For the record: judging, discerning, and choosing are part and parcel of life. From day one, our senses present the world to us and we’re off on the grand adventure. All is recorded in the Book of Life from cradle to grave. “Known but to God” can be recorded on every tombstone. And so, now we come to the death of the “great man”, Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy. What constitutes this greatness matters. Of late, we have seen idols and iconic figures come to their respective ends. To judge, to discern, to choose is human, wisdom depends on it. Society learns and survives by it.
Let a merciful and just God judge the disposition of a soul. I’m okay with that for myself and others. What to make though, of hours and days and in some cases eons of public pronouncements and near cult worship. Senator Ted Kennedy died and now the myth begins, or has it been spun like a cocoon about him throughout life? For the butterfly to emerge, the cocoon must be broken.
I’m of the opinion that God isn’t wowed by the Kennedy legacy and I’m certain all spin stops before His throne. A face to face with God isn’t like Facebook, Twitter or even “Meet the Press”. Men may flatter us, but the truth is that pride goes before a fall. Before the Almighty, humility is the better garb.
For my part, I see that Edward Moore “Ted” Kenned, had it all; life lived to the full. He got the chance as the youngest of nine children born to a Catholic mother who practiced her faith, not birth control, to experience family, faith, power, love, fun, sin and foolishness. He got to make mistakes, ask forgiveness, build bonds of kinship and friendship. He got to roar like a lion and cry like a baby. I see, too, that this gifted and blessed man, failed to find it in his heart or philosophy to support the unborn, the un-named also conceived by the will of God, failed to grant them protection or welcome into the same life he so abundantly lived. May these, the Holy Innocents, now pray for him, their brother, offering the purest Innocent, the Lamb of God, to a loving Father who even Now, stoops to the lowly when they cry out for mercy. Lord have mercy!
Ignatius Press sticks to the facts and leaves the funeral fuss, fantasy, and lionization to press, popular myth romantics, and political agendas.
“America is not a secular state. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was ”born Protestant.” It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has no established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for both believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a ‘’secular” country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.”“As Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said recently, too many Americans have ”no recognition of the fact that children continue to be killed [by abortion], and we live therefore, in a country drenched in blood. This can’t be something you start playing off pragmatically against other issues.”
NewsMax.com reports the numbers:
Among the key findings:
86% of Americans would significantly restrict abortion. 60% of Americans would limit abortion to cases of rape, incest or to save the life of a mother – or would not allow it at all. 53% of Americans believe abortion does more harm than good to a woman in the long term. 79% of Americans support conscience exemptions on abortion for health care workers. This includes 64% of those who identify as strongly pro-choice. 69% of Americans think that it is appropriate for religious leaders to speak out on abortion. 59% say religious leaders have a key role to play in the abortion debate. 80% of Americans believe that laws can protect both the health of the woman and the life of the unborn. This includes 68% of those who identified as strongly pro-choice. Additionally, the data showed that since October nearly every demographic sub-group had moved toward the pro-life position except for non-practicing Catholics and men under 45 years of age.
Independents and liberals showed the greatest shift to the pro-life position since October, while Democrats were slightly less likely to be pro-life now than they were in October.
“The data shows that the American people are placing an ever increasing value on human life,” said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. “Far from the great divide that most people think exists when it comes to the abortion debate, there is actually a great deal of common ground. Most Americans are unhappy with the unrestricted access to abortion that is the legacy of Roe
vs. Wade, and pundits and elected leaders should take note of the fact that agreement on abortion need not be limited to the fringes of the debate and issues like adoption or pre-natal care. The American people have reached a basic consensus, and that consensus is at odds with the unrestricted access to abortion that is the legacy of Roe.”
The survey of 1,223 Americans was conducted May 28 – 31 and has a margin of error of +/-3%.
Americans United for Life is working hard getting the word out:
With the Sotomayor confirmation hearings set to begin on July 13, we need “all hands on deck” to show the Senate and the nation that Judge Sotomayor’s radical record — including her longtime participation in a pro-abortion advocacy group — makes her unfit for the highest court in the land.
Michelle Malkin writes Racism Rejected:
President Obama applauds the decision as a victory for equality under the law. Not.The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
SCOTUS Blog background here. More background here and here.
Tom Goldstein: “Ricci result: Kennedy finds a violation of Title VII. An outright reversal 5-4…the plaintiff firefighters won. New Haven violated the law by throwing out the test.”
Sotomayor = Not so wise now.
“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
Growth in Israel is part and parcel of life. Curtailing growth casts the shadow of death over any nation. As Israel goes so goes those who are blessed by her:
Charles Krauthammer sees this with clarity and writes:
Obama the Humble declares there will be no more “dictating” to other countries. We should “forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions,” he told the G-20 summit. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will henceforth “start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating.”
An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone — Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Clinton imperiously explained the diktat: “a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.”
What’s the issue? No “natural growth” means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them — not even within the existing town boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that. The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns — even before negotiations.
To what end? Over the last decade, the U.S. government has understood that any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some of the close-in settlements — and compensating the Palestinians accordingly with land from within Israel itself.
That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and again at Taba in 2001. After all, why turn towns to rubble when, instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians?
This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and Republican administrations for the last decade, but was agreed to in writing in the letters of understanding exchanged between Israel and the United States in 2004 — and subsequently overwhelmingly endorsed by a concurrent resolution of Congress.
Yet the Obama State Department has repeatedly refused to endorse these agreements or even say it will honor them. This from a president who piously insists that all parties to the conflict honor previous obligations.
The entire “natural growth” issue is a concoction. It’s farcical to suggest that the peace process is moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new grandchildren — when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Ehud Olmert’s peace offers, brazenly declares that he is in a waiting mode — waiting for Hamas to become moderate and for Israel to cave — before he’ll do anything to advance peace.
Israel brought growth and fruitfulness to a land long neglected. The money that poured into the hands of Hamas and Fatah after the Oslo accords was used to wage war and build a terror machine that continues to impoverish the people of the region under Palestinian control. What would the situation be now, if instead of terror, these funds actuality funded schools, roads, courthouses, hospitals, and charitable institutions that truly relieve the suffering of their people. No nation, no one, can help the Palestinians until they set aside hatred to love their own people.
Krauthammer writes:
Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
Be Holy! 