Homily of His Excellency Bishop Edward James Slattery

At the Pontifical Solemn High Mass Honoring Pope Benedict XVI

on the Fifth Anniversary of His Inauguration



In the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Washington, D. C.

April 24, 2010

Whose Century?

From World Affairs
By Gordon G. Chang

On October 1 last year, China’s Communist Party celebrated the country’s National Day, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. As they did ten years before, senior leaders put on a military parade of immense proportions in their majestic capital of Beijing. Like the Olympic Games in 2008, the parade was a perfectly executed and magnificently staged spectacle, but instead of international fellowship, the theme was the power of China’s ruling organization and the rise of the Chinese nation.

But did Beijing need two hundred thousand soldiers and school children to demonstrate its strength or ascendancy? The dominant narrative about China today is that it will, within a few short decades, become the preeminent power in the international system. Its economy, according to the conventional wisdom, was the first to recover from the global downturn and will eventually go on to become the world’s largest. Geopolitical dominance will inevitably follow.

How did this notion of Chinese supremacy gain hold? The answer is nothing more profound than statistical extrapolation. China was destitute when Deng Xiaoping grabbed power in December 1978. Since then, the country has averaged, according to official statistics, a spectacular annual growth of 9.9 percent. This rate, if carried forward, gives China the world’s largest economy in a few decades—2027, to be exact, according to a now-famous Goldman Sachs estimate.

So will ours be the Chinese century? Probably not. China has just about reached high tide, and will soon begin a long painful process of falling back. The most recent period of China’s fast growth began with Deng’s Southern Tour in early 1992, the event that signaled the restarting of reforms after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Fortunately for the Communist Party of China, this event coincided with the beginning of an era wherein political barriers to trade were falling and globalization was kicking into high gear, which set the table for a period of tremendous wealth generation.

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Archbishop Warns of “Civil Unrest” in Wake of UK Court Ruling against Christian Counselor

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

The clash between Christians and the state has intensified, with a UK court now having upheld the dismissal of a Christian psychologist who refused to give advice on sexual intimacy to homosexual couples - a decision the former Canterbury Archbishop Lord Carey has denounced as a prelude to “civil unrest” between Christians and the secular government.

Gary McFarlane, 48, a Bristol solicitor, father of two, and evangelical Christian, had worked part-time as a psychological counselor with Relate for five years, during which time he even gave advice to homosexual couples working out basic relationship problems. However, he was sacked from his job in 2008 when he qualified as a psychosexual counselor, because he said he could not give advice in homosexual intimacy as this violated his conscience and beliefs.

McFarlane tried without success to challenge Relate’s decision to fire him at an employment tribunal, arguing that they should have accommodated his religious views. He then appealed to the UK Court of Appeal for permission to challenge the tribunal’s ruling.

However, Lord Justice John Laws denied McFarlane’s request in a strident ruling that argued the law had no responsibility to protect the individual’s expression of conscience or religious belief.

Laws made clear that the court did not view legislation protecting individual conscience as justifiable, calling it an irrational position that “is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary."

"The conferment of any legal protection of preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however long its culture, is deeply unprincipled," said Laws in his ruling.

"In a free constitution such as ours there is an important distinction to be drawn between the law's protection of the right to hold and express a belief and the law's protection of that belief's substance or content," ruled the Lord Justice. Laws said that if the law created special exemptions for adherents of one belief, then it would lead to a disenfranchisement of the rest of the members in society, and would lead to “theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.”

"The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments,” wrote Laws. “The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself."

Gary McFarlane lamented the ruling saying, "I have the ability to provide counseling services to same-sex couples.

"There should be allowances taken into account whereby individuals like me can actually avoid having to contradict their very strongly-held Christian principles."

Lord Carey struck out at Law, saying the fact that leaders of the Church of England and other faiths have felt compelled to intervene in court cases involving discrimination against Christians and their viewpoints is “illuminative of future civil unrest” coming to the United Kingdom.

"It is, of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a religious bar to any employment by Christians," said Carey.

Carey denounced the judgment, saying it "continues a trend on the part of the courts to downgrade the right of religious believers to manifest their faith in what has become a deeply unedifying collision of human rights."

"The description of religious faith in relation to sexual ethics as 'discriminatory' is crude and illuminates a lack of sensitivity to religious belief,” he continued.

"The comparison of a Christian, in effect, with a 'bigot' (i.e., a person with an irrational dislike to homosexuals) begs further questions. It is further evidence of a disparaging attitude to the Christian faith and its values."

Yet the archbishop also said that Laws’ ruling suppressed British pluralism rather than encouraged it, because the state was enforcing secular values rather than embracing a neutral stance that would allow all individuals of all faiths to live out their beliefs freely.

"It heralded a 'secular' state rather than a 'neutral' one. And while with one hand the ruling seeks to protect the right of religious believers to hold and express their faith, with the other it takes away those same rights. It says that the sacking of religious believers in recent cases was not a denial of their rights even though religious belief cannot be divided from its expression in every area of the believer's life.

"Oddly the judge doesn't address the argument that rights have to be held in balance and he is apparently indifferent to the fact that religious believers are adversely affected by this judgment and others."

The disenfranchisement of Christians in the United Kingdom continues apace under the anti-discrimination laws introduced by Labour. In the past several years numerous reports of Christians losing their jobs or even being arrested simply for expressing their Christian moral views have surfaced – events that appear shocking in light of the 70th anniversary this year of Winston Churchill’s famous “Finest Hour” speech from the Second World War.

The famed British Prime Minister had rallied the British people on the eve of the Battle of Britain in June 1940 saying, “upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” He warned that if they failed, “all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

Breaking: Obama Cheating Scandal

Yes, yes, we know; but were it not for the National Enquirer which investigated and broke the John Edwards cheating scandal, he might be carrying on as Vice President today.

From The National Enquirer


PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide.

A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old VERA BAKER in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions.

While Baker has insisted in the past that "nothing happened" between them, reports reveal that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.

Among those being offered money is a limo driver who says in 2004 that he took Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous where Obama was staying.

An ENQUIRER reporter has confirmed the limo's driver account of the secret 2004 rendezvous.

Mark Levin: 'Whose SWAT Teams Are On All Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rigs And What The Hell Are They Doing? '

Sanford Says SC Will Not Help Implement Socialized Medicine

From Bloomburg Business Week
By Meg Kinnard

South Carolina will not operate a new, high-risk health insurance pool for people unable to get private coverage, Gov. Mark Sanford said Friday, leaving the administration of such a program up to the federal government.

"It represents yet another extension on unfunded mandates coming from Washington to South Carolina," said Sanford, a Republican, who said he had made his decision known in a letter sent to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The high-risk pools for those unable to obtain private insurance are part of federal health care reform signed last month by President Barack Obama. States have until the end of the day Friday to tell Washington if they'll operate their own pools or defer implementation and oversight to the federal government.

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Illegal Immigrants Sought in Arizona Deputy Shooting

Law officers backed by helicopters hunted gunmen in Arizona's desert early Saturday after a sheriff's deputy was wounded by suspected illegal immigrants believed to be smuggling marijuana, officials said. The violent episode came amid nationwide debate over the state's tough new immigration law.

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