Anglican Mainstream

By Albert Mohler

The doctor is a murderer. The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell ended yesterday, with the infamous abortion doctor convicted of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter. The doctor’s abortion clinic, described by a Philadelphia prosecutor as a “house of horrors,” is no more, but the truth revealed in his trial remains. He is not the only one with blood on his hands.

The prosecution of Kermit Gosnell put the entire nation on trial. The doctor was indicted on hundreds of criminal counts, and in addition to the murder and manslaughter convictions he received yesterday, he was also convicted on more than two hundred counts including racketeering, infanticide, and performing abortions that violated Pennsylvania law. Most of those were illegal late-term abortions.

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By Anthony Esolen, Ruth Institute

Lust perverts language itself, calling sex “safe” or “protected,” and cohabitation “honest,” and relationships “mutual,” which are nothing but forays into a jungle, where the strongest and most cunning survive.

Several weeks ago, Saint Valentine’s Day at my school came and went. There was no dance. There was no concert. There was no ice cream social. There was no party for trading little gifts. There was no showing of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Marty or Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Casablanca. There were no foolish and innocent flirtations on the way to class.

But there was some small notice taken of the holiday. A group of women, as has been customary for several years, rented space at a local theater to stage there what they are not allowed to stage at our Catholic college, the dreary, hapless porno-twaddle called The Vagina Monologues. A few hundred of our students made the trip across the city to watch it, including some young men motivated by a sort of homeless chivalry. The stated justification for the show is to protest violence against women—though, in Eve Ensler’s initial version of the play, the only violence against a woman was a lesbian drug-rape of a teenage girl, and that was celebrated as liberating.

So it’s come to this: Even lust now is gray and dispirited. The girls celebrate Valentine’s Day by putting on a series of vulgar and angry skits, to instruct the boys in how rotten they are, and the boys, most of whom have no particular desire to treat girls badly, roll their eyes and go along with it, or file it away with all the other petty resentments of our lonely contemporary existence.

Of course, there isn’t a feminist on my campus who will admit to these young women that if they really want to be protected from violence, they should marry a decent man and stay married to him, because such married women are less likely than any other group of Americans to be the victims of a felony.

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Read also:  Should Men Hold Doors open for Women? by Peter Hitchens

By Julian Mann

If author David Cornwell (alias John Le Carre) had admitted that he had voted for Ukip, socially liberal journalists and publishers – the mainstream of those worlds – would have been affronted. Mr Cornwell might well have suffered financial consequences or at least some professional ostracism.

But his boast in an interview for The Times Magazine (4/5/13) that he has 'done' cocaine will cost him nothing because taking an illegal Class A drug is perceived by the politically correct establishment as a matter of no consequence.

Unlike the displaying of biblical texts on commercial premises. When a Christian cafe owner in Blackpool did that in 2011, he received a visit from the police after a customer complained about 'homophobic' statements.

Psalm 73 expresses a righteous Israelite's lament that, in a fallen world, the wicked prosper. He admits that his faith in God almost faltered in the face of that reality until, v17, he entered the Lord's sanctuary and contemplated the ultimate destiny of the wicked.

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By Kristin Rudolph, IRD

Our evaporating sexual mores are indicative of deep confusion about who we believe we are as human beings, what it means to be uniquely male or female, and what our purpose in life is. Dale Kuehne, author of Sex and the iWorld discussed these issues at the recent Q Conference in Los Angeles on April 16, stating: “We were made to love God, self, and others,” not to accumulate material wealth or indulge fleshly desires.

We have been told that freedom from religious and traditional boundaries will make us happy, as we are liberated to pursue self-fulfillment. But, Kuehne, a politics professor at St. Anselm College pointed out in a Q&A session, a Washington Post study of teenage mothers found the number one reason girls became pregnant was not because they were ignorant about birth control, but because they “wanted to be loved.”

Kuehne explained, “There is a design to the world. There are rules to it [which are good news].” He described the shift from a world that recognized and lived by those rules – the “traditional world,” or “tWorld.” This world was built with limits that placed sex within the relationship of husband and wife. The professor outlined how this moral foundation was established through a blend of Judaic and Christian teachings, and Greek and Roman philosophy. As Aristotle argued, “Fundamentally humans are not individuals, per se, we’re always part of relationship. The fundamental relationship for him was family,” Kuehne said.

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By Peter Mullen, CEN

Many were shocked the other day when they read some words from the lesbian journalist Masha Gessen:

“It's a no-brainer that homosexual activists should have the right to marry, but I think equally that it's a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we claim that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. I don't think it should exist.”

None of this should have come as a shock, for the origins of the nihilistic programme promoted by such as Ms Gessen were set out clearly by the dissident communist intellectuals of the Frankfurt School half a century ago. These writers understood that communism was not going to triumph in the West by force of arms and so they decided its victory would come by other means: chiefly this was by their penetrating the institutions of western civilisation and undermining it from within. They have succeeded beyond their dreams because they have found a ready consent among so called liberal thinkers and politicians in Europe and America. And so, as Gertrud Himmelfarb said, “The counter-culture is the culture now.”

Prominent in the Frankfurt School was Georg Lukacs who saw the necessity for the destruction of Christian civilisation and he advocated demonic ideas in the spread of cultural terrorism. Lukacs was an agent of the Comintern and he set up a schools programme in which children were instructed in free love, and sexual intercourse while being taught that the family was a decadent institution along with monogamy and all manifestations of religion. He aimed to undermine the family by promoting licentiousness among women and children and so weaken the basis of Christian living.

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by David Baker, Christian Today

What have we learnt since Britain's longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century passed away?

It has been frequently observed that the death of Baroness Thatcher has served as a reminder of how divisive a figure she was – either loved or loathed, adored or abhorred.

But however strong the passions which she arouses even today, it seems to me the most revealing things we have learnt since her passing are not about the late Prime Minister herself, or even how Britain feels about her, but about how we as a nation have lost our way in handling death.

There was a time, of course, when society had more recognised rituals that accompanied the passing of an individual: the shutting of curtains in a home, a vigil at the coffin – perhaps even the stopping of clocks. Then there was the bowing of heads and removal of hats in the street as a funeral cortege went past; a liturgy familiar to all in the country with its time-honed words ("in the midst of life we are in death"); a refusal to speak ill of the dead.

But nowadays, detached from our Christian moorings, and uncertain and confused as a society about the value of human life, we find ourselves all over the place. For many, it seems that anything goes: there were parties in several cities to celebrate Baroness Thatcher's passing; there has been chatter on the internet about pelting her coffin with lumps of coal; and of course there was the campaign to promote the song "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" – even if in the end it did only reach number two.

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By Professor Ian Robertson, Huffington Post

By Bill Muehlenberg

By Fr Ed Tomlinson

by Stephen Glover, Mailonline

There were fine tributes to Margaret Thatcher yesterday in the House of Commons. Even the Labour leader Ed Miliband accepted she had been right to see that this country had to change, and right to come to the defence of the Falklands.

But even as I listened to these mostly measured speeches I could not get out of my mind the foul and disgusting things that have been said or written about her over recent days by comedians, politicians, pop stars, a few journalists (I regret to say) and ordinary people.

Never in modern times, and probably not in the entire history of these islands, has the demise of a public figure been greeted with such euphoria and wild expressions of hate. The death of Margaret Thatcher has revealed something very unpleasant, and rather unexpected, about our country.

Of course, politics in Britain has long been conducted competitively, passionately and, very occasionally, even violently. But what has happened over the past few days is different. Within hours of her death the floodgates were opened and streams of sewage pumped out.

In Glasgow and Brixton, campaigners shouted from loudspeakers ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,’ as the mob ecstatically replied: ‘Dead, dead, dead.’ Some were carrying banners, with one proclaiming: ‘Rejoice, Thatcher is dead.’

Pictures of anti-Thatcher graffiti scrawled on walls in Brixton (the scene of fierce riots in 1981) were circulated on Twitter, with one reading, idiotically: ‘You snatched my milk, and our hope.’

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Read also:  Teachers of hatred: The drama mistress and the master from Miliband's school who helped organise the Maggie 'death parties'

By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

By David Blackburn

By Julian Mann, CEN

The self-esteem movement with its mantras: ‘you’re special’, ‘learn to love yourself’, ‘believe in yourself’, is becoming increasingly entrenched in secular education. But how is it impacting on the Church?

Glynn Harrison, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Bristol University and a member of the Crown Nominations Commission, has wittily described the negative effect: “I sat in a committee meeting recently, addressed by a chirpy young ‘church-growth consultant’ sporting a spiky haircut and a PowerPoint presentation. Clicking on yet another depressing graph showing national church attendance figures heading southwards he announced: ‘Our churches need leaders who will help them build up their self-esteem’.”

Professor Harrison continued: “In my Sunday school days many decades ago, we sang a little song that went, ‘Jesus first, myself last, and others in between’. We would never teach our children to sing such self-negating tunes now. Why not? ‘Because you can’t love other people until first you love yourself’. In this upside-down world of self-esteem it’s not the sin of pride that we take into the confessional, but the transgression of ‘not liking myself enough’,“ (The Big Ego Trip, Evangelicals Now, March 2013).

Jesus’ exhortation to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ is routinely abused by the preachers of self-esteem. A divine command intended to counter the fallen human tendency to self-love, selfishness and greed is shamelessly inverted.

When targeting clergy, the catechists of the religion of self-love are able to exploit an opening for their message in the fact that  the pastoral calling is manifestly becoming more stressful. Their pitch to us is that, unless we convert to their creed, we will either burn out or go bonkers.

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By Toby Helm, Guardian

Top Anglican cleric attacks handling of issue as 'disproportionate' as PM prepares new crackdown on access to social housing

A leading Anglican cleric has launched a powerful attack on the way politicians are exaggerating the negative impact of immigration, which he says is "wholly disproportionate" to the real threat.

The Bishop of Dudley, David Walker, told the Observer: "Public fears around immigration are like fears around crime. They bear little relationship to the actual reality."

His remarks come as the prime minister, David Cameron, prepares to outline tough new measures to ensure that immigrants will have to have been settled in the UK for between two and five years before they can even get on the waiting list for social housing.

However the bishop, who served on the board of the National Housing Federation and is a former chairman of South Yorkshire Housing Association, said: "The tone of the current debate suggests that it is better for 10 people with a legitimate reason for coming to this country to be refused entry than for one person to get in who has no good cause. It is wholly disproportionate as a response. It is especially galling in Holy Week, when Christians are remembering how Jesus himself became the scapegoat in a political battle, to see politicians vying with each other in just such a process.

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Read also:  Holy Immigration – Bishop of Dudley bashes the Prime Minister from Cranmer

by Ross Kaminsky, American Spectator

by Melanie Phillips, Mailonline

Jutting out his chin after a humiliating defeat in the East-leigh by-election, David Cameron declared yesterday that ‘there will be no U-turns’ and no ‘lurching to the Right’ (but not, alas, ‘no cliches’).

[...]  Some are urging him to do a deal with UKIP. This will never happen — because when Mr Cameron infamously called them ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’, he meant it.

He thus also inescapably insulted his own core Conservative voters who share UKIP’s views — views from which he has attempted to dissociate his party.

As Lord Tebbit so aptly observed, if a party leader kicks his own supporters often enough they will kick back.

Mr Cameron does not have to enter an alliance with UKIP in order to reconnect to Conservative voters. All he has to do — revolutionary thought! — is adopt Conservative policies himself.

Since the fall of Mrs Thatcher, British Conservatism has lost its way.

Mr Cameron wrote yesterday: ‘It’s not about being Left-wing or Right-wing; it’s about being where the British people are.’

Well, the British people want to get back from the EU the power to govern themselves. They want to live in a country that does not resemble an international transit camp, but where citizenship is based on a truly common culture.

They want to end ruinous and pointless green taxes, and to conserve the countryside against urban sprawl. They want armed forces that can actually defend the country and a drastic curtailment of international aid. And they want solid, unambiguous support for traditional family life.

That’s where the British people really are, Prime Minister. The problem is that you are somewhere else.

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By Max Wind-Cowie, Telegraph

The government's pledge to cap social care funding risks further alienating middle class families already reeling from having their child benefit cut and marriage tax break postponed, writes Max Wind-Cowie.

One month after the Coalition’s ‘mid-term review’ sidestepped a pledge to cap social care funding, it appears the Government are finally willing to show their hand.

Today's announcement will impose a limit of £75,000 on the amount that individuals will have to pay towards their own care – after which point, the state will cover further costs.

Demos analysis shows a cap set at that level is miserly, helping only 16% of older people.

However, there remains another significant problem – one that risks further alienating the kind of middle class families already reeling from having their child benefit cut and marriage tax break postponed. The scheme contains a hidden penalty for couples, and for their children.

Any cap would be calculated at the individual level. Each of us requiring social care in old age will be asked to fork out up to £75,000.

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By Benjamin Lazarus, The Commentator

European countries with sizeable Muslim populations would do well to be cautious in the face of an Islamist backlash

It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.

Bernard Lewis: ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’ (1990).

Whenever there are sectarian problems in Africa, the Middle East or Europe, Islamism is more often than not the root cause. The recent insurgency in Mali is simply the latest episode, and as Islamist rage spreads across regional fault lines in Africa and the Middle East, the battle between the West and Islamism is clearly intensifying.

In 2010, this conflict was described by the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as an ideological war against the cultural and religious equivalent of revolutionary communism. He believed this conflict would play out as a ‘generational-long struggle’, a view recently echoed by the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

It has long been assumed if the Israel-Palestine conflict was resolved, political Islam across the globe would quieten down, and we would co-exist peacefully. I have even recently heard this same spiel from the mouth of a senior British UN Representative.

This notion – that creating a Palestinian utopia would quell the rage boiling beneath the surface of so many Islamic communities worldwide – is idle, ignorant and absurd.

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By Ed West, Telegraph

By Hilary White, LifeSite News

In a speech to the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s legal office that deals mainly with marriage annulment cases, Benedict reiterated that marriage is an “irrevocable covenant between man and woman.”

But “contemporary culture, marked by a strong subjectivism and moral and religious relativism, places before the individual and family pressing challenges.”

Questions, he said, are being widely raised whether it is even possible to create a bond that lasts a lifetime or whether such a thing “corresponds to human nature,” or whether it is fundamentally opposed to human freedom.

“It is part of a widespread mentality,” Benedict said, “to think that a person becomes himself only by remaining ‘independent’ and coming into contact with others only through relationships that can be interrupted at any time.”

Rejecting faith, said the pope, leads to “a profound imbalance in all human relationships, including marriage, and facilitates an erroneous understanding of freedom and self-realization.

“These, together with the flight from patiently borne suffering, condemns humanity to becoming locked within its own selfishness and self-centredness. On the contrary, accepting faith makes human persons capable of giving themselves … and thus of discovering the extent of being a human person."

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