Saturday, November 10, 2007

Unlocking the Convert's Heart - Grodi


Marcus Grodi is known mainly for his Coming Home Network and work on EWTN. He has ministered to a profound number of Protestant and nondenominational pastors who have been led by the Holy Spirit to enter full communion with the Catholic Church. Here is a piece he wrote from the Catholic Education Resource Center, Unlocking the Convert’s Heart, which deals with a biblical defense of Catholicism.

HE Said It, I Didn't ...

... But I Wish I Had

Amil Imani writes at Global Politician, "Is Allah a False God?" Imani:
The New Testament tells how the Christians have to regard Islam. The apostle John wrote in his first letter, "Every spirit which does not acknowledge that Jesus has come in the flesh... is the spirit of the antichrist..." (1 John 2:18-23; 4:1-6).

"We must therefore confess with all humility that the spirit in Islam is the spirit of the antichrist. Muhammad had heard much about Jesus, but, in spite of all, he denied the crucified Son of God."

Before the advent of Islam, the Arabs were idol worshipers. One of the historians by the name of Vaqqidi said that the Arabs had 360 Gods for each day of the year and the largest and the main God was called “Allah.” They were pagan, a polytheistic culture. Interestingly enough, not many Muslims want to accept that Allah was already being worshipped at the Ka’ba in Mecca by Arab pagans before Muhammad came along.

So that’s where Allah comes into the picture; eventually this idol becomes Islam’s God. When the Muslims say: Allah-o-Akbar or God is great in reality they refer to this large statue which was worshiped by the Bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula. Islam is paganism cult wrapped in monotheistic dogma.

"The Religion in the sight of Allah is Islam." (Qur'an 3:19)

Christians have come to believe that the Wisdom of the Lord is greater than the Muslim Sword commonly used to conquer and force its victims to obey the Allah’s manifestation: the Quran.

Islam is a grand delusion, birthed by Muhammad’s hallucination that he relayed to his first wife and employer, Khadija. Greatly frightened, he told Khadija that he was visited by jinn (devil) in the Hira cave. Khadija comforted the distraught man by assuring him that the episode was Allah’s way of choosing him as his messenger. Muhammad believed his rich wife-employer who was 15 years his senior and the delusion became a belief—Islam.

Islam is rooted in the primitive tribal mentality of “We against Them,” “We the righteous against the heathens,” “We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah.” Islam is a polarizer. Islam is an enemy-maker. To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed. Continue reading …
Note well that last paragraph. It describes with near-precision the model-rival problem of the doubles that René Girard posits in his taxonomy of human anthropology, mimetic theory. This is a contention I have long held about Islam: it is a creation of the primitive Sacred, and totally dependent as a heresy on the biblical faiths of Judaism and Christianity, though in negative imitation.

And our proper response? As men of the Catholic Church, defense of the Deposit of Faith and the Holy Father, frequent observance of the Sacraments, vigilant practice of the virtues, cardinal and theological -- including legitimate defense. In short, in the inestimable words of T. S. Eliot, "prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action."

Losing Money & Cross Necklaces

A British Airways employee working at Heathrow is facing persecution for having the audacity to wear a cross since she is a Christian. Surely BA isn't worried about losing its place in the multiculture foodchain and God-speak neutral world. It is worried about one and one thing only: revenue loss.

Of course, with the Human Rights Act of 1998, so called, in place for nearly a decade, what do you expect?

Friday, November 9, 2007

D. Pipes & Vanquishing Foes

A polarizing figure, Daniel Pipes gives a fine diagnostic of the foe. He sees terrorism as a "tactic", not an enemy, those who have hot-wired Islam for justification of violence a new, proliferating movement within Islam, and a close affinity between this reading of Islam and the totalitarianisms of fascism and communism. This video is a necessity, in my opinion. For those with a Girardian understanding, it will provide much grist for the mill. The second video is weaker as a normative/imperative presentation, but should be watched and assessed, nonetheless.

God Is Not God of the Dead


Gospel Commentary for the 32rd Sunday in Ordinary Time By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap

ROME, NOV. 9, 2007 (Zenit.org).- In reply to the question that the Sadducees had posed to trap him about the woman who had had seven husbands on earth, Jesus above all reaffirms the fact of the resurrection, correcting at the same time the Sadducees' materialistic caricature of it.

Eternal beatitude is not just an increase and prolongation of terrestrial joys, the maximization of the pleasures of the flesh and the table. The other life is truly another life, a life of a different quality. It is true that it is the fulfillment of all man's longings on earth, yet it is infinitely more, on a different level. "Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels." Continue reading …

If I may be so bold, one might ponder how inexplicable is the fact that from the "stuff of stars," as dear old Carl Sagan put it, comes the human race -- persons like us. Is it really any more unlikely and unimaginable that we "graduate" to a resurrected body that transcends our biological finitude as much as our personal lives transcend the thermonuclear existence our atoms once made play in those stars, nebulae, and other whirling bits of space debris?


I will happily put my money and my life in the keeping of this Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ, who, as C. S. Lewis said, had logically to be (a) a liar, (b) a madman, or (c) telling the truth. If the answer is either (a) or (b), I've lost nothing except a few decades of opprobrium in the eyes of snooty atheists. But if (c) is true, then here's hail! to the rest of the Road.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Could Elizabeth I Foresee This?

St. Paul's during the Blitz

And so, the shape and contours of the conclusion to the English "reformation" come into sharp relief. A report from the ruling party's favorite think tank recommends the end of calling Britain a "Christian nation," and "expunging Christmas from the national calendar," although they admit this will be hard to do.
"The empire is gone, church attendance is at historically low levels, and the Second World War is inexorably slipping from memory," the Institute for Public Policy Research stated. The report, written by IPPR advisers Ben Rogers and Rick Muir, calls on Ministers to launch an "urgent and upfront campaign" promoting a "multicultural understanding of Britishness".
The Dowry of Our Lady was lost so long ago. Could Elizabeth I, Lord Cecil, and the New Millionaires possibly foresee where their expunging would bring dear, sad, unmerry old England? [HT: Taki's Top Drawer]

Pass on WW IV? Did a Pig Just Fly Over?

At Taki's Top Drawer, Steven LaTulippe opines, Let’s Sit Out World War IV. It'd be nice if possible, but addiction to oil being what it is in the West, and the ever-proliferating Scimitar population in western nations, let's just consider it a nice pipe dream.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The World & the Holy Grail

Frederica Matthewes-Green writes this magnificent reflection at First Things. Come on, the holy grail? Okay, okay, I'll bite. [HT: New Advent]

Reestablishing the Caliphate

Robert Spencer on the centrality of the reestablishment of the Caliphate to offensive jihad: [HT: Real Clear Religion]

Swastika & Scimitar - Part Two

Thule Society

Paul Belien (regardless of the funny business and on-going argument with LGF -- I don't know who is right or wrong, and, frankly, I don't care. Get along!) wrote for the Washington Times this article entitled, Nazis and Islamists. It augments and fills in spaces favorably with all posts mentioned and contained in ”Inhuman Infidels R Us”. From the article:
“Had Charles Martel not been victorious,” Hitler told his inner crowd in August 1942, “then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world.” Hitler told Albert Speer that Islam is “perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.” If the Muslims had won in Tours, the whole of Europe would have become Muslim in the 8th century and “the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of [Europe]. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.”
The structural comparison between Nazi and Islamist paganism is inescapable. The undertow of the primitive Sacred form of religion was vast and murderous in the former and gathering momentum in the latter. It threatens to carry even "moderate" religionists into its maelstrom of sacred violence and ruin, just as it did German citizenry in World War II. How can it be stopped if political leaders of the west continue their denial and ignorance of this reality?

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Da'wa and Ideology

Let it be put on the record: The meek SHALL inherit the Earth [Mtt 5,5]. That having been said, however, an Egyptian scholar tells as plainly as it can be stated how Islam will "peacefully" conquer Europe: [HT: Eye on the World]

They'll Never Miss Just One

Counterterrorism's Doug Farah, quoting Bruce Riedel in Newsweek, makes the Pakistan chaos perfectly clear: "If you were to look around the world for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard."

Monday, November 5, 2007

Inhuman Infidels R Us

How fascinating. Kafir Canada notes what some Floridian Muslims are saying about us non-Muslims: we are “less than human.” As I noted in Swastika and the Scimitar, and Structure, Not Themes, Part One and Part Two, an essential element in the primitive Sacred form of paganism is to dehumanize those who are to be sanctioned sacrificial victims of my religion, anthropologically speaking. For those who have been introduced to and instructed in the cultural anthropology of RenĂ© Girard, his "mimetic theory," this is basic stuff and universally valid in all human cultures "since the foundation of the world."

What is astonishing is the ubiquity and swiftness the West is being infiltrated (I know, that sounds paranoid -- offer me a better verb) by Muslims whose words and behavior signify not a "religion of peace" (except on their legalistic, domineering, and repressive terms) but the "same old same old" of the primitive Sacred seeking new victim-fodder. FLORIDA!? Why, they will be building mega mosques in London, Dearborn, and Falls Church next. What? Oh. They are trying to ... And what do you suppose will be taught in those mosques?

The one force in the history of the human cosmos fighting against the primitive Sacred's proclivity for creating new victims for human sacrifice is the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Humans born into Original Sin will still stumble before the Tempter's wiles, but the world's last, best shot is the Church, the Deposit of Faith (Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium), her Sacraments and virtues, founded by God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Cling to Peter's barque, love God with all of your being, and your neighbor as yourself ... regardless of his or her primitive Sacred religion.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillip’s “Britain’s Anti-Semitic Turn” at City Journal.

Catholic Church & The West - Knox

Monsignor Ronald Knox, 1888-1957, has been a near constant source of inspiration for me before and since my entering full communion with the Catholic Church. Home sick, I picked up Milton Walsh's fine book, Ronald Knox As Apologist, and, turning to Knox's conference entitled, "The Brute Fact of Christianity," I read terms that are hotly bandied, discussed and debated today. Knox:
“I want it to be understood, then, that I am thinking particularly of that body of Christians which is in visible communion with the Holy See. Much of what I say will be true of other denominations, but not all of it; no matter. Catholicism is Christianity at its most challenging, Christianity in the raw...
“(T)he Christian religion is not, what most religions are, the reflection, the off-print, of one particular civilization or one particular part of the world’s surface. That, of course, is at first sight a controversial statement. Years ago, Mr Belloc produced a rather misleading slogan, ‘Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.’ People are coming to talk nowadays as if that were true; as if Christianity were only a statement in spiritual terms of the values cherished by what we vaguely call ‘The West.’ But if that is, at the moment, geographically true, it is not historically true. Until the rise of Mohammedanism, itself a kind of Christian heresy, cut off the east from the west, was that process suspended. Meanwhile, you would have supposed that Christian religion expressed the values cherished by the Roman-Greek empire of the first centuries. Yet it survived the death of that empire, and set its seal upon the new order which emerged after the barbarian invasions. The attempt to capture Christianity and make it run in harness with the ideals of one particular empire, one particular form of culture, is constantly being made, but always it breaks the bonds in which we seek to imprison it.” [my emphases]
Msgr Knox was an Oxford graduate and acquaintance of C. S. Lewis, who admire Knox's fine mind and wit. He knew what it meant to be a Catholic in an England that equated Catholicism with treason, betrayal, and the Gunpowder Plot. In America, we are only beginning to squirm under the increasing pressure of the twin pagan tyrannies of postmodern nihilism and Islam.

May we not lose heart in our love of country. May our zeal never wane in the practice of vigilent practice of the virtues. For, in the words of Knox, "The Blessed Sacrament, the Jerusalem of our souls, stands apart from and above all the ebb and flow of world-politics, its citizenship a common fellowship between us and those who are estranged from us, those who at the moment are our enemies. Our friends yesterday, our friends tomorrow -- in the timeless existence to which that altar introduces us, they are our friends today."

Sunday, November 4, 2007

J. K. Rowling - Dumbledore Gay?

Perhaps dear J. K. "always pictured Dumbledore gay," but I have a hunch she pictures an Oxonian kind of snooty, urbane, unflappable fop, not this. 'Damnable that she succumbed to her newfound wealth; like Lord Cecil and the New Millionaires in the English reformation, she seems to think that being rich and the observed of all observers gives one's thoughts and opinions epistemological certainty. That right belongs solely to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. If you deign to notice this, J. K. -- shame. Shame on you for siding with dark magic.

Someone to Watch Over Me

If plans proceed for the mega mosque to be built next to the Olympic venue in London, you can hear the shouts of the crowd -- or mob, take your pick. What a nice addition to Merrie Olde England.

UPDATE: A leading opponent of the mega mosque, Councillor Alan Craig, has received a Youtube "obituary" containing pictures of himself, his wife, and his children. The religion of peace reaches out its claws yet again. [HT: BJ]

Pakistan, Dionysus, & Chaos

A reasonably complete analysis of the Pakistan Emergency from Counterterrorism Blog, Jeffrey Imm reporting. Just in case you want something to add to your prayer list: a Muslim country with nuclear weapons amidst growing Talibanization.

Let us remember that in the same way the secular West thirsts for its addictive substance of choice, oil, in order to continue its lifestyles of softcore nihilism, those who would overthrow the West in the name of Allah long for one thing most of all: nuclear weapons. Do not listen to or argue over the themes of the latter, or the former, for that matter; look at the structure, the arc or gradient of their respective forms of violence.

Then you will see that Islam resembles not a "religion of peace" any more than the secular West resembles "the kingdom of God." No. You will see that both are victories of Friedrich Nietzsche, his deity of choice, Dionysus, and the chaos of the primitive Sacred. And behind Dionysus, the "father of lies and a murderer since the beginning."