December 21, 2012 4 Comments
Speaking of failure:
Our experiment of godless society has failed. We have tried to run our government by godless policies. We taught our children a godless worldview. Our biggest mistake was subjecting hundreds of millions of people to this failed experiment for so long, without recognizing or correcting its failures.
Worth a read in full in the Christian Post.
September 9, 2012 1 Comment
iafrica.com reports:
President Jacob Zuma urged religious leaders on Saturday to continue promoting social cohesion in the community.
“We urge the religious sector, in the memory of Sister Bernard [Ncube], to continue promoting social cohesion and stability in families and communities.
“We were truly pleased with the swift response of religious leaders to the tragedy of 44 people who were killed in Marikana last month,” Zuma told mourners at Ncube’s funeral in Soweto.
He commended religious leaders for their involvement in the Marikana tragedy and the work done by the SA Council of Churches’ through its Bench Marks Foundation in producing a report on the state of the mining sector in the Rustenburg area.
“We cannot achieve transformation or sustainable development working alone. We are therefore encouraged by the support of the faith-based sector as we continue to build a truly non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society,” he said.
Ncube’s funeral was held at the Regina Mundi Catholic church in Soweto. She died last Friday at the age of 80, having played an integral role by organising women in the 1970s and ’80s, in what was then called Transvaal.
She also assisted in establishing the Federation of Transvaal Women and later became that organisation’s president.
She was the former mayor of the Westrand Municipality and member of Parliament from 1994.
“Her passing has also brought into sharp focus, the immense contribution and role of the church in the struggle for liberation and human rights in our country,” Zuma said.
He said South Africa produced exceptional men and women of the cloth who fulfilled Biblical scriptures through bravely using the church as a site of struggle to free the people they ministered to.
These included among others Beyers Naude the founder of the Christian Institute, Archbishop Dennis Hurley, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Alan Boesak, Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Father Albert Nolan and Reverend Frank Chikane.
He said these leaders realised the need for a new theology which took account the deplorable living conditions of the majority and the need for their total liberation from colonial oppression and apartheid.
“Sister Bernard felt more pressure as she was a woman and a nun, which brought about its own additional stereotypes and expectations of behaviour.
Despite constant threats and numerous attempts on her life, Ncube poured her heart and energy into her Christian and political work, Zuma said.
“We will always remember Sister Bernard as a selfless citizen who did not seek accolades, regardless of her personal achievements and the positive impact she made in the lives of others.”
May 6, 2012 1 Comment
Glasgow — The archbishop of Glasgow has warned that if the government continues to ignore the wisdom of generations, then society will further descend into “ethical confusion and moral disintegration.”
Archbishop Mario Conti went on to warn that religion is being driven from the U.K. public sphere by a new form of secularist tyranny.
Archbishop Conti was speaking at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, in the presence of all Scotland’s Catholic bishops, representatives of civil and public life, and the apostolic nuncio to the U.K., Archbishop Antonio Mennini, during a special Mass to mark the seventh anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
Asking what society — “now in many respects post-Christian” — expects of the law, he said it is “certainly not the role of law to re-create our society according to passing fashions and ideologies, nor to redefine nature, whether in terms of persons and their rights or its natural institutions.”
“We live in a culture of human rights which appear to be ever more in need of codification and protection,” he said. “And I wonder why; I do not think society of itself ought to be more needful than before law and laws, unless, of course, we can no longer rely on the generality of citizens to act virtuously and according to conscience.”
Referring to the words of Pope Benedict at Westminster Hall during his U.K. visit, when he said that some people wished to deny a religious voice in the public sphere, Archbishop Conti said, “One cannot help remark that those voices are growing ever louder in our country, that attempted marginalization is becoming ever more acute, and we are witnessing the transformation of tolerance into a kind of tyranny in which religious views are the only ones which seem unworthy of respect and acceptance.”
He continued, “Governments which fail to take into account the wisdom that is handed down generation to generation in communities of faith or fail to underscore the right and duty of following informed conscience on the part of citizens will, it seems, inevitably find themselves attempting to be wise by creating ever more legislation and requiring judges to interpret it according to the mores of the day.”
In such a climate, the archbishop suggested that it is hardly surprising that the authorities “seem ready to redefine marriage without any reference to children or to the natural law written on the heart of mankind, putting the claim of ‘equality and diversity’ on a higher level than faith and reason and, ultimately, asserting the moral equivalence between marriage and same-sex unions, contrary to the virtue of chastity.”
He concluded, “Our society will descend further into ethical confusion and moral disintegration the more that those in government and the judiciary slip society’s moorings from the capstans of virtue.”
The above was here.
April 18, 2012 Leave a comment
The Rev Dr Peter Mullen in the Telegraph:
I love the story of the near punch-up at the parish meeting in the holy and venerable village of Long Melford. “Shut your mouth!” and “One more word from you and I will thump you now!” And all over a villager’s criticism of another villager’s handling of the tombola draw. Forget the turmoil in the Middle East – the real aggro goes on in the English countryside. There are people there, I can tell you, who would shoot one another for the second prize in the Saturday whist drive. I know what I’m talking about because I was a country parson in Yorkshire for twenty years. Sometimes we teetered on the verge of carnage.
I ought to have gleaned some hint of what I was in for when I went for the appointment and my interview by the Parochial Church Council in the big house next to the common. I imagined I would be asked whether I was High Church or Low, did I prefer the old Prayer Book to the new Noddy version, or even did I believe in the Apostles’ Creed and subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. Not a bit of it. They talked for an hour about money and how much those “swine” in the diocesan office were swindling the parish out of every year.
Then there was a long silence before a lady with a big hat and an eminent moustache said, “I have a question for you, Vicar: do you think whist drives are sinful?”
That was a showstopper. I fended it off with as good a humour as I could manage: “Could be, I suppose. Especially if you cheat.”
“No, “she said “only the reason I ask is that our last Vicar preached against whist drives. Said it was gambling. He turned up at one and started a rumpus during the prize-giving at the end.”
She appealed to the assembled PCC for support and addressed the chairman, “You remember, Fred, it was Connie Hardcastle who’d won the bottle of sherry. Our last Vicar was against booze as well. Anyhow, he kept blathering on until he’d right got Connie’s goat. She just flung the bottle of sherry at him. Missed. And it smashed against the wall. Glass everywhere. And you can still see the stain on the wall.”
I tell you, recent events in Long Melford were tame compared with some of the rural aggro I’ve witnessed first hand up i’Yorkshire.
One of our wildest excitements happened – as all the best excitements do – at a village funeral. It was one of those permafrost winters we used to get in the 1980s and the ground was solid. Old Jack Stevenson, blacksmith’s assistant, was going to his last repose. Trouble was, they hadn’t dug the grave wide enough to accommodate his generous frame. We had to send for the men with the shovels. It took them half an hour to make the necessary indentations in the ice-earth. In the process they got very hot and one took off his woolly jumper to reveal a t-shirt bearing a very rude logo.
I couldn’t work out whether the red cheeks were owing to embarrassment or the gale blowing off the North Yorks moors. The tedious interlude was enlivened by Jack’s son, Dennis. I should explain that Jack had been a steady – or unsteady – imbiber all his days. Dennis relieved the considerable tension by calling out, “Dad, you were tight all your life, and now you’re too tight for your bloody grave!”
Garden fetes should be renamed garden fights. One year Mollie Turner – a lady of the most flamboyant geriatric sensuality – excited the Events Committee by offering to run a fortune-telling tent as a fundraiser. That got them going. They were up in arms. There were accusations that our village was bringing back the Witch of Endor and there were those who said it was all the devil’s work.
After an almighty skirmish, it went ahead and no one was killed or even seriously injured. But I will say that if you went into that tent with Mollie, you took more than your life in your hands.
June 1, 2011 Leave a comment
(CBS4) – Expect challenges to a bill signed by Governor Rick Scott which will require welfare applicants to undergo drug testing.
The bill also requires that those who apply for welfare must pay for the drug testing out of their own pockets. However, the cost would be reimbursed if the person passes the drug test…
“While there are certainly legitimate needs for public assistance, it is unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction,” Governor Scott said. “This new law will encourage personal accountability and will help to prevent the misuse of tax dollars.”
A similar law which passed in Michigan in 1999 which required random drug testing of Welfare recipients lasted five weeks before it was stopped by a judge. An appeals court ruled it unconstitutional after a four-year legal battle.
On Tuesday, Scott also signed into law another measure that bans the designer drug MDPV or “bath salts.”
Poison control centers in Florida have reported 61 calls of “bath salts” abuse, making Florida the state with the second-highest volume of calls. The hallucinogenic substances are readily available at convenience stores, discount tobacco outlets, gas stations, pawnshops, tattoo parlors, and truck stops, among other locations.
A good idea?
May 22, 2011 Leave a comment
These poor kid(s)!
“So it’s a boy, right?” a neighbour calls out as Kathy Witterick walks by, her four month old baby, Storm, strapped to her chest in a carrier.
Each week the woman asks the same question about the baby with the squishy cheeks and feathery blond hair.
Witterick smiles, opens her arms wide, comments on the sunny spring day, and keeps walking.
She’s used to it. The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.
While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl…
When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …).”
Their announcement was met with stony silence. Then the deluge of criticisms began. Not just about Storm, but about how they were parenting their other two children
… Witterick and Stocker believe they are giving their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females.
(HT)
These parents are being reckless and plain stupid. What kind psychological damage will they not bestowing upon their children in abdicating on their God given responsibilities as parents?
Their sick experiment is bound to fail for sure…
May 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Fox in Boston is reporting the upside-down-ness of our culture has reached the tipping point. We are now completely mad.
For generations, society looked askance at premarital sex. First, that was done away with so there was no shame at all to premarital sex. But now this would be the next step:
A new bill on Beacon Hill would ban parents from engaging in sexual relationships within the home until their divorces are final.
Supporters say the bill is meant to prevent domestic violence and shield children while the divorce is underway. Critics say it takes away parents rights.
Sooo…this bill would ensure that married people couldn’t have sex until their divorce? So much for liberals keeping government out of the bedroom, huh?
I’m sure this has no chance of passing but it’s truly awesome to point out how liberalism puts no limits on Big Government as long as it’s seemingly well intended to protect some minority group -as long as that group isn’t the unborn.
The above was here.
You Americans are really weird!
May 9, 2011 Leave a comment
SlutWalks, coming you way soon:
An international series of protests known as SlutWalks, sparked by a Toronto police officer’s flippant comment that women should avoid dressing like “sluts” to avoid being raped or victimized, is taking root in the United States.
Some women and men who protest dress in nothing more remarkable than jeans and T-shirts, while others wear provocative or revealing outfits to bring attention to “slut-shaming,” or shaming women for being sexual, and the treatment of sexual assault victims.
“It was taking the blame off the rapist and on the victim,” said Nicole Sullivan, 21, a student at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and an organizer of the SlutWalk planned Saturday in that city. “So we are using these efforts to reclaim the word ‘slut.’”
The police officer made his comments in January to a group of York University students at a safety forum. He later apologized, but his comments were publicized widely on Facebook and Twitter. They inspired a march in Toronto last month that drew more than 3,000 people, as well as SlutWalks since then in Dallas, Asheville, North Carolina, and Ottawa, Ontario.
In addition to Boston, marches are planned in cities including Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Reno, Nevada, and Austin, Texas.
“The event is in protest of a culture that we think is too permissive when it comes to rape and sexual assault,” said Siobhan Connors, 20, of Lynn, Massachusetts, another Boston organizer. “It’s to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality … essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way.”
The events are similar to “Take Back the Night” rallies and other marches that aim to bring attention to sexual violence. But there are key differences.
SlutWalkers have danced to hip-hop, worn T-shirts with the word “slut” and held signs that read “sluts pay taxes.” Some women have skated around on inline skates in lingerie, while their male supporters wore shirts reading, “I love sluts.”…
More here.
April 24, 2011 1 Comment
Imagine: A multicultural cesspool just getting worse.
David Cameron is considering plans to create a “multi-faith” House of Lords where Muslim imams could sit alongside Anglican and Catholic bishops.
The controversial suggestion is revealed in a paper drawn up by Tory officials which calls for a wide range of different churches to be represented once reforms to the Upper House are carried out.
Currently 26 Anglican bishops have seats in the Lords. But Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, is drawing up a draft bill setting out wholesale changes to the Lords that are expected to include provisions for hundreds of existing peers, including the bishops, to be evicted while at least 80 per cent of new members are elected.
The paper, produced by the Conservative Christian Fellowship, says: “Christians need to enter the debate and make it clear that we value the presence of the Lords Spiritual, but this doesn’t have to mean unquestioning support for the status quo.
“There is a strong argument that our legislature would also benefit from the wisdom of leaders of Baptist, Catholic, Methodist and black-led congregations.
“A broad bench of Lords Spiritual drawn from a range of churches in Britain could provide a powerful vision of unity.”
Pitiable!
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