Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, Have Mercy on Me
Today is the feast day of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 25, 1970. These very brave men and women were martyred for the True Faith in England and Wales between 1535 and 1679, and they are representative of hundreds of Catholics in these countries who went to their death rather than to renounce their Catholicism.
John Pridmore, a reformed gangster from England, talks elquently about Saint Margaret Clitherow in the above video, and her life is typical of these brave champions of Christ.
Father Edward Hinds Found Slain In Rectory
Father Edward “Ed” Hinds, the pastor of Saint Patrick Church in Chatham, New Jersey, was found slain early Friday 
morning by parishioners in the rectory when he failed to celebrate the 8:00am Mass.
This morning there was a congregation of roughly 300 parishioners that attended the 8:00 am Mass the day after the slaying. It was a somber and quiet mood as the parish remembered their dear priest who was the only pastor at the church and he also worked at the parish school.
Year In Review Of The American Catholic
We here at the American Catholic are celebrating our one year anniversary by reflecting on our favorite posts of the last 12 months.
Today it is my turn to contribute my favorite postings.
Enjoy!
What Is An American Catholic – Zach
The Scary Thing Is: We Really Mean It – DarwinCatholic
Fr. Emery of the 10th Tennessee Regiment – Donald McClarey
Being Reasonable Doesn’t Always Work – Chris Burgwald
Moloch: A Call for a More Sensitive Reappraisal – David Curp
The Flames of Dissent and Discord
Politicians make asinine statements all the time, but sometimes there is one that stands out from the crowd for its sheer cluelessness, duplicity and perversity. Patrick Kennedy, yep, one of Teddy Kennedy’s sons, a Democrat member of Congress from Rhode Island, lambasted the Church for not falling into line behind ObamaCare. Here is a statement that he made to CNSNews.
“I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person–that right now we have 50 million people who are uninsured,” Kennedy told CNSNews.com when asked about a letter the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had sent to members of Congress stating the bishops’ position on abortion funding in the health-care bill.
The British Grenadiers
Something for the weekend. I have always found this tune to be catchy, even though more than a few of my ancestors fought against British Grenadiers! In the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries a grenadier was a soldier who carried little bombs, think stereotypical black anarchist bombs, and threw them at enemy positions, often in sieges. The bombs eventually fell out of military use, until they were revived in the hand grenades of the Twentieth century. However grenadiers, the tallest and strongest men in a regiment, were still usually grouped together into an elite company and were often held in reserve until their use was needed to turn the tide of a battle. Whole regiments of grenadiers, most notably in the Royal Army the Grenadier Guards, were sometimes formed. The song The British Grenadiers is a fitting tribute to those men who were often involved in fighting of the most desperate sort.
Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.
But of all the world’s great heroes, there’s none that can compare.
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadiers.
Poverty: Separating Morality from Politics
As you can clearly see, I have been bitten by the writing bug. This will be my last post for a little while, so I wanted to make it a good one. Starting Monday my contributions to the discussion will be sporadic at best for at least a week.
Consider it yet another fulfillment of my promise to certain commentators here to get back to economic issues so we can continue our disagreements after so much agreement on life issues and the liturgy 
Installation Scene From Becket
In honor of the Anglican initiative of Pope Benedict this week, a reminder of the history of Catholic England, when Catholics were willing to stand against the State if need be to protect the Honor of God. Becket (1964), although inheriting the historical howlers that existed in the play, and were known by the playwright Jean Anouilh who wisely preferred a poetic story to prosaic fact, (Becket was Norman not Saxon, Henry II was not a crowned juvenile delinquent, the armor, as is usual in medieval epics, is all wrong for the period, etc.), this classic film helped awaken in me a desire to learn about the history of the Church. With masterful performances by Richard Burton as “the holy blessed martyr” and Peter O’Toole as Henry II, the film brought alive to me as a child the high Middle Ages. The installation sequence brought home to me the important role of ceremony, tradition and symbolism in our Faith, a lesson I have never forgotten.
Political Parties Must Stand For Something: Sarah Palin Endorses Doug Hoffman
In the 23rd New York Congressional District special election, Sarah Palin has tonight endorsed the pro-life Doug Hoffman, running on the Conservative Party ticket, against Dede Scozzafava, the pro-abort leftist Republican, a race that I posted about here earlier in the week. Sarah Palin’s statement is as follows:
Beyond Capitalism and Socialism
This essay is also on my blog, and I hope it will spark some constructive and respectful discussion.
I tend to think I am doing something right if people from both ends of the political spectrum are rabidly attacking me. The notion that one ideological camp has a monopoly on truth and justice is repugnant to me, even if I lean one way or another at times. At the same time, I never enjoy seeing civil discussion degenerate into uncharitable attacks.
Attachment to labels is part of the problem I encounter when putting forth alternative economic ideas. People on the political right are as agitated by the mere word “socialism” as people on the left are by the word “capitalism”. It doesn’t help that both sides hold radically different definitions of each word.
53-47
Future historians may mark this vote as the day Obamacare died. Harry Reid was unable to have the senate invoke cloture and end debate on a bill which would dump 250 billion in medicare reimbursements over 10 years from the health care bill and throw it into the general budget deficit with no hint as to how this quarter of a trillion dollars would be paid for. In order to invoke cloture Reid needed 60 votes, he got 47. 13 Democrats joined all 40 Republicans in refusing to invoke cloture.
The whole purpose of this shell game was to improve the image of the health care bill by reducing the cost by 250 billion dollars. I guess the senators who voted against ending debate realize that most voters would be able to see through this inept attempt to reduce the cost by shuffling a mountain of red ink into the general deficit abyss. Continue reading
It's A Depression, Thus Sayeth The Veep
During these dismal economic days, we can always rely upon the comic stylings of Joe Biden to raise our morale, just as the American public during Depression I looked to the Three Stooges for comic relief. I assume Jolly Joe in the above video was thinking of the old Reagan line from Reagan’s 1980 campaign for President: “A Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A Depression is when you lose your job. A Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his!” Needless to say, the brighter lights in the Administration were reaching for extra strength pain relief as they saw the human gaffe machine use the “D” word, especially since they have been attempting to convince a sceptical public that the recession is ending.
What makes this especially hilarious is that Newsweek, the unofficial house organ of the Obama administration, ran a puff piece on Biden last week entitled “Why Joe is No Joke” . Hint Joe, when you are a politician and one of the most sycophanic press journals on your side runs a story arguing that you are not a joke, that is most definitely not a good sign. Continue reading
Much to the Chagrin of the Powers that be, the Tide is Further Turning Toward Catholicism Thanks to Traditional Minded Anglicans
The dream of orthodox minded Catholics and Anglican liberals came true on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 as the Vatican announced that traditional minded Anglicans, clergy included, would be welcomed into the Catholic Church with their own Anglican style rite (though not exactly a rite of their own.) The promise Jesus made that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church is now once again being made manifest for those who chose to recognize it (Matthew 16:16-20.) What King Henry VIII started Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have salvaged. The English and their former empire (if they wish) can return home again.
Since many conservatives may now leave, religious liberals too have high hopes as the worldwide Anglican Communion can possibly fulfill their wish of unbridled liberalism. However, it is becoming plain to see that it is for all intents and purposes the liberal’s wish is now turning into a death wish. The irony of reading statements by traditional Anglicans thanking God for Pope Benedict’s statement coupled by liberal Catholic posters in the dissident National Catholic Reporter asking to be saved from Rome spoke volumes. Even with fawning mainstream media coverage, every liberal Protestant denomination has seen their numbers plummet in recent years, some as much as 50%, while Catholicism, with all the negative banner headlines, continues to grow around the world.
The Archbishop of Canterbury seems a truly tragic figure cut from a Shakespearean play trying to hold together what a murderous king wrought. It couldn’t be done and so we may now see the implosion of the Anglican Communion, especially in the only region that had any vibrancy, Africa. The African and Asian continents have long been the hope of the One True Church. Fortunately, the embers of truth can also be seen in North & South American seminaries and even in Europe, where the Faith had seemed all but dead.
Anglicans And Catholics To Reunite, Reaction And News Roundup
I will be updating this post as often as I can throughout the day [Last update at 10:01pm CDT]. I’ll be reporting on reactions and news concerning this groundbreaking development that came from the Vatican this morning. The Vatican issued a note explaining a new provision in an upcoming Apostolic Constitution that will allow for a structure to be in place to receive Anglicans and Episcopalians into the Catholic Church. Basically a corporate reunion!
To read the full text of this announcement from the Vatican click here.
To read the full text of the joint press release of the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Gerard Nichols, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, click here.
Reaction and news from around the world [all emphasis mine]:
Last Update of the day at 10:01pm CDT (Earlier updates further down this post)
Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London. Offers a brief history of what transpired the last couple of years between Anglo-Catholics, and those inside the Vatican, both faithful and dissident Catholics.
“Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lawn [Interesting choice of words, but nonetheless accurate in my opinion] after manoeuvres undertaken by up to fifty bishops and begun two years ago by an Australian archbishop, John Hepworth [The leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion].”
Church Opens Doors To Anglicans Seeking Reunion With Rome
This morning William Cardinal Levada announced at the Vatican that Pope Benedict XVI has introduced a canonical structure in an upcoming Apostolic Constitution that allows for corporate reunion with Anglicans by establishing Personal Ordinariates.
A Personal Ordinariate would be similar to Military Ordinariates which have been established in most countries to provide pastoral care for the members of the armed forces and their dependents throughout the world.
Here are the highlights from this mornings announcement:
- It provides for the ordination as Catholic priests of married former Anglican clergy.
- Historical and ecumenical reasons preclude the ordination of married men as bishops in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
- The Constitution therefore stipulates that the Ordinary can be either a priest or an unmarried bishop.
- The seminarians in the Ordinariate are to be prepared alongside other Catholic seminarians, though the Ordinariate may establish a house of formation to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony.
- These Personal Ordinariates will be formed, as needed, in consultation with local Conferences of Bishops, and their structure will be similar in some ways to that of the Military Ordinariates.
Cardinal Levada has stated:
Vista Users Rejoice!
With the release of Windows 7, we PC users can only hope that Gates & Co got it right this time and that we can kick Vista, the worst computer operating system devised by fallen man, to the gutter. Here is a good article setting forth some of the more annoying features of Vista, and here is an article which explains why Vista never was accepted by many PC owners. Windows 7 seems to be getting good reviews from the testers, but we will all be able to find out on our own soon enough. Continue reading
Party Loyalty and the New York 23rd Congressional District
I have been a Republican as long as I have been old enough to pay attention to politics. I have usually found the Republican party to be a much closer fit to my conservative political views than the Democrat party, and therefore my party allegiance was not a difficult choice for me. It also helped that most members of my family in the paternal line have been adherents of the GOP since the Civil War, although in the case of my late father it was more out of a strong dislike of the Democrat party which he used to call …, actually, since this is a family blog I will not repeat some of the epithets my father used in regard to the party of Jackson. Thus I am a Republican both by conviction and heredity.
However, party loyalty is a two way street. In order for a political party to deserve the loyalty of its supporters, the party must field candidates that broadly stand for what most party members believe in. In the special congressional election for 23rd district in the New York, the GOP powers that be in that district have singularly failed to do so. They have nominated a liberal Democrat in Republican clothes as the standard bearer of the Republican party. Michelle Malkin in this column here succinctly states why the GOP nominee Deede Scozzafava is running in the wrong party.
The Search For The Historical Jesus: The Gospel According to Whom? (Part I)
Jesus of Nazareth: Liar, Lunatic, Lord—or Historical Victim?
A student at a Catholic university—if it faithfully abides by Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris and Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University—will constantly be informed that modern philosophy has committed “crimes of reason.” This philosophical shift, a consequence of a movement borne in a period called “the Enlightenment,” has tremendously affected all the other disciplines of academia, particularly the natural and social sciences. This reflects my own experience and how I was educated to think.
Yet this bad philosophy that has pervaded all of academia was largely unexamined in how it affected Christian theology in my academic experience. Certainly, we took notice of its more self-evident effects; the most obvious being the work of dissenting theologians supporting women’s ordination, who didn’t believe in Hell, who argue for the moral legitimacy of artificial contraception, and so forth—in other words, manifestations where the underlying philosophy is clearly not Catholic—but there never was any exhaustive attempt to uncover how “bad philosophy” has infiltrated Christian theology. In many ways, the question was addressed, but only in broad strokes at points where the question at hand was not the focal point. In other words, this question was addressed insofar as it can be by talking about it considering another perspective or point of interest. It was not addressed for me except by a sole professor by the name of Fr. Robert Barringer, to whom I am deeply indebted.
Government Cannot Love
Archbishop Charles Chaput writing in First Things this month:
We need to rededicate ourselves to the work of Christian charity and the Catholic soul of our institutions. Charity is a duty for the whole believing community. But is also an obligation and privilege for every individual member of the Church, flowing from our personal encounter with the mercy of Jesus Christ. Government cannot love. It has no soul and no heart. The greatest danger of the modern secularist state is this: In the name of humanity, under the banner of serving human needs and easing human suffering, it ultimately, ironically – and too often tragically – lacks humanity. As Benedict foresees in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est: Continue reading
Into the Minefield
October 27, 1913. The Great War was soon to begin in Europe and Leo Peter Craig was born into this world in Everett, Massachusetts. He was five years old when his mother died, leaving his father with five young children to raise. Under these unusual circumstances, his Aunt, Veronica Craig, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield Kentucky, received a dispensation from her vows in order for her to help raise her brother’s children. For 18 years she dedicated herself to this task, becoming a second mother to young Leo. After the children were all raised, she returned to the religious life. Leo attended the LaSalle Academy of the Christian Brothers in Providence, Rhode Island. Going on to Providence College, he obtained his BA in 1935, at which time he entered the Dominican novitiate at Saint Rose’s in Springfield, Kentucky. He completed his philosophy courses at the Dominican House of Studies in River Forest, Illinois, and his theological training at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He was ordained to the priesthood on May 21, 1942.
Arise Ye Russian People!
Something for the weekend. The Arise Ye Russian People sequence from the film Alexander Nevsky. A true work of genius by Sergei Eisenstein who somehow pulled off the feat of making a film about an Orthodox Saint, an aristocratic Prince and pillar of the Church, and ladling it with Communist and anti-religious propaganda, and yet having the final result not be laughably absurd. The film was among the first efforts of Stalin to rally traditional Russian patriotism against the looming threat of Nazi Germany. Poor Eisenstein found himself in the doghouse soon after the release of the film due to the Nazi-Soviet pact. After the onset of Operation Barbarossa, the film was once again released and played to packed houses throughout the war. The song was composed by Sergei Prokofiev. The lyrics roughly translated are :
Arise, ye Russian people,
to glorious battle, to a battle to the death:
arise, ye free people,
to defend our beloved country!
All honour to the warriors who live,
and eternal glory to those slain!
For our native home, our Russian land,
arise, ye Russian people!
Best Candidates for Employee Owned Companies
Having at times been a bit critical of my co-contributor Joe’s enthusiasm for Employee Owned Companies (EOCs) and “economic democracy” in general, it seems only fair that I spend a moment looking at the good sides — and there do definitely seem to be good sides to the employee owned company model.
Being entrepreneurially-minded, employee ownership is certainly not something that I’m in principle opposed to, it’s more that I think it probably works well in certain situations, but is not a panacea.
Where It Doesn’t Work
It seems to me that certain business characteristics will make it particularly hard for EOCs to prosper. This does not mean that employees at such companies should not have company issued stock, but the amount of stock distributed to employees by the company should probably be limited to the traditional 10-20% maximum.
Companies which require large amounts of capital investment (early stage startups which are trying to grow very fast, research-intensive companies) are generally not going to be good candidates. The traditional return for investment is stock — either by the general investing public through a public stock offering, or through specific investors in a privately held company. Such companies often reserve a portion of stock for issue to employees as an incentive (or sell to them at a discount via stock options) and have company performance based compensation, but their need for capital makes it impossible for them to reserve 50%+ of company stock for employees.
Continue reading
First Catholic Mass at Pensacola
August 15, 2009 marked the 450th anniversary of the first Catholic Mass at Pensacola, Florida. Earlier Masses had been said during exploratory expeditions in the continental U.S., but this was the first at a settlement, albeit one that would last for little more than a year. Dominican priests of the Tristan de Luna expedition celebrated Mass on August 15, 2009, Julian calendar, near Pensacola Florida. The Dominicans were Fathers Pedro de Feria, as vicar-provincial of Florida, Dominic of the Annunciation, Dominic de Salazar, John Macuelas, Dominic of Saint Dominic, and a lay brother.
As the Blessed Virgin Mary is the patroness of the US, it was fitting that the date was the Feast of the Assumption. A reenactment occurred with a Mass on August 15th of this year in Pensacola. The King and Queen of Spain visited Pensacola in February as part of the celebrations.
In 1959 the Knights of Columbus erected a cross, pictured above, at the site of the first Mass in Pensacola. 450 years is a huge span of time in human affairs, and it is the Mass, the everlasting sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, that unites us with those Catholics so long ago, the early pioneers of our Faith in our Land.
CNN and HuffPo Feeling Heat Over False Racist Quotes to Rush Limbaugh
[Updates at the bottom of this post as of 4:21pm CDT 10-16-2009 AD]
This week there has been a whirlwind of character assassination done by the mainstream media to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh’s bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams (American) football team of the National Football League (NFL). They have been accusing Mr. Limbaugh of saying several racist quotes without confirming their existence. All the alleged racist quotes have been debunked by Snopes earlier this week as well as being denied by Mr. Limbaugh. Additionally many in the mainstream media have been unable to find any evidence of these allegations.
But today there has been a sudden realization of regret when the heat turned up on their yellow journalism. Regret that some elements of the mainstream media were involved in libel and slander.
The most prominent of the yellow journalists are liberal news anchors Anderson Cooper and Rick Sanchez of the left-of-center CNN, sports columnist Bryan Burwell of the liberal St. Louis Dispatch, and finally the liberal Huffington Post (HuffPo) blog.
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