Furman University: A Beachhead for Truth-Seeking

Two North Carolina retirees foster the creation of a model program at Furman University.

Campus (Furman Mall fountains), Furman University

From The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
By Jane S. Shaw

What can be done about the ideological tilt at colleges and universities?  At times, it seems as though the Ivory Tower will be forever lost in a fog of political correctness and collectivist dogma.

Yet there have been some positive developments. A number of donors—individuals and organizations—are finding that they can make a difference in the fight to restore objective analysis and the search for truth. Through their efforts, small islands of intellectual rigor and appreciation of the foundations of Western civilization in our universities are popping up, even in bastions of rigid anti-Western thought.

President Kennedy's Secret Society Speech

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."

~ Thomas Jefferson

In this incredible audio recording of  President Kennedy addressing the American Newspaper Publishers Association,  he warns of secret societies that are the real power in global affairs.  Many believe his intent to expose and dismantle the secret workings of the Federal Reserve led to his murder.  Whatever the President's purpose behind these words, they stand as a striking rebuke to the secretive, manipulative and destructive, Marxist thug who currently occupies that once noble office.

Calvin Coolidge, Commander In Brief

By George F. Will

Before Ronald Reagan traveled the 16 blocks to the White House after his first inaugural address, the White House curator had, at the new president’s instruction, hung in the Cabinet room a portrait of Calvin Coolidge. The Great Communicator knew that “Silent Cal” could use words powerfully — 15 of them made him a national figure — because he was economical in their use, as in all things. 

Were Barack Obama, America’s most loquacious president (699 first-term teleprompter speeches), capable of learning from someone with whom he disagrees, he would profit from Amity Shlaes’s new biography of Coolidge, whom she calls “our great refrainer” with an “aptitude for brevity,” as when he said, “Inflation is repudiation.” She says that under his “minimalist” presidency, he “made a virtue of inaction.” As he said, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.” During the 67 months of his presidency, the national debt, the national government, the federal budget, unemployment (3.6 percent) and even consumer prices shrank. The GDP expanded 13.4 percent. 

Read more at The Washington Post >>

 

Al Jazeera Hires K Street to Lobby Congress

By Cliff Kincaid

Apparently on the defensive over its unorthodox entry into the U.S. media market, Al Jazeera has hired a high-powered lobbying firm on Capitol Hill to stave off an investigation of the curious transaction with former Democratic Vice President Al Gore. 

The firm, DLA Piper, represented Al Jazeera in the acquisition of Gore’s Current TV, has an office in Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, and is also active in the “Islamic financial services industry” in the Middle East. 

“Al Jazeera America is assembling a K Street team to advocate for its cable news channel,” reports The Hill. Current TV was purchased from Gore and other prominent Democrats, including Richard C. Blum, husband of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. Gore reportedly got $100 million out of the $500 million deal.

Read more at NewsWithViews >>

 

Pope Benedict's Homily for Ash Wednesday 2013: "It is Never Too Late to Return to God"

Vatican Basilica
Wednesday, 13 February 2013

The English translation is by Vatican Radio

Venerable Brothers,
Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin a new Lenten journey, a journey that extends over forty days and leads us towards the joy of Easter, to victory of Life over death. Following the ancient Roman tradition of Lenten stations, we are gathered for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The tradition says that the first statio took place in the Basilica of Saint Sabina on the Aventine Hill. Circumstances suggested we gather in St. Peter’s Basilica. Tonight there are many of us gathered around the tomb of the Apostle Peter, to also ask him to pray for the path of the Church going forward at this particular moment in time, to renew our faith in the Supreme Pastor, Christ the Lord. For me it is also a good opportunity to thank everyone, especially the faithful of the Diocese of Rome, as I prepare to conclude the Petrine ministry, and I ask you for a special remembrance in your prayer.

The readings that have just been proclaimed offer us ideas which, by the grace of God, we are called to transform into a concrete attitude and behaviour during Lent. First of all the Church proposes the powerful appeal which the prophet Joel addresses to the people of Israel, “Thus says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (2.12). Please note the phrase “with all your heart,” which means from the very core of our thoughts and feelings, from the roots of our decisions, choices and actions, with a gesture of total and radical freedom. But is this return to God possible? Yes, because there is a force that does not reside in our hearts, but that emanates from the heart of God and the power of His mercy. The prophet says: “return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting in punishment” (v. 13). It is possible to return to the Lord, it is a ‘grace’, because it is the work of God and the fruit of faith that we entrust to His mercy. But this return to God becomes a reality in our lives only when the grace of God penetrates and moves our innermost core, gifting us the power that “rends the heart”. Once again the prophet proclaims these words from God: “Rend your hearts and not your garments” (v. 13). Today, in fact, many are ready to “rend their garments” over scandals and injustices – which are of course caused by others – but few seem willing to act according to their own “heart”, their own conscience and their own intentions, by allowing the Lord transform, renew and convert them.

This “return to me with all your heart,” then, is a reminder that not only involves the individual but the entire community. Again we heard in the first reading: “Blow the horn in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly! Gather the people, sanctify the congregation; Assemble the elderly; gather the children, even infants nursing at the breast; Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her bridal tent (vv.15-16). The community dimension is an essential element in faith and Christian life. Christ came “to gather the children of God who are scattered into one” (Jn 11:52). The “we” of the Church is the community in which Jesus brings us together (cf. Jn 12:32), faith is necessarily ecclesial. And it is important to remember and to live this during Lent: each person must be aware that the penitential journey cannot be faced alone, but together with many brothers and sisters in the Church.

Finally, the prophet focuses on the prayers of priests, who, with tears in their eyes, turn to God, saying: ” Between the porch and the altar let the priests weep, let the ministers of the LORD weep and say: “Spare your people, Lord! Do not let your heritage become a disgrace, a byword among the nations! Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”(V.17). This prayer leads us to reflect on the importance of witnessing to faith and Christian life, for each of us and our community, so that we can reveal the face of the Church and how this face is, at times, disfigured. I am thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the Church, of the divisions in the body of the Church. Living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry is a humble and precious sign for those who have distanced themselves from the faith or who are indifferent.

Photo By Gregorio Borgia

“Well, now is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). The words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians of Corinth resonate for us with an urgency that does not permit absences or inertia. The term “now” is repeated and can not be missed, it is offered to us as a unique opportunity. And the Apostle’s gaze focuses on sharing with which Christ chose to characterize his life, taking on everything human to the point of taking on all of man’s sins. The words of St. Paul are very strong: “God made him sin for our sake.” Jesus, the innocent, the Holy One, “He who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21), bears the burden of sin sharing the outcome of death, and death of the Cross with humanity. The reconciliation we are offered came at a very high price, that of the Cross raised on Golgotha, on which the Son of God made man was hung. In this, in God’s immersion in human suffering and the abyss of evil, is the root of our justification. The “return to God with all your heart” in our Lenten journey passes through the Cross, in following Christ on the road to Calvary, to the total gift of self. It is a journey on which each and every day we learn to leave behind our selfishness and our being closed in on ourselves, to make room for God who opens and transforms our hearts. And as St. Paul reminds us, the proclamation of the Cross resonates within us thanks to the preaching of the Word, of which the Apostle himself is an ambassador. It is a call to us so that this Lenten journey be characterized by a more careful and assiduous listening to the Word of God, the light that illuminates our steps.

In the Gospel passage according of Matthew, to whom belongs to the so-called Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to three fundamental practices required by the Mosaic Law: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. These are also traditional indications on the Lenten journey to respond to the invitation to «return to God with all your heart.” But he points out that both the quality and the truth of our relationship with God is what qualifies the authenticity of every religious act. For this reason he denounces religious hypocrisy, a behaviour that seeks applause and approval. The true disciple does not serve himself or the “public”, but his Lord, in simplicity and generosity: “And your Father who sees everything in secret will reward you” (Mt 6,4.6.18). Our fitness will always be more effective the less we seek our own glory and the more we are aware that the reward of the righteous is God Himself, to be united to Him, here, on a journey of faith, and at the end of life, in the peace light of coming face to face with Him forever (cf. 1 Cor 13:12).

Dear brothers and sisters, we begin our Lenten journey with trust and joy. May the invitation to conversion , to “return to God with all our heart”, resonate strongly in us, accepting His grace that makes us new men and women, with the surprising news that is participating in the very life of Jesus. May none of us, therefore, be deaf to this appeal, also addressed in the austere rite, so simple and yet so beautiful, of the imposition of ashes, which we will shortly carry out. May the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and model of every true disciple of the Lord accompany us in this time. Amen!

A Godly Man in an Ungodly Age

 By Patrick J. Buchanan 

 

“To govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

With those brave, wise, simple words, Benedict XVI announced an end of his papacy. How stands the Church he has led for eight years? 

Pope Benedict's Abdication of the Petrine Office

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Like so many throughout the world, we felt shock and ineffable sadness on learning of our Holy Father's abdication today.

The quiet, scholarly Bavarian Pope has been a great and historic helmsman for the bark of Saint Peter.  With his restoration of the Extraordinary or Tridentine Mass, he has healed wounds that festered for decades and ended nearly a half century of turmoil and alienation that followed the Second Vatican Council; he has built trust and collaboration between the See of Peter and the churches of Constantinople and Moscow; he has healed divisions between Anglicanism and Catholicism and provided a bridge across which disaffected Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestants could return to the historic Church and keep the beautiful patrimony of their traditions; he has ensured faithful translations of the Roman Missal and reverent liturgies, he has reminded Catholics of the "hermeneutic of continuity" and restored our beautiful traditions and devotions.  With superb ecclesiastical appointments, personal example, brilliant teaching and the invocation of a special Year of Faith, he has refocused a bureaucratic and self-focused Church into a dynamic, renewed and evangelical Catholicism that is reaching millions in Africa and Asia, while offering a radical, counter-cultural vision to the youth of historically Christian nations.  He has spawned a wealth of vocations among generous young people who know the emptiness and the despair of hedonism and secularism and want to live their lives, like that of their Pope, in radical service to Jesus, the Gospels and the salvific mission of the Church.  Perhaps the Holy Father's greatest gift is that of a teacher.  In countless letters, encyclicals, homilies, reflections and books, Pope Benedict has presented the Word of God, difficult theological issues and doctrine  in ways that are not only clear and relevant to modern men and women, but in ways that profoundly touch their hearts and compel action.

It was shocking to learn that for the first time in over 700 years a Pope will abdicate his position as Supreme Pontiff.  We believe that popes and monarchs are far more than chief administrative officers, important for what they do, but rather God-chosen leaders, spiritual leaders, important for what they are and represent.  Pope Benedict is Christ's Vicar on Earth and the successor of Saint Peter, the first Pope, but he has shouldered that awesome responsibility with humility, kindness and a profound love for the Church and all of its members.  

We wish he would stay and continue a dutiful and brilliant papacy for many, many more years;  but even in relinquishing the Petrine Office, this gentlemanly and holy Pope provides new insights about life lived radically in service to Christ and His Church.  He has acted with humility and as a loving shepherd not only for her more than a billion professed members, but to all mankind who, whether they recognize it or not, have been entrusted to his care and are the objects of his love, prayers and service.

We know that the Holy Spirit will provide the Church with the right Pope for the years ahead, but the 265th link connecting that papacy with all those before it, right back to Saint Peter, will always be remembered for his brilliance, holiness, glorious restoration and renewal.  Thank you, Holy Father, for your example, faithful teaching, for all that you did to restore and renew Christ's Church for a new and challenging era in salvation history.

May God richly bless you and honor you, in this life and the next, for being a good and holy shepherd.