Great Grandson of Kaiser Talks About His Faith

Race car driver and Kaiser-great-grandson: "The teaching of the Catholic Church helps me to keep developing my relationship with my Creator continuously."

Vienna (kath.net) "The teaching of the Catholic Church helps me to keep developing my relationship with my Creator, and keeps reminding me that there is more to it than what can be grasped
by the Hands.” With clear words, racer and Kaiser-great-grandson Ferdinand Habsburg gave an interview with "News" about his Catholic faith. According to his observations, the happier people are all spiritual. A special model of faith for him was his grandfather, Otto von Habsburg. Only at the age of 19 did Ferdinand become a confirmand, which at the time, he was very convinced about and ready for the important Sacrament. For the first time two years ago, where he had consciously sensed that there was a God. In the meantime, he has found his spiritual home in the Catholic Church. "Anyway, I'm certainly praying on a daily basis." Once upon a time somebody mentioned my belief on the plane because he noticed that I was praying the rosary, which was an interesting conversation.” On Sundays and public holidays, he goes to Holy Mass regularly, but sometimes he likes to go to Church alone to pray.

When asked how he would explain to an atheist the need to believe, Habsburg said:  "An atheist believes that there is no God. I truly believe that He exists. The existence of God can not be scientifically proven, but neither that he does not exist. We all believe in something, and in that sense I do not need to explain anything to him, because he has this need to believe, just like me, except that he just believes that there is only here and now." But he does not want to force anyone to be a believer. This is not possible. But for him, it would be nice if, through his faith and example, he would get some one to engage with God and find his way to Him.

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG

In Memoriam: Otto Habsburg Passed Away Today

Edit: if you have a hard life, filled with failures, everything going wrong, it's sometimes valuable to think on the lives of great men who may have failed in the eyes of the world, but have succeeded in keeping the faith till their deaths.  Here's to all the failures, those that have failed and kept the faith, and those who've failed and are in need of it, no matter how great or lowly.   Here's an essay by Charles Coulombe at Taki Magazine:

[Takimag] The San Fernando Valley in the 1970s was a very dull place. Hot and dusty, filled with lackluster architectural construction thrown together during the postwar housing boom, it was the last place I wanted to be.

Back in those far-off days, the LA Archdiocese’s paper, The Tidings, ran a column by the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, son of Austria-Hungary’s last Emperor-King.

My family was historically minded, and my upbringing gave me a hatred of the French Revolution and a love of the Habsburgs, Bourbons, and Stuarts. In high school in the 1970s, I became a monarchist. In the LA Central Library lurked such volumes as The Purple or the Red, Kings Without Thrones, and Monarchs-in-Waiting. I resolved to write to the Archduke Otto concerning issues political and religious. Off my note went into the post.

Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights. http://takimag.com/article/death_of_an_imperial_pen_pal/print#ixzz4DSCCSshF

Secessionist Movement in Trieste Recalls its Place in Habsburg Monarchy

Edit: It looks like the city of Trieste prefers Habsburg Monarchs to the Republican government of Italy. We received this declaration from the e-mail:

On Sunday morning of the 15th of December, before the court, many citizens of Trieste will declare the renunciation their Italian citizenship.

We, the people, want to reestablish full sovereignty for the Free State of Trieste. This movement was born in the serious difficulties faced by the city itself, for its region and for all of Europe. The past annexation was accomplished outside of the legality of civil law, in local as well as international standards: The peace settlement with Italy in 1947 in Paris which was singed and continues in force -- continues to be systematically ignored.

We, the people, we are the citizens of the Free Territorium of Free Trieste and intend, therefore to live legally in a state of individual and collective well being.

The Free Territorium of Trieste is, is by definition, multicultural and multi-lingual and understands its historical and geographical place in Middle Europe.

We are establishing ourselves for the Internationalization of the economy of our region and, the impulse of our place for many years in the Habsburg Monarchy, we advocate our continuation and the broadening of the mental openness of our population for other languages and cultures.

The free harbor of Trieste, the most important motor for our economy, can not be excluded or prepared for the settlement of real investments, without producing the previous legality.

So soon as these will be returned, we want to make good the progressive progress of innovation, to promote the foreseeable industrial developments and the settlement which today's reputation of stagnation of technology and is born according to the preservation of the environment. Trieste has suffered through the complicity of all administrations, which in the past decades have been a caused a nuisance in our area, and its hinterland are today under morbid debts of a no longer bearable environmental strain.

It hasn't bypassed us, how the Italian State counteracted a concourse and are in the clear, that whose causes do not lay in Trieste and that whose consequences are detected in Trieste's part is to be seen traces by reason of its progressively illegal status of the current administrative power.

By reason of this gripping economic decline the current administration is above all not in a position, for our existential important reforms -- to accomplish it as an attenuation of the tax burden.

While Europe puzzles over the causes and the solutions of the current crisis, our movement aims then to improve the quality of life in our region palpably, to closely oversee the conduct of human rights conventions and to implement the rights of self-determination of the people in fact.

"Free Trieste" represents the living interests of the overpowering majority of the population in their tributary areas and asserts therefore, the political, legal, economic and tax rules of the Peace Agreement in effect its legal path. Thus, on that it follows the reestablishment of its legality is our highest objective.

We, the people, want therefore, want to reestablish the complete sovereignty of the Free State of Trieste.
info@volontaritrieste.eu

Palm Sunday: The 90th Anniversary of the Emperor's Death

He came unto his own and his own received him not. -The Apostle John

That the 90th anniversary of his death fell on the same day as Palm Sunday this year is filled with a beautiful symbolism as the secular ruler, takes on the mantle of his master.  From Dom Gueranger's Liturgical Year.

The miracle performed by our Saviour almost at the very gates of Jerusalem, by which He restored Lazarus to life, has roused the fury of His enemies to the highest pitch of phrensy. The people’s enthusiasm has been excited by seeing him, who had been four days in the grave, walking in the streets of their city. They ask each other if the Messias, when He comes, can work greater wonders than these done by Jesus, and whether they ought not at once to receive this Jesus as the Messias, and sing their Hosanna to Him, for He is the Son of David. They cannot contain their feelings: Jesus enters Jerusalem, and they welcome Him as their King. The high priests and princes of the people are alarmed at this demonstration of feeling; they have no time to lose; they are resolved to destroy Jesus. We are going to assist at their impious conspiracy: the Blood of the just Man is to be sold, and the price put on it is thirty silver pieces. The divine Victim, betrayed by one of His disciples, is to be judged, condemned, and crucified. Every circumstance of this awful tragedy is to be put before us by the liturgy, not merely in words, but with all the expressiveness of a sublime ceremonial.

From Ars Orandi... 

Photo credit: Roman Christendom

Regina von Habsburg is dead, RIP

The wife of the son of the Austrian Kaiser, Otto von Habsburg has died at the age of 85 in Upper Bavaria in her house in Pöcking .

Pöcking (kath.ent/KNA) Regina von Habsburg, wife of the son of Kaiser Otto Habsburg, has died at the age of 85 in the Upper Bavarian town of Pocking. It was announced by her eldest son Karl on the same day. With her the family lost a great personality, "who inspired us through her unshakeable faith and her positive attitude toward life."

She was born in 1925 as the Princess of Sachsen-Meiningen in Würzburg and married Otto von Habsuburg in 1951. The pair had seven children and 22 grandchildren. The family has set aside a fund for social charitable needs. Finally the Director Claus Hipp will preside as patron for the "Munich Table".

The Styrian Hands out Turkeys in Fresno

The worthy Styrian, Arnold Swarzenegger, in a gesture reminescent of the Hapsburgs of old, comes to hand out food to the poor at Catholic Charities with his encouraging peasant grin and kind words. Such displays are expected of public figures, but not all public gestures are heartless and cynical. Gifted, public men should set a good example by selfless, if public, acts of charity; still, we were really taken by the good natured, hearty magnanimity of the Styrian. He has always been a charming, sometimes kindly, if scandalous, presence in American life, but his kind gesture is a worthy immitation of better men whose legends he must have learned as a child living in the night time of the Kingdom of the Danube.

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Governor Schwarzenegger was back in the Valley to lend a hand at a holiday food giveaway the day before Thanksgiving.

His visit comes as the number of families in need of public assistance continues to grow. The number of Fresno County residents on food stamps has jumped 84-percent in the last four years.

Governor Schwarzenegger greeted families who patiently waited outside Catholic Charities on Wednesday. They carted off enough food for a holiday meal, including turkey and vegetables.

Balloons for the kids helped raised the spirits of families who face gloomy times.

Olivia Calistro of Fresno said, "There's not a lot of work. Me and my husband we're on a fixed income, whatever he brings in. All the holiday food helps."

The governor said, "They all know tomorrow will be a day of eating and they will not be left out."

Link to the original...