Trooping the Color, marking the official celebration of the Queen's birthday, took place in London today. The ceremony which dates to the 17th century includes regiments of the British and Commonwealth armies.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Holy See Establishes Australian Ordinariate for Former Anglicans
From Catholic World News
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| Father Harry Entwistle |
Pope Benedict XVI has established an ordinariate in Australia for Anglicans entering the Catholic Church and named a former bishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion to lead it.
The new ecclesiastical jurisdiction, formally known as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, was established on June 15. Father Harry Entwistle, who once served as western regional bishop for the Traditional Anglican Communion in Australia, was ordained to the Catholic priesthood on June 15.
June 15, 1215 – King John of England signs Magna Carta
This excellent article makes a very important point: Magna Carta did not create new rights for the Church, barons or people anymore than did the English or American Bill of Rights. Magna Carta was a reaffirmation of rights which had existed from time immemorial among the Anglo-Saxon people, but which, as in our own day, had become disrespected. This great document merely restored the old order, the noble truth.
Our many new readers may be interested in this post about Stephen Langton, the Catholic Cardinal who wrote Magna Carta, and this excellent talk on the document by the Very Reverend Philip Buckler, the Dean of Lincoln Cathedral.
From Tradition, Family and Property
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| King John of England |
The charter of liberties granted by King John of England in 1215 and confirmed with modifications by Henry III in 1216, 1217, and 1225.
The Magna Carta has long been considered by the English-speaking peoples as the earliest of the great constitutional documents which give the history of England so unique a character; it has even been spoken of by some great authorities as the “foundation of our liberties”. That the charter enjoyed an exaggerated reputation in the days of Coke and of Blackstone, no one will now deny, and a more accurate knowledge of the meaning of its different provisions has shown that a number of them used to be interpreted quite erroneously. When allowance, however, has been made for the mistakes due to several centuries of indiscriminating admiration, the charter remains an astonishingly complete record of the limitations placed on the Crown at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and an impressive illustration of what is perhaps national capacity for putting resistance to arbitrary government on a legal basis.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Catholic Bishops Unanimously Adopt 'United for Religious Freedom' Statement
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved by unanimous vote on Wednesday a statement reaffirming the church's long standing opposition to President Obama's health care mandate requiring employers and insurers to provide free contraceptive care to employees. The group is meeting in Atlanta, Ga., for their annual conference.
The Catholic Vote Swings
There is a term from Catholic theology which aptly describes those Catholics who will again vote for the despotic thug illegitimately occupying the White House; that term is "invincible ignorance."
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According to Gallup, President John F. Kennedy garnered 78 percent of the Catholic vote. |
From National Review Online
By Michael Novak
The new wisdom is that Catholics vote just like everybody else. That purported wisdom isn’t wise.
The Catholic vote differs in four decisive ways from the Protestant, Jewish, and secular votes.
(1) The Catholic vote is concentrated mainly in the largest states in the Electoral College: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey.
(2) A larger proportion of Catholics than of any other religious group except Jews votes regularly, every election. In some jurisdictions (Chicago, Boston) Catholic voters have been known to vote at a rate of 104 percent or more when necessary, some of them after their natural deaths.
(3) In some key states, the Catholic vote, although tending more Democratic, is fairly evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. Keeping the Catholic vote for the Democrat down even to 52 percent may be enough to get a Republican elected.
And (4) — most important of all — in many states Catholic voters frequently swing between parties by margins of 3 to 6 percent. And even more in some years.
As political professionals know well, each swinger counts twice. Each takes a vote away from one column and puts it into the other. If on a national basis the 25 million Catholic votes (24 percent of all votes cast) swing by 1 million votes toward Romney and away from Obama, that gives Romney a net gain of 2 million votes in relation to his competitor, and Obama a net loss of 2 million. This year it seems more likely to be a swing of 2 million for Romney, a net loss to Obama of 4 million. And it may be even a larger swing, depending on how powerful the broad-based campaign to protect religious liberty turns out to be.
The historical record of these large swings helps to explain why the Catholic vote has gone with the winning side in so many elections since 1952. Put another way, the Catholic swing vote has more than any other decided the winner, just because it is of such significant numbers. No Democrat since 1952 (except for Clinton in 1992) has ever won the White House without a majority of the Catholic vote.
In some states, as noted above, Republicans do not have to win a majority of the Catholic vote to carry the state; they need only hold down the Democratic Catholic majority by two or three percentage points. In Pennsylvania, my home state, the rule among professionals was that if the Catholic vote for the Democrat could be held down to 52 percent, the Republican could take the state.
Percentage of Catholic Vote for Presidential Winners
1952: Eisenhower, 44%
1956: Eisenhower, 49%
1960: Kennedy, 78%
1964: Johnson, 76%
1968: Nixon, 33%
1972: Nixon, 52%
1976: Carter, 57%
1980: Reagan, 47%
1984: Reagan, 61%
1988: Bush, 49%
1992: Clinton, 47%
1996: Clinton, 55%
2000: Bush, 46%
2004: Bush, 48%
2008: Obama, 53%
(The figures above are from Gallup. In the three-way race of 1968, Nixon lost the Catholic vote to Hubert Humphrey by a margin of 59 percent to 33 percent, but managed to squeak out a victory, since much of the Southern Protestant vote went to George Wallace. In 1972, however, Mr. Nixon’s 52 percent broke the Democratic lock on the Catholic vote.)
Finally, it may be that in some years a particular factor affects a significant slice of Catholic voters more than most others — the chance to elect the first Catholic president in 1960, for instance.
And Catholics tend to identify themselves as Catholics long after they have ceased going to church (“born Catholic” or “non-practicing Catholic,” these tend to qualify their identity). The difference in voting patterns between Catholics who go to Mass at least weekly and those who don’t is in some matters (partial-birth abortion, e.g.) unusually large. In 2012, I expect the defense of religious liberty to cut as deeply against Obama as 3 million Catholic voters or more. Worth watching.
Michael Novak is distinguished visiting professor at Ave Maria University and co-author, with Jana Novak, of Washington’s God.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Will Heads Roll for the Stuxnet Leak?
By Patrick J. Buchanan Within days of SEAL Team Six’s killing of Osama on that midnight mission in Pakistan, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, reading all about the raid in the press, went to the White House to tell President Obama’s national security adviser pungently to “shut the (bleep) up.”
Leaked secrets of that raid may have led to the imprisonment for 33 years of a Pakistani doctor who helped us locate bin Laden.
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