Notes: Friday, September 17, 2010

"Complaint of anti-Semitic articles is dismissed"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/complaint-of-antisemitic-articles-is-dismissed-20100916-15er8.html?skin=text-only

Excerpts:

In the column on June 12 Mr Carlton said that the previous column had led to ''hundreds of Jewish emailers'' responding to him. He added: ''It is a ferocious beast, the Jewish lobby. Write just one sentence even mildly critical of Israel and it lunges from its lair, fangs bared.'' And: ''The Israel lobby, worldwide, is orchestrated in Jerusalem by a department in the Prime Minister's office.'' In the item on June 19, Mr Carlton wrote: ''With bottomless irony, the Jewish lobby spent much of last week assuring anybody who would listen that there is no such thing as the Jewish lobby.''

[...] The Sydney Morning Herald replied by emphasising that the writers of opinion articles are entitled to express their views and to do so in a forceful manner. It referred to ''hundreds of emails, some of them crude and racist'', being received by Mr Carlton and to his use of ''strong and colourful language … to describe the ferocity of those who wrote''. It denied the allegations of anti-Semitism but said that Mr Carlton believed many of the email responses showed very clear evidence of co-ordination and that ''there is such a thing as a 'Jewish lobby' ''. It provided details on a department in the Israeli government it said was the originator of many of the arguments used in emails to him. The newspaper provided the council with some quotations from emails and press releases supporting his assertions about co-ordination of responses, and also with copies of the 12 letters that it had published, many of them critical of Mr Carlton, in which the issues raised by Ms Maynard were canvassed.

Here is Mr. Carlton's opinion piece of June 12. That "department in the ['Israeli'] Prime Minister's office" is called the "Ministry for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs", by the way. (Perhaps publishing this article was Fairfax's way of appeasing the beast.)

1917 Code of Canon Law and commentary available on-line:

http://www.archive.org/stream/newcanonlaw00woywuoft/newcanonlaw00woywuoft_djvu.txt
(Discovered here: http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379745#379745)

The atheist non-murderer as coward

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379684#379684
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379703#379703

Mr. Rowney on Dr. Hawking's "stunning lack of philosophical subtlety"

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=23217

For once, an interesting 'CathBlog'. Particularly interesting was this section:

Hawking fails to grasps Leibniz's great insight that the universe must have a contingent cause. Without positing a contingent cause everything is necessary. For example the fact of "high winds in NSW on Fathers' Day" is just as necessary as "the law of gravity". Of course this is just bizarre and goes against our ordinary intuitions. It is also contrary to much of modern science. Leibniz was brilliant enough to discover a contingent cause in God's free choice to create the universe. Hawking doesn't have a contingent cause, he offers a (physically) necessary cause and so fails Leibniz's criterion. This error is again common to many recent physicists.

Two comments by me at AQ:

The first regarding Egypt's court ruling that the Coptic Orthodox Church must have divorce-'n'-remarriage:

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379848#379848

The other regarding the socio-political doctrine of St. Robert Bellarmine:

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379851#379851

H.H. The Pope praises Saints of the Confessional State and their patrimony

Excerpts from the item in today's Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin:

POPE PRAISES DEEP CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

VATICAN CITY, 16 SEP 2010 (VIS) - [...]

"The name of Holyroodhouse", [the Holy Father] said, "recalls the 'Holy Cross' and points to the deep Christian roots that are still present in every layer of British life. The monarchs of England and Scotland have been Christians from very early times and include outstanding saints like Edward the Confessor and Margaret of Scotland. ... Many of them consciously exercised their sovereign duty in the light of the Gospel, and in this way shaped the nation for good at the deepest level. As a result, the Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years. Your forefathers' respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike".

[...] "Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms; and may that patrimony, which has always served the nation well, constantly inform the example your government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world. [...]
PV-UNITED KINGDOM/ VIS 20100916 (1050)

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of the Impression of the Holy Stigmata on the Body of St. Francis, Confessor, A.D. 2010