Note: To be sure, we are called to be the most earnest peacemakers and never to stop working hard towards peace. Yet, alas, in our own time, World War II showed again why it is not wrong to thrust out violent invaders when earnest efforts towards peace have failed. However we are taught that we… Read More St. Joan Confronts Utopia
By historian William Thomas Walsh “Of the external foes of the Church, Mohammedanism was one of the most dangerous and long enduring. Ideologically it was not external, but one of the great heresies, containing as it did many Christian elements, mingled with some borrowed from Judaism, and much gross and carnal materialism foreign to both;… Read More What the Critics of the Crusades Forget or Ignore
Ross Douthat writes, “He may believe that the age of American-led globalization is ending no matter what, that after the pandemic certain walls will stay up everywhere, and that the goal for the next 50 years is to consolidate what you can — resources, talent, people, territory — inside your own civilizational walls. In this… Read More Putin The New Czar?
As Witness: Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bob Dylan. Antisemites (even Christian ones) and Jihadists both call him a fraud. After all, he is not always on their side. And God knows he can’t think for himself! Opinion Courtesy of Electronic Intifadah 2016: Controversially, musical genius Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize for literature last week.… Read More When Times Change Many Change.
Proportionality in all conflicts is to be desired as I have stated many times over many years. War is hell. Hamas knew what it was doing. It was deliberately trying to provoke a war by a vicious sneak attack in a period of relative stability. Proportionality is the ideal, but history shows it is seldom… Read More The Consequences of Hamas’ War
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lengthy and emotional response to Sir 2016 John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War, a war opposed by Pope John Paul II and millions of people across the world: “The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong, the aftermath turned out to… Read More Iraq. The Geat Internationalist Tragedy in Context And Retrospect.
Justice and War. The Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of justice concerning war: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Most of the time, when people discuss just-war theory, they mean jus ad bellum (justice before the war). Jus ad bellum refers to those four conditions described by Saint Augustine through which we determine whether a war is just before we… Read More Catholic Teaching on Proportionality in War
Jonah is in the belly of the Deep State still, many say. Glenn Greenwald: The Trump administration doubles down on lies and excuses for why anti-Trump journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the infamous Signal chat. Then: European leaders cannot back up their deranged militarization goals without U.S. support. Finally: a DC Appeals Court rules… Read More The Truth & Lies About the Atlantic’s Signal Controversy
“Top diplomats from the United States and Russia met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and improving relations between Washington and Moscow. The Riyadh summit represents a monumental shift in U.S. policy after the Biden administration led an international effort to isolate Russia over its invasion and gave tens… Read More Victory for Putin in Ukraine? Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Duss Debate War.
On February 26, 1950, a couple of years before I was born, Leonard Bernstein premiered his second symphony, The Age of Anxiety, in New York City. It was based on W. H. Auden’s 1948 Pulitzer Prize winning poem which had used the metaphor to describe the spiritual, psychological, and political milieu after World War II.… Read More The Age of Anxiety
David Starkey tracks the history and influence of the Dada movement of art and its influence in modern culture and life through his experiences with the Royal Academy. BBC: December 3, 2004. An autographed gentleman’s urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time. “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which shocked the… Read More April is the cruellest month
If Christian leaders of most denominations won’t speak up for Christians enduring great suffering across the world, he asks, why have them? And government leaders? “How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the west, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. They should be. Here’s the view of a pastor from… Read More Tucker Carlson: Standing Up for Christians Not Allowed in Modern Wars?
…Or does he want to develop them with Ukraine to the benefit of the American people? Opinion. Washington Post 12/18/24 Donald Trump often says that liberating Iraq without getting its oil resources was one of America’s biggest foreign policy blunders. He has a chance to avoid a similar mistake in Ukraine. Ukraine is not only… Read More Does Trump Want Putin to Get Ukraine’s $26 trillion in gas and minerals?
Updated. Brussels (Reuters) – A top NATO military official on Monday urged businesses to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly, in order to be less vulnerable to blackmail from countries such as Russia and China. “If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can… Read More NATO tells business leaders to prepare for ‘wartime scenario’
Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, proportionality and preemptive strikes. Fr. Charles McCarthy, a Melkite Catholic priest in Massachusetts, argues that it might be a “mortal sin” to vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in this 2024 Presidential election, since each, he says, are in various ways complicit in “grave evil” by supporting and enabling… Read More A Melkite Catholic Priest Bound to Infuriate Many.
I wish all those responsible would just go back to the Church, confess, and get their sins forgiven by Christ. Then we can all do quiet penance to make the world better, begin anew, knowing that God is more desirous to forgive us all than we ourselves could ever conceive. Cf. Matthew 12:31: “And so I… Read More Iraq and Sleepless nights
Victor Gaetan is senior international correspondent for the National Catholic Register 8/21. The closer we look at decisions to deploy a second atomic weapon against Japan on August 9, [1945…] the more morally audacious the tactic appears. Step outside the American explanatory cloud—we bombed military installations to force unconditional imperial surrender—defining public understanding to see:… Read More Nagasaki Was A Strike Against Japan And The Catholic Church
In this interesting interview, despite the heading given by Maike Hickson, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller says he believes Pope Benedict XVI understood liturgical development in the context of sacred Tradition correctly, without prejudice to previous expressions of the same sacred Sacrifice. Diversity of rites have always existed side by side in the Church. Müller accepts diversity… Read More Cardinal Gerhard Mueller on Misunderstandings of Liturgical Substance and Unity
By AFP – Agence France PresseJune 28, 2024 Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he was drawing up a “comprehensive plan” for how Kyiv believes the war with Russia should end. There are no public talks ongoing between Ukraine and Russia and based on public statements by Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the… Read More Zelensky Says Preparing ‘Plan’ To End War With Russia
Updated. “The popular understanding of The Crusades in the West is that they involved barbaric, violent Christians invading the peaceful and enlightened Islamic world. Films like Kingdom of Heaven and Mankind: The Story of Us reinforce this narrative. But the truth is the reality of the Crusades is much, much different. In fact, it’s the… Read More “Why the Crusades Were Awesome, Actually”
Opinion. Peter Robinson and Douglas Murray. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, was published by Bloomsbury in May 2017. It spent almost 20 weeks on The Sunday Times bestseller list and was a Number 1 bestseller in non-fiction. It has subsequently been published in more than 20 languages worldwide and has been read and… Read More October 7, Gaza and the Case for Israel
*|* What’s next for Syria’s Christians After Assad’s Fall? (Opinion) Opinion. The other side of the story: Robert Spencer: The Roots of the Hamas-Israeli War. What the Left doesn’t care to Face. “Robert Spencer was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and joined the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1984.[21][22] Spencer has stated that, under the reign of President Mustafa Kemal… Read More Israel Has Been Facing Much Backlash from the Western Left. But History is Long & Has Its Warnings.
President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported. US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran… Read More Biden Tells Netanyahu US Won’t Support Attack On Iran
Most truly moral people are shocked at the thought that leaders of a nation could engage in unnecessary wars, kill many hundreds of thousands of people, very likely millions (1) in the process, and still sleep at night and smile on the golf course for the cameras. Leroy Fletcher Prouty (January 24, 1917 – June… Read More Malthusian Wars. Fletcher Prouty.
Foreign Affairs: “…When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II—or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on… Read More How Today’s Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones That Produced World War II
Be it near or still a ways off, Jesus the Lord said regarding the last times, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there… Read More Does God send wars as a punishment for sin?
Charles Lewis. Review of The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by By Guillaume Zeller. National Catholic Register . Updated. “On July 20, 1933, six months after Hitler rose to power, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, and the German vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, signed a concordat — a sort of peace treaty between the… Read More Enduring Faith Amid Horror: The Priests of Dachau
No food, no water, no electricity, no escape as attacks intensify overnights Pope Francis repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Hamas to release hostages, invoking God, in a series of tweets addressing the conflict on Sunday. “In God’s name, I beg you to stop: cease using weapons,” Francis said. “I hope that avenues will… Read More Pope Francis has called for an immediate halt to the conflict in Gaza
National Review: “Billions of dollars of aid have flown into Gaza while it has been under Hamas’s control, but instead of going to help alleviate the suffering of its people, the money has been diverted by Hamas to fund its terror operations. The group has dug up water pipes to repurpose them as rockets to… Read More Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza’s Problems
If the West has too often acted unjustly throughout the world —and it certainly has— this fact can never make genocidal Hamas right. “Hamas never wanted peace with Israel.” The Christian Post. “It was — and is — the mission of Hamas to obliterate Israel, not make peace with Israel. As noted in an October… Read More Genocidal Hamas
“The left has really let us down.’ Why many American Jews feel abandoned Like many American Jews, Jonah Goldman sides politically with the left, including its push for the rights of Palestinians. During college, he was active in J Street, the liberal Jewish advocacy group that opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and lobbies… Read More ‘The left has really let us down.’ Why many American Jews feel abandoned.
The Palestinian Argument Today. Context, 2004. Dershowitz: The Case for Israel and Palestine. Debate: Norman Finkelstein vs. Alan Dershowitz (2003). Image Source: Politico “The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005. Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein… Read More Israel and Palestine Today. Dershowitz–Finkelstein.
— France24 Report. “Ground incursions expected”. — Israel’s high-tech spies and $1bn Iron Dome defences failed to stop Hamas massacring civilians in ’embarrassing failure’ — 12 Hours Later. Developments. — Some 300 dead and counting — Regional Leaders React. RFJ Jr. Calls for “Sustained Military Campaign” in Response to Unprovoked Hamas Attack on Israel. Kennedy… Read More Massive Intelligence Failure on Israel’s Part
“… It is not money that takes people away from the Church but classical liberalism, which commodifies everything. Poland is interesting in this regard, as just over half of the Catholic population still attends Mass, and there is a strong rural and traditional element there. It would be interesting to see where Hungary lands in… Read More Wealth, Greed and Hubris
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” — Bhagavad Gita, Robert Oppenheimer “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” — JFK, American University, 1963 “The dropping of the… Read More Oppenheimer and The End of Time.
“A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines.”— Wikipedia “The use of cluster bombs, banned by 123 countries, has not helped the Russians… Read More Cluster Bomb Orgy of Death
Medea Benjamin Russia’s brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has attracted widespread condemnation across the West. Government and media circles present the conflict as a simple dichotomy between an evil empire and an innocent victim. In this concise, accessible and highly informative primer, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies insist the picture is more complicated. Yes,… Read More War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict
The Imaginative Conservative.Victor Orban interview excerpt. “… the Hungarian position was that there was hardly any chance that there could be a winner in this war. It will have losers, but it won’t have winners. “Russia is coming up against a brick wall, and as NATO is supplying Ukraine with weapons and money, it’s simply… Read More The Ukraine War, the Pope, & the West
Tucker Carlson cancelled by Fox News. Opinion. Updated. NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — “Conservative media titan Tucker Carlson and Fox News on Monday “agreed to part ways” effective immediately. Carlson’s last broadcast was April 21, giving the hugely popular host no opportunity to bid farewell to his audience. An announcement from Fox News shared on social media… Read More Are Moral Truths and Free Inquiry Being Outlawed in America Today?
David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”
Catholic Critique 