Higher Education Debacle

Holding place for review of book The Breakdown of Higher Education by John M. Ellis. An excellent book and long overdue. In progress.

The Paradigm Shift

The Paradigm Shift

A COLLECT FOR SABBATH REST

Saturday

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. [ACNA BCP 2019]

The world has been topsy-turvy for the past ninety days or so. The nature of our world in the twenty-first century, regardless of this current crisis, is one of global interconnectedness and fast-paced striving. There is no slowing of the pace; no down-shifting. It is more and more, faster and faster – or so we thought.

Covid-19 and the world’s reaction to its expanding, deadly threat, is producing a “gear shift” in leaders and governments around the globe.

“Stop! Slow down! Consider every action you take. A wrong decision could cause more death.” This is the theme driving drastic action in the hope of curbing this threat by the Coronavirus.

Imagine the supernatural, our Creator, who is saying to creation, “Now you must slow down. You have no choice.”

We are experiencing what some call a paradigm shift. No one knows its outcome. How it unfolds is unknown. No one can predict our future near term or long. It may take the passing of a generation or two before the effects of this paradigm shift are noticed.

Consider the Israelite people who wandered for forty years.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Exodus 20:2

Consider this period that we are now experiencing a sanctified day of rest.

Reflect. Repent. Renew.

Church Militant - the website

Church Militant Website

For several years recently I have paid close attention to the output from a website known as Church Militant.com. Its chief spokesman is Michael Voris, a Roman Catholic layman and a traditionalist.

Week after week – and sometimes day after day – Mr. Voris produces a five to eight-minute video. Some videos are also placed on Facebook. In each and every Vortex video Voris opens by saying that “lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed …”

Voris’s and Church Militant’s sole focus is directed toward exposing the corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. And Pope Francis is not excluded from examination and scrutiny. Indeed, Voris and his associates have dug deeply into the church’s corruption over the years and have made and are making known their discoveries to the public.

One can say that through the nature of his work Michael Voris is a reformer. Any Reformation of a large and traditional ecclesiastical organization from the inside takes time, and as far as we know Voris has been at this work for more than ten years and he is very good at it. His and Church Militant’s exposé of corruption in his church is having its positive effects, but slowly.

Once in a while, however, Voris feels it necessary to attack Protestantism and is quite the soldier in advancing the never-ending motif that salvation comes through the church, through the Roman Catholic Church only. Protestants are heretics, according to Voris. This language is not helpful.

Protestants, too, believe in the Church, of course, but they/we believe that salvation comes through the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

It seems that Voris the Reformer forgets that Dominican Martin Luther had very good reason to question the practices of the Roman Catholic Church in that period of history. Corruption ran high. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church subsequently reformed, slightly. Luther’s correction was necessary.

Voris’s identification of current-day abuses and corruption within the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic is not a vain pursuit, but to slam Protestants in the process provides no value to Voris’s otherwise well-articulated and cogent arguments. His slam is also misguided. Devaluing Protestantism adds nothing to Voris’s mission. Such commentary is irrelevant to his cause. Any potential or existent moral support he might secure from Protestants could be mitigated.

Think about it. Michael Voris might become an historic reformer as the years evolve. A little self-evaluation might be in order. Martin Luther had his shortcomings. So might Mr. Voris.

The Church is the gift from God’s Holy Spirit and Jesus is Lord and Savior.

God Love You.

Worth Earlwood Norman Jr speaks for himself. He is a priest and archdeacon in the Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy of the Anglican Church in North America and is publisher of Archdeacon Books. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

24Dec2019

Progressivism

Progressive (ism)

Progressivism is not insurance.

It provides no coverage.

It faults the present

As passé.

Critical of the now

Progressivism promises radical change

But delivers nothing,

Relying on diversion and deception.

Progressivism seeks only power.

It throws out the present and

Continually ridicules the past.

Its promises are ephemeral.

Progressivism is never right.

It is forever left.

Neo-Marxist

Posing as post-modernist.

Progressivism is the disguised

Gemini of communism

Ready, willing, and able

To control and manipulate you.

Progressivism is neither liberating nor social;

It passes through stages

From liberalism to socialism

To the dictatorial.

Then it ceases being progressive.

Those who cannot see this

Are people truly

Not Woke.

No joke.

WENjr

12-03-2019

Collapse

Collapse

No center to hold.

Neither left nor right,

But countless factions

Ready to fight.

Have you even noticed

America in disarray?

Tensions heighten

Day by day.

She murders her future

While in the womb.

She ignores her past

Granting elders an early tomb.

Affluence is a factor,

Yes, foreign foes, too.

Raw hatred to those who dare oppose

Is what we choose.

In politics

There used to be

A loyal opposition

To challenge or to agree.

It was a way

For ideas to enter

Into discussion.

It forged a center.

But a readiness

That kills

By anonymous assassins

Delivers gratuitous thrills.

Common ground is lost

To zeitgeist feeling,

Replacing our foundation

Sending us nationally reeling.

Founding mothers and fathers

Squirm in their graves

As their legacy

Become new slaves.

Freedom not enough.

Wealth bad.

Prosperity illusive.

Life sad

So, say the spoilers,

Those who were spared life’s trials.

They assert an expertise

With arrogant smiles,

Yet they have

No experience.

Their expertise

Is masked, and nefarious.

But what you don’t want to hear is

That America’s beginning

Was Christ-based,

Her foundational underpinning.

America’s start,

Like the Exodus of old,

Experimented with freedom.

That is the center to hold.

Resurgent Green Grocer

Resurgent Green Grocer

Havel’s green grocer

Is alive and well.

Unfortunately, he’s come closer,

Right here under the Liberty Bell.

The grocer is not the problem,

But the fear he projects:

Life hitting rock bottom,

All freedoms in check.

Progressive, Socialist elite,

Know better than you.

With innuendo, hate, and cheat,

Reality, they skew.

Not afar.

It’s here.

They are the Socialist tsar,

Your superior, not peer.

Commonwealth and Empire

Commonwealth and Empire

One a protector of its people, primarily

Codified by and large;

No exceptions arbitrarily,

Such its legal and humanitarian charge.

The other a misnomer,

If ever there was one;

Is in a democratic republic a carcinoma,

With an emperor to shun.

“Let the children come to me,

And do not hinder …

I will set them free

And you will not injure.”

Do not deny their presentation

In the Lord’s temple;

Their Holy representation?

Life and breath that’s so central.

Shame on the Commonwealth’s doctor,

Shame on the Empire’s leader.

You are the unborns’ stalkers.

You are life’s cheaters.

WENjr

2-3-2019