Hundreds of millions can't be wrong: Providence, the magazine of Christian realism, laughably redefines barbarism out of existence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy's problem isn't that he doesn't know what barbarianism is, it's that he doesn't know what civilization is, which was born in a tiny country in the Mediterranean with a small population of just a few million.

 

Can you guess which one?

 

These Are Not Barbarians

Robert Nicholson 

“This is not a clash of civilizations,” the prime minister continued. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.”

The speech went on for almost an hour, conveying a clear picture of the high-stakes war to which the US is unwittingly a party. By the end, however, I was still reeling from the analytical flaw embedded in the first few lines.

On one hand, Netanyahu is right. The actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 were barbaric, at least in a colloquial sense. The Iranian regime and its proxies threaten the US-led order. Israel needs all the help it can get.

Yet he’s also wrong. Our enemies are not barbarians. They are highly-intelligent defenders of a rival civilization who want to destroy our way of life for reasons we don’t care to understand. More importantly, they are supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims—the majority, not just the mullahs in Tehran—who, inspired by a shared understanding of the Islamic tradition, deem the killing of non-Muslim civilians as legitimate for the same reasons the ancient Israelites killed the Canaanites: because God said so.

Yeah, if hundreds of millions applaud crashing planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the rape, torture, and murder of 1,000+ Israelis on 10/7, they must have a point.

Can you tell I'm disgusted?

And the assertion of immoral equivalence between Islam and Judaism is breathtaking, which isn't designed to do anything but undercut the moral superiority of Christianity and the West in the fight against Islam and other evils, like The Empire of Japan, whose holocaust in Asia is on the lips of no one like Nazi Germany's is and shouldn't have been ended by dropping the atomic bombs, according to this lunatic.

That Christians like this aren't laughed off their own stage isn't a sign that they are correct. It's a sign that Christianity has become wholly empty-headed and incapable of defending itself. London has become Londonistan in our lifetime, now infamous for knife and acid attacks by Islamists. Enoch Powell predicted it in the 1960s, but the prophet is without honor in his own country.

Barbarism isn't the "extreme outlier". It's in every man. Christianity used to teach this, as did Aristotle, and the prophet Jeremiah, but not Nicholson, nor George W. Bush for that matter, whom Nicholson resembles perfectly:

True barbarians . . . are rare in our world. ... To pretend as if hundreds of millions of Muslims who see the Hamas massacre as morally justified—and who condemn the US preoccupation with Israel’s security—are depraved savages is to insult both them and ourselves. They are merely drawing on a tradition different than ours.   

If I had a subscription to this rag I would end it.

 

The first miracle of Carlo Acutis, eucharistic enthusiast, is unconvincing: Brazil is overrun by faith healers and Catholics needed a win of their own

 

 In Brazil, a boy named Mattheus was healed from a serious birth defect called an annular pancreas after he and his mother asked Acutis to pray for his healing. ... Mattheus was born in 2009 with a serious condition that caused him difficulty eating and serious abdominal pain. He was unable to keep any food in his stomach, and vomited constantly. ... Fr. Nicola Gori, the priest responsible for promoting Acutis’ sainthood cause, told Italian media what happened next: “On October 12, 2013, seven years after Carlo's death, a child, affected by a congenital malformation (annular pancreas), when it was his turn to touch the picture of the future blessed, expressed a singular wish, like a prayer: 'I wish I could stop vomiting so much.' Healing began immediately, to the point that the physiology of the organ in question changed,” Fr. Gori said.

-- Catholic News Agency, October 12, 2021, here. 

When Matheus got home, he ate beef and French fries and did not vomit afterward. His mother later testified that this was the first time in his entire life that this happened.

At the next ultrasound scan, the doctor confirmed that the morphology of the pancreas has completely changed and become normal. One doctor declared that it was now a textbook pancreas, an organ that was so perfect that it looked unreal. When Father Tenório saw Matheus’ tests, he reported the facts to the postulator of the beatification of Carlo Acutis.

-- Catholic Stand, December 28, 2021, here. 

An abdominal X-ray of a patient with an annular pancreas will show the double-bubble sign, indicative of duodenal obstruction. Ultrasound, which is the first-line examination in the investigation of abdominal pain in children, reveals a fluid-distended duodenum and can identify the second duodenal portion incarcerated by pancreatic tissue. On computed tomography, pancreatic tissue surrounding the duodenum can also be seen. In most cases, endoscopy is also performed. 

However, it should be borne in mind that even if the radiological and endoscopic findings both suggest an annular pancreas, the definitive diagnosis is established only during surgery. In patients with symptoms of obstruction, laparotomy can reveal a band of pancreatic tissue surrounding the second portion of the duodenum, supporting the diagnostic hypothesis, which can be confirmed by examining the resected specimen.

-- Radiologia Brasileira 52 (4), Jul-Aug 2019, here. 

 

The subject underwent only ultrasound. The diagnosis of annular pancreas was never certain in the first place.

9news.com.au

John of God 'monster' making millions with barbaric surgery and 'blessed' pills

Mark Saunokonoko

Dec 18, 2018

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The controversial John Faria has worked as a celebrity faith healer for the last four decades in a small town in central Brazil, becoming widely known as John of God.

He became famous for conducting "psychic surgeries" that he said could cure diseases, including cancer. Thousands of Australians, many terminally ill or suffering from debilitating sicknesses, have reportedly visited Mr Faria's compound deep in Brazil's interior.

Mr Faria's critics have argued the faith healer is nothing more than a charlatan, fleecing the vulnerable for millions of dollars.

One of the accusers is Mr Faria's adult daughter, Dalva Teixeira. She called him a "monster", while others have claimed he molested them as children. Mr Faria has strenuously denied the allegations of more than 300 accusers.

Oprah Winfrey famously visited Mr Faria in 2012 to feature him in an episode of her massively popular worldwide syndicated show. Afterwards, Mr Faria's questionable star rocketed to dangerous new heights.

In a since-deleted column on oprah.com, Winfrey wrote that she was overwhelmed by the experience of seeing Mr Faria cut into the breast of a woman without anaesthesia and that she left feeling "an overwhelming sense of peace".

Yesterday, in a statement to Reuters, Winfrey said: "I empathise with the women now coming forward and hope justice is served."

Oprah's peaceful experience watching Mr Faria wield his scalpel was markedly different to Australian reporter Michael Usher, who along with a 60 Minutes crew was invited inside the self-styled healer's compound in 2014.

Usher said it was hugely unsettling to watch Mr Faria use scalpels to slice open peoples' flesh or scrape away at their eyeballs, none of it done with an anaesthetic. That Mr Faria would shove scissors down the noses of ill people who sought his help left Usher distressed.

"John of God is not a surgeon, he is not a trained doctor," Usher said after the 60 Minutes segment aired.

"Yet he is presented with a tray of medical instruments, scalpels and all sorts of scissors. He takes a scalpel and scrapes eyes. He sticks knives and scalpels of some sort down the back of people's throats. He shoves scissors down people's noses, and he claims he is getting to tumours. He claims he is getting to the root of people's illness. He claims he is getting to what is making people ill or sick. None of it is done with an anaesthetic and you don't even know if what he is using is sterile."

According to 60 Minutes, Mr Faria's faith healing compound, which has been visited by supermodel Naomi Campbell and Brazilian footballer Ronaldo, has made tens of millions of dollars. In 2014, a Fairfax report stated 18,000 Australians had journeyed to see Faria. The self-styled healer has claimed to have treated millions of people.

 John of God has boasted he is blessed with healing powers from a divine "Entity". He claimed the entity can cure the blind, the paraplegic, the cancer-stricken and other illnesses.

"I can understand why people search for spirituality," Usher said of the thousands flocking to Mr Faria, despite long-circulating rumours of sexual abuse and his unscientific and barbaric medical techniques.

"I can understand people's faith. I understand how powerful hope is. What I cannot tolerate is someone like John Faria taking advantage of people who only have hope left."

Located in Abadiania, 130km south-west of the capital city of Brasilia, Mr Faria's compound, Casa de Dom Inacio, is filled with people from Brazil and hopeful visitors from around the world wearing all white. Neutral clothing makes the wearer more open to healing energy, according to believers.

Usher said there were no miracles to be found in the compound, just exploitation.

Meeting John of God is free. But he has built a multi-million-dollar enterprise through other strategies.

On the compound he prescribes his visitors sessions on crystal beds, which cost $25 per session. The crystal beds, which appear to be a kind of sunbed projecting light through crystals, are believed to earn Mr Faria $1.8 million a year.

 Blessed water is sold for $1 in standard plastic bottles. From a Faria-run pharmacy, blessed herbal pills are selling for $25 a bottle. It is estimated the blessed pill generates $40,000 a day, more than $14 million in a year.

An Australian doctor who travelled with 60 Minutes tested the pills, which he found to be simple passionflower herbal supplements.

When Usher sat down with Mr Faria, several of the faith healer's minders stood close by. Asked if his practice was more about money than miracles, the interview was quickly shut down. Walking away from the cameras, Mr Faria ignored questions about alleged sexual abuse.

The most recent allegations which led to Mr Faria handing himself into police surfaced last week.

Several individuals appeared on Brazilian Globo Television show to recount charges that he had been sexually violent with them or relatives. After that, authorities were contacted by more than 300 other accusers, including de Faria's adult daughter, Dalva Teixeira.

In an interview published by Brazilian magazine Veja, Ms Teixeira said that under the pretense of mystical treatments he abused and raped his daughter between the ages of 10 and 14.

She said her father stopped after she became pregnant by one of his employees. Ms Teixeira said she was beaten so severely by her father that she suffered a miscarriage.

 "My father is a monster," she said.

It is unknown how many Australians, if any, may have lodged complaints with Brazilian police or could have been potentially abused by him.

One of Mr Faria's biggest supporters is an Australian man named Robert Pellegrino-Estrich.

In 2000, Mr Pellegrino-Estrich wrote The Miracle Man, a book documenting the supposed healing powers of Mr Faria. The book, said to be available in 16 languages, is seen as being instrumental in raising awareness of Mr Faria around the world.

Mr Pellegrino-Estrich currently lives in Brazil, and he has for many years been paid by Australians who use his travel advisory services to assist their visit to Faria's centre.

Nine.com.au contacted Mr Pellegrino-Estrich for comment, but he did not respond.

Australians have not always had to make the pilgrimage to Brazil to meet Mr Faria.

In 2014, despite concerns from NSW Fair Trading, the John of God roadshow rolled into Sydney, where an estimated 6000 people paid $295 for a day ticket, or $795 for the full three-day experience.

 

https://www.9news.com.au/world/john-of-god-inside-faith-healers-compound-psychic-surgery/e201d8c6-2090-46a7-aa2f-78b84c1e520c

At least Rome tried to stop the barbarian invasions from the north, the LCMS' Matt Harrison has welcomed the hordes from the global south for a decade

 Here.

You will be replaced by better Christians, he says. It is God's will, he says.

Except you won't be. You aren't being. The future is oblivion for the LCMS, not replacement.

This has only been the LCMS' latest gimmick in a long line of gimmicks to stem the tide of decline.

The first, minor dip in the numbers for the LCMS was from 1974. Seminex. It amounted only to a pruning of the tree. The second, steeper dip from the late 1990s was purely demographic, and cut to the root. Peak Baby Boom in 1957 reached age 40 in 1997, after which it is difficult for a woman to have children.

It was already then too late.

The LCMS was always an improbable enterprise to begin with, suffering from multiple personality disorder, just like the religion itself. Simul justus et peccator. The members were at once disloyal to the homeland as immigrants to America, yet here they were, still strangely German proud. It worked for quite a long while out in farm country, where animal husbandry kept the prime directive always in mind, but the forces of anti-German discrimination started to take their toll during the Great War, and finished off the German-lovers in the Second.

My grandfather, a graduate of Springfield who had been a missionary and church planter in places such as Oregon and Wisconsin, introduced English services once a month during The War To End All Wars. The anger over that expressed by church members caused him a massive heart attack which killed him suddenly in 1919 the day after an ugly voters meeting. He was only 52. His last of nine children ended up volunteering to fight Hitler in 1943, to the quiet consternation of the extended family, some of whom had retreated to the safety of the Wisconsin Synod. The LCMS continued to grow only because its loyal sons like my father survived the war and continued to have relatively big families of four.  I happily grew up taking German from the 7th Grade onward in the public school. In college I read Faust and the Lutherbibel.

But we were too few.

Some of the people running the show then weren't stupid. They knew what was coming if they didn't DO SOMETHING. And so there were desperate attempts pushing evangelization programs on the youth in the 1970s, many of them non-Lutheran in inspiration.  There was the Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ. The group would descend on a town for a weekend and cold-call at front doors, doing a survey, presenting the Gospel, inviting them to church. There was the Jesus Movement, then the Charismatic Renewal, The Purpose Driven Life, and the Church Growth gimmickry.

They all came to nothing, except to infect the LCMS' church life and worship with the same laxity infecting the wider culture. Die, Der, und Das was too hard! back then, but now we must learn over 100 gender identities. 

What they should have done is make babies. That is how one honors father and mother.

And so it is not well with the LCMS. And it will not live long on the earth.

The soul of the LCMS was required of it a long time ago. The only question now is whose things shall these be which remain?

Down he points.

 

Mormons remain in denial about polygamy's centrality not just to their religious history but to their theology

Even with the church-sponsored Gospel Topics essays on the subject and various historic works, including those in the church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers, far too many members still believe that polygamy is an unspeakable word or maintain that Smith never practiced it. ...

Brigham Young, among others, taught that those men who were to be elevated to the highest degree of heaven and become Gods were those who entered into polygamy. ...

... over 40% of [Manti, Utah's] population was in polygamous households [at its height]. ...

... the age of Joseph Smith’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, [w]as 14, not, as the Gospel Topics essay does, “sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.”

More .

It is also little appreciated how important was the place occupied by polygamy in the politics of America leading up to the Civil War.

The Republicans of 1856 called polygamy and slavery the "twin relics of barbarism":

Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery.

Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, bars Illinois Senate President, Speaker of Illinois House, and other lawmakers from Holy Communion

Bishop Paprocki bars pro-abortion Illinois lawmakers from Holy Communion:

“In accord with canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law...Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan, who facilitated the passage of the Act Concerning Abortion of 2017 (House Bill 40) as well as the Reproductive Health Act of 2019 (Senate Bill 25), are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois because they have obstinately persisted in promoting the abominable crime and very grave sin of abortion as evidenced by the influence they exerted in their leadership roles and their repeated votes and obdurate public support for abortion rights over an extended period of time.”

“These persons may be readmitted to Holy Communion only after they have truly repented these grave sins and furthermore have made suitable reparation for damages and scandal, or at least have seriously promised to do so, as determined in my judgment or in the judgment of their diocesan bishop in consultation with me or my successor."

“I declare that Catholic legislators of the Illinois General Assembly who have cooperated in evil and committed grave sin by voting for any legislation that promotes abortion are not to present themselves to receive Holy Communion without first being reconciled to Christ and the Church in accord with canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law."

“[I]n issuing this decree, I anticipate that some will point out the Church’s own failings with regard to the abuse of children.”

“The same justifiable anger we feel toward the abuse of innocent children, however, should prompt an outcry of resistance against legalizing the murder of innocent children. The failings of the Church do not change the objective reality that the murder of a defenseless baby is an utterly evil act."

“We also understand many unplanned pregnancies come with fear and difficulty."

“It is our obligation, as a society, to be there for these pregnant mothers, help them in any way possible, and empower them to make life affirming decisions. This also includes continued support for the mother and her child after birth. We must acknowledge a child in the womb is not a problem. He or she is a gift from God.”

“In view of their gravely immoral action to deprive unborn children legal protection against abortion, it must be said that any Catholic legislator who sponsored, promoted, advocated, or voted for these pro-abortion bills has acted in a seriously sinful manner unfaithful to the 2,000-year-old Christian teaching against abortion and therefore, would place themselves outside of the full communion of the Catholic Church."

“Such persons are not to receive Holy Communion until they have celebrated the sacrament of reconciliation and displayed a public conversion of life.”

“As sacred Scripture warns, ‘Whoever eats unworthily of the bread and drinks from the Lord’s cup makes himself guilty of profaning the body and of the blood of the Lord.’ To support legislation that treats babies in the womb like property, allowing for their destruction for any reason at any time, is evil. It’s my hope and prayer these lawmakers reconcile themselves to the Church so they can receive Communion.”

“The Eucharist is the most sacred aspect of our Catholic faith."

“I want to thank lawmakers who stood up to these barbaric pieces of legislation and voted ‘no,’ and I applaud their courage to speak the truth that the most basic right we should all enjoy, is the right to life.”

Archaeology confirms that Spanish conquerors of Mexico had told the truth about the enormity of Aztec inhumanity

But no one wants to say so because it's politically incorrect to suggest that the Christian invaders told the truth and justly put an end to the incredibly barbaric Aztecs.

Here's the story, where the reference to "previously thought" refers only to thinking sanitized of contamination by Christian prejudice, which now turns out to have been unprejudiced, and correct:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5893933/The-horror-Aztec-tower-skulls-revealed.html

The full horror of the Aztec 'skull tower' revealed: Archaeologists say THOUSANDS of human sacrifices had their still-beating hearts cut out before their heads were severed and added to a monument the size of a basketball court

• Archaeologists previously found 650 skulls in Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City
• New research shows find was just a small part of massive array of what was once thousands of skulls
• New details of the gory rituals have also been revealed, which include turning skulls into masks

Aztec human sacrifices were far more widespread and grisly that [sic] previously thought, archaeologists have revealed. ... Some Spanish conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. The skull edifices were mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico. In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli.

Maybe the barbarism of Spain in the New World had something to do with its 800-year experience of Islam before Columbus

From "Islamic Spain in Middle Ages no paradise for Christians, Jews, women" by Paul Monk here:

The real thrust of Fernandez-Morera’s critique of the myth of Andalusia is that Islam in Spain, far from setting a high bar of tolerance, was characterised by plunder, domination, the harsh application of sharia law, the persecution of Christians or Jews who openly avowed their non-Muslim beliefs, and the violent suppression of ‘‘heresies’’ and apostasy within the Muslim community. ... There is no Andalusian golden age of Islam to emulate.

Bioarchaeologist blames mass child sacrifice by Chimú "civilization" in Peru in AD 1468 on the weather

And don't forget boys and girls, the real villain in the new world was the European, beginning with Christopher Columbus not three decades later, according to the author of your kid's high school history book, Howard Zinn:

How certain are we that what was destroyed was inferior? Who were these people who came out on the beach and swam to bring presents to Columbus and his crew, who watched Cortes and Pizarro ride through their countryside? What did people in Spain get out of all that death and brutality visited on the Indians of the Americas? 

From the story here in National Geographic:

The layer of mud found during excavations may provide a clue, say the researchers, who suggest it was the result of severe rain and flooding on the generally arid coastline, and probably associated with a climate event related to El-Niño. ...

Haagen Klaus, a professor of anthropology at George Mason University, has excavated some of the earliest evidence for child sacrifice in the region, at the 10th- to 12th-century site of Cerro Cerillos in the Lambayeque Valley, north of Huanchaco. The bioarchaeologist, who is not a member of the Las Llamas project, suggests that societies along the northern Peruvian coast may have turned to the sacrifice of children when the sacrifice of adults wasn't enough to fend off the repeated disruptions wrought by El Niño.

"People sacrifice that which is of most and greatest value to them," he explains. "They may have seen that [adult sacrifice] was ineffective. The rains kept coming. Maybe there was a need for a new type of sacrificial victim." 


Meanwhile, "ancient" ain't what it used to be (anything before 476 AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire), perhaps because the arc of human barbarism keeps interfering with that other one bending toward justice somebody recently immortalized.

Peter Leithart wrings his hands over the divisions caused by the Reformation, uttering complete rubbish

Here in First Things:

The catastrophic effects of these divisions rippled out into European culture, society, and politics. They’re rippling still. Worse, the fragmentation of the Church undermined the evangelical aims of the Reformers. By its sibling feuds, the Reformation quenched the very Spirit it had unleashed.

Protestants were not solely responsible for the division of the Church. Catholic intransigence and treachery silenced prophetic voices and delayed and prevented the deep self-examination the Church needed. Yet Protestants were responsible, especially for the divisions within the Reformation’s own ranks.

Quenched the Spirit, eh? Which spirit? Peter Leithart, like most Christians of the contemporary period, doesn't grasp the essentially divisive nature of the coming of the Spirit, as if the prophets were put to death for preaching the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. The prophets critiqued the household of God, calling it to repentance and revealing its sins, often at the cost of their lives.

It is a fetish of our utopian age to exclude this point of view in favor of a preoccupation with unity. But it's still disturbing that churchmen seem caught up in it, even at this late hour in the ridiculous history of ecumenism. They'll do anything it seems not to face the fact that in the Bible the idea is a development of its later literature, emphasized in the Fourth Gospel (especially John 10 and 17) and the Pauline Ephesian letter (chapter 4), neither of which can be reconciled with the Synoptic tradition nor the early genuine letters of Paul without doing a little violence to reason. Even the Passion narratives have been reworked from this point of view of the later "church", which is the first concrete expression of Christianity's decadence. Robust preoccupation with "the Other" from the original period of the Spirit gave way to the crabbed self-reflection and identity "politics" of Christian, Jew, church, synagogue, Greek, barbarian, male, female, slave, free, and Roman citizen.  

Jesus the eschatological prophet, on the other hand, never imagined a "church", let alone this long, drawn out history betwixt heaven and hell. He did not imagine "identities". Those who do the will of God are my mother, sisters and brothers, he said. Many are called. Few are chosen. Narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to life. Few are they who find it. Repent while you still can. The reign of God is nigh. Come follow me.

What a polarizing fellow.

"All his ways are judgment" (Deut. 32:4).

 

Protestants shouldn't apologize for it.

Muslim barbarians in Dhaka, Bangladesh flood the streets with the blood of their animal sacrifices

Our new country's going to be great!

The development of liberal social equality in the West would have been unthinkable without Pauline Christianity and Protestantism

Knox thought rule by Queens was unnatural

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

-- Galatians 3:28

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

-- Colossians 3:11

[7]Neither would I that you should esteem the reformation and care of religion less to appertain to you, because you are not kings, rulers, judges, nobles, nor in authority. Beloved brethren, you are God's creatures, created and formed to his own image and similitude, for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of the only beloved Son of God, to whom he has commanded his gospel and glad tidings to be preached, and for whom he has prepared the heavenly inheritance, so that you will not obstinately refuse, and disdainfully contemn the means which he has appointed to obtain the same: to wit, his blessed evangel, which now he offers unto you, to the end that you may be saved. For the gospel and glad tidings of the kingdom truly preached, is the power of God to the salvation of every believer (Rom. 1:16), which to credit and receive, you, the commonalty, are no less indebted than are your rulers and princes. [8]For albeit God has put and ordained distinction and difference betwixt the king and subjects, betwixt the rulers and the common people, in the regiment and administration of civil policies; yet in the hope of the life to come he has made all equal. For as in Christ Jesus the Jew has no greater prerogative than has the Gentile, the man than has the woman, the learned than the unlearned, the lord than the servant, but all are one in him (Ga. 3:26-29), so there is but one way and means to attain to the participation of his benefits and spiritual graces, which is a lively faith working by charity.

-- John Knox, Letter to Scotland, 1558

The Protestant idea of the spiritual equality of all "in the hope of the life to come" took on a life of its own in the West as secularization took hold during the Enlightenment.

Finally, Some Fighting Words About Barack Obama, and Other Enemies of Christ

"For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

"The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism.

"And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

"The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

"May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil. ...

"Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room. ...

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

"Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

"This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the instrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.

"No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions."

-- Bishop Daniel Jenky

Read the whole thing, here.

Let Us Now Shun Famous Men, Like David Bentley Hart

Without fear of contradiction I can assert that the group most detested by all and sundry at this hour in America is the Westboro Baptists, who have the unmitigated gall to show up at military funerals and proclaim God's hate, hate!, for America, her soldiers and her symbols.

"Her" is said advisedly, because to the Westboro Baptists, America is a bitch, a whore, ancient Babylon re-incarnate, for her late friendship with homosexuality, among other things.

Closely following them in opprobrium is the US Supreme Court which has rather thumpingly ruled that these fanatics have a right to express their opinions as they do, which has been according to the law. As far as the Supremes would have it, the quarrel is local, the politics local, and the local laws the law until such time as the locals change it and the Westboro Baptists break it.

A writer for First Things, one David Bentley Hart, is quite beside himself over all this. Here he calls the Westboro Baptists barbarians, fiends, resorters to absolute license, and abusers, with Mr. Hart fancying that the founders would have had them duly arrested. Actually, the founders would have criticized the Westboro Baptists for their timid response to the moral outrage of homosexuality, the practitioners of which the founders would have characterized as the barbarians, the fiends, the abusers and licentious in the extreme. The rest of us they wouldn't recognize as countrymen.

The truth is Mr. Hart actually would have preferred a fascism of the judicial sort, while crying out the generic variety, saving him all this trouble.

True to the readership of First Things, Mr. Hart has taken it a bit in the shorts not for any of that, but for suggesting, facetiously enough, that the Westboro Baptists and the military families might usefully settle this by a duel, which should tell you two things.

One, many readers of First Things apparently live where Rush Limbaugh lives, in not liberally educated Literalville, in a different neighborhood from Rush but still the same town, which comes as quite as much a shock to me as it does to Mr. Hart.

Two, Mr. Hart is sufficiently unnerved by this that he has found it necessary to write a follow-up (here) in which he has proposed instead that we all quickly recover the manners of a bygone age and treat these Westboro Baptists to the cut instead of the duel, a refined social custom descended from the shunning teaching of, for example, Paul's First Corinthian Epistle, chapter the fifth.

Oh yeah, that'll hurt 'em.

Except that in First Corinthians, Paul advises shunning actually the sinners, like the homosexuals, whereas Mr. Hart advises shunning, well, the shunners, Paul, and the Westboro Baptists, for example.

If there is a God in heaven, the Westboro Baptists are surely His prophets, and Mr. Hart is one of their targets. I'd say they're scoring hits.