From the Pastor - 'A Living Force for All Mankind'

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler

"The Baptism of Jesus" by Leonardo da Vinci

Jesus did not need to be baptized, yet he did so to occasion another “epiphany” announcing his divinity. St. Gregory Nazianzen said: “Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens, like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent.”

In an age cynical about heroes, it is important to remember that there really are heroes, and the greatest heroes are those who have been faithful to their baptism. One example is Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart (1880 – 1963).  He was born of an influential Catholic family in Belgium. His Irish mother died when he was six, and his father, an international attorney, took him to Cairo where he learned Arabic. From there the young Adrian went to the Birmingham Oratory School founded by Blessed John Henry Newman. He later left Oxford University to become a soldier in the British Army and fought in the Boer War and both World Wars. He lost an eye and a hand and was shot up with shrapnel, which was removed only late in life. This did not stop him from being a first-class game hunter in Hungary, Bavaria, Austria, and Bohemia, and a fox hunter and polo player.

This flower of the Edwardian Age was admired by Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek and challenged Mao Tse-tung to his face. During World War I, while serving in the Somaliland Camel Corps, Carton de Wiart was wounded in a foray against the “Mad Mullah” Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan and was shot many times in the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele and Cambrai. His wife was a Polish countess and taught him her language. He was sent to Poland with the British Military Mission and got to know Charles de Gaulle. There he engaged in a shootout with the Bolsheviks, befriended the pianist and premier, Paderewski, and the future Pope Pius XI, then nuncio to Poland, whom he encouraged to remain when Warsaw was under attack.  After an air crash, General de Wiart was a prisoner in Lithuania.

In World War II he fought in Norway. En route to defend Yugoslavia against a Nazi invasion, his plane was shot down in Libya, and he became a prisoner of Mussolini in Italy. Released, he was sent on a mission to China by way of India, fought in Burma, and consulted General MacArthur in Tokyo.

In his autobiography, de Wiart neglected to mention his various decorations and knighthoods, including the Victoria Cross. But he remembered that he had been baptized. He was the kind of hero St. Gregory spoke of: “Today let us do honour to Christ’s baptism . . . He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven.”

Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

 

Juan Williams Lambastes NPR as Exec Who Fired Him Steps Down

News analyst Juan Williams contends that National Public Radio (NPR) promotes an “incestuous” organizational culture that is “not open to real news.” Williams’ scathing comments followed an independent review of his firing in October, which in turn led to the resignation of NPR news executive Ellen Weiss on Thursday.

Weiss fired the affable Williams for confessing on Fox News that he sometimes gets nervous when flying with Muslims dressed in traditional garb.

Shortly after the firing, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said during remarks to the Atlanta Press Club that Williams should have kept his feelings between himself and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

On Thursday, Williams told Fox News host Megyn Kelly: “The whole idea was to demean me, and make me to appear as if I was not only a lunatic who needed a psychiatrist, but I was a loose cannon and not a professional news person.”

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Walter Williams on 'Future Prospects for Economic Liberty'

WALTER WILLIAMS is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University. He holds a B.A. from California State University at Los Angeles and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA. He has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Hoover Institution National Fellowship and the Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor. A nationally syndicated columnist, his articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, National Review, Reader’s Digest, Policy Review and Newsweek. Dr. Williams has authored six books, including The State Against Blacks (later made into a PBS documentary entitled Good Intentions) and Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on August 2, 2009, during a Hillsdale College cruise from Venice to Athens aboard the Crystal Serenity.

Future Prospects for Economic Liberty

One of the justifications for the massive growth of government in the 20th and now the 21st centuries, far beyond the narrow limits envisioned by the founders of our nation, is the need to promote what the government defines as fair and just. But this begs the prior and more fundamental question: What is the legitimate role of government in a free society? To understand how America’s Founders answered this question, we have only to look at the rule book they gave us—the Constitution. Most of what they understood as legitimate powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. Congress is authorized there to do 21 things, and as much as three-quarters of what Congress taxes us and spends our money for today is nowhere to be found on that list. To cite just a few examples, there is no constitutional authority for Congress to subsidize farms, bail out banks, or manage car companies. In this sense, I think we can safely say that America has departed from the constitutional principle of limited government that made us great and prosperous.

On the other side of the coin from limited government is individual liberty. The Founders understood private property as the bulwark of freedom for all Americans, rich and poor alike. But following a series of successful attacks on private property and free enterprise—beginning in the early 20th century and picking up steam during the New Deal, the Great Society, and then again recently—the government designed by our Founders and outlined in the Constitution has all but disappeared. Thomas Jefferson anticipated this when he said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

House Republican Introduces Bill to Block FCC's 'Internet Grab'

Rep. Marsha Blackburn

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced legislation Wednesday to deny the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory oversight over the Internet, which the Tennessee Republican insisted was the "sole prerogative of Congress" to administer.

"I agree that the Internet faces a number of challenges," Blackburn said in a release. "Only Congress can address those challenges without compounding them. Until we do, the FCC and other federal bureaucracies should keep their hands off the 'net."

According to Rep. Blackburn’s office, the "Internet Freedom Act" has the support of more than 60 House members, including a majority of GOP’ers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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The American Episcopacy: 'What is Going On?'

Religious Belief Dramatically Lowers Probability of Adolescent Sexual Activity: Study

World Youth Day of Prayer, Sydney, Australia, 2008

From LifeSiteNews

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

Higher levels of religiosity in adolescents dramatically increase the probability that they will remain virgins during high school and college, a new study has concluded.

The study, entitled “Religiosity, Self-Control, and Virginity Status in College Students from the ‘Bible Belt’,” and published in the September 2010 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,  found that for every unit increase on its scale of religiosity, the odds of a male remaining a virgin increased by a factor of 3.86.  For a female, the odds jumped by a factor of 4.13.

Episcopal Bishop Presides over Wedding of Female "Priests"

The "marriage" of two lesbians in Massachusetts, regarded by the  Episcopal Church as "priests," has renewed a long-running controversy over same-sex unions in both the U.S.-based Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion with which it is affiliated.

The Rev. Mally Lloyd, a ranking official of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, "married" the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, on New Year's Day in Boston, according to the Patriot-Ledger. Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, the state's highest ranking Episcopal prelate, presided. Ragsdale has been a controversial figure in the 2.1 million-member denomination for both her outspoken affirmation of same-sex "marriage" and homosexual clergy, as well as her unqualified defense of abortion as a "blessing."

Bishop Shaw has also openly supported gay marriage for years. Shaw gave his parish priests permission to perform same-sex marriages soon after the 2009 Episcopal General Convention voted to allow "generous pastoral response" in such situations.