St. Michael the Archangel
Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Posted on 11/02/2004 5:56:48 AM PST by Lindykim
All the polls show the Presidential race is all about voter turn out.This Tuesday is the most important day in America's future. The next President will have the opportunity to appoint three or four Judges to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Saturday, as I sat behind the President at a rally in Minneapolis , I heard his promise to use his Administration in the next four years, as he has the past four years, to protect the life of the unborn and uphold the definition of marriage.
I heard references to God as well as references to The Almighty. I heard an evangelical prayer from a pastor and I watched as the Mayor of St. Paul led 23,000 people in the hymn Amazing Grace....I heard the hatred of abortion and the respect for traditional marriage. My friends, I heard what you will never hear at the rally of the democrats.
I believe anyone that does not vote on Tuesday is sinning and anyone that votes for Kerry is committing an even greater sin! We not only need President Bush but we need members of the U.S. House and Senate that will support those he will appoint to the federal bench and the U.S. Supreme Court.
This election is a worldview battle, a battle between good and evil....it is a spiritual battle. This is it folks.....if Kerry wins and he appoints Judges to the U.S. Supreme Court; America is lost.
If you do not vote on Tuesday and Kerry wins, don't complain about the increase in persecution that will surely follow. If you think we are not already experiencing persecution in America to some degree by the humanistic liberals and ACLU judges, then read the book by David Limbaugh entitled, Persecution. What will occur under the judges Kerry appoints and a Kerry Administration will be unimaginable.
This is no time to waste votes on third party candidates..A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Kerry. If you disagree that is fine....don't waste your time sending me an e-mail about it because I will not waste my time reading it.
Please forward this to 10 people right now and ask them to do the same. I have sent this e-mail alert to 40,000 people. If everyone fowards this alert to 10 people, we will reach 400,000 people with this urgent message....if evangelicals vote on Tuesday, in record numbers, we can win for righteousness sake. Please join me in praying for God's will. God bless you and God bless America.
Sincerely, Brannon Howse President & Founder Worldview Weekend www.worldviewweekend.com
Right now it's called things like "culture war", a clash of bipartisanship, or a clash between religious believers and seculars. These phrases are fuzzy sounding and lead to confusion.
What's occuring between Left & Right is a war between competing ideas. They compete because those on the Right are antithetical to those on the Left. And collectively , these ideas make up worldviews.
The Left's worldview, in very plain language, is godless neo-communism. And the Right's worldview is our traditonal Judao-Christian/Scottish Enlightenment {as opposed to the Franco-Germanic Enlightenment} one on which America was founded. So simply put, the Left's godless worldview states that man is all there is, therefore man is in complete control, and all laws, principles, etc., are the product of man Of course what they really mean by "man" is a relatively small group of "elite men" who were supposedly born with superior intellectual powers and should therefore be the rightful rulers over everyone else.
If this sounds like the thinking that undergirded the formation of ancient monarchies, more modern aristocracies, dictatorships, and ideologically-based regimes like Maos' People's Republic, or Lenin's and/or Stalinins' Soviet Republic, Kim Jung Il's totalitarian regime, Castro's communnist Cuba, etc., you're right. Notions of 'elite' men were ideated by ancient philosophers. This worldview has ancient origins that predate the Bible.
Our traditional worldview states very simply that man is Not all there is. There is a Creator Who created mankind, the earth, the universe, and a transcendant moral code variously known as the Decalogue, Ten Commandments, Natural Law, or as CS Lewis termed it, the Tao.
Using our Creator as the "Lodestar" {or first principle}, our Founders deduced that since the Creator made this earth and all of us, then:
(a) all men were created equal, which means that no man or group of men were "born" to be the natural rulers {controllers} over all other men
(b) if our Creator created life, then it's not for man to define who may or may not live {this goes right to the heart of abortion and euthanasia, both of which are founded on the idea that man can decide how to define life and whether it should be allowed to live or not
(c) if our Creator formed the earth, then it's there for any of us to use and possess. From this, our Founders deduced our right to private property and our right to defend it {2nd Amendment}. This is in complete opposition to the Left's elitist worldview with its' notions of collectivist control of all land, resources, etc. and their opposition to private gun ownership. After all, how can they "own" everything if the {inferior masses} people are armed?
When we see this war of competing ideas as a war between totally oppositional worldviews it makes sense of the following:
(a) why the atheist/secular Left hates our Creator and is waging war on Him by waging war against Christianity and all of its' religious symbols, holidays {holy days} like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.
(b) why they have a frenzied, demented fear and hatred of GW Bush, an evangelical Christian
(c) why they've virtually eradicated our history and replaced it with a secularized, multiculturalist version
(d) why they've taken control of our institutions of learning, those that disseminate information and lead to the shaping of culture {msm and entertainment industry, our judiciary, etc
(e) why they've created the lie that our Founders intended America to be a secular {atheist} nation.........they did not of course
(f) why they've created the lie that all of our Founders were deists. Only one or possibly two were.
(g) why they've created the lie that there is a Constitutionally mandated "separation of church and state" {there isn't}.
(h) why they've used tax exemption laws to shut up church leaders
(i) why they've been engaging in a campaign of smear-tactics and verbal intimidation towards Christians in which they marginalize them by labeling them as crazed zealots, fundies, radicals, etc. The purpose of this campaign is to strike fear into Christians and thereby reduce them to a state of apathetic passivity and subjugation.
If we're to win the war against the demented infants on the Left who seek to control all of us, then we Must recognize the absolute importance of our traditional worldview and its' lodestar........our Creator. We cannot have our traditional freedoms without Him and the transcendant moral laws which He placed over us all. As He is removed from the picture, we begin to revert to the rule of elite men.........kings, aristocracies, socialism, etc.
There is no third way. it's either obediance towards our Creator or obediance towards elite man.
bumpity-bump
This is known as "Posited Law". It is the basis of laws that the ACLU and most law universities base their political and legal philosophy. NATURAL LAW, its superior, states that laws come from a higher source and pre-exist any government. The Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by Natural Law.
I had an interesting series of email exchanges with Mr. Howse after I inquired of him why Worldview Weekends, a traveling series of lectures and presentations by prominent Christians with a decidedly political tone, never came to the Northeast but seemed to stay in the South and Midwest. I suggested that the information and exhortation provided by WVW would have a most useful impact where it would not be "preaching to the choir".
His reply to me was that WVW is a for-profit business and if I had $10,000 he would book a Worldview Weekend for me. He then became abusive using terms such as "jerk" and "idiot" to describe me and others who believe that true Christianity is not a moneymaking proposition (not that I can't be a jerk or an idiot occasionally, but I wasn't on this occasion). It does seem that preachers, revivalists and Christian apologists stick to the areas where there is money to be made, not the areas that are in desperate need of the Word of God.
I don't trust this man. He's a hothead and seemingly lacks the benevolence, humility and devotion I admire in fellow Christians.
I pray he will come back to the Cross and understand that he must serve Christ first by making disciples, not money. God will feed us like he feeds the birds and clothe us like he clothes the lilies of the field if we serve Him first.
If Mr. Howse doesn't believe this he is not to be trusted.
St. Michael the Archangel
Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
A lot of it is a clash between relativism (that there are no absolute rights or wrongs) and those who believe in natural law.
For the most part, religious people around the world are not relativists...but secular humanists are.
It's probably worldview clashes more than "culture clashes"
And for those of us who see the end results, often we do see it in terms of good and evil.
I stopped watching TV because I found the advertisements going the way of soft-core porn (well, maybe a bit of exaggeration, but were moving in that way). Even when I could find programming that was good and interesting, I couldn't get away from the filth that the modern relativists are trying to peddle to kids (young adults in particular) who don't know why that is bad...
And when it comes to choosing death over life...I don't have another word for it.
Cardinal Ratzinger said: "The truth is not subject to a majority vote."
But moral relativists believe it is, and therein lies the difference.
This is the stark truth. The culture of death will get a stranglehold on the Supreme Court, and we will be one step closer to Bin Laden getting invited to give Harvard's next commencement speech.
Lol ... glad to know I am not alone. Thanks for posting a great response.
The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the premise. The notion of private property is implicit in the Commandment, "though shall not steal." However, since all that exists is the Lord's, no man can truly say that he owns anything absolutely. The right to hold private property is relinquished or nullified in life or death cases. For example, in a time of famine, those people who are starving would have a primary right to an individual farmer's produce.
Any chance of getting a larger version of that pic of St. Michael?
Actually, if you go to this site, you can download it as wallpaper for your desktop (that's what you had in mind, right :-)?
"For example, in a time of famine, those people who are starving would have a primary right to an individual farmer's produce."
I didn't find that in the Catholic Encyclopedia article you linked. As a matter of fact, these passages...
"And Pius X, in his Motu Proprio of 18 Dec., 1903, laid down the following two principles for the guidance of all Catholics:
• (1) "Unlike the beast, man has on earth not only the right of use, but a permanent right of ownership; and this is true not only of those things which are consumed in their use, but also of those which are not consumed by their use";
• (2) "Private property is under all circumstances, be it the fruit of labour or acquired by conveyance or donation, a natural right, and everybody may make such reasonable disposal of it as he thinks fit."
...
Though private property is a necessity, still the use of earthly goods should in a manner be general, as Aristotle intimated (Polit., 1. 2, c. 5) and as Christian philosophy has proved in detail (St. Thomas, "Summa" II-II, Q. lxvi, a. 2; Leo XIII's encycl., "De conditione opificum"). This end is obtained when the rich not only observe the laws of justice, by not taking unjust advantage, but also, out of charity and liberality, share their abundance with the needy. Earthly goods are meant to be, in a certain manner, useful to all men, since they have been created for all men, and consequently the rich are strictly obliged to share their superfluities with the poor."
...would seem to contradict the notion that the starving have any "right" to other people's property.
An obligation on Peter to be charitable in no way endows Paul with the right to take Peter's property. In fact, the notion that anyone has a "right" to another's property nullifies the entire concept of charity, which lies in freely giving someone what he has no right to take.
Muchas gracias.
Tell it like it is bump!
In posting my worldview article in here, I was fairly certain it would meet with some some constructive criticism due to this being a much more intellectually informed forum than in some of the other groups I post in. It's mostly for those 'other' groups..... groups controlled by pagans, atheists, radical homosexuals, New Agers, etc.,
that my writing style, which simplifies complex ideas as much as possible, is aimed. The abject ignorance and hatred I encounter in those groups is astonishing and disheartening. But who knows?
Perhaps I might reach through to someone.
OOoops, their links are all gooned up. Guess they're not maintaining their site.
Here's something, though: the picture of the Madonna and Child they have there is by William Bouguereau, and if you go to the arc.com, you can find several wonderful paintings by him.
He also did classical themes when he wanted to work some prurience in, but his sacred paintings are wonderful. I'm convinced that Mel Gibson patterned the next-to-last scene of The Passion after Bouguereau's Pieta.
La Vierge aux Anges is beyond wonderful, imnsho.
I didn't know you wrote it. Nice job. I figured whoever wrote it was speaking in shorthand, but I wanted to make this point clear for libertarians who tend to take an absolutist stand regarding private property.
Again, man is essentially a social being. Consequently, all rights granted him are subject to the necessary restrictions which are demanded by the common welfare and more accurately determined by law. This right of disposal which the civil power exercises over property has been called dominium altum, but the term is misleading and should be avoided. Ownership gives to a person the right to dispose of a thing for his private interests as he sees fit. The Government has no right to dispose of the property of its subjects for its private interests, but only as far as the common weal requires...
In the example I gave, the distribution of the farmer's produce to starving people would promote the common good, since the right to life of the starving people supercedes the farmer's right to private property.
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