Serious Business

En lieu of anything remotely serious from me, here's the inimitable Armchair Warlord on last night's raid into the Strip:

Update: Israeli troops withdrew after some skirmishing.  It's unclear whether they ever actually entered Gaza proper or engaged from beyond the fence, or how well the respective sides came off.

The fundamental problem the IDF and the Israeli government in general faces right now is that to accomplish their stated goal of destroying Hamas, bombing, shelling and armored incursions into open areas of the Gaza Strip (which they had restricted themselves to in previous rounds of fighting) will not do the job.  At some point Israeli APCs are going to have to roll up to the first line of shattered concrete housing blocks, drop ramps and dismount infantry.  And those infantrymen are going to have to get behind their assault rifles and go to work.  Block by block, building by building, room by room, through an army of enemies and an ocean of civilians, until the job is done.

I think at this point Netanyahu has placed an order with the butcher for a bloodbath and now he doesn't want to pay the bill.

 

I won't comment but will repeat: 

At some point Israeli APCs are going to have to roll up to the first line of shattered concrete housing blocks, drop ramps and dismount infantry.  And those infantrymen are going to have to get behind their assault rifles and go to work.  Block by block, building by building, room by room, through an army of enemies and an ocean of civilians, until the job is done.

 

Serious business. 

Pax et Bonum,

LSP

War

 

Wow, you no sooner delete a random reminiscence post about dodgy nightlife in central London in the mid '90s than yet another war breaks out, this time in Israel. 

Cause and effect? Delete Groucho's, the Atlantic Bar and Grill, Cafe Boheme and Blacks and get what, a war? Apparently, and you can read all about it here.

It seems as though Hamas raiders caught the IDF napping just at the time they're low on ammunition because of sending all those 155s to Zelensky. But that's as maybe, in the wake of an IDF base being overrun, an IDF General captured and Hamas terrorists roaming seemingly at will through Israeli cities, Bibi's declared a state of war and has vowed, "The enemy will pay an unprecedented price."

They doubtless will and you'll notice none of this, the war in Ukraine, escalation in Armenia, Syria, African coups and now war in Israel happened on 45s watch, yet we were assured that this was precisely the geopolitical chaos unhinged Nazi Trump would lead us to.

Projection? I'd argue yes and urge your prayers for the people of the Holy Land. 

Pax et Bonum.

LSP

The Feast of St. Mark

 

It's the Feast of St. Mark today. Mark was close to St. Paul and St. Peter, and his Gospel is believed to be the earliest; he was martyred in Alexandria. The wicked Venetians stole his relics from that city in the early 9th century A.D. and adopted the Evangelist as their patron saint. Perhaps you've enjoyed the basilica built in his name.

Here's Austin Farrer, preaching in Trinity College chapel to students:

Happy is the man who learns from his own failures. He certainly won’t learn from any one else’s. Here I am on a safe ground, for you are all failures, are you not? when it comes to serving God. So there is no fear of my missing my target in any of you, and especially, perhaps, just at the end of a vacation. Vacations tend to be spiritual disappointments. It is humiliating how, when you get back into your families, childish faults of temper reassert themselves which you hoped you had outgrown; humiliating how, as soon as you lose the encouraging company of your Christian friends here, your religion languishes. You have not prayed nor worked nor controlled yourself as you hoped to do. God has given you much; you have not given anything worth mentioning to God. Well, St Mark went back from the work in Pamphylia (if he is indeed the same man), and in Gethsemane none of the disciples behaved with credit. It is by these desolating experiences that God teaches us to trust him, not ourselves. The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead.

 

The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead. 

Such wisdom and truth.

Pax et Bonum,

LSP

Women Priests Are So Very Very Awesome - Eschaton

 

Why are wymxn priests so very, very awesome? you ask with bated breath. Good question.

some kind of risible joke?

Is it their winsome hands-in-the air jollity?

cross dresser?

Boyish good looks?

you apostate dykes

And obvious reverence for the sacrament they blasphemously pretend to confect.

+++

We were told, you may recall, that if we didn't ordain wimmin to the priesthood no one would take us seriously and everyone would stop going to church. A powerful argument made all the more compelling by the ethical force behind it. Viz. Not having wymxn priests is unjust, bigoted and evil, so we must have they/them.

Leaving aside the hard-edged rigor of late 20th and early 21st century theology, we have to ask: Now that we've ordained wymmin for several decades is everyone taking us seriously and going to church? No, they are not.

Oh dear, we obviously haven't worked the equation hard enough, so maybe trans vicars and rainbow marriage rituals will finally persuade everyone to go to church because we're at last serious about social equity. First phase of the revolution failed? Double down.

But this is a smokescreen. Their intention isn't to build a Church they don't believe in, which they think has been unjust and effectively evil since the days of the Apostles. No, it's to tear it down. No matter, then, if congregations dwindle and die, the wrecking unicorn will have done its rainbow work.

They'll fail in this, the gates of hell shall not prevail, but in the meanwhile "there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." And persecution such as has been never seen. This is foretold.

Pax et Bonum,

LSP

Sunday Sermon

ἔνθα στᾶσ᾽ ἤϋσε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ, ὃς τόσον αὐδήσασχ᾽ ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα

there the goddess, white-armed Hera, stood and shouted in the likeness of great-hearted Stentor of the brazen voice, whose voice is as the voice of fifty other men  (Homer, Iliad V. 785)

Like brazen-voiced Stentor I thundered from the pulpit this morning, "Christ has drawn us to a place of decision, to a choice. Do we follow him and live, or not?" 

Rhetoric waxed large, "We can, if we like, pour our energy into the world, the flesh and the Devil. We might even be successful beyond our wildest dreams and become the very King of the King Ranch itself. But what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?"

A typical photo of white armed (sorry, racist) Hera

You get the picture and the message was clear, by the grace of God, take up your Coss and follow Christ, ultimately to the throne of glory itself. All well and good, but LL's composed a better sermon. Here's a snapshot:

John Wright wrote that we live in a posthuman age. By that, he did not mean that men could not extend life and expand consciousness by bio-nanotechnology, neural shunts or downloading self-identities into the psycho-cyberverse. He meant, nearly a third of us has sold the heritage of mankind, what it means to be human, for a mess of pottage called political correctness. And at its root, you will always find that the PC culture has at its core, a hatred of Jesus Christ.

The posthumans renounce the gift of reason, and think themselves superhuman, beyond good and evil. Neither the law of cause and effect nor the law of supply and demand has any bearing on their talking points and chanted slogans.

Again:

The Left promoted hedonism until it ran out of any pleasures to give, and championed socialism until it went broke, and preached skepticism until all men grew skeptical of it. The freethinkers entered the thought prison of political correctness, and threw the keys away, and called a halt to all thought.

So the Left are basically left with nothing. That nothing is called Nihilism. Think of Antifa. They are its poster children. Producing nothing, they live to destroy.

Producing nothing, they live to destroy. Precisely, and I'd suggest their father is the Devil, a murderer from the beginning. But take heart, evil defeats itself.

Pax et Bonum,

LSP