has been set to music by various composers. During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the host during the consecration. It is also used frequently during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

The hymn's title means "Hail, true body", and is based on a poem deriving from a 14th-century manuscript from the Abbey of Reichenau, Lake Constance. The poem is a meditation on the Real Presence of our Lord in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's setting of Ave Verum Corpus was written in 1791, to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.

The text is in Latin, and reads: Ave verum corpus, Natum de Maria Virgine, Vere passum, immolatum In cruce pro homine, Cuius latus perforatum Unda fluxit et sanguine, Esto nobis praegustatum In mortis examine.

A translation into English is: Hail the true body, born of the Virgin Mary, truly suffered, sacrificed on the Cross for mankind, whose pierced side flowed with water and blood, let it be for us, in consideration, a foretaste of death.