Magic Statistics

Today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, is also known as Passion Sunday, for which the Gospel reading appointed by the Canadian 1962 Book of Common Prayer is St Matthew 20:20-28.  A sermon by Dr Robert Crouse, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Saskatchewan, based on that passage, is posted at Lectionary Central.

[T]he kingdom of God requires an inversion, an overturning, of our "natural" worldliness: "whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant."

This is the essential lesson of Passiontide. We celebrate at once a kingship and a crucifixion. They are not separate; the humiliating cross is the throne of glory. Consider the words of Fortunatus' marvelous hymn:

Fulfilled is all his words foretold; 
Then spread the banners, and unfold 
Love's crowning power, that all may see 
He reigns and triumphs from the tree. 

Read the whole thing.

via Saskatchewan Diocese.

Another disturbing display of yob culture in the UK.  A 14-year old schoolgirl named Leanne Black went on a rampage upon being sentenced to custody for her second drunk-driving conviction.  She kicked furniture over, punched a prosecutor, and threw a jug of water at magistrates, screaming abuse all the while.  This happened moments after she claimed to have made progress in dealing with her anger management problem.

She was first found guilty of drunk driving at age 12—the youngest person ever convicted of that offence in the UK.  She has also been in court of charges of criminal damage, burglary, harassment, and breaching a curfew.

Ms Black's mother accompanied her daughter to court and showed what a fine supportive mother she is.

Black had arrived at court armed with eggs - to pelt photographers with - and her mother, Nora, also contributed to the day's events by sticking out her bottom for the cameras and saying "film this".

Times of London columnist India Knight has seen too many such stories in the news lately, and she's sick of it.  And she's now convinced that throwing more money into more government programs for the "dispossessed" won't help.

Being morally bankrupt is not an automatic byproduct of deprivation, as generations of heroic people have shown us. You can chuck all the money you like at the Blacks of this world, but — what? Does anyone seriously believe that they will become benign, enlightened people as a result? Something in the British — something rather frightened, or Blairishly disingenuous, despite his talk of “zero tolerance” — finds it somehow impossible to broach in any honest way the terribleness of the underclass. We feel we are kicking people who are down, or right-wingishly frothing at the mouth, or exposing our class prejudice.

But anybody with a true sense of decency would see these vulpine individuals with their gold chains and filthy mouths for what they are: the least liberal, most racially intolerant, most sexist, most entitlement-grabbing mob in British social history.

One could argue that government spending has encouraged the entitlement mentality that seems to be part of the problem here.

Horrific crimes are bring committed in the suburbs of Paris by young people utterly without conscience. Assaults against anti-government demonstrators and, especially, the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Ilan Halimi, have intensified the fear many Parisians feel toward those living in the immigrant neighbourhoods surrounding the city.

Testimony from this grim underbelly, the immigrant banlieues — literally “places of banishment” — has fortified the elite’s view of young immigrants on the wrong side of the Paris ring road as “barbarians at the gate”.

For years the Parisian establishment has quaked at the prospect of angry hordes invading their affluent heartland and last week that nightmare came true as gangs of hooded youths robbed and bludgeoned white students attending anti-government demonstrations.
. . .
Barbarians seemed an appropriate name. The shocking cruelty inflicted on Halimi seemed to have little to do with efforts to extract money from his anguished family. It evoked the sadistic moral universe of A Clockwork Orange, the novel by Anthony Burgess, with a dose of anti-semitism thrown in.

Mr Halimi and others have been targeted because they are Jewish, but neighbourhood women are also frequent victims of brutality and cruelty.

Other examples of savagery in these lawless enclaves were exposed on Friday at the trial of Jamal Derrar. He was accused of burning 17-year-old Sohane Benziane to death in 2002 in Vitry-Sur-Seine, where last year’s orgy of suburban rioting began, after she defied his order to stay away from his “territory”.
. . .
Another girl, 18-year-old Chahrazad Belayni, was doused with petrol by a suitor and set alight in November last year. She remains in a coma. In Marseilles in 2004, Ghofrane Haddaoui, a 23-year-old woman from the suburbs, was stoned to death by a gang of youths.

Read the whole thing.

Previous related post: The real casualties of the Muslim slums of France.

The collect for today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St John 8:46-59