The Dispatch: More from CWR...

Extra, extra! News and views for November 16, 2022

Here are some articles, essays, and editorials that caught our attention this past week or so.*

Detail of "Bookplate D.H. Roodhuyzen de Vires van Dishoeck"(1942) by M.C. Escher (Image: WikiArt.org)

Armageddon – “What does the Bible really teach about the End of the World, Armageddon, the second coming of Jesus Christ and the final battle against the Antichrist?” Armageddon, Apocalypse, and the Final Battle (Integrated Catholic Life)

Spiritual Friendship – “While I am sorely sympathetic to the desires of same-sex attracted Christians and their need for family and belonging, I believe that the proponents of modern-day spiritual friendship disorder the precious mystery of friendship. ” Spiritual Friendship: Temptation or Belonging? (Christian Research Institute)

Nothing Goes Nowhere – “i know a lot of people were expecting a ‘red wave’ but as i had been cautioning, that’s A LOT harder than it looks.”  you can’t beat “something” with “nothing” (bad cattitude)

Affluent White Female Liberals – “If 21st-century politics is shaping up as class war, the American midterm elections have concretised a troubling facet of this political landscape: this class war is also a sex war.” A sex war is coming (Unherd)

Principled Neutrality – “The only principled position, we have been told, is neutrality. The voters can approve or disapprove abortion as they like, but what matters is that the voters decide.” Bleeding Montana (Ius & Iustitium)

Death by Academic Books — “The road to hell was once paved with good intentions—but nowadays we settle for symbolic gestures. They’re much cheaper than good intentions.” Academic Publishing and the Death Instinct (The Honest Broker)

No Wave – “Tuesday may have been disappointing for Republicans, but pro-abortion fanatics didn’t win big either.” Abortion Didn’t Hold Back Republicans (The American Conservative)

A Self-Imposed Exile – “The reason for our journey: ­Wyoming Catholic College. We wanted to get a better sense of the place before I committed myself to four years in the indifferent, yawning landscape of Wyoming.” Why I Went to a Catholic College (First Things)

Metaverse Fantasy – “It’s over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people.” The Age of Social Media Is Ending (The Atlantic)

The LGBT Front – “The United States’ men’s national team have made a huge statement at the World Cup in Qatar by redesigning their crest to incorporate the rainbow flag, in a bid to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.” Qatar: Somewhere Under The Rainbow (The American Conservative)

Christ-Haunted writers – For these writers, all lovers of good literature should be thankful. American Literature and the Catholic Faith (National Catholic Register)

Lion & Lamb – “Finding appropriate kids’ books these days can be tough. Even with an otherwise wonderful local library, there is a great deal of questionable material lurking in the pages of some new releases.” Lion & Lamb seeks to curate the Catholic child’s bookshelf (Aleteia)

Catholic Creativity – The fourth biennial Catholic Imagination Conference, bringing together Catholic poets, novelists and artists for two days of readings, panels, workshops and fellowship, was held from September 30-October 1 at the University of Dallas. Writer on a mission to re-fire Catholic imagination (The Catholic Weekly)

(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)


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3 Comments

  1. @Principled Neutrality.
    “Judges must not interfere with this posture of principled neutrality. Such a position does not have deep roots in the classical legal tradition, which certainly does not hold that the law can be neutral on essential questions of morality, letting the voters decide such basic questions as who is alive” (Pat Smith).
    The question posed is whether a decision to save the life of the survivor of abortion should rest with the people rather than a judicial precept. Ironically, the question relates to the argument against abortion by Justice Kavanaugh, that the Constitution is ‘neutral’ insofar as abortion rights, meaning the Constitution does not refer to abortion at all.
    Smith quotes Ross Douthat’s complex response, that the judge in deciding on neutrality did not, it seems, say all that should be said, in consideration of the decision left with the people and the Montana vote against a referendum to protect the infant. At first reading it appears Douthat’s nuanced response is correct.
    My response to this complex, sad outcome stemming from the Supreme Court argument for Constitutional neutrality on abortion resulting in the argument for neutrality, the decision on the right to life of the abortion surviving infant left with the voter that resulted in the defeat of the referendum to protect that right – actually has juridical foundation in the Common Law [the Common Law of England which in practice refused a right to abort infants] adopted by most states upon independence from British rule. That argument deeply rooted in tradition finds its juridical basis in the natural law, a major component of the traditions incorporated in the Common Law [see Dissenting Opinion Justice Robert R Beezer in Compassion in Dying v State of Washington US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit argued and submitted October 1995 Filed March 1996].
    Although the Washington case addressed a right to suicide, justice Beezer employs argument contra abortion rights in hi Opinion citing Bowers v Hardwick 478 US 186 1986. Bowers: “These tests are distinct from the broader nonfundamental liberty inquiry of Casey. The sweeping description of liberty in Casey is never characterized as fundamental under the Constitution; rather, its wide purview covers all liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, non fundamental as well as fundamental. The Casey plurality states repeatedly that it is the combined force of stare decisis and liberty that protects a woman’s right to abortion. Casey 112 S.Ct. at 2804, 2808. This implies that liberty alone would be insufficient to support a new fundamental right to abortion”.
    Douthat’s rationale would be correct insofar as the Constitution that as written does not defend a right to abortion, nor does Common Law and the natural law, upon which our American, and British legal tradition find legal definition. In effect, the right to life of the unborn and survival of the aborted infant does not rest with the will of the general public. That right is a justice right requiring protection by the law.

  2. “Armageddon”
    Jesus tells us that His Second Coming will be like the days before the Great Flood, and that no one will know when the disaster will hit. Well! The Survivors, Noah and his family, knew when the great disaster would hit.

    Matthew 24:36 The Unknown Day and Hour.
    “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be [also] at the coming of the Son of Man.

    There is not one, but two great Apocalyptic ‘Anti-christs’. One at the beginning of Messianic Reign, the Matthew 24 ‘Desolating Abomination’, and the one at the end of Messianic Reign, when free-willed earth ends in Daniel 9. In between the two ‘Desolating Abominations’ Jesus will Rule on earth, with and through His Church, the Catholic Church, in His ‘Holy City’, which is the Revelation 21 ‘New Jerusalem’, for the Daniel 9, 63 weeks, which, if Jesus Second Coming Comes now in 2022, would put doomsday off till the year 34,000.

    Daniel 9:26
    After the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut down with no one to help him. And the people of a leader who will come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. His end shall come in a flood; until the end of the war, which is decreed, there will be desolation. For one week he shall make a firm covenant with the many; Half the week he shall abolish sacrifice and offering; In their place shall be the desolating abomination until the ruin that is decreed is poured out upon the desolator.”

    St. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3, that in the Great Flood, God destroyed the original heavens and the earth, and then made a new heaven and earth. St. Peter, along with John of Revelation, tell us that the heavens and earth will be destroyed again, and again God will make us a third, new heavens and new earth, for the meek, humble and pure of heart, after the unrepentant wicked are removed from the earth, by the wrath of God. The Revelation 21 “The New Heaven and the New Earth”, third, ‘New Heaven and Earth’ will be Jesus’ Kingdom Come on free-willed Earth, ‘The New Jerusalem’, where Jesus will be married to His Bride the Catholic Church, and His presence reside within her Body of people, in the Restored Israel, in the Restored Garden of Eden, like Adam and Eve lived in the Presence of God in the original Garden of Eden.

    ‘Jesus is Getting Married’
    http://www.apocalypseangel.com/married.html

    Acts of the Apostles 1:6 The Ascension of Jesus.
    When they had gathered together they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.

    2 Peter 3:3
    Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come to scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation.” They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed of old and earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God; through these the world that then existed was destroyed, deluged with water. The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought [you] to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

    Psalms 97
    The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice; let the many islands be glad. Cloud and darkness surround the Lord; justice and right are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him; everywhere it consumes the foes. Lightning illumines the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim God’s justice; all peoples see his glory.

    Psalms 96:11
    Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them. Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice before the LORD who comes, who comes to govern the earth, To govern the world with justice and the peoples with faithfulness.

    Daniel 7:11
    I watched, then, from the first of the arrogant words which the horn spoke, until the beast was slain and its body thrown into the fire to be burnt up. The other beasts, which also lost their dominion, were granted a prolongation of life for a time and a season. As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him, He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

    Acts of the Apostles 26:17
    I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God,

    According to Jesus’ locutions to St. Faustina (1930s), Jesus is Second Coming to remove, only the unrepentant wicked, from the earth soon. So, be sure to receive Jesus’ Sacraments of Divine Mercy, this Divine Mercy Sunday. It is only Jesus’ Divine Mercy which will shelter you through our impending Matthew 24 Great Chastisement.

    Acts of the Apostles 26:17
    I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God

2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. Extra, extra! News and views for November 16, 2022 | Franciscan Sisters of St Joseph (FSJ) , Asumbi Sisters Kenya
  2. Extra, extra! News and views for November 16, 2022 | Passionists Missionaries Kenya, Vice Province of St. Charles Lwanga, Fathers & Brothers

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