The Annunciation of the Lord

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge - 'Gabriel's Message'

By Father Thomas De Saint-Laurent

Out of love for us, the Eternal Word was made flesh in the chaste womb of Mary. His plan was marvelously arranged. From all eternity, He chose a man after His heart who would be the virginal spouse of His divine Mother, His adopted father on earth, and the guardian of His childhood.

While not granting Joseph the same privileges He had granted our Blessed Mother, the Lord adorned his soul with the rarest virtues and raised him to great holiness.

When Our Lady had completed her education in the Temple, she was wed to this humble artisan. Like her, Saint Joseph belonged to the royal race of David, then fallen from its ancient splendor. Also like her, he had consecrated his virginity to God and ardently desired to see with his own eyes the promised Messias, the salvation of Israel.

Obama’s Libyan Intervention Has Lowest Approval of Any Military Op Polled by Gallup in 4 Decades

President Barack Obama’s intervention in Libya’s civil war has not only failed to win the approval of a majority of the American people, according to a Gallup poll conducted Monday, it also earned the lowest public approval rating of any U.S. military operation polled by Gallup over the past four decades.

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The Lutheran Landslide

From The National Catholic Register

By Tim Drake

Father Richard John Neuhaus

One of the most under-reported religious stories of the past decade has been the movement of Lutherans across the Tiber.

What first began with prominent Lutherans, such as Richard John Neuhaus (1990) and Robert Wilken (1994), coming into the Catholic Church, has become more of a landslide that could culminate in a larger body of Lutherans coming into the collectively.

In 2000, former Canadian Lutheran Bishop Joseph Jacobson came into the Church.

“No other Church really can duplicate what Jesus gave,” Jacobson told the Western Catholic Reporter in 2006.

In 2003, Leonard Klein, a prominent Lutheran and the former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter came into the Church. Today, both Jacobson and Klein are Catholic priests.

Over the past several years, an increasing number of Lutheran theologians have joined the Church’s ranks, some of whom now teach at Catholic colleges and universities. They include, but are not limited to: Paul Quist (2005), Richard Ballard (2006), Paul Abbe (2006), Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Hutter, Philip Max Johnson, and most recently, Dr. Michael Root (2010).

“The Lutheran church has been my intellectual and spiritual home for forty years,” wrote Dr. Root. “But we are not masters of our convictions. A risk of ecumenical study is that one will come to find another tradition compelling in a way that leads to a deep change in mind and heart. Over the last year or so, it has become clear to me, not without struggle, that I have become a Catholic in my mind and heart in ways that no longer permit me to present myself as a Lutheran theologian with honesty and integrity. This move is less a matter of decision than of discernment.”

It’s been said that “no one converts alone,” suggesting that oftentimes the effect of one conversion helps to move another along a similar path. That’s exemplified through Paul Quist’s story. He describes attending the Lutheran “A Call to Faithfulness” conference at St. Olaf College in June, 1990. There, he listened to, and met, Richard John Neuhaus, who would announce his own conversion just months later.

“What some Lutherans were realizing was that, without the moorings of the Church’s Magisterium, Lutheranism would ineluctably drift from it’s confessional and biblical source,” wrote Quist.

Many of the converts have come from The Society of the Holy Trinity, a pan-Lutheran ministerium organized in 1997 to work for the confessional and spiritual renewal of Lutheran churches.

Now, it appears that a larger Lutheran body will be joining the Church. Father Christopher Phillips, writing at the Anglo-Catholic blog, reports that the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) clergy and parishes will be entering into the U.S. ordinariate being created for those Anglicans desiring to enter the Church.

According to the blog, the ALCC sent a letter to Walter Cardinal Kasper, on May 13, 2009, stating that it “desires to undo the mistakes of Father Martin Luther, and return to the One, Holy, and True Catholic Church established by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Blessed Saint Peter.” That letter was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Surprisingly, in October 2010, the ALCC received a letter from the secretary of the CDF, informing them that Archbishop Donald Wuerl had been appointed as an episcopal delegate to assist with the implementation of Angelicanorum coetibus. The ALCC responded that they would like to be included as part of the reunification.

Media Can’t Hold Down Pro-Life Message Forever: Lord Nicholas Windsor

Read Part I of the interview with Lord Windsor here.

From LifeSiteNews

By Hilary White

Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor

Lord Nicholas Windsor, the youngest son of the Duke of Kent and cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, came to the pro-life position at the same time as his conversion to Catholicism. He told LifeSiteNews.com in a recent extensive and candid interview that he believes the two are inextricably linked.

Lord Windsor spoke with LSN on February 25th, while attending the annual plenary meeting of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome.

Born in 1970, Lord Windsor said that his generation, those born to the Baby Boomers, are part of a backlash that looks upon the “calamitous” social and moral chaos of the last 40 years with “horror.”

The life issues, he said, “in a certain respect, are the biggest thing. Because in our house, in the house of the developed world, it’s our biggest shame, it’s the biggest moral weight that we bear. Because in some sense, society has consented.”

“As Christians, as members of society, we have to act in our own small way. It’s clear that the Church provides an enormous wealth of teaching to draw on. The invitation is in front of us, in front of our eyes.”

Anglican Group Faces Uncertain Future as Ordinariates Begin

From VirtueOnline

By David W. Virtue

A personal ordinariate offered by Pope Benedict XVI for traditionalist Anglicans has divided the American branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) - the Anglican Church in America - causing an irreparable schism in that body of Anglo-Catholics.

The Traditional Anglican Communion was formed in 1991. Archbishop Louis Falk served as its first primate. He was succeeded in 2002 by Archbishop John Hepworth of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia. The TAC exists in Africa, Australia, the Torres Strait, Canada, Central and South America, England, Ireland, India, Pakistan, Japan and the United States. The vast majority of its members are in India and the Torres Strait.

The TAC is not recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury and is independent of the Anglican Communion. The TAC upholds the theological doctrines of the Affirmation of St. Louis (1977) with its members self-described as Anglo-Catholics in their theology and liturgical practice. Some parishes use the Anglican Missal in their liturgies. The TAC is guided by a college of bishops from across the communion and headed by an elected primate. TAC churches separated themselves from Anglicans principally over the ordination of women, liturgical revisions, the acceptance of homosexuality and the importance of tradition.

The Pope's offer to orthodox Anglicans, however, has produced unintended consequences.

Furor in N.J. Over Charter School Space

The idea proffered by teacher union bosses that charter schools, sharing space with conventional public schools, would "set up the opportunity for "the haves and the have-nots" because some charter schools raise money from private donors" is outrageous and dishonest.

In New Jersey, public charter schools receive 90% of the per-student funding received by the conventional, district-run public schools.  The school districts also have established foundations and raise enormous amounts of money from corporate donors, private foundations and individuals, and unlike the public charter schools, their facilities are funded by state taxpayers.

The union bosses do, indeed, fear a contrast between "the haves and have-nots," but it is not the contrast they suggest.  It is instead the contrast between dedicated teachers who have made a sacrifice to work as professionals teaching in charter schools, and those teachers who work to the letter of the contract as a union member.  The labor union mentality is at the heart of public school failure.  It strips teachers of professionalism and turns them into laborers, and it punishes those who go the extra mile and show initiative and dedication.

There are public school teachers in New Jersey who secretly offer their students extra-help off-site; because were they to stay after school and work hours not specified in the contract, they would become the subject of union harassment.

The students of New Jersey should be thankful they finally have a governor who is standing up for them and against the self-serving union mob.

From The Wall Street Journal

By Barbara Martinez

The union representing Newark's teachers is rallying its members to what is expected to be a raucous meeting Tuesday night over whether charter schools should share space with traditional public schools.

"Say No to peaceful co-existence in the same school building!" said an e-mail that went out to all 4,800 teachers of the Newark Teachers Union asking them to appear at the regular meeting of the Advisory School Board.

The space battle is the first frontier of a system-wide restructuring effort spurred by a $100 million grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Over the past month, the school system, which is under the control of the Christie administration, began raising the possibility that charter schools could take over space in under-used public school buildings. Almost immediately, the teachers' union and others objected.

The Value of a Classical Education

From The Denver Post

Guest Commentary by Melanie Brooks-Nelson

We are bombarded with the news almost daily: schools struggle to educate students, who are graduating lacking basic skills and knowledge. We could have many conversations about this vexingly complex issue, the causes, the challenges faced by educators every day. I want to offer a lesson for teaching the humanities suggested by a pair of articles in the Post: "History diversified" (Feb. 18) and "It's old school-and it's the future" (Feb. 20).

A classical education in literature, history, and philosophy is often perceived, even by teachers, as less than cutting edge, not central to students' concerns or to contemporary issues; and teachers' virtually automatic response to this perception is to approach cultural studies by making connections to popular culture and to students' own ethnic identities. Metaphor may be taught by an example in a hip hop song, spelling by texting, and literature by recent authors (Megan Nix, Feb. 20 article). The "so what?" of history is answered by a proliferation of personalized stories of distinct ethnic groups students identify with, relegating all those "dead white men" (Feb. 18 article) of traditional history to decidedly secondary status.