Sunday, October 5, 2008
Alternative Candidate on The Financial Crisis
Doubt this guy will get in, but he's speaking sense on the current financial crisis.
Waking Up to the Archbishop of Canterbury
This morning I woke up to the Archbishop of Canterbury, or rather, the voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams on the radio. In truth I did wake up to someone else as well, but I suppose that my own moral relativism, my own clouded vision and my own immoral and self-destructive tendencies led me there. That's one very good reason I was unable to receive Communion today. Woe to me if I had, but frankly, woe to me anyway right now.
A lot of Catholic bloggers are very scathing about Rowan Williams. The interview did grate with me, not because of anything he really said, but just because he didn't really seem to be saying anything. It starts to get to a point when you wonder whether the BBC, asking for the Church's view of any moral issue, should just cut out the Church of England and go straight to a Christian religious leader who will give them a straight answer to a straight question. The destructive side of his difficulty in really speaking out about morality is the fact that the Church of England is or was meant to be a strong voice of moral leadership in the UK.
The problem is one of credibility. Deep down I believe that what we all want is truth. We don't really want our own truth, or our own gospel, because even if we could convince ourselves we had it, it would not satisfy us. Truth liberates and sets us free. The Holy Father's words today about the destructive consequences of sin and the unhappiness caused when souls abandon the friendship of Christ ring true to me. Does the "freedom" we seek from our own egoism and self-will bring us happiness? Speaking as someone with recent experience of it, I can tell you it doesn't. Sin brings us suffering, guilt and sometimes an unutterable sense of dread. Only in turning to Christ in prayer and the Sacrament of Penance can we see the desolation wrought by sin and know the mercy of God.
For the sake of the nation's soul, and indeed the nation's souls, I wish Rowan Williams would say something along those lines, would speak truth rather than dodge and evade stating Church teaching on any moral issue for fear of offending someone, because the more he evades doing that, the less people respect him. We are all of us, crying out for the truth, not the comfortable truth, not the nice and PC truth, but the Truth that sets us free. Pope Benedict XVI, now gloriously reigning is not afraid of speaking the truth to his flock and we or most of us, respect and love him all the more for it.
More News on the Iraq Nightmare
From Zenit:
2 More Christians Murdered in Iraq
MOSUL, Iraq, OCT. 5, 2008 (Zenit.org)
Two Christian men were killed Saturday in Mosul, contributing to a "climate of panic" among the small community there, reports AsiaNews.it.
Hazim Thomaso Youssif, 40, and Ivan Nuwya, 15, were both killed in the Iraqi city, contributing to a long list of attacks against Christians in the war-torn country. Youssif was ambushed in front of his clothing store, and Nuwya was shot to death in front of his home, located near the local mosque of Alzhara.
A source for AsiaNews in Mosul reported that there is a "climate of panic" among the Christian community there, and that the city "has become the holocaust of the Christians."
On Sept. 2 a Christian doctor was kidnapped and killed in Iraq, even after his family had paid the requested ransom. The same happened to another Christian only two days earlier.
In February, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was abducted outside of a church where he had led the Way of the Cross; it was a Friday of Lent. During the kidnapping, his three companions were killed.
For days there was no news from the archbishop or his kidnappers. Finally, after a phone call from the assailants, the archbishop's body was found March 13 in a shallow grave. He was 65.
Forty-seven Christians were killed in Iraq in 2007, including three priests.
The Christian community has already dwindled to less than half its number from five years ago. Some 1 million Christians lived in Iraq in 2003; today that number is barely 400,000.
Pope Benedict XVI on Man's True Freedom
From Zenit report:
“Nations that at one time were rich with vocations are now losing their identity, under the deleterious and destructive influence of a certain modern culture,” the Holy Father noted in his homily.
“There are those who, having decided that ‘God is dead,’ declare themselves ‘god,’ taking themselves to be the singular artificers of their destiny, the absolute lord of the world," he continued. "Clearing God away and not awaiting salvation from him, man believes he can do as he pleases and poses himself as the sole measure of himself and his action.
“But when man eliminates God from his horizon, when he declares that God is ‘dead,’ is he truly more happy? Does he truly become free?
“When men proclaim themselves absolute owners of themselves and lords of creation, can they really build a society where freedom, justice and peace reign?”
The daily news amply shows” that with this vision “the will to power, egoistic interests, injustice and exploitation, violence in all its forms” spread. “The end of all this is that man finds himself alone and society more divided and confused."
Yet, "evil and death do not have the last word, but Christ is the victor in the end. Always!”
80 Year Old Man Arrested in Shopping Mall In US for Anti-Iraq War T-Shirt
And if you don't believe her, here's more evidence to back up her theory:
Paxman Vs Rice
Well, objectively speaking Condeleeza Rice holds her own when confronted by BBC's resident pitbull. Less objectively speaking, it doesn't seem that her arguments hold up that well. We consistently heard and still hear that the 'War on Terror' is an effective war protecting us from 'evil' men who want to harm us. The war in Iraq and it seems the war in Afghanistan are clearly both unwinnable and unending.
The illegal war in Iraq, the subsequent illegal imprisonment and torture of people yet to be deemed guilty in a court of law, the shedding of so much innocent life in foreign lands as well as the blood shed by US and UK soldiers in the unwinnable 'War on Terror' will haunt us all for years and as such these tragedies do not lend themselves to her argument.
Pope John Paul the Great urged both the US and UK administrations to heed his advice against an unjust war in Iraq. He clearly was not convinced by their arguments. Our former UK Prime Minister, clearly still pondering his conversion to the Catholic Faith at the time, listened to the wise words of the heroic and saintly Pontiff and swiftly ignored them and cast them aside in favour of the US President, who it seems, had also already made up his own mind on the matter.
It does seem that the US/UK alliance are very good at pointing out the sins of "terrorists" and "evil men" and "bad" regimes yet so often resort to their methods of fear-mongering, terror and brutal aggression in order to defeat the threat. According to Rice's view, the policies of her administration have saved many of us "innocents" from havoc and terror. That really is impossible to discern. We'll never know whether Guantanamo Bay stopped another terrorist atrocity from hitting London. But are the lives of UK residents and the American people more valuable and "innocent" than the lives of Iraqi men, women and children, still suffering unto this very day from the havoc unleashed at the start of the fatal invasion?
After the debacle of Abu Grahib and the torture methods of waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay, I find it nothing less than miraculous that the majority of the Islamic population of Great Britain have not risen up in arms against the Government.
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