"Primeiro-Ministro" do Papa Enriquecendo Ilicitamente

Para brasileiros, você pode pensar no cardeal Maradiaga como o José Dirceu do Papa Francisco.

Parece que pegaram ele enriquecendo assustadoramente enquanto defendia os pobres com ideologia comunistas.

Leiam sobre o caso aqui ou aqui.

Vídeo: Que Maneira "Rock" de Contar a História do Natal. Fantástico!!

Certa vez eu li que a música que os ingleses mais gostam de ouvir no rádio é Bohemian Rapsody do Queens. A música mistura rock com ópera.

Mas o grupo Puppetunes, que usa fantoches para fazer paródias de música para ensinar a Bíblia, usou a música para contar o Natal seguindo de perto a Bíblia. Letra da música escrita por Mark Bradford e show dirigido por Darla Robinson.

Ficou demais. Eles chamam de Bethlehemian Rhapsody. Aproveitem. Eu assisti, várias vezes.

Aqui vai a letra:

Is this the real birth?
Is it nativity?
Caught in a census
in the town of his ancestry.

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.
He’s just a poor boy foretold by prophecy.
Because the wise men come, wise men go, angels high, shepherds low.
This is how God’s love shows.
It’s a wondrous story to me, to me.

Mary just got the word.
The angel did appear but he told her not to fear.
Mary now it’s just begun; your son is gonna wash our sins away.
Mary ooo (this is how God’s love shows) the God who reigns on high has sent his son to you to die for all.

I see a little silhouette-o of a sheep.
Shepherds watch, shepherds watch over there like the night time.
Angels shine like lightning very, very frightening me!

Glory to God, Peace on Earth, Glory to God, Peace on Earth!
Unto you is born this day, the only way!

I’m just a shepherd nobody loves me.
He’s just a shepherd from a poor family.
Angels said go to the stable and see.

Wise men come, wise men go, will Herod let him live?
Hey Herod – No! he will not him live – better go!
Hey Herod – he will not him live – better go!
Hey Herod – he will not him live!
Better go, will not let him live, better go, will not let him live!
Better go – oh – oh – oh
Go, go, go, go, go!

Oh, Mary Joseph, Mary Joseph!
Mary Joseph better go…to Egypt now
gotta save your son who came
for me, for me, for me!

[music interlude]

So you think that it’s just a tale now days long by?
But this child who was born went to Calvary to die!

Oh, Jesus!
It’s the story of Jesus!
Wash our sins out!
Wash our sins right out of here!

[music interlude]

Oooo, Jesus, Jesus
It’s a wondrous story, anyone can see.
Lets give God the glory!
It’s a wondrous story to me.

This is how God’s love shows!

----

FELIZ NATAL, caríssimos amigos.


(Agradeço a indicação do vídeo ao site Aleteia)

"Vamos Irritar o Soldado de Israel Até Ele se Irritar e Bater na Gente, Daí a Gente Divulga"

Não confie em vídeos que você vê na televisão.

Como é difícil ser policial ou soldado, a gente imagina que eles são fortes e armados, mas, na verdade, podem ser bem frágeis politicamente e socialmente.

No caso de Israel, isso deve ser mais terrível, o mundo não está interessado nas explicações de Israel quando há uma "crise palestina".

Reportagem: Obama Protegeu Grupo Terrorista Hezbollah para Fechar Acordo Nuclear com Irã

Na sua ânsia de ser bonzinho com o mundo mu~çulmano e em fazer um acordo nuclear com o Irã, Obama protegeu uma das maiores organizações criminosas do mundo.

O site Politico, que não pode ser considerado de direita, a tendência do site é de esquerda (apesar de não ser radical), fez uma reportagem investigativa sobre a relação do governo Obama com o grupo terrorista Hezbollah que tem apoio do Irã.

O título da reportagem pode ser traduzido como "Como Obama Protegeu (ou Livrou) o Grupo Hezbollah", livrando o grupo de ser penalizado por suas prática financeiras que apoiam o terror e as drogas pelo mundo. Obama fez tudo isso para conseguir acordo nuclear com o Irã, atrapalhando as ações das próprias instituições de investigação dos EUA, na forma do Projeto Cassandra, que descobriu que o Hezbollah estava envolvido com tráfico de drogas, de armas e lavagem de dinheiro. Inclusive com entrada dessas drogas e armas na América Latina. Obama impediu o avanço do Projeto Cassandra.

A reportagem é de John Meyer.

Vejamos parte da reportagem abaixo:

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah's billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House's desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

By Josh Meyer

A GLOBAL THREAT EMERGES

How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

December 15, 2011

Hezbollah is linked to a $483,142,568 laundering scheme

The money, allegedly laundered through the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two exchange houses, involved approximately 30 U.S. car buyers.

The untold story of Project Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government agencies — and shifting priorities at the highest levels — can set back years of progress.

And while the pursuit may be shadowed in secrecy, from Latin American luxury hotels to car parks in Africa to the banks and battlefields of the Middle East, the impact is not: In this case, multi-ton loads of cocaine entering the United States, and hundreds of millions of dollars going to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization with vast reach.

Obama had entered office in 2009 promising to improve relations with Iran as part of a broader rapprochement with the Muslim world. On the campaign trail, he had asserted repeatedly that the Bush administration’s policy of pressuring Iran to stop its illicit nuclear program wasn’t working, and that he would reach out to Tehran to reduce tensions.

The man who would become Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director, John Brennan, went further. He recommended in a policy paper that “the next president has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries” through not only a direct dialogue, but “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.”

By May 2010, Brennan, then assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, confirmed in a speech that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, saying it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and, ultimately, a political party with representatives in the Lebanese Parliament and Cabinet, according to a Reuters report.

“There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”

In practice, the administration’s willingness to envision a new role for Hezbollah in the Middle East, combined with its desire for a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program, translated into a reluctance to move aggressively against the top Hezbollah operatives, according to Project Cassandra members and others.

Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad, a suspected top Hezbollah operative whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, was arrested in Prague in the spring of 2014. But for the nearly two years Fayad was in custody, top Obama administration officials declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him to the United States, even as Putin was lobbying aggressively against it.

Fayad, who had been indicted in U.S. courts on charges of planning the murders of U.S. government employees, attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and attempting to acquire, transfer and use anti-aircraft missiles, was ultimately sent to Beirut. He is now believed by U.S. officials to be back in business, and helping to arm militants in Syria and elsewhere with Russian heavy weapons.

Project Cassandra members say administration officials also blocked or undermined their efforts to go after other top Hezbollah operatives including one nicknamed the ‘Ghost' allowing them to remain active despite being under sealed U.S. indictment for years. People familiar with his case say the Ghost has been one of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers, including to the U.S., as well as a major supplier of conventional and chemical weapons for use by Syrian President Bashar Assad against his people.

And when Project Cassandra agents and other investigators sought repeatedly to investigate and prosecute Abdallah SafieddineAbdallah Safieddine, Hezbollah’s longtime envoy to Iran, whom they considered the linchpin of Hezbollah’s criminal network, the Justice Department refused, according to four former officials with direct knowledge of the cases.

The administration also rejected repeated efforts by Project Cassandra members to charge Hezbollah’s military wing as an ongoing criminal enterprise under a federal Mafia-style racketeering statute, task force members say. And they allege that administration officials declined to designate Hezbollah a “significant transnational criminal organization” and blocked other strategic initiatives that would have given the task force additional legal tools, money and manpower to fight it.

Former Obama administration officials declined to comment on individual cases, but noted that the State Department condemned the Czech decision not to hand over Fayad. Several of them, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were guided by broader policy objectives, including de-escalating the conflict with Iran, curbing its nuclear weapons program and freeing at least four American prisoners held by Tehran, and that some law enforcement efforts were undoubtedly constrained by those concerns.

But the former officials denied that they derailed any actions against Hezbollah or its Iranian allies for political reasons.

“There has been a consistent pattern of actions taken against Hezbollah, both through tough sanctions and law enforcement actions before and after the Iran deal,” said Kevin Lewis, an Obama spokesman who worked at both the White House and Justice Department in the administration.

Lewis, speaking for the Obama administration, provided a list of eight arrests and prosecutions as proof. He made special note of a February 2016 operation in which European authorities arrested an undisclosed number of alleged members of a special Hezbollah business affairs unit that the DEA says oversees its drug trafficking and other criminal money-making enterprises.

Project Cassandra officials, however, noted that the European arrests occurred after the negotiations with Iran were over, and said the task force initiated the multinational partnerships on its own, after years of seeing their cases shot down by the Justice and State departments and other U.S. agencies.

The Justice Department, they pointed out, never filed corresponding U.S. criminal charges against the suspects arrested in Europe, including one prominent Lebanese businessman formally designated by the Treasury Department for using his “direct ties to Hezbollah commercial and terrorist elements” to launder bulk shipments of illicit cash for the organization throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

--
“The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”…

...leiam mais clicando aqui.

Vídeo Natal (do Benedictine College) e os Reis Magos.

O belíssimo vídeo do Benedictine College acima descreve o nascimento de Jesus Cristo, pelo Evangelho de São Lucas (2,4-19). que diz:

4.Também José subiu da Galiléia, da cidade de Nazaré, à Judéia, à Cidade de Davi, chamada Belém, porque era da casa e família de Davi, 
5.para se alistar com a sua esposa Maria, que estava grávida. 
6.Estando eles ali, completaram-se os dias dela. 
7.E deu à luz seu filho primogênito, e, envolvendo-o em faixas, reclinou-o num presépio; porque não havia lugar para eles na hospedaria. 
8.Havia nos arredores uns pastores, que vigiavam e guardavam seu rebanho nos campos durante as vigílias da noite. 
9.Um anjo do Senhor apareceu-lhes e a glória do Senhor refulgiu ao redor deles, e tiveram grande temor. 
10.O anjo disse-lhes: Não temais, eis que vos anuncio uma boa nova que será alegria para todo o povo: 
11.hoje vos nasceu na Cidade de Davi um Salvador, que é o Cristo Senhor. 
12.Isto vos servirá de sinal: achareis um recém-nascido envolto em faixas e posto numa manjedoura. 
13.E subitamente ao anjo se juntou uma multidão do exército celeste, que louvava a Deus e dizia: 
14.Glória a Deus no mais alto dos céus e na terra paz aos homens, objetos da benevolência (divina). 
15.Depois que os anjos os deixaram e voltaram para o céu, falaram os pastores uns com os outros: Vamos até Belém e vejamos o que se realizou e o que o Senhor nos manifestou. 16.Foram com grande pressa e acharam Maria e José, e o menino deitado na manjedoura. 
17.Vendo-o, contaram o que se lhes havia dito a respeito deste menino. 
18.Todos os que os ouviam admiravam-se das coisas que lhes contavam os pastores. 19.Maria conservava todas estas palavras, meditando-as no seu coração. 

Neste evangelho não aparecem o reis magos nem a perseguição de Herodes, que estão descritas no Evangelho de São Mateus.

Ninguém deve ficar assustado com diferenças de descrição de detalhes nos evangelhos, isso depende, por exemplo, do público alvo do evangelhista (Mateus tinha foco nos judeus), se o evangelhista era testemunha ocular dos atos de Cristo (Lucas não foi), da fonte textual (ver a questão do "evangelho Q"), etc.

Recentemente, eu soube de um livro do Padre Dwight Longenecker que fez uma pesquisa histórica sobre os três reis magos. Bem interessante.

Imagem do livro abaixo. Para ver uma descrição do livro pelo próprio Padre Longencecker, clique aqui.

Para comprar o livro, clique aqui.




Feliz Natal, amigos.

Os Piores e Bizarros Cursos Universitários nos EUA

A Young American's Foundation (YAF) é uma fundação conservadora, defende valores tradicionais, liberalismo econômico e defesa militar forte. A YAF tem um olho bem aberto para o que é ensinado nas instituições de ensino nos Estados Unidos e faz pesquisa sobre o ensino de universidades e faculdades dos Estados Unidos regularmente.

Essa pesquisa é muito reveladora. Se, no Brasil, temos a Escola Sem Partido (ESP), a Young American's Foundation pode mostrar claramente para nós que o problema, combatido aqui pela ESP,  é universal e chega às universidades mais renomadas no mundo.

O relato desse ano pode ser lido clicando aqui. No texto tem um sumário, que diz que pesquisando os catálogos de ensino de mais de 50 instituições, a YAF, identificou que:

1) O tema geral é uma tal de "intersectionality" (interseccionalidade), que "estuda" as formas de opressão nas formas de racismo, sexismo, classisismo,.., de qualquer grupo de identidade que se julgue discriminado;

2) Houve uma explosão de disciplinas sobre "queers" (gays, lésbicas, transexuais, etc), todas em favor de afirmar que o sexo é uma escolha não tem nada a ver com biologia. Disciplinas como "Além do Binário", "O que é Homem e Mulher", "Somos todos Loucos: Gênero e Cultura", "Queers e a Bíblia", "Religião Queer" e "Comida Queer",

3) Disciplinas contra o capitalismo também abundam nas universidades americanas;

4) Há também as disciplinas bizarras como sobre: Vampiros, Zumbis, Vibradores, Fidel Castro e Che Guevara (dando glórias aos dois assassinos sanguinários), além de uma tara por Donald Trump. Há disciplinas como : "Raça e Trump", "Casamento e Trump", "Misoginia e Trump", "Estudando Sócrates em Tempos de Trump"...

Vejam a lista de disciplinas da universidades no relatório. É bizarro e assustador. É "comédia e tragédia", como diz a YAF.

Recentemente, eu fui a um seminário em Oxford, com a participação de professores de diversos lugares do mundo e pude ver mais uma vez como o ensino está totalmente bizarro no mundo e como os professores falam as mais tresloucadas asneiras e são aplaudidos.

O que fazer? A YAF costuma também indicar onde estudar para evitar tantas estupidezes.

É guerra cultural, podem ter certeza. É guerra!

Muçulmano, Prefeito de Nazaré, Cancela Celebrações de Natal.

Por que ele cancelou o Natal na terra do Salvador? Ora, por causa de Trump.

Supostamente, se Trump não tivesse declarado Jerusalém como capital de Israel, ele permitiria as celebrações.

O prefeito declarou que a decisão de Trump entristeceu os muçulmanos por isso não tem festa de Natal dos cristãos.

Mas, deixando de lado a falta de lógica, mesmo em se tratando da relação judeus-muçulmanos por que os cristãos têm que pagar o pato?

Vejam relato da Fox News.

Just like during the original Christmas, Jesus' birth will not be celebrated in Nazareth this year -- though this time, it's being blamed on President Trump.

Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has caused a backlash in the region, particularly among Muslims, and the reaction's reverberated to Nazareth, where the town's mayor, Ali Salam, announced Thursday that all planned Christmas events would be canceled.

"Our identity and faith cannot be bargained,” Salam, a Muslim, said, according to 10 News. “[Trump’s] decision has taken away the joy of the holiday and we will cancel the festivities this year.”

Nazareth, the northern Israeli town which is home to a population made up mostly of Muslims and Christians, is scrapping all holiday plans, including a Christmas market and festival.

The annual events are a huge tourist attraction during the Christmas season. Nazareth is believed to be Jesus Christ's childhood home, though he was born in Bethlehem. Still, Nazareth is an important point on the Christian Christmas pilgrimage.

Por Que Não se Deve Mudar o Pai Nosso - Escritor e Tradutor Anthony Esolen.

Bom, eu diria simplesmente que a oração foi ensinada pelo próprio Cristo e suas palavras são claras fazendo com a tradução seja também clara.

Não se deve mudar "não nos leve para tentações"  para "não nos deixeis cair em tentação". A tradução usada em português e espanhol é simplesmente errada, não corresponde às palavras de Cristo, e o Papa não deveria tentar impor uma tradução errada.

Sem falar, que em termos puramente técnicos de tradução seria uma mudança errada e teologicamente controversa.

Mas aqui vai o que diz o famoso tradutor Anthony Esolen sobre o assunto.  Ele é famoso mundialmente por traduzir por exemplo a Divina Comédia de Dante. Ele é também terminantemente contra a versão que se tem em português e espanhol.

Em destaque, Esolen lembra que o próprio Cristo disse para rezarmos, caos contrário, nós seríamos "testados" ou colocados em tentação. Todos têm que "lutar o bom combate".

O texto de Esolen foi publicado no site First Things.

WHY WE SHOULDN’T CHANGE THE LORD’S PRAYER

Anthony Esolen, 12.11.2017.

Pope Francis has caused another round of cheering and dismay by calling for a “better translation” of the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Specifically, he says that the line familiar to us English speakers as “lead us not into temptation” should be rendered as “let us not fall into temptation,” because a loving Father does not subject His children to evil. We may cite here, in apparent support of that statement, the words of St. James: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (Jas. 1:13–14). It was not God who tempted Job, but Satan. It was not God who tempted David with the sight of Bathsheba bathing in her garden, but David himself, whose desire gave birth to the sins of adultery and murder. All Christians, I suppose, will agree.

And yet, and yet: The words of Jesus are clear. The original Greek is not ambiguous. There is no variant hiding in the shelves. We cannot go from an active verb, subjunctive mood, aorist tense, second person singular, with a clear direct object, to a wholly different verb—“do not allow”—completed by an infinitive that is nowhere in the text—“to fall”—without shifting from translation to theological exegesis. The task of the translator, though he should be informed by the theological, cultural, and linguistic context of the time, is to render what the words mean, literally, even (perhaps especially) when those words sound foreign to our ears.

Here someone will shout, “But sometimes the meanings are not literal.” I agree. Sometimes the primary meaning is figurative; but that is still a linguistic judgment, and not theological exegesis. Even so, we are far more likely to paint for our readers a broad range of figurative meaning by keeping close to the literal field wherein that meaning takes root and flourishes, than by dispensing with the literal, and losing it and much of the figurative to boot. Hence translations that suppress the word “seed” (as in “Abraham's seed”), or “fruit” (as in “be fruitful, and multiply,” or Jesus’s parable of the vineyard owner who sent his servants to gather the “fruit” of his land), replacing these words with “offspring” and “produce,” are not only pallid English. They make it impossible for us to hear the figurative resonances of these words as Jesus and his fellow Jews heard them, across all of Scripture. They distance us—who are already farther off than is healthy—from what Aidan Nichols, O. P. has called “the warmth and wonder of created things,” of fruit, and seed, and the marital act that sows the seed.

Someone else will say that language changes over time, and that is why we need revisions. Perhaps; but the ancient Greek has not changed, and English in this regard has not changed. “Lead us not into temptation” means “do not lead us into temptation,” and that is that. We might revise and render “temptation” as “testing” or “trial”: “Do not lead us to the test,” but that would still fall under the pope’s disapproval.

No, I believe that the Greek means what it means, and what it means is accurately rendered as “lead us not into temptation,” exactly the same in Matthew as it is in Luke.

Then someone objects, and says that the Greek is just a translation of the Lord’s Aramaic, so that we, by guesswork, can efface the Greek and replace it with a supposititious original. There are three problems here. First, the Greek is the text we have, and it is canonical. Second, there is no reason to suppose that Greek-speaking Jews did not pray the prayer exactly as the Greek-speaking Saint Luke records it, which in this line is identical to Matthew’s. Third, if we consider a Semitic substrate it becomes more likely, not less, that the Greek me eisenenkeis hemas eis peirasmon is an exact rendering of what would be a verse of psalmic poetry, as I believe all of the Lord’s Prayer is. We would have A + B + C, where A is the negative, B is a causative verb (in Hebrew, “lead” = “to cause to go,” as in Psalm 23) with affixes for second-person singular subject and third-person plural object, and C is “into-temptation.” Such a verse or half-verse would be familiar to every one of Jesus's listeners, and they would have expected it to be completed by a second half. And so it is, in another A + B + C: “but + free-us + from-evil,” each element in correspondence with its partner in the previous half. No, I’m afraid that all attempts to justify an alteration on linguistic grounds fail. But what about the theology?

Let us be careful here. Jesus himself, in Gethsemane, instructed his apostles to pray “lest they be put to the test,” echoing his own words in the Lord’s Prayer. It is not a prayer that they should not fall into temptation, much less that they should not yield to temptation. It is parallel instead with Jesus’s prayer in the garden, that he might be spared the cup that he was about to drink. Jesus knows our weakness, and knows that trials will come. He knows that, as James says, “blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him” (1:12). But we are weak. We are not yet heroes. We are hardly soldiers at all. So we confess our weakness.

We pray, then, that God will spare us that test—even as we know that tests will come. Jesus himself says it. Satan has demanded Peter, to sift him like wheat, says Jesus, “but I have prayed for you, that your faith might not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:31). We are not heroes, we are poor and unprofitable servants, yet we are called to say, with St. Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 3:7). And a Father might very well allow His grown sons and daughters to stand the test, that they might show their strength—His strength in them!—and triumph over the Slanderer.

The words of Jesus, as words, are clear. Their implications are profound. They are hard for us to fathom. They strike us as strange. That is as it should be. Let them stand.

Anthony Esolen is professor of English Renaissance and classical literature at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.