Mar 29, 2008

The Fire that both burns and saves

Spe Salvi Saved in Hope by Pope Benedict XVI

46...[Saint] Paul begins [1st Corinthans] by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.

SPLC poor on facts

Southern Poverty Law Center is Poor On Facts and Substance

Attempts to Equate Religious Conservatives with Phelps and Other Extremists

Washington, DC – The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) charged today that the Southern Poverty Law Center suffers from a “poverty of facts and substance” when it attempts to lump the Coalition and other responsible religious conservatives with extremists like Fred Phelps.

The center’s just-released report reports a surge in “hate group” membership, up by 48 percent since 2000 and mixes church groups and religious conservative organizations in with the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis.

“Extreme liberals traffic in slurs because they are strangers to the truth,” said TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon. “Because we oppose the homosexual agenda and other key elements of the liberal agenda they dodge a discussion of the issues and go right for the personal attacks and mudslinging.

“The only poverty these liberal lawyers know is a poverty of spirit and hope. They hate America.

“Ever since they were first proposed, TVC predicted that so-called ‘hate crime’ laws were designed to threaten Christians rather than protect anyone.

Today, any time someone quotes the Bible about homosexuality you can count on some liberal to call it a hate crime. Hate crime laws are a stick designed to intimidate and silence Christians. They protect no one.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center always has to pump up some new boogie man to justify its existence. If none is available at the moment, they look for the nearest Christian group and label it ‘racist,’ ‘bigoted’ or a ‘hate group.’

“These liberal lawyers owe many of the people on its list of hate groups an apology because all that their organizations have done is resist the imposition of anti-Christian regulations and statutes on free people.”

NOTE: the SPLC has also labeled MassResistance, a site linked to by me, as an Anti-Gay hate group. It seems if you believe in Traditional marriage, and are against the indoctrination of kids in public schools, they want to censor you with intimidation. They really hate those whom they label haters.

Something to Think about

Spe Salvi Saved in Hope
45...With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter?

Mar 24, 2008

latest email

Happy and Blessed Easter.
Thanks to all who prayed for 40 Days for Life. http://40daysforlife.com/blog/?p=93

Mar.26, Wed. 7:30PM St. Paul's continues Study of Pope Benedict's Encyclical Spe Salvi, “Saved in Hope” http://cathedralofsaintpaul.blogspot.com/
Mar.27,Th.7PM Bible Study Our Lady Good Counsel http://olgcya.blogspot.com

Mar.27,Thu. 7-8:30PM – The only political party with Pro-Life candidates meets at the MA College of Pharmacy, 19 Foster St., Worcester. Contact Bill McCarthy, 508-890-8855, mccarthy75@charter.net Includes Traditional Marriage Initiatives with Joanne Powell, Mass. Coalition for Marriage and Family and Pro-Life candidate Ronald Chernisky.
http://www.worcestercountyrepublicanclub.com
http://blog.worcestercountyrepublicanclub.com

Mar.29,Sat. Pro-Lifers: Come Aside and Be Refreshed. Sacred Heart in Webster. Coffee 9:30AM, Fr. Peter West from Priests for Life at 10AM and 1PM. Lunch provided, 4PM Mass with Bishop McManus. Come for all or part.

Mar.31, Mon. 7PM Rosary at Blessed Sacrament Phelan Center
Mar.31, Mon. 7PM Rosary for Unborn at St. Thomas Aquinas in Warren
Apr.2, Wed. 7:30PM St. Paul's Bible study group finishes their Study of Pope Benedict's Encyclical Spe Salvi, “Saved in Hope” http://cathedralofsaintpaul.blogspot.com/
Apr.3,Th.7PM Bible Study Our Lady Good Counsel http://olgcya.blogspot.com

Apr.4, First Friday 8PM Mass with Fr. Richard Jokubauskas, followed by all night Eucharistic Adoaration, ending with 8AM Saturday Mass with Fr. Michael Roy.

Apr.5-8,Sat-Tue. "Mission to the Family" Conference encompassing Theology on the Body.
Apr.6,Sun. 1-1:30PM Problem Pregnancy is looking for a PREGNANT MARRIED MOM who will be between 10-14wks pregnant, willing to help with our chastity program by having a live ultrasound. We do this to show the students that the baby is alive and kicking at this young age and that it is not a "BLOB OF TISSUE" as the abortion clinic tells the girls. Please call Problem Pregnancy and ask for Kathy, 508-856-0700.

Pope Expected to Hold Catholic Colleges Accountable on Pro-Abortion Speakers by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor March 13, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- When he visits the United States next month, Pope Benedict XVI is expected to hold Catholic colleges accountable that have invited pro-abortion speakers to campus. The pontiff has requested an audience with more than 200 top officials from Catholic universities and he is expected to make it clear they need to follow Church teachings.
http://www.lifenews.com/nat3799.html

Apr.12,Sat 8:30AM-4:30PM MCFL convention Bringing Massachusetts Back to Life, Sturbridge Host Hotel. Key Note DA Phill Kline who filed 107 indictments against Planned Parenthood $35 before 3/28. http://www.masscitizensforlige.org

Apr.19,Sat 6PM Cenacle at St. Paul's Cathedral – Visitation House fund raising Supper featuring Chris Slattery. Call Eve 508-798-0762 or email evelindquist@visitationhouse.org

HB 1722 has been sent to committee for study, which means is should be dead. Thanks to all who sent complaints to their representatives in Boston.

May 3, One Million Rosaries for Unborn Babies
http://www.saintmichaelthearchangelorganization.org/infosheet.php

Faithful Departed - The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture by Phil Lawler (Encounter Books):

Thanks and God Bless,
Jay G.
http://www.dtf-jayg.blogspot.com/

Prayer Needs;

Mar 23, 2008

Dieux le volt!

"What was life like for the Christians in Palestine in the years leading up to the Crusades? Let's see: In 1004, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021) turned violently against the faith of his Christian mother and uncles (two of whom were Patriarchs) and ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over the next ten years thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives. In 1009, al-Hakim commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed, along with several other churches (including the Church of the Resurrection). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rebuilt by the Byzantines in the seventh century after the Persians burned an earlier version, marks the traditional site of Christ’s burial. Al-Hakim piled on other humiliating decrees, culminating in the order that Christians and Jews accept Islam or leave his dominions.

He ultimately relaxed these decrees, and in 1027 the Byzantines were allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Nevertheless, Christians were in a precarious position and pilgrims remained under threat. In 1056, the Muslims expelled three hundred Christians from Jerusalem and forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the Seljuk Turks swept down from Central Asia, they enforced a new Islamic rigor, making life difficult for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). After they crushed the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 and took the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes prisoner, all of Asia Minor was open to them — and their advance was virtually unstoppable. In 1076, they conquered Syria; in 1077, Jerusalem. The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people."
from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer

..they count for nothing

When Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade at the Council of Claremont in 1095, he called for an organized defensive just action against the terrors of the Turks. Nowhere in any of Urban's speeches and letters is there a call to convert the Mohammedans.

The First Crusade was mainly a Gallic action. But several unorganized herds, confused mobs really, mostly Teutonic in origin, left immediately for Jerusalem in the Spring of 1096. "The name of Peter the Hermit, the Picard, of Walter the German knight, of Leisingen, of the Turbingen lord, and of Volkmar are best remembered among these incompetent robbers...their pillage and worse had made difficult the path the regular Crusaders were to follow...They massacred the Jews of the Rhine by way of send-off, storming or failing to storm the palaces of the bishops who would protect such victims, murdering in particular the Chief Rabbi of Mayence to prove their contempt for the special protection of him by the great lay rulers, the Emperor and the Duke of Lorraine.

Their anarchy filled the spring of '96. They trailed off in successive mobs eastward to die well-merited deaths at the hands of the outraged peasants of the Danube whom they despoiled, or at the hands of the Turks in the salty dust of Anatolia. In the military story of the Crusades they count for nothing."[2]


[2] The Crusades by Hilaire Belloc, TAN books, (c)1937, p.20-21

Mar 22, 2008

The Battle of Manzikurt, Aug.26, 1071

As Islam spread East, various Mongol/Hun/Turk barbarians from central Asia gave up their superstitious paganism for Monotheistic Mohammedanism. These fervent and fierce converts who became the muscle of the orthodox caliph in Bagdad as well as the rulers in Iran/Persia included Seljik the Turk. His great-grandson, Alp Arslan became ruler of the Seljik Turks in 1063, nine years after the formal split between Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics in 1054, and three years before the Norman conquest of England by William in 1066.

Alp Arslan led many attacks on the Byzantine Empire, ruled then by Romanus Diogenes amidst the political intrigue that "was mixed up with an 'intellectual' disease comparable to the movement called today [1930s] in Europe by the barbaric names of 'Pacifism' and 'Anti-Militarism.'"[1] Until this time, Byzantium stood well-rooted, a bastion of civilization and the Christian world. Unlike the Arab Mohammedans who controlled Jerusalem but deferred to the Christian West on matters of administration of Christian places in the Holy Land, the Seljik Turks brought only destruction.

Romanus Diogenes brought out about 60,000 men, including heavy cavalry against 100,000 dimunitive, horseback riding, arrow shooting Seljik Turks. Military strategy dictates that the well-disciplined coherent forces (the Greeks) will miss their highly mobile, loosely organized foes (the Turks) who can attack and retreat and regroup at will, UNLESS the foe can be pinned against some terrain where their retreat is cut off. This mistake of Romanus Diogenes was compounded by the traitorous and envious acts of his reserve commanders, who abandoned the field. A general massacre of Romanus' army ensued during the night. The defeat at Manzikurt left the Byzantine Empire open to invasion by the Turks. The Seljuk Turks in Jerusalem from 1071-1096 leave a legacy of bullying and worse of Christian pilgrims, far worse then the previous Arab host, as well as desecration of Christian places.

This victory and brutal behavior by the Seljuk Turks set the stage for the First Crusade - the one you never hear about in the Movies or in History Class. The Just One. Dieux le volt!


[1] The Crusades by Hilaire Belloc, TAN books, (c)1937, p.13

Mar 13, 2008

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho RIP

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho, who had been kidnapped by terrorists in Northern Iraq last week, was found dead in Mosul today. Initial reports were that He had been shot, but an autopsy could not confirm this.

May the Divine Mercy reamin always with us, and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Cosmology: Room for a Creator?

Last Saturday was the 8th annual Worcester Diocese Men's Conference at the DCU Center. Prof. Russell Stannard spoke on the subject that grew out of the question Stephen Hawking posed at the end of A Brief History of Time, "What place then for a creator?"

The Telegram covered the conference, and on the message postings a writer named Wingtips asked: "The article states that 'God fits in nicely, along with the big bang theory and Charles Darwin's evolutionary discourse.' I am curious about how this can be so when most who believe the bible to be the word of God and who accept Creationism (aka 'Intelligent Design') sneer at evolution and claim that the earth is somewhere around 6,000 years old, thus dismissing the big bang theory and the science of geology? One recent 'contributor' to these forums called the theory of evolution and geological evidence that the earth is hundreds of millions of years old 'twaddle.' Please explain how these can be reconciled."

I attempted a reply: "There is a vast range of thought by those who believe that God created the Universe, from strict Creationists who believe the Bible only has a literal interpretation and therefore the world is approximately 6000 years old, to those who believe that God spoke and the Universe was created (with a big bang about 14 Billions years ago) and that God specifically created Man (male and female He created them) at a specific point in time several to tens of thousands of years ago, to those (often classified as believers in Intelligent Design) who believe that God created the Universe with the Big Band and set in motion a series of events that lead to the formation of our Solar System, and life, and that God created evolution with the intent that Mankind would arise through evolution. All of the believers in this range of thought believe that God is not just Creator but Sustainer, that God is involved in our lives, indeed he sustains us. I myself would say that God keeps the electrons in their shells(orbits), because electron orbits contradict Newtonian Physics, and electrons should crash into the nucleus. And since the world is broken, all of these believers fight with each other. Just watch.

There are also others, like Albert Einstein, who believe that God created the Universe, but that God is not involved with us, is not God the Sustainer.

I believe the point of Dr. Stannard's talk could be summarized by former atheist astronomer Fred Hoyle's quote, 'a commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.'"

Mar 3, 2008

Presidential Preview

[Sen. Barack] Obama also has been more aggressive in framing his pro-abortion position previously than he was on Sunday. When he was in the Illinois Senate, for example, he repeatedly opposed a bill that would have defined as a "person" a baby who had survived an induced-labor abortion and was born alive.

In a 2001 Illinois Senate floor speech about that bill, he argued that to call a baby who survived an abortion a "person" would give it equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment and would give credibility to the argument that the same child inside its mother's womb was also a "person" and thus could not be aborted.