Nehemiah 8:10 “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Highly enigmatic, I say, but I believe it. So, I do my best to recover the joy that only the Lord can give….. again and again.
In the closing prayer of today’s Divine Office, I read:
O God, the world had fallen flat in the dust but your Son’s humility stood it upright once more.
Fill your faithful people with a holy joy:
take those whom you have torn away from slavery to sin
and make them rejoice eternally.
Better than the politics of this day celebrated elsewhere as May Day, is the memorial of Joseph the Worker remembered in the Church.
May St. Joseph the worker keep us united to Jesus and the Church as our days of trial test our faith and fidelity. May we never think our smallest most menial tasks lack infinite worth in the hands of heaven.
Prayer to St. Joseph the Worker
St. Joseph, by the work of your hands and the sweat of your brow, you supported Jesus and Mary, and had the Son of God as your fellow worker. Teach me to work as you did, with patience and perseverance, for God and for those whom God has given me to support. Teach me to see in my fellow workers the Christ who desires to be in them, that I may always be charitable and forbearing towards all. Grant me to look upon work with the eyes of faith, so that I shall recognize in it my share in God’s own creative activity and in Christ’s work of our redemption, and so take pride in it. When it is pleasant and productive, remind me to give thanks to God for it. And when it is burdensome, teach me to offer it to God, in reparation for my sins and the sins of the world. (Note: This prayer was taken from the booklet “Devotions to Saint Joseph” by Brian Moore, S.J., printed and published by the Society of St. Paul.)
NPR says it’s out of the bag. Justice Souter will retire. President Obama will have his chance to change things once again. Hopefully he’ll be more circumspect in his appointment. Souter was appointed by Bush but proved to be something of a surprise with liberal leanings.
Michelle Malkin writes, “Now, we’ll get an out liberal as opposed to a stealth one.”
What’s next? Will Obama shape the court in his image?
Pray,pray,pray! Crying come naturally!
Allah simply groans.
Glenn Reynolds points us here for an interesting take by Legal Insurrection highlighting Prof. Michael Dorf and rewritten 2 days before the retirement announcement:
Does Arlen Specter’s defection from R to D strengthen the President’s hand in Congress? Perhaps overall but not on judicial appointments because breaking (the equivalent of) a filibuster in the Senate Judiciary Committee requires the consent of at least one member of the minority. Before today, Specter was likely to be that one Republican. Now what?
In his third press conference on his 100th day in office, President Obama stood by his conviction that torture is wrong, that water-boarding is wrong. Basically he said it was wrong making the argument that we don’t need it. Obama claims the high ground in protecting sworn enemies of this country from harsh procedures. “It corrodes the character of a country.” Here is the text of exchange:
OBAMA: Jake? Where’s Jake? There he is.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve said in the past that waterboarding, in your opinion, is torture. Torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
OBAMA: What I’ve said ? and I will repeat ? is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British ? all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.
And then the reason was that Churchill understood ? you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s ? what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.
However, this same man, President Obama, supports, allows and has helped restore and implement legislation that allows the arms and legs to be severed from the bodies of pre-born infants not only in this country but around the world. (Harsh words, harsh procedures! Saline abortions are worse than corrosive, they are caustic, for the infant.)
The pre-born children of this Nation are our future citizens. Every fragment of their being was conceived and formed while their mothers breathed the air of American freedom and protection. Obama has in the past stood side by side with those who sanction collapsing the skulls of fully formed infants making sure they never draw their first breath.
The key to his position may be one of pragmatism rather than morality. Has he forgotten that he indicated that the destruction of his own future grandchildren was preferable to him rather than for his own daughters to bear his grandchild in an untimely manner; His words on the subject, “if they make a mistake. I don’t want them punished with a baby.” This is part of what Obama calls teaching “morals and values to make good decisions.” This President hasn’t a moral leg to stand on.
Amy Welborn here points to of OSV who wrote in Corroding the Character of Our Nation:
“We have seen the tragic results of what happens when one life is considered less important than another. It’s unfortunate that the president can recognize that fact when it comes to terror suspects and prisoners of war but not when it comes to his own countrymen still in the womb. President Obama said in his press conference last night that he believes that the abortion decision is best left in the hands of women, who he believes struggle with what they choose to do. Well, we would hope that women struggle with the decision to end a child’s life, but the reality is that with each passing year people seem to become more and more desensitized to the plight of the unborn. Why? For the exact reasons the president stated: Over time, bad but easy choices corrode what’s best in a people.”
I am having trouble being in the world, but not of it. Paul’s word’s challenge me. Pope Benedict XVI wants them to push me into the mind of Paul and the arms of the Holy Spirit. “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:2
As Pentecost draws near, I’m reminded that it is the Holy Spirit not my spirit that will transform me into conformity with Christ of the Cross and the Resurrection. Tomorrow morning, God willing, I’ll find myself before the Blessed Sacrament once again. Here are the words I will take with me into the silence:
“How poor, how graceless, as I see it, the worship we offer to God sacramentally present! What scant respect we have for the One before whom the seraphim cover themselves with their wings, prostrating themselves before Him. And He bears it all in silence, remaining without splendor, hidden beneath the bread, that He may live in the midst of those He created. Oh, how good He is! What infinite love He has! Why aren’t we crazy with love for Him?” St. Teresa of the Andes – Letter 115
Elizabeth Lev, daughter of Mary Ann Glendon has responded to this written by Kaitlyn Riely at Politics Daily. Riely,speaking of Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, says:
“But Glendon has been trained in diplomacy. Shouldn’t being in the same place and engaging someone of an opposing view be right up her alley? Wouldn’t the better decision be to use her platform — or at least her proximity — to persuade Obama to change his views? Her diplomatic style seems to be less suited for U.S.-Vatican relations and more for U.S.-Cuba relations.”
Reponse by Elizabeth Lev, Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter:
“The Laetare Medal is the highest honor conferred on Catholics in the United States. For a Catholic, it has greater prestige than a Nobel Prize for a scientist or an Academy Award for an actor, as the award is given for career-long achievement, for “staying the course” in the words of St. Paul. It doesn’t just showcase a single discovery or film role.
To renounce it, therefore, is not the lightest of matters. Professor Glendon has spent a month thinking, consulting, and given her deep faith, praying about this decision. (This, for those of you who don’t know, means asking God to help one put aside one’s own personal concerns and act in the way that will produce the greatest good). (Kaitlyn) Riely’s dismissive “thanks, no thanks” rendering of her decision, while pithy, is reductive.
Professor Glendon was to have been honored for not only for her scholarship, but for her second career, her pro-bono work — ranging from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the great civil rights issues of the present day — namely, the defense of human life from conception to natural death. Her concerns range from the aging and dying population to the unborn to the well-being and dignity of every life, regardless of race, religion, or economic status. Her outstanding work in this field has earned her the respect of the most brilliant minds of the international community, regardless of whether they agree with her position. So again, to see her merely as “strongly anti-abortion” instead of as a tireless defender of the dignity of life, is to reveal not only a lack of understanding of the subject’s work, but also the writer’s real interest in this question.
Furthermore, during his first 100 days in office, President Obama has worked tirelessly to undermine Professor Glendon’s lifetime of work; he is funding abortion out of the bailout package and planning to suppress the protection of conscience for health care workers.
Your notion that her “training in diplomacy” might somehow ease this situation does not take into account that she has a five-minute acceptance speech and he will have a lengthy commencement speech. There is no “engaging” here. Diplomacy generally teaches that if you have a rapier and your opponent has a missile launcher, try not to engage.
That Professor Glendon “did not like that Notre Dame was claiming her speech would serve to balance the event” is again facile and simplistic. What is there to like in being the deflector screen for inviting a profoundly divisive figure to give the commencement speech? What is likeable about a Catholic University named for the most important woman in Christianity exploiting a woman who has already dedicated her life to protecting the Church’s teaching by turning her into a warm-up act for a grotesque twist on a reality show?
Finally, after 50 Catholic bishops condemned the university for its direct defiance in honoring a man in open conflict with the Church’s teaching, it is right that Professor Glendon let her silence speak louder than her five-minute allotment of words would have.Readers might be wondering how I know all this. Well, for one I am her daughter, but more to the point, I read her letter with the careful consideration it deserves.”
Elizabeth Lev is an art historian and writer based in Rome, where all of her three children were born… more
Michelle Malkin sums up Obama’s first 100
Be Holy! 