Category Archives: Christianity

The World’s Secular Saint

Celebrity, Christianity, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, South-Africa

The front page of BBC News World, on Easter Day, March 31, 2013, says it all.

On what is “by far the most religiously significant” event in the Christian calender, the world’s secular saint—a former communist, terrorist, and ever the committed statist (provided those in charge of the state apparatus are black)—garners the first, very LARGE headline:

“Nelson Mandela’s condition ‘improves.'”

The second, more modest headline, small mercies, is: “Pope delivers Easter plea for peace.”

A news headline second in line to one about an avowed, former communist—secular saint of the West Nelson Mandela—is quite an achievement.

Go Pope.

Secular Saint

The Other Brother Bedevils Obama

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Christianity, Conservatism, Media, Race

“The Other Brother Bedevils Obama” is the current column. Read it on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“‘The Bible,’ a popular new History Channel miniseries, is not my cup of tea—and not because of a lack of religiosity of which I am guilty.

This production may well work as a proselytizing device for the average reality TV consumer. Pop-productions, courtesy of the star of ‘Touched by an Angel,’ however, are less effective with those who’ve studied the Hebrew Bible—perhaps the greatest literary work ever—in the language in which it was written.

Interesting, though, are the recognizable facial features of the actor who plays the antagonist in the series.

James Poniewozik of Time magazine has pointed out, sarcastically, that ‘a raft of viewers–including noted Biblical scholar Glenn Beck–claimed that the show’s version of Satan bore a striking resemblance to’ Barack Obama.

Their dark foreboding excepted, the facial features of the actor who plays Satan in ‘The Bible’ do resemble Obama’s.

Moroccan actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni is well cast in the role of ‘The Bible’s’ Prince of Darkness. As expected, Mehdi Ouazanni as Satan looks sinister. However, while the contours of Ouzaani’s face bear a striking likeness to Obama’s, the president usually takes care to face Americans—a people who take everything at face value—sunny side up only.

He may be a man of many masks, but President Obama’s face is generally bereft of the pall of evil that blankets Beelzebub’s face in ‘The Bible.’

There was an exception big media failed to notice, because of the providential prism through which they view (and filter) Barack Obama.

Quite recently, Obama let the very darkness that blackens Ouzaani’s face in ‘The Bible’ deform his own features. This happened during the National Prayer Breakfast, in the course of Dr. Ben Carson’s keynote address.

The Breakfast took place before the Republicans commenced a ‘slobbering love affair’ with Dr. Carson, an accomplished and affable African-American, who serves as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. …

… Was anyone watching the president’s face during The Other Brother’s Prayer-Breakfast remarks? Well before Dr. Carson addressed the collapse of other ‘pinnacle nations’ before America, through ‘moral decay’ and ‘fiscal irresponsibility,’ an ugly expression enveloped the president’s features, Dorian-Gray style. See for yourself. …

The complete column is “The Other Brother Bedevils Obama,” now on WND.

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UPDATE III: Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel? (Opus Dei Smears)

Christianity, Conservatism, Democracy, Gender, Pop-Culture, Religion, Socialism

The following is from the current column, “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on LRC.COM:

“NO TO A ‘SUPERPOWER POPE.’ Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed.

Out of the papal conclave and into the limelight charged the vainglorious Dolan (who, it has to be said, harbored hopes of becoming pope). He then suctioned himself to the television cameras, American style. No other cardinal elector granted interviews on emerging from the Sistine Chapel; they were enjoined to secrecy.

Not the American cardinals. According to the Associated Press, these prolix self-promoters held daily press briefings near the Vatican to a room packed with reporters and television crews.

This was vulgarity, not transparency.

Not for nothing was the vow of silence once considered a test of character and spirituality in Christianity and in other faiths. This universal value has been inverted by American pop culture and pop religion. In the US, a deeply private person is considered defective; a blabbermouth who does and says anything on camera is canonized. …

… American public life is such that even our pick for pope (Dolan) struts his stuff like a “Jersey Shore” reality star.

MORE on why “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ON THE RACK,” in “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “The Pope and the Injustice of Social Justice” by Jack Kerwick:

…some initial reports of his views on “social justice” most definitely do not sound fine and good. …Whether used by so-called secular “progressives” or Catholic clerics, the call for social justice is the call for a larger, more powerful, more intrusive government. That is, it is the demand for a government that is capable of and willing to confiscate the legally owned resources of some citizens so as to “redistribute” them to others. When social justice is the order of the day, anything other than a robust, activist government is not an option.
It is crucial for everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to grasp this: social justice and liberty are mutually antithetical.

UPDATE II (15/3): Father Bob Kind of Agrees.

sistine

UPDATE III (3/16): Via a LewRockwell reader of “Spared the Sins of a ‘Superpower Pope’” comes this link to a smear of Pope Ratzinger, for opposing the “Injustice of on Social Justice” (see Update I above, for Jack Kerwick’s critique).

The new pope Francis I, it would appear, champions the evils of social justice theory and liberation theology.

He and Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

What the Obamas imbibed from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ for the past 20 years was Black Liberation Theology. “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” reads a statement of “doxology” on the Church’s site. The church is proud of its separatist “Black Value System.”
Only just retired, Pastor Wright is as central to the Church as is Africa. His “Talking Points” are prominently plastered on Trinity United’s website. There, Wright states that this diverse “doxology” is of a piece with “Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.” (Spot the blanked-out Americans.) A black person in America, moreover, is deemed outside his traditional homeland.

UPDATE II: ‘We Have a Pope’ (Thankful That He is Not The American)

America, Christianity, Natural Law, Religion

Such is the power and majesty of the Catholic Church that the excitement over the election of the new Vicar of Christ is sweeping the world.

All I can say, as an admirer of the Church, is this: I hope the new Pope is not The American (@ 11:08 am.)

More to come.

UPDATE I: Thankful That He is Not The American.

Argentine Italian Jorge Bergoglio, the new Pontiff, is Right on Church doctrine; Left on “social- justice” issues.

UPDATE II: Via Srdja Trifkovic:

Many of us non-RC traditionalist all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation. In the end it turned out to be rather good. Pope Francis, the first non-European Bishop of Rome since Gregory III (d. 741), is universally described as “modest” and “moderate”—which is much preferred to the dreaded “bold” or “courageous,” in the sense that those words are used by the global media.
“He lives like a monk in a small apartment, travels by bus, and detests all vanity,” Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro told me when he heard the news. His Grace has visited Buenos Aires repeatedly in recent years as the Orthodox Diocesan Administrator, but he has not met Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who was mostly in Rome on those occasions. “I’ve heard from many local people, however, both lay and clergy, that he radiates a burning faith,” says the Metropolitan and adds that his simplicity and compassion for the poor go hand in hand with doctrinal firmness.