Still Waiting for Moral Leadership in Britain

Queen’s cousin speaks to LifeSiteNews

From LifeSiteNews

By Hilary White

Lord Nicholas Windsor, the youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent and first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, told LifeSiteNews.com earlier this month that patience is required from those waiting for true moral and spiritual leadership to turn the anti-human, anti-life tide in Britain.

Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor with one of their two sons.

Lord Windsor sat down with LSN at the annual plenary meeting of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life on February 25th. He spoke at length of his conversion to Catholicism, through the influence of the late Pope John Paul II, and his dedication to the pro-life philosophy.

The hope of turning society away from the post-Christian amorality, he said, lies with the post-Baby Boom generation: “Our generation is the one after [the one] which made these, I think, calamitous decisions. To some extent, our generation looks upon all that with horror.”

He said that “undoubtedly” true leaders will emerge from the generation disillusioned with the social revolution. “There are inspiring people,” he added, but “perhaps not on the national stage … One has to be patient.”

Lord Windsor was received into the Catholic Church ten years ago and became the first ever member of the current English Royal Family to be married at the Vatican and the first since 1554 to be married according to the rites of the Catholic Church. His son Albert was the first member of the Royal Family to be baptized a Catholic since 1688. 

Obamavilles: Nearly 20% of Florida Homes are Vacant

From CNN Money

By Les Christie

It's not always easy to feel sorry for sunny Florida. But it just got hit with another blow.

On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% -- or 1.6 million -- of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting vacant. That's a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years.

Having this amount of oversupply on the market will keep home prices depressed and slow any recovery.

During the housing boom, Florida was among the hottest real estate markets in the nation. Homes were snapped up by the state's growing population as well as hordes of investors confident that prices would continue to soar.

Jim DeMint's Blind Spot: Mitt Romney

We have great admiration and gratitude for Senator Jim DeMint's principled leadership  in the United States Senate.  But as the following commentary clearly points out, he has a "blind spot" named Willard "Mitt" Romney.  We respectfully urge Senator DeMint  not to tarnish an otherwise sterling reputation as a principled conservative by repeating a mistake he made in 2008 - by endorsing in 2012 a charlatan who has been on every side of the great moral issues of our day -- abortion and same-sex "marriage."

South Carolina Republican voters rejected the former Massachusetts governor in 2008, and his record of promoting socialized medicine, taxpayer-financed abortion on demand, and being responsible for actually implementing same-sex "marriage" in that state, is even better known now. The stakes for the future of our republic are too high to settle for a candidate who offers "less of the same" bankrupt and immoral policies pushed by Obama.

Please, Senator DeMint, we can forgive 2008, but there are no acceptable excuses for repeating that mistake.

Choir of New College, Oxford - 'Cantique de Jean Racine' - Gabriel Fauré

The lyrics of this sublime hymn were written by French tragedian Jean Racine (1639-1699).  It is a paraphrase of a Latin hymn, and was later set to music by Gabriel Fauré in 1864-65, when the composer was 19 years old.

From the Pastor - 'The Transfiguration'

A weekly column by Father George Rutler

Transfiguration by Lorenzo Lotto (1510-12)
Pinacoteca Comunale, Recanati

Churches dedicated to Our Saviour traditionally celebrate the Transfiguration on August 6 as their annual parish feast. The catastrophic earthquake in Japan recalls the force of the bomb there on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1945 when the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted Vishnu: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” A different kind of power radiated from the transfigured Christ: “God from God, Light from Light.” The Church enters this radiance in every sacrament, and retells the mystery in the Gospel proclamation for the Second Sunday of Lent.

In the Transfiguration, Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the Prophet flank Christ. Representing the life of the intellect — practical and prophetic, social and scientific — they worship Him as their source and inspiration. “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (John 1: 9). A man whose mind is without God is out of his mind. Memory of that kept St. Peter sane the rest of his life: “And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount” (2 Peter 1:18).

As a child, I enjoyed the early television puppet show, “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” so different from the TV fare in our present coarsened culture. As the best children’s entertainments are aimed at adults through the children, the puppets' fans included John Steinbeck, James Thurber, Adlai Stevenson and Orson Welles. One day the absent-minded witch Beulah threw down her broom and announced that she was abandoning magic to embrace the wonderful world of empiricism. That is a good thing to do, but empiricism, or knowledge from sensory experience, is not wonderful if it does not connect mental brilliance with the “Light from Light.” The wrong use of the intellect leads to death, not life.

In The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Prospero also repents of magic at the end, but only after he has dissolved spirits into thin air. Then he tells his daughter Miranda and her fiancé Ferdinand: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” That enchanting empirical perception of the brevity of life is also melancholic for its lack of supernatural light. In the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah disappeared, not banished by Christ like magic, but subsumed into his eternal radiance. This dumbfounded Peter, James and John, until our Saviour touched them with his human hand and led them back down the mountain. Eusebius of Caesarea calculated that this happened forty days before the Passion. The Church walks with Christ for forty days in Lent, with the light of Heaven in memory and the shadow of the Cross in prospect. This is God’s way of instructing the intellect that victory over death comes through death, not in spite of it. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Father George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

Book Review: Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is Not a Religion

From Global Politician

By A. Millar

Books on Islam is a saturated market, an editor friend of mine told me a few months ago. At the time I though she might be right. I had only recently read a couple of works that, for want of a better description, read like second rate Bruce Bawers. Maudlin and self-absorbed, these books (which shall remain nameless) tell us more about the authors than they do about radical Islam. Former boyfriends, Holland in the Springtime, and hints that the Pulitzer Prize went to the wrong author, are punctuated with references to female genital mutilation, terrorist acts, and hook-handed radical preachers.

It is as if one were wandering around an Impressionist exhibition only to discover someone has scribbled images of Palestinian terrorists in thick black marker pen all over the Monets. Yes, the juxtapositions is jarring, but the average person living in the West is assaulted by contradictory messages every day, whether on the stream of billboard adverts he passes on the way to work or in an evening’s television-watching. Consequently, such books fail to shock, and, indeed, to force us to see the crisis of the West as an existential threat.

Our jaded culture, and cultural relativism, allows us to believe that the graffiti might be the real art. And one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter anyway. So what’s the problem?

It’s this kind of cultural relativism, and cultural suicidal tendencies, that Rebecca Bynum confronts in Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion (New English Review Press). At 152 pages, this work is slimmer than those like the aforementioned, but it is denser and far more challenging. Few, if any, will agree with everything that is said. But this book was not written to be agreed with. It was written to shake things up, and push the reader outside of his comfort zone. An engaged mind is more important to Bynum than a nodding head.

The Solemnity of Saint Joseph

Go To Joseph!

by Saint Teresa of Avila

(From her Autobiography, Chapter VI)

Finding myself so crippled and so young too, and earthly doctors having failed to cure me, I looked to heavenly physicians for help...

I took for my advocate and comforter the glorious Saint Joseph, and commended myself fervently to him; and I clearly saw that it was he who both cured me of my sickness and delivered me from great dangers that threatened my good name and the loss of my soul. His aid has brought me more good than I ever desired to receive from him. I do not remember at any time having asked him for anything which he did not grant. I am quite amazed at the great favors Our Lord has given me, and the many dangers, both of soul and body, from which He has delivered me through the intercession of this blessed saint. Our Lord seems to have given to other saints the power to help us in only one kind of necessity, but I know from experience that this glorious Saint Joseph helps us in all kinds of needs. It appears then that God wishes us to understand that as He was obedient to Joseph when He was on earth (for Saint Joseph was called His father and he could command Him) so now in Heaven God grants whatever Joseph asks.

Others, on my advice, have turned to Saint Joseph and they have had the same experience; and now there are many people who honor him and keep discovering the truth of what I have told them.

I strove to celebrate his feast day [March 19] with all possible solemnity, but I must admit that there was more vanity than true devotion mixed in with the celebration, for I always wanted everything to be done impressively and properly, even though my intentions were good. But it was always a fault of mine that whenever Our Lord gave me the graces to do something good, I added many faults and imperfections with it; whereas when it was a question of doing anything vain, worthless, or bad, I spent much time and effort with it. May Our Lord pardon me!

I wish I could persuade everyone to be devoted to this glorious saint, because long experience has shown me what wonderful blessings he obtains for us from God. Of all those I have known with a true devotion to Saint Joseph, I have never known any who did not advance in virtue, for he assists in a very special way those souls who place themselves under his protection.

For many years now I have always asked favors from him and they were always granted. But if sometimes my petitions had something wrong about them, dear Saint Joseph granted something much better for my own good. Were I a person who had authority to write, I should gladly relate in detail all the favors this dear patron obtained both for me and others; but under obedience I must tell some things briefly, and at length those incidents suggested by my superiors. I only request, for the love of God, that those of you who doubt what I say will prove it for yourselves. And you will see, through experience, how great a blessing it is to commend yourselves to this glorious patriarch, and to be devoted to him. Those persons, especially, who are given to prayer should ever be devoted to him, for I do not know how anyone can think of the Queen of Angels, at the time when she suffered so much on account of the Child Jesus, and not give thanks to Saint Joseph for taking care of them the way he did.

Whoever wants a model to imitate on how to pray, let him take this glorious saint as a guide and he will not lose his way!

God grant that I have not committed any error in speaking as I have....for although I profess to be devoted to him, yet I feel I have always failed in imitating his virtues. But he acted like himself, and showed us his virtues when he enabled me to rise and walk, and to be no more a cripple, And I, by making so bad use of this favor, show what sort of person I am.

The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sing the Litany of Saint Joseph