Dennis Prager: 'This Election is a Referendum on What We Want America To Be'

If one were to survey the wisest and most learned people in the land on what Tuesday's elections are about, one could not find a better summation than the one Dennis Prager offered at this University of Denver forum.

Carmelite Monks of Wyoming - "Sanctum et Immaculata"

Gregorian chant from one of our advertisers, the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming, whose Mystic Monk Coffee is almost as sublime as their sacred music.

A Homily by Father Franklyn M. McAfee - "Christ and Culture"

Homily of Reverend Franklyn M. McAfee, D.D.

Pastor Emeritus

St. John the Beloved Catholic Church

McLean, Virginia

October 28, 2007

From the Pastor - "The Feast of All Saints"

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler

The greatest saints could have been the worst people who ever lived if they had misused their native gifts. St. Augustine’s intellect could have created a convincingly false religion. St. Louis IX could have used his rank to ruin his kingdom. St. John of Capistrano could have invoked his charismatic charm to persuade the Christian soldiers to surrender Western civilization, and St. Ignatius Loyola could have used his organizational skills to destroy the Faith in foreign lands.

By the same logic, the worst villains in history could have become saints if they had used their political power, rhetorical talents, and energy to spread the Gospel. Herod the Great might have become a Christmas hero; the faithful might now be lighting candles at the tomb of Lenin as at a reliquary, and churches might have been dedicated to saints named Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler if . . . On that “if” hangs all human destiny. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3: 20).

The Feast of All Saints celebrates those who opened their doors to Christ. On All Souls Day the Church prays for those who have offered their free wills freely to the Lord and who now prepare, with the help of our suffrages, to enter into his glory. St. Paul said that God "alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). The same saint, who was blinded by the perceptible light of God in Christ on the Damascus road, later assured his friend Timothy: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance” (2 Tim. 4: 6-8). Last summer I ran a few miles in the Wall Street Race and at the finish line I received a T-shirt. I was not ungrateful for it, but Our Lord did not do all he did for us, showing us the face of God both battered and radiant, crucified and risen, just to give us a T-shirt.

The crown of righteousness is offered to all those who take off their masks, for we cannot see God if we are disguised by pride. A culture of death does not make the transition from All Hallows Eve to All Hallows Day. St. John never disguised his love for his Master, and he assures our confused world: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

MYSTERY: Why Are So Many Political Operatives Moving to South Carolina After November 3rd?

From Hillbuzz

Here’s something strange: political operatives have suddenly gained massive renewed interest in the 2008 South Carolina Democrat primary.

We’re starting to coordinate the anti-Rahm Emanuel campaign here in Chicago starting November 3rd…that is where we thought all eyes in Chicago would be on Wednesday of next week.

We’re also going to be working on a campaign against the Cocktail Party GOP establishment…to stop their plan to attack Governor Palin. The 2012 GOP nomination fight essentially begins Wednesday too. We are all-in for Palin.

But we’ve been talking to everyone political we know here in the Midwest to see what they are going to do after November 2nd…and a lot of people are planning on focusing on SOUTH CAROLINA.

“Big things are going to be happening there…things that will take this White House down”.

We have a suspicion of what’s up.

It has something to do with things Obama did in the leadup to the 2008 Democrat primary in South Carolina.

It is the big mystery on the radar.

It’s going to be very busy here for the next several days, but start helping us fill in articles written about the South Carolina Democrat Primary in 2008 and how Obama made up a 20-point deficit to Hillary Clinton to end up winning that contest on Super Tuesday.

SOMETHING overlooked at the time keeps Obama up at night today.

This connects to what Ulstermann and his Democrat insider were saying about something bigger than Watergate that could bring Obama down.

Stay tuned.

Start digging through old South Carolina reporting.

Let’s team up to bring down the worst president in history and burn the Democrat Party to the ground.

Daniel Hannan on America vs. Europe

Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament and journalist, has written an important and thoughtful book on the United States, The New Road to Serfdom.

Hannan first became known to many Americans for his speech on the floor of the European Parliament where he said to then Prime Minister Gordon Brown "You cannot spend your way out of a recession." Daniel discusses why a Tea Party movement can occur in America and not in Europe, and why the European social-welfare model, toward which Obama and other socialists are moving America, is diseased and unsustainable.

Rangel Plan Gives Obama Domestic 'Civilian Security Force'

From WorldNetDaily

By Bob Unruh

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he visited Colorado Springs and WND broke the the story that he wanted a "Civilian National Security Force" as big and as well-funded as the $650 billion-plus U.S. military.

Now Charlie Rangel is proposing that he have it.

Read the rest of this entry >>

The Democrats' Final Recourse: Massive Vote Fraud

Obama Poll Workers

From American Thinker
By Selwyn Duke

The reports are rolling in from all over the country. A Craven County, NC resident attempts to vote a straight Republican ticket but his choices come up straight Democrat four times, despite receiving assistance from poll workers. In NC's Lenoir County, registered Democrat Ervin Norville also tries to vote straight Republican but finds that his ballot has the names of several Democrat candidates selected. Boulder City, NV resident Joyce Ferrara says that when she and several others went to vote for Sharon Angle, they found that Senator Harry Reid's name was already checked off. In Dallas County, TX' congressional district 30, Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson's name was the only one on the ballot in a few locations (no, she isn't running unopposed). And some states have been late in mailing out military absentee ballots, whose recipients, interestingly, are known for their Republican leanings.

These happenings are generally referred to as "mistakes" and "glitches," but if that's all they are, then we're witnessing a truly historic anomaly. Because either the mainstream media is now suppressing stories of mistakes and glitches benefitting Republicans, or the laws of probability have suddenly been rescinded and tossed coins are coming up donkey tails every time. Welcome to American elections, Venezuelan style.

I have long said that this election would see vote fraud of unprecedented magnitude. And it does seem that a perfect storm of such criminality is brewing. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship to vote, a treasonous act that facilitates vote fraud. Of course, some liberals are more forthcoming about their intentions; in Portland, ME and New York City, there is a push to allow non-citizens to vote. Not to be outdone, San Francisco seeks to allow even illegal aliens to cast ballots in school elections. Hey, why not? They're not illegals - they're undocumented Democrats.

Then there is the matter of the fox guarding the polling house. It has now been learned that the technicians who work on the Nevada voting machines that have been checking off Harry Reid's name are members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a leftist organization that has given tens of millions of dollars to Democrats. (By the way, do you remember all the complaints about "antiquated" paper ballots after the 2000 election? I knew that all the talk about "hanging chads" and the need for modern technology would lead to vote fraud. After all, now elections can be swayed by a well-placed, skilled hacker and there's no paper trail.)

Add to this the fact that the left is more brazen than ever. For one thing, laymen liberals, like their judges, are very influenced by precedent. And the liberal delusion that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election - thus drawing first blood - gives leftists a handy rationalization for actually stealing elections. Second, Barack Obama's DOJ's refusal to prosecute the Philadelphia Black Panthers - despite videotape evidence of their voter intimidation - sends the message that the left has almost carte blanche to sway elections by any means necessary.

Most of all, though, we have to remember that leftists are, well, leftists. They are simply much more corrupt than those on the right. I know, this sounds like blind partisanship, so I'll explain.

I'll introduce this with a point once made by former military-intelligence man Ralph Peters about how you could understand the Taliban: You have to view them as aliens. His point was that most people have trouble conceiving of mindsets radically different from their own and, consequently, often mistakenly assume that others operate by the same principles they do. Even liberals recognize this phenomenon - when they warn of "ethnocentrism." I, however, am more concerned about conservocentrism.

If you're an average bright-eyed conservative and you really want to understand leftists, begin by viewing them as aliens. Because they really aren't like you, and the difference isn't simply ideology, either. They truly are far more dishonest, deceitful and manipulative than conservatives.

In explaining why this is so, I'll again draw an analogy to Islamists. Many have pointed out that Western and Islamic thought dictate very different things with respect to honesty. While the West's formative religion, Christianity, teaches that lying is a sin, period, Islam states that lying to an infidel for the glory of Allah is a good. In other words, Christians can lie, but they must commit what they consider a sin to do so. Muslims can do so with what they view as divine approval.

Another difference is that Islamic thought includes a concept known as "dual truth," which basically states, writes American Thinker's Patrick Poole, "that what may be true in the realm of religion may be contrary to what is true in nature." Thus, even if an action is forbidden in Islamic texts, Muslims may be able to take it in the "real world." It's always convenient when you have more than one "truth" with which to justify behavior.

This brings us to liberals. Like Islamists, they have more than one "truth" from which to choose, something they readily admit to with pronouncements such as "That is your truth; someone else's might be different." To be precise, however, they use the word "truth" loosely, as a synonym for taste, and don't actually believe in Truth, properly defined (i.e., divinely ordained morality). They are moral relativists.

What does this mean? It means the sky - or perhaps I should say the netherworld - is the limit for behavior restrictions. Unlike Islamists, they don't have to find their justifications in medieval texts or complex philosophical contortions, as their credo is simple: "If it feels good, do it." Without belief in anything that transcends man to use as a yardstick for behavior, they ultimately have nothing left to use but the "god within," which is just a gussied-up name for emotion. And their emotion-driven ends really do justify their means. If they feel conservatives are "evil," conservatives must be. And if they feel that any tactic necessary to vanquish that evil is fair game, it must be. Understand that beneath the light of their deified feelings, lying, cheating or stealing to win elections is not merely justifiable - it is a "good," and one they do with the only approval they need: self-approval. They are aliens from a planet much like the Hell described by the Devil in an old comic strip (in The New Yorker, I think) when he said, "There's no right or wrong down here. It's whatever works for you." It is a place where there is a wall of separation between man and Truth.

And the truth is that in this election, as in every one, some races will be close enough so that vote fraud can be a factor. So how should we proceed once results are in? First, conservatives need an attitude adjustment: They have to understand the nature of their enemy (as outlined above) and become warriors. We mustn't for a moment entertain the notion that the best thing for the nation after a suspicious loss is to concede the race graciously. Rather, the best thing for the nation is to oust the alien vote-snatchers from power by any moral means necessary.

Second, we must recognize that razor-close races almost always go Democrat for a reason (think: Al Franken in Minnesota) and view every such loss as a probable vote-fraud scenario. Then we must analyze exit polling - which has become a very precise science - for discrepancies between its findings and election results. And when they are found, the matter must be sifted to the very bottom.

Alien vote-snatchers are worse than murderers. They not only steal votes but also our future; they undermine the rule of law and threaten the republic itself. In a saner time, they would probably be hanged. And if it becomes apparent that the government - the Eric Holder DOJ, judges and others - has become so corrupt that it will preserve its power by negating the votes of the people, then we should consider our Founding Fathers' words: "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...."

Let's see if the attempt at alteration works this November 2.

ACORN Whistleblower Anita Moncrief on Obamunist Voter Fraud

Is Obama Mentally Ill?

For weeks there have been rumors from "inside sources" that a massive White House scandal is about to be revealed. In light of some of the most un-presidential comments ever uttered, his racism, talk of Republican "enemies," the large number of White House resignations, criminal voter fraud, the trashing of the United States Constitution, his constant vacations and travel, his detachment from the job, the sidelining of the United States in international affairs, and endless basketball and golf games, we wonder if Obama is undergoing a mental breakdown.

It appears to us that hope and change depend more and more on the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 4.

Pontifical Council Implements Pope’s Call for ‘Court of the Gentiles’

Court of the Gentiles in Jerusalem

From Catholic World News

In his 2009 year-end address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict reflected on the role of the ‘Court of the Gentiles’ at the temple in Jerusalem: it was “a free space for the Gentiles who wished to pray there to the one God, even if they could not take part in the mystery for whose service the inner part of the Temple was reserved.” He added:

I think that today too the Church should open a sort of "Court of the Gentiles" in which people might in some way latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery, at whose service the inner life of the Church stands. Today, in addition to interreligious dialogue, there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Msgr. Peter Fleetwood discussed how the Pontifical Council for Culture is implementing the Pope’s call for a ‘Court of the Gentiles’: debates, meetings, and dramas are planned, beginning with meetings in Paris at the Sorbonne and UNESCO.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Courtyard of the Gentiles (Vatican Radio)
• Pope Benedict: Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (2009)

Obama Appoints Record Number of Open Homosexuals

"the current president 'has nominated and appointed the most radical group of ideologues ever assembled by an American President.'"

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

President Barack Obama has appointed more openly homosexual individuals to government posts than any previous president, according to sources cited by the Associated Press.

Gay lobbyists estimate that Obama has granted top appointments to more than 150 open homosexuals in the two years he has served at the White House - topping the approximately 140 favored by President Bill Clinton in all eight years of his presidency. A spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign called the pattern "a simple affirmation of the American ideal that what matters is how you do your job and not who you are.”

Others suggested, however, that the appointments were not entirely a matter of personal merit.

Denis Dison, spokesman for the Presidential Appointments Project of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, said the administration's appointments were meant to be received as friendly gestures towards the homosexualist movement.

“From everything we hear from inside the administration, they wanted this to be part of their efforts at diversity,’’ said Dison. The Presidential Appointments Project acts as a stepping stone for homosexual professionals seeking federal posts "to improve our federal government’s policies and processes."

One of the names listed on the project's website is Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. Jennings' appointment outraged conservatives after it was revealed that the "Safe Schools Czar" had envisioned a future of openly "promoting homosexuality" to schoolchildren and, as former leader of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, oversaw a workshop teaching young teens how to perform the dangerous and obscene sex act known as "fisting."

Another notable name on the list is Chai Feldblum, nominated to become a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which oversees workplace discrimination complaints. Feldblum, a law professor, has reportedly said regarding conflicts between religious liberty and sexual liberty that "in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that's the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner."

Shin Inouye, an openly homosexual White House spokesman, told the AP that, "“We have made a record number of openly LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender] appointments, and we are confident that this number will only continue to grow.’’

In January of this year, a report on the Obama administration's appointments was published by Liberty Counsel, which concluded that the current president "has nominated and appointed the most radical group of ideologues ever assembled by an American President."

Zais for Education Superintendent

A statewide candidate we enthusiastically endorse, and so does The Post and Courier.

From The Post and Courier

South Carolina schools must improve if the state is to compete financially and its citizens are to be successful. Mick Zais has turned a failing college into a respected one. Voters should elect him to apply the same energy and skills to improving our public schools.

Dr. Zais would bring impressive academic and service credentials to the office of Superintendent of Education. And his plans for the state office are based on sound educational and management principles.

At the core of his approach is his commitment to give local school boards and principals more authority to spend state money and choose programs that work for their particular students.

But while giving them privileges, he also plans to increase their accountability, including finding ways to assess teacher performance and to determine their pay based on, among other things, student progress. "We don't pay good teachers enough, and we pay bad teachers too much," he told us.

Mitchell M. Zais graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with an engineering degree and earned masters and doctorate degrees in social psychology from the University of Washington.

He was an Army Ranger and paratrooper and retired as a brigadier general. He served in Vietnam and Korea, and also taught organizational behavior, management and leadership classes at West Point.

After retiring, he became president of Newberry College, which in 2000 was failing and nearly bankrupt. During his tenure, school enrollment nearly doubled, the endowment more than doubled, facilities were constructed and renovated and academic programs were added. While other colleges were struggling in 2008-2009, Dr. Zais was leading Newberry to a budget surplus -- without raising tuition. And in the 2010 U.S. News and World Report college rankings, Newberry placed No. 35 among the 100 best baccalaureate colleges in the Southern region.

In the military and at Newberry, Dr. Zais supervised large numbers of diverse people, and he did it by building consensus instead of simply barking orders.

While president of Newberry, he was acutely aware of educational deficits that in-state freshmen arrived with. He was particularly disturbed by their poor writing and spelling skills and says he would focus additional energy on teaching reading -- particularly to the poorest students who are often left behind.

He is a staunch supporter of charter schools as a way to offer choice for students and a way to improve academic performance.

Having seen the vast disparity among school and student success, he would promote tax breaks to scholarship-granting organizations to enable low-income families in failing school districts to attend better private schools. The idea deserves legislative consideration.

Dr. Zais believes each child deserves instruction appropriate for that student. In that regard, he would promote high schools offering three curricula. One would be for pre-college students. One, also rigorous, would be for career and technical students. The third would be a basic curriculum for students who plan to enter the military or the workforce immediately after graduation.

All are worthy approaches to education.

Dr. Zais would bring compassion, competence and courage to the post. We need someone of his mettle and intellect to take the reins of the Department of Education and steer it to higher achievements.

Archbishop Chaput Lauds Military Service; Calls for New Christian Knighthood

Archbishop Chaput delivered the following remarks to Catholic cadets at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on Monday, Oct. 25, 2010.

None of you wants to sit through another classroom lecture. So my comments will be brief. Then we can get to some questions and answers. I'm also going to skip telling you how talented you are. You already know that. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. What you'll discover as you get older is that the world has plenty of very talented failures – people who either didn't live up to their abilities; or who did, but did it in a way that diminished their humanity and their character.

God made you to be better than that. And your nation and your Church need you to be better than that. Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10). Wisdom – not merely the knowledge of facts or a mastery of skills, but wisdom about ourselves, other people and the terrain of human life – this is the mark of a whole person. We already have too many clever leaders. We need wise leaders. And the wisest leaders ground themselves in humility before God and the demands of God’s justice.

I want to offer you just four quick points tonight. Here's the first. Military service is a vocation, not simply a profession.

The word “vocation” comes from the Latin word vocare, which means to call. In Christian belief, God created each of us for a purpose. He calls each of us by name to some form of service. No higher purpose exists than protecting other people, especially the weak and defenseless. This is why the Church, despite her historic resistance to war and armed violence, has held for many centuries that military service is not just “acceptable.” It can also be much more than that. When lived with a spirit of integrity, restraint and justice, military service is virtuous. It's ennobling because – at its best – military service expresses the greatest of all virtues: charity; a sacrificial love for people and things outside and more important than oneself. It flows from something unique in the human heart: a willingness to place one's own life in harm's way for the sake of others.

The great Russian Christian writer Vladimir Solovyov once said that to defend peaceful men, “the guardian angels of humanity mixed the clay [of the earth] with copper and iron and created the soldier.” And until the spirit of malice brought into the world by Cain disappears from human hearts, the soldier “will be a good and not an evil.” (i) He expressed in a poetic way what the Church teaches and believes. And you should strive to embody this vision in your own service.

Here's my second point. Protect the moral character you build here, and remember the leadership you learn here. You’ll need both when the day comes to return to civilian life.

I think it's unwise for people my age to judge the world too critically. The reason is pretty simple. The older we get, the more clearly we see – or think we see -- what's wrong with the world. It also gets harder to admit our own role in making it that way. Over my lifetime I've had the privilege of working with many good religious men and women, and many good lay Christian friends. Many of them have been heroic in their generosity, faith and service. Many have helped to make our country a better place.

And yet I think it's true – I know it's true – that my generation has, in some ways, been among the most foolish in American history. We’ve been absorbed in our appetites, naïve about the consequences of our actions, overconfident in our power, and unwilling to submit ourselves to the obligations that come with the greatest ideals of our own heritage.

Most generations of Americans have inherited a nation different in degree from the generations that preceded them. You will inherit an America that is different in kind – a nation different from anything in our past in its attitudes toward sexuality, family, religion, law and the nature of the human person; in other words, different and more troubling in the basic things that define a society. My generation created this new kind of America. Soon we will leave the consequences to you.

And this brings us back to my second point: Where the leadership and moral character of my generation failed, you need to succeed. The task of Christian moral leadership that will occupy much of your lives in the future will not be easy. It will place heavy demands on people like you who learned discipline and integrity in places like this.

Here's my third point. Guarantees of religious freedom are only as strong as the social consensus that supports them.

Americans have always taken their religious freedom for granted. Religious faith has always played a major role in our public life, including debate about public policy and law. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly guarantees this freedom. But that guarantee and its application are subject to lawmakers and the interpretation of courts. And lawmakers and courts increasingly attack religious liberty, undermine rights of conscience, and force references to God out of our public square. This shift in our culture is made worse by mass media that, in general, have little understanding of religious faith and are often openly hostile. As religious practice softens in the United States over the next few decades, the consensus for religious freedom may easily decline. And that has very big implications for the life of faithful Catholics in this country.

Here's my fourth and final point. Given everything I've just said, how do we live faithfully as Catholics going forward in a culture that’s skeptical, and even hostile, toward what we believe?

Knighthood is an institution with very deep roots in the memory of the Church. Nearly 900 years ago, one of the great monastic reformers of the Church, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, described the ideal Christian knights as Godly men who “shun every excess in clothing and food. They live as brothers in joyful and sober company (with) one heart and one soul. … There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood. They rival one another in mutual consideration, and they carry one another’s burdens, thus fulfilling the law of Christ.” (ii)

Bernard had few illusions about human nature. And he was anything but naïve. Writing at the dawn of the crusading era, in the early 12th century, he was well aware of the greed, vanity, ambition and violence that too often motivated Europe’s warrior class, even in the name of religious faith.

Most of the men who took up the cause of aiding eastern Christians and liberating the Holy Land in the early decades of crusading did so out of genuine zeal for the Cross. But Bernard also knew that many others had mixed or even corrupt and evil motives. In his great essay “In Praise of the New Knighthood” (c. 1136), he outlined the virtues that should shape the vocation of every truly “Christian” knight: humility, austerity, justice, obedience, unselfishness and a single-minded zeal for Jesus Christ in defending the poor, the weak, the Church and persecuted Christians. (iii)

Our life today may seem very different from life in the 12th century. The Church today asks us to seek mutual respect with people of other religious traditions, and to build common ground for cooperation wherever possible.

But human nature -- our basic hopes, dreams, anxieties and sufferings -- hasn’t really changed. The basic Christian vocation remains the same: to follow Jesus Christ faithfully, and in following Jesus, to defend Christ’s Church and to serve her people zealously, unselfishly and with all our skill. As St. Ignatius Loyola wrote in his “Spiritual Exercises” -- and remember that Ignatius himself was a former soldier -- each of us must choose between two battle standards: the standard of Jesus Christ, humanity’s true King, or the standard of his impostor, the Prince of This World.

There is no neutral ground. C.S. Lewis once said that Christianity is a “fighting religion.” He meant that Christian discipleship has always been -- and remains -- a struggle against the evil within and outside ourselves. This is why the early Church Fathers described Christian life as “spiritual combat.” It’s why they called faithful Christians the “Church Militant” and “soldiers of Christ” in the Sacrament of Confirmation.

The Church needs men and women of courage and Godliness today more than at any time in her history. So does this extraordinary country we call home in this world; a nation that still has an immense reservoir of virtue, decency and people of good will. This is why the Catholic ideal of knighthood, with its demands of radical discipleship, is still alive and still needed. The essence of Christian knighthood remains the same: sacrificial service rooted in a living Catholic faith.

A new “spirit of knighthood” is what we need now -- unselfish, tireless, devoted disciples willing to face derision and persecution for Jesus Christ. We serve our nation best by serving God first, and by proving our faith with the example of our lives.

---

(i) Vladimir Solovyov, The Justification of the Good: An Essay on Moral Philosophy; translated by Nathalie Duddington; edited and annotated by Boris Jakim (Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 2005) 349; original Russian text published in 1897

(ii) Bernard of Clairvaux, “In Praise of the New Knighthood,” The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, V. 7 (Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI, 1977) 127-167
(iii) Note that Bernard, who preached the Second Crusade, wrote his essay specifically as an apologia for the founding of the first military-religious order, the “knights of the Temple” or the Knights Templar. The Templars took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, lived in common and dedicated themselves to the defense of Christians in the Holy Land. But as R.J. Zwi Werblowsky writes in his introduction to Bernard’s essay in The Works noted above, Bernard was also concerned with “the theology of a reformed and sanctified knighthood” in contrast to the frivolity and vanity of worldly chivalry.

Governor Christie on O'Keefe 'Teachers Gone Wild' Video

New Videos Expose Corrupt New Jersey Teachers' Union Thugs

From Examiner.com
By Terry Hurlbut

James O'Keefe, head of Project Veritas, yesterday released two videos in a series that he titled Teachers' Unions Gone Wild, a take-off on a popular TV show titled Girls Gone Wild. It contains candid footage taken by "citizen journalists" (meaning volunteer temporary stringers) interviewing several persons purporting to be teachers attending the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) leadership conference at the East Brunswick Hilton (August 7-13, 2010). Jason Method of the Asbury Park Press filed the first report yesterday evening.

The two videos are uploaded to YouTube and embedded at O'Keefe's Project Veritas site. The first of these videos follows:

WARNING: This video features candid interviews with persons or groups using profane and even obscene language. Parental judgment and discretion are advised.

The first video is taken at the conference, and shows several teachers describing hypothetical situations in which teachers (especially those with tenure) could utter racial slurs at their pupils in class and not be subject to termination, and also making crude references to Governor Chris Christie and describing the sort of violent assaults that some members would like to perpetrate upon him. Equally embarrassing are the shots of teachers playing video arcade games and boasting about doing so "on their dime", meaning at an event that they attended at parent/taxpayer expense.

One teacher, identified on the video as Alissa Ploshnick, a "special educator" in the Passaic Public Schools, appears telling an interviewer that "it is very, very hard to fire a tenured teacher." She said that even inappropriate sexual conduct would not be sufficient, and said that a teacher would have to be caught literally in flagrante delicto in the hallway for an immediate termination to occur. (The preceding is the Bowdlerized version of Ms. Ploshnick's remarks.) She then described the case of another teacher, whom she would not identify, who actually uttered a racial slur at a student and suffered no worse sanction than demotion.

The video goes on to capture several chants intended to demean Governor Christie, with shots of stories told of certain episodes of unprofessional conduct by school officials (like the Bergen County official who cut and pasted an e-mail wishing Christie dead and sent this memo out to the teachers who answered to him). It also mentioned an unidentified teacher describing the NJEA's role in altering the application for the Race to the Top federal grant without informing Christie or then-Education Commissioner Bret Schundler of the alterations. (New Jersey ultimately placed eleventh in the RTTT race and lost out on the grant.)

The video ends with the posting of a telephone number (609-599-4561) as if it were an advertisement for ordering a full-length video, and makes references to the rigging of elections. The telephone number turns out to belong to the NJEA. A viewer might interpret its presence in the video as either a take-off on lengthy TV ads for consumer goods "not available in stores," or an invitation to call the NJEA to ask, or complain, about the behavior depicted in the video.

The second video is largely a follow-up by one of the volunteer stringers on the Alissa Ploshnick interview. First he conducts an "ambush interview" with Ploshnick, an interview that turns out to be unproductive. Then he calls the assistant superintendent of the Passaic Public Schools, posing as the father of the boy who allegedly had suffered the racial insult.

NJEA spokesman Steve Baker denounced the two videos as inauthentic, saying, "It's James O’Keefe and that’s all you need to know."

However, in a later story carried by The Star-Ledger (Newark), Project Veritas spokesman Shane Corey defended the videos and insisted on their authenticity. He specifically says that no person posed as a teacher to be recorded making an embarrassing statement.

O'Keefe is famous for appearing at several housing-assistance offices of the old Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and posing as a procurer, with a young woman in tow posing as a prostitute, and asking for, and most of the time getting, housing assistance. The resulting scandal led to the official defunding of ACORN and ultimately to the spectacle of the national organization shuttering and its chapters changing their names.

Today O'Keefe released yet another embarrassing video for the NJEA, alleging a possible role for them in election fraud surrounding the Jersey City mayor's race in 1997, when Bret Schundler ran for a second term of office.

The Most Anti-Catholic Political Ad You'll Ever See

From The National Catholic Register
By Matthew Archbold

A Democrat Party supporting independent non profit group has sent out perhaps THE most anti-Catholic political advertisement I’ve ever seen. Sometimes there’s a little subtlety to anti-Catholic political rhetoric but not this time. This is in your face anti-Catholicism. A postcard was sent out to voters with a photo shopped picture of a Catholic priest wearing a campaign button saying: “Ignore the Poor.”

As you can see the pic takes up nearly the entire length of the postcard. It’s anti-Catholicism is not one point of many. It’s the point.

According to its website “The Minnesota DFL supports and works to enact the ideals and principles of the Democratic Party and strives to sustain the foundations in our Party’s grassroots history.”

One of the more worrisome things about this is that this group must believe that there’s enough of an anti-Catholic vote that this would pay dividends. Could that be true?

Never mind the factual basis the charge that the Church ignores the poor is absolutely ridiculous because the Church is THE most charitable organization on the planet. But this postcard has nothing to do with the poor. What this is about is the fact that the Church stands strong against abortion and gay marriage. And that makes some very angry.

This election season has been a nasty one. And this may be its low point.

Obama's Aunt: "You Have The Obligation to Make Me a Citizen"

Gifts to Notre Dame Plunged $120M During Year of Obama’s Appearance

The perpetrators of this outrage will pay an even greater price in eternity.

From Catholic World News

Contributions to the University of Notre Dame fell by over $120 million during the fiscal year in which President Barack Obama was awarded an honorary degree. Several dozen bishops criticized the university’s decision during the months preceding the May 17, 2009, commencement ceremony, and an alumni group called for the withholding of donations.

During the July 2008 - June 2009 fiscal year, gifts to the university totaled $226,689,374, including $60,133,035 in government grants. During the July 2007 - June 2008 fiscal year, in contrast, gifts totaled $347,155,514, including $62,241,121 in government grants. Thus most of the decline in contributions was in private donations rather than government funding.

The decline in donations largely coincided with the late-2000s recession, which officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

During the July 2006 - June 2007 fiscal year, gifts to the university had totaled $309,743,862, including $61,218,074 in government grants.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• GuideStar
• Late-2000s recession (Wikipedia)
• $8.2M in donations withheld from Notre Dame, alumni group claims (CWN, 4/28/09)
• New Notre Dame alumni group calls for ouster of Father Jenkins (CWN, 4/20/09)

From the Pastor

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler
Pope Gregory XV canonized a spectacular group on March 12, 1622: Philip Neri, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Isidore the Farmer. Relations between the Italians and the Spanish were not as happy as they are now, and a Roman wit said the Holy Father had canonized “four Spaniards and a Saint.” There were no boundaries last Sunday when Pope Benedict XVI canonized six vivid per­sonalities from Australia, Canada, Spain, Italy, and Poland.

Each was a hero of persistence in the face of obstacles. Stanislao Soltys (1433-1489) sustained faith in a time of special stress for long distressed Poland. Candida Maria de Jesus y Barriola (1845-1912) and Giulia Salzano (1846-1929) patiently abided the difficulties typically facing founders of religious orders. Battista da Varano, (1458-1524) born a princess, mourned the violent deaths of her father and brothers by the conspiracy of Cesare Borgia, and procedural problems thwarted her canoniza­tion since her beatification in 1843. Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) was excommunicated briefly for exposing corruption. André Bessette (1845-1937) endured ill health and threat of exile when his miraculous gifts elicited both doubts and envy. And yet, after a lifetime as a simple janitor, a million people attended his funeral rites.

The more media-created celebrities distance themselves from God, the more indistinguishable they become one from another. In contrast, the personalities of the saints become more vivid and distinct as they grow in grace. St. Thomas Aquinas said that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. The Greeks had a system by which they iden­­­t­i­­fied personality types with bodily fluids or “humours.” People tend to be sanguine (friendly), choleric (energetic), melancholic (thoughtful), or phlegmatic (self-content). Everyone is a combination of all these, and personalities develop by how they combine.

God’s grace develops and does not distort these quali­ties. Sanguine saints become friends of God and man, choleric saints become leaders, melancholic saints be­come mystics, and phlegmatic saints become peace­makers. Without grace, the sanguine easily becomes superficial, the choleric over­bearing, the melancholic depressive and the phlegmatic lazy.

However their personalities developed, they attained perfection through humble endurance. St. Paul told St. Timothy to “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient” (2 Timothy 4:2). No one could say that the Apostle to the Gentiles had a bland personality. “I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith” (ibid, 4:7).

The Mother of Our Lord left history very few recorded words, but by perfectly accepting God’s Word, her personality became what Wordsworth called “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” In her humility she became the masterpiece of art, mother of universities, and muse of highest culture. Last Sunday, the Pope prayed that through the intercession of Virgin Mary and the six new saints “our existence might become a canticle of praise for God.”


Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

King's College Choir - "In Paradisum" - Gabriel Fauré

In paradisum deducant te angeli,
in tuo adventu
suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te
in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise,
May the martyrs receive you
In your coming,
And may they guide you
Into the holy city, Jerusalem.
May the chorus of angels receive you
And with Lazarus once poor
May you have eternal rest.

Archbishop Dolan on the Bigotry of the New York Times

New York's valiant new Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, has had enough of the virulent anti-Catholicism served up daily by the New York Times. Many Catholics have come to accept that anti-Catholicism is the one socially acceptable bigotry in the United States, particularly among those who fancy themselves "intellectuals" and part of the "elite." But enough is enough. In his personal blog, Archbishop Dolan has called ignorance and hatred by their proper names. The Archbishop's column follows:

More from the Times

I know, I should drop it. “You just have to get used to it,” so many of you have counselled me. “It’s been that way forever, and it’s so ingrained they don’t even know they’re doing it. So, let it go.”

I’m talking about the common, casual way The New York Times offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.

Two simple yet telling examples from one edition, last Friday, October 15.

First there’s the insulting photograph of the nun on page C20, this for yet another tiresome production making fun of Catholic consecrated women. This “gleeful” tale is described as “fresh and funny” in the caption beneath the quarter-page photo (not an advertisement). Granted, prurient curiosity about the lives of Catholic sisters has been part of the nativist, “know-nothing” agenda since mobs burned the Ursuline convent in Boston in the 1840’s, and since the huckster Rebecca Reed’s Awful Disclosures made the rounds in the 19^th century. But still now cheap laughs at the expense of a bigoted view of the most noble women around?

Maybe I’m especially sensitive since I just came from the excellent exhibit on the contributions of Catholic nuns now out on Ellis Island. These are the women who tended to the homeless immigrants and refugees, who died nursing the abandoned in the cholera epidemic, who ran hospitals and universities decades before women did so in the non-Catholic sphere, who marched in Selma and today teach our poorest in our inner-city schools. These are the nuns mocked and held-up for snickering in our city’s newspaper.

Now turn to C29. This glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed “art” exhibit comes to us from Harvard, and is a display of posters from ACT UP. Remember them? They invaded of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled on the Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was here for a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselves to families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral. The man they most detested was Cardinal John O’Connor, who, by the way, spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients, and, when everyone else ran from them, opened units for them at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and St. Clare’s Hospital. Too bad for him. One of the posters in this “must see” exhibit is of Cardinal O’Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a “scumbag,” the “art” there in full view in the photograph above the gushing review in our city’s daily.

Thanks for your patience with me. I guess I’m still new enough here in New York City that the insults of The New York Times against the Church still bother me. I know I should get over it. As we say in Missouri, it’s like “spitting into a tornado.”

Elvis Presley - Miracle of the Rosary

In this month dedicated to Our Lady and the Most Holy Rosary, an unlikely and beautiful tribute:

From CatholicCulture.org

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. According to an account by fifteenth-century Dominican, Alan de la Roch, Mary appeared to St. Dominic in 1206 after he had been praying and doing severe penances because of his lack of success in combating the Albigensian heresy. Mary praised him for his valiant fight against the heretics and then gave him the Rosary as a mighty weapon, explained its uses and efficacy, and told him to preach it to others.

"Since the prayers of the Rosary come from such excellent sources — from Our Lord Himself, from inspired Scripture, and from the Church — it is not surprising that the Rosary is so dear to our Blessed Mother and so powerful with heaven.

"If we consider the power of the Rosary as seen in its effects, we find a great abundance of proofs of its wonderful value. Many are the favors granted to private individuals through its devout recitation: there are few devoted users of the Rosary who cannot testify to experiencing its power in their own lives. If we turn to history, we see many great triumphs of the Rosary. Early tradition attributes the defeat of the Albigensians at the Battle of Muret in 1213 to the Rosary. But even those who do not accept this tradition will admit that St. Pius V attributed the great defeat of the Turkish fleet on the first Sunday of October, 1571, to the fact that at the same time the Rosary confraternities at Rome and elsewhere were holding their processions. Accordingly, he ordered a commemoration of the Rosary to be made on that day. Two years later, Gregory XIII allowed the celebration of a feast of the Rosary in churches having an altar dedicated to the Rosary. In 1671, Clement X extended the feast to all Spain. A second great victory over the Turks, who once, like the Russians, threatened the ruin of Christian civilization, occurred on August 5, 1716, when Prince Eugene defeated them at Peterwardein in Hungary. Thereupon Clement XI extended the feast of the Rosary to the whole Church.

"Today, when dangers far greater than those of the ancient Turks threaten not only Christianity but all civilization, we are urged by our Blessed Mother to turn again to the Rosary for help. If men in sufficient numbers do this, and at the same time carry out the other conditions that she has laid down, we have the greater reason for confidence that we will be delivered from our dangers." -- Mary in our Life by Fr. William G. Most

The Rosary and the Liturgical Year

The Rosary had its origin in the liturgical mentality of former ages. Even at the present time it is called "Mary's Psalter." There still are Catholics who consider the 150 Hail Marys a substitute for the 150 psalms for those persons who neither have the time, the education, nor the opportunity to pray the Hours of the Divine Office. Thus "Mary's Psalter" is a shortened, simplified "breviary" — alongside the common Hour-prayer of the Church. — The Church's Year of Grace, Dr. Pius Parsch

The Rosary is Christocentric setting forth the entire life of Jesus Christ, the passion, death, resurrection and glory. Of course, the Rosary honors and contemplates Mary too, and rightly so, for the same reason that the Liturgical Year does likewise: "Because of the mission she received from God, her life is most closely linked with the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and there is no one who has followed in the footsteps of the Incarnate Word more closely and with more merit than she"142 (Mediator Dei). Meditation on this cycle of Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries makes the Rosary not only "a breviary or summary of the Gospel and of Christian life,"(Ingravescentibus malis) but also a compendium of the Liturgical Year. Therewith the Rosary stands revealed as a dynamic teacher and nurturer of Christian faith, morality, and spiritual perfection, fostering in various ways faith, hope, charity, and the other virtues, and mediating special graces, all to the end that we may become more and more like unto Christ. — Mariology, Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.