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Magna Carta

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The British Library has a website devoted to Magna Carta, explaining the document’s history, legacy and crucial influence on the formation and development of modern democracies – HERE. Below is their introduction to the document, emphasizing the principle of the rule of law to safeguard the liberty of the individual in community with others.

MAGNA CARTA: AN INTRODUCTION 

by Claire Breay and Julian Harrison

What is Magna Carta?

Magna Carta, meaning ‘The Great Charter’, is one of the most famous documents in the world. Originally issued by King John of England (r.1199-1216) as a practical solution to the political crisis he faced in 1215, Magna Carta established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the king, was subject to the law. Although nearly a third of the text was deleted or substantially rewritten within ten years, and almost all the clauses have been repealed in modern times, Magna Carta remains a cornerstone of the British constitution.Most of the 63 clauses granted by King John dealt with specific grievances relating to his rule. However, buried within them were a number of fundamental values that both challenged the autocracy of the king and proved highly adaptable in future centuries. Most famously, the 39th clause gave all ‘free men’ the right to justice and a fair trial. Some of Magna Carta’s core principles are echoed in the United States Bill of Rights (1791) and in many other constitutional documents around the world, as well as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).

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R.G. Menzies — a very ‘clubbable’ prime minister

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It is perhaps not well known that Robert G. Menzies immensely enjoyed the social life of the clubs he was a member of. He had membership in three during his career: the West Brighton, the Savage, and the K.K. They provided a clean relaxing break from his busy life first in the law and then in politics. Sir John Bunting, Menzies’ Cabinet Secretary and Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Department, devoted several pages to Menzies’ ‘clubbability’ in his book R.G. Menzies: A Portrait. Those pages are reproduced below.

Edmund Burke’s Club is organizing a dinner to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (15th June 1215) and the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (18th June 1815) at Melbourne’s Savage Club for the 16th of June 2015. As with the very enjoyable dinner on the eve of our Edmund Burke conference, the dinner will take its lead from R.G. Menzies.

MENZIES was a considerable club man. But that straight away needs an explanation, because the clubs he most used were not of the usually understood variety. There are various dictionary definitions of clubs. For what are now understood as the traditional clubs, the Concise Oxford formula seems to go closest: ‘body of persons combined for social purposes, and having premises for resort, meals, temporary residence etc.’ Clubs of this sort, modelled on British precedent, have always existed in Australia. They are social clubs obviously, but they are also clubs that people join for business and professional reasons. These were not really for Menzies. He visited them often enough, and the equivalent clubs elsewhere, and, as a guest, was perfectly at home and happy. But although he was in them, he was not of them, nor of their style. His main choices, in his home city of Melbourne, fell on three quite other clubs: the Savage, the West Brighton and the K.K. These were clubs for the inner Menzies. (I omit, which would be at my peril if he were to know, the Melbourne Scots, but it does not, I think, come into this narrative.) Continue reading →

Report on Edmund Burke conference and May meeting

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The meeting of 1 May reviewed the Edmund Burke Conference that took place on 28 February 2015. Members were of the opinion that the conference was well organized. and that on the day all went according to plan. The attendees found the presentations interesting and instructive, as befitted an organization devoted to the study of Edmund Burke’s thought.  The numbers were moderate, but it was noted that our means of attracting interested participants were limited. All agreed that members should work at the promotion of such an occasion well beforehand. There was also the consideration that Edmund Burke’s Club is a little more than two-years-old. The pleasing development was that the limited promotion attracted a number of members from states outside Victoria.

The pre-conference dinner at the Savage Club which included a reception and a number of readings and interventions was considered a resounding success. The Club is looking at the possibility of organizing another dinner along the same lines for later in the year.

After the review of the conference, Gerard Wilson gave a presentation on Burke’s ideas on religion and state and society. When the meeting finished, attendees repaired to the nearby RACV Club bistro for supper. It was a very enjoyable evening. Photos of the meeting and the conference will be posted shortly.

Gerard Wilson’s presentation here: Burke on religion meeting 1 May 2015

Kenneth Branagh’s Very Christian Cinderella

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The following review of the soon to be released movie CINDERELLA appeared on Zenit Online
MORE THAN A FAIRYTALE

By Fr. Robert Barron

Kenneth Branagh’s “Cinderella” is the most surprising Hollywood movie of the year so far. I say this because the director manages to tells the familiar fairy tale without irony, hyper-feminist sub-plots, Marxist insinuations, deconstructionist cynicism, or arch condescension. In so doing, he actually allows the spiritual, indeed specifically Christian, character of the tale to emerge. I realize that it probably strikes a contemporary audience as odd that Cinderella might be a Christian allegory, but keep in mind that most of the fairy stories and children’s tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm and later adapted by Walt Disney found their roots in the decidedly Christian culture of late medieval and early modern Europe.

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Thomas More – fictionalising history for political purposes

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Deconstructing History

‘[Hilary] Mantel has chosen to make [St Thomas] More the singular object of her anti-Catholic vitriol. More does not appear in the book other than in a damning light; no one speaks anything but ill of him and he is not allowed a redeeming feature’

WOLF HALL AND THE REAL ST THOMAS MORE

By  Graham Hutton

THE FIRST of a trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell by the successful English writer Hilary Mantel, ‘Wolf Hall’ has experienced a phenomenal success winning huge critical acclaim, selling over 1.2million copies and winning the Mann Booker prize. It has now been turned into a stage play and at both Stratford-upon-Avon and London’s West End this play, too, has been such a success that it is being described with such hyperboles as ‘a landmark’ and ‘a phenomenon’. No doubt the forthcoming TV series will reach even more people. Unfortunately, whatever the literary merits of the book, its popularity is something which Catholics can only regret. The great work of recent historians of the English Reformation such as Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh and Richard Rex, has done much to clear away the obfuscations of traditional English historiography around the medieval Church and the reformation. Continue reading →

The meaning of ‘holocaust’ – another opportunity for the leftist media

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The Macquarie (Australian) Dictionary meaning of the word ‘holocaust’:

holocaust/ˈhɒləkɒst/ (say ‘holuhkost), /-kɔst/ (say -kawst)

noun 1.  great or wholesale destruction of life, especially by fire.

2.  an offering devoted wholly to burning; a burnt offering.

[Late Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston a burnt offering, properly neuter of holokaustos burnt whole]
–holocaustic /hɒləˈkɒstɪk/ (say holuh’kostik), adjective

The word frequently appears in the Bible referring to burnt offerings. After the Second World the word was used to describe the attempted genocide of Jews. It is a word that has powerful literary use as an image to convey terrible and purposeful destruction. See HERE

The leftist media’s confected outrage over Prime Minister Abbott’s use of the word ‘holocaust’ as an image should once more convey to Menzies’ people how vicious and unconscionable the left are in their attempt to destroy the prime minister. There is no tactic, no lie that is too great or too low for them to employ in their unrelenting political campaign. Menzies’ people should be well aware of who their enemy is. Andrew Bolt shows how transparent the leftist media’s tactic is: Abbott hanged for what the gallery forgave Keating and Bob Brown.

 

Prestigious academic award to keynote speaker at Edmund Burke Conference

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Professor Garrett Ward Sheldon, keynote speaker at the coming Edmund Burke Conference, has received a prestigious academic award from the University of New Mexico. The citation is as follows:

The University of New Mexico Alumni Association announces the recipients of its prestigious James F. Zimmerman, Bernard S. Rodey, Erna S. Fergusson and Faculty Teaching Awards. They include: James F. Zimmerman Award – John Mateczun; Bernard S. Rodey Award – Garrett Sheldon; Erna S. Fergusson Award – Michelle Coons; and Faculty Teaching Award – Steven McLaughlin.

“This year’s awards recipients are making important contributions to our nation, state and university communities,” said Karen Abraham, Executive Director of the UNM Alumni Association. “They are a distinguished and diverse group of talented individuals.”

Bernard S. Rodey Award – Garrett Sheldon (’77 BA)
 Garrett Ward Sheldon is The John Morton Beaty Professor of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Virginia College at Wise. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the UNM Honors Program in 1977 and earned a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Sheldon has published 10 books in the fields of political theory and political theology, including “The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson” and “Religion and Politics: Major Thinkers on the Relation of Church and State.” He has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University; the University of Vienna, Austria; and Trinity College, Dublin. Sheldon received the Outstanding Faculty in Virginia Award, the highest honor conferred on an academic by the Commonwealth. He is also an ordained Christian minister and author of the novel “What Would Jesus Do?”

For full details of the awards go HERE

The Christmas story according to St Luke, translated by Mgr Ronald Knox

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The infancy chapters 1 & 2 of

THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

Translated by Mgr Ronald Knox, 1945

MANY have been at pains to set forth the history of what time has brought to fulfilment among us, following the tradition of those first eye-witnesses who gave themselves up to the service of the word. And I too, most noble Theophilus, have resolved to put the story in writing for thee as it befell, having first traced it carefully from its beginnings, that thou mayst understand the instruction thou hast already received, in all its certainty Continue reading →