The Bible is the sacred book of Christianity. There are many Christian churches, but all accept the two sections of it: the Hebrew scriptures, which we know as the Old Testament, and the Christian writings, known as the New Testament. Roman Catholics, among other Christian churches, accept a third section known as the Apocrypha. This was included in the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint).
We are now well launched into the year two thousand and eleven – eleven years after a change of century. As the infamous 20th gradually diminishes in our memory, with its two World Wars, the tentacles of Socialism and the mostly blind grasp of Capitalism dulling our minds, it is satisfying to know that according to U.N. statistics, 200,000 persons will be lifted out of extreme poverty during each day of 2011. What is classified as extreme poverty? Living on $1.25 or equivalent per day. Which is all very well for the rest of Europe and the world, but what about a country where more than a million and half people have no income whatsoever?
General Browning, husband of novelist Daphne de Maurier / homeusers.brutele.b
Arnhem is the sixth largest city in the Netherlands. It was the scene of fierce and remorseless fighting between 17 and 26 September, 1944, following the successful invasion of Normandy in June, by allied troops, ships and airforces.
The idea for a parachute/glider-mounted attack in the Dutch Netherlands is said to have been General Montgomery’s, though it was backed by General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces, and Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister. The idea was a very good one, strategically speaking, but it failed to take heed of local advice about cleverly hidden German tank regiments between Nijmegen and Arnhem. In fact the allies decided to take no notice whatever of clear and accurate intelligence. Clearly, in the minds of the planners lay the idea that if Arnhem should prove successful, it would raise the morale of the inading allies tremendously – as indeed it would have – had the Arnhem plan worked.
Anti-clericalism is not the same as anti-Christian movements. Most Roman emperors tried to stamp out Christianity from the death of Christ under Tiberius until Constantine the Great decided to adopt Christianity as an official religion within the Empire, thus ceasing the practice of pitting Christians against lions and other wild animals, such as hyenas, in the ring.
The name anti-clericalism applies in modern times to any policy bent on destroying the moral and political power of the Christian Church, and subordinating its non-spiritual functions within the State. Though there have been many instances of anti-clericalism at the expense of the Orthodox Church (Russia and Turkey), and even now in Moslem countries (see recent massacres of Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan), the term is usually restricted to aggressive hostility towards the Roman Catholic Church, its Pope, bishops, priests, monks and nuns. (more…)
John Fisher photographed around the time of his cooperation with the White Rajah of Sarawak / en.wikipedia.org
John Arbuthnot Fisher was one of the last great fighting sailors, in the tradition of Nelson, Frobisher and Drake. He first went to sea as a midshipman with the British Royal Navy at the age of thirteen.He survived this often cruel and demoralising apprenticeship, and went on to fight as an eighteen year old third lieutenant with the White Rajah of Sarawak, Brooke, who was engaged in the business of sweeping the multitudinous pirates of Sumatra from the South China Sea. Fisher survived that too.
Countless times as you read books and learned pamphlets on history, you will meet the French words Ancien Régime. It is an easy bet that many of us only half know what these two simple words signify. The translation is easy: in English – traditional method of government by royalty; in Spanish – el antiguo regimen.
I have not mentioned the air traffic controllers ‘strike’ because the media has talked of nothing else since the dreadful weekend at the beginning of December, when all air traffic over Spanish territory was cancelled at the orders, apparently, of AENA, the government-controlled body that manages Spain’s far too numerous airports (47 at the last count, many virtually unused, but the Ministry of Development is building more at towns you may never have heard of, like Teruel).
European Health Ministers
A kind correspondent sent me the following details about Health Ministers in France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, in that order. It makes interesting reading, if a bit frightening when we come to Spain’s Health Minister, who goes by the name of Leire (or Leyre) Pajín.
In the first of this three-part series about British and international secret services and their chiefs, three British spy-masters were described fairly extensively – those three who controlled British Intelligence from its creation as ‘SIS’, though its period as ‘MI6’, until the secret services were ‘outed’ and no longer secret in the second half of the twentieth century.
Our previous two articles made it clear that secret services (usually founded by a monarch, though not always) are by no means an imaginary cloak-and-dagger operation invented by eminent authors like John le Carré, Frederick Forsyth, Len Deighton and Ian Fleming. Alexander the Great entrusted much of the intelligence side of his staggering conquests to his most trusted general Ptolomy, aided by Alexander’s companion Hephaistion. Alfred before he became The Great had spies reporting to him from the Danish/Norwegian occupied parts of Eastern England; But perhaps the first officially set-up spy system, almost purely national, was thought up by the first Tudor king, Henry VII. His choice as spy-master was, of course, a churchman.
Carey ex-Archbishop of Canterbury confessed he ‘had doubts about his Faith’
All ends have to have a beginning, and the beginning of the end for the Church of England started at the beginning of the 20th century. The outrage had nothing to do with vicars, rectors, fathers, priests, vergers or even church wardens. A decision was made by the church hierarchy to sell off most of the parsonages, vicarages, deaneries – call them what you will, in the United Kingdom.
Previously, the Church of England had been the largest landowner in the UK. This was because not only did the church building itself (and often the land it was built on) belong to the Church, but its attendant graveyard as well, and, most importantly, the vicarage where the parson and his family (if he had one) lived, and the parson wrote (or copied) his sermons while his wife busied herself with the teacups.