Reflections on faith, culture and current affairs from a conservative contrarian desperately seeking to recover a sense of sacred enchantment
New Zealand
Joined January 2016
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“I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.”
- Whitney M. Young Jr. -
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🚨 Houston we have a problem... and none of our leaders seem to want, or even know how to talk about it despite the gravity of the issue we are now facing. In this episode we explore the collapsing global fertility rate that the leaders of both of New Zealand’s major political parties struggled to give compelling answers to during last week’s leaders debate. We also discuss the suggestion, made by a senior economist, that NZ should import 125,000 young people from Europe each year to try and solve our fertility crisis👇 #nzpol
I’m not sure whether it’s a symptom of the mainstream media’s failure to do basic factchecking, or of the modern media’s illiteracy when it comes to the basic facts of the Christian faith, but this headline is untrue - this priest was NOT killed during his sermon. The sermon had concluded long before he died will praying the prayers of the Mass.
This is farcical. A survey of only 616 people that produces such an absurdly disproportionate result is clearly not representative of reality. If this were accurate, there is no way that National and Labour would be polling neck-and-neck in the party vote right now (and have been for weeks). #nzpol
💯 THIS! 👇
Ironically, Christopher Hitchens contributed to the very problem he bemoaned. His dogmatic promotion of irrational fundamentalist atheism was the cultural equivalent of someone urging a sick patient to fight against ill health while at the same time ridiculing and pouring the very life-saving medicine they need down the drain.
By all means resist, but if you resist in the name of the false gods of liberalism, Enlightenment, ethnic purity, jingoistic nostalgia, or anything other than return to the Christian faith that built our civilization, you will not get to the root of the problem and ultimately you will fail. What Islamists understand that too many Westerners, left and right, do not understand is that in the long run you cannot defeat religion except with religion. And they do not understand it because they are in their different ways blinded by attachment to the things of this world – economic wellbeing, political power, freedom, pleasure, security, national pride – things which have their place but have become idols. Hence, again and again, they flail about looking for some secular political solution, whether left-wing or right-wing, to a problem that is at bottom theological.
Left Foot Media retweeted
Welcoming immigrants, providing health care and shelter, feeding the hungry and visiting prisoners are the worthy and necessary tasks of Christians, but they are not equivalent to, nor are they substitutes for evangelization.
This isn’t journalism, it has all the hallmarks of a shameless attempt by the media to create a gotcha moment in an effort to garner more votes for TOP. #nzpol
Looking forward to this - ‘The Bones of Saint Peter’ was a phenomenal book. I started it reading it one night and didn’t stop until I was finished at dawn the next day.
Left Foot Media retweeted
“I have often said during my 20 years as a bishop that I am not interested in a private education for the privileged as an apostolate of the Church. The Archdiocese of Portland should not be operating schools whose institutional priorities and plans are dominated by a secular, utilitarian vision of academic excellence and great sports programs, while remaining inaccessible to so many of our families because of high tuition costs. To do so would be wholly inconsistent with the history and purpose of Catholic education. Our first job is not to prepare children eventually to get into a great college or university, but to help them get into heaven!”
Portland Archbishop Alexander King Sample
Another point that no one seems to have considered is the motivating desire of jihadists to be perceived as martyrs, and so, in this case, a high profile public execution of this nature would surely fulfill that desire and actually glorify and encourage others to imitate the original evil he committed?
1. It is incoherent to be in favor of the death penalty and to be opposed, in principle, to public executions. In fact, many of the purported ends of the death penalty are integrally achieved only when it is public.
2. The death penalty cannot be justly practiced out of a spirit of vindictiveness, bloodlust, or anger. Therefore, any factor that encourages these should be discouraged.
3. There is a difference between publicity as such and a certain manner of publicity (livestreaming). While it isn’t problematic to make an execution open to the public and permit the media to attend, livestreaming (which has an association with entertainment) seems to encourage the aforementioned vices.
4. As a confirmation of this, at times, public executions were carried out with great solemnity, along with assurances for the spiritual good of the executed.
This somehow feels more relevant in light of the election tsunami we once again find ourselves caught up in 🤔 #nzpol
Hey James, it might be worth reconsidering the fact that a lot of Tamaki voters are not pro-abortion, and if you’re serious about representing the entire electorate, not just the pro-abortion demographic, this isn’t a wise or mature way to approach things at all. Even worse, this actually makes it sound like you’re hostile to free and open debate about big issues.
Is it just me, or has the obsession with political polls now become far worse than in any previous election? #nzpol
In theory, under MMP, any party leader could be prime minister, any party could take a majority share of the vote, and any combination of parties can form a coalition government. Yet the political debates are structured as if only the National or Labour parties are permitted or capable of achieving majority vote and occupying the PM’s office, and as if MMP also prevents them from ever becoming coalition partners. This approach effectively kneecaps the scope of MMP, reducing it to system of FFP with partners. Keep that in mind next time someone suggests that split voting is an affront to the purity of the MMP system. #nzpol
One thing’s for sure, the ‘undecided voter polling’ was a pointless farce of a gimmick. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to question how many of them were genuinely undecided swing voters, as opposed to undecided left wing voters. #nzpol