Religious Freedom

In recent times when we think of religious freedom, we are often reminded of such restrictions of Christianity in Muslim controlled countries around the world. However these restrictions are not just in, for example Saudi Arabia or Iran or in many of the Muslim Asian countries.

I found this interesting article on the Catholic Exchange website that explores this topic.

Religious Freedom : A Double Standard

October 8, 2007

On Sept. 24, President Bush spoke to the UN General Assembly against "regimes that deny their people fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration." He was referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Article 18 of the Declaration defines freedom of religion and belief as follows: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance."

Stressing that the expansion of freedom is not just a Western goal, nor a mere Bush doctrine, but a fundamental agreement of the world body, the President cited Myanmar, where "basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship are severely restricted."

The issue of religious freedom is part and parcel of the American heritage, not only in political speeches, but also in academic circles. When Lee Bollinger recently introduced the president of Iran as a guest speaker at Columbia University, he scathingly referred to Iran's denial of freedom to a religion founded there in the 19th century: the Baha'i faith. The mainline media picked up Bollinger's statement and clearly emphasized it.

Current criticism of those who deny religious freedom throughout the world often focuses on Muslim countries. It is noticeable, however, that the same critics in America have nothing to say about ongoing violations of religious freedom by the Israeli government. Just recently, for example, it has rescinded its policy of granting re-entry visas to Arab Christian ministers, priests, nuns and other religious workers who wish to move in and out of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories to church offices in Jerusalem, or to travel abroad. In the past, re-entry visas were routinely granted to Arab Christian religious workers in the Holy Land, and clergy traveled relatively freely to and from points overseas, including the United States. They must now apply for re-entry visas at Israeli consulates abroad each time they travel outside the areas under Israeli control. Since visa applications submitted to Israeli missions abroad take months to process, the new Israeli policy means that religious personnel will no longer be able to move freely outside their parishes in the West Bank. Many of the clergy and other church workers are from nearby Jordan, which made a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. The new Israeli policy will effectively prevent them from visiting their families there.

Rev. Fares Khleifat, the only Greek Catholic priest in Ramallah, traveled to Jordan for several days in mid-September. When he tried to return to his parish on September 14, he was stopped at the Al Sheikh Hussein Bridge, and his valid multiple-entry visa was canceled without explanation. He was forced to return to Jordan. His de facto deportation from the Holy Land by the Israeli government has left his parish without a priest. Father Faris, a holder of both Vatican and Jordanian passports, commented: "For the past six years, I have been traveling regularly between the West Bank and Jordan on church affairs without any problems whatsoever."

Father Faris is one of thousands of foreign passport holders who have been denied entry by the Israeli authorities over the past several years, and is only the latest in a trend in refusing religious-worker visas. This trend, which has disturbed Vatican officials for some time, is one of a number of contested policies under debate in a Vatican-Israeli permanent working commission since 1994, when the Vatican and Israel established diplomatic ties. In 1997, a Fundamental Agreement was made, clarifying the legal status of Catholic institutions in Israel. That agreement, however, was never added to Israeli law, rendering it unenforceable. With no legal relationship between the Church and the Israeli government, church property disputes cannot be resolved in court. The Israeli government thus reserves for itself the handling of Church-property disputes. There are many cases of confiscation of Church properties by Israel that have never been resolved or even litigated. Since 1994, the Vatican has requested guaranteed access to juridical due process through the Israeli court system when property disputes arise, and, more specifically, the return of those Church properties confiscated by the Israeli government. The failure to come to an agreement on these issues has been a long-standing obstacle in Vatican-Israeli relations.

...interesting.

Now this from another source.

'Not a Single Christian' in Birthplace of Christ

The once vibrant Christian communities of Bethlehem and Nazareth, with roots in the "land of Jesus" going back to first century Israel, are rapidly declining in the face of a systematic campaign of persecution conducted by the same Muslim terrorists intent on driving the Jews into the sea.

Beatings, sham legal proceedings, property seizures, dismissal and replacement of elected Christian leaders, accusations of selling property to Jews and intimidation by gunmen with links to the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have so reduced Christian populations in the cities of Jesus' birth and boyhood one community leader predicts all Christians will be gone within 15 year

lots of turmoil in the Holy Lands...

...please excuse the formatting...my computer or this application is acting up.

Cardinal Schonborn - Change or Purpose?

Carl Olsen at InsightScoop has a great post on the good Cardinals new book on creation evolution and a rational Faith. Rather lengthy however the topic is of such interest, (at least to me) that it's well worth the read.

Enjoy..

A number of related news articles have, by blind chance and the mysterious process of cyber-viewing-evolutionary selection, come to my attention. First, from EWNews, this brief note:


The Council of Europe has adopted a resolution calling upon nations to "firmly oppose" efforts to encourage the teaching of creationism in schools.

By a vote of 48-24, the Council approved a statement that said "creationism could become a threat to human rights."

The Strasbourg body based its resolution on a report that said the teaching of creationism and intelligent design, which "was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon," has begun to make inroads in Europe. This trend is dangerous, the report said, because creationism is unscientific.

The resolution called upon education officials to resist appeals to put creationism or intelligent design in the curriculum alongside the teaching of evolution. These studies are fundamentally different, the Council of Europe proclaimed, because: "The theory of evolution has nothing to do with divine revelation but is built on facts."

So Cal weekend

With mild temp's in the beach area this weekend, it's still sunny enough to get out and do some fun stuff.

This event is a reason to walk around the Redondo Beach area.

The DailyBreeze - The Art of Illusion

Sure, what your kids scrawl on sidewalks is cute, but what Julian Beever can do with chalk will blow your mind.

The British artist - deemed the "Pavement Picasso" for his three-dimensional, anamorphic renderings cast on concrete - has set his artist's eye on the Redondo Beach pier as his latest canvas.

As fishermen cast their lines into the ocean and sea gulls flew overhead Thursday, Beever shuffled around the pier and sketched the ghostly outline of a woman floating in a swimming pool.

So totally Los Angeles, he figured.

Here's some of Julian's work HERE

S.F. , What's the Deal

(photo: WND)

Now there’s Catholic bashing and then there’s Catholic Bashing. San Francisco seems to be aiming to capture that Guinness World Record Award for this category….and they may have it in the bag.

This article on WND, (although I did find it else where) “Gays mock Jesus with Last Supper take-off – Taxpayers subsidize event …

A taxpayer-supported "gay" celebration in San Francisco, featuring a poster portraying Jesus Christ and his disciples as "half-naked homosexual sadomasochists," has come under heavy fire from major Christian groups demanding that California lawmakers condemn it.
The poster by organizers of the ‘Folsom Street Fair’, sponsored in part by Miller Brewing, replaces the bread and wine representing Christ's blood and body with sadomasochistic sex toys.

Now that’s just plain sick. This was out in plain public or everyone to see with the full consent of the City Officials.

I know there are people in this City that don’t agree with this, so why don’t they do something?!
The City officials there have totally lost it.

They allow these kind of events to litter the city streets but won’t allow these Marines to do theirs.

(Photo:FoxNews)

Marines Denied Permission To Film Commercial

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep. 24, 2007 (KGO) - New York said "yes," but we said "no." Why were the U.S. Marines denied permission to film a recruiting commercial on the streets of San Francisco?

San Francisco is, once again, the center of a controversy over how city leaders treat the U.S. military. This time, it involves an elite group of Marines who wanted to film a recruitment commercial in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

The tension has been building in the two weeks since the city turned away members of the Silent Drill Platoon, and it boiled over Monday afternoon at a meeting of the San Francisco Film Commission.

The U.S. Marine Silent Drill Platoon performed Monday morning in New York's Times Square. They filmed part of a recruitment commercial through the start of the morning rush hour -- something they could not do in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

"It's insulting, it's demeaning. This woman is going to insult these young heroes by just arbitrarily saying, 'no, you're not going to film any Marines on California Street," said Captain Greg Corrales of the SFPD Traffic Bureau.

MORE...

(Visit the http://www.our.marines.com/ website for the commerical)

What's the deal? I don't get it.

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly also tried to get rid of the Navy Blue Angels ... but the Gay Pride event with it's horrible Last Supper poster is acceptable.

Unbelievable...

...More on the Dignity of Life

Also from Zenit.org

Commentary on Artificial Hydration and Nutrition

The Sick "Have the Right to Basic Health Care"

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 14, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a commentary issued today by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on "Responses to Certain Questions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration."

* * *

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has formulated responses to questions presented by His Excellency the Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a letter of July 11, 2005, regarding the nutrition and hydration of patients in the condition commonly called a "vegetative state.

"The object of the questions was whether the nutrition and hydration of such patients, especially if provided by artificial means, would constitute an excessively heavy burden for the patients, for their relatives, or for the health care system, to the point where it could be considered, also in the light of the moral teaching of the Church, a means that is extraordinary or disproportionate and therefore not morally obligatory.

The address of Pope Pius XII to a congress on anesthesiology, given on Nov. 24, 1957, is often invoked in favor of the possibility of abandoning the nutrition and hydration of such patients. In this address, the Pope restated two general ethical principles. On the one hand, natural reason and Christian morality teach that, in the case of a grave illness, the patient and those caring for him or her have the right and the duty to provide the care necessary to preserve health and life.

On the other hand, this duty in general includes only the use of those means which, considering all the circumstances, are ordinary, that is to say, which do not impose an extraordinary burden on the patient or on others. A more severe obligation would be too burdensome for the majority of persons and would make it too difficult to attain more important goods. Life, health and all temporal activities are subordinate to spiritual ends. Naturally, one is not forbidden to do more than is strictly obligatory to preserve life and health, on condition that one does not neglect more important duties.
MORE

JPII...Euthanized?

I tell you, the Time Magazine of late is getting worse than the tabloids that I see in line at the super market.

This story in the latest edition of Time (Tabloid) Magazine.

Was John Paul II Euthanized?

In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book by John Paul's personal physician. The failure to insert a feeding tube into the patient until just a few days before he died accelerated John Paul's death, Pavanelli concludes. Moreover, Pavanelli says she believes that the Pope's doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and thus she surmises that it was the pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he'd been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March. Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.

MORE...

Where were they when Terry Shiavo was starved to death... no food or water and she wasn't on her death bed until then.

This from Zenit.org

John Paul II "Profoundly Loved" His Life

Final Prayer Was Lesson for Attending Physician
VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 20, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The final voiced prayer of Pope John Paul II was an act of profound asceticism, said his personal physician.

Dr. Renato Buzzonetti said the Pope's last words were "the prayer of a saint that loved life until the good Lord called him to himself," reported an article Sunday in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

The doctor continued: "Pope John Paul II was cared for until the last moment of his life, when at 9:37 p.m. on April 2, 2005, he breathed his last.

"It is true that he had previously told his doctors, 'Let me go to the Lord.' But that was an ascetic phrase, an elevated form of a final prayer of a man who was suffering a great deal and felt the strong desire to draw close to the Heavenly Father.

"It was certainly not a renunciation or a form of anticipated surrender of life. Nor was it an invitation to physicians caring for him to pull the plug or to discontinue care, a sort of indirect choice for euthanasia, as some are insinuating. Whoever believes this, is wrong.

"The doctor said John Paul II spoke the prayer "in a weak voice to Polish Sister Tobiana, while she was ministering near the bed. When the sister came out of the room she told us that the Pope told her that he 'wanted to be let go, to go to the Lord.'

"I repeat, it was a mystical invitation, a high form of prayer recited by a man who felt that he was near to completing his earthly adventure. But he was never left alone, without care or protection, as some erroneously are trying to insinuate.

"It was for those of us who were near him yet another great life lesson. A prayer prayed right to the end, in a very weak voice, inaudible, whispered, yet profound. The prayer of a saint that loved life until the good Lord called him to himself."

Attachment to faith

The physician was addressing certain claims that arose in media reports, especially in the wake of the document from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith released last Friday on the obligation of feeding tubes for people in a persistent "vegetative state."

"That phrase, 'Let me go to the house of the Father,' was an act of a high prayer, of profound asceticism, an original example and almost unique in its attachment to faith in God the Father and, at the same time, to life, which John Paul II profoundly loved right up to the last moment," Buzzonetti said.

"His was a long passion," he added. "On March 31, when he looked out of his window for the first time he couldn’t even speak. But he did not give up. From that day on he was administered enteric nutrition through a nasal gastric tube, because he was no longer in a condition to feed himself by mouth.

"The drip was applied and secured until the end, without interruption. Then, on March 31, he suffered serious septic shock with cardio circulatory collapse because of a urinary tract infection; he was given all of the appropriate therapeutic measures and cardio respiratory assistance.

"The physician affirmed that John Paul II, though he was not taken to a hospital for his final hours, received excellent medical attention.

"His secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, asked him explicitly if he wanted to go," Buzzonetti explained. "But the Holy Father wanted to remain in the Vatican where he was also guaranteed uninterrupted and quality specialized medical assistance, 24 hours a day, with highly specialized personnel."

This also from Zenit.org:

Dignity in Life and Death

Debate Continues Over Euthanasia
By Father John Flynn, L.C.ROME, SEPT. 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The issue of euthanasia came to the forefront of news again recently, with the publication of a note Sept. 14 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The statement, written in reply to questions sent to the Vatican by U. S. bishops, stipulated that providing nutrition and liquids to people who are in what is often termed the vegetative state is, with rare exceptions, morally obligatory.

After the fierce debate over the 2005 Terri Schiavo case in Florida, news came from Arizona a few months ago about a man who unexpectedly woke up from a coma. Jesse Ramirez suffered brain injuries in a May 30 car crash, reported the Arizona Republic newspaper June 27.

On June 8 his wife, Rebecca, had asked his doctors to remove the tubes providing him with food and water. Jesse's parents objected and obtained a court order to reconnect the tubes. Subsequently, Jesse suddenly woke up from his coma.

Earlier this year another case was reported, from Denver, Colorado. Christa Lilly had been in coma since the mid-'80s in the wake of a heart attack and stroke. In the past, Lilly had woken up for brief periods, but until this year the last time was on Nov. 4, 2000, reported the Denver Post newspaper March 8.

According to the article, a neurologist from the University of Colorado Hospital, James Kelly, thinks that Lilly might have been in a "minimally conscious state" during these years, as opposed to a persistent vegetative state.

Killing machines

Euthanasia came up for debate in Germany recently, after the announcement by Roger Kusch, ex-justice minister in Hamburg, that he has designed a machine to help people commit suicide.

According to a report in the Sept. 9 edition of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, a simple push of a button injects a lethal solution into the terminally ill patient. German federal law prohibits helping someone commit suicide, but does not make illegal the actual act of suicide by the person involved. So with his machine Kusch hopes to avoid any legal difficulties in helping people die.

News of the invention drew immediate criticism, both from politicians and Archbishop Werner Thissen of Hamburg. Kusch is a candidate in Hamburg's October elections.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, protests by residents in a Zurich suburb have forced the assisted-suicide group Dignitas out of its premises, according to a July 13 report on the Web site of the German magazine Spiegel Online.

Since 1998, around 700 people have come to the Dignitas center to put an end to their lives. According to the article, the largest group of clients is from Germany, with Britain in second place.

Earlier, in June, the Swiss Senate called on the government to draft a law aimed at improving controls of organizations offering assisted suicide. The National Commission on Biomedical Ethics, a government advisory panel, has also recommended increased state supervision of organizations such as Dignitas.

July also saw a court in the Swiss city of Basel sentence Peter Baumann to three years in prison for having helped three people with psychological problems commit suicide, the agency Swissinfo reported July 6.

Baumann, a retired psychologist, helped the people die between January 2001 and January 2003. According to the court, Baumann acted out of egoistic motives, hoping to obtain public recognition of his methods. The judges, however, defined his conduct as "inhuman," and criticized his behavior as negligent.

Care, not death

During his trip to Austria, Benedict XVI raised the issue of euthanasia in his Sept. 7 speech to members of government and the diplomatic corps. Saying that the issue was of "great concern" to him, the Pope added that he feared tacit or explicit pressures on the elderly and ill to put an end to their lives.

"The proper response to end-of-life suffering is loving care and accompaniment on the journey toward death -- especially with the help of palliative care -- and not 'actively assisted death,'" the Pontiff stated. He also called for reforms in the social welfare and health systems in order to assist people who are terminally ill.

Some of Canada's bishops also addressed euthanasia earlier this year. In April the Ontario episcopal conference published a brochure titled "Going to the House of the Father: A Statement on the Dignity and Destiny of Human Life."

"It seems a cruel twist of history that societies with such great medical capabilities are turning against the disabled and sick -- with lethal results," the introduction stated.

The bishops insisted that protecting life is not just a Christian or religious argument, but a basic human right. "To permit the killing of the disabled, frail, sick or suffering, even if motivated by a misplaced compassion, requires a prior judgment that such lives are not worth living," they said. "No one forfeits the right to life because of illness or disability."

"Unless the right to life is secure, there can be no sure foundation for any human rights," they added.

The statement also explained that there is a difference between deliberately causing death and unduly prolonging life. We are not morally obliged, the bishops said, to prolong life if the means used are unduly burdensome or cause additional suffering and when there is little hope of recovery.

The bishops also recommended that Christians not neglect the soul and that they should draw comfort from the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection. Suffering and death for Christians, they continued, is not only a matter for medicine.

Disabled concerns

Another source of opposition to euthanasia comes from groups representing disabled people, as the Los Angeles Times reported Aug. 6. According to the article, one of the reasons why legislative proposals to allow medically assisted suicide have failed in California in the past few years is the hostility of the disabled's rights movement.

A combination of legalized euthanasia and pressure to cut increasing costs in the health care system could lead to the withdrawal of treatment for the disabled. The Los Angeles Times quoted a number of disabled people, active in groups who have fought against assisted-suicide proposals.

"The conditions I have are expensive to treat, and it would be a lot cheaper for the health care system to just let my health go to the point where I would want to die," said Los Angeles activist Laura Remson Mitchell, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, kidney disease and diabetes.

Legal leniency

Other concerns arise from the increasing reluctance by some courts to punish family members who help a sick relative commit suicide. The application of the law in Britain in recent years has been eroded to the point where courts are reluctant to punish those who say they help kill someone out of love, commented Robert Verkaik, law editor for the British newspaper the Independent in an article published May 8.

Among other examples, Verkaik noted a case from October 2006, when a man who helped his terminally ill wife to die was set free with just a nine-month suspended sentence.

Earlier, in March, a French court convicted a doctor for poisoning a terminally ill cancer patient, reported the Associated Press on March 15. In spite of his guilt, the tribunal in southwestern Perigueux sentenced Laurence Tramois to just a one-year suspended prison sentence for his role in the Aug. 25, 2003, death of Paulette Druais in the nearby town of Saint-Astier.

Misguided compassion seems destined to lead to the deaths of still more people as pressures to ease restrictions on assisted suicide continue.

I guess politics are run pretty much the same all over the world. Inject a lie and present it as the truth as in the Time article.

The Catholic Church has been consistant in it's stance on Abortion and Euthanasia. The election season is upon us, and I'm sure we will see an abundance more of this kind of "perhabs it's true" garbage ment to place doubt in the mind of the faithful.

..... lets pray that Catholic Christians and non-Catholic Christians (everyone actually) know the truths about these two important issue during the elections. If we don't get it right on these issues, we'll never work out heathcare, imagration, war, environment and others.

60's Hippy Movement Part II - The Sequel

(photo: Drudge Report)

Now I was rather young during the 60’s and being youthful (elementary school thru middle school) I have a rather a different memory of those times than I do now that I’m older and wiser (some what wiser).

Some of the music that I liked came from the Beatles (...what is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds mean?), Jimi Hendrix (…what does purple haze mean?), Dillon (…what does blowing in the wind mean?). Joni Mitchell was another favorite. Lyrics like “…pave paradise, put up a parking lot.” Or “Help me I think I’m falling, in love again…” were catchy and I didn’t really pay too much attention to the lyrics. The beat was cool toying the hidden messages was kind of fun as well.

Today, with a few decades of forming my thoughts, and opinions; of living through many mistakes as well as few good decisions, and developing my faith and realizing how the latter was most important in my life’s journey; I have a keener eye on what that 60’s era was all about.

Some of it was good, a lot bad and there was a whole lot of ciaos. I’ve been noticing (as well as others who I’ve talked to) the reemergence of some aspects to this era. I’ve noticed how some are actually looking forward to this chaotic time making a come back. They make their comparisons, some truthful, some totally off base.

60’s activist and musicians from that time seem to be making good on this perception to blow off the dusty anti-war signs and speeches. And while most of them are in their 60’s and older they seem to be trying to spread some of the anti-establishment, anti-religion sentiment that today’s youth and especially many (although not all) college students seem to be eating up.

I heard it today as Ahmadinaejad was cheered and applauded on the campus of Columbia University; the President of the University (“I’d invite Hitler…) with his monologue of statements and questions that didn’t get answered. The winning smile of a ruthless dictator, madman winning over the crowd with his transparent half truths and down right lies (“…there are no Homosexuals in Iran” and “women are treated with respect in our country”).

More applause….

Joni Mitchell has come out swinging in her new album in hopes of a musical come-back. She bashes the Catholic Church (…what a surprise). Hey, it’s safe public piñata to take a swipe at. Better that than upset the wonderful Islamic State, paradise according to President Ahmadinaejad.

(photo:Foxnews)

Last week, one of the young anti-war protesters made clear why she was protesting. “I read my history (of the 60’s) and I know what my rights are…and Pataeus is a traitor and he’s no General of ours…we’re our own general”.

Scary times.

Just some observations I’ve made that I thought I’d share….

Painting Treasures in Tehran Valult

(Photo: LATimes)

The LAtimes has this piece on painting treasures kept under lock and key in the basement of one of their museums.

TEHRAN -- Habibollah Sadeghi looks vaguely irritated to see me: not surprised, seeing as he has spent the last 10 days evading my phone calls, letters and polite appeals delivered through intermediaries. He knows I want to see his Picassos. He doesn't want to show them to me.

But Iranian hospitality being what it is, Sadeghi is forced to invite me into his office for tea. "I got your letter," he says. "Frankly, I was somewhat offended that you seem to think our paintings are like some big nuclear secret. They are not a secret at all."

"I know," I reply. "That's why I came to see them."We are not talking about the paintings on the wall at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which Sadeghi directs. Those are, at the moment, a stylish if bland collection of Iranian textile and costume design for the fashion-conscious and appropriately modest Iranian woman.

No, we're talking about the outlaw paintings in the basement, locked in the museum's vault. Not just the Picassos -- the Kandinskys, the Miros, the Warhols. The Monet, the Pissarro, the Toulouse-Lautrec, the Van Gogh. Possibly the best Jackson Pollock outside the U.S.

The article is pretty interesting. Too dangerous to show in public in Tehran... a victim of their own faith.

Dead Man Wakes up.....under Autopsy Knife

(Photo:abcNews.com- Carlos Camejo)

Wow!

I read this yesterday and it gave me the hebee-gebee's.

You've got to read this one...

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy. . .

Spinning the B16's actions

Breitbart.com is reporting that the Pope Benedict XVI not meeting with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was because of some "...divergence of view" between the Vatican and the White House about the "initiatives of the Bush Administration in the Middle East".

How about the real reason... He was on vacation.

Read the Article: Pope refuses to meet Rice

...and here: Pope declined meeting with Rice, Italian paper reports (cwn)

God and Evolution

Carl of InsightScoop has pointed out this piece in First Things Mag.
Thanks Carl you always have some great things to read...

God and Evolution
by Avery Cardinal Dulles

During the second half of the nineteenth century, it became common to speak of a war between science and religion. But over the course of the twentieth century, that hostility gradually subsided. Following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate established a commission to review and correct the condemnation of Galileo at his trial of 1633. In 1983 he held a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, at which he remarked that the experience of the Galileo case had led the Church “to a more mature attitude and a more accurate grasp of the authority proper to her,” enabling her better to distinguish between “essentials of the faith” and the “scientific systems of a given age.”

From September 21 to 26, 1987, the pope sponsored a week of study on science and religion at Castel Gandolfo. On June 1, 1988, reflecting on the results of his conference, he sent a positive and encouraging letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, steering a middle course between a separation and a fusion of the disciplines. He recommended a program of dialogue and interaction, in which science and religion would seek neither to supplant each other nor to ignore each other. They should search together for a more thorough understanding of one another’s competencies and limitations, and they should look especially for common ground. Science should not try to become religion, nor should religion seek to take the place of science. Science can purify religion from error and superstition, while religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each discipline should therefore retain its integrity and yet be open to the insights and discoveries of the other.

In a widely noticed message on evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, sent on October 22, 1996, John Paul II noted that, while there are several theories of evolution, the fact of the evolution of the human body from lower forms of life is “more than a hypothesis.” But human life, he insisted, was separated from all that is less than human by an “ontological difference.” The spiritual soul, said the pope, does not simply emerge from the forces of living matter nor is it a mere epiphenomenon of matter. Faith enables us to affirm that the human soul is immediately created by God.

Read More...

MoveOn. Org's Mark on Society

Suzanne Fields, columnist for the Washingtimes has a good take on the General Petraeus Slur. I know this is old news from last week, however this issue came to the forefront of my thoughts this weekend as I heard the news of the anti-war protesters in Washington on Sunday.

Now there is nothing wrong with anti-war protesters, we should all be anti- war, no one should root for war, even if one thinks this conflict in Iraq is a Just-War, one should be against war.

Anyways, the news reporter interviewed one of the protesters and among the questions he asked was, “Do you think General Petraeus is a traitor” or a question close to that in wording. The answer was of no surprise to me but one that still left a rather bad feeling about where we are in this war debate.

The answer to the question was something like ‘Petraeus is a liar…yes he is a traitor…he’s no General to us. We are our own general’

It appears that the MoveOn .Org ad has left its slanderous mark on society. Individuals are now quoting the ad as their stance on the character of General Petraeus. Now to be fair I don’t know if the General had given the opposite news if others on the opposing side would in turn have the same slanderous attitude, however in this instance that is not the case and this why I thought this particular article was worth highlighting…

Read on…..

When Decency Goes AWOL
By Suzanne Fields

When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.-- St. Augustine, "On Lying"
Lying is a moral issue difficult to be absolute about. Most of us accept a little white lie to spare a person's feelings. A roguish Southern politician I know dutifully compliments every baby held out by a beaming mother, but occasionally a child is thrust at him that's so plain he can't think of a single thing to compliment. So with a big smile he exclaims: "That's some baby!" The fib is acceptable because the mother is pleased. No harm is done. We accept a lie that spares a life or a lie that defends a life, including the speaker's own. But a slander is the most grievous sin of all.

In Dante's Inferno, deceivers are dispatched to the eighth circle of hell enduring cruel enough punishment, but traitors, "sowers of schism and of discord," are sent to the ninth circle and suffer even greater torment. That's why the attacks on the character and integrity of Gen. David Petraeus are little short of heinous. If the lie imperils the fighting men and women entrusted to his care, the general is a traitor to his country. The lie gives the edge to the enemy.

There is no greater lie than to falsely accuse a person of being a liar. The slander by MoveOn.org, the smearing machine of the Democratic lunatic left, rises to the highest office of the land, falsely accusing the president of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which was not a lie but a mistake based on the intelligence gathered by several nations of the coalition. A mistake is not a lie; an accusation of mistake has no power to destroy a reputation.

Lying in politics is not new, but what is new is the thundering silence from critics of policy who know better and who say nothing. In time truth generally wills out, but when media is instantaneously ubiquitous, a lie, in the words of a senator of the previous century, runs halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on. A lie distracts debate, inhibits rational discussion, curtails the free expression of ideas and reduces honest differences of opinion to vicious tirades. And it lives forever in the infinity of the Internet, even after exposed as a lie.

Lies poison the debate, which is exactly what Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, set out to do when he opened hearings to listen to Gen. Petraeus. He accused him, without evidence, of delivering a report ghost-written by the White House, and delivered a broadside: "We cannot take anything this administration says on Iraq at face value." Every one of his colleagues who refused to condemn the slander perpetuated in the MoveOn.org ad were co-conspirators in the lie. Lantos' slur was particularly sad because, as a survivor of the Holocaust and a onetime hero of the Hungarian resistance, he knows about such lies.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, infamously said. "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."

Those who let the slanders against Gen. Petraeus stand can't even take satisfaction from the general's judgment that thousands of troops can be brought home by next summer. If there is no confidence in his truthfulness on one issue, can he be trusted on another?

Pundits have compared the poisonous slander against Gen. Petraeus to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's smear of Gen. George C. Marshall in 1951. Where is that crusty old Boston lawyer Joseph Welch, who famously demanded of Joe McCarthy: "Sir, have you no decency?"

Decency is an old-fashioned virtue fusing manners and morals, and it often seems to have gone AWOL in the modern world. Decency once served as guide for both public and private behavior. In our free-for-all politics, when anything goes, where conflicts on Capitol Hill have long since lost all trace of civility, it's a virtue rarely recalled. That's too bad. We need an honest and robust debate about the war. But when every debating point is dismissed as a lie and every adversary is scorned as a liar, debate becomes impossible. Dante's eighth circle becomes a crowded place.

Suzanne Fields is a columnist with The Washington Times.

Shameful...

This is one of the most shameful ads I've seen in a newspaper.

This ad even before General Petraeus spoke. This General who has spent the majority of his life fighting for the freedoms that the originators of this ad, in my opinion, abuse.

In fact I don't believe those freedoms include dragging the good name of someone through the mud.

You may disagree with the message of the General or for that case, agree with the message (just to state what I believe), slander is not an option.

Shameful...

Moment of Silence - 911

I spent the morning watching the 911 memorial on TV. Sometimes I think we forget what happened.

We should never forget...

Prayer for those that lost their lives and for the families that survived them.

WCC +<><

Human Cows?

You know, it never ceases to amaze me what is deemed acceptable in today's world of ethics.

This story from London on creating stem cells from Human DNA and a Cow's egg.

Jimmy Akin has the low down on this with a nice graphic. These cells are 99% Human.

American Papist also covers the story.

Catholic World News weighs in.

Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer

With temperatures around 105 in my area (So. Cal) I was able to justify spending a little more time at my local air conditioned Borders store.

So with a Tazo Giant Peach Ice Tea, an over stuffed reading chair and a few choice selections from the shelves, I spent the afternoon in a cool air conditioned state.

I found this great book by Fr. Tomas Dubay, S.M. entitled 'Deep Conversion Deep Prayer', published by Ignatius Press.

The books' back cover says it all:

"In this new book, he responds to the call by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to help believers and all those interested in spirituality developing a deeper prayer life and union with God."

This book was so good I just couldn't put it down..... so I bought it.

Fr. Thomas Dubay is an expert on the teachings and writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and being the retreat master that he is, his explanation of the deeper prayer life and how to attain it is kept simple yet packed with insightful daily examples. It's an easy read and not in a over-my-head format.

Check it out...

It's only 122 pages long but It's one for the personal library

Apostolic Fathers

Just ordered my copy of this new DVD for Steve Ray.

We're doing a study on the Church Fathers in our Men's Group this Fall (via Mike Aquilina book "The Fathers of the Church"

B16 used his Wednesday Audience to share the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, a 4th century Early Church Father.

I'm looking forward to exploring these early teachers of the Church.

Dark Night of the Soul...

I've been reading the reaction to the Mother Teresa story in Time Magazine for a few days now. I've read both shock at this supposedly new revelation and I've also read everything from some down right rude comments and thoughts to some very compassionate and enlightening explanations about this mystery of faith described as the "dark night of the soul"

Most of us have felt this in ever so brief moments. I know I experienced a sliver of it at different times in my life. When I lost my job and woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering how I was going to support my family. Or when my wife was in the hospital and all kinds of thoughts ran through my mind. that feeling of "...where is God, please don't leave me now."

But those thoughts never lasted more than a few days and, thank God for his goodness, everything turned out just fine.

Now to have that feeling for the length of time Mother Teresa had it, and still have the strength to go forward with her work, well I'm just in awe.

To me, it makes me realize that knowing Jesus isn't just when I'm feeling happy and joyous. It's knowing that He's present when I'm not happy or joyous. That when all seems at their darkest, God is still there and I'm not abandoned, even if I don't feel it.

I don't know if that makes sense. When I contemplate on the sacrifice of our Lord and try to understand the pain he endured for me; maybe Mother Teresa came closer to understanding that than most of us. The time in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus in prayer; maybe Mother Teresa came to know that loneliness in prayer that Jesus felt.

While reading the various posts online I found Carl Olsen (InsightScoop) had a good posting so I recommend going there for some good insight.

UPDATE: Just found this on Jimmy Akin's site (The Arctic Night of the Soul).

The Anne Rice Vote

Not that I really care whom she votes for. Everyone will vote his/her way according to their personal beliefs as to what they see in the next President of the United States.

What I do care about is when one professes to be Christian (Catholic) and Pro-Life and use that as a justification to vote for a 100% Pro-Death (For Abortion Candidate).

... Just doesn't make sense to me. Some where the wires got crossed.

"I'm pro-life and that's why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton"... Boy I just don't know about that one.

Okay, I know about her resent conversion to Catholicism so I can kind of (... and I'm really trying hard here) to understand she might not know about the Catholic Churches ( and all Christians should) stand on Abortion, but to go public on your "Official Website" with this.

I have heard many anti-abortion statements made by people who are not Democrats, but many of these statements do not strike me as constructive or convincing. I feel we can stop the horror of abortion. But I do not feel it can be done by rolling back Roe vs. Wade, or packing the Supreme Court with judges committed to doing this. As a student of history, I do not think that Americans will give up the legal right to abortion. Should Roe vs Wade be rolled back, Americans will pass other laws to support abortion, or they will find ways to have abortions using new legal and medical terms.

And much as I am horrified by abortion, I am not sure -- as a student of history – that Americans should give up the right to abortion.

I am also not convinced that all of those advocating anti-abortion positions in the public sphere are necessarily practical or sincere. I have not heard convincing arguments put forth by anti-abortion politicians as to how Americans could be forced to give birth to children that Americans do not want to bear. And more to the point, I have not heard convincing arguments from these anti-abortion politicians as to how we can prevent the horror of abortion right now, given the social situations we have.


Again, I believe the Democratic Party is the party that is most likely to help Americans make a transition away from the abortion crisis that we face today. Its values and its programs --- on a whole variety of issues --- most clearly reflect my values. Hillary Clinton is the candidate whom I most admire.

Well.

Will someone close to her please sit down and have a nice charitable conversation?

China Bans Reincarnation....?

Here's a one I've never heard before...

"The Chinese Communist dictatorship has now reached into the afterlife – authorities have banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission."


I guess if you’re a buddhist monk and you've reincarned into a grasshopper, dog or cat and you didn't ask permission from the Chinese Govermenet first, you could find yourself in insect prison or worse..... the pound. :-)

READ MORE

Out with the Old and in with the New...

Looks like a couple of my daily blog visits have new blog locations:

Katerina of Evangelical Catholicism - NEW BLOG: Civilization of Love

Amy of Open Book - NEW BLOG: Charlotte was Both

Make a visit...

The Assumption

Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption of The Blessed Virgin Mary. A holy day of obligation.

I found this article at the Catholic Exchange website: The Spirit and the Assumption : Deificaton and Vatican II

(excerpt)
The Second Vatican Council only promulgated two dogmatic constitutions: Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) and Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church). Stating this is not meant to downplay the other constitutions and documents of the council. Rather, it is to highlight key opening passages found in a dogmatic context. Certain repeated passages at the start of these dogmatic constitutions beckon the faithful to renew their evangelical pronouncements and catechetical methods by incorporating a recovery of the biblical and patristic understanding of deification (in Greek: theosis) into the New Evangelization.

Byzantine (Greek Catholic and Orthodox) theology, spirituality, and catechetical tradition has always centered on the near-symmetry that "God became man so that man might become God" (cf. CCC#460). The pronouncement balances and encompasses the wider meaning of "salvation" and the purpose of the Incarnation as defended by Saint Athanasius against the Arians. In the East, catechetical reiteration upon "participation in the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4) and "becoming God" by grace was always standard fare. In the West, the symmetry was never lost but the doctrine seemingly waned catechetically from the time of the 14th Century until the 20th Century. Nevertheless, the heart of the matter was always maintained in Western mystical theology, especially in Saint John of the Cross, and known implicitly in Marian devotion and study. Liturgically, at the Offertory, we still hear, "By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

See ya at Mass...

Church Father's

I've been studying up on the Church Father's in preparation for our upcoming Men's Fellowship fall session at our parish.

I've been reading a book by Mike Aquilina I hope to use. "The Fathers of the Church - An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers"

The book is great, not too heady and easy to read... right up my ally. The Church Fathers bring so much depth and insight to how the early church formed. Boy, talk about standing on the shoulders of giants, those first eight centuries were so crucial.

With the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Jesus' promise to protect his church "and no evil shall prevail over it", these men of God kept the gospel true.

Another source that's come to my attention is the new video/study guide by Steve Ray " The Apostolic Fathers".

(Steve Ray's Blog)

It's still hot in my hand - right off the press, well, right out of the DVD burner! The Apostolic Fathers, Handing on the Faith is done and I am on my way to Ignatius Press to show it to them and get their final approval before we make copies for everyone else! Here is what the cover will look like.
I showed this DVD to family and friends last night. They all praised it as our best one yet. My daughter is a philosopher and her husband a theologian. They both said it was great. It is 93 minutes long, very fast-paced, full of information, humor, good music, interesting effects and bloody martyrdoms.
The Study Guide will be finished this week and I expect to have this DVD ready for delivery no later that October 1. I think it is our best documentary yet and my prayer and expectation is that it will make many Catholics confident and excited about the Catholic Church and it will also bring many others home. It will be a great gift for Protestants to help them understand their roots and why it is the Catholic Church that has the continuity all the way back to the Apostles. I am very anxious to get this one out there.

Update 8/4/07: Ignatius Press loved it! It is approved and going to captioning, printing and replication. I just finished writing the Study Guide - 28 pages!! Watch for this one some time in September 2007.

Sounds promising. Hope to pick this up when it comes out. The Book is good though. Pick up a copy. Over at amazon.com you can read an excerpt...

Prayers....

Thank you so much for your prayers for my friend who pasted away last week.

... I also took my Father in for surgery on Thrusday and on Friday my wife's grandfather pasted away as well.

... that's the reason for the spotty blogging.

thank you

WestCoastCatholic +<><

Sacraments!

I found this nifty sacraments chart over at Steve Ray's blog. It's pretty cool, check it out...

(LINK)

Bridge Tragedy

Prayer's for the victims of the Bridge tragedy...

...I ask for your prayers for a friend of mine that will pass away anytime now.

WCC +<><

Priest Arrested in China..

More persecution in China..

XIWANZI, China, JULY 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Four priests have been arrested and detained for refusing to join the Patriotic Association, the government body that oversees religious practice in the country.

Three of the priests were arrested July 24, at the home of Catholic faithful in the Ximeng region of Inner Mongolia, the Cardinal Kung Foundation reported.

Father Liang Aijun, 35, Father Wang Zhong, 41, and Father Gao Jinbao, 34, were hiding in order to avoid arrest, but were finally caught by eight plainclothes men.

During the initial phase of the arrest, the priests were locked up in a cage, prohibited from talking to anyone and refused water. They have now been transferred to an undisclosed location.

The fourth priest, Father Cui Tai, 50, of Shuangshu Village, Zhuolu County, was detained after a minor motorcycle accident in early July. He has been detained at the public security and religious bureau since the accident.

Father Cui, of the Diocese of Xuanhua, Hebei, has also refused to register with the Patriotic Association.

According to the Cardinal Kung Foundation, at least five bishops are in jail and others are under house arrest and surveillance. About 15 priests and an unknown number of laypeople are also jailed.

My parents use to live in a city 25 miles outside of Los Angeles up until 2 years ago. I lived their with them as I grew up from third grade until I got married.

As I would visit them I was often asked to go down to the corner store to refill their 5 gallon water container for the week.

There was this purified water store there run by an elderly North Korean man. A Christian man. It was his own business which he started and ran mostly by himself. He had these giant metal canisters set up behind this glass walled partition, with various pipes and hoses resembling some sort of purification system. How purified was the water, only God knows, but my parents swore their allegiance to this gentleman. The point seemed to them that his purified water was just as good if not better than the bottled water we could buy in the store. They could actually see the filtration system behind the window.

He would take your empty water container. Rinse it and clean it before refilling it with fresh water.

Parents are wise that way sometimes. What seemed to me as being a bit naive at that time seems all the wisdom today in light of just what was revealed by the "Aquafina" bottled water fiasco reported in the news last week.

"IT'S JUST TAP WATER!"

My parents to me are wiser than I gave them credit for..... boy I'm I ashamed.

Anyway, I think the interaction between them and the 'water man' was more about relationships than it was about purified water. That's a lesson they taught me too.

They befriended him and would often converse with him on many visits about his country back home and the family he still had there.

On one occasion as I picked up water for them, the elderly man and I managed a conversation, he in is broken English and I in my attempted sign language. Looking back I don't know why I tried to use sign language. It seems rather dumb now but he didn't let on how dumb I must have really looked. He taught me a lesson in kindness that day as well.

Anyway, he told me how he planned to get back to his country at the end of the month to visit his congregation.

Congregation?

It ends up he was a pastor of a local church in the area of his old home. He was going back to bring bibles and various gift. He was going back to pray with them. This is illegal in North Korea as you know.

He knew the dangers of sneaking back into North Korea and especially dangerous if caught with bibles in ones possession. He had a comfortable life he in the U.S. , however he was determined to go back with his gifts to visit his congregation. He was their pastor and he knew they were waiting for him.

I never found out how that elderly man made out with his journey. My parents have since moved out of that city and closer to me.

I don't know what prompted me to remember this story, but I felt compelled to share.

This persecution in China, Iraq, North Korea and elsewhere. Even in our own news media.

We must not be afraid to be that Light in World our Lord needs us to be.

Let us pray for those being persecuted for the faith..

May the Lord protect them and guide them

Iraqi Christians...

This article from The National Catholic Register.

Carrying the Cross in Iraq:
Christians in Iraq are today facing serious persecution, as detailed in a number of recent reports, including in this publication.

Predictably, some of these accounts are filed by sources that were against the war in Iraq, dislike President Bush at a level bordering on hatred, and are more than happy to revel in another example of where they believe the White House has failed in Iraq.

On the other hand, to be sure, many of the accounts come from fair-minded observers with no political agenda — such as this publication — not to mention the actual victims of the repression.
MORE...

It's easy to forget that there are Christians in Iraq. We may have the impression that everyone in Iraq is Muslim and that Muslims are just killing other Muslims.

Not true. The violence is also being directed toward our Christian brothers and sisters. How much of that violence happened before the war during Saddam's rule?

What will happen to them if we leave?