Seven of Communism's One-Hundred Million Victims

Courtesy of: The Western Confucian

From Pravda



St. Nicholas, the Czar-Martyr

Ora pro nobis!!!

Science Confirms what Orthodox Christians Have known for Centuries: INCENSE IS GOOD FOR YOU!

By Rich Maloof:

Scientific papers aren’t usually tagged with very exciting titles, but recently I came across a real barn burner: Incensole Acetate, an Incense Component, Elicits Psychoactivity by Activating TRPV3 Channels in the Brain.
Whoa.
Reading between the lines of lab-coat lingo, I realized the report was saying that frankincense—the incense traditionally burned in religious ceremonies—can act on the brain to lower anxiety and diminish depression.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Hebrew University administered incensole acetate, a component of frankincense, to lab mice and learned that it lit up areas of their little mouse brains that control emotion, including nerve circuits affecting anxiety and depression.

Read the rest here.

The fragrance of sanctity is actually good for you after all!!!

For my separated brethren on the West Roman side of the Bosporus: Here's wishing your good Bishop well as he wears down the Post-Vatican II Orcs and restores this venerable and ancient practice on the parish level. Your health may well depend on it!!! ;-)

Biretta tip to: Ben Johnson

Bishop Hilarion Opposes Radical Liberalization in Protestant Communities

From OrthodoxNet.com:

Not all participants of the inter-Christian dialogue are ready to pursue partnership and solidarity, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, said.
“The divergence is so deep, that it can be compared to bottomless abysses,” Hilarion said in his interview to the Soyuznoye Veche, the newspaper of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia, commenting his dialogue with a Lutheran bishop.
According to Hilarion, the bishop refused to recognize abortion as a sin in a joint document, whereby he expressed “a more liberal approach to this challenge” as compared to the position of the Moscow Patriarchate.
“If we fail to reach consensus even on such matters which are seemingly obvious to all Christians, what can we do about other challenges?” Bishop Hilarion said.

Read the rest here

My take on this: I truly, passionately and ardently hope he becomes the next Patriarch of Moscow! Well done, Your Grace!

Note to Liberal Christians: Secular Society Has Passed You By

From The Ochlophobist:

"We have learned this lesson from ECUSA and that sort over and over again. Leader of a very small and not in the slightest bit influential ecclesial body is horrified that other Christian leaders are not "facing the challenges of the modern world." Let us entertain reality for a moment. Nobody in Europe is listening seriously to the rhetoric of ECUSA, or Rowan Williams, or the Lutheran Church in Norway, or the EP. They see some snippets from the EP about the environment in a magazine. In response, they think or intuit (very briefly) 'he is saying what we are supposed to be saying, and he wears a very cool outfit, and looks both stern and happy at the same time, and that's all good because those folks in Eastern Europe who might still believe in that stuff will be more inclined to recycle, and, oh, there's a lingerie ad on the next page....' "

Drown the Castro Machine Out with Capitalism!

In May, the Castro machine labeled an 80-year-old retired waiter to be dangerous! Apparently, he still has quite a bit of fight in him: "I was born fighting!"

Here's the scoop, from Cubanet.com:

A Mercenary and Dangerous Old ManBy Leonel Alberto Pérez BeletteHavana (May 2008 – Cubanet) Members of the political police harassed an 80 year old opponent in his own home to prevent him from blemishing the festivities of the first of May.Alfredo Guilleuma Rodriguez has become a "danger" for the authorities of the state. So much so that the State decided to place to two police officers and a member of the Committee of Defense of the Revolution (CDR) on his doorstep with the objective to stop him from leaving his dwelling on May Day.According to him, he was told that he would not be able to leave while the parade was being performed. In spite of their threats, the elder was not scared because he needed to leave to find something for his grandson’s breakfast. After an exchange of words, in which he was branded a mercenary, the authorities were limited to following him to where he was going. Earlier, the leader of the police sector had already notified him that he was not going to permit him to moved around freely.

Why are they so infuriated with a grandfather that still needs a cane to travel? Guilleuma Rodriguez has spent his life fighting against tyrannies and as a true revolutionary. He fought against Hatchet, then against Batista and now against the ones in charge of Cuba.

Read the rest here.

Here's my view about how to deal effectively with the Castro regime: drown them out with capitalism!The embargo has been a miserable failure. It made sense when the Soviets were there, but now it makes no sense at all. It has not helped the Cuban people, plunging them deeper into poverty, while strengthening and expanding the power of the Castro machine. Fidel Castro thrived on this, since he could always blame the country's woes on the embargo, thus emboldening him to take ever more repressive measures to secure his own power base.

Imagine, for a moment, the possibilities of ending this ineffective embargo. As more investment comes in, Castro will have less and less opportunity to blame the U.S. for the nation's economic woes. The Cuban people will be more inclined to see the Castro regime as the cause of stagnation, and so Raul Castro and his cronies will be in a more precarious situation. The U.S., by taking a "back seat," will not be seen as the meddling neighbor, letting capitalism take its course in the island. The Castro regime will seem less and less relevent, as the elder Castro's raison d'etre-conflict with los yanquis-will be out of the picture.

But don't count on this being implemented any time soon. Why not? The Miami exiles, who represent a fairly sizeable voting bloc in Florida, will not for a moment support any effort to end this ineffective embargo. No one seeking political office will even touch it.

Understandably, they are angry, having lost loved ones in overnight raids, never to be seen again.

But my people need to ask themselves honestly: How has this embargo, now 40+ years strong, ruined Castro and helped the Cuban people? Answer: On both counts, not at all. What we have ended up with is a 49-year-old Soviet-style dictatorship, with an heir apparent.

For the sake of the Cuban people, let's put an end to this farce, and help them remove this cancerous growth that is the Castro machine by...ending the embargo!!!

Let's drown the Castro machine out with capitalism!

Well, chaps, we had a good run!

Or, the end of Anglo-Catholicism

Biretta tip to: The Young Fogey

No, not surprising in the least. When the vote came in February of 1993 (under George Carey's watch) to ordain women to the priesthood, who could doubt that the other shoe was going to fall?

As the then bishop of London, The Rev. Dr. Graham Leonard (now an RC priest) put it, there is "no doubt that the Church of England has become a sect. It may be the Established Sect, but a sect nonetheless."

From The Telegraph:

After six hour of emotional debate, one bishop broke down in tears saying he was ashamed of the church for ignoring the deeply felt wishes of traditionalists.

The Rt Rev Stephen Venner, the Suffragan Bishop of Dover, was comforted by other church leaders on the floor of the General Synod in York as its 468 members took a major step towards women becoming bishops, with just an unwritten statutory code of practice to cater for those who firmly believe the Bible teaches that bishops must be male, as Jesus and his apostles were.
Bishop Venner, said: “I have to say that for the first time in my life I am ashamed.

“We have talked for hours about wanting to give an honourable place for those who want to disagree and we have turned down almost every realistic opportunity for those who are opposed to flourish.”

Hundreds of traditionalists, including several bishops, may leave the church after an epic four-hour debate ended with proposals to create new "men only" dioceses or "super bishops" narrowly thrown out by members of the General Synod in York.

Read the rest here

Assesing the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II

From OrthodoxChristianity.net:

"Jesuit Fr. Robert F. Taft, an internationally acclaimed authority on the history of Eastern liturgies, has been teaching at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome for almost 40 years and also serves as a consultor for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches. He holds the honorary title of archmandrite, conferred upon him by more than one Eastern church for his extraordinary contributions to liturgical studies and church unity....Liturgical pioneers drew inspiration from Russian Orthodox emigrés to France, who had fled from their homeland after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. These contacts proved crucially important because the Orthodox church, Fr. Taft notes, had preserved the liturgical spirit of the early church and continued to live by it.Liturgists in the West, however, did not attempt simply to imitate existing Eastern usage, but interpreted and applied it in the light of the needs of Latin Christianity. And that is why the liturgical movement, which Vatican II essentially validated, was so successful.But there were things that Vatican II “failed to do well or did not do at all,” Fr. Taft writes. He mentions three items: the process of initiation, the Liturgy of the Hours, and Communion from the tabernacle.He underscores the irony that one of Pope Pius X’s most celebrated and enduring reforms, namely, the lowering of the age of first holy Communion from adolescence to the age of reason....“This destroyed the age-old sequence of the rites of Christian initiation,” Fr. Taft insists....Fr. Taft argues, secondly, that the Liturgy of the Hours, despite its title, “is no liturgy at all, but still a breviary or book of prayers.”....Finally, the distribution of pre-consecrated hosts at Mass was “totally unthinkable in the early Christian East and West ... [and] is still inconceivable in any authentic Eastern Christian usage today.” Indeed, “Communion from the tabernacle is like inviting guests to a banquet, then preparing and eating it oneself, while serving one’s guests the leftovers from a previous meal.” "

And now, for a few words from The Young Fogey:

"Vatican II didn't define any Roman Catholic doctrine and its decrees on religious liberty and ecumenism, the real bone of contention with some traditionalist groups, are no problem but it was exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.The legitimate liturgical movement was wonderful and indeed influenced by the Orthodox.The aftermath of Vatican II killed it.Pope Benedict XVI's 'reform of the reform' that McBrien hates so much is a try at reviving it.Robert Taft makes a good liturgical point on all three matters. Trying to bring the divine office (the hours as Orthodox say) back into the daily practice of most Roman Catholics is one valuable reform that either has spectacularly failed or never was tried.Tacked-on epiklesis and token deacons notwithstanding it's obvious to the common man that the aftermath of Vatican II moved Roman practice far away from the East and more in line with Protestantism. Traditionalist the late Michael Davies nailed this: for all the talk about ecumenism it's 'a harsh and even offensive condemnation' of Eastern practice.More than one Orthodox knows this.Richard McBrien and NCR are typical old, liberal-Protestant-wannabe RCs angry that the kids like Pope Benedict and his restoration of tradition better than their worn-out junk.I really suspect people of McBrien's kind don't like Communion from the Reserved Sacrament not for some purist liturgical reason (like Communion should be from the liturgical action happening right now) but because they think the Roman Catholic/Orthodox belief in the Real Presence is stupid and superstitious like the first Protestants did.I wonder what insulting things he'd say about the Orthodox if you put a few drinks in him.Note to McBrien and Taft: what Western Rite Orthodox do looks a lot more like Pope Benedict's revival than their junk.That should tell you what the mind of the Orthodox Church is on this."

Well done, Serge!