Veterans Day, Armistice Day, Remembrance Day

Father Rutler: A Time for Choosing

Today a long-forgotten crucifix will be placed once again in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. It will hang in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel near Bernini’s great tabernacle. Bernini himself would have admired the work of the anonymous artist, for its mediaeval style anticipated the spirit of the more exuberant baroque.
 
The crucifix was carved seven hundred years ago and was the object of devotion in the original Constantinian basilica built in the fourth century. The torso and legs are seven feet long and are in one piece made from the trunk of a walnut tree. It was placed in the new basilica in 1626 and survived many vicissitudes, including the Sack of Rome when the invaders used the old basilica as a horse stable and mockingly vested the corpus in one of their uniforms.
 
Gradually, it was forgotten after it was removed to make room for Michelangelo’sPietà and ended up in a remote and virtually unreachable chapel. High technology has restored it, as it suffered discoloration and termite damage. The sort of stereo microscopes used in microsurgery identified the many layers of paint and varnish before they were meticulously removed.
 
The outstretched arms are six-and-a-half-feet wide. Even if the Lord had not been nailed to the cross, his arms would be open to all who approach him, as they were when he ascended into glory. “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
 
Our nation is weary, and the ennui is especially taxing and belabored by a long election campaign. Events have forced us to examine the condition of our culture, and how much we have ignored Christ’s call to come to him. The degradation of our institutions, reflected tellingly even in the way people dress and speak, is palpable and has taken its toll on our schools and governments and even our churches. This is a time, rarely matched in our national annals, for choosing between conversion and tragedy. To choose the tragic path is to mock our Lord, and our demoralized culture is already well on its way to masquerading Christ Crucified in comic vestments.
 
Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, to this very week, Bishop John Carroll penned a prayer for the new nation. As the first bishop in the United States, cousin of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an esteemed friend of many Founding Fathers, he stood on a terrain high enough to survey the looming dangers and salutary prospects of the day, as he prayed for a government “encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality.” Our perspective is the same today, only with more souls both at risk and offered benevolent promise.

All Saints Day - The Litany of the Saints

Here is a beautiful Piddflicks video to commemorate today's All Saints Solemnity.  This is an ancient prayer of supplication through Christ, to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all the Angels and Saints in heaven.

Pat Buchanan: Hillary’s Watergate?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

After posting Friday’s column, “A Presidency from Hell,” about the investigations a President Hillary Clinton would face, by afternoon it was clear I had understated the gravity of the situation.

Networks exploded with news that FBI Director James Comey had informed Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, which he had said in July had been concluded.

“Bombshell” declared Carl Bernstein. The stock market tumbled. “October surprise!” came the cry.

The only explanation, it seemed, was that the FBI had uncovered new information that could lead to a possible indictment of the former secretary of state, who by then could be the president of the United States.

Father Rutler: Truth Versus Spin

There was a time when debates consisted in measured arguments, logical in syntax and respectful of the opponent. One thinks of the earlier, elevated exchanges between G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, whose differences of belief about almost everything—including the most important things: religion and politics—were imaged in Chesterton’s corpulence and Shaw’s emaciation. When Chesterton said that Shaw looked as if there had been a famine in the land, Shaw said that Chesterton looked like its cause. Then they dined with laughter, for they were bonded by the conviction that there are high ideals that are objective, even if they disagreed about what they were.
 

When prejudice and sentiment replace love of truth, discourse yields to shouting. Serious conversations have given way to “talking heads” shouting rehearsed slogans at each other, not letting facts stand in the way of opinion. This is why a prominent media figure recently lamented that “journalism is dead.”
 

The irony is that this degeneracy of discourse is in the name of free speech, when it actually disdains such freedom. The power of an argument exists only in the exercise of power itself: might makes right. “But wisdom is justified by her children” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:35). Every tyrant tries to defeat truth with drums. It is the consequence of ideology usurping logic. The decay of logic began when men confused the two.
 

The triumph of the will over the intellect was a subtle attitude even among such sophisticated mediaeval theologians as William of Ockham and Duns Scotus. Of course its most violent and vulgar expression was in Islam, but it leaked into modern attitudes through cynical people like Nietzsche and Freud who did not think themselves religious at all. All that may seem obscure, but you meet it daily in the “spin doctors” of TV talk shows and newspapers.
 

Einstein said that National Socialism took over Germany by suborning the media, the universities, and the courts of law. That corruption has free play in our time, when you can tell what a television channel will report simply by which one it is, when college students burst into tears when a lecturer says something that contradicts their conceits, and when judges render decisions according to their political allegiance.
 

This mentality is “Voluntarism.” It is a corruption of voluntas, which means will or desire, just as racism is a corruption of race, and sexism is a corruption of sex, and militarism is a corruption of the military. Our Lady was the opposite of the voluntarist: “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” And her Son, conceived by that selfless surrender to truth, redeemed all creation with the inner dialogue of truth with truth: “Not my will but thine be done.” Jesus was not a talking head. We know all this because the Evangelists were not spin doctors. 

Pat Buchanan: Anti-Catholics & Elitist Bigots

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Will Hillary Clinton clean out the nest of anti-Catholic bigots in her inner circle? Or is anti-Catholicism acceptable in her crowd?

In a 2011 email on which Clinton campaign chief John Podesta was copied, John Halpin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress that Podesta founded, trashed Rupert Murdoch for raising his kids in a misogynist religion.

The most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are Catholic, railed Halpin: “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations…”

The United States Navy's 241st Birthday