Piotr Stanczak - Martyr and Hero

That he was Polish does not surprise me. I came to learn and admire a lot about the Poles under John Paul the Great.

Vermeer

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1654) - Johannes Vermeer

Prevaricating for all of us

Victor Davis Hanson:

I still cannot quite believe Obama thinks that chattel slavery in America was ended without violence. Or that Islam was responsible for unprecedented breakthroughs in advanced math, sophisticated medicine, and printing, let alone that it served as a catalyst for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Instead, Obama seems to believe that fudging on facts is not fudging, but simply offers a competing narrative that gains validity by its good intentions. Most Americans, Obama further believes, are either too dense or too uneducated to discern his misinformation. But they will at some future date appreciate the global good will that results from his feel-good mytho-history.

No one in the Arab street is going to object when Obama assures us all that Islamic felonies — religious intolerance, gender apartheid, coercive government — are equivalent to American religious and gender misdemeanors. Hitler made up stories about World War I and German minorities in Eastern Europe for murderous racist reasons. His ignoble lies are in no way similar to present-day noble lies that are offered for exactly the opposite goal of promoting religious tolerance and global brotherhood.

[ ... ]

So why does President Obama so often get history wrong, so often call for utopian schemes he would hardly adopt for himself, and so often distort by misinformation and incomplete disclosure?

Partly the culprit is administrative inexperience, partly historical ignorance. But mostly the disconnect comes because Barack Obama believes he is a philosopher-king, whose exalted ends more than justify his mendacious means.

In other words, Obama is our first truly postmodern president. And the Guardians who form his elite circle — in the very manner that they once falsely accused neo-cons of doing — deliberately, but “nobly,” distort the truth on behalf of us all.

Read all of Hanson's Obama and the ‘Noble Lie.’

The Post-Am Presidency

For the record: John Bolton on the man who has written two - count them, two - autobiographies already in The Post-American Presidency.

This is substantiated by Spengler's superb analysis at AsiaTimes.com.

Opportunity for Plenary Indulgence

In case you were not aware of it and can make it to Mass today, it is the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul. And if you are learning to help the souls of the dearly departed as they make their way to Heaven, it is also a day to earn by God's grace a plenary indulgence. No. 35 in the Authorized English Edition of The Handbook of Indulgences states:

The Christian faithful obtain a partial indulgence when they make devout use of a devotional object (such as a crucifix or cross, a rosary, a scapular, or a medal) which has been rightly blessed by any priest or deacon.

If the devotional object has been blessed by the Pope or by any bishop, the Christian faithful can obtain a plenary indulgence while making devout use of it on the solemnity of the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, provided they add ot its use a profession of faith made in any legitimate formula ...

To learn more, click on Indulgence Information at the Bridegroom Press website (just under the header).

Poor Old England IV

Can the Christian faith in Britain be saved? Britain is no longer a Christian nation and the Church of England could die out within a generation, an Anglican bishop has warned.

Or, perhaps the more accurate question: Can a national church be saved? Some would say its seeds of destruction were sown a long time ago.