dimanche 6 octobre 2013

John Michael Talbot has had a link to an interview as status

Lon Pearson
As an Evangelical "ordained" in the "Anglican entity" I felt excited and blessed with the election of Pope Francis and now feel disappointed reading this interview. Words like "Convert you? Proselytism is solemn nonsense. You have to meet people and listen to them." sounds nice but the charge of proselytism has been used to condemn Christians for trying to convert people to Christ. In the New Testament and throughout much of the history of the Church, proclamation (even to strangers) was done with urgency and without apology. I know His Holiness is a very intelligent and compassionate man with far more experience in the world than I have...yet the primacy of a "listening process" may eventually hurt the witness of the Roman Catholic Church as it has damaged the faith of the Episcopal church.
MR
John Michael, on the whole it was a very good interview. But, for all his pastorally good intentions, this Pope sometimes is a theological train wreck. Please explain to me, for instance, what he meant by this, and how it squares with Catholic moral theology: "And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place."
CR
I think hes the best pope since pope john paul the second
John Michael Talbot
lon (pearson) - there is a vast difference between evangelizing and proselytizing. catholics have always disapproved of the latter, and promoted the former.

MR - good catholic moral theology recognizes the difference between subjective and objective truth, and that the church's obligation is to preach the universal objective truth, but a person is only accountable for what they know. there is also a difference between natural law and formal revelation. natural law can attain to many revealed truths, as st. paul describes in his letter to the romans. on that level there can be accord between believers and non believers on many things. ( take for example, stopping at a red light, or other areas of basic law and courtesy) that is what he is addressing. but notice he is also quite clear, and personally challenging regarding the interviewer's lack of faith in revelation from god in christ, but always in a respectful and non judgmental way that shares his own views, and does not foist them on others. that itself demonstrates the balance we must all walk in this increasingly secularized world. the entire context must be recognized, or lifting only one part of the interview can do violence to its real intent and content. thanks.

isn't it interesting how we sometimes only hear or see part of a person's statements based on our own concerns and fears? i encourage everyone to look at the entire interview, and then comment on specifics in that context. this is the "listening" we need for real evangelization of non believers.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
accords between believers and non-believers from natural law are one thing, but today we must fear accord between them (if you call modernists believers) against natural law! That interview was one of the drops, I am either without pope or it is someone like Michael I or Alejandro IX.
John Michael Talbot
hans- that is your right and your choice. for myself, i understand and support what he is saying fully. "i stand with peter."
CR
Being a mentally challenged person i cant say that i comprehend that interview its profound but im not so sure that other religions have the right to try to change other peoples faiths this comes from experience with a former friend steve is a diehard evangelistic protestant who believes that catholics are hellbound however im told that i should forgive ignorant people
John Michael Talbot
CR - you understand very well!!
Hans-Georg Lundahl
"Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good."

Even if they are wrong and might be corrected by discouragement?

"And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place."

Everyone has a duty, but not every man has a right to follow his own idea therein.

He is however right one should not have a society where everyone (or most) is supposed to crush his conscience.

Was it another one or the same (Italian original) where he said salvation still comes from the Jews?

[turning aside to CR]

CR why not give your evangelical friend a few reading tips?

Great Bishop of Geneva
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/
John Michael Talbot
hans- i am afraid that you have missed the point. please understand the catholic magisterial context of the pope's informal statements. check out the catechism of the catholic church for clarification. your fears are fully covered there. thanks. no need for further comment or debate.

[and to someone else]

geeze! i am amazed at a how off point we get in response to an interview. we miss the forest for the trees. we all want to be pontiffs somehow. let him be the pontiff. he's actually earned it! it is good to dialogue in love. it is quite another to criticize constantly. that seems one of the real problems of our culture today. we are polarized, and grid locked, not only in washington, but in our churches too. jesus must grieve!
Hans-Georg Lundahl
"please understand the catholic magisterial context of the pope's informal statements"

I am not saying a Pope informally says he dislikes pistaccio ice cream I conclude he is not Pope because he is wrong on ice cream.

I have a problem figuring how someone who is wrong about theology when informal should be considered right about it when formal.

Besides, if a bad man is hampered by Catholic Theology while doing the formal stuff, he can use charisma plus loyalty to the office and do his bad stuff on informal ways.

"we all want to be pontiffs somehow."

Well, no. I am informal. Precisely as Chesterton was. If you take that as wanting to be pontiff somehow, you are in fact acting as if the pontiff was as much pontiff when being informal.

That is very bad Canon Law.

It is not I who envy the Pope - if such he be - his position. It might even seem as if he envied me a position of informal influence which I have earned by writing (and by getting read by some 300.000 or somewhat less readers [should obviously be page hits, not readers as reading people] by last time I checked).

How many pontiffs are trying to be Chestertons as well?

vendredi 4 octobre 2013

Miriam Carey, RIP!

I was guarding the Royal Palace in Stockholm during military service. I was told: first shout, then shoot into air, then shoot into leg. Kill only as last resort.

If she was driving a car, shooting a tire to stop it might have been a thing. If there had been explosives, killing her would not have stopped explosion, unless she was to trigger it. If she had been delaying it as one delays explosion of hand grenades, killing her would have triggered explosion.

I am so reminded of the scene in Syldavia where Tintin faces the pistol of a King who lost his Sceptre "Don't shoot, Your Majesty, I am no Anarchist!"

But maybe the guards were more into the latest film than into Hergé.

jeudi 3 octobre 2013

Diverging p o v on Latino Immigrants in US (with European parallels)

friend (status)
I do not understand why so many in Latin America cross the border to come to the USA. I think many Latin Americans regret having came to this country.
CP (friend of friend, Orthodox)
They see it as a land of freedom and opportunity.
friend
This is not the 10s. :D
GP (quoting him, not sharing his p o v)
Because they are shameless, arrogant, hateful invaders, who want to reconquer America. Of course, they will turn the US into just another Latin American shithole.
CP
[@friend] I am not quite sure what you mean by that and your friend GP certainly sounds hateful.
friend
America 'used' to be the land of freedom and opportunity. Don't mind him- he has Asperger Syndrome.
CP
To us living in American true we see the depths our country has shrunk to. But when you think of those people living in Latin American countries America is like a piece of heaven.
JS
Because the wage they earn here pays for a lot more at home than it pays for here.

It's about ruthless wage suppression and upper middle class scorn for the white working class:

National Data | January Jobs: Half of New Jobs Go To Immigrants—96% (!) To Hispanics
By Edwin S. Rubenstein on February 4, 2012 at 12:23am
http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-january-jobs-half-of-new-jobs-go-to-immigrants-96-to-hispanics


"For years, farmers throughout the U.S. had access to an abundant, cheap, mostly unauthorized labor force streaming in from Mexico. Workers say they often had to beg growers for even a few hours of work and their wages were low."


Crops Rotting in the Fields, Part MLXXVII
By Steve Sailer on September 27, 2013 at 2:47pm
http://www.vdare.com/posts/crops-rotting-in-the-fields-part-mlxxvii


How is anyone supposed to live on $8 an hour in California? Simple, they only board there, the money is spent in Mexico:

"But farmworkers, whose incomes are some of the lowest in the nation, have benefited, their wages jumping in California to $2 to $3 over the $8 hourly minimum wage and even more for those working piece rate. "


A shortage of $8 an hour labor is an economic catastrophe. What a nightmare for those growers, paying 2 or 3 dollars more an hour! And they even had to hire American high school students! It must be very mortifying for them to have to deal with working class whites of their own nationality.
GP
[@CP:]

Why don't you look at what your wonderful latinos are doing to the US--wage suppression, drug dealing, drug trafficking, litter, drunk driving, rape of little girls, school drop out rates, illiteracy, plus the dispossession of the historic American nation.
HGL, myself:
Drug dealing and drug trafficking? A pretty bad ting when it comes to coke, I am not sure I agree when it's only marijuana (or rather, I do not).

Illiteracy and school drop out rates? In Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religions (unlike Jewish, Muslim and Protestant ones) that is not a sin. (And I am socially dropping out of Academia, after five years' worth of studies in philology mainly classical - if you will call me and Hilaire Belloc drop-outs).

Dispossession of the Historic American Nation ... moot point. During 19th C. US dispossessed a Historic Hispanic Nation.

Litter and drunk driving? Granted. You might add quarrelling. Rape of little girls? I do not think that is at all typical for them.

Wage suppression - now we are talking. Immigrants (meaning the usually so thought of), women at work and machines at work are wage suppressing.

Strawberries ... in Denmark French pick them. In France Spaniards and Portuguese pick them. In Southern Spain Moroccan residents pick them. That is the price for them being cheap to the local consumer.

They cannot be correctly picked by machines.

And in France we have a problem when farmers are so sympathetic to nationalist points of view as soon as the workers without papers have been there just long enough to ask for rights in the French social system. And so sympathetic to the right to choose one's country up to that point.

Reminds me of Anne Frank: so well hid from the Germans until a neighbour boy fell in love with her.
CP
They may be doing everything you say but that does not give you the right to call them "shameless,arrogant, hateful invaders." And not all Latin Americans are like that.
GP
They are shameless, arrogant, hateful invaders. Have you seen how they march demanding that the US completely open its borders? Have you seen Mexican (as well as other) Latin American politicians demand the US cease all border controls? Have you heard of organizations like MECHA? Have you heard the Marxist junk taught in "hispanic, latino, and chicano" studies? Do you know they call us "gringos" IN OUR OWN COUNTRY? How they don't care that they don't speak English.

And no, Hans, please take your cultural Marxism elsewhere. There was no historic hispanic nation within the borders of the present-day USA. Spain planted a flag in those regions, and largely left. That flag was then replaced by a Mexican flag. The only people there where Indians who were not at all hispanic. So, no, take your hispanic racism and anti-americanism elsewhere. Mexicans and Central Americans do not belong in the US, are not wanted, and should bugger off.

Also, yes, Mexicans especially have a huge predilection for raping little girl (who they view as slutty--exactly like Muslims), littering, and driving drunk. And no, marijuana is not nice, cute, or cool. And I don't want them trafficking it, dealing it, or using it.
CP
Gabriel for calling Hans racist you certainly reek of it. They call us "gringo" because we are. Mexicans and Central Americans are not wanted. Well neither are racist haters but they are still here. And drug trafficking, rape of little girls and drunk driving is by no means limited to Latinos. White people do it just as often and so do blacks.
MJO
Not all Latin Americans are as you describe, Gabriel... you can't judge ALL of them for the bad ones that you describe and decide to focus on.. Some are here, legally, and are good, hard-working, upstanding citizens. There are plenty of white and black Americans who do many of the things you describe as well, should we judge the entire country's population based on the rapists, sex offenders, murders, thieves, etc? Also, not all Latin Americans are Mexican... jus' sayin'.
HGL
I am not a cultural Marxist. It is true that Spain and later México planted their flags in country that was more Indian than originally Hispanic. But I think Apaches, though hating Spanish-Mexicans, learnt Spanish sooner than English. I also think they had a worse deal under the US Americans. It is furthermore true that in Tejas a US Citizen was invited to help with plantation by the government - on the understanding he bring French speaking Catholics from New Orleans. Instead he brought Ulster Scots Calvinists. That is the background to what Santa Ana was fighting for. Not meaning he necessarily used the best means ...

[@friend]

- I will not excuse him on the ground of his having Asperger Syndrome.

For one thing I do not believe there is such a diagnosis. If I were believing it and were a doctor, I would be all too tempted to label him with that, just to get even with him, and as rubberish as the three main symptoms are, it would be easy for me to do so with my bias, which as a doctor I would of course not acknowledge, and maybe for my consciousness sake do some lame efforts to balance with strained efforts at objectivity.

[Rubberish is not a misspelling for rubbish, but a mistaken wordchoice for rubber like elastic. Caoutchouc.]

For another thing, such words are not excusable. A real fool would not be able to say them, and thus his words cannot be excused as folly, of any kind.

If he calls me an Antiamerican racist, it is not totally false. I am for Irish, Scotish and Welsh against English. I am for the French in the Seven Years War (not sure that squares totally with my Austrian loyalties.) I feel the two parts of the English nation have been governed badly - as far as ultimate loyalties go - since before the Reformation, like since the Hundred Years war when they burned St Joan of Arc (oh, in a purely nationalistic way of looking at it, the people who did so were probably French - but they identified themselves as English subjects) and since 1401 when Owen Glendower was hung and quartered and when Lollards were brought under the same kind of Inquisition that later burnt St Joan of Arc - unique for Latin Church insofar as it was just under King and Bishops, not at all under Papacy except indirectly as long as these were subject to Popes.

[Two parts, i e I am now going on to the other part:]

Later US helped Juárez overthrow Maximilian of Austria (and that Antiamerican and Antijuarez stance does square with my Austrian loyalties, whatever be the case with Seven Years War), and later still install the infamous Porfirio Díaz, the anticlerical and the exterminator of Yaquis.

Pancho Villa and up to the régime that killed the Cristeros, that was US that had its finger there. Overthrowing Austria and setting up the heavily Marxist and Masonic Czechoslovakia was Woodrow Wilson's doing.

When the Russian Revolution started, two powers launched the Communists. They were perhaps already at War with each other, at least they were a few months later. Willy of Potzdam lauched Lenin. Woodrow Wilson launched Trotski.

[@GP again:] You called me a Marxist? Are you aware how the Marxists in France hate and mistrust me, when they are honest and when they do not hide behind pitying me as a mental case? Are you aware that while PRÉSENT boycotts my articles, probably because I am for Gipsies and Caroline Parmentier not at all for them, the kind of people they leave me to live off despise me equally for not hating Germans and for not hating each and every Fascism, especially Franco, along with Nazism? Are you aware of how many Catholics consider me a Protestant because I refuse their cultural Marxism of Evolutionism and Heliocentrism and Freudianism?

This is not at all saying I would get along better with Hispanics than with English - I do not and English is indeed part of my culture - as is Swedish.

Oh, one thing more, being against people for their illiteracy is cultural Marxism. You, GP, are the Cultural Marxist. Even if it existed before Marxism, Victorianism and Judaism and Prussianism are not very much better things than Marxism. If anything Marxists, though worse in immediate violence agaist the Church, are so far better as they have a care for the poor. So, if not Marxist, at least you are pre-Marxist.

A Catholic does not despise a man or a woman for not going twelve years to school while growing up, and a Catholic does not despise a man or a woman or child for begging.

Because, you know, one standard complaint of Prots of the worst sort as well as Jews and Marxist (I noticed Mark Steyn whom you like is Jewish), against the Church of Christ is not sending every child to school to learn the three R's. And another one is allowing married people to "litter" the world with paupers. By not condoning birth control, of course.

It is not anti-Turkish racism to be against the High Porch. It is not anti-American racism to be against much that US has historically stood for. When Chesterton interviewed Mussoloni, this man had not yet published any Carta della Razza, which was probably the infamous Galliani's idea when he came back from a butchering spree in Ethiopia in 37. Mussolini was asked what he thought of racism and eugenicism, back in 35. Note this was one year before even Hitler became actively racist. And Mussolini answered he despised racism and eugenicism as a Protestant fad.

It was. Two states in US, two states in Canada, my own poor old Sweden, all of them were braving Casti Connubii. It was of course also an Evolutionist fad and a Modernist fad. And probably still is. And every state which so far carried out that tyranny was a Parlamentarian democracy. Franco and Salazar never went so low (unless Salazar encouraged lobotomy before US did), and when Chesterton heard that answer and wrote it in his book about Rome, Germany had one year to wait before that madness and Italy three years. Though they were fascist states.

Of course fascism is inferior to the old Monarchies like, especially, Austria. But it is superior, in some of its forms and some of the stages of the other forms, than certain things that go on today.