Blogbegging Archive

Prayer Request

Posted October 6, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader writes and asks:

On October 15th the Supreme Court of Canada is set to hear the Carter vs Canada case that seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada.

Christians around Canada will be praying this does not pass for the next week until the case begins. We could really use all the support we can get as Canada is not the country most acquainted with reason.

I would very much appreciate any spiritual support you can offer.

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Nachtritter

Posted September 20, 2014 By John C Wright

I am trying to concoct a German sounding name for a group in my next novel.

Nachtnebeldunkelritterbruderchaft.

It is supposed to mean the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Night-dark Mist.

Does it? Anyone here speak German?

Their shorter form is Nachtritter, which I am hoping means Night-rider (or, literally Night-knight)

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

 

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Call to Prayer to Avert Black Mass

Posted August 8, 2014 By John C Wright

This is not a hoax. Things are really, really bad out there in Leftwingland.

August 4, 2014
The Memorial of St. John Vianney

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

By now you are probably aware that a Satanic group has scheduled a so-called Black Mass for Sunday, September 21 at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City.

Even though tickets are being sold for this event as if it were merely some sort of dark entertainment, this Satanic ritual is deadly serious.  It is a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.  Using a consecrated Host obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners offer it in sacrifice to Satan.  This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians.  It mocks Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we Catholics believe is truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist when it has been consecrated by a validly ordained priest.
Read the remainder of this entry »

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A Cry for Help

Posted August 6, 2014 By John C Wright

John Hutchens writes:

The Catholic Near East Welfare Association … actually have people on the ground… The Iraqi Christian community is helping the Yezidis; warning on the pictures on the first one, they aren’t pleasant

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/05/Yezidis-Suffer-as-Much-as-Christians-Under-ISIS-in-Iraq

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/040820145

and CNEWA sent out an email asking for more help, it didn’t mention the Yezidis for reasons that I think are really easy to guess. Regarding prayers there is this quote from the letter:

“Right this minute, Iraq’s Christian families face absolute annihilation. Yes, they’re in our prayers. But they need more: the strongest support we can give.”

Incidentally, today is also a day of prayer for the Iraqi Christians:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/day.of.prayer.for.iraqi.christians/39325.htm

So both our prayers and any other support we can give them is needed.

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Can We Help the Assyrian Christians?

Posted July 23, 2014 By John C Wright

This a question whose answer I also would like to know. A reader asks:

So I don’t even know the right questions to ask, but besides prayers do you or anyone here know or is able to reliably find out what I can do to help the Assyrian Christians in Iraq, namely from Mosul:
http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-torches-1800-year-old-church-in-mosul-priest-says-city-is-now-empty-of-christians-123632/
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/18/A-Desperate-Cry-from-Iraq-Christians
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/last-remaining-christians-flee-iraq-mosul-201472118235739663.html

Is there, for instance a charity to donate to for the help of purchasing water for the Christians as ISIS has cut off the Christian communities water supplies and the Kurds are having to truck it in at a figure I saw of over $10 a gallon?

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Pray on March 25th

Posted March 25, 2014 By John C Wright

A message from CatholicVote.org, which I pass along:

At this moment in Washington D.C., nine Supreme Court justices are listening to oral arguments in two cases by for-profit
corporations challenging the HHS mandate.

Our case – Autocam v. Sebelius – is being held by the Court pending the outcome of these two cases (Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Co.)

Please pray with us. Go to: http://catholicvote.org/prayonmarch25

Pray for the attorneys responsible for presenting the arguments in these cases. Pray for the Justices. Pray that God in His infinite wisdom, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, will grant our prayers and protect the religious freedom of every American.

But today we are asking you to join us in the most powerful
weapon of all — prayer.

All of these historic fights for the freedom to practice our faith are both temporal and spiritual battles. The media will miss the spiritual battle altogether. Yet that battle is the fight that matters most.

Please pray with us right now.

St. Thomas More, patron of religious liberty,
Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas,
pray for us and for the United States of America.

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Announcing the Call for Beta Readers!

Posted February 26, 2014 By John C Wright

UPDATE: For better or worse, a dozen readers have written me and asked to be beta readers. I think that is enough, and I thank you all for your attention. If you are someone in the field, like a technical writer or a professional editor, and you want to get in on the action, you can write me.

—————————————–

Dear Friends and Loyal Customer (Hi, Nick!) It occurs to me that if any of you have free time and a kind heart, you could help me with my current project. As anyone not dyslexic can tell, my essays are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors which I never seem to catch.

The new collection of essays, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN will consist of nothing other than the essays that have appeared here on this blog, but I need someone to help me copy edit them, and catch mistakes my defective brain seems never to see. I could pay you nothing but a hearty thankyou and put your name in the Dedication page.

Drop me a line here or at john-c-wright@sff.net, and I will send you the manuscript electronically, or give you access to a Box folder where it is kept.

 

 

 

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Question for the Readers

Posted February 11, 2014 By John C Wright

Someone has asked me to submit some of the essays I have written here at my journal site for publication. I am a little at a loss, since I am not sure what is good and what is forgettable.

To any loyal reader with an opinion, therefore, allow me to solicit it. I’d like your help to make the decision. I have ten years of material here. Which essays stuck in your mind? Which do you think should be published?

(And maybe we can have a professional editor go through and correct the spelling errors…)

I am not sure what the book will be called. Probably something like ALARUMS AND CONVERSIONS, but in my personal opinion the title should be something calculated to boost sales, such as HARRY POTTER AND THE SPARKLY VAMPIRES OF DUNE.

 

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Prayer request

Posted February 5, 2014 By John C Wright

A reader writes:

Hello everyone.
I apologize for posting off-topic but I need some help. My father Thomas Buckley has been hospitalized with what is either a large tissue infection, or an aggressive lung cancer. I’ve never spoken with a better group of people than on this blog, and any prayers on his and my mother’s behalf would be greatly appreciated. Thank you to all.

Merciful Lord, visit us in our time of need and affliction; and as you healed Jairus’ daughter and raised her from her bed of infirmity, visit your servant, Master, and deliver him from sickness and pain. For you alone have born the sickness and affliction of our world and with you nothing is impossible. For you are all-merciful and to you we ascribe glory and adoration forever. Amen

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Time to Call

Posted January 28, 2014 By John C Wright

Thought I should pass this along.

The House will vote today on H.R. 7.

This critically important legislation is called the “No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act.”

I need you to make a quick call right now. Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Tell your Representative to vote Yes on H.R. 7!

This legislation would do the following:

1. Write into permanent law the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of nearly all abortions.

2. Rid Obamacare of its massive expansion of public funding for abortion in insurance plans.

3. Ensure that customers like you and me are fully informed about abortion coverage and surcharges in health care plans sold on the exchanges.

This legislation has been updated to deal with the horrible expansion of abortion that began with the implementation of Obamacare.

The House is ready to lead. If they pass this bill, the pressure will be on Senate Democrats up for election this year in red states like Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

Time to make a call: (202) 224-3121.

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Unexpected Enlightenment Day!

Posted August 29, 2013 By John C Wright

If I have ever found favor in your eyes, kind reader, please go to Amazon and click on my wife’s book to help raise her numbers.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unexpected-Enlightenment-Rachel-Griffin/dp/1937051870

rachel-griffin-cover

If you want to read a Harry Potter style book with lots of teen angst and a clever mystery (and see my character Sigfried Smith in action — I was the adviser on that character, meaning he talks and acts just like me) then by all  means buy the book. But clicking on it will be a service to us nonetheless.

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Chick Fil A Day for Orson Scott Card

Posted July 14, 2013 By John C Wright

I heard on the radio, as front-page news headline, that Leftists are planning a boycott of the Ender’s Game movie to punish Orson Scott Card for daring to oppose gay marriage. The news particularly mentioned that the movie has nothing to do with marriage or with sex or sexual deviance: the boycotters just want Card punished for thinking wrong thoughts.

I could not care less about this movie. I will certainly see it on opening night, paying full ticket price, rather than waiting for its release to second run theaters or on disc or streaming.

I want to reward Card only because Left wants to punish him.

I want to live in a free society rather than one where men with unpopular views are hounded down by mobs of craven zealots. I want to live in a society where those who cannot tell the difference between a sexual perversion and a civil right are shamed into silence, and their moral blindness and brutal ignorance no longer tolerated among honest men.

Come, my friends, my fellow citizens, my fellow science fiction fans. Are we to let talented writers be savaged and punished and silenced, and allow these barbarians to have their way?

Let us make the opening night of this movie one of the most successful ever.

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Appeal from Catholic Vote

Posted June 6, 2013 By John C Wright

I pass this along to my readers in case any of you honest and decent folk out there wish to contribute to the cause. It is from Catholic Vote, an organization that was also targeted and harassed.

 

Read the remainder of this entry »

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Tell the Federal Government to Respect Religious Freedom

Posted April 6, 2013 By John C Wright

Monday, April 8 is the deadline for submitting comments to the Obama Administration on the latest version of its HHS contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization mandate.

Please take a moment to submit a short online comment in support of religious freedom.

Religious freedom is not just the right to go to church.  It is the freedom to live one’s faith, including the freedom to run a business or charity in accordance with one’s religious beliefs.

hat tip to Mark Shea

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Orson Scott Card Blacklisted for Christian Faith

Posted March 20, 2013 By John C Wright

From the pen of David Blount over at the site Moonbattery

There’s a price to be paid by countermoonbats with courage enough to stand up for decency and sanity in a culture that is swirling down the toilet. Ask Orson Scott Card.

After pro-homosexual activists promoted an online petition demanding the firing of award-winning speculative fiction writer Orson Scott Card from an upcoming Superman comic anthology, DC Comics confirmed that Card’s portion of the project has been shelved indefinitely.

An online petition collected some ungodly (I use the word advisedly) number of signatures, and DC comics caved.

Although it did not receive as much media attention, there is a petition asking DC comics not to go along with the brownshirt blacklist:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/we-support-orson-scott-cards-superman-comic/

If, gentle reader, I have ever written a story or essay or joke or even a word that pleased you, in the name of all that is kind, just, wholesome, true, bright and good in life, take the moment to go and sign the petition.

If they succeed with Orson Scott Card, who is much more mild in his views than I, they will succeed with driving stories I write out of the market as well. So I am motivated, in part by self interest.

I motivated more by indignation that Politically Correct perverts have managed to besmirch the reputation of Superman. He now stands for Truth, Justice, and Censorship.

Mr Blout of the Moonbattery site expresses my sentiments:

For the first time in human history, a society has degenerated to the point that advocating the preservation of children’s innocence and the family unit can get a famous author blacklisted.

In case you don’t know this him:

Orson Scott Card is the bestselling author best known for the classic Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow and other novels in the Ender universe. Most recently, he was awarded the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in Young Adult literature, from the American Library Association. Card has written sixty-one books, assorted plays, comics, and essays and newspaper columns. His work has won multiple awards, including back-to-back wins of the Hugo and the Nebula Awards-the only author to have done so in consecutive years. His titles have also landed on ‘best of’ lists and been adopted by cities, universities and libraries for reading programs. The Ender novels have inspired a Marvel Comics series, a forthcoming video game from Chair Entertainment, and pre-production on a film version.

And if you do know him, go immediately and buy one or more of his books, and show support for this man. http://www.amazon.com/Orson-Scott-Card/e/B000AQ3SS0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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