Posts with the tag 'Benedict XVI'
Just another sign that the new, free Iraq is taking its just place in the world:
When Benedict XVI returns from Australia, he will be visited in Castel Gandolfo by the prime minister of Iraq.
Nouri al-Maliki will visit the Pope on July 25, the Holy See reported.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy Father’s secretary of state, will also meet with the Iraqi leader.
Al-Maliki has been the prime minister in Iraq since 2006. He has repeatedly condemned violence against the Christian minority of his country as an attack on all Iraqis.
I’d say lets start a count down calendar to when the last liberal will finally admit that we’re winning in Iraq…but we might be waiting a long, long time for that…
Tags: Benedict XVI, Iraq, Prime Minister Al-Maliki, Vatican
July 17th, 2008
The Defense of Marriage amendment to the California constitution is favored by 54% of California voters.
Given the trouble many people in the world have getting food each day, the Pope’s recent statement is appropriate:
“The Lord and Creator of all things became a ‘grain of wheat’ to be sown in our land, in the furrows of our history”, said the Pope. “He became bread in order to be …. shared; … He became our food in order to give us life, His own divine life”.
“The Eucharist is a school of charity and solidarity”, he went on. “Those who nourish themselves on the bread of Christ cannot remain indifferent before people who, even in our own time, are without daily bread. Many parents have great difficulty in feeding themselves and their children. It is an ever more serious problem which the international community struggles to resolve. The Church not only prays to ‘give us this day our daily bread’ but, following the example of her Lord, seeks in all ways ‘to multiply the five loaves and the two fish’, through countless initiatives of human promotion and participation so that no-one may lack what they need to live”.
“May the Feast of Corpus Christi be an occasion to increase this authentic concern for our brothers and sisters, especially the poor”, said Benedict XVI and he concluded by calling upon the Virgin Mary “from whom the Son of God drew flesh and blood”, to intercede to this end.
I like Food for the Poor and Missionaries of the Poor…but feel free to help out in any way you can.
McCain ahead of Obama in money on hand? So says McCain advisor Carly Fiorina The Hill.
Sales of new homes rose in April. This suprised the experts. It doesn’t surprise anyone who knows that when prices go down, you can move more product. Apparantly the “experts” figure we’re all dumb and only buy when prices are on the rise…
Dicuss these issues and any others you’d like.
Tags: Benedict XVI, food shortages, gay marraige, home sales
May 28th, 2008
Interesting:
Rev. John Hagee, the controversial pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, has lauded Pope Benedict XVI in a Washington Times essay and thanked him for the speeches he made during his U.S. visit. Hagee praised what he called Pope Benedict’s “moral vision for America,” especially the Pope’s affirmation of Christian participation in the public square.
In his Washington Times essay, Rev. Hagee also repeated his denial of accusations he has made anti-Catholic statements. Hagee insisted he has been “quite zealous” about condemning what he said was the “past anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church.” However, he claimed his view of the Catholic Church had been caricatured.
Hagee praised Pope Benedict’s many public statements about the role that “our Judeo-Christian faith” can play in contemporary life.
“As an evangelical Protestant I happen to disagree with Pope Benedict on many issues of Christian doctrine and ritual,” Hagee wrote. “But when it comes to his moral vision for America and the world I have one thing to say in response to the Pope’s visit: Amen.”
Hagee said that evangelical leaders believe faith must not be confined to “churches on Sunday morning.” Rather, Christian values can help build a more just and humane society. Hagee said the Pope “speaks for all of us” when he said “any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted” and called for Christian participation “in the exchange of ideas in the public square.”
My erring brother, Hagee, has made a gracious gesture in keeping with the true Christian spirit - and while I retain many differences of opinion with Hagee, I choose to accept this olive branch and let bygones be bygones. At a time when religion, as a thing, is under full scale assault, those of us who believe must remain as united as possible, and I’m not going to gnaw a bone of resentment just for the sake of keeping angry.
Tags: Benedict XVI, Catholic Church, Christianity, Hagee
May 5th, 2008
Bringing a bit of Truth to a body which doesn’t hear it too often:
The life of the community, both domestically and internationally, clearly demonstrates that respect for rights, and the guarantees that follow from them, are measures of the common good that serve to evaluate the relationship between justice and injustice, development and poverty, security and conflict. The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security. Indeed, the victims of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence, and they can then become violators of peace. The common good that human rights help to accomplish cannot, however, be attained merely by applying correct procedures, nor even less by achieving a balance between competing rights. The merit of the Universal Declaration is that it has enabled different cultures, juridical expressions and institutional models to converge around a fundamental nucleus of values, and hence of rights. Today, though, efforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests.
For the liberals in the audience, what the Holy Father was pointing out is the absolute and self-evident truth that it is human beings who have rights, not groups of human beings. There is no such thing, really, as “women’s rights”, “black rights” or “gay rights” - there are human rights, and humans hold them inherent to their being. All of these efforts to try and redress alleged imbalances and cross-groups injustices will always fail because they seek to deal with human beings in groups, rather than as people - and thus we see things such as affirmative action in America giving most of its benefits not to poor people who may actually have suffered injustice, but to upper class and rich people who are best able to take advantage of the group benefits offered. If you want to ameliorate injustice, then you will have to take the trouble to do it case by case, human by human. The Pope went on:
Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer. The activity of the United Nations in recent years has ensured that public debate gives space to viewpoints inspired by a religious vision in all its dimensions, including ritual, worship, education, dissemination of information and the freedom to profess and choose religion. It is inconceivable, then, that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves - their faith - in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one’s rights. The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature. The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order.
In a just society, the human beings who believe in God must be allowed to bring this belief in to the public square and use such belief in their efforts to help build the society. To say there is a “wall of separation” between Church and State which precludes believers from attempting to enact their moral views into law really means there is a wall of separation between justice and people. A society cannot be free unless all who are contained within it are allowed to argue their point, and attempt to convince the legitimate law-making bodies that their views should prevail - any attempt to force religion out of the public square or, more absurdly, to claim that an expression of religion is said square is an illegitimate “establishment” of religion is really an attempt to deny liberty, and deny justice to individual human beings who believe in God.
The illness in our society fundamentally stems from the deliberate attempt to expunge the transcendent; from the attempt to try and construct a society where justice is considered secondary in the quest to build a good society. Pope Benedict’s words are a timely reminder of what we really need to do - seek justice first, and the good society will flow from that.
Tags: Benedict XVI, human rights
April 19th, 2008
There is only one Truth, and Benedict XVI serves Him:
As Benedict XVI lands in the United States we can look back upon … dire predictions and report that — thus far, anyway — Benedict has not thrown his head back to bare his fangs. No iron maidens have been commissioned for the new inquisition. He has poured no kerosene on the teeming bonfires of American culture. The soft-spoken, multilingual, piano-playing book-lover who turns 81 while here has proved himself to be a peaceable and pastoral shepherd, one who likes to talk and to listen, but to do both while resolutely teaching the faith throughout the age, rather than spreading the age throughout the faith.
Pope Benedict’s encyclicals have been Christ-centered exhortations to love and to hope. There has been no bull whip cracking down, only a gentle issuing of an invitation to ponder the Eternal and to fit ourselves into the plan God has for each of us in our spheres.
In the current age, which would prefer God to fit into its plans rather than the reverse, Benedict is preaching a radical message that he knows many — blessed with free will and beholden to the age — will reject. Far from displaying an “enforcer” mentality, the pope accepts that rejection with pragmatism and ultimately with trust. “The Church,” he said as Joseph Ratzinger, “will become small, and will to a great extent have to start over again. But after a time of testing, an internalized and simplified Church will radiate great power and influence; for the population of an entirely planned and controlled world are going to be inexpressibly lonely … and they will then discover the little community of believers as something quite new. As a hope that is there for them, as the answer they have secretly always been asking for.”
The rock may be submerged by the wave, but it remains a rock all the same - and when the nauseating wave of lies and cruelty subsides, the rock will be found right where it was all along…and the people who chased after the false gods of consumerism, pornography, power and nihilism will turn - those who survive the catastrophe they are creating - humbly and child-like back to the ancient faith.
A young friend of mine once asked what sort of world we’d have if even for just a week, we all lived as Christ commanded - the world would be changed, overnight, by the most profound and genuine revolution. Meanwhile, however, we can only do what we can, taking the cares of each day as it comes, and trusting in God that as long as we try to do the right thing, then all that happens - good and bad - is for our ultimate benefit. In Benedict XVI the Church has an excellent servant - and the world a man who calls them to Truth.
Tags: Benedict XVI, Papal Visit
April 16th, 2008
Actually, we’re just anticipating the media bias vis a vis Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit:
With a papal visit less than two weeks away, American readers can anticipate a spate of “analysis” stories, assessing the health of US Catholicism and predicting the content of the Pope’s message to America. Be forewarned: most of this coverage will be grossly inaccurate.
Writing for National Review Online, George Weigel cites a tendentious Washington Post piece as the early favorite for what he calls the Father Richard McBrien Prize in Really Inept Vaticanology. Weigel makes a strong case; the Post piece is definitely a contender. But there will be others, equally wrongheaded, before Pope Benedict’s visit is finished. The Boston Globe has not yet weighed in with its editorial opinion, and Father McBrien himself can never be counted out. This competition will be fierce.
The most popular theme for simplistic journalists is the contrast between the blithe spirit of American cafeteria Catholics and the inflexible dogma of the Roman Pontiff. (If you see the term “Panzerkardinal” in what purports to be a news story, you’re probably reading another entry in Weigel’s competition.) It’s easy to see the papal visit as a confrontation: the Vatican enforcer coming to town to bring order to American chaos.
We can expect the MSM to trot out the usual suspects - the Catholic theologian who stands athwart Catholic teaching; the pro-abortion Catholic; pro-female priest Catholic…heck, one of these days I’m sure we’ll come across the differently-abled, transgendered person of color Catholic (who wants to be a priest and nun, at the same time), just to make certain all bases are covered. The general line of these stories is to demonstrate that the Church is out of step with its membership and this is the reason why the Church in America shed so many members over the past few decades…such a line makes for, perhaps, a nifty narrative for an ignorant editor, but it doesn’t even touch upon the truth.
The Catholic Church is not, however, a democracy - truth cannot be decided by popular vote. It doesn’t matter if the MSM could demonstrate that every single Catholic in America is opposed to a particular item of Catholic doctrine - it wouldn’t change. Doctrine is something that comes from God and to determine just what shall be obligatory on believers is something only discovered after very careful - and, usually, very long - deliberation all up and down the line in the Catholic Church. You’ll never hear such phrases as “lightening fast” and “lickety split” applied to the way the Church considers matters of faith and morals. So, the crtitics will hammer away - female priests! Married priests! Birth control! Abortion! Such matters have been settled, and won’t be unsettled unless something extraordinary happens…and that thing won’t be the carping and complaining of certain people who really wish Truth could bend to their desires.
As for me, Ive decided that I’m going to keep track of “Panzerkardinal” during the Pope’s visit - for my own amusement (and for a future “What Media Bias?”), I want to see how many times it is used over the next month.
Tags: Benedict XVI, Catholic Church, media bias
April 6th, 2008
In response to the shocking death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho:
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 16, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI made a strong appeal for peace in Iraq today, in the wake of the kidnapping and death of the archbishop of Mosul.
The Pope led the praying of the midday Angelus in St. Peter’s Square after he celebrated Palm Sunday Mass. He began his pre-Angelus address with a tribute to Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul.
The 65-year-old archbishop was kidnapped Feb. 29 after leading the celebration of the Way of the Cross. His two guards and driver were shot and killed…
…”At the end of this solemn celebration in which we have meditated on Christ’s Passion,” the Holy Father said today: “I would like to recall the late Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Monsignor Paulos Faraj Rahho, who tragically died a few days ago.
“His beautiful witness of fidelity to Christ, to the Church and his people, whom he did not want to abandon despite numerous threats, moves me to cry out forcefully and with distress: Enough with the bloodshed, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq!”
The Holy Father went on to plea for an end to the upheaval caused by the war in Iraq, which began five years ago this week.
He said: “And at the same time I make an appeal to the Iraqi people, who for five years have endured the consequences of a war that has provoked upheaval in its civil and social life: Beloved Iraqi people, lift up your heads and let it be you yourselves who, in the first place, rebuild your national life!
“May reconciliation, forgiveness, justice and respect for the civil coexistence of tribes, ethnic groups and religious groups be the solidary way to peace in the name of God!”
The left, following the lead of dimwitted MSM reports, has chosen to call this a Papal condemnation of the liberation of Iraq - of course, what it really amounts to is a heartfelt call for what all good people want - an end to the hatred, which can only be accomplished as Iraqis rise up and work for reconciliation, justice and peace. Iraqis are doing this, in ever greater numbers, but let us pray that the death of Archbishop Paulos serves as a catalyst to bring all Iraqis of goodwill together for the future of Iraq.
Tags: Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, Benedict XVI, Iraq
March 17th, 2008
