by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch
I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
HENRY VIII WAS THE FIRST BREXIT: A terrific short piece on the spirit of Charlemagne, Catholic social thought, European bureaucracy, and the protest of Protestant Britain.
LUTHER AND ISLAM: From Fr. Rutler.
HUNGARY TO PROTECT CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE: A national fund that commits the nation to the protection of Christians.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: A review of the past - a practice hard to revoke.
DO WE WORSHIP THE SAME G-D? Orthodox Jewish rabbinic statement on Christianity. "The emergence of Christianity in human history is neither an accident nor an error but the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations."
A CATHOLIC ICON OF THE FEMININE:SEXUAL ORDER BASED ON SACRAL ORDER: Let us be thankful and pray for Phyllis Schafly the activist. A tribute from Buchanan. Even the opposition gives a curtsey. A last interview -why the feminists hate her. Excerpts:
Why did they hate me so much? And I really don’t think it was because I led the battle against the Equal Rights Amendment. I think it’s because I stood up for the full-time homemaker that they want to eliminate. In fact, if you read the literature of the feminists, which you don’t want to have to do, but Carolyn Graglia who wrote 'Domestic Tranquility' has done a good job of reading all that tiresome stuff and their main goal is to get rid of the full-time homemaker. And you kind of have to ask yourself why do they hate the full-time homemaker. You would think if they were looking for some fancy career in the workforce, they’d be glad not to have the competition of all these women who prefer to stay home. But that isn’t the way they look at it. The way they look at it is when they get to the position of a promotion and second class and partner class and so forth, their competition is a man and he has an asset that she doesn’t have. He has a wife and she doesn’t have that and she can’t have a wife. And they want to take that. The wife is such a big asset to the man and they want to take that away from him. And so you find that all the women’s studies courses are all programmed, designed to program a young woman’s life with no space for marriage and children.
In answer to my question, “Do you think feminism got anything right, looking back over the years?”
No. I think it’s completely destructive because it starts out with the notion that American women are victims of the patriarchy. And if you start out thinking you’re a victim, you’re not going to get very far. But that’s what they teach: victims of the patriarchy, and they’re out to abolish the patriarchy. (chuckles)
II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST
SHIA RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP IN IRAQ: Sistani is not Iran's puppet. Shia Islam’s leading religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani lives in Najaf, which lies 100 miles south of Baghdad. The Iraqi city is the heartland of Shia Islam and home to a seminary established in the early 11th century. It is the seat of the Marja’iyya – the influential religious establishment led by Ayatollahs. He does not agree with the same theory of State clerical rule that the Iranian clerics exercise.
ALLEPPO - AGAIN THE US IS BEING PLAYED. ASSAD AND RUSSIA VS ISIS. WHY DONT WE JOIN THEM: The best report I have see from the Christian perspective inside Aleppo shows again how the US (whose strategy is driven by Salafist Sunnis) is hurting more than helping.
REMEMBERING 9/11: To commemorate our dead, we must define and defeat our enemies.
III PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
TRUMP AND NORMAN VINCENT PEALE: Some history from the unfriendly 'NYTimes'.
WHAT TRUMP SAYS IN BLACK CHURCHES: "Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one flag," he added. "It is time to break with the bitter failures of the past, and to embrace a new American future.”
WHAT TRUMP SAID TO WHITE EVANGELICALS: "But we are going to protect Christianity. And if you look what's going on throughout the world, you look at Syria where if you're Christian, they're chopping off heads. You look at the different places, and Christianity, it's under siege…
"And we've got to protect because bad things are happening, very bad things are happening, and we don't -- I don't know what it is. We don't band together, maybe. Other religions, frankly, they're banding together. And if you look at this country it's got to be 70 percent, 75 percent, some people say even more, the power we have, somehow we have to unify. We have to band together... the country has to do that around Christianity. So get together, folks, and let's do it because we can do it."
CLAREMONT INSTITUTE: Is home to highbrow but real conservatives. They are steeped in the classics and American history. They write more about manliness and prudence as fundamental political virtues than most conservatives. However, they have been tepid or opposed to the Trump candidacy... Until this brilliant article - The Flight 93 Election.
From the article:
Second, our Washington Generals self-handicap and self-censor to an absurd degree. Lenin is supposed to have said that “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” But with an opposition like ours, why bother? Our “leaders” and “dissenters” bend over backward to play by the self-sabotaging rules the Left sets for them. Fearful, beaten dogs have more thymos.THE COLLAPSE OF THE QUEEN BEE: We have argued that queen bees are never defeated for leadership (they are not like bulls). They collapse. September 11th was the fitting day for the preposterous notion of President Hillary Clinton to lose its plausibility. In one image of collapse, it has become clear that the old queen bee shall never govern the American hive. The tide has turned and another story must begin.
...This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.
Yes, Trump is worse than imperfect. So what? We can lament until we choke the lack of a great statesman to address the fundamental issues of our time—or, more importantly, to connect them. Since Pat Buchanan’s three failures, occasionally a candidate arose who saw one piece: Dick Gephardt on trade, Ron Paul on war, Tom Tancredo on immigration. Yet, among recent political figures—great statesmen, dangerous demagogues, and mewling gnats alike—only Trump-the-alleged-buffoon not merely saw all three and their essential connectivity, but was able to win on them. The alleged buffoon is thus more prudent—more practically wise—than all of our wise-and-good who so bitterly oppose him. This should embarrass them. That their failures instead embolden them is only further proof of their foolishness and hubris.
The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.
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