America's Hoochie Mama

What is it about children's events that causes America's First "Lady" to dress like a ghetto ho?  Here she is yesterday at a children's White House Christmas (they wouldn't call it that, but we will) party:

and here's the hoochie mama at the Kids' Choice Awards:

One never expected class from this lot, but America should not expect to see its First "Lady" in outfits that get some women arrested for soliciting.  Maybe she needs another vacation -- or a man.

An Ironic Ecumenism: The Global War on Christians (Part 2)

If I asked you to name the country that has witnessed the single greatest outburst of anti-Christian violence in recent years, you'd probably guess somewhere like North Korea or an Islamic country such as Egypt.

You'd be wrong. The answer is India. As John L. Allen tells us in his new book, "The Global War on Christians," in 2008, "a series of riots [in the state of Orissa] ended with as many as five hundred Christians killed." Even more shocking than the number of those killed was the way they were killed: "many were hacked to death by machete-wielding Hindu radicals."

By the time the violence ended, "thousands more were injured, and at least fifty thousand were left homeless."

Unlike North Korea or Saudi Arabia, the perpetrators were not government officials but private individuals and groups, acting with the implicit and sometimes explicit approval of local officials.

Thus, after a nun was "raped, marched naked through the streets and beaten," local "police sympathetic to the radicals discouraged the nun from filing a report and declined to arrest her attackers."

Read more at The Christian Post >>

Traditional Liturgy Flourishing in the Bible Belt

A South Carolina parish demonstrates that reverent, beautiful liturgies—in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms—are possible in a modern American parish.

 

Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Taylors, South Carolina

This September marked the sixth anniversary of the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, the motu proprio of Pope Benedict XVI that provided juridical recourse to Catholic laymen interested in receiving regular access to the traditional Latin Mass and the sacraments. Since the document went into effect, what results can be seen in the United States and Canada in terms of the availability of Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form? 

The Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei keeps a comprehensive list of locations in which the traditional Latin Mass is available. At last count, in the 191 dioceses in North America, there are about 485 parishes that offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form with some frequency (monthly, twice-per-month, or weekly), with 335 parish locations offering it weekly. 

In North America there are 75 parish locations that offer daily access to the Extraordinary Form. Of those locations, 38 are in the care of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and 13 are provided for by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. That leaves 24 locations run by dioceses or religious communities (such as the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius in Chicago) where the Mass in the Extraordinary Form is offered daily. 

One such parish is thriving in what may seem to some to be the least likely of places—what is often referred to as “the buckle of the Bible Belt,” Greenville, South Carolina. Prince of Peace Catholic Church, located in Taylors, SC, is a diocesan parish with nearly 2,000 families and an evangelical liturgical approach that is beginning to draw national and international attention. 

Read more at The Catholic World Report >>

Vatican and Bodleian Libraries Launch Online Archive of Ancient Religious Texts

Website funding from Polonsky Foundation includes Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible and aims to put 1.5m pages online

Radcliffe Square, Oxford University. The Bodleian Library, together with the Vatican, is putting thousands of religious texts online. Photograph: Alamy

From The Guardian

By Maev Kennedy

Some of the rarest and most fragile religious texts in the Vatican and Bodleian libraries, including ancient bibles and some of the oldest Hebrew manuscript and printed books, are being placed online in a joint project by the two great libraries, which will eventually create an online archive of 1.5m pages.

The website launched on Tuesday with funding from the Polonsky Foundation includes the first results of the four-year project, including the Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible, one of only 50 surviving copies of the first major book printed in the west with metal type.

Has the Asian Tiger Gone Tiger?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

When Montecore, one of two white tigers in the Las Vegas act of Siegfried and Roy, turned and almost killed Roy on stage, the reaction was that the tame and complacent beast had gone berserk.

Comedian Chris Rock was nearer the mark:

“That tiger ain’t go crazy; that tiger went tiger.”

Seems our Asian tiger is going tiger as well.

Sharply escalating its clash with Japan over ownership of the Senkaku Islands, Beijing has established an air defense identification zone over the islands and a huge stretch of the East China Sea. Before entering its ADIZ, says Beijing, all planes must now notify China.

The United States responded by flying two B-52s through the zone. Japan and South Korea sent fighter jets through, also without permission. China then sent a squadron of fighters over the islands.

Now, in a move that has startled Tokyo, the United States has advised U.S. airliners entering China’s new ADIZ to alert China. Japan considers this tacit U.S. recognition of China’s territorial claim. 

Paying in Blood: The Global War on Christians (Part 1)

Sometime in November, the North Korean regime publicly executed eighty people in seven cities across the country. In each instance, a crowd was forced to watch as ten people, their heads covered with white bags, were tied to stakes and machine gunned to death.

The "crimes" for which these people were put to death were "watching or illegally trafficking South Korean videos, or involvement in prostitution, [or] possessing a Bible."

That's right. Possessing a Bible.

Read more at The Christian Post >>

The First Sunday of Advent

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge - "Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending"