Cardinal Bergoglio in Buenos Aires in 2010
Friday, September 20, 2019
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Father Rutler: The Light of the World
From time to time someone will remark that our national flag hanging from the choir loft appears to be faded. It is actually in good condition, but the white stripes are printed with the names of those who were killed in the attack on our nation on September 11, 2001. Hardly anyone in our parish was not affected by that, one way or another. When offering Mass this past week for the dead, I remembered how, as people panicked in a stalled subway from Brooklyn when the electricity failed and smoke filled the passageways, a blind man guided them to the exit. During his life he had learned to manage without the light of day.
Christ is the original Light of the world, uncreated, and from whom all earthly light proceeds. Without Christ, the intellect darkens, and this moral myopia is the affliction of our present time. Celebrities illuminated by stage lights can utter some of the darkest blasphemies against human dignity. Professors who think of themselves as “bright” can obscure the logic of their students. When the lights of truth go out, and the corridors of civilization fill with the smoke of Satan, the only sure guides are the prophets and saints.
In saying that the blind will lead the blind into a ditch (Luke 6:39), Christ was referring to the morally blind, and not the physically blind, as depicted poignantly in that painting by Pieter Bruegel. The contemporary term “Fake News” does indeed expose the tendency of prejudiced opinion to conceal the Light of Truth.
This week the Church celebrates the life of Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), a man of superior intellect, though his mental brightness was not flawless. Most conspicuously, he made the mistake of rejecting the heliocentric theory of the priest Copernicus and his friend Galileo. The philosopher of science, Karl Popper, and Pierre Duhem before him, cut him some slack by arguing that the saint objected to presenting a hypothesis as an irrefutable conclusion.
But Bellarmine’s real business was to lead people out of temporal darkness into eternal light. This he did by his theological learning and commentary on culture, including his exposure of the fallacy of the divine right of kings (or what we might call government absolutism), but above all by his dictum: “Charity is that with which no man is lost, and without which no man is saved.”
In garishly bright city streets filled with people in danger of moral meanderings, each church is meant to be a beacon that saves people from falling into the ditch. The Vigil Lamp before the parish altar may seem frail, and its flame small, but it is a flickering reminder that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17).
Sunday, September 1, 2019
"Adoro Te Devote" - Saint Thomas Aquinas
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Edwina Sandys on Her Grandparents Winston and Clementine Churchill
Edwina Sandys reminisces about her grandparents Winston and Clementine Churchill at the International Churchill Conference.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2019
This is the 2019 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. It's long, but wow what a show! With amazing musicians, projections on the castle and fireworks, it is a spectacular event. Plus, there is nothing more beautiful than bagpipes when properly played!
Please note, during the fireworks, you will hear the song twice. We wanted to add a close-up of the fireworks.
General Timestamps
It opens with General Fanfare
2:40 The Massed Pipes and Drums
10:50 The Guard's Brigade Band, Nigeria
12:41 German Army Kassel Band
16:09 Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force Steel Orchestra
19:27 The French Artillery Band Lyon
24:46 Massed Pipes and Drums
27:50 Lochiel Marching Drill Team
32:44 Beijing Marching Wind Band and Cultural Display
37:46 Tattoo Dance Company
41:03 Hjaltibonhoga - The Sheltland Fiddlers
43:37 New Zealand Army Band
48:32 The Massed UK Military Bands
All bands come onto the esplanade for the final
1:07:15 Repeat close-up of the fireworks
1:11:02 Lone Piper
1:12:03 The March Off
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Why Pope Francis Hasn’t Visited Argentina
By George Neumayr
“He knows nothing — not morals, not theology, not history. Nothing. Only power interests him.”
Last Saturday, I arrived in chilly Buenos Aires. I am sure it is just a coincidence, but my arrival coincided with the collapse of the peso. A dollar goes a long way in Argentina. For $40, Americans can get a four-star hotel; for $4, they can get a tasty steak. Signs of Argentinian economic malaise abound, from shanty towns on the outskirts of Buenos Aires to hobos sleeping on dirty mattresses in its downtown. Argentines love raw dollars, offering huge deals for cash purchases.
It appears that the Peronistas are on the verge of victory. As Brazil goes right, Argentina moves back to the left, such is its addiction to its socialist traditions.
My principal purpose in visiting Buenos Aires is to learn about its not-so-favorite son, Jorge Bergoglio, who still hasn’t visited Argentina since becoming Pope Francis. During my first few days here, I asked every Catholic I met to explain that anomaly. I got some blunt and brutal answers.
“We all know he is a son of a bitch,” said a former prosecutor to me. “We are ashamed of him. He represents our worst qualities.”
His friend chipped in that Catholics consider Francis “to be a fake, a make-believe pope,” not to mention, he added, an uncultured, ill-mannered flake.
The former prosecutor oozed contempt for Francis: “He knows nothing — not morals, not theology, not history. Nothing. Only power interests him.”
The description of Pope Francis as a power-mad ideologue is very widespread, I am finding. I spoke at length with Antonio Caponnetto, who is the Argentine author of several books on Pope Francis. “At seminary, his classmates called him ‘Machiavelli,’ ” he noted.
Caponnetto gives two reasons for why the pope has avoided his home country: one, at least half the country hates him, and two, Francis dislikes the supposedly “conservative,” pro-capitalist Macri regime. The latter reason is absurd: Macri is hardly conservative, as Argentine conservatives are the first to say.
On Wednesday morning, I visited with Santiago Estrada, Argentina’s former ambassador to the Holy See. He has been close to Bergoglio for decades, but he allowed that Bergoglio “hates businessmen.” He dislikes Macri, he said, not because Macri is a pillar of conservatism but because Macri is simply not as anti-business “as the pope.” Estrada was loath to criticize his friend, but he conceded that the pope’s promotion of molesting bishops has been “inexplicable.”
The pope’s predecessors visited their home countries. Even the timid Pope Benedict XVI braved his German critics and returned home.
Is it really possible Pope Francis could boycott Argentina for the rest of his tenure?
Probably not. For one thing, say engaged Catholics, if the hardcore leftists return to power, “he will come back.” Estrada thinks he “definitely will come back next year” if Macri loses, but that he will call it a “pastoral visit.”
“Francis has been working behind the scenes” to help Macri’s opponent, an Argentine political operative said to me. “He wants Macri to lose.”
Conservatives fear the prospect of a Peronista victory. One, who has a political blog, said to me, “I will leave the country. It won’t be safe for us.”
I got a small taste of that on Tuesday as I passed the office for one of Argentina’s left-wing parties. No sooner had I taken out my camera to take some pictures of it than a couple of Peronista wannabe thugs sprinted out of the office to question me. What, they demanded, are you doing? I ignored their gibbering, while another member of my party tried to appease them with a cleverly composed piece of faux flattery.
One eye-rolling conservative Catholic told me that the Peronism of Francisworld is so strong that some acolytes of the pope are talking about canonizing Evita.
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