Does God Only Understand Latin?

Traditionalist Catholics hope that Latin masses will boost parish attendances but not everyone agrees that they will do anything to keep Catholics from leaving the Catholic Church or bring back the sheep that have left.

Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington, says, “Of 150,000 people in the Washington DC area who attend Mass each week, less than 500 choose the Tridentine Mass,” which has been available in the city since 1985.

Accessibility isn’t an issue, since the rite is already offered in three locations scattered across the city and suburbs.

Latin masses have their place on the weekly schedule if there is a majority in that parish who prefer the mass said in the universal language of the Catholic Church. In our local church, the mass is spoken in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Providing for the needs of it’s local parishoners is what should be important, not forcing people to concentrate on saying words that are foreign to them when they should be focused on mass.

What will most people do if the Latin mass is the only mass they can go to? What most Catholics pre-Vatican 2 did. They will sit in the pews and recite their rosary during mass.

There’s only two generations of Catholics in the world left living who remember when the Latin masses were the norm. In 20 years, what language will predominate the United States? The Church’s push to protect illegal aliens will be a huge factor in the final outcome. I guarantee you, it won’t be Latin.

Deus beatus nos totus in ullus lingua.

Where Is The Security With French Port Contractors?

What is it about the French and their corrupted practices of dealing with the enemy? The heinous United Nations Food for Oil scandal, now the South Miami port’s number one contractor seems to be a French company with ties to Cuba and its’ terrorist-loving regime.

A foreign company set to build a massive tunnel project at a major U.S. seaport has close ties to the government of a country that has long appeared on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

The French construction giant (Bouygues Travaux Publics) is the preferred contractor to build a $1 billion tunnel at the South Florida Port of Miami, the world’s top cruise ship terminal with nearly 4 million passengers annually and one of the country’s busiest cargo ports with about one million containers a year.

It turns out that the French company has very close ties with Cuba and has in fact teamed up with its communist government to build nearly a dozen high-end resorts. Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro has even praised the company during his marathon speeches to the masses.

The State Department has for years listed Cuba as a nation that sponsors terrorism, along with other U.S. enemies such as Iran and Syria. In fact, a recent State Department report on terrorism says that Cuba, Iran and Syria have not renounced terrorism or made efforts to act against foreign terrorist organizations.

It seems ironic that U.S. tax dollars—in this case state, county and city–will go to a company with such a cozy relationship to a notorious America basher and supporter of terrorism. Then, there is the very pressing national security issue.

Thanks to Dave!

General’s Penetrating Words For Our Military

Michael Yon has posted the letter below from General Petraeus.

One of the reasons I trust General Petraeus is he just comes right out and says what needs to be said. The letter which he sent to our forces serving in Iraq (posted below) is a case in point. The letter is more important than it might appear on first glance.

It’s important to keep in mind that the drive-by, Bush-hating media, the Democratic liberals, and the wussy-assed Republicans don’t want to see a victory in Iraq. They just want to get liberals elected to office.

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen serving in Multi-National Force-Iraq:

Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we—not our enemies—occupy the moral high ground. This strategy has shown results in recent months. Al Qaeda’s indiscriminate attacks, for example, have finally started to turn a substantial proportion ofthe Iraqi population against it.
In view of this, I was concerned by the results of a recently released survey conducted last fall in Iraq that revealed an apparent unwillingness on the part of some US personnel to report illegal actions taken by fellow members of their units. The study also indicated that a small percentage of those surveyed may have mistreated noncombatants. This survey should spur reflection on our conduct in combat.

I fully appreciate the emotions that one experiences in Iraq. I also know first hand the bonds between members of the ” brotherhood of the close fight. ” Seeing a fellow trooper killed by a barbaric enemy can spark frustration, anger, and a desire for immediate revenge. As hard as it might be, however, we must not let these emotions lead us—or our comrades in arrns—to commit hasty, illegal actions. In the event that we witness or hear of such actions, we must not let our bonds prevent us from speaking up.

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees. We are, indeed, warriors. We train to kill our enemies. We are engaged in combat, we must pursue the enemy relentlessly, and we must be violent at times. What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight, however, is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings. Stress caused by lengthy deployments and combat is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign that we are human. If you feel such stress, do not hesitate to talk to your chain of command, your chaplain, or a medical expert.

We should use the survey results to renew our commitment to the values and standards that make us who we are and to spur re-examinat ion of these issues. Leaders, in part \icular, need to discuss these issues with their troopers — and, as always, they need to set the right example and strive to ensure proper conduct. We should never underestimate the importance of good leadership and the difference it can make.

Thanks for what you continue to do. It is an honor to serve with each of you.
David H. Petraeus,
General, United States Army
Commanding

How can the Republicans let our military down this way? Grow a spine, Congress! We need leaders in the White House and representing us.

King Herod’s Tomb Found

The tomb had never been found until now.

The tomb is at a site called Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert, clearly visible from southern Jerusalem. Herod built a palace on the hill, and researchers discovered his burial site there, the university said.

The university had hoped to keep the find a secret until Tuesday, when it planned a news conference to disclose the find in detail, but the Haaretz newspaper found out about the discovery and published an article on its Web site.

Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Romans around 74 B.C. The wall he built around the Old City of Jerusalem still stands, and he also ordered big construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Massada and other sites.

It has long been assumed Herod was buried at Herodium, but decades of excavations had failed to turn up the site. The 1st century historian Josephus Flavius described the tomb and Herod’s funeral procession.

The Queen’s Visit

The White Tie Dinner at the White House.

Spring pea soup with fernleaf lavender

Chive pizzelle with American caviar

Newton Chardonnay Unfiltered 2004

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Dover sole almondine

Roasted artichokes, pequillo peppers and olives

Saddle of spring lamb

Chanterelle sauce

Fricassee of baby vegetables

Peter Michael Les Pavots 2003

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Arugula, Savannah mustard and mint romaine

Champagne dressing and trio of farmhouse cheeses

“Rose Blossoms”

Schramsberg Brut Rose 2004

Proof That Man Can See Into The Future?

Okay, so you can’t take seriously a newspaper that has departments such as Femail, Fantasy League, Suduko, and the TV and Show Biz categories listed before the Science and Technology; but this article from the UK’s Daily Mail, caught my eye, but then again I knew it would. This is a subject I relate to, having experienced more than one incident of premonition and “knowing” ahead of time something was going to happen.

Do some of us avoid tragedy by foreseeing it? Some scientists nowbelieve that the brain really CAN predict events before they happen.

Professor Dick Bierman sits hunched over his computer in a darkened room. The gentle whirring of machinery can be heard faintly in the background. He smiles and presses a grubby-looking red button.

In the next room, a patient slips slowly inside a hospital brain scanner. If it wasn’t for the strange smiles and grimaces that flicker across the woman’s face, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just a normal health check.

But this scanner is engaged in one of the most profound paranormal experiments of all time, one that may well prove whether or not it is possible to predict the future. For the results – released exclusively to the Daily Mail – suggest that ordinary people really do have a sixth sense that can help them ‘see’ the future.

Such amazing studies – if verified – might help explain the predictive powers of mediums and a range of other psychic phenomena such Extra Sensory Perception, deja vu and clairvoyance. On a more mundane level, it may account for ‘gut feelings’ and instinct.

The man behind the experiments is certainly convinced. “We’re satisfied that people can sense the future before it happens,” says Professor Bierman, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam.

“We’d now like to move on and see what kind of person is particularly good at it.” And Bierman is not alone: his findings mirror the data gathered by other scientists and paranormal researchers both here and abroad.

Professor Brian Josephson, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Cambridge University, says: “So far, the evidence seems compelling. What seems to be happening is that information is coming from the future.

“In fact, it’s not clear in physics why you can’t see the future. In physics, you certainly cannot completely rule out this effect.”

Virtually all the great scientific formulae which explain how the world works allow information to flow backwards and forwards through time – they can work either way, regardless.

We already know what we need to know, we just need to know that we know. Trust your instincts more.

Gore’s Increasing Spirituality

Environmentalism is cited as the new religion of the left and Gore is the Anti-Christ.

The former vice president referred continually to a “new way of thinking” that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet.

“It’s in part a spiritual crisis,” Gore told the crowd in the Convention Center at the American Institute of Architects national convention. “It’s a crisis of our own self-definition — who we are. Are we creatures destined to destroy our own species? Clearly not.”

Environmental Anti-christ Is Coming.

Green Fervour – The New Paganism

Children Are Bad For The Earth?

In another example of how much the far left environmental whackos hate families, despise love, goodness and compassion, and are just miserable buggers, now the co-chairman of the group OPT, Optimum Population Trust in the United Kingdom says that everyone should be limited to only having two children. He then equates having children to making 642 flights from London to the United States.

HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank.

The paper by the Optimum Population Trust will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family’s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York. John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights.

“The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

In his latest comments, the academic says that when couples are planning a family they should be encouraged to think about the environmental consequences.
“The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account,” he added.

Professor Guillebaud says that, as a general guideline, couples should produce no more than two offspring.

Are Muslims having more babies? There is that debate but it could be a toss-up between Hispanics and Muslims. The cultures not having babies are the Western middle and upper classes.

Coming from a family of 8, including my parents, I think big families are wonderful. I enjoy large families and watching the camraderie, the interactions, the love. I see that in my friend Jennifer’s family. Jennifer recently had her eight child. Her life is one big adventure from sun-up to sun-down, and even in the middle of the night. Her children don’t know it yet, but they are unique in the world and don’t realize how lucky they are to be in such a loving family with good parents. I know as children, we didn’t appreciate our family status. Having my babies was the best time of my life.

Then there are the Duggars, who will celebrate shortly their 17th child.

Michelle Duggar said Monday in a telephone interview from her northwest Arkansas home that the whole family is excited about the arrival of the baby girl they will name Jennifer Danielle, keeping with the family tradition of giving the child a name that begins with J.

Jennifer Danielle is due July 27.

Duggar, 40, said she was doing fine with her latest pregnancy. Although she has gotten older since she had her first child at age 21, she said, she still has plenty of energy and only minor aches and pains.

“With each baby, God’s given me the grace and the energy to keep going, and they really keep you going,” she said. “I feel like a 20-year-old kid, but I’m realizing my body isn’t that 20-year-old. I don’t get up and play the games as hard as I used to, and I try to be a little more careful.”

Duggar said she and husband Jim Bob, a former state representative and U.S. senate candidate, view each phase of their children’s lives as an adventure.

“I’ve never been a mom of a 19-year-old young man and a 17-year-old young man and woman, so every phase of parenting is an exciting adventure” Duggar said.

The Duggars home school their children at their 7,000-square foot home in Tontitown. The couple’s oldest child, Joshua, is 19, and their youngest, Johanna Faith, is 19 months. Their children include two sets of twins.

Because the couple sees each child as a blessing from God, Michelle Duggar said they will, as long as she is able, accept each child they are given. “Really, our heart is we would love to receive whatever gifts or blessings the Lord wants to give us,” she said. “But I love the baby stage and I can’t imagine life without having a toddler in the house.”

Two of the Duggar children, Janna, 17, and Jill, 15, attended Johanna’s birth at St. Mary’s hospital in Rogers in 2005. Duggar said the two girls, who both have an interest in becoming midwives or nurses, may attend Jennifer’s birth as well.

And though she has 16 children, Duggar said that each child is so different there are times when she feels like she knows nothing about parenting.

“Here I am a mama with her 17th child on the way, and so many people think ‘Oh you’ve got it all figured out,”‘ Duggar said. “I am still learning. Just when I think I’ve got something figured out I try it on the next one and it doesn’t work.”

The Duggars’ other children are John David, 17; Jessa, 14; Jinger, 13; Joseph, 12; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 8; Jedidiah, 8; Jason, 7, James, 5; Justin, 4; and Jackson Levi, 2.

Our children are the future of the earth. Go forth and multiply – exponentially.

Jesus Christ Alive & Well In Orlando?

It takes all kinds folks. Okay, he didn’t admit it at first, but then finally, everybody guessed his big secret so now that it’s out in the open, Jesus Christ, reincarnated, now appears in amphitheatres and under tents all over the world. Well not all over the world, he’s banned in certain countries. Is there any doubt that this person believes in tithing? Of course, he does.

A controversial religious figure who claims he is Jesus Christ incarnate with a following of millions with “666” tattoos on their bodies, filled an amphitheater in Orlando this weekend, and promised joy, peace and prosperity.

Orlando police officers stood guard around the Lake Eola amphitheater as Dr. Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, 61, arrived in the city Saturday. Miranda, who has been banned from three countries, told Local 6 News cameras and a cheering crowd that he was Jesus Christ reincarnated.

His followers believe that Miranda’s life and his teachings replace those of Jesus of Nazareth, Local 6’s Jamie Guirola said. “They believe that Jesus is going to come from the sky,” Juan Sanchez. “But, that is not the way he is going to come.”

“He is here?” Guirola said.
“He is here.” Sanchez said.

Miranda said millions of people worldwide have tattooed their bodies with “666” in recognition that the second-coming of Christ has taken place, according to the report. “I have it proudly on my hand,” a believer told Local 6’s Jamie Guirola. “It is easier when they shake my hand. It is easier for them to ask. I am very proud to show it is a sign of love.”

A group of Christians protested the event, calling the following a cult. Police also removed two people from the amphitheater.

“We are just questioning their faith and their ‘666’ tattoos,” a protestor told Local 6. “We just want to learn more so we can relate more between being a Christian and believing in this and who the true Jesus is.”

Miranda said he is known as God in at least 30 countries. Local 6 reported that he was born in Puerto Rico and admits to being a recovering heroin addict. He also spent times in prison on drug and petty theft charges.

Miranda is the founder of the Miami-based Growing in Grace Ministry.

I don’t know who’s whackier, Dr Jose Miranda or the idiots who follow him?

Global Warming Is Cheesy Science

…according to Wisconsin’s faithful heretic, Reid Bryson. The 86 year old scientist understands that our knowledge is very limiting when it comes to the earth sciences.

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News. In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.

“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What’s called “proxy evidence”—assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data—helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.

We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it’s second-tier stuff. “Don’t talk about proxies,” he says. “We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It’s all written down.”

Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners’ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

Some facts that get lost in the melodrama of Hollywood’s gore:

• Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?
• A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?
• Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…
• A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

Read the rest of David Hoopman’s interview with this Wisconsin scientist.