Category: Christianity

Ethnocentrism and Christian universalism: opposites and parallels

Over the last few days I have conducted an e-mail exchange with “Rocket”, whom readers will know for his firm universalist Christian stand.  Rocket asked to post here on the juxtaposing of ethnocentric and universalist Christian aims and values.  What we’ve ended up with is this, which parentage is very much more Rocket’s than mine.  So it is his handle which appears beneath the post.
GW

In the sociological substratum of ethnocentrism versus authentic Christian universalism there are a number of interesting ways to compare and contrast these two value systems.  One significant qualitative difference lies in the dual concepts of honor and shame, which are the tribal equivalents of redemption and retribution in Christianity.

Historically, tribes with an iron clad bloodline-identification placed a high premium on honor and shame.  Roman historian Tacitus wrote about Germania and its conflict with Pax Romana, and how the German tribes refused to be subdued.  Hence they remained free men in the sense of retaining control over their tribe’s fate.

Meantime, through the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, the Christian is embraced by divine forgiveness.  Hence he lives as a free men, even though his life-circumstances may dictate otherwise.

There can be no honor for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth because His followers do not seek honor from men, including each other.  They do seek redemption, though, and an act of altruism towards the poor and sick is redeeming.  Hard-heartedness or greed, on the other hand, will meet with retribution.  The parallel in the old Germanic world was that hard-hearted fighting was in-group altruism, and there was honor if you fought as an Ostrogoth and great shame if you did not.

Continued...

An Imaginary Interview

An Imaginary Interview
By
Robert E. Reis

“CAMBRIA WILL NOT YIELD” is an anonymous author at a blog by the same name. I think his blog deserves many visits. I hope you will agree.

Why are white Europeans in retreat?

“It is clear that white Europeans no longer believe what white European pagans once believed, nor what white European Christians once believed. This is why they are helpless in the face of the “passionate intensity” of the barbarians of color. The barbarians still believe in barbarism.”

Continued...

The Christianity Question

In European culture, polytheistic beliefs began to dwindle with the rise of Christianity.  In the centuries to come it was to be expected that the polymorph system of explanation, whether in theology or, later on, in sociology, politics, history, or psychology, in short, the entire perception of the world, would gradually come under the influence of Judeo-Christian monotheistic beliefs.  Unquestionably, the two thousand year impact of Judeo-Christian monotheism, with its distilment of Americanism, has considerably altered its approach to politics as well as the overall perception of the world.

... In modern consciousness, the centuries long and pervasive influence of Christianity has contributed significantly to the modern view that holds any glorification of polytheism or, for that matter, nostalgia for the Greco-Roman spiritual order, as irreconcilable with contemporary Americanised society.  Modern individuals who reject Jewish influence in America often forget that much of their neuroses would disappear if their Biblical fundamentalism was abandoned.  One may contend that the rejection of monotheism does not imply a return to the worship of ancient Indo-European dieties or the veneration of some exotic gods and goddesses.  It means forging another civilisation or, rather, a modernized version of scientific and cultural Hellenism, considered once as a common recepticle of all European peoples.

Dr Tomislav Sunic writing under his heading of “American neo-paganism in his book, Homo americanus.

Now, I’ve put together this quote because it contains both halves of what I suppose we must call the Christianity Question, namely:-

1) The role of the Bible in communicating the Jewish materialistic worldview, out of which came the obsessive 20th Century drive for world improvement.

All liberalism’s children, including communism, democratism, predatory capitalism, even anti-semitism in Tom’s view, are just secular offshoots of this strange, borrowed Levantine faith.  And there is no end to it as long as we draw water from that well.

2) The desirability and grave difficulty of recovering mythological value for Europeans (which Tom qualifies as “the quest for their ancestral heritage").

I am going to make a few observations about both issues.  I do so with some nervousness about treading on hallowed ground.  I am a stranger to faith myself and would not, even if I was able, wish to follow Richard Dawkins’ tasteless precedent.  I am not, therefore, making a case against faith.  My case against Christianity is the case against the leaden characteristics of the Jewish god.

With that caveat then, here goes.

Continued...

Strange Alliance: Christian/Jewish Zionists.

When debating the existence of God, philosophers point to two major problems: unnecessary evil in the world and non-belief (See T.M. Drange’s Nonbelief & Evil, 1998). One strong component of many religions then is to find ways to prove that God exists, and especially reassuring are miracles and prophecies.

In The Politics of Apocalypse: The History and Influence of Christian Zionism by Dan Cohan-Sherbok, 2006, he traces the long history of Christian Zionists attempts’ to use biblical prophecy to show that God exists, that God plays an active role in the unfolding of the future, and being saved before “Armageddon arrives,” which is right around the corner, should be the main concern for Christians. Until recently I have always considered such ideas belonging to a small number of religious literalists, but they have far more influence than I was aware of before—and outside their group I would assume others are also quite unaware of their influence.

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OPEN SEASON ON EVERY RELIGION BUT ONE

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/01/19/open_season_on_every_religion_but_one

In a nation of broken taboos—where a Brooklyn artist can display a crucifix in urine and Madonna can rock out while hanging from a cross—only one religion, Judaism, enjoys virtual immunity from criticism. Those who dare break the silence are punished with social and political ruin, tarred as “anti-Semites,” sinners of the worst stripe.

Think I exaggerate? Just take a moment to sample the scorching critiques leveled by national public figures against Islam and especially Christianity. For starters, listen to Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman. If you think Jews aren’t uniquely sheltered, imagine if he were talking about them.

“They are a well-funded, well-organized facet,” he intoned, “engaged in an aggressive campaign to transform America into a theocracy ruled by their warped view of biblical law.”

Foxman was talking about Christians or, in his words, “Christian Supremacists.” This was a warm-up for his lecture on Muslim extremists, another group of scary, religious radicals Foxman said also seek global dominion. The ADL head bragged that in 2006 more than 21 books or national articles were written about the threat of politically active Christians. First on his list was Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, which accuses Christians of “dominion theology.”

Nasty, Racist, Islamophobic, Militaristic video game set to be Christmas bestseller

There’s some fight in the old faith yet:

A video game that depicts a crusade of violence by Christians could be heading for the bestseller charts this Christmas, even though it has been condemned by Muslims and secularists.

The game Left Behind: Eternal Forces is set in post-apocalyptic New York and features God’s army battling the Antichrist.

Based on the bestselling Christian fantasy Left Behind series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, it puts players in command of brainwashed legions fighting the “good fight” for Christianity.

Gamers are ordered to convert or kill in order to re-model America as a Christian-controlled state, and establish its world vision of Christ’s dominion over all aspects of life.

Gamers pit battles between the paramilitary Christian Tribulation Force and the grey, faceless Global Community forces of the Antichrist, said to be modelled on the United Nations.

‘Grey, faceless Global Community’! As in, what we might have once the distinct races and nations of the West are subsumed into a toffee-coloured global mass!

And just wait until you hear what Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society* (read:National Society for the eradication of Christianity) and author of such uplifting and edifying works as these, has to say:

Fundamentalists on both the Christian and the Muslim side are creating this kind of nasty, extreme propaganda and aiming it at young people.

Translation: “This is precisely the sort of extreme propaganda that Muslims have been using to encourage their young to make war on Christians. This, however, is an example of Christians - Whites - doing the same, which can’t be allowed. Don’t you remember that you’re supposed to be a helot, not to fight back?”

Now, why would a campaigning homosexualist, in other words somebody who campaigns for the benefit of those whose interests do not extend past this generation, be so hostile to a reaffirmation, however vulgar, of the fighting Christian faith, which is apt to make life uncomfortable for the near future but is nigh on essential if we are to survive in the long run? That’s easy enough to answer. Now, why does the Times choose to quote him without mentioning any of these highly salient details? That’s the more interesting question.

We don’t have to agree with the sentiments, fundamentalist, totalitarian and genocidal ones, endorsed by Left Behind to welcome the arrival of this video-game. It will act purely as what The Revolutionary Conservative once called ‘a totalitarian onslaught of mind-numbing extremity against Political Correctness’. It’ll be a way of confronting Cultural Marxism with its dialectical opposite, and seeing it flinch in sheer terror at the spectacle. After all, they, not we, first decreed that the public celebration of Christmas was but a lesser variant of the same crime that the Holocaust represented, the crime of racism. Those behind this game simply agree, although they are also unwilling to give up Christmas.

*Here‘s a rather interesting website. Scroll down and count the number of National Secular Society members you can find.

I hate to over Sobranise you…

...but this week’s offering is just too good:

I finally began to get my answer when I watched, yet again, the classic liberal movie Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized version of the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial.” If you want to understand how liberals see the world, this is the place to start.

The real Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwin’s theory in a public school. Today, when government has switched dogmas, he would be prosecuted if he tried to teach that God created man.

The movie never actually uses the term right-wing, but the basic idea is there. On one side are the reasonable, benevolent, open-minded liberals, typified by the Clarence Darrow character (played by Spencer Tracy); on the other are the religious bigots, buffoons, and blowhards who hate science and are typified by the William Jennings Bryan character (Fredric March) and form lynch mobs.

The Big E tells God: Thou shalt not love Thy children in the BNP

None-too-bright but seemingly unstoppable lip-flapper and scourge of English survivalism ... “The Man” when it comes to equality ... the one and only Trevor Phillips, Tony’s Georgetown bro, has been laying those smooth, smooth moves on the BNP.  Again.

Church should expel racists and BNP supporters, says CRE chief

Churches should expel racists and supporters of the British National Party from their pews, the head of the Government’s race watchdog said today.

Trevor Phillips called on bishop and priests to refuse communion to racists and turn them into “pariahs and outsiders”.

“Will the churches support any priest or minister who says I will not administer the sacrament to someone who blatantly rejects Christ’s teachings?”

... The CRE chief said at a conference run by the Evangelical Alliance, a grouping that includes many of the country’s black churches, that the churches should have condemned the BNP leader.

“If ever there was a moment for hellfire and damnation, this was it,” Mr Phillips said. “At the very least, every pulpit this Sunday should have been ringing with denunciation, ministers and priests crying ‘not in our name’.

“The far right should not be able to claim Christ to their cause. But they will do if we let them.”

He added: “I feel rage that my church might expect me to be in communion with such as Nick Griffin.  This is where Christ puts us to the test.

“In the end it is Christians who decide who shares their fellowship, and who is excluded.”

Mr Phillips asked: “Are we ready to use weapons of faith to turn these people into pariahs and outsiders?”

Continued...

Balls of steel in Lambeth?  Well, just the one so far.

"The first time the Church has launched such a defence of the country’s Christian heritage” is how an un-named bishop described a confidential Church document, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph today.

“An astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society” was how the Telegraph saw it.

The paper, titled Cohesion and Integration – A briefing note for the House [of Bishops], was written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury.  These are the criticisms it levels at our so-liberal political masters:-

1. The attempt to make minority “faith” communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society “more separated than ever before”.

2. Divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

3. The Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, “preferential” treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population.

4. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda.

5. Public funds have been used to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, legislation on forced marriage has been shelved, financial arrangements to comply with Islamic Law have been encouraged.  Yet none of this has produced any “noticeable positive impact on community cohesion.  Indeed,” the report goes on, “one might argue that disaffection and separation is now greater than ever, with Muslim communities withdrawing further into a sense of victimhood, and other faith communities seriously concerned that the Government has given signals that appear to encourage the notion of a privileged relationship with sections of the Muslim community.”

6. The Government is wrong to see faith as the cause of a divided society.

Of course, one has to note from the outset that the Church of England is more the wounded liberal Establishment at prayer than the forthright, awakening defender of an imperilled Christian nation.  It still adheres firmly to the pluralistic faith-society, the la-la “why can’t we all love one another” ideology.  But this is kumbayah with an oddly refreshing note of menace - at least as far as this useless, fearful, screwed-up Government is concerned.

The day that menace finds its proper target amid the golden crescents of England’s northern towns and cities will be really something.

Just one more ball to find.

Singin from da hymn sheet

Since I am not a Christian nor a liberal nor a Ugandan immigrant nor sound asleep it is difficult for me to assess the utility of today’s sermonising by Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.  He is, alas, the second most powerful figure in the Anglican Church, and living proof of the Communion’s exciting, go-ahead committment to ... vibrancy, of course.  So when he adumbrates upon the nature of my Englishness and cautions me to vote for a mainstream political mugger in Thursday’s local authority election, should I obediently sit up and take notice.  Does anyone, in fact, obediently sit up and take notice?

Well, according to BBC News this is what he said:-

Referring to parties like the British National Party, Dr John Sentamu said they espoused the “politics of fear”.

Dr Sentamu, who was born in Uganda, described Britain as “a country of immigrants” and ... told BBC Radio Four’s Sunday programme: “This country has been one of the most welcoming, most accommodating.

I want to suggest if it lost that because people simply say ‘we’re going to put a barbed wire around a number of things in order for us to feel safe’, that is not actual security, that’s fear - and any politics which plays on people’s fears in the long run, give it a bit of time, it will fail”.

Continued...

An expedition into Volkskultur

My previous little personal memoirs here seem generally to have been well-received, so here is another!

Intellectually, I have been an utter atheist for over 40 years but emotionally I am still the Bible-bashing Protestant fundamentalist I was in my teens.  And one consequence of that is that I have a great love of Christian music, including popular hymns.  So I feel very much at home with ALL the sacred music of my Volk.  I would scarcely be a lover of Bach otherwise as his inspiration was very much in German Protestantism and its great music.

So when Anne suggested that we attend a “Festival of Praise” last night at the Logan Entertainment Centre (a municipal facility in a working-class part of the Brisbane area), I was perfectly happy to go along.  Since she came into my life Anne has done a fair bit towards demolishing my previous reclusive lifestyle!

When we arrived, I noticed that the audience was 100% “Caucasian” (which seems to be the American euphemism for “white”—a term one uses at some risk these days.  Though the connection most “Caucasians” have with the Caucasus is very distant indeed).  And I would guess that most of the audience were Anglo-Celtic too.  Some people don’t like that term “Anglo-Celtic” but seeing I am myself Anglo-Celtic in ancestry, I see no problem with it. 

Continued...

Christian patriots smeared by Church Marxists

Christians seeking to halt Marxist onslaught against British people are smeared by Church of England

According to its website, the recently established Christian Council of Britain is an organisation that aims to ”work towards the removal of barriers to the expression of our faith and all forms of discrimination faced by Christians” by raising awareness of the ”threat to our ancient faiths, values and our very existence by false prophets”. Unsurprisingly, these fairly innocuous objectives - in fact they are the ingredients for the very survival of European Christianity - have come under attack from the Marxist conspirators who have infiltrated and captured the mainstream churches.

The major “crime” of the CCB is that it has informal links with the British National Party and holds to similar objectives. The founder of the CCB, Reverend Robert West, has said, ”there is a link in that the BNP has encouraged and facilitated the formation of the Christian Council of Britain”. When asked of his personal world-view, Reverend West said, ”the CCB believes in the biblical teaching of nations. We should live in nations as nations”. He continued, ”if we are to exist as nations then we are to have our own national homelands. In our own national homelands in which our own identity has priority...each race should have its own space”. In order to grant “space” to each “race”, Reverend West is prepared to countenance the voluntary repatriation of aliens; as he stipulates ”provided it was by consent”.

This extremely subversive notion of national self-determination has been pilloried by the Church of England and other Marxist and New World Order religious fronts. In distancing itself from the CCB, the Church of England has reiterated its official policy that ”any political movement that seeks to divide our communities on the basis of ethnicity is an affront to the nature of God revealed in creation and Scripture”, sanctimoniously concluding that ”voting for and/or supporting a political party that offers racist policies is incompatible with Christian discipleship”. In an astonishing attempt to rewrite the Bible, the Church of England has even created a whole new category of sin:

(We) call on all Christians in England to nurture a loathing of the sin of racism and to model the teaching of Christ in loving all our neighbours…

According to the Macquarie Dictionary, “racism” is any belief that “human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures”. As anyone with the slightest understanding of Christianity could tell you, there is no such sin as “racism” or anything remotely like it in the Bible, and in issuing such a ridiculous edict the Church is not only abusing its position as a temporal authority by concocting errant nonsense, it is arguably elevating itself to a status equal with God Himself. That the Church has abdicated its role as a responsible religious authority and become little more than an outlet of state-sponsored propaganda is further confirmed by its commitment to ”building cohesive communities and affirming our multi-ethnic, culturally and religiously diverse society”.

Not to be outdone by the Church of England, Methodist Church spokeswoman Anthea Cox has condemned the CCB. She said, ”I am outraged that the BNP and its allies are using Christianity to further their agenda of segregation and division”. She continued, ”We reaffirm our earlier statements that Christian belief is incompatible with any political party or philosophy that is based on hatred or treats people as inferior because of their race, beliefs or for any other reason.” But the CCB has never said that anyone should be treated as “inferior” because of their race. They simply stated that each race should have the right to self-determination, a right which the churches never thought to condemn in the case of the African anti-colonial movements. Do Englishmen not have the same rights as Africans? If this is true, then will the Methodist Church recant its policy of “equal treatment of the races” as being inconsistent with its more favoured policy of “English self-abnegation”?

It is now perfectly obvious that the established churches believe in no identifiably Christian principles whatsoever. They have eschewed all Commandments except for the most sacred Commandment of all, ”Thou Shalt Not Discriminate”. They believe that opposing the destruction of one’s own ethny is the most grievous sin of all, and even go further in implying that the dissolution of whole races is somehow an unqualified benefit to humanity. In taking such a positively inhumane stance the priorities of the established churches are instructive. Note that they do not argue, for example, that one cannot both be a Christian and support a political party that carries out criminal wars of aggression against foreigners on the basis of monstrous fabrications. They do not disendorse politicians who drop depleted uranium ordinance on civilians, and they certainly do not oppose state-sponsored torture at the ballot box.

No, the established churches have reserved all their ire for believers in national and ethnic self-determination, and in doing so they have confirmed themselves as nothing more than pathetic shills for the New World Order; their eventual eclipse will be mourned by nobody. 

Vatican stops apologizing for the Crusades

"The Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity. The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.... At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.... Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.  He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”.

He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.  Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.”

More here

The precentor and the dragon

What is a precentor?  You haven’t a clue have you?  Shame!  A precentor is a senior official of a cathedral or other large ecclesiastical establishment.  It is all part of your European Christian background and culture.  To defend your culture you first have to know about it.  So try harder.  The precentor originally led the singing and he is still usually in charge of a cathedral’s musical affairs—though he also is a senior administrator generally —often the next down in seniority to the Dean.

I met a precentor today.  Anne and were were in town for a stroll and noticed a service in progress at the metropolitical cathedral of St John (Anglican) so we popped in for a biscuit and a sip of wine.  (Just joking!  Atheists don’t take communion).  Anyway the music was good, the service was delightfully mediaeval and we had a quick chat with the precentor afterwards.  In the absence of the Dean (who was over at the CATHOLIC cathedral in some good cause!) the Precentor celebrated the Eucharist so also had hand-shaking duties afterwards.

I must admit that I was a bit fuzzy about what precentors actually did—partly because the duties of precentors do vary—so I was pleased to meet a live one and find out what he did.  He was indeed 2IC to the Dean.

After church we strolled down to the Botanical Gardens for another sit-down and had a very fat dragon (an 18” long lizard) come up to us in an apparent quest for food.  A very pleasant Sunday morning!

Not Winterval yet

I am somewhat bemused to find three men in cassocks stepping into the ring to take on the “silly bureaucrats” and the “minority in leadership who want to privatise religion”.  But that’s what has happened today.

First off, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams put his name to a piece in The Mail On Sunday saying:-

What makes some people suspicious of Christmas these days is that it’s too religious. This year there seems to have been even more stories about the banning of Christian images and words by silly bureaucrats.

Right on cue the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, weighed in during GMTV’s Sunday Programme with:-

“We must avoid the kind of political correctness that is creeping in and undermining the public expression of the Christian faith.”

He said he was concerned about “a worrying hostility towards Christianity and all religions by a minority of people in leadership today who want to privatise religion, push it to the boundaries, not allow a voice in the public arena.”

Meanwhile the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Reverend Jonathan Gledhill, declared his diocese to be fighting back against the politically correct approach to Christmas with a new poster campaign:-

“There have been reports from all over the country about local authorities, businesses, retail centres and even central government trying to take the Christ out of Christmas, claiming Christmas is offensive.

“They seem to want to make Christmas history - the Diocese of Lichfield wants to make Christmas His story”

Ordinarily, we would say these churchmen are part of the liberal problem and preside over an emotionally feminised version of Christianity.  However, even they have limits.  They have, it seems, noticed that the silly bureaucrats and the mysterious minority in leadership have none, and will go on chipping away at every surviving outcrop of Western culture until nothing remains.

The “hands-off” declarations of today reveal a fault-line between religious liberals and committed egalitarian activists.  In essence, the former are drawing a line in the snow.  They are refusing to let their faith be marxised out of existence - which is a point I have made many, many times in respect of Western Man in general.  When all roads lead to extinction, resistance will be the only recourse.

Gregorian chant at Our Lady of Protection Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church

Almost all blogs contain a fair bit of comment about the personal life of the blogger.  There is not much of that here so maybe my occasional personal anecdote helps keep a balance.  My anecdotes are always fairly didactic anyway.

Because both the lady in my life (Anne) and myself are lovers of early church music we tend to end up in churches a fair bit on weekends even though we are both unbelievers.  Mentally, I am as atheist as you can get but emotionally I am still Christian.  And I can assure you that that apparent inconsistency bothers me not one iota.  I have an enormous appreciation (and considerable knowledge) of my Christian heritage.

Last night we went to a concert held after the regular service at Our Lady of Protection Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church here in Brisbane.  How a church can be both Byzantine and Catholic is a considerable puzzle.  Byzantium is the home of Orthodoxy.  But I assume that there was a schism some time in the past where an Orthodox church kept all its Greek rites but decided to recognize the magisterium of the Pope as well.  The fact that the church still had a version of the mediaeval “rude screen” between the altar and the congregation supports that.  There was also no organ in evidence—which seemed very strange to an old Protestant like me. Presbyterian/Methodist churches that I know always have an organ with a pulpit in front of it as the focus of attention in a church (rather than an altar).

The first thing I noted in the church was the large number of children and young people in attendance.  It made me feel very grateful for our Ukrainian immigrants.  After the genocide inflicted on the Ukrainians by Stalin, perhaps they feel an urge to restore their numbers.  And, unlike Muslims, Ukrainians don’t make the news by harassing Anglo-Australians.  I guess having a religion that says “love your neighbour” is a bit different from having a religion that says “Kill the infidel”.

The main attraction on the program was a series of Latin chants by “Schola Cantorum”—a Brisbane choir who seem to specialize in that.  The male members dressed in monk’s robes so one got a very good feel for how the chants were originally intended.  And hearing them in a church with such a prominent mediaeval feature as a rude screen helped with that too.

And the priest was YOUNG!  Still in his 20s by all appearances.  Great to see that Christianity is alive and vital among this subsection of the Australian population at least.

Celebrating the feast of Christ the King at “Our Lady of Victories”

It has from time to time been said on this blog that if you want to live in an entirely white society, you need to move to Eastern Europe.  In Brisbane you can do that with relative ease.  This Sunday morning, I attended a mass at “Our Lady of Victories” church—Brisbane’s major Catholic church with an entirely Polish congregation.  The service was mostly in Polish but, being a bit deaf, I found it hardly more incomprehensible than the service at the Metropolitical Cathedral of St. John—a marvellous stone Anglican church to which I also occasionally go for the music.  Being a great fan of early church music (the Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina is my favourite in that department) I am often to be found in places where few atheists go.

Anyway, the service at “Our Lady of Victories” was overwhelming.  The congregation was of course entirely pink-skinned and mostly elderly.  There was Gregorian chant even before the service began and young nuns in wimples were much in evidence.  The service began with a magnificent ecclesiastical procession with all sorts of flags, banners and uniforms—with the distinctive caps of the heroic Polish armed forces much in evidence.  There was no order of service or prayer-book handed out.  People KNEW what to do and when to do it.  Sanctuaries were opened and closed, bells were rung and trumpet fanfares were sounded.  And best of all was the heartfelt singing of Polish hymns.  And, quite amazingly, after the service was over and we left the church, we all processed right around the church and resumed devotions while standing outside it—with the clergy officiating from the entrance staircase.  There was a definite reluctance to let go of a great community occasion.  It was all pretty foreign to my poor old Presbyterian heart (the lady I was with was also of Presbyterian origins) but the power of the occasion was still very evident to me nonetheless.

So, yes. I do appreciate the ways of my Volk—with that term VERY broadly defined—and I believe that they are so powerful that they will never go away.  That the Poles have endured so much and still emerged victorious in all the ways that matter is proof of that.

Dr Jensen & the future of identity

In rejecting their own ethnic traditions liberals are left with a major problem. What is to hold society together, if not a common ancestry, culture, religion and history?

Australian intellectuals are especially fond of “imagining” new forms of national identity which will unify society. The latest effort is called “Australia: Ideas for our Future”. The authors of this work believe that there is an Australian tradition of mateship, tolerance and a fair go for all around which a unifying Australian identity can be based.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has criticised this approach to an Australian identity in an article in today’s Age newspaper (not yet online).

He is, firstly and understandably, disappointed that the proposed national identity is entirely secular. He sees this as further proof of the declining position of Christianity in Australia. In his own words, “Frankly, Jesus is slipping out of memory and imagination.”

He then points out the limitations of the proposed identity, in words which demonstrate a mixture of clarity and confusion:

Continued...

Racial attitudes and Christianity

It follows almost without saying that Leftists would believe Christians to be “bigots”—i.e. to have negative attitudes towards minorities. “Racist” is the favourite Leftist term of abuse and Christians are the group that Leftists hate most so racism and Christianity must go together.

Many readers here would however probably be inclined to say: “If only it were true”.  They would be aware that Christian idealism tends to cause Christians to see all men as “equal in the sight of God” and hence to reject any notion that large-scale uncontrolled immigration could have any problems associated with it.

So how does it pan out in fact?  Do Christians overall tend to have negative or positive attitudes towards minorities?  I present some research findings on the subject here.

Social Justice ten times better than God

Every month I get a magazine from my old school, Xavier College, which is the leading Catholic private school here in Melbourne.

Up to now, I’ve been uncertain whether I want to send my own son to Xavier. But the latest school magazine has made the decision easy. He won’t be going.

The latest magazine shows all too clearly how far the school has drifted away from Catholicism into a modernist, secularised liberalism. In fact, going by the magazine the school has dropped religion altogether in favour of a new kind of cult called “social justice”.

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Christianity: The Signs of Decay

Local Methodist Church

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Overturning Constantine

At least for 1000 years my kin have been Christian, lately I’ve struggled with keeping the faith. After reading this story I doubt that I’ll send my children to Sunday school. If the Church doesn’t defend us from race replacement, I won’t defend her.

I’ll take my children to the cathedrals to explain architecture, I’ll teach them Latin, and teach them to understand Christian art, but I won’t give two cents to the pederasts and cowards speaking in the pulpits of our churches. Choke on your communion wafer!

How could he do it?

I heard about the shooting on the radio on Friday morning. A man had been gunned down in his Melbourne home during the night.

In today’s paper we get the full story. The victim was a man by the name of Jafar Heshmaty. He had left his native Iran, worked illegally in Greece, bought a Greek passport and then flown to Melbourne in 1989.

In Melbourne he was put in detention while his claim for refugee status was fought in the courts. He received support from the Baptist Church which organised protests and a Christian community sponsorship for him.

But after three years the High Court ruled against him because of doubts about his real identity. So he sought and received asylum in America instead.

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BEST WISHES TO POPE BENEDICT XVI

His views are well-known and he will be a great defender of his church against the white-anting from within that is its major threat. His early election is a tribute to the already great authority he held within the church.  From a news report:

A delirious crowd of around 100,000 cheered and waved wildly as Ratzinger, the 265th pontiff in the Church’s 2000-year history, smiled and acknowledged the applause from the curtain-draped balcony of Saint Peter’s basilica. His first words were met by a huge ovation. “Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II the cardinals have elected me a simple and humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord,” he said, paying tribute to his immediate predecessor.  The announcement that the 115 cardinals sequestered inside the Sistine had chosen a new pontiff on only the second day of their conclave came when white smoke billowed out of a chimney atop the Vatican.... The election by a two-thirds majority came in a fourth round of voting that had begun when the 115 cardinals sequestered themselves into the chapel for their conclave.  The Pope now has the onerous burden of guiding the Church into a new era fraught with moral dilemmas and dissension over a host of issues ranging from emptying pews to contraception and celibacy. A close confidant of John Paul II, he shared his conservative views.

Random thoughts on P.D. James

Browsing through an autobiography of authoress P.D. James, I was surprised to discover she is something of an Anglican traditionalist. She writes,

“The Church of England in my childhood was the national church in a very special sense, the visible symbol of the country’s moral and religious aspirations, a country which, despite great differences of class, wealth and privilege, was unified by generally accepted values and by a common tradition, history and culture, just as the Church was unified by Cranmer’s magnificent liturgy.”

As you might expect, she does not approve of recent developments within the C of E. She declares,

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