Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Summorum Pontificum Contact Search

Through Jimmy Akin I found this website which is putting together a global list of Catholics interested in the Traditional Latin Mass. What's great about it is you can see interest in a particlar region, or state.

For instance, there are currently 45 Catholics in the State of Washington who have expressed a desire for the 1962 Mass through this website.

Check it out...and add your own name to the list! (Then spread the word.)

Summorum Pontificum Contact Search

**UPDATE**

So I just figured out another neat feature of the website. If you look at the list of anonymous contacts for a given area (say, Washington State), you can email any one of them by clicking on their contact ID number. For example, there are currently four people listed in the City of Tacoma. If I lived in Tacoma I could email each of them (the LumenGentleman website emails them directly; it does not give out their email address) and find out who my Trad-Friends are. :)

Pretty cool. (Now if only there were more than just myself and my wife listed in Port Orchard...)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Death Penalty

This is an interesting topic, and I've commented on it in the past.

But compare and contrast these two voices from the Supreme Court. From Congressional Quarterly Researcher, March 10, 1995 Volume 5, No. 9.

Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, from an opinion dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision denying review in a Texas death penalty case, Callins v. Collins, Feb. 22, 1994.

"Bruce Edwin Callins will be executed [tomorrow] by the state of Texas. Intravenous tubes attached to his arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses...will behold Callins...strapped to a gurney, seconds away from extinction. Within days, or perhaps hours, the memory of Callins will begin to fade. The wheels of justice will churn again, and somewhere, another jury or another judge will have the...task of determining whether some human being is to live or die.

We hope...that the defendant whose life is at risk will be represented by...someone who is inspired by the awareness that a less-than-vigorous defense...could have fatal consequences for the defendant. We hope that the attorney will investigate all aspects of the case, follow all evidentiary and procedural rules, and appear before a judge...committed to the protection of defendants' rights...

But even if we can feel confident that these actors will fulfill their roles...our collective conscience will remain uneasy. Twenty years have passed since this court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly and with reasonable consistency or not at all, and despite the effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this...challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination...and mistake...

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored...to develop...rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor...Rather than continue to coddle the court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved...I feel...obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies... Perhaps one day this court will develop procedural rules or verbal formulas that actually will provide consistency, fairness and reliability in a capital-sentencing scheme. I am not optimistic that such a day will come. I am more optimistic, though, that this court eventually will conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness while preserving fairness 'in the infliction of [death] is so plainly doomed to failure that it and the death penalty must be abandoned altogether.' (Godfrey v. Georgia, 1980) I may not live to see that day, but I have faith that eventually it will arrive. The path the court has chosen lessen us all."
I would like to point out to readers that Blackmun (the now deceased author of Roe vs. Wade) makes an appeal not to the words of the Constitution which he is paid to uphold, but almost exclusively to emotion.

Now read Scalia.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, from an opinion concurring in the Supreme Court's decision denying review in a Texas death penalty case, Callins v. Collins, Feb. 22, 1994.

"The Fifth Amendment provides that '[n]o persons shall be held to answer for a capital...crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury...nor be deprived of life...without the due process of law.' This clearly permits the death penalty to be imposed, and establishes beyond doubt that the death penalty is not one of the 'cruel and unusual punishments' prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. [H] owever, over the years since 1972 this court has attached to the imposition of the death penalty two quite incompatible sets of commands: the sentencer's discretion to impose death must be closely confined (see Furman v. Georgia, 1972), but the sentencer's discretion not to impose death (to extend mercy) must be unlimited (Eddings v. Oklahoma, 1982; Lockett v. Ohio, 1978). These commands were invented without benefit of any textual or historical support; they are the product of just such 'intellectual, moral, and personal' perceptions as Justice Blackmun expresses today, some of which...have been made part of what is called 'the court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.'

Though Justice Blackmun joins those of us who have acknowledged the incompatibility of the court's Furman and Lockett-Eddings lines of jurisprudence...he unfortunately draws the wrong conclusion from the acknowledgment... Surely a different conclusion commends itself, to wit, that at least one of these judicially announced irreconcilable commands which cause the Constitution to prohibit what its text explicitly permits must be wrong. Convictions in opposition to the death penalty are often passionate and deeply held. That would be no excuse for reading them into a Constitution that does not contain them, even if they represented the convictions of a majority of Americans. Much less is there any excuse for using that course to thrust a minority's views upon the people.

Justice Blackmun begins his statement by describing with poignancy the death of a convicted murderer by lethal injection. He chooses, as the case in which to make that statement, one of the less brutal of the murders that regularly come before us, the murder of a man ripped by a bullet suddenly and unexpectedly, with no opportunity to prepare himself and his affairs, and left to bleed to death on the floor of a tavern. The death-by-injection which Justice Blackmun describes looks pretty desirable next to that. It looks even better next to some of the other cases currently before us, which Justice Blackmun did not select as the vehicle for his announcement that the death penalty is always unconstitutional, for example, the case of the 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat. How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!"


Monday, August 27, 2007

Scouting

Sorry, two goofies in a row...

Dear Mom & Dad,

Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and are worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily, none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Adam when it happened. Oh yes, please call Adam's mother and tell her he is okay. He can't write because of the cast.

I got to ride in one of the search and rescue jeeps. It was neat. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning.

Scoutmaster Keith got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn't hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up? The wet wood didn't burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes. Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Keith gets the bus fixed. It wasn't his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scoutmaster Keith said that with a bus that old you have to expect something to break down; that's probably why he can't get insurance.

We think it's a neat bus. He doesn't care if we get it dirty and if it's hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the fenders. It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the highway patrol man stopped and talked to us.

Scoutmaster Keith is a neat guy. Don't worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Jessie how to drive on the mountain roads where there isn't a NY cops. All we ever see up there are logging trucks.

This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out to the rapids. Scoutmaster Keith wouldn't let me because I can't swim, and Adam was afraid he would sink because of his cast, it's concrete because we didn't have any plaster, so he let us take the canoe out. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.

Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we got to see how a tourniquet works. Steven and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Keith said it probably was just food poisoning from the leftover chicken. He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison. I'm so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time. By the way, what is a pedal-file?

I have to go now. We are going to town to mail our letters & buy some more beer and ammo. Don't worry about anything. We are fine and tonight it's my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster's tent.

Love, Billy, your favorite son.

Grizzly Bear



(Click on image to enlarge.)

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Praying to Saints

Having a blog as well as a Facebook account has its pros...and its cons.

The main "con" being time spent on either means less time for the other. And so it has been the past few weeks, where most of my Internet time is spent debating folks on Facebook, and squeezing in fewer posts on the blog. My apologies to those of you who visit Ab Opposito daily.

Anyhow, I figured you might be interested in some of the more recent conversations in a discussion on Catholicism and Protestantism. Here is my most recent post to a good-natured Evangelical named Reece:

Reece, praying to the saints seems to be a major hang-up for you. Seeing as how your interpretation is quite different from the Catholic interpretation, that is understandable.

Here again, then, is the Catholic response to your argument against praying to the angels and saints.

Let's go through this step by step, and you can respond to whatever you see as an error on my end.

STEP 1.

Protestants often level the charge that asking the saints for their intercession violates the sole mediatorship of Christ, which Paul discusses: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).

But asking one person to pray for you in no way violates Christ’s mediatorship, as can be seen from considering the way in which Christ is a mediator. First, Christ is a unique mediator between man and God because he is the only person who is both God and man. He is the only bridge between the two, the only God-man. But that role as mediator is not compromised in the least by the fact that others intercede for us. Furthermore, Christ is a unique mediator between God and man because he is the Mediator of the New Covenant (Heb. 9:15, 12:24), just as Moses was the mediator (Greek mesitas) of the Old Covenant (Gal. 3:19–20).

The intercession of fellow Christians—which is what the saints in heaven are—also clearly does not interfere with Christ’s unique mediatorship because in the four verses immediately preceding 1 Timothy 2:5, Paul says that Christians should interceed: "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:1–4). Clearly, then, intercessory prayers offered by Christians on behalf of others is something "good and pleasing to God," not something infringing on Christ’s role as mediator.

STEP 2.

You yourself have raised the complaint that Christians on earth are to have no contact with the dead. You equate praying to the saints with necromancy, sorcery, magic, etc., as God forbid us to do in Deuteronomy 18:10–11.

But this is a mistake on your part.

God has indicated that one is not to conjure the dead for purposes of gaining information; one is to look to God’s prophets instead. Thus one is not to hold a seance. But anyone with an ounce of common sense can discern the vast qualitative difference between holding a seance to have the dead speak through you and a son humbly saying at his mother’s grave, "Mom, please pray to Jesus for me; I’m having a real problem right now." The difference between the two is the difference between night and day. One is an occult practice bent on getting secret information; the other is a humble request for a loved one to pray to God on one’s behalf.

In Jeremiah 15:1, we read: Then the Lord said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people." Here it appears that God receives the prayers of the dead saints as a matter of course. Moses and Samuel were both known as intercessors, and Jeremiah lived centuries after both men.

Another problem you will run into following this particular argument, is the fact that Jesus did the same "abomination" of contacting the dead on the Mount of Transfiguration, when He talked to Moses and Elijah: men who had been dead for hundreds of years (Matt 17:1-3).

And just to clarify, as Christians we do not consider members in heaven to be in a state of "death." Either these folks are alive or they are not. Clearly, they are alive (more than we are). Jesus alludes to this fact when He speaks of "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacb," stating that "He is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32). Hebrews 12:1 mentions that we are surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses" -- which commentators have compared to a picture of spectators in a sports arena observing. Further proof is unnecessary.

Asking saints in heaven or angels or the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray for us is not different in essence from asking each other (those of us on earth) to pray. Mary is a lot more righteous than we are, and more alive, and with God. Angels never did sin, so they are untainted with that stain. Therefore, we can ask them to pray for us, according to the clear dictum in James 5:16.

We are not relying on the power of some "medium" (many of whom are fake to begin with, as Houdini, the Amazing Randi, and others have shown), but on the power of God. The saints can see us, hear us, and pray for us, because they are with God, out of time, and accorded the remarkable abilities that those in such situations receive as a matter of course.

STEP 3.

You also object to the practice of praying to saints because, as you put it, "The problem is asking [angels and saints] to do something rather than asking God to do something. If God so chooses to use angels to do his bidding, great, but God isn't one of those times where you should cut out the middle man."

Now this gets back to my answer in Step 1 because you seem to have a problem with intercessory prayer in general, not just in particular with saints in heaven. If our relationship with God is one where the middle man ought to be "cut out," as you suggest, then you must *necessarily* be against praying for others (you would be a middle man) or having anyone else pray for you (they would be a middle man).

But then you run into all kinds of problems, not the least of which is 1 Tim 2:1-4 (quoted again)

"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth"

Of course, this is closely followed by Rom. 15:30–32, Eph. 6:18–20, Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25 and 2 Thess. 3:1 where Saint Paul directly asks others to pray for him.

So, hopefully you are now convinced your problem is not one of there being a "middle man."

You say part of the problem is asking a saint to do something rather than asking God.

Here you provide a list of Catholic prayers to various saints with the question, "What is Saint _____ asked to do?"

But I think the misunderstanding is simply a distinction Catholics make when invoking the aid of angels and saints between a "primary cause" and a "secondary cause" -- something which has probably never been explained to you.

Let me take a shot at it.

What’s a primary cause? Just that: a first—but not a sole—cause of something else. Ultimately, God is the primary cause of everything. But he sovereignly prefers to involve his creatures in his work to various degrees, which makes them secondary causes.

So what’s a secondary cause? It is a dependent but real cause. It didn’t cause the thing all by itself, but without it, the thing wouldn’t have come to be.

Think of it this way: Michelangelo is the primary cause of the Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica. His chisel is the secondary cause. When Michelangelo carves the statue, is it he or his chisel that does the carving? The answer is both. Similarly (though with a significant difference), Michelangelo’s mom and dad were the secondary causes of Michelangelo (God, of course, being the primary cause). When Michelangelo was brought into the world, was it God or his parents that caused him to be born? Again, the answer is both.

When this relationship between primary and secondary causes is pointed out, it seems fairly obvious. Most Evangelicals, for instance, would not balk at the statement that "the apostle Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans," even though they affirm (as do Catholics) that God is the true author of Scripture. Like Catholics, Evangelicals understand that God, the primary cause of the epistle to the Romans, made Paul a secondary cause of the epistle. Yet, curiously, the idea of primary and secondary causes often gets ignored when the topic of conversation turns to the intercessory actions of the angels and saints.

Catholics recognize God is the primary cause of any and all grace or assistance we receive. But the fact that you, Reece, might pray for me and God grant me grace because of your prayer, in no way reduces Him or His action. It makes you a cooperator, a "secondary cause," of His divine assistance.

In the same way, his angels and saints in heaven.

Hope that helps.


Disclaimer: Most of what you see here was stolen from Catholic Answers, Mark Shea, or Dave Armstrong. Thanks guys! :)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Grand Opening Coming Soon!

This just in from LifeSite:
A huge new abortion clinic, said to be the largest Planned Parenthood Center in the United States, has been constructed near Chicago.
Ah, yes. Just what the Windy City needs. Another death camp where unwanted, unborn babies can be killed at the request of their mothers -- or under demanding pressure from fathers and other 'concerned' relatives.
If the 22,000 square-foot, $7.5 million facility opens, it will offer contraceptives, pregnancy tests, sexually transmitted disease testing and abortions. Officials expect to receive 8,000 patients and 10,500 visits within the first year. Of those visits, reports the Chicago Daily Herald, about 2,400 will be for abortions.
Yes, there is serious money to be made in the lucrative abortion industry. People will pay top dollar to have you kill their baby. Saving babies? Well, that's a different story.









City residents had no idea what was being constructed in the East side of Aurora, near Chicago. As Schiedler remarked in a recent report, "Planned Parenthood snuck into town." He added, "They were nearly finished building this place before we learned about it. We haven't got much time to stop them, but we're doing all we can...Planned Parenthood constructed the facility under another name, listing it as the "Gemini Medical Office Building."

"Planned Parenthood knew what they were doing," Schielder said in a press release. "Pro-lifers have stymied them before when they knew Planned Parenthood was coming to town. This time they kept things quiet until it was too late to halt construction."

Schiedler told LifeSiteNews.com, "They lied to the city of Aurora…They let the city council believe it was going to be a quiet, medical office." According to the Beacon News, however, Steve Trombley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area, said that the building would be the largest Planned Parenthood health center."

*GASP*

Planned Parenthood lied?!

That's impossible.


Monday, August 20, 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Dodging the issue

The Canadian branch of the Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) is headed up by Stephanie Gray. CCBR has just launched their own truck campaign, displaying billboard-size pictures of aborted babies on the sides of their trucks.

This has caused quite a stir among the "we-want-abortion-we-just-don't-want-to-see-abortion" crowd north of the border.

And then, there was news that a Vicki Saporta, Executive Director of the National Abortion Federation agreed to debate Miss Gray for half an hour live on Wednesday August 14th.

Well, come August 14th, Saporta backed out.

At the very last minute Saporta was replaced with a Canadian representative (Dawn Fowler), while the debate format itself was scrapped, and replaced with an interview format. According to LifeSiteNews.com:

Pro-lifers across Canada were waiting expectantly last night to hear Stephanie Gray, the Executive Director of the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR), discuss the recent abortion billboard truck campaign. She was set to be interviewed with U.S. National Abortion Federation (NAF) representative Vicki Suporta on CKNW 980's "Nightline BC."
[chop]
Stephanie Gray told LifeSiteNews.com that she had understood that she would be facing Vicki Saporta and that the show would involve some measure of debate. Thus, she was surprised to find out at the last minute that it would be a non-debate format.

Gray was allowed to speak first and also received more time on the air. The host Michael Smyth listened to her and asked questions for about 15 minutes. Fowler was then interviewed separately, such that no interaction between the two was possible. Gray tried calling the program back during Fowler's interview, but no one answered her calls.

Nevertheless Gray's pro-life case was so strongly presented that Fowler was unable to refute it afterwards. During the ten minutes in which Fowler was allowed to speak, one of her main tactics was evasion. Host Smyth was clearly dissatisfied with Fowler's responses. He asked her why she believed that the abortion images are misleading. Avoiding the issue, however, Fowler referred to the CCBR website as untrue because it claimed that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Convinced by Gray's arguments, Smyth continued to press the point, saying that the website isn't the same thing as the abortion pictures. He also noted that Gray made a good case.

This is all very typical, of course.

The pro-abortion movement has been dodging the issue for decades.

Framing the debate in terms of "choice." Using vague terminology to describe the unborn child as a "clump of cells" or the "product of conception." Lumping their activism in with the civil rights movement, as though killing her baby is a mother's right.

So this is nothing new. Last night's showdown was just another dodge, in a string of dodges.

No matter. The pictures of abortion will end abortion.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Running out of storage space?

How about this ad?



Let's set aside the pro-abortion, clothes-hanger-hysteria propaganda for now.

Look at it this way: At least they recognize which way the momentum is swinging with regard to American sentiments on baby killing.

Assumere

August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven.

In Roman Catholic doctrine, the Assumption means that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken (assumed) bodily into heavenly glory when she died. In the Orthodox church, the koimesis, or dormition ("falling asleep"), of the Virgin began to be commemorated on August 15 in the 6th century. The observance gradually spread to the West, where it became known as the feast of the Assumption. By the 13th century, the belief was accepted by most Catholic theologians, and it was a popular subject with Renaissance and baroque painters. The Assumption was declared a dogma of the Roman Catholic faith by Pope Pius XII in 1950.
























My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour; he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed;
the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.
He has mercy on those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm
and has scattered the proud in their conceit,
Casting down the mighty from their thrones
and lifting up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
to remember his promise of mercy,
The promise made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
(Luke 1:46-55)

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

How long, O Lord?

Reason #168 for the disbanding of all national bishops' conferences.

LONDON,England, August 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A book published under the auspices of an official body of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, has angered Catholics in Britain for its attacks on Pope Benedict. "Catholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical Explorations," been denounced as a "withering attack" on Pope Benedict XVI and his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. The book has been the subject of dozens of blog posts around Britain by mainstream Catholics, almost all denouncing it as an anti-Catholic Marxist diatribe.

The book is a volume of essays published by Caritas Social Action, the umbrella organization for Catholic social justice and aid organisations in England and Wales. The Caritas website says, "We are an agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and part of Caritas International."
chop

Thompson quotes one of the essays: "We may find that a particular person who calls himself a pro-life campaigner is merely an anti-abortionist. Although many of those with whom he campaigns are inspired to very positive action, he is energized only by the more negative aspects of the struggle in which he is involved. While he is convincing himself that he is motivated only by love, all that others see when they meet him is an avenger."

Another essay attacks those who try to uphold the traditional family: "Probing below the worst of the noisy rhetoric of the 'recovery of family values', one often finds a form of Christianity that is deeply connected to capitalism. Hence the association of 'traditional' families with financial as well as spiritual flourishing is made, and in one swift construction an entire capitalist economic system is also vindicated."
chop

He concludes, "How much evidence do Catholics need that the Bishops' Conference has been hijacked by left-wing activists working under the patronage of bishops who are in many cases doctrinaire socialists?"


We need no more; we have ample. And I don't mean just the Conference in Great Britain.

From Always Our Children, to the Brokeback Mountain scandal, to the verbose and worthless Faithful Citizenship the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been nothing but a thorn in the side of the Church.

Viewed in a more mystical light, it has been nothing but a thorn in crown of Our Blessed Lord.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Southwick receives positive recommendation from SJC!

The faithful of Ab Opposito will recall several posts dedicated to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals appointee, Judge Leslie Southwick, who has been stalled by Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee for months on end.

Many nominee-watchers over at Confirm Them thought Southwick would never make it past the SJC. Amazingly, last week, he was recommended by a 10-9 vote, with liberal Democrat Dianne Feinstein being the lone dissenter from the rest of her party.

By no means is the struggle over -- Southwick still has to be given an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate.

Had I the time, I would expound upon my feelings about this recent development. (This was my original intent -- but a week after the 10-9 vote, and still no essay making its way to my blog, I figured I ought to say something.)

The main themes being:

1) Thank you, Senator Feinstein.
2) Shame on the rest of you nine ideologically prejudice, rotten SJC Democrats. Rotten to the core. I don't recall Clinton facing the same opposition to his 370-something nominees.
3) Senate Republicans: Grow some backbone. Make the Dems show their hand.
4) Bush: Keep up the good fight. And how about nominating a few more good conservatives to fill some of those remaining appellate vacancies while you're at it, would you? Time is running out, Mr. President.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Bad day

I've had some pretty embarassing moments in my life.

I don't think I've had one as bad as this:

A Catholic priest faces an indecent exposure charge after police said he went jogging in the nude about an hour before sunrise.
The Rev. Robert Whipkey told officers he had been running naked at a high school track and didn't think anyone would be around at that time of day, a police report said.

He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging. "I know what I did was wrong," he said in the report.

Whipkey did not return phone messages. His attorney, Doug Tisdale, told the Longmont Times-Call that Whipkey had no comment.

Whipkey, 53, was arrested June 22 in this Weld County town about 20 miles north of Denver.

An officer said he saw a naked man walking down the street at 4:35 a.m. The U.S. Naval Observatory Web site said sunrise that day in Frederick was 5:31 a.m.

The officer said when he shined his flashlight at the man, he covered himself with a piece of clothing he was carrying.


Source.

H/T to Gerald.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Quote of the Day

This one goes to Diogenes.

"The crisis of liberal Christianity is precisely its inability to decide whether it has anything of value to give, and the language of mission is empty in the absence of an authority to do the sending."


Read the full piece here.

Rebecca Nurse

There's a powerful story recounted by Andrew Hyman at the Confirm Them blog (a blog that, IMHO, should be visited daily, btw).

I've posted Andrew's words here:

Fred Thompson recently mentioned the Salem witch trial of Rebecca Nurse, so out of curiosity I looked her up. Here, then, are a few brief remarks about Rebecca Nurse.... She was a 71-year-old great-grandmother in 1691. Some girls in Salem got sick, and so the witch-hunt began. If we look on the bright side, Nurse was well along in years at the time, which is probably the best stage of life to face such a horrible fate (i.e. after living a long and happy existence). At her trial in Boston, the jury found her not guilty, but the judge insisted that the jury reconsider that verdict, and the jury then obligingly produced a guilty verdict. The colonial governor issued a reprieve, but later withdrew it. Public outrage about Nurse's trial and execution have been credited with generating the first opposition to the witch trials. In 1711, her family was compensated by the government for wrongful death, and her excommunication was eventually revoked in 1714 --- unfortunately, her execution could not be as easily revoked. Upon being accused of witchcraft, this is what that wise old great-grandmother of seventeenth-century Massachusetts said:


"As to this thing, I am as innocent as the child unborn."

May God please bless Rebecca Nurse, a voice from our past.












How ironic are Nurse's words -- and her fate -- when read in a post-Roe America.

Slander

"The imaginary threat of the "religious right" is important because it allows liberals to complain about their victimization by religious zealots. It is not sufficient psychic compensation to be applauded wildly on Politically Incorrect and other late-night TV shows, profiled in fawning articles in the New York Times, photographed for People magazine, showered with awards, Pulitzer prizes, and other sundry tributes. Liberals insist that they also be admired for their bravery in standing up to Christians.

"Never have acts of cowardice been so lavishly hailed as raw courage. In any random month, a series of no-account actresses can be found courageously advancing their careers by attacking the Catholic Church in glossy magazines. You would think it would be difficult to be taken seriously as a martyr while being favorably profiled in Vanity Fair. But that's the beauty of modern-day martyrdom: You never have to suffer." -Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right pg. 232


Bullseye.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Prayer

"He who prays is certain to be saved; while he who prays not is certain to be damned. All the saints were saved, and came to be saints by praying; all the accursed souls in hell were lost through neglect of prayer; if they had prayed, it is certain that they would not have been lost. And this will be one of the greatest occasions of their anguish in hell, the thought that they might have saved themselves so easily; that they had only to beg God to help them, but that now the time is past when this could avail them."


Divine Father, You have given me Your Son; I, a miserable creature, give myself to You. Accept me, for pity's sake. I desire, Lord, to make up for the offenses I have committed against You, by doing all that I can to please You. I desire to love You, my God, without interest, without ceasing, and without reserve.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori

Ann Coulter

Let's be honest: the woman is pretty darn funny.

B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms, but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to the subject of education was only natural.

Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when you're half-white and half-black. What do you do? Demand an apology for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees — which is the same way federal aid works.


Bird Feeder

I received this email today.

I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed.

Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.

But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue.

Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table...everywhere.

Then some of the birds turned mean:

They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket.

And others birds were boisterous and loud:

They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.

After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore.

I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone.

I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.


Soon, the back yard was like it used to be...... quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal.


Now lets see....... our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen.

Then the illegal's came by the tens of thousands.

Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families: you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor: ourchild's 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English: Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to press "one" to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than "Old Glory" are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.

Maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.