How many of Senator John Kerry’s grandparents are ethnically Irish?
WINNER: The Poster Formerly Known As Anonymous Coward, in 23 minutes. Like Saint Patrick, Kerry is 0% Irish.
Author: Eric Johnson
St. Patrick’s Day quiz
What was Saint Patrick of Ireland’s ethnic background? (No fair using Google to answer.)
WINNER: Father Jeffrey Keyes was quick to point out that St. Patrick was born in Britain, and that St. Patrick was a Roman citizen. He was not ethnically Irish. He only ended up in Ireland because the kind, gentle folk of that land kidnapped and enslaved him.
Friend of the enlisted man?
A short summary of Senator Kerry’s military experience: he commanded a vessel in Vietnam, and was decorated for valor. He received three non-life-threatening wounds during his four months in Vietnam. Because of these wounds, he abandoned his comrades by petitioning the Navy to let him leave a combat zone (there was a rule allowing three-times-wounded servicemen to leave).
That landed him in a cushy desk job working for an admiral. Then he got the Navy to release him before his committment was over, in order to run for Congress. He then testified before Congress about war crimes he never saw, committed by men he never knew (and who were later proven liars.)
Sen. Kerry is the kind of officer that enlisted men loathe — working the system for his own benefit instead of theirs, advancing his own interests with no loyalty to those underneath him. His haughty demeanor would have only exacerbated their dislike. Maybe he was a different man back then, but I doubt it. I’d be curious to see what his former subordinates really think of him. They’re probably too classy to denounce their former commanding officer in public, but it would be great to get them into a bar and see what they say after a few drinks.
Men are willing to fight and die for a flawed, arrogant, and even cruel leader if they sense he shares their struggles and believes in their cause. They despise self-serving careerists, because they know that selfish men will often endanger their lives for no good reason, and think of the people around them as merely means to an end.
Prayers to the saints, con’d
This is in response to Catholic Light’s favorite Protestant, Ken Shepherd, who commented on a previous post about praying to the saints.
Ken, I have to take issue with your assertion that “asleep” in the NT is anything other than a euphemism for bodily death. Is our God the God of the living, or the dead? In Revelation, are the saints who cast their crowns before the Lamb “asleep”? No: “…they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them” (Rev. 7:15)
Or Revelation 4, which describes the worship of the Lamb that goes on “day and night”?
Are the saints indifferent about what happens on Earth? “…I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?'” (Rev. 6:9-10) That sounds like they’re tremendously concerned with enacting justice on earth.
You don’t cease to be a member of the Church merely by dying. There is one body in the Lord, not separate bodies for the physically living and the dead. “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Eph. 4:16) Some do the work in heaven, others do it on earth. There’s nothing we can do for the saints in heaven; they have attained perfection. However, since they have been transformed into “little Christs,” they have the ability to pray to the Father and intercede on our behalf, just as Revelation says they do.
I think it’s best to leave the question of imputed righteousness for another day. (For now, I’ll point out that Christ himself commanded us to “be perfect, even as my Father in Heaven is perfect,” and I think he meant it!) What I’d like to do is ask, if you don’t mind, when and where you think prayer to the saints originated? Because I can show you references to that practice that are contemporary with Scripture, and in the decades following. To my knowledge, that wasn’t even a significant point of controversy within Christendom until Martin Luther reacted against the real, scandalous, and devil-inspired abuse of relics and other saint-related devotional practices.
If the practice is wrong, it was wrong almost from the very beginning, since as I mentioned before there are ancient accounts of the earliest Christians venerating the graves of the saints and building altars over their bodies. And why didn’t Jesus step in to stop it? What was the Holy Spirit doing for 1,500 years, if it wasn’t guiding the Church? Why would he allow his children to persist in such gross errors for so long?
Hatred is a liberal value, part II
An actual license plate, seen in a northern Virginia parking lot:
H8 GWB
The Left is always accusing conservatives of being “haters,” motivated by animus and little else. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is what the psychologists call “projection.”