Battle of Bannockburn - 699 Years Ago Today

On this day 699 years ago - 24 June 1314, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, led his vastly outnumbered army into battle against the English under King Edward II at Bannockburn, near Stirling Castle, in Scotland. Edward had more than 2000 battle-hardened knights to Bruce’s 500 horsemen, and a force of 16,000 infantry to Bruce's 6000 foot soldiers.

It was Midsummer Day, the Feast of St John the Baptist.

The day before, an English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, had seen the Bruce separated from the rest of his army and turned his war-horse to charge him. De Bohun thundered across the field levelling his lance at Bruce. The Bruce stood his ground and waited until the English knight was almost upon him, then stood up in his stirrups and brought his battle-axe crashing down, splitting de Bohun's helmet and skull in two.

The Bruce would own this day as well. 

 

 

The Scots had carefully chosen their ground at Bannockburn. They used the natural terrain to counter the threat of Edward’s heavy cavalry and dug small pit traps or ‘pots’ to defend their flanks and force the English to fight them head on. Disastrously, Edward ordered his men to cross the Bannockburn river onto boggy ground. Bruce ordered the Scots to push forward and a forest of spears sent Edward’s army crashing back upon itself. The Scots pushed Edward’s army back to the steep-sided Bannockburn until the river was filled with bodies. King Edward II fled the field, escaped to Dunbar Castle, and then sailed back to England. Others weren't so fortunate - the Scots killed or captured many of the greatest knights of England.

For the next 15 years - until the Bruce's death in 1329, the Scots held the upper hand over the English militarily, including a significant victory at the Battle of Byland in Yorkshire, in which a young, newly crowned Edward III was almost captured.

The ultimate result of Bannockburn was that the Scots had won their independence on the battlefield, an achievement that was to receive legal sanction a few years later when the Scots obtained papal recognition of their claim for independence as laid out in the Declaration of Arbroath (considered by many to be a forerunner to the American Declaration of Independence).

(Source)

“Mary’s Ultrasound” Ad Campaign Draws Criticism From Pro-Aborts in UK

Tom Peters reports at CatholicVote:

I’m thrilled to see this ad campaign and welcome all the controversy it is causing:

An ecumenical nonprofit in England has come under fire for their upcoming Advent campaign designed to put Christ back into Christmas. Their crime? Creating billboards and posters that show a Baby Jesus as an ultrasound, with a halo. The ads, created by ChurchAds.net say: “He’s on His way. Christmas starts with Christ.”

… The “Baby Scan Jesus” ads are being placed on billboards and posters in churches, retail stores, bus shelters and homes. ChurchAds has also created two clever radio ads: one an airport announcement, the other a humorous telephone message from St. Joseph about the birth of his Son. [Tim Drake at National Catholic Register]

[More]

U.K. Election Results

I, myself, was pulling for the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party, since there wasn't much of a choice between New Labor and New Labor Light ... errr ... I mean the Conservative Party.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Peter Hitchens: Tories NEED to Lose Again

Peter Hitchens: Tories NEED to Lose Again

The "good" Hitchens brother (i.e. not the one who hates Mother Teresa and wants to arrest the Pope) angstfully urges "Please do not vote Tory":

Many of you are going to hate me for what I am about to say. I regret this. Perhaps the fact that I am going to do it anyway will convince some of you that I am deadly serious, and prefer unpopularity to doing the wrong thing.

It is one of the most important and urgent tasks I have ever undertaken. I warned, 13 years ago, against New Labour.

I warned, seven years ago, against the Iraq War. I was right (as I usually am – full list on application).

But in those cases I might as well have tried to halt a tsunami with a feather duster.

The country had gone into a sort of craze, and believed what it wanted to believe.

This time, I think and hope that what I say might actually have some effect on an unusually close Election.

And it is this. Please do not vote Tory. It will have the opposite result to the one you intend.

[...]

But I beg and plead with you not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project. You will hate yourself for it in time if you do.

[...]

You may want to ‘Get Gordon Brown out’. So do I. And he’s done for anyway.

But do you really want to put in a man who agrees with Gordon Brown on almost every major issue, and is so confident of his liberalism that he doesn’t even try to keep it secret?

No muttered remarks in the car about ‘bigotry’ for him. He has said openly that he regards the conservative-minded people of this country as ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’ – and nobody made him apologise for it afterwards.

If you now endorse the Cameron Tory Party, you will destroy all real hope of change for the better.

I assume here that my readers mostly agree with me about what this country needs. It needs its independence back, so it can make its own laws and control its own coasts and territorial seas, its armed forces, its foreign policy – like a proper nation.

It needs to regain control of its borders and end the mass immigration which is neither necessary nor good.

It needs to stop the destruction of the married family and the undermining of adult authority.

It needs to use the law to restrain the grotesque abuse of alcohol and the dangerous spread of drugs.

It needs to restore the idea that crime and disorder should be prevented by a police force patrolling on foot – and where that fails, the criminals should be punished in austere and ­disciplined prisons.

It needs schools which teach proper subjects in orderly and peaceful classrooms.

It needs to shrink and reform a grotesque, unjust welfare state which rewards sloth and neglects the truly poor.

It needs – urgently – to defeat the politically correct fundamentalist zealots, who sneer ‘Bigot!’ at anyone who dares defend the reasonable beliefs and opinions which were normal a generation ago.

Some of you may also agree with me that it needs to reassert its debt and its allegiance to the Christian religion, on which our unique civilisation of orderly freedom is based.

David Cameron pretends skilfully to agree with these positions because he knows that is what you think.

But he does not really agree with you or me. He is himself deeply politically correct (he has just sacked a parliamentary candidate for having the ‘wrong’ opinions about homo­sexuality, a fact a grovelling media have not publicised)...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/election/article-1270363/General-election-2010-The-important-article-Ive-written--loyal-Conservative-voters-hate-it.html#ixzz0msV41XQE

"Terminally Ill" Lockerbie Bomber, Freed on "Compassionate" Grounds, Still Alive and Living in Luxury Villa 6 Months After Being at "Death's Door"

Big frickin' surprise (NOT!):

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is living with his family in a luxury villa in Libya six months after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds because he had less than three months to live.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, no longer receives hospital treatment after ending the course of chemotherapy that he had been given after returning to his homeland last August.

Professor Karol Sikora, the London-based doctor who examined Megrahi and predicted he would be dead by last October, admitted this weekend that the fact the bomber is still alive might be "difficult" for the families of the 270 victims of the attack.

Most did not want Megrahi released and they suspected he would live longer than the predicted three months.

The Sunday Telegraph revealed last September that the Libyan government had paid for the medical evidence which helped Megrahi, 57, to be released. The Libyans had encouraged doctors to say he had only three months to live.

The life expectancy of Megrahi was crucial because, under Scottish rules, prisoners can be freed on compassionate grounds only if they are considered to have this amount of time, or less, to live.

Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, ruled last August that Megrahi should be freed. Megrahi's release came after Libyan leaders warned that lucrative oil and trade deals with Britain would be cancelled if the bomber died in jail ...

My Comments:
I suppose Tony A will be along at some point to explain how all us vengeful "Calvinists" are sick, morbid monsters for holding it against the guy that he's still alive. No, the problem is that the guy is still alive and NOT IN JAIL, while his victims and their families have, once again, been denied justice.

For, now we know that, not only was so-called "compassion" NOT the motivating factor behind the terrorist's release (the real motivating factor would be greed, as the UK was more interested in saving its lucrative oil deals with Libya than it was in being "compassionate"), but the terrorist himself was NEVER EVEN ON the threshold of "death's door" as claimed.

Suckers.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
New York Archbishop: Mistake to Release Lockerbie Bomber

Victory for Religious Groups as Labour Gives Up on Equality Bill Clause Condemned by Pope

From The Telegraph:

Ministers had tried to include a new definition of a priest in the flagship anti-discrimination law, but church leaders complained that it was far too narrow.

They said it would mean religious organisations could no longer opt out of equality rules, and so would face prosecution unless they went against their beliefs by employing homosexuals. Roman Catholics feared they would be forced to admit women to the priesthood for the first time.

In an unprecedented intervention in British politics, on Monday the Pope declared that Britain’s equality laws are imposing “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.

The controversial clause was struck out of the legislation during committee stage in the House of Lords last week, but clergy feared Labour would try to put it back in before the law entered the statute book.

However the Equality Bill is seen by Gordon Brown's allies as Harriet Harman's bill and party startegists are anxious that contentious parts of the bill do not become a part of the election attack against Labour.

Mr Brown visted the Pope while he was Chancellor and has enjoyed good relations with the Vatican on issues such as world poverty. Number 10 also points out that there are many Catholic Labour MPs who wil be upset that the new Bill has provoked such strong recation from Rome.

Downing Street is anxious that relations remain cordial and has now indicated that they will drop the contentious parts of the Bill...

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Pope Critical of Labour’s "Unjust" Equality Laws Ahead of UK Visit

Pope Critical of Labour’s "Unjust" Equality Laws Ahead of UK Visit

From The Telegraph:

Benedict XVI claimed that legislation introduced by Labour to end discrimination “actually violates natural law” as it stops worshippers remaining true to their beliefs.

He said that rather than making society more equal, the Government's new rules limit religious freedom.

His strongly-worded intervention in British politics comes after leaders of both the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England clashed with Labour over its flagship Equality Bill, which they fear will make them admit homosexuals to the priesthood or face prosecution for discriminating against them.

In an address delivered on Monday to 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales, the pope attacked the implications of Labour’s equality laws.

He said: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet... the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

He went on: "In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

[More]

The dictatorship of relativism was quick to go on the offensive in attacking the Holy Father:

... Speaking at a meeting of the European Parliament's Socialists and Democrats in Rome, Stephen Hughes criticised Pope Benedict's concern that the Equality Bill would restrict religious groups from acting in accordance with their faith.

'As a Catholic, I am appalled by the attitude of the Pope. Religious leaders should be trying to eradicate inequality, not perpetuate it,' Hughes said in a statement reproduced on his website. 'Instead of criticising the UK's plans to improve its legislation, the Pope should ensure that existing EU legislation is properly applied in the Vatican,' Hughes said.

The Pope, who announced the first papal visit to Britain since 1982 on Monday, urged Bishops from England and Wales to make a convincing case against legislation that could force churches to hire homosexuals or transsexuals. He said the legislation violates natural law and told the visiting bishops they should fight it with 'missionary zeal.' Human Rights groups have hit back at the Pope's comments...

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Same-Sex "Marriage" and Religious Liberty

Bork Predicts “Terrible Conflict” Will Endanger U.S. Catholics’ Religious Freedom

Same-Sex "Marriage" and the Persecution of Civil Society

InsideCatholic on "The Unintended Consequences of Gay Marriage"

Secularist Attacks on the Catholic Church in Britain

Regular Guy Paul on What's Next for Same-Sex "Marriage"

Catholic Provocation?

Federal Judge: Catholic Church’s Position Against Homosexual Adoptions Justifies Government Hostility Towards Church

San Francisco's Hateful Anti-Catholic Resolution Prompts Lawsuit by Thomas More Center

Catholic League Says Gay Adoption Issue Spurring Anti-Catholic Bigotry

9th Circuit Rules Okay to Censor Terms "Marriage" and "Family Values" as Hate Speech

UK Catholic Schools Endangered by Sexual Orientation Regulations

Official Anti-Catholic Bigotry Returns to British Parliament

"A Charter for Suing Christians"

A Catholic Londoner on "The Last Acceptable Prejudice"

British Bishops: U.K. Sex Equality Law "Threatens Catholic Adoption Agencies"

UK: Churches "Could be Forced to Bless Gay Weddings"

The Coming Persecution of Churches Over "Gay Marriage"

The Coming Conflict Between Same-Sex "Marriage" and Religious Liberty

Pope to Make First Ever Official Papal Visit to Britain

(Hat tip: National Catholic Register)

The Times of London reports:

Pope Benedict XVI is to visit Britain next year in the first ever official visit by a pontiff.

The Holy See will announce soon the first papal visit to Britain since Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982.

[...]

During his time in the country, expected to take place in September next year, Pope Benedict will have a meeting with the Queen, Supreme Governor of the Church of England and will be accorded the full panoply of a state visit. It is possible the Pope will also stay with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

[...]

A draft itinerary is understood to include London, Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh.

[...]

One issue likely to be central to the celebrations will be the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a ceremony that could take place with Benedict in Birmingham, where Newman founded his Oratory...

[More]

UPDATE (24 September)
Fr. Finigan has more information, including lots of links.

Good Enough for Government Work

The National Health Service in action:

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.

Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.

But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.

***
Following the second operation his incision became infected and he was admitted to hospital for a third time for treatment.

[More]

My Comments:
"We're from the Government, and we're here to help."

Just ... damn.

New York Archbishop: Mistake to Release Lockerbie Bomber

Archbishop Dolan reveals that he is a dualist Americanist Calvinist with a "dodgy theology" that doesn't encompass the fullness of Christ's compassion as it is embraced by our European betters:

Echoing sentiments expressed by other local religious leaders, Archbishop Timothy Dolan called the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi “a sad and perplexing mistake.” The terrorist, who received a hero’s welcome in his native Libya, had been released because he is suffering from terminal cancer.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

NYC clergy condemns Scotland freeing bomber (AP)

(emphasis added)

Tony Blair Criticizes Pope's "Entrenched Attitudes" on Homosexuality

See my post on the subject at Catholics in the Public Square:

Blair Criticizes Pope's "Entrenched Attitudes" on Homosexuality; Former PM Hopes for "Rethinking", "Evolving", and "Sensible Reformation of Attitudes".

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Soon to be a meme heard round the world:

Couples who have more than two children are putting an 'irresponsible' burden on the environment, the Government's leading green advisor has warned.

Jonathon Porritt called on ministers to divert money away from curing illnesses towards contraception and abortion services to limit the country's population and help in the fight against global warming.

And he criticised fellow green campaigners for dodging the issue of population growth and its effect on the environment because it is too 'controversial'.

It came as Catholic bishops in England and Wales lambasted environmentalism as an ideology every bit as dangerous as communism. [ED.: Yep.]

In a booklet, they say worshippers should be deeply sceptical of claims the green movement makes on global warming. [ED.: Yep.]

***
Mr Porritt, who has two children himself, added: 'I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

'I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don't really hear anyone say the P-word.

***
A spokeswoman for the Pro-life Alliance said: 'Yet again we hear an expert calling for more contraception and abortion: but our high abortion figures are the fruit of that kind of approach.

'The unpleasant aspect of this statement is the idea that how many children you have should be down to the state. Wherever we have seen such policies being imposed, such as in China, we have seen a preference for male children and a rise in infanticide.' [ED.: Yep.]

The views expressed by Mr Porritt came under attack from the Catholic Church, which views contraception as 'intrinsically evil'.

A booklet by the London-based Catholic Truth Society, a charity under the patronage of Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, said there was a proven tendency among the environmental lobby to exaggerate the threat of global warming to vindicate their calls for radical Government measures to 'forcibly' move the world down a 'sustainable' path. [ED.: Yep.]

The book, Global Warming: How Should we Respond, says: 'Just as Marxism advocated Communism as the only solution to the world's ills, so Greens warn us of major catastrophe if we do not adopt their calls for radical change.'

It says the ideology of the Green movement ran counter to Christian beliefs, because it saw 'mankind as just one species among many'. [ED.: Yep.]

The book says that population programmes targeting the 'supposedly feckless breeding' of the poor, especially in developing countries, were the result of racist and unfounded prejudices. [ED.: Yep.]

'Environmental campaigns which demand that the natural world should be treated with greater respect imply that this is the only issue that matters, ignoring the plight of humanity or any spiritual values,' it said. [ED.: Yep.]

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)


UPDATE (3 February)
Fr. Finigan notes that large families are greener:

The Sunday Times last weekend reported on a GP who discourages families from having more than two children. (See: Green GP refuses to help women have large families.) Dr Pippa Hayes is a member of the Optimum Population Trust whose motto is "stop at two". Essentially, the OPT believes that having more children is not eco friendly. This is an old idea dressed up in green language; human beings are seen as a kind of pollution.

The article does give space to an alternative assessment - that in fact large families often lead more environmentally friendly lives. To take one example, they certainly don't use air travel to the same degree because with a large family, package holidays in the sun are prohibitively expensive. The active outdoor alternatives are not only very beneficial for children but also, in fact, tend to waste fewer natural resources. The photo shows one family making the most of our current weather.

The large families I know also tend to make economies of scale at home, passing on clothes and other things, cooking with fresh ingredients, growing stuff in the garden, keeping chickens, enjoying games with things that have been made, not bought, and generally getting out into the environment rather than just talking about it.

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

New Tyburn Memorial Planned

(Hat tip: Rich Leonardi)

From The Catholic Herald (U.K.):

A monument in honour of hundreds of Catholics executed for their faith is to be erected in the heart of central London.

Consultations are underway to instal a striking memorial on the former site of the Tyburn gallows at the western end of Oxford Street, the capital's busiest shopping street.

Between 1535 and 1679 nearly 400 Catholics were executed on the spot, and 105 of these have been recognised by the Vatican as martyrs, with a number canonised as saints.

Since the Fifties the site of the gallows has been marked simply by a stone roundel in a traffic island at the intersection of Edgware Road and Bayswater Road, near to Marble Arch, bearing the image of a plain black cross and the words: "The site of the Tyburn Tree."

But Westminster City Council has begun looking for ideas for a more fitting memorial.

***
Tyburn became a place of public execution in the 12th century, and, as the "King's gallows", was used in particular for those people convicted of capital offences against the Crown. The first martyrs of the Protestant Reformation - St John Houghton and companions - were executed together for treason there on May 4 1535 after they refused to accept King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England.

In 1571 Queen Elizabeth I erected the Tyburn Tree, triangular gallows purposely built for multiple executions, with 24 men and women executed there together in one instance.

Catholics to die there included St Edmund Campion, the first English Jesuit martyr, who wrote in his "brag" to Elizabeth's Privy Council, that the Jesuits would never cease to work for the conversion of England "while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn".

The last Catholic Tyburn martyr was St Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh, executed on July 1 1679, the last of 25 innocent victims of the Titus Oates plot.

Most men were hanged, drawn and quartered - a slow death that involved castration and disemboweling before the head was struck off and the body quartered - but Catholic women, such as Mary Ward and Anne Line, were hanged instead.

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Martyr's Walk DVD Available

Tyburn Memorial Gone? [UPDATED]

National Catholic Register on "Our Lady's England"

London: Plans Unveiled for Memorial to Pre-Reformation Shrines [UPDATED]

Joanna Bogle on "The Island of Saints"

A Possible St. Edmund Campion Movie?

A Memorial in Chelsea to the Marian Shrines Destroyed in the English Reformation

Forty Martyrs of England and Wales - 25 October (Formerly Commemorated 4 May)

Auntie Joanna on The Martyrs' Walk

Today Is The Feast Day of St. Edmund Campion, Martyr (1 December)

Edmund Burke vs. the Catholic Penal Laws

Statue of Edmund Burke on Trinity College Green, Dublin
Please read Donald McClarey's informative post at American Catholic on the electoral price paid by one of the world's greatest political philosophers (and the father of modern-day conservatism) for his exercise of conscience and judgment:

“For I must do it justice; it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”

So wrote Edmund Burke, brilliant writer and member of Parliament, of the Catholic penal laws in the Eighteenth Century. Son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, suspected in his lifetime, probably incorrectly, of being a secret Catholic, Burke was a man who fought during his life for many causes: reform in Parliament, support for Americans in their fight against oppression by the English government, prosecution of Warren Hastings for his misrule in India, his crusade against the French Revolution, all these and more engaged his formidable intellect and his luminous pen. However, one cause he championed from the beginning of his career to the end of it: relief for Catholics in Ireland and England from the Penal Laws.

[More]

Cartoon lampooning Edmund Burke, as an Irish Jesuit, seated at a tableeating potatoes from a pot labeled "Relick No. 1. used by St. Peter."
Burke is portrayed as a Jesuit because he supported the 1778 Relief Actwhich relaxed restrictions on the rights of Catholics. The poverty of the Irish is parodied by the potatoes. Catholicism is parodiedby the pictures on the wall, the mutilated crucifix, the pot labeled as a relic of St. Peter,and the demons dancing under the table.

Brits Set to Lift 300-Year-Old Ban on Catholic Succession to the Throne

From The Daily Mail:

The 300-year-old rule excluding Catholics from the throne is set to be abolished under plans drawn up by Downing Street.

***
Legislation including the 1701 Act of Settlement bars all Catholics and anyone married to a Catholic from reigning and forces any monarch coming to the throne to reject Catholicism.

***
'To bring about changes to the law on succession would be a complex undertaking involving amendment or repeal of a number of items of related legislation, as well as requiring the consent of legislatures of member nations of the Commonwealth,' the spokesman said.

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Joanna Bogle on "For God and Queen: The Quandary of the English Catholic"

British Prelates to Press for Repeal of Act of Settlement

Scottish Cardinal Denounces Great Britain's Official Anti-Catholicism

This Day in Jacobite History: The Acts of Union - 1 May 1707

This Day in Jacobite History: Death of Queen Anne; George, Elector of Hanover, Becomes King - 1 August 1714

Times of London Columnist: "Eventually, We Will All Hate Obama Too"

David Aaronovitch writes in The Times of London:

It amuses me that some of those who criticise the present US Administration for its Manichaeism - its division of the world into good and evil - themselves allocate all past badness to Bush and all prospective goodness to Obama. As the ever-improving myth has it, on the morning of September 12, 2001, George W. and America enjoyed the sympathy of the world. This comradeship was destroyed, in a uniquely cavalier (or should we say cowboyish) fashion, through the belligerence, the carelessness, the ideological fixity and the rapacity of that amorphous and useful category of American flawed thinker, the neoconservative. They just threw it away.

***
This week you could hear the author Andrew O'Hagan on Radio 4, reading from his collection of self-conscious essays, The Atlantic Ocean, in which - despite his own claims - every impact of American life on Britain is somehow configured negatively. He writes of an exported popular culture “born in the suburbs of America” and defined as “Spite as entertainment. Shouting as argument. Dysfunction as normality. Desires as rights. Shopping as democracy.” This in the country that has sent Big Brother, Pop Idol, Wife Swap and Location, Location, Location over the Atlantic in the other direction, while taking delivery of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire.

I should admit that I am irked by O'Hagan's dismissal of the “idiots who supported that bad and stupid war (ie, Iraq)” and am willing to match my idiocy against his intelligence in any debating forum that he cares to name. More interesting, though, is the desire to blame America. For all that O'Hagan claims that the US has lost its purchase on the world's affections, it remains the chosen destination for the most ambitious of the planet's migrants. For all that he claims that this change in sentiment is recent, I can't help recalling those - the most honest - who commented, in journals he writes for and on the very day after September 11, that the Americans had had it coming.

In part I think that anti-Americanism is linked to a view of change as decline. The imagination is that dynamic capitalism, associated with the US, is destroying our authentic lives, with our own partly willing connivance. It is a continuing and - at the moment - constant narrative, uniting left and right conservatives, which will usually take in the 19th- century radical journalist William Cobbett (conveniently shorn of his anti-Semitism), and end with an expression of disgust over the Dome, the Olympics or Tesco. Just as bird flu is a disease from out of the East, runaway modernity is a scourge originating to the West.

So Barack Obama, en fête around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Of course, with a name like "David Aaronovitch", he MUST be a "neocon" himself.
/sarcasm

Joanna Bogle on "For God and Queen: The Quandary of the English Catholic"

Joanna Bogle writes at InsideCatholic:

... Recently a child in Scotland decided -- or, at least, it was announced in the press that he had decided, but it is possible that his parents had some influence on his decision, since he is only eight years old -- that he didn't want to affirm his loyalty to the queen when making his Cub Scout promise. The problem is that if you can't make the Promise ("to do my best to my duty to God and the Queen"), you can't really be a Cub Scout.

I daresay some special arrangement will be made for him, but what was the reason given for his refusal of loyalty to Her Majesty? He's a Catholic, and apparently feels very strongly about the Act of Settlement and the fact that it bans Roman Catholics from the throne or from marrying into the royal family.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of how much this eight year-old knows of our constitutional and religious situation as it has developed over the past few centuries, this does give us all an opportunity to explore an interesting question.

As is well known, the curious twists and turns of English history have resulted in a situation where, in the 21st century, there exists a law banning any member of the royal family from marrying a Roman Catholic without express permission from the monarch, and anyone in direct line to the throne from marrying one at all.

So are most Catholics now calling for a change in the law?

***
... Catholics in Britain are loyal to the crown. We honor the queen, and it is partly our faith that makes us do so. She sticks by things that matter to Catholics: God, personal and public responsibilities, service to others. She is a devout and regular churchgoer. She took her coronation anointing seriously. She makes sacrifices in order to fulfil her duties.

So frankly we aren't bothered in getting a change in the law, and we place a higher value in the stability of the monarchy and its constitutional value than we do any sense of mild irritation that we have about our technical status in the eyes of the law.

[Read the whole thing]

Dale Price also addressed this subject a couple of weeks ago.

Proof That Abortion Increases When Republicans Are In the White House?

Maybe there's something to the notion put forward by left-liberals that when Republicans are in the White House there is an increase in the rate and/or number of abortions.

After all, George W. Bush is in the White House and here's this news story reporting that "the number of abortions among girls aged under 16 rose by 10% ... in 2007". That would be pretty damning evidence backing up the left-liberal case-in-chief against Republicans and their policies.

... Except for the fact that the news source is the BBC and the increase in abortion is among young teens in England and Wales.

... Where there's been a Labour government for the last decade.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
"Poverty and Abortion: A New Analysis"

Number of Abortions Lowest in Decades

National Review Online: Mainstream Media Continues to Distort on Abortion

Pro-Life Quote of the Day

On This Day In History: War of 1812 Declared

The Capture and Burning of Washington, 1814
196 years ago today, on June 18, 1812, the United States stunned the world by disastrously declaring war on Great Britain, beginning what is known to history as "The War of 1812":

... The ostensible reasons for the war seemed to have been forgotten once the opening shots were sounded. The United States was upset at the British navy’s arrogance on the high seas. Desperate to find sailors for a fleet of over one thousand ships, Great Britain didn’t hesitate to stop and search American ships in the hopes of recovering seaman who deserted the draconian existence of the British navy for the easier life aboard U.S. vessels. British captains were not above press-ganging the odd American while they were at it. England had also begun to seize Yankee ships trading with Napoleonic France. These tactics caused a huge controversy in the American Congress. Eventually, the United States cut off all trade with the continent.

As the record reveals, the Americans wanted more than just maritime rights. What they also wanted was the other half of the North American continent still in the hands of the King of England. In 1778, during the American Revolution, the Yankees tried to seize Canada, and actually captured Montreal. The expedition however, under Generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, perished in the sub-zero cold beneath the towering walls of the fortress at Quebec.

In 1812, Americans were determined to make another attempt at eradicating the British presence in North America, and settle "the Indian question" once and for all. Such a campaign, promised Thomas Jefferson, would be a matter of mere marching. In Congress, the War Hawks took up this position and demanded the United States finalize the independence from Britain they had fought so hard to win. Many Americans came to see the 1812 conflict as the second Revolutionary War.

When Great Britain finally realized that the Americans would go to war on the impressment issue, it revoked the Orders-in-Council which authorized the seizures. In the final analysis, these causes bore so little weight, that they were not even mentioned in the peace treaty which, eventually ended the war. But in early 1812, it was too late. War was imminent, and could not be stopped.

The Battle of Fort Meigs

War of 1812, Ohio Historical Society Collection


UPDATE
History Channel: First Invasion: The War of 1812 - Madison Declares War

History Channel: This Day In History: 06/18/1812 - Second Anglo-American War

History Channel: Great American History Quiz: War of 1812



Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
What the Andersons Did for Father's Day Weekend

Put In Bay - Site of Perry's Victory on Lake Erie

Aboard The Niagara

Tall Ship Niagara Coming to Sandusky Bay

First Things on "The Transformation of Belfast"

Sandra Czelusniak, an M.A. student at Queen’s University Belfast and a 2007 Publius Fellow with the Claremont Institute, writes on the changing face of Belfast and Northern Ireland at the First Things blog:

... The first word that comes to mind on visiting Belfast in 2008, ten years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement that brokered a cease-fire between the various paramilitary groups and brought an end to the thirty-year period of sectarian violence commonly known as “The Troubles,” is change. In July 2007, the British Army officially announced the termination of its Northern Ireland mission and withdrew its troops from the region, with this news coming on the heels of a landmark power-sharing agreement between the Republican Sinn Féin and Loyalist Democratic Unionist party. This year, the omnipresent Reverend Ian Paisley, notorious for his longtime refusal even to so much as shake hands with a Catholic, is stepping down as the head of the Democratic Unionist party, bringing an end to a long chapter in the history of religious and political tension in Northern Ireland. This announcement came after Paisley’s having formed a political friendship with Martin McGuiness, head of the Northern Ireland Parliament’s Sinn Féin delegation. This odd pairing has given the duo the nickname “Chuckle Brothers” for their apparent propensity for laughing and smiling together in public.

***
But as eye-opening as the politically charged murals are, a deeper understanding of the Northern Ireland conflict comes from talking with the inhabitants of Belfast themselves, who know firsthand the complexities and realities of living in a such a politically charged atmosphere. One of the most surprising aspects of the Troubles was, for an outsider such as myself, the range and spectrum of experience and opinion found in both “communities.” These ranged from the young woman from Falls Road whose parents sent her to live with a family in Belgium every summer, to the Republican-sympathizing Protestants from just outside Belfast, to the students who lived in rural areas and to whom the nationalist-loyalist connotations of either Catholic or Protestant affiliation were as bewildering to them as they were to the non-Irish among us.

Hence my surprise upon hearing from a Protestant student that the Catholics were identifiable based on their last names, their pronunciation of certain words, if they said “Derry” instead of “Londonderry,” enthusiasm for the Irish language, or even what type of football jerseys they would wear. After listening to that explanation, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that being Catholic meant attending Mass and professing submission to the authority of the pope. It would be unimaginable in some parts of Belfast that a loyal British subject could be Catholic, or that an ethnically Celtic Irishman could be a Protestant, so inseparable were the political and religious affiliations. But this is indicative of how insular the two groups had become due to centuries of mutual hostility and myriad injustices towards the indigenous Catholic population of Ireland.

It is this very conflation of “Catholic-Republican” and “Protestant-Loyalist” identities that leads some Catholics in Belfast to regard Sinn Féin and Republicanism with disdain. “I tell Catholics not to vote for Sinn Féin. It’s basically a Marxist-socialist party, and their positions are very often against the Catholic Church,” the Catholic chaplain at Queen’s University told me. “I came from a very rural, very Catholic though not Republican small town where we were not terribly affected by what was going on in Belfast.”

These Catholics, though they certainly have no love lost for the Unionists, saw much of the violence in the Troubles as arising partly from the tendency of many Northern Irish Catholics to submerge their Catholic identity into the ideology of Irish Republicanism. This is illustrated in a perplexing mural on the Falls Road commemorating Irish participation in the (very anti-Catholic) Republican army during the Spanish Civil War.

Several others were likewise very quick to impress upon me that Catholic and Republican were not the same thing. When I expressed my surprise at having seen pictures of Che Guevara lumped in with those of Bobby Sands at a Republican pub, a lifelong Catholic Belfast resident answered: “Simplistic, isn’t it? Anyone who presents themselves as ‘freedom fighters’ will get these people’s praise.” He went on to tell me: “Yes, there was discrimination. Yes, things were difficult for many Catholics for a long time. But the Sinn Féin was always more concerned for their Marxist agenda than for Catholics and their families. I would sooner vote Unionist than any of these people. And my father was in the IRA, so that is saying a lot.”

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
I've always had Irish Republican sympathies (even back when I was a Protestant), but I've also always recognized that Sinn Fein are a bunch of unreconstructed Marxists.

Below is a sampling of the sorts of republican murals discussed in the First Things piece. Not a whole lot to do with Irish independence in these things. And, for the record, the unionist murals are worse - nothing but a violent hodgepodge of threats and Orange chest-thumping intimidation.