Debt Limit: A Parody

Columbus The Catholic

“What failure! His failure towered over other men’s successes.” 

Columbus Again

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

– Joaquin Miller, 1892

By Ed Masters

The Essential Columbus

Cristoforo Columbo was the given name of the man known to the English-speaking world as ‘Christopher Columbus’ and to the Spanish world as ‘Cristobal Colon;’ his descendants living in Spain still carry this surname. He was born in the Republic of Genoa in 1451 (a scant two years before the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks) to Domenico Columbo, a middle class wool weaver and Susanna Fontanarossa.

While much has been written about Columbus over the last five centuries, he was by no means the first to step foot in the New World. American Indians had lived on the two continents and surrounding islands for thousands of years; the Vikings had landed in Canada; and the Irish under St. Brendan, the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians[1] all more than likely brushed the shores of the Americas. (The Phoenicians actually had bigger and better ships than our intrepid Genoese.)

Read more at Regina Magazine >>

Andrea Bocelli - "Ave Maria" (Schubert)

Vocations to Religious Life are Surging in England and Wales; Here's Why

Vocations to religious life in England and Wales have tripled in just eight years. Here are four reasons why

A Sister makes her final profession (Photo: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk)

From The Catholic Herald (UK)
By Mark Greaves

The number of people entering religious life has tripled over the last eight years, according to revised figures from the National Office for Vocation. Last year 64 people joined religious orders, compared to just 19 in 2004. It seems like the long decline in vocations has been reversed.

In much of Europe, the decline continues. In France, for instance, the total number of novices fell by a third from 2004 to 2011 (from 311 to 204). So what’s the secret – what is Britain doing differently?

1. Pope Benedict XVI’s visit 
 
Vocations officials say they owe a lot to Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in 2010. Sister Cathy Jones, religious life promoter of the National Office for Vocation, says it strengthened people’s faith and pride at being Catholic. “People who had been discerning a good number of years thought, ‘I’ll give this a go’,” she says.

2. A culture of vocation

Fr Christopher Jamison, director of the National Office for Vocation, says that, in the early 2000s, “lots of different people woke up to the same idea” – that is, that everyone had a vocation, whether that’s to be a priest, a religious, a single or married person. “Vocation” simply means to live out the baptismal call to holiness. A “culture of vocation” is what Catholic culture ideally should be.

This is the idea that vocations ministry is built on. And it leads directly to numbers three and four…

3. Discernment groups
 
Discernment groups have sprung up all over the country. These help people decide what their particular path to holiness will be. They come in various forms, from the national Invocation festival to the Compass programme, run by religious orders, to local Samuel groups. Many religious orders also run their own “come and see” weekends, where interested people can get a taste of religious life.

Fr Stephen Langridge, vocations director at Southwark, says: “It’s not about trying to recruit people – it’s about making people better disciples.”

The Church used to act like a recruitment agency, with adverts on posters and beer mats. That seems to be a thing of the past.

4. Vocations directors
 
Vocations ministry has expanded enormously in recent years. Fr Langridge says that when he was thinking about becoming a priest years ago he saw his vocations director just once. Now, he says, “I wouldn’t let someone apply if I haven’t spent 100 hours with them”.

Fr Jamison says religious orders used to have the idea that they should only pray for vocations. “If you did more than that it showed a lack of faith in God,” he says. Now, he explains, a “significant number” of religious orders have full-time vocations directors. That means they can engage much more with people who are interested in religious life. 

Today in History: West Saved from Islam at Battle of Tours

Precisely 100 years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in 632, his Arab followers, after having conquered thousands of miles of lands from Arabia to Spain, found themselves in Gaul, modern day France, facing a hitherto little known people, the Christian Franks.

There, on October 10 or 11, in the year 732, one of history’s most decisive battles took place, demarcating the extent of Islam’s western conquests and ensuring the survival of the West.

Prior to this, the Islamic conquerors had for one century been subjugating all peoples and territories standing in their western march—including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. In 711, the Muslims made their fateful crossing of the straits of Gibraltar, landing on European soil. Upon disembarkation, the leader of the Muslims, Tariq bin Zayid, ordered the Islamic fleet burned, explaining that “We have not come here to return. Either we conquer and establish ourselves here, or we perish.”

This famous Tariq anecdote—often reminisced by modern day jihadis—highlights the jihadi nature of the Umayyad caliphate (661-750), the superpower of its day. Indeed, as most historians have acknowledged, the Umayyad caliphate was the “Jihadi-State” par excellence. Its very existence was coterminous with its conquests. Its legitimacy as “viceroy” of Allah was based on subjugating lands in the name of Allah.

Once on European ground, the depredations continued unabated. Writes one Arab chronicler regarding the Muslim northern advance past the Pyrenees: “Full of wrath and pride” the Muslims “went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made those warriors insatiable… everything gave way to their scimitars, the robbers of lives.” Even far off English anchorite, the contemporary, the venerable, Bede, wrote, “A plague of Saracens wrought wretched devastation and slaughter upon Gaul.”

Read more at FrontPage Magazine >>

 

Is Red State America Seceding?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight to war after the last breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 this time only yawned. Let them go, all agreed.

The spirit of secession, the desire of peoples to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon. 

Will Lindsey Graham Face a Serious Primary Challenge?

By Javan Browder

It’s becoming more and more clear that Senator Lindsey Graham is on shaky ground with the GOP electorate in SC.  Multiple county GOP groups have recently passed censure measures against him, and by overwhelmingly large margins, with other counties soon to vote on similar censure measures.

A recent poll conducted by Landmark Communications and Rosetta Stone Communications showed that Graham only reaches 42% of the vote against his field of primary challengers, and still falls short of 50% against any of them in a head to head matchup.

Adding to voter frustration over Graham, is his recent vote in favor of cloture on the Senate version of the Harry Reid amended CR bill which allowed full funding for Obamacare, something the House had stripped out in its version before sending it to the Senate. The cloture vote required at least 60 votes, so it could not pass without at least 6 republican votes, and once cloture was invoked it meant that the bill would be voted on as is with the Obamacare funding and only need 51 votes to pass.  Many conservatives believe the process was a setup between the powers that be in both parties. That was the main purpose of Senator Ted Cruz’s 21 hour filibuster, to try and bring attention to the fix. Though Graham did vote against the actual bill, by voting for cloture, many conservatives feel that he cast a de-facto vote in favor of Obamacare funding.

Read more at South Carolina Conservative Dot Com >>