Tony Blair Seeks Promotion in RCC - Take II

Father Timothy suggested that taking on a formal role in the Church could give him fresh moral clout when he campaigns on climate change and Africa.


Is there anything biblical in this ? Climate change ? I thought the church's job was to proclaim Christ, and him crucified.



President Bush proved himself less than familiar with Catholic etiquette when, on his way home from the G8 summit in Germany, he stopped for an audience with the Pope in the Vatican.
First he failed to bow before shaking hands, saying: "It's great to be here." Then officials cringed as he repeatedly called the Pontiff 'sir'. Later, a Vatican spokesman said: "I don't think President Bush meant anything by his use of words. The expression "sir" is widely used in English and especially by Americans – but of course the correct term is "Your Holiness"."


Sometimes, I really, really love our president.

 

Very interesting, if true. I had raised the question once before in another thread about Blair's faith, having heard via some grapevine or another that he was a devout Christian. The answer someone from over the pond gave at that time was that he was in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the C of E. But apparently there is much more to the story.

Like it or not, the RC Church has a history of attracting intellectual converts, especially in the UK ... beginning with John Henry Newman, I suppose.

 

.....Outreach? I bet it reaches out, given the vigorously proselytising nature of some of the mosque’s material. As for education, I wonder if that will include the claim, posted on Ihsan’s site, that non-Muslims who insult Mohammed are guilty of a crime or that Tony Blair is a “major prima facie war criminal”.Ihsan, I should add, is not an Islamist mosque: its members are mostly British-born converts to Islam who condemn terrorism. (I think they are Sufis, though they do not say so on the site; also, the pictures suggest that a majority of converts are white, so I’m not sure where “racial justice” comes into it.)
Whether that makes Ihsan “moderate” is another matter. Under the “resources” section of the website, the mosque advertises a book showing “how the Muslim community alone can identify the enemy of Islam and life itself, indicating the bankers as the force to be stripped of their power and their magical usury expropriation of our wealth.” Doesn’t sound terribly moderate to me.
What I don’t understand is why the Churches' Commission for Racial Justice, funded by the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Free Churches, should be offering financial support to Ihsan’s holiday camps. Any ideas?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/june2007/mosquefundingmadness.htm

 

I heard Ian Paisley say just this week that Tony Blair was once associated with the InterVarsity fellowship (a reformed, evangelical student body) and that he even preached under their banner.

His wife has certainly been a powerful influence on his spiritual life, and such a conversion would be the ultimmate proof of that.

 

Apparently Paisley neglected to mention that Blair's father was once the Secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League, and that "Phony Tony" himself is politically to the left of Bill Clinton.

It appears that Phony Tony has plans to infiltrate the RCC. I take his new found "religiosity" about as seriously as I did Bill and Hillary Clinton's when they showed up at that Billy Graham Crusade a while back.

Can you say "ulterior motives"?

 

Where did you get this from? His father, Leo, a successful lawyer and law lecturer, chose to run for parliament as a Tory (conservative) in 1963, which is quite a shift for a communist.

 

"Leo Blair grew up in a tenement in Golspie Street, Govan, Glasgow, and attended Govan High School. When he left school he worked as a copy boy on the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker and was Secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League 1938-1941."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Blair_(senior)

 

"As a teenager Leo Blair embraced the “Red Clydeside” beliefs of his foster mother. Settled in a flat in Golspie Street, in Govan, now long-since demolished, Leo became secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League before becoming a barrister."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/newspapers/sunday_times/scotland/article788777.ece

 

Interesting, although in fairness he was a teenager at the time and apparently under the influence of his mother. It would seem he must have had a political conversion, possibly due to the fact that he married into a middle class Irish protestant family.

 

And his "religion" is not new, it is actually history. The claims I have heard from someone close to him, who does not easily get decieved, is that he made a genuine profession, but has drifted far from his original moorings.

Who knows... one day I guess we will find out.

My inclination is to believe he is not saved. But, you never know.

 

Here's the latest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6232600.stm