Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob.

Patrick B. Craine, "Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob" LifeSiteNews (November 29, 2019):

We have sadly decided to boycott Chic-fil-A. Sadly, because we LOVE Chic-fil-A chicken. No one makes better chicken. Much better than KFC or any other vendor. And normally I wouldn't care much where I'm getting my fast food on the road, as long as it's good. I wouldn't care if those making my food are religious, agnostic, or gay. But when an institution stands for traditional Christian family values, is closed on Sundays out of respect for Judeo-Christian sabbath observance, and has "Christian" in its mission statement, but then caves in to anti-Christian lobbies where it’s hard – where the Gospel butts up against our culture of death and sexual licentiousness – they have betrayed their Christian identity. Chic-fil-A is the warning canary in the coal mine, and it just died. Sad. Caveat emptor!

If you’re still defending them, watch this:



[If you would prefer to read a transcript of the video, click here.]

How the Catholic Faith went underground for centuries in Japan and was preserved by the lay faithful

Sandro Magister, "The 'Hidden Christians' of Japan ..." (Settimo Cielo, October 17, 2017):

Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the “hidden Christians” of Japan, who miraculously reappeared with their faith intact in the second half of the nineteenth century, after two and a half centuries of centuries of ferocious annihilation of Christianity in that country.

But few know the real story of this miracle on the brink of the incredible. It was reconstructed on Thursday, October 12 in a fascinating conference in the aula magna of the Pontifical Gregorian University, by the Japanese Jesuit Shinzo Kawamura, professor of Church history at Sophia University in Tokyo and an author of the most up-to-date studies on the issue.

The complete text of his conference, given at the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Holy See, is reproduced on this other page of Settimo Cielo:

>> Pope Pius IX and Japan. The History of an Oriental Miracle

An extensive extract from this is published below. From reading this - which is a must - it can be gathered that what allowed the intact transmission of the Catholic faith, from generation to generation, among those Christians devoid of priests and entirely cut off from the world was essentially an oral tradition made up of a few decisive truths concerning the sacraments and in the first place confession, according to what was taught by the Council of Trent.

It is “Tridentine” Catholicism, therefore, that nourished the miracle of those “hidden Christians.” With its doctrine of sin and of sacramental forgiveness, anticipated in them by repeated acts of perfect contrition, in the absence of a confessor but also in the prophetic vision that one day he would finally arrive.

These were acts of contrition that followed, at times, the sin of apostasy, which involved publicly trampling on the “Fumie,” the image of Jesus, as they were forced to do by their persecutors in order to prove that they abjured the Christian faith, on pain of death....

"HIDDEN CHRISTIANS" IN JAPAN. THE HISTORY OF AN ORIENTAL MIRACLE
by Shinzo Kawamura, S.J.

On January 8, 1867, His Holiness Pope Pius IX dispatched a special message to Fr. Bernard Petitjean of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, who at the time was involved in missionary work in the city of Nagasaki. The purpose of His Holiness was to personally bless an event, which he exuberantly described as a “Miracle of the Orient.”

What he referred to as a “Miracle of the Orient,” was the fact that three years before this message was dispatched, that is, on March 17, 1865, an incident had occurred within one of Japan’s oldest churches, namely the “Oura Tenshudo" of Nagasaki, which is also known as the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan.

A group of approximately 15 people, descendants of the Hidden Christians of Nagasaki Urakami, visited the Oura Tenshudo that had just been built, and engaged in a dialogue with Fr. Petitjean.

They spoke to Fr. Petitjean saying: “We are of the same faith as you. Where can we find the image of Saint Mary?”.

No sooner had these Hidden Christians ascertained the fact that Catholic priests had entered Japan, more and more of them began to come out of hiding, and their numbers in course of time exceeded ten thousand.

After having duly confirmed the fact that the faith of these priests was the same as that which had been adhered to by their ancestors 400 years ago, these Hidden Christians returned to the Catholic Church.

Three keywords

These Hidden Christians had endured about 250 years of persecution, due to the prohibitions imposed upon them by the Tokugawa government. Even so, they faithfully continued to preserve their faith, and when they eventually felt that the time was appropriate to do so, they rejoined the Catholic Church. This was indeed a miracle, but my question is, what was it that made this miracle possible?

I now wish to present three keywords that I consider most vital, with regard to the possibility of this Oriental Miracle....

Kawamura goes on to discuss in detail the "three keywords" to understanding the survival of the underground faith in Japan. Essentially, they come down to (1) lay communities that had been organized for the governance of the Catholic faithful in diverse territorial regions of the country since the time of St. Francis Xavier's mission in Japan; (2) the prophecy of a martyred catechist that after seven generations, black ships would arrive and Catholic "confessors" with the authority to forgive sins would return to Japan; and (3) hope of forgiveness in the absence of sacramental Confession through the Tridentine provision that "reconciliation between the individual and God can be attained by true contrition."

In these far-from-ideal conditions, how these Japanese "hidden Christians" were able to preserve and sustain their faith at all is indeed an "Oriental Miracle."

[Hat tip to JM]

Silence of the Shepherds

Why is it that Catholic bishops seem to be plumping for Muslims? Why do they issue statements about Islam that are dishonest and misleading? Why do they appear to be so intent on protecting the image of Islam? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, you’re not alone. Given current events and the historical record of Islam’s aggressive campaigns against the Christian West, the rational thinker could be forgiven for believing that the leaders of the Christian world might just want to pay a bit more attention to contemporary anti-Christian violence — thousands of terror attacks, beheadings, stabbings, kidnappings, rapes, torching of churches and Christian-owned businesses — committed by Muslims, in the name of Islam.

Instead, most of the world’s Catholic bishops (with some heroic exceptions, such as Ignatius Joseph III Younan, patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church of Antioch, and Jean-Clément Jeanbart, Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo), when they’re not extolling the virtues of Islam as a “religion of peace,” can be found counseling their flocks against so-called Islamophobia — anti-Islam sentiment, bias, or violence — typically in the immediate aftermath of a Muslim-perpetrated act of terror or instance of anti-Christian persecution.

For example, in May, after Muslim militants in the Philippines burned down the Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians, murdered more than a hundred Catholics, and held a dozen others hostage, Bishop Edwin de la Peña y Angot of the Marawi prelature worried out loud that the ensuing anti-Muslim sentiments might damage interreligious dialogue. “Some of the natural biases that Christians have against Muslims will be stirred up again,” he said in an interview (Zenit, June 9). “Interfaith dialogue is a very fragile process and these incidents can destroy the foundation that we have built.” About anti-Christian sentiments among Muslims, the bishop was silent.

Trump's Religious Freedom Order: "Woefully inadequate"

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, "BreakPoint: President Trump's Religious Freedom Order" (BreakPoint, May 5, 2017):

President Trump’s long-anticipated order on religious freedom reminds us that salvation won’t come on Air Force One.

Yesterday, on the National Day of Prayer, President Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty.

Unfortunately, though it was a “first step,” it was a small one, an order Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation called “woefully inadequate.”

Now, let me be clear: there are things in the order worth praising. The president said that “No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and the tenets of their faith.”

I couldn’t agree more. And I’m thankful that at least so far this administration, unlike the last one, isn’t forcing that choice on Americans. Still, protecting religious freedom requires more than just noble sentiments. And here is where the executive order disappoints. After directing the federal government to “vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom,” the measures set forth in the order are, well, less than vigorous.

The order instructs the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and HHS to “consider amending existing regulations” to address “conscience-based objections” to the HHS mandate.

Words like “consider” aren’t exactly a guarantee that anything will change. As Ryan Anderson told The Atlantic, the “regulatory relief” promised to groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor may very well amount to, “Well, you have to do it, because [the Supreme Court] told you to do it,” but, it “doesn’t move the ball” on religious liberty.

Nor does the emphasis on the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches and other charitable organizations from endorsing political candidates.

First, the Johnson Amendment is bad law, but it’s rarely, if ever, enforced. So the order effectively tells the IRS to continue doing what it is already doing. Second, the inability to endorse candidates from the pulpit on Sunday isn’t the problem with religious freedom in this country. The problem is the increasing inability of Christians and other people of religious conviction to practice their faith Monday through Saturday.

Yesterday’s events suggest that, as I said after the election, the incoming administration has offered us a reprieve on religious freedom, but not a champion. Or as Chuck Colson often put it, salvation doesn’t arrive on Air Force One.

So, with or without the executive order we really wanted, we have to know this: The case for religious freedom must be made both in our churches and over our backyard fences. Even had we gotten the executive order many of us had hoped for, it would have been, at best a temporary help.

Why? Because our cultural understanding of religious freedom is currently not strong enough to offer or to sustain a long-term political solution. Like the understanding of marriage was lost in the cultural imagination way before Obergefell, so the understanding of religious freedom has been lost in the culture. Many are just frankly ignorant about what the free exercise of religion means and why our founders thought it so important.

For most Americans, religious freedom means the ability to “attend the church of your choice.” The logical corollary of this would be, “what happens in church stays in church.”

Of course, if Christians took that idea seriously, there would be a lot fewer religious hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc. Government can’t even begin to fill the vacuum left should these institutions be forced out of business.

Americans must be reminded that believers ought not be made to choose between obeying their conscience and serving their neighbor. And it would help if Christians understood this better. In too many churches, being a Christian is about how God can make your life better, not how you can work with God to make the invisible kingdom visible.

This is where the battle for religious freedom will be fought, and either won or lost, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

Good news! Number of Christians martyred worldwide down by 15,000 last year

The bad news? The number of Christians martyred for their faith in 2016 was 90,000 -- 1 every 6 minutes -- making Christians the most persecuted group in the world. The previous year the number was even higher: 105,000. The statistics were cited by the prominent Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne in an interview with Vatican Radio, referencing a study produced by the independent Center for Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. [Source]

Women from the Christian community mourn for their relatives, who were killed by a suicide attack on a church, during their funeral in Lahore, March 17, 2015. Suicide bombings outside two churches in Lahore killed 14 people and wounded nearly 80 others during services on Sunday in attacks claimed by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban.

Supreme Court Justice Warns Catholics of Coming Persecution

Spencer Irvine, "Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Reminds Catholic Audience of Warning of Persecution after Obergefell decision" (Accuracy in Media, March 20, 2017). Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's words:

Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected. . . . . We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.

Breaking through 'Silence' ~ The other Jesuit in Japan, who didn't apostatize

This 2014 photo shows human bones unearthed in Tokyo, which researchers believe are of the
18th-century Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti. | AFP-JIJI
In case you missed it: "Italian priest imprisoned in 18th century may have been influential in Japan’s development" (The Japan Times, June 7, 2016):

Disguised as a samurai in kimono and topknot, Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti stole ashore on a small Japanese island in 1708, daring to enter a land hostile to his Christian creed.

He was quickly captured by authorities, who saw the alien faith as a threat to national identity. He was thrown into a prison for Christians, where torture was routine.

More than 300 years later, researchers using DNA analysis have confirmed that remains unearthed at a Tokyo construction site almost certainly belong to Sidotti — and say they back up historical accounts of his treatment.

Historians say Sidotti helped shape Japan’s view of the Western world with his knowledge after he won over the nation’s leading scholar of the day. But he fell from grace after refusing to give up his faith and his final days and death have been shrouded in mystery.

Christian missionaries made aggressive inroads in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries, gaining adherents among commoners and even powerful warlords.

But fears they were an advance guard for European colonialism spurred a brutal crackdown long before Sidotti arrived.

Three sets of bones were unearthed in July 2014 from land that now forms the parking lot of an upscale condominium complex that was once the site of the prison — the Kirishitan Yashiki, or Christian Mansion. Its only reminder today is a stone marker commemorating the spot.

National Museum of Nature and Science researchers near Tokyo carefully cleaned the bone fragments before piecing them together like human jigsaw puzzles in a painstaking process that took more than six months.

Kenichi Shinoda, the museum’s chief of anthropology, analyzed DNA from a tooth and concluded that one of them had the same genetic type as present day Italians.

Japanese historical records show that only two missionaries from Italy had been held at the site, Sidotti and Giuseppe Chiara.

The latter was the model for the main character of a Portuguese priest in Shusaku Endo’s novel “Silence,” which director Martin Scorsese is turning into a film.

As records show Chiara was cremated after his death at 84, the unearthed remains are almost certain to be of Sidotti, who was 47 when he died in 1714, researchers said.

While at the prison, Japanese Christians and foreign missionaries were tormented with demands they renounce the banned religion, and many did so under duress.

While they feared foreign religion, Japanese officials also craved Western knowledge and scientific insights that were harder to obtain under the official policy of national seclusion that started in 1639.

As part of his interrogations, Sidotti was questioned by Japan’s top Confucian scholar, who developed a deep respect for the Roman Catholic priest for his knowledge of geography, languages and global affairs, experts said.

The scholar, the renowned Hakuseki Arai, is said to have tried to help Sidotti but the priest was later sent to the dungeon amid allegations he baptized the Japanese couple tending to his daily needs.

The Italian died there, but it is not clear how, researchers said.

Historical accounts, including those written by Japanese scholar Kotonobu Mamiya about a century later, however, mention that Sidotti was accorded a certain respect and treated far better than other prisoners — even in death.

Researchers say that is backed up by evidence from the remains.

Kazuhiro Sakaue, senior researcher of anthropology at National Museum of Nature and Science, observes a
restored skull believed to be that of Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti, at a laboratory
in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, in April. | AFP-JIJI
“His body was laid flat in a casket, a luxurious one as far as I can tell by the brackets,” said Akio Tanigawa, professor of archaeology at Tokyo’s Waseda University and lead researcher on the remains, referring to coffin pieces discovered with the bones.

“People did not bury human bodies like this,” Tanigawa stressed, suggesting Sidotti was likely given a burial “in the Christian way.”

He said that in 18th century Tokyo, then known as Edo, people were buried in a sitting up position in a small tub.

The two sets of bones unearthed next to Sidotti’s may be those of the Japanese couple, Chosuke and Haru, researchers said, as at least one was placed in a small tub.

The missionary had a great impact on Japan, Tanigawa stressed, citing books by Arai. An adviser to the rulers of the time, he penned a study of the Western world for which Sidotti is cited as a key source.

“The knowledge shared by Sidotti surely changed Japan’s view of the world,” he said.

[Hat tip to Christopher Blosser]

Related: Amy Welborn, "Reading Silence for the first time" (Catholic World Report, December 14, 2016)

“'PO SI JIU!' RED GUARDS ARISE! CRUSH THE REACTIONARIES!"

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, “'PO SI JIU!' RED GUARDS ARISE! CRUSH THE REACTIONARIES!" (Fr. Z's Blog, February 10, 2017):

The liberal juggernaut … libbernaut? … is well-connected and organized. They work together.

Perhaps you saw the NYT’s piece (aka Hell’s Bible) which managed (through fake news) to make an absurd connection between Card. Burke (whom libs hate with the intensity of a type O star), and chief advisor to Pres. Trump (whom libs hate with the intensity of a type O star), former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon (whom libs hate with the intensity of a type O star). It was a tour de force of smear. The objective: link Burke and Bannon and Trump with the liberal Alt-Right bugbear. The upshot is that Burke, etc. are white supremacist, LifeSite reading rubes who watch Duck Dynasty. They are “rad-trads”, “church militant” types… real knuckle-draggers who stand in the way of the Revolution! They must be crushed, publicly humiliated, sent to camps, thrown from windows.

Then there is the surreal piece at WaPo worthy of the Red Guard of China’s Cultural Revolution entitled, “How Pope Francis can cleanse the far-right rot from the Catholic Church”. Guess who’s picture surmounts the screed. But hey! It’s only an opinion piece, right? Let’s see the first paragraph ....

A "Climate of Fear" in the Vatican?

The Editors, "A 'Climate of Fear' in the Vatican?," New Oxford Review (January-February, 2017):

Several independent reports out of Rome paint a troubling picture of the working situation at “headquarters.” Indications are that the Eternal City is on edge. And in the midst of the palpable sense of unease, anxiety, and, yes, even fear, one man looms large. That man is Pope Francis.

Much, though not all, of the distress radiates from a remarkable development: Four high-ranking prelates have publicly challenged the Pope over Amoris Laetitia, his murky and verbose apostolic exhortation in which he seems to suggest that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can be admitted to Holy Communion. On November 14 cardinals Raymond Burke of the U.S., Carlo Caffarra of Italy, and Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner of Germany made public a dubia, a set of five short yes-or-no questions addressed to Pope Francis about passages in Amoris Laetitia that, they say, have caused “uncertainty, confusion, and disorientation among many of the faithful.”

The cardinals decided to go public with the dubia after submitting it to Francis privately in September — and then waiting two months for a reply that never came. The dubia calls on the Pope, “with profound respect,” to “dispel ambiguity” and “resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity.”

So far, not only has Francis refused to respond privately to the cardinals’ request, he has also refused to respond publicly. In fact, he’s made only one public comment about the dubia. In an interview in Avvenire, an Italian Catholic magazine (Nov. 18), Francis referred obliquely to “a certain legalism” that wants to see everything as “black and white,” and he wondered aloud whether such criticism doesn’t come “from an evil spirit” or “the desire to hide one’s own dissatisfaction under armor.” Yes, you read that correctly: Francis actually suggested that the men who asked him to make specific some of his (intentionally?) ambiguous ramblings might be under the influence of demons!

While maintaining a certain aloofness about it in public, the Pope is apparently very agitated about the dubia. Edward Pentin, a respected Vatican correspondent, told Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s The World Over (Nov. 18), that Francis is “boiling with rage.” Reportedly, the Holy Father has been working hard behind the scenes to vilify and isolate the four cardinals and their supporters.

Pentin offered further insight in an interview with Beverly Stevens, editor of Regina, an online Catholic magazine (Dec. 8). The Pope, he said, instead of addressing the cardinals’ concerns — either in public or private — is treating them as “adversaries.” He has even questioned the cardinals’ “mental state.” Observers are reading this as a manifestation of Francis’s “anger at having his agenda taken off course,” Pentin went on to say. And so, one hears the phrases “reign of terror” and “Vatican martial law” frequently bandied about in Rome these days.

Pentin’s report was echoed by Steve Jalsevic, managing director of the pro-life news service LifeSiteNews.com. Blogging from Rome during a recent visit, Jalsevic wrote that there is a “consistent pattern of widespread anxiety and very real fear among faithful Church servants,” the likes of which he’d never witnessed before in his ten years of making biannual trips there (Dec. 16). The tension gripping the Vatican is by no means limited to those embroiled in the dubia controversy. Many curial functionaries, Jalsevic said, are “afraid of being removed from their positions, fired from their jobs in Vatican agencies or of encountering severe public or private reprimands and personal accusations from those around the pope or even from Francis himself.”

That the Pope could be so vindictive would be startling if he hadn’t already given us glimpses of the man behind the magnanimous papal persona. “Severe reprimands” and “personal accusations” don’t seem all that out of character. As anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to this papacy knows, Francis rarely passes up an opportunity to deliver a tongue-lashing to Catholic prelates or laymen (see, for example, our New Oxford Note “Pope Francis: Put-Down Artist?” Apr. 2014) — especially to those whom he considers excessively orthodox (or “rigid,” as he likes to label them). It is odd — isn’t it? — that the alleged “Pope of mercy” would so readily indulge his mean streak.

Natural born haters behind the monolithic cult of 'diversity'

The Editors, "The Cult of Diversity at Providence College," New Oxford Review (January-February, 2017):

One of the common propaganda techniques used by today’s cultural hucksters is known as the empty vessel — a vague “virtue word” or phrase that aims to evoke positive feelings rather than convey meaningful information. An empty vessel is often so vague that everyone is expected to agree on its appropriateness and value, though no one is really sure just what it means. Empty vessels are designed to make us approve and accept certain assertions without examining any real evidence. Consider the words change, equality, sustainability, progressive, and multiculturalism — words that are readily bandied about in our ordinary political exchanges but rarely convey anything meaningful or specific.

Anthony Esolen, a professor of Renaissance studies and an acclaimed Dante scholar at Providence College in Rhode Island, recently took on the politically correct usage of the word diversity. Esolen, an orthodox Catholic who’s taught at the Dominican-led school for twenty-five years (and who has appeared in our pages), is an enthusiastic proponent of both liberal-arts education and the teachings of the Church. In an article at the website of Crisis magazine (Crisis.com, Sept. 26), Esolen lamented his Catholic college’s manipulative misuse of the watchword diversity as a political slogan — for example, the phrase Celebrate Diversity is brightly emblazoned on a conspicuous campus mural, and the school’s website prominently features a four-page Diversity Program. “Is not diversity as it is now preached a solvent for any culture?” Esolen asked. “Is not that same call for diversity, when Catholics are doing the calling, a surrender of the Church to a political movement which is, for all its talk, a push for homogeneity, so that all the world will not look like the many-cultured Church, but rather like the monotone non-culture of western cities that have lost their faith in the transcendent and unifying God?”

The problem, as Esolen sees it, is this: Providence College (the initials of which are, perhaps fittingly, P.C.), in appealing to the vague and undefined empty vessel of diversity, is willingly suppressing its own Catholic culture in favor of an infection with Western sexual obsessions. What that means for professors like him who believe in the teachings of the Church is that they must risk anything from censure to public humiliation to outright firing for simply speaking with the voice of the Church, especially in the realm of sexual morality. The secular preachers of diversity brook no dissent from the politically correct acceptance of all celebrated sexual attractions and proclivities. Their vision, Esolen explained, is “a vision that pretends to be ‘multi-cultural,’ but that is actually anti-cultural, and is characterized by all the totalitarian impulses to use the massive power of government to bring to heel those who decline to go along.”

Esolen complained that several of his faithful colleagues at Providence had been harassed by fellow faculty members and university administrators for simple expressions of the Catholic faith and Church teaching. The college even has a Bias Response Team standing by to field any and all reported incidents of “bias” — such as explaining why the Church opposes same-sex marriage and does not condone acts of sodomy. According to Esolen, these bias investigators “are like a Star Chamber whose constitution and laws and executive power no one will know.” If a Catholic college threatens to bring its faithful professors before a diversity-review board, how can it possibly allow for expressions of disapproval toward any disordered inclination or sin, sexual or otherwise? Ironically, this is not diversity at all. It is conformity and homogeneity: Accept our politically correct principles or suffer the wrath of the Thought Police. Think like us or be bludgeoned in the name of an undefined and perhaps undefinable “diversity.”

As if to prove Esolen’s point, the diversity police at Providence College somehow got hold of his Crisis article and used it to publicly denounce him. In an interview with Rod Dreher (The American Conservative, Nov. 1), Esolen explained that a group of students led by a “radical professor” took heated umbrage with him. “The students accused me of racism,” he told Dreher, “despite my explicit statements in the article that I welcome people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds.” Bizarre! Nowhere in his Crisis article did Esolen even remotely intimate that he took issue with a member of any racial or ethnic group. The students — and later, it turns out, fellow professors — went into apoplectic spasms inspired solely by his criticism of the diversity obsession. “They were angered by my suggestion,” he said, “that there was something narcissistic in the common insistence that people should study themselves rather than people who lived long ago and in cultures far removed from ours by any ordinary criterion, and there was something totalitarian in the impulse of the secular left, to attempt to subject our curriculum to the demands of a current political aim.”

In other words, Esolen’s detractors didn’t even understand the well-reasoned argument he was making about the misuse of the term diversity. It was much easier for them to disregard his arguments and all relevant facts in favor of calling him a racist — another propaganda technique, by the way, simply referred to as, you guessed it, name-calling. But they weren’t satisfied with just calling him a racist. The group later organized a protest on campus. “About 60 students marched around,” he told Dreher, “while a female student led them around, shouting slogans through a bullhorn.” These students ended their protest march at the office of the college president, Fr. Brian Shanley, and demanded a response from him. Some even demanded that Esolen be fired right then and there.

Some off-hand thoughts on the movie, Silence

I read the novel Silence by the Japanese Catholic author, Shusaku Endo, years ago when I lived in Japan. He's called the "Japanese Graham Greene." With good reason. Like Greene, he's a darn good novelist. Also like Greene, his Catholicism in his writings is ambiguous. I don't hold that against him as a novelist. Some of my favorite Catholic novelists are also ambiguous about the Catholic faith in their writings, even though they are clearly and intentionally Catholic, like Walker Percy or Evelyn Waugh.

I read many, many reviews of Martin Scorsese's film based on Endo's novel, also called "Silence." One of the best on the critical side, I thought, was Monica Migliorino Miller's "Scorsese's Silence: Many Martyrs -- Little Redemption" (Crisis, January 9, 2017). But there were others that were also good on the appreciative side.

Personally, I liked the movie Silence. I think it was very well done. Whatever Endo's and Scorsese's motives, I think they both dealt powerfully with two things: (1) the exquisitely horrific tortures underwent by Catholics in Japan before the Meiji Restoration, and (2) the diabolically insidious temptations to apostasy that can make infidelity to Christ itself look like fidelity and virtue.

The latter theme of the movie, which I think most Christian audiences thought most significant, I think were (mis-?)understood in two ways: (a) by the 'liberals' as proclaiming a gospel of merciful accommodation indifferent to doctrine, and (b) by 'conservatives' as a message of doctrinal compromise intended by both Endo's novel and Scorsese's film.

I'm not at all certain that the latter is true. Whether it is or not, I think that not only the temptations but the consequences of apostasy were shown by both novel and film in a faithful light: the temptations were beyond ingenious, with the voice of Jesus seeming to come from His image on the fumie itself ("Step on me.") as if Christ Himself were counseling the mercy of apostasy as the path to redemption; and both apostate priests ended their lives by faded into oblivion, morphing into gollum-like shadows of themselves; and the Japanese Catholics (not all, but many) who witnessed their apostasy were significantly demoralized by it.

Remarkably, however, when Catholic priests returned to Japan after the Meiji Restoration of the mid-nineteenth century, they encountered Kakure Kurishitan (hidden Christians) who came out of hiding once again to present rosaries and crucifixes and statues of Maria Kanon that doubled as secret images of the Madonna, showing that the Faith had not been entirely wiped out. The price of persecution as well as apostasy was high. Only something like one tenth of 1% of Japanese people are Christians, and of these, half (about 509,000) are Catholic.

Some of you may remember the movie, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. One of the young samurai actors in the film was Shin Koyamada, who only discovered during the making of that film that his ancestors were among the Kakure Kurishitan. So moved was he by the narrative of persecution and Catholic resistance during the Shimabara Rebellion, that he ventured to make film about those events in which he played the father of Shiro Amakusa, the leader of that rebellion (see my review here with a trailer of the film, "Good Soil").


Another recent discovery is the book, A Christian Samurai: The Trials of Baba Bunko, William J. Farge, SJ., which contradicts the generally held belief among Western historians that the Catholic mission in Japan ended in failure. Farge relates how Christian moral teachings not only survived the long period of persecution but influenced Japanese society throughout the Tokugawa period. Baba Bunko was a Japanese Catholic essayist and satirist whose biting criticism of the authorities of his time eventually led to his execution; but he was brazenly bold in asserting his views, declaring, for example, that a representation of the Eucharist would be a more fitting symbol for Japan than the coat of arms of the emperor and insignia of the shogun.

Gotta run.

"Charges dropped against Founder of the Franciscan of the Immaculate"

Adfero, "Charges dropped against Founder of the Franciscan of the Immaculate" (Rorate Caeli, December 15, 2016):

The charges against Father Stefano Manelli, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate have been dropped. After about a year of investigations, the Deputy State Prosecutor at the Court of Avellino, Doctor A. Del Bene, has asked for the closing of the proceedings against the religious, whose Order is still under commissioning without a valid reason having ever been given by the Congregation for Religious....

Those close to him commented that "the outcome of the investigation has brought clarity to the “assumed allegations” restoring justice and dignity to Father Stefano Manelli who for some time has been the subject of slanderous, defamatory attacks, amplified by the media outlets."

History, in its irony, would have it that the news of the dismissal of this investigation would come precisely at the end of the year of Mercy

Read original Italian article here.

The return of the religious alt right Republican Taliban and other left-wing conspiracy theories

"Return of an Imaginary Menace," New Oxford Review (November 2016):

In our New Oxford Note “The Last Rhetorical Refuge of an Intellectual Scoundrel” (June), we asked the rhetorical question: “Remember all those insults about the ‘American Taliban’ hurled at religious conservatives in the 2000s?”

Kevin D. Williamson remembers, and he takes us back to that time, ten years ago, when Chris Hedges, a “leading moralist of the Left,” as The New Republic called him (Jun. 11, 2014), could author a book titled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, and that book could earn rave reviews on its way to becoming a New York Times bestseller. Hedges’s book claims, in Williamson’s words, that “a secretive movement of authoritarian Christians organized along the lines of the great totalitarian movements of the 20th century was on the verge of seizing power through violence” (National Review, Sept. 12).

That a Christian cabal bent on recreating America in its own image was poised to ascend to power wasn’t merely the product of Hedges’s fever dreams. Progressive political blogger Markos Moulitsas also entertained the notion. Kos, as he is widely known, might have been the one to popularize the term American Taliban when he posted an incendiary piece bearing that title (www.DailyKos.com, Mar. 11, 2005), in which he argued that “the Taliban/Al Qaida/Hezbollah/Jihadists of the world” are “exactly what we see in the Republican Party as the GOP continues to consolidate power — creeping theocracy, moralizing, us versus them, embrace of torture, the need to constantly declare jihad on someone, hysterics over football-game nipples, control over ‘decency’ on the airwaves, lyrics censorship, hostility to women freedoms [sic], curtaling [sic] of civil liberties, and so on.” Five years later, Kos would capitalize on the concept by releasing his own book on the topic, American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.

In the interim, a kind of cottage industry had spawned, and the term American Taliban — and all that it represented — had taken on a life of its own. Soon, any number of reputable publishers and mainstream organizations, from The New York Times to Oprah Winfrey, were seriously considering the possibility that an influential group of highly placed Christian dominionists was operating behind the scenes of American political and cultural life, forming opinions, influencing policy, and biding its time until it could step out from behind the curtain and impose its beliefs first on a fractured and distracted America and eventually on a bewildered and unsuspecting world.

Fr. Perrone on what we prayed to be spared

With each passing year, as our society continues to evolve, I grow ever fonder of our parish, which in so many ways is unlike nearly any other I've experienced. By the same token, I suspect, in the eyes of the surrounding society (even Catholic society), our parish must seem proportionally out-of-step and weirdly antiquated. What makes it so? Simply that it has resisted evolving along with society. There's nothing really extraordinary about our parish at all in the great historical scheme of things. The fact is, it is simply Catholic; and Catholic precisely in the sense that any of our Catholic great-grandparents would have immediately recognized. They would have found it entirely ordinary; which is what makes it so extraordinary today. This is one reason I like to include those parts of these weekly reflections by our pastor that open a window onto our parish life -- like the concluding two paragraphs of his column below, which was published the Sunday preceding the presidential election. Enjoy.

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (assumption Grotto News, November 6, 2016):

I recently came across this and thought you'd enjoy reading it these days just before the election.

*****

A Fable
Once upon a time in a not too distant land there was a people who had just elected a New Leader (NL) who promised, if elected, to enforce contraception funding, support unlimited abortion rights and fetal experiments, and uphold gay marriages, and who was known to have done criminal deeds but people didn't much care about that because their own sins blinded them to see them. One of NL's goals that had not been kept too much of a secret was to penalize any religious body that opposed sweeping social changes for a brave new society. While some people protested these, only one religious group proved big and powerful enough to stand in the way of NL's new ways. So an order came down on them. "Either change your ways and your beliefs to fit with the new program or else heavy taxes will be levied on all your properties, and you'll be shut down in no time!" This threat terrorized the hierarchy and made the hearts of believers tremble. But to keep peace some of the hierarchy said, "Let's give in to this new program so we can keep our properties, stay in control, and keep some semblance of our religion." Others, clergy and laity alike, were adamant and refused to change. These had their parishes shut down for lack of money to pay the taxes and their clergy went into hiding -- some of whom were imprisoned. And so there was a huge split in this church. While the side of those who went along with the new policies resented the oppressive controls they weren't really all that sad. "NL means well," they said. "Besides, most of us -- unlike those rigid forlks who were shut down and forced undegroudn -- secretly agreed with a lot of what NL wanted done anyhow." And so these got on rather well, though theyfelt deeply guilty for their conformity. The diehards meanwhile, those who refused to change their ways, kept the old religion alive, conducting their religious services clandestinely and teaching their children the old religion of their fathers. So there was now an officially recognized church under NL's control and the opporessed reactionaries who kept to their traditional ways in secret.

Meanwhile the whole land was now beginning to feel other pressures as NL pushed on to greater and greater control of people's lives. Taxes were increased to unbearable limits to create the new society that promised freedom, equality, and happiness for everybody -- everybody except those who opposed the new program. Conformists with the reforms were rewarded with jobs and privileges while the general population suffered emotionally and economically, even unto wretchedness. But whenever somebody began to object or criticize NL or the new reforms they were forcibly silenced and punished severely. In this way NL exercised total control over everything in this land and many pretended they liked things this way -- though they really resented them -- because they were afraid.

Life went on a long time in this land and the people were miserable. All the while, however, the underground believers and other dissidents kept going quietly under oppression, living by their old beliefs and ways as best they could, keeping alive in their hearts the hope that someday NL would be gone, the former order reinstated, and liberty restored.

But in the meantime, the people lived most unhappily and were very sorry that they had ever brought this sufering upon themselves.

*****
Recall that there will be an overnight prayer vigil in our church this Monday night after the 7:00 p.m. Mass through Tuesday morning just before the 7:30 a.m. Mass. We will be prostrate before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, precisely as we sing the Benediction hymn, veneremur cernui, that is, falling down before God. This is expressed well also in (Vulgate) Psalm 94 that is prayed in the Divine Office every morning: "Come, let us adore, and bow down before God, let us weep before the Lord." We have great reason to pray so very humbly for a good outcome to this election.

The Forty Hours Devotion opens this Friday at the 7:30 a.m. Mass with its procession following, closing just before the 7:00 p.m. Mass. It will reopen Saturday morning at 6:30 (with Mass at the usual 7:30 time), closing 8:00 p.m. On Sunday morning adoration begins at 6:00 a.m. and continues through the solemn closing Mass at noon (procession with the Blessed Sacrament is at the end of the Mass). Note that during the Sunday Masses, the Eucharist is not exposed, except during the noon Mass due to a special privilege for the closing Mass of Forty Hours.

Fr. Perrone

Pancake Sunday today.

Remnant video calls for opposing Soros demagoguery, supporting U.S. Sovereignty

Is it me, or is it getting cold in here ...

Thus spake a reader who emailed me this: Michael J. Kruger, "How my books are being banned at the Society of Biblical Literature" (Cannon Fodder, October 19, 2016). Excerpts:

... Dr. John Kutsko, executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature, has just proposed that InterVarsity Press–one of the largest evangelical presses in the country– be suspended from having a book stall at the annual SBL meeting (starting in 2017).

The reason for this ban is the recent decision by InterVarsity to uphold the biblical view of marriage and to ask their employees to do the same (see IVP clarification on their policy here).

Since I have a current book with IVP Academic, The Question of Canon, and a forthcoming book with them on Christianity in the second century, SBL would effectively be banning my books from the annual meeting. And that would be true for hundreds and hundreds of other IVP authors.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

National Catholic Register: "Satan fuels Islamist violence against Christians"

Deacon Nick Donnelly, "Satan Fuels Islamist Violence Against Christians" (National Catholic Register, August 10, 2016)

COMMENTARY: The beheading of Father Jacques Hamel was clearly intended as a deliberate desecration of the Church.


The brutal murder of 86-year-old Father Jacques Hamel by Islamic State terrorists on July 26 is an evil beyond the comprehension of all decent and moral people. The fact that Adel Kermiche and Abdelmalik Petitjean chose to attack a priest celebrating Mass and cut his throat as he knelt at the foot of the altar takes this act into the realm of demonic evil. The archbishop of Rouen told the congregation at Father Hamel’s requiem Mass that his dying words were, “Get away from me Satan.”

Read more >>

Related: Richard Ducayne, "Paris Archbishop calls God of Islam 'God of Death'" (CM World News, August 1, 2016): The French Archbishop, Andre Cardinal Vingt-Trois, has openly called the God of Islam, Allah, the "God of death" and even compared Allah to the pagan god Moloch, who demanded human sacrifice.

NC State students can't talk to other students about Jesus without a permit

An aerial view of the North Carolina State University campus,
the Memorial Belltower (center) and surrounding area
in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Michael Avramovich, "Teacher, May I Have Permission To Tell My Classmate About Jesus?" (Touchstone, June 30, 2016): Apparently at NC State, you now can't talk to students about religion without a permit. Say what???

The Big Lie: Protestant & Secular Texbook Traditions About The Irish Rebellion of 1641

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, "The Big Lie: Ireland, 1641" (New Oxford Review, May 2016) - a book review of The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory, by John Gibney (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013): 

If to rob a man of his good name for a lifetime is to rob him of his most precious possession, what is it then to rob an entire people of their good name for centuries? The Big Lie about the 1641 rebellion was just such a robbery of the Irish people. It stands at the root of Irish suffering for centuries, even casting a shadow across the Irish Famine of the 1840s. John Gibney’s scholarly book The Shadow of a Year offers an illuminating account of this grave injustice.

Gibney begins by giving the Protestant version of the rebellion. In Ulster, the Irish had recently been dispossessed of their land by English and Scottish settlers, and on October 23, 1641, a mob broke out against these settlers. In the official Protestant account, religion was the reason for the uprising, and it was immediately depicted as a sectarian genocide organized by Irish Catholics. Henry Jones, Anglican dean of Kilmore, said the rebellion had been caused by the “innate bigotry and brutality” of the Irish and ordered by the Pope and Jesuits. Jones headed a commission that collected thousands of depositions about what happened — but these depositions were only from Protestants. In March 1642 he presented lurid extracts from these depositions to the English Parliament, published as A Remonstrance. Thus, says Gibney, the “atrocity propaganda” was first printed in England “for an English audience.”

The Protestant account was used to justify the Cromwellian confiscations of Irish lands from 1649 to 1653, which amounted, Gibney says, to “perhaps half of the available land in Ireland.” In 1649 Cromwell justified the atrocities his New Model Army committed against Catholics in Drogheda and Wexford as a “righteous judgment” for the rebellion of 1641. When the Catholic bishops of Ireland protested that the army seemed bent on “exterminating” the Irish, Cromwell replied that “the massacres of 1641 had yet to be avenged.”

Thus, much depended on the truth of what had taken place. Despite Catholic denials, the Protestant version of 1641 would henceforth be used to deprive Catholics of their lands and also — for the next 150 years — of religious liberty. The 1652 Act for the Settling of Ireland exempted from pardon all Catholic priests on the ground that they had abetted the “murders or massacres” of Protestants in 1641.

Only a tiny fraction of the depositions taken by Henry Jones were about atrocities, yet Sir John Temple, in his book The Irish Rebellion (1646), presented these tales as representative of the whole. Temple’s account was still being described in 1887 as “an almost infallible witness against Catholicism,” even though it was composed, Gibney says, chiefly “to bolster the case for a prospective reconquest of Ireland under the auspices of the English parliament.”

From the first, Protestant historians gave a wildly implausible death toll of those murdered by Catholics in 1641. In March 1643 the Irish Lord Justices put it at 154,000, a figure taken from the “unsubstantiated assertion of Robert Maxwell, an Armagh clergyman of Scottish extraction.” They used this number to block Parliament from coming to terms with Irish Catholics, since that might have saved their lands. Many gave a death toll of 300,000 based on Temple’s Irish Rebellion, but what Temple wrote was that 300,000 English Protestants had been murdered, died of other causes, or been “expelled out of their habitations.” There is a big difference between being forced out of your home and being murdered. Catholics denied that there had even been 100,000 Protestants in Ireland at the time. Meanwhile, in 1649 the Puritan poet John Milton — a rabid enemy of Catholics — put the number of those massacred in 1641 at 600,000.

This Big Lie became the foundational myth of colonial Ireland: It was on the basis of the 1641 rebellion that the 1662 Act of Settlement upheld the Cromwellian confiscations. Also in 1662 the Irish Parliament passed an act ordering the Anglican Church of Ireland to commemorate 1641 with an annual sermon on October 23. The state church added new prayers about 1641, incorporating them into the Irish Book of Common Prayer in 1666, where they remained until 1859, giving religious sanction to an egregious slander against the Irish people.

What can be said of a Christian worship turned into a self-righteous justification for oppression? Where was the Christian charity? In addition to a church service, the annual commemoration included public drinking, bell ringing, a gun salute, a bonfire, and a parade. By the end of the 17th century, a new colonial order prevailed in Ireland, with 800,000 Irish Catholics dispossessed and disenfranchised by 200,000 English and 100,000 Scottish Protestants — and government troops to enforce it.

Rationalists embraced the Big Lie: David Hume harped on the atrocities of 1641, and Voltaire wouldn’t listen to any arguments against the “reality” of the 1641 massacres, linking them to the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. For Hume and Voltaire, Gibney says, 1641 was a “genocidal sadism prompted by little more than hatred based on superstition.” When religious liberty for Catholics was debated in Ireland’s House of Lords in 1793, the Anglican bishop of Cashel rose up to defend the persecution of Catholics by reading aloud a “lurid extract about 1641 from David Hume.”

On the other side, the Catholic version of 1641 remained virtually the same from the 17th to the 19th century. Catholics said that the atrocities attributed to them were “inventions” used to justify their dispossession, that the death toll for Protestants was wildly exaggerated, and that in 1641 Protestants had been the first to inflict terrible brutalities on Irish Catholics across the land.

In 1662 a certain “R.S.” published a Collection of Some of the Murthers and Massacres Committed on the Irish in Ireland Since the 23rd of October 1641. Since Catholics had no freedom of the press, this tract was quickly suppressed and publicly burned in Ireland. Yet it gives, Gibney says, “a reasonably sober account of various brutalities visited on Catholics by Protestants and, later, by parliamentary forces.” R.S. ridicules the inflated death toll given for Protestants “on the reasonable grounds that the figures commonly given far exceeded the Protestant population in Ireland.” Moreover, he recounts how in one night English and Scottish soldiers massacred all the residents of Islandmagee — 3,000 men, women, and children — though no one in County Antrim was in rebellion. R.S. follows this with reports of similar massacres conducted by government troops, county by county.

In 1668 Catholic Bishop Nicholas French said that in 1641 “four hundred English could not be found murdered in Ireland.” In 1684 the Earl of Castlehaven wrote that the rebellion of 1641 arose from legitimate grievances and that the Lord Justices were the ones intent on “exterminating” all the Irish “who would not conform to the established church.” In Ireland’s Case Briefly Stated (1695), Hugh Reily argues that the Lord Justices needed a pretext to confiscate Irish land, so they authorized the massacres at Santry, Contarf, Bullock, Islandmagee, and Carrickfergus to provoke a rebellion. While the death toll given for Protestants was “absolutely impossible,” Catholics died in “much greater numbers.”

The major spokesman for the Irish in the 18th century was John Curry, who asked in his Brief Account (1746) why 1641 was “trumped up” with so many “unjust” exaggerations against his people. He declares that they had not committed a murder in 1641 that had not been “returned upon them at least four fold,” and that the official version was a slander “deliberately and cynically adopted to blacken the name of the Catholic Irish amid the formulation of the land settlement of the 1660s, and thereby used to dispossess them.” Edmund Burke sympathized with Curry, but to save his career in England he left his most important work on the topic unpublished: His “Tracts Relating to the Popery Law” (1765) declares that the Catholic rebellions in Ireland were not “produced by toleration but by persecution” and “arose not from just and mild government but from the most unparalleled oppression.”

In 1819 Matthew Carey published Vindiciae Hibernicae in America, with later editions carrying the commendations of Presidents John Adams and James Madison. By then the Big Lie about 1641 had been spread in this country by John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Carey laments that the slander is, in his day, “almost as thoroughly believed as the best established fact in the annals of the world.” He asserts that there was no massacre in 1641 except for what the Dublin administration “perpetrated against the Irish” to confiscate their land, and he rightly calls the “penal laws” that deprived the Irish of religious freedom for 150 years “tyranny…covered by as base a cloak of hypocrisy as the annals of the world can produce.” He also neatly dissects the various death tolls given for Protestants and shows them to be based, Gibney says, on “forgery and perjury.”

A Catholic account of 1641 was produced by Daniel O’Connell in Memoir on Ireland Native and Saxon (1843), in which he argues that all the suffering of the Irish after 1641 stemmed “largely from calculated and gross Protestant misrepresentations of Catholic conduct during the rebellion.” He sees the lies surrounding 1641 as “the demoniacal means by which Protestantism and English power achieved their ascendancy in Ireland.”

Toward the end of The Shadow of a Year, Gibney discusses the late-19th-century debate between historians James Anthony Froude and W.E.H. Lecky. In The English in Ireland (1872-1874) Froude characterizes the Irish as “a savage, turbulent, and violent people” who needed civilizing by the English. Predictably, he takes the depositions compiled by Jones at face value, gives “uncritical acceptance” to the official version of 1641, and points to the “solemn annual commemoration” in the state church. Lecky responds in his History of Ireland (1892) by saying that the fantastic stories about Catholic atrocities were due to “Protestant designs on Catholic estates” and to the fear that the Irish might otherwise save their lands by “coming to terms” with the English government. He concedes that a rebellious mob in Ulster had committed awful crimes, but these had been “grossly, absurdly, and mendaciously exaggerated…almost beyond any other tragedy on record.” He discredits Sir John Temple as the one who “bore more responsibility than any other for propagating the notion of a massacre” and calls the depositions collected by Jones “untrustworthy.”

The Big Lie continued to propagate in the 20th century. Ernest Hamilton, in Soul of Ulster (1917), a work Gibney describes as “racist and sectarian,” suggests that the death toll for Protestants in 1641 could have been over a million and that “the soul of the native Irish has not at the present day changed by the width of a hair” from that time. Maude Glasgow, in The Scotch-Irish in North America (1936), repeats Milton’s assertion “without qualification” that 600,000 Protestants had been massacred.

At a 1998 conference at the University of Notre Dame commemorating the Tyrone Rebellion of 1798, I happened to see a new book by Ian McBride among the many on display. I skimmed it and discovered that he too reasserted the Big Lie about 1641. When I pointed this out to several people who were attending the conference, I was met with weary shrugs and the response, “What else is to be expected from McBride?”

Recently, the one-sided and mendacious depositions compiled by Henry Jones have been digitized. Gibney (and Ian Paisley) thinks this is a great idea, but I’m not convinced. In Alice Curtayne’s The Trial of Oliver Plunkett (1953), we read that the same Jones, who joined Cromwell’s army in 1649 and was promoted to Anglican bishop of Meath in 1661, was busy collecting new perjurers in 1680 to testify against St. Oliver Plunkett (who was found guilty of high treason for a fictitious plot to bring in the French army and restore the Catholic Church by force of arms). The Protestant duke of Ormonde, viceroy of Ireland, referred to Jones in a letter to his son as “not only a spiteful but a false informer.” Yes, Ormonde called him a liar. It seems that Jones’s Big Lie about 1641 is like a vampire that keeps resuscitating itself every century. We can hope and pray that Gibney’s book has thrust a stake through its beastly heart.

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is Professor Emerita of English at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She has published on Dryden, Milton, and Swift, as well as on Catholics of the seventeenth century.

The foregoing article, "The Big Lie: Ireland, 1641," was originally published in the May 2016 issue of the New Oxford Review and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706. 

World organizations declare ISIS slaughter in the Mideast "genocide"

Among those condemning ISIS massacres of Christians and others a "genocide" are listed:

• The International Association of Genocide Scholars
• 60 Parliamentarians from the United Kingdom
• 200+ Members of Congress
• Pope Francis
• EU Parliament
• Genocide Watch
• USCIRF

Check out the following websites:

• "Statement of Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson on State Department's Genocide Declaration" (Knights of Columbus, March 17, 2016).
• "StopTheChristianGenocide.org" (Sponsored by In Defense of Christians and Knights of Columbus).
• "There is only one word for what is happening: genocide" (Knights of Columbus, March 10, 2016).

[Hat tip to P. Borealis]