MODERN TIMES/Bobby Sands

It is said we live in modern times,
In the civilised year of ‘seventy nine,
But when I look around, all I see,
Is modern torture, pain, and hypocrisy.

In modern times little children die,
They starve to death, but who dares ask why?
And little girls without attire,
Run screaming, napalmed, through the night afire.

And while fat dictators sit upon their thrones,
Young children bury their parents’ bones,
And secret police in the dead of night,
Electrocute the naked woman out of sight.

In the gutter lies the black man, dead,
And where the oil flows blackest, the street runs red,
And there was He who was born and came to be,
But lived and died without liberty.

As the bureaucrats, speculators and presidents alike,
Pin on their dirty, stinking, happy smiles tonight,
The lonely prisoner will cry out from within his tomb,
And tomorrow’s wretch will leave its mother’s womb

BOBBY SANDS was twenty seven years old when he died on the sixty sixth day of hunger-strike in the H-Block prison hospital, Long Kesh, on the 5th May 1981. The young IRA Volunteer who had spent almost the last nine years of his short life in prison as a result of his Irish republican activities was, by the time of his death, world-famous having been elected to the British parliament and having withstood pressures, political and moral (including an emissary from Pope John Paul II), for him to abandon his fast which was aimed at countering a criminalization policy by the British government.

Impersonator in Rome busted for busking as late Pope John II

For a man who seeks to imitate a noble personage, he could play worse than a Pope.

In Rome, however, it is a predilection fraught with potential problems.

A performer from Slovakia — so far unidentified — was arrested in Rome on Friday on a misdemeanor charge for pretending to be the late John Paul II.

For the past several weeks, according to Britain’s Telegraph, the papal lookalike, dressed in a white cassock and decorated with a skull cap and a crucifix on a necklace, has been entertaining tourists near the Via dei Fori Imperiali, the broad avenue that leads up to the Colosseum and a lucrative spot for attracting passers-by. … Some would drop a few euro coins into his silver tray.

“John Paul was a great Pope. Lots of people ask to have their photograph taken with me,” he told the paper, as he sat on a chair and smiled broadly as he held a Bible.

Police who detained him told him he will be hit with a fine of between about $200 to more than $1,200, depending on a court’s decision.

“The problem was that he looked a lot like Karol Wojtyla. He was detained for usurpation of title which is a misdemeanour,” a police spokeswoman told AFP.

“The cassock he was wearing has been confiscated,” she said, adding that the action had been taken after an anonymous complaint.

The Slovak was one of several buskers and street artists who try their luck along the street, from bands of Peruvian pipers to fake centurions and legionaries and performers who stand stock still dressed as the Statue of Liberty.

“If he had been dressed like Tutankhamen nothing would have happened,” another police officer said.

Local media had joked that the fake Pope had brought the number of pontiffs in Rome to three, along with Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who is living out his retirement in a former convent in the Vatican.

via Clerical Whispers.

via Clerical Whispers.

No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand

Paul Ryan (pictured), Mitt Romney‘s running mate in the US presidential election, has stated that he learned from Ayn Rand to view all policy questions as a ‘fight of individualism versus collectivism’. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

The Catholic condemnation of abortion and the death penalty is well known and understood. But Catholic doctrine also condemns unfettered capitalism. We offer here a list of principles of Catholic social doctrine – not to argue their priority over others – but because we judge these to be the most in danger of being ignored or distorted in contemporary public debate.

The Catholic view of the human person is social not individual. Congressman Paul Ryan has stated that he learned from Ayn Rand to view all policy questions as a “fight of individualism versus collectivism”. The Catholic church does not espouse “individualism” but rather sees it as an error as destructive as collectivism. Blessed John Paul II described “individualism” as a dimension of the “culture of death” arising from an “eclipse of the sense of God”. The human person is “by its innermost nature, a social being”. We are radically dependent upon and responsible for one another. Again, in the words of John Paul II: “We are all really responsible for all.” This truth of the human person is tied to the central doctrines of the church. It reflects the very “intimate life of God, one God in three persons”.

Government has an essential role to play in protecting and promoting the common good. The error of individualism leads to a mistaken understanding of the role of government. For too long politicians have echoed Ronald Reagan’s misleading mantra “government is the problem”. The Catholic church, on the contrary, because of its social understanding of the human person, considers government to be as “necessary” for human nature as the family. The state exists to “defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies”. Thus, while the church does not offer a specific blueprint for policy, it does view our government’s action on behalf of the common good a positive good in itself.

via No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand | Vincent Miller | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

via No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand | Vincent Miller | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.