| May 16, 2009
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Babylon (Rome) has not been healed |
Jeremiah 51:9
We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed
Revelation 18:4
I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues;
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2 Corinthians 11: 3-4
But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.
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2 Corinthians 6:14-17
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.
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Jeremiah 7:18
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.
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| Shalom in Christ Jesus, |
Babylon cannot be healed!
For centuries, Bible
scholars have been trying to identify who Mystery Babylon is. Rather than pin
it down to one specific city, nation, or religion it sometimes appears that all
the elements of the original Babylon have been redistributed or a better
description would be, "compartmentalized" into certain kings, nations,
religions, groups and possibly even financial entities that forms the great
composite "end-times" beast-system. Nebuchadnezzar's vision in Daniel 2 has two
legs that come down squarely on two cities, Rome and modern day Istanbul, both
centers of false religions. We see Rome extending a hand to Islam and Islam
pretending to accept but he hates her and together they both turn their back on
true Christians and Israel.
Babylon cannot be healed!
Many have tried for a long time including Martin Luther and John Calvin,
however they failed and had to leave and all must leave Babylon when they learn
the truth, and that is the truth and the truth of God's word.
In the case of this alert, I
am applying this ugly truth to Roman Catholicism, which is a horrific mixture
of gospel truth and pagan lies. Throughout the scripture, God declares that He
hates a mixture and this mixture is indefensible Biblically. I know very well
as was born into and raised in this religion and 'came out of her' and so I am
not fooled by the garbage that passes off these days as "spirituality",
especially one of the few 'Christian' religions' the world approves of and that
reason... because it is of the world, going all the way back to the Tower of
Babel.
This alert looks at a number
of recent events involving Rome beginning with the Pope's trip to Israel and
the ensuing hypocrisy involving the Holocaust and the Palestinians as well as
past incidents.
Also note the return of
indulgences, that is nothing has changed to begin with as many have been
warning all along. However, some Evangelicals I have tried to reason with
concerning these issues who think this pope (and especially Pope John Paul II)
is just a "wonderful" guy (I guess all they see is the sun reflecting off the
wolf's bright white teeth) have refused to even look at the RC's own Catechism
because it's "hundreds of years old and therefore must not apply any longer".
This is the sort of non-thinking I have faced in recent years and is sadly a
sign of our times where the world and much of the church has been given over to
subjectivism.
Other articles include the
continued free-fall into sexual deviance based squarely on the direct rebellion
against God's Word by Rome by forbidding it's clergy to marry, and other
effects of following false doctrines.
It should be noted that much
of the perceived persecution of Jews by 'Christians' are really persecution of
Jews by Rome. This is because many of the worlds Christians are grouped
together with Rome and the Roman Church and it's sister the Orthodox Church as
well. This is unfortunate for this and many other reasons. However, I must
stress that although I very much hate the lies, mixture, and religion of Rome,
I love her people and desperately want to see them come to Jesus for salvation.
Please pray for those caught
up in the deception and share the good news with those you know trapped in her
clutches.
Also, keep in mind that
there is much more to the Babylon story than this little bit including a
possible involvement of literal Babylon in modern day Iraq as well as the
worlds monetary system that is based on principles that were also born in
ancient Mesopotamia.
There
is very much to this issue and I do not believe anyone has it all figured out
yet. As always, take all these things to The Lord in prayer, go to His Word,
and ask Him for wisdom and understanding in these last days.
May The Lord bless you and
keep you,
BE/\LERT!
Scott
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Pope in Bethlehem: A missed opportunity
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Aaron Klein argues Benedict overlooked murder, persecution of Christians
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - May 13, 2009
During Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Bethlehem today, the pontiff did not address rampant Muslim persecution of Christians and stood by as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas lied about the real reason behind local Christians fleeing.
In a major address, the pontiff strongly supported a Palestinian state. Perhaps he does not realize recent history demonstrates such a state may lead to increased persecution and endangerment of Palestinian Christians.
"Mr. President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders," Benedict said upon his arrival in Bethlehem, standing alongside Abbas.
In Bethlehem, where the Christian population has dropped from a majority to less than 20 percent, Benedict delivered a special message of solidarity to the 1.4 million Palestinians isolated in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"My heart goes out to the pilgrims from war-torn Gaza: I ask you to bring back to your families and your communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship and the suffering you have had to endure," the pope said in his address at an open-air Mass in Manger Square.
"Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted," he added.
By referencing the "war-torn Gaza" and necessary "rebuilding," the pope was apparently fingering Israel's recent 22-day confrontation with Hamas as the cause for "the suffering" Gazans "had to endure."
He said nothing, however, of the suffering of Gaza's 3,000 Christians since Hamas took over that territory in 2007. Benedict might well have decried the many bombings, shootings and other Islamist attacks against Gazan Christian establishments, the brutal murder of the territory's only Bible-store owner, or the regular intimidation and persecution of Christians there. His solidarity with Gazan Christians might have given them some much-needed strength.
Benedict, speaking from Bethlehem - the site of rampant Muslim persecution of Christians - did not once renounce the Islamic violence there, either. Instead, the pope stood beside Abbas as the Palestinian leader deceptively pointed to a concrete separation barrier in Bethlehem and blamed that barrier, as well as Israeli "occupation," for the plight of Christians.
"In this Holy Land, the occupation still continues building separation walls," Abbas said. "Instead of building the bridge that can link us, they are using the force of occupation to force Muslims and Christians to emigrate."
It should be respectfully pointed out to the pope that Abbas was dangerously fabricating history. Actually, it was Abbas' own Fatah party that is causing Christians to flee.
First, about the "wall." Bethlehem is not surrounded by any wall. Israel built a fence, in 2002, in the area where northern Bethlehem interfaces with Jerusalem. A tiny segment of that barrier, facing a major Israeli roadway, is a concrete wall that Israel says is meant to prevent gunmen from shooting at Israeli motorists.
The fence was constructed after the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or terror war, launched after the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat turned down an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state, instead returning to the Middle East to liberate Palestine with violence. Scores of deadly suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis were planned in Bethlehem and carried out by Bethlehem-area terrorists, including Abbas' Fatah organization.
At one point during the period of just 30 days in 2002, at least 14 shootings were perpetuated by Bethlehem cells of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorists, killing two Israelis and wounding six.
Many times Muslim gunmen in the Bethlehem area reportedly took positions in civilian homes in the hilltops of Christian Beit Jala, which straddles Bethlehem. Beit Jala afforded the terrorists a clear firing line at southern sections of Jerusalem and at a major Israeli highway down below, drawing Israeli military raids and the eventual building of the security barrier there.
Is this barrier causing Bethlehem's Christians to flee, as Abbas claimed today?
Simple demographic facts will answer this question. Israel built the barrier five years ago. But Bethlehem's Christian population started to drastically decline in 1995, the very year Arafat's Palestinian Authority took over the holy Christian city in line with the U.S.-backed Oslo Accords.
Bethlehem consisted of upwards of 80 percent Christians when Israel was founded in 1948, but since Arafat got his hands on it, the city's Christian population dove to its current 23 percent. And that statistic is considered generous since it includes the satellite towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. Some estimates place Bethlehem's actual Christian population as low as 12 percent, with hundreds of Christians leaving every year.
As soon as he took over Bethlehem, Arafat unilaterally fired the city's Christian politicians and replaced them with Muslim cronies. He appointed a Muslim governor, Muhammed Rashad A-Jabar and unilaterally disbanded Bethlehem's city council, which had nine Christians and two Muslims, reducing the number of Christians councilors to a 50-50 split.
Arafat then converted a Greek Orthodox monastery next to the Church of Nativity, the believed birthplace of Jesus, into his official Bethlehem residence.
Suddenly, after the Palestinians gained the territory, reports of Christian intimidation by Muslims began to surface, reports the pope would do well to note since they may foreshadow what is to come under a Palestinian state.
Christian leaders and residents in Bethlehem told me they face an atmosphere of regular hostility. They said Palestinian armed groups stir tension by holding militant demonstrations and marches in the streets. They spoke of instances in which Christian shopkeepers' stores were ransacked and Christian homes attacked.
In the past, they said, Palestinian gunmen fired at Israelis from Christian hilltop communities, drawing Israeli anti-terror raids to their towns. ...
Some Christian leaders said one of the most significant problems facing Christians in Bethlehem is the rampant confiscation of land by Muslim gangs.
"There are many cases where Christians have their land stolen by the [Muslim] mafia," said Samir Qumsiyeh, a Bethlehem Christian leader and owner of the Beit Sahour-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station.
"It is a regular phenomenon in Bethlehem. They go to a poor Christian person with a forged power of attorney document, then they say we have papers proving you're living on our land. If you confront them, many times the Christian is beaten. You can't do anything about it. The Christian loses, and he runs away," Qumsiyeh told me, speaking from his hilltop television station during an interview last year.
Qumsiyeh himself said he was targeted by Islamic gangs, his home firebombed after he returned from a trip abroad during which he gave public speeches outlining the plight of Bethlehem's Christian population.
One Christian Bethlehem resident told me her friend recently fled Bethlehem after being accused by Muslims of selling property to Jews, a crime punishable by death in some Palestinian cities. A good deal of the intimidation, she added, comes from gunmen associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization.
A February Jerusalem Post article cited the case of Faud and Georgette Lama, Christian residents of Bethlehem who said their land was stolen by local Muslims, but that when they tried to do something about it, Faud was beaten by gunmen.
One religious novelty-store owner I met recently told me Muslim gangs regularly deface Christian property.
"We are harassed, but you wouldn't know the truth. No one says anything publicly about the Muslims. This is why Christians are running away."
Meanwhile, Benedict's call for a Palestinian state would bring complete PA control over more territory in which Christians reside. Thus, his call, if implemented, may well result in even more Christian deaths, persecution and intimidation.
Original Report
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Live Teaching Engagements
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Pope Pleases PA Muslims, Disappoints Christians and Jews
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - May 15, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI wound up his grueling week-long "Bridge for Peace" Middle East tour Friday morning, leaving behind disappointed Christians and Jews but satisfied Muslims and Palestinian Authority leaders.
He denounced the Holocaust in strong terms in his farewell speech, apparently in reaction to criticism that his comments at the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier this week were too bland.
He recalled his visit to the Auschwitz death camp three years ago, "where so many Jews - mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends - were brutally exterminated under a godless regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred. That appalling chapter of history must never be forgotten."
The pope did not specifically refer to Germany or the Nazis, did not specifically condemn Holocaust deniers and did not make mention of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's request to the pontiff on Thursday that he condemn statements calling for the eradication of Israel.
Pope Benedict called on all nations to recognize that the "State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders," while adding the same plea for a "two-state solution."
President Shimon Peres, in his farewell remarks, stated, "Today's political and spiritual leaders face a profound challenge: how to divorce religion from terror [and] how to prevent terrorists from hijacking the religious conscience by cloaking an act of terrorism in the false guise of a religious mission."
The pope's visit was the second papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land in recent years, following by nine years Pope John Paul II's trip, which concluded several months before the outbreak of the great terror war known as the Oslo War, or the Second Intifada. Pope Paul VI visited in 1964.
Pope Benedict was not in a great hurry to visit Israel, but the Vatican pushed him into the trip, the Canadian National Post stated. The pope wanted to make his trip contingent on Israel's agreeing to turn over valuable property to the Vatican.
Israeli Christians, almost of them Arab, were astonished that the pope did not visit Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), which is a center of Christian tradition. This may have been because of security concerns: police revealed Friday morning that they had specific information of attempts to interrupt the papal entourage. The 3,000 faithful who attended an open-air mass in Jerusalem were outnumbered by security forces.
"Israeli security blamed the Arab organizers," according to the National Post. "Local Christians blamed Israeli security. The routine is well known, but the result looks the same - Christians feeling as if they are left holding the short end of the stick." The pope's visits to two holy shrines in Jerusalem were relatively short, but he spent much more time with rabbis and Muslim clerics.
Media Bias
Yad VaShem Holocaust Museum Director Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel and one of the most widely respected and popular rabbis ever to serve in that position, was openly critical of Benedict XVI. The German-born patriarch's speech at Yad VaShem was charged with emotion but omitted specific references to Germany or the Nazi movement, of which he was a member in his youth.
The Vatican immediately defended the Pope, saying that he was an involuntary member of a Nazi squad that he left in order to enter the priesthood. Foreign media several times this week repeated, and often condemned, criticism of the speech by rabbis as well as by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud).
However, the media, and the pope himself, played down or ignored a tirade by a Muslim cleric in the pope's presence Monday night. Sheikh Tayseer al-Tamimi, a senior religious leader in the Palestinian Authority, accused Israel of "murdering women and children [and] destroying mosques and Palestinian cities."
Media dutifully reported the outburst and then dropped the subject but continued to refer to rabbis' criticism of the pope. A rare exception was Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, a popular American journalist and author.
He commented in the Washington Post, "Without debating either the accuracy of his claims or the sincerity with which he [Tamimi] spoke, the Sheikh's behavior points to his lack of desire for peace or even reconciliation. His behavior points only to his desire to enlist the Pope in his own version of events.
"But more disturbing than the Sheikh's boorish behavior is that this is the man the Palestinian Authority would send to this important meeting. Is this the best that they can do? Is this really the message that they want to send?"
The Pope's Pro-PA Speech
Despite the outburst by the PA Muslim cleric, the pope rallied behind PA demands for a new Arab state in Judea and Samaria -- on the land that Jordan occupied from 1948 to 1967. During that time, Jordan prohibited Christians and Jews from entering holy sites.
He implicitly backed the PA demand that millions of foreign Arabs be allowed to immigrate to Israel based on their being descendants of approximately 700,000 Arabs who fled the Jewish state while the Arab world fought to annihilate it in 1948.
Pope Benedict also held 'interfaith' talks with Muslims, in a sharp reversal from Vatican statements last year that ruled out theological discussions between Muslims and Christians. He took off his shoes and entered the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount the morning after Sheikh Tamimi's harangue.
The pope stated, "One God is the infinite source of justice and mercy." This was a reference to the Common Word appeal by Muslim scholars for a Christian-Muslim dialogue based on the two shared principles of love of the Almighty and love of one's neighbors, according to religion blogger Tom Heneghan. However, the blogger's research noted one glaring flaw.
"After noticing the echo of the Common Word appeal in Benedict's address, I checked to see whether his Muslim hosts were signatories of the document," he wrote. "They weren't. In fact, the only Palestinian I could find who has signed it is Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, the head of the Islamic courts in the Palestinian territories," and the same cleric who railed out against Israel on Monday night.
Original Report
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Sheikh Tamimi attacks Israel, pope walks out
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THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Matthew Wagner - May 12, 2009
A leading Palestinian cleric commandeered an evening devoted to interfaith dialogue with Pope Benedict XVI on Monday to rant against Israel for "killing Gaza's children," "bulldozing Palestinian homes" and "destroying mosques."
In an impromptu speech, delivered in Arabic at the Notre Dame Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem, Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, chief Islamic judge in the Palestinian Authority, launched a 10-minute tirade against the State of Israel for confiscating Palestinians' land and carrying out war crimes against the residents of Gaza.
He also called for the immediate return of all Palestinian refugees, and called on Christians and Muslims to unite against Israel.
Tamimi invoked the name of Saladin, the Muslim sultan who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187. Tamimi said that unlike Israel, Saladin upheld the religious freedoms of all faiths.
Following the diatribe and before the meeting was officially over, the pope exited the premises. However, he shook Tamimi's hand before walking out.
The pope, speaking before Tamimi, discussed the importance of religion and truth for the advancement of humanity's mutual understanding.
He was visibly uncomfortable with the tone of Tamimi's discourse. Even those who did not understand his Arabic quickly understood that the Muslim cleric was giving a militant speech.
Several attempts were made by Latin Patriarch in the Holy Land Fouad Twal, a Palestinian, to politely stop Tamimi. But Tamimi would not be deterred from reading his written speech, apparently prepared in advance without the knowledge of the organizers.
When Tamimi finished, applause could be heard from a few dozen in an audience of a few hundred.
Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, responded to Tamimi's tirade by e-mail.
"The intervention of Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi was not previewed by the organizers of the interreligious meeting that took place at Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem.
"In a meeting dedicated for dialogue this intervention was a direct negation of what dialogue should be. We hope that such incident will not damage the mission of the Holy Father aiming at promoting peace and interreligious dialogue as he has clearly affirmed in many occasions in this pilgrimage.
"We hope also that interreligious dialogue in the Holy Land will not be damaged by this incident," Lombardi said.
Haifa Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, the only Jewish representative on the stage with the pope, attacked Tamimi afterwards for "cynically exploiting the media opportunity to incite and disparage the State of Israel."
Cohen, who is also the cochairman of a joint Chief Rabbinate-Holy See interreligious committee, said he would refuse to meet with Tamimi again. ...
The statement said that Israel condemned the comments, and that instead of furthering peace and dialogue, the sheikh chose to "sow division and hatred between Israel and the Palestinians, and Jews, Moslems and Christians."
Tamimi staged an identical verbal attack against Israel during Pope John Paul II's visit in March 2000. ...
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Palestinians use pope to wage propaganda
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Report accuses them of hijacking pontiff's visit for political gain
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - May 14, 2009
JERUSALEM - The Palestinian Authority exploited Pope Benedict XVI's visit here this week for political gain and to wage propaganda attacks against Israel, particularly regarding sovereignty over Jerusalem, according to a study released yesterday.
"The PA has exploited Benedict's visit to Israel ... especially the sensitive [issue] of sovereignty over Jerusalem. According to PA-affiliated spokesmen, Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem does not give it sovereignty or any other rights," states a report by the Terrorism and Information Center at Israel's Center for Special Studies.
Reuven Erlich, the center's director, said the purported exploitation by the PA extended to the pope's tour of Bethlehem yesterday.
"The pope was deliberately paraded in front of the security barrier to make a non-issue into an issue. Also [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas used his speech alongside the pope for pure propaganda purposes," said Erlich.
The center's study highlighted multiple aspects of Benedict's visit that were allegedly seized upon by the PA, including the pope's drive through eastern sections of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim for a state.
States the study: "[The PA] set up a media center alternative to that provided by the Israeli Government Press Office. They also criticized the hanging of Israeli flags along the routes taken by the pope to the eastern part of the city."
The study documented a public incident during a meeting between the pope and representatives of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths in which the Palestinian representative present interrupted the media-saturated event to deliver a rant against Israel.
Chief Palestinian Justice Taysir Tamimi screamed out in a rising voice that "Israel destroys Palestinian cities and establishes settlements on Palestinian land." ...
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Rabbi to pope: Go split Rome
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Pontiff slammed for comments in support of Palestinian state
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - May 12, 2009
JERUSALEM - If Pope Benedict XVI so fervently supports a Palestinian state - which would split sections of Israel - he also should divide Rome, charged the leader of a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis.
"I was shocked to hear that the first thing the pope had to say when he landed in Israel was that the Holy Land must be divided to make room for a Palestinian state," said Joseph Gerlitzky, rabbi of central Tel Aviv and chairman of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, which includes some of Israel's most prominent Jewish leaders.
"I suggest that he divide Rome. The Holy Land was promised to the Jewish people and absolutely no human being on this earth has a right to relinquish even one inch of this land," Gerlitzky stated.
Gerlitzky made the remarks at a speech today commemorating the Jewish festive day of Lag Ba'Omer, which is about the mid-way point between Passover and the day on which the Jews were said to have received the Torah.
In his opening comments after disembarking at Israel's international airport yesterday, Benedict called for the creation of a Palestinian state with the hope that Israelis and Palestinians "may live in peace in a homeland of their own within secure and internationally recognized borders."
Gerlitzky's comments were just a taste of the criticism directed at the pope from Israeli lawmakers and religious leaders here, some of whom were disappointed with segments of Benedict's closely scrutinized visit to the Holy Land. ...
Israeli newspapers today were filled with criticism.
"One would have expected the Vatican's cardinals to prepare a more intelligent text for their boss," one columnist, Tom Segev, wrote. ...
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Pontiff Joins Religious Leaders in Peace Appeal
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Calls for Protecting Children from Fanaticism and Violence
ZENIT NEWS AGENCY [Innovative Media] - May 14, 2009
NAZARETH - Benedict XVI met with religious leaders of various traditions in Galilee, assuring them of the Catholic Church's commitment to foster peace and work for the betterment of society.
Today at the Shrine of the Annunciation, as part of the Pope's daylong visit to Nazareth, an interreligious meeting gathered Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Druzian leaders for dialogue and prayer.
The Pontiff addressed the meeting participants, affirming that all religious traditions share the conviction that "peace itself is a gift from God." ...
The Holy Father noted, "Lasting peace flows from the recognition that the world is ultimately not our own, but rather the horizon within which we are invited to participate in God's love and cooperate in guiding the world and history under his inspiration." ...
Benedict XVI pointed out that Galilee is a land "known for its religious and ethnic diversity" and is a home to people "who know well the efforts required to live in harmonious coexistence."
He told the religious leaders, "Our different religious traditions have a powerful potential to promote a culture of peace, especially through teaching and preaching the deeper spiritual values of our common humanity."
Noble task
The Pope pointed out that the future of humanity will be shaped by "molding the hearts of the young."
"Christians readily join Jews, Muslims, Druze, and people of other religions," he affirmed, "in wishing to safeguard children from fanaticism and violence while preparing them to be builders of a better world."...
He gave an assurance of the Catholic Church's commitment to join with other religious traditions in the "noble undertaking" of bettering society and thus testifying "to the religious and spiritual values that help sustain public life." ...
Shared prayer
After this address, a Jewish representative led a moment of prayer shared by the representatives of the different religions, in which he sung: "Shalom! Salaam! Lord, grant us peace! Dona Nobis Pacem!"
The leaders on the stage joined hands amid applause from the audience.
Earlier today, in a Mass celebrated on Nazareth's Mount of Precipice with around 50,000 people, Benedict XVI acknowledged the "tensions in recent years" in that area, "which have harmed relations between its Christian and Muslim communities." ...
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40,000 join pope at Nazareth mass
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By JPost.com and AP - May 14, 2009
An estimated 40,000 people greeted Pope Benedict XVI on Mount Precipice in Nazareth before he presided over a mass on Thursday morning. ...
As the music subsided, the crowd began the familiar chants in Italian of "Benedetto" and "Viva il Papa."
In his address, the pope called on the city's Christians and Muslims to bridge the gaps between their communities. ...
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| Vatican, Arab League work to promote peace |
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Frances D'emilio - April 24, 2009
The Holy See and the Arab League have agreed to work together to promote peace and justice in the world, the Vatican said Friday, after a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the league's secretary-general.
In a separate meeting, Amr Moussa and the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, signed a memorandum of understanding between both sides, a Vatican statement said.
"During the cordial meetings, emphasis was placed on the importance of the agreement, which is intended to foster increased cooperation between the parties with a view to promoting peace and justice in the world. Particular importance was given to the role of intercultural and interreligious dialogue," the Vatican statement said.
The meetings allowed for an "exchange of view on the international situation, especially in the Middle East, and on the need to find a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the other conflicts which afflict the region," the Holy See said.
The pope travels to the Middle East next month on a Holy Land pilgrimage. Benedict will visit Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Benedict's envoy to Egypt, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, told Vatican Radio that besides appreciating the pope's interest for peace and development in the region, the Arab League "takes into account also the situation of Christians in Arab countries." ...
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Pope Deflects Netanyahu's Request to Denounce Iran
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - May 15, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI deflected Thursday a request by Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu that he denounce Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for anti-Semitic statements.
"I asked him as a moral figure to make his voice heard loudly and continuously against the declarations coming from Iran about their intentions to destroy the state of Israel," Netanyahu said in a television interview after meeting Pope Benedict. "It cannot be that at the start of the 21st century, a state arises that says it intends to destroy the Jewish state and that a very strong and aggressive voice isn't heard condemning this phenomenon," the Prime Minister elaborated.
"Blocking the Iranian danger will advance peace," he told the pope. "We want peace with the Palestinians, but one that brings security. We do not seek to rule a different people, but we also do not want an Iranian-backed terror state to develop beside us and endanger Israel," he explained to the visitor from the Vatican. ...
The pope and Mr. Netanyahu held a private 15-minute meeting in Nazareth and discussed "how to advance the terms of the peace process," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. Netanyahu stated that he and the pope had discussed "the historic process of reconciliation between Christianity and Judaism." ...
Read Full Report
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| Middle East Trip: News Briefs |
Yeshiva Tells Pope: Jerusalem Ours for Eternity
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - May 15, 2009
While some Israelis took to the streets in protest of Pope Benedict XVI's policies, the Beit Orot yeshiva in Jerusalem has found a creative way to let the pope know their stance on the Jewish people's rights. The yeshiva, located roughly 400 meters from the pope's hotel, has hung out large banners proclaiming Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem.
The 20-meter signs were strategically located to make them visible in photos and videos of the pope taken by foreign journalists near his temporary residence.
One banner reads, "Jerusalem - Eternal Capital of Israel and the Jewish People," while another reminds the pope of the Biblical verse proclaiming the Jews a chosen people. The yeshiva has also hung Israeli flags around its compound. ...
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Pope's expression of regret over Islam speech well received in Jordan
ASSOCIATED PRESS - May 9, 2009
The top religious adviser to Jordan's king thanked Pope Benedict XVI for expressing regret after a speech three years ago that many Muslims deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.
Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed spoke Saturday after giving the Pope a tour of the biggest and newest mosque in Jordan's capital, Amman.
It was the pontiff's second visit to a Muslim place of worship since becoming leader of the Roman Catholic Church in 2005. ...
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'Vatican to stop missionizing Jews'
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Abe Selig and JPost Staff - May 12, 2009
After meeting the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, and praying at the Western Wall on Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI arrived for a historic meeting with the chief rabbis at Heichal Shlomo, next to the capital's Great Synagogue, and agreed that the Catholic Church will cease all missionary activity among Jews.
In his welcoming address, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked the pope for his announcement, calling it an "historic agreement and, "for us, an immensely important message." ...
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Vatican plays down pope's Hitler Youth past
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - Reporting by Philip Pullella, Jeffrey Heller and Tom Heneghan, writing by Alastair Macdonald - May 12, 2009
JERUSALEM - The Vatican played down Pope Benedict's teenage membership of the Hitler Youth Tuesday after it was highlighted by Jewish critics of remarks he made about the Holocaust during his continuing visit to Israel.
An official spokesman withdrew an initial statement that the German-born pope had "never, never, never" been in the Hitler Youth after reporters pointed out that Benedict himself had said he was -- in a 1996 book on the then cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger.
Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, revised his statement to say that the pope had been signed up against his will and did not take an active part in the Nazi Youth movement.
"He was enrolled involuntarily into the Hitler Youth but he had no active participation," Lombardi said. "The Hitler Youth is not a significant experience in his life because he was not an active participant. It was just something that was done." ...
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Related:
Some truths about Palestinian Christians
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THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Seth J. Frantzman - May 12, 2009
Palestinian and other Arab Christians are a perennial political football, especially with Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land. Seen by some as the epitome of what happens to minorities under Islamist rule (when their shops are firebombed in Hamas-run Gaza), they are also continually used by the Western media to show how the Israeli security fence divides those in Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Even as their community shrinks they seem to get more and more attention. They were a centerpiece of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.
It is worthwhile therefore to consider a little about their recent history and dispel some of the myths that have grown up about them. A recent Time magazine article by Andrew Lee Butters notes that "the creation of Israel has been a disaster for Christians in the Middle East. Many of the Palestinian refugees... were Christians. The flood of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon helped spark a civil war between Muslims and Christians there... the ongoing occupation of the West Bank [by Israel] is strangling the life out of those Christian communities that are left."
The truth is quite different. There were roughly 150,000 Arab Christians in British mandatory Palestine on the eve of Israel's 1948 War of Independence. Some 75,685 fled the areas that became Israel, leaving 32,000 in Israel in 1949, mostly in Nazareth, some villages in the Galilee and in Haifa, Acre and Jaffa. Family reunification and repatriation programs brought their numbers to 39,000 by 1951. Most Christian refugees came from Jaffa, Haifa and West Jerusalem, and almost all of them fled before Israel declared independence in May 1948.
In fact Ben-Gurion ordered the IDF to give special protection to Nazareth when it was seized on July 16: "Those who penetrate into the city will fight valiantly against invaders and gangs wherever they resist; at the same time they will meticulously and conscientiously refrain from harming, despoiling or pillaging holy places." Christian villages in the Galilee, many of which are also shared with Druze, were given special protective treatment as well, and few were harmed by Israelis or abandoned by their Christian inhabitants.
CHRISTIANS ACTUALLY benefited demographically from the creation of Israel, rising from 1 in 7 of the Arab population to 1 in 3 by the 1950s. Rather than being "many" of the refugees, they formed a small minority and fared much better than their Muslim counterparts. Most were middle class, educated and spoke foreign languages. Because of this, prominent Palestinian Christians such as the families of Edward Said and John Sanunu (Ronald Reagan's chief of staff) easily assimilated in the West. Their being overwhelmingly urban - in 1947 115,000 lived in towns and cities - made them both vulnerable during the war and also made it easier to flee the fighting.
Christian communities suffered most in the West Bank, where Muslim refugees were cynically settled in their midst. Thus Ramallah was 90% Christian before the war and contained only 5,000 inhabitants, while Bethlehem was 80% Christian and had only 9,000 inhabitants. By 1967 there were 16,000 people in Bethlehem, of whom only 6,400 were Christian, and Ramallah is a large Muslim city today.
Lebanon was certainly harmed by the influx of Palestinian refugees, but its Christians were hurt primarily as a result of the 1970 Jordanian Civil War, after which Arafat's PLO created a state within a state in Lebanon and, in alliance with other Muslim militias, destabilized the country. Far from "strangling the life" out of Christian communities in the West Bank, where there are barely 50,000 Christians, access to Israel and its economy, education and medical facilities helped them. In contrast the Hamas victory in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal hasn't made their life better. Compared to Christians in the Palestinian territories, the ones in Israel have flourished even though demographically they have declined to 2% of the population.
THE OTHER SIDE of the story of Palestinian Christians is that they have had a long and hallowed role in Arab nationalism. Mathilda Moghannem, a Protestant Palestinian feminist, declared in January 1948 that "Christians will become Muslims to defeat Zionism."
George Habash, founder and leader of the communist terrorist PFLP, was a Christian, as was Yasser Arafat's wife. In the 1970s a Catholic Christian priest, Hilarion Carucci, was even convicted of running guns for the PLO.
Palestinian Christians suffer periodic bouts of intimidation and harassment. Their churches are spray-painted with graffiti, and while Christian women marry Muslim men and Palestinian law ensures their children must be raised Muslim, when a Christian man is rumored to date a Muslim women riots have ensued. ...
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How can one defend this practice Biblically?
Plenary Indulgence Offered for Year for Priests
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ZENIT NEWS AGENCY [Innovative Media] - May 12, 2009
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican is offering a plenary indulgence for all faithful on the occasion of the Year for Priests, which is set to begin June 19 and last one year.
The decree was made public today and signed by Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, respectively penitentiary major and regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary.
The Year for Priests marks the 150th anniversary of the death of St. Jean Marie Vianney, also knows as the Cur� de Ars.
The decree noted that Benedict XVI will preside at the opening liturgy June 19, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, "a day of priestly sanctification." He will celebrate vespers before the relics of the saint, brought to Rome for the occasion by the bishop of the French Diocese of Belley-Ars.
The Year will end in St. Peter's Square, in the presence of priests from all over the world "who will renew their faithfulness to Christ and their bonds of fraternity."
For priests, the plenary indulgence can be gained by praying lauds or vespers before the Blessed Sacrament exposed to public adoration or in the tabernacle. They must also "offer themselves with a ready and generous heart for the celebration of the sacraments, especially the sacrament of penance."
The plenary indulgence, which under current norms must be accompanied by sacramental confession, the Eucharist and praying for the intentions of the Pope, can also by applied to deceased priests.
Priests are granted a partial indulgence, also applicable to deceased priests, every time they "devotedly recite the prayers duly approved to lead a saintly life and to carry out the duties entrusted to them."
For the faithful, a plenary indulgence can be obtained on the opening and closing days of the Year for Priests, on the 150th anniversary of the death of St. Jean-Marie Vianney, on the first Thursday of the month, or on any other day established by the ordinaries of particular places for the good of the faithful.
To obtain the indulgence the faithful must attend Mass in an oratory or Church and offer prayers to "Jesus Christ, supreme and eternal Priest, for the priests of the Church, or perform any good work to sanctify and mould them to his heart."
The conditions for the faithful for earning a plenary indulgence are to have gone to confession and prayed for the intentions of the Pope.
The elderly, the sick, and all those who for any legitimate reason are unable to leave their homes may obtain the plenary indulgence if, with the intention of observing the usual three conditions as soon as they can, "on the days concerned, they pray for the sanctification of priests and offer their sickness and suffering to God through Mary, Queen of the Apostles."
A partial indulgence is offered to the faithful when they repeat five times the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be, or any other duly approved prayer "in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to ask that priests maintain purity and sanctity of life."
Original Report
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Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences:
For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Paul Vitello - February 9, 2009
The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: "Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences."
In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago - the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife - and reminding them of the church's clout in mitigating the wages of sin.
The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.
"Why are we bringing it back?" asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. "Because there is sin in the world."
Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI's recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council's reforms.
The indulgence is among the less noticed and less disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.
According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.
There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one - the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 - but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day. ...
The return of indulgences began with Pope John Paul II, who authorized bishops to offer them in 2000 as part of the celebration of the church's third millennium. But the offers have increased markedly under his successor, Pope Benedict, who has made plenary indulgences part of church anniversary celebrations nine times in the last three years. The current offer is tied to the yearlong celebration of St. Paul, which continues through June.
Dioceses in the United States have responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This year's offer has been energetically promoted in places like Washington, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, Okla. It appeared prominently on the Web site of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which announced that any Catholic could receive an indulgence at any of six churches on any day, or at dozens more on specific days, by fulfilling the basic requirements: going to confession, receiving holy communion, saying a prayer for the pope and achieving "complete detachment from any inclination to sin."
But in the adjacent Archdiocese of New York, indulgences are available at only one church, and the archdiocesan Web site makes no mention of them. (Cardinal Edward M. Egan "encourages all people to receive the blessings of indulgences," said his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, who said he was unaware that the offer was not on the Web site, but would soon have it posted.)
The indulgences, experts said, tend to be advertised more openly in dioceses where the bishop is more traditionalist, or in places with fewer tensions between liberal and conservative Catholics. ...
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Evangelical's and Catholic's Together
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Understand the Times with Roger Oakland - January 27, 2009
During the late 1990s, while evangelical Protestants and Catholics were making progress joining hands and disregarding differences (Chuck Colson's "Evangelicals & Catholics Together"1), I discovered strong evidence of an underlying Catholic agenda to entice all those who were not Catholic to become Catholic.
The pope's declaration at the Eucharistic Congress in June of 2000 and the Knights of Columbus booklet promoting the Eucharist as the heart of what Catholics mean by evangelization, reminded me of a statement made by Catholic priest Tom Forest in 1990. I had come across this quote while doing research for my book, New Wine and the Babylonian Vine. Forest speaking to an exclusively Catholic group, explained:
Our job is to make people as richly and as fully Christian as we can make them by bringing them into the Catholic Church. So evangelization is never fully successful, it's only partial, until the convert is made a member of Christ's body by being led into the [Catholic] church.
No, you don't just invite someone to become a Christian. You invite them to become Catholics ... Why would this be so important? First of all, there are seven sacraments, and the Catholic Church has all seven. On our altars we have the body of Christ; we drink the blood of Christ. Jesus is alive on our altars ... We become one with Christ in the Eucharist...
As Catholics we have Mary, and that Mom of ours, Queen of Paradise, is praying for us till she sees us in glory. As Catholics we have the papacy, a history of popes from Peter to John Paul II ... we have the rock upon which Christ did build His Church. Now as Catholics--now I love this one--we have purgatory. Thank God! I'm one of those people who would never get to the Beatific Vision without it. It's the only way to go....
So as Catholics ... our job is to use the remaining decade evangelizing everyone we can in the Catholic Church, into the body of Christ and into the third millennium of Catholic history.2
A clear picture was being painted--a missionary vision focusing on the Eucharist was a topic of extreme significance. (From Another Jesus, 2nd ed., pp. 29-30 - to understand the meaning of the Catholic Eucharist and the Pope's new evangelization plan, please read this important book.) ...
Read Full Report w/ Notes on the blog of Lighthouse Trails Research
Understand the Times
Also:
The Post-Neuhaus Future of Evangelicals and Catholics Together
Charles Colson says the convert to Catholicism helped break down the most important barrier.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY [CTI Publications] - Interview by Susan Wunderink - January 23, 2009
When Richard John Neuhaus died January 8, Prison Fellowship's Charles Colson didn't just lose a friend of 25 years. He also lost his partner in convening Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Since its first publication in 1994, "The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium," the group has issued other consensus statements on salvation, the relationship between Scripture and tradition, the communion of saints, and other issues. It is next set to issue a document on Mary, the Mother of Jesus. But can the movement continue without its chief Roman Catholic architect? Christianity Today international editor Susan Wunderink asked Colson, a Christianity Today columnist, what lies ahead. ...
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"The First Ever Catholic-Emergent Conference" Erroneously Advertised
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FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE The Blog of Lighthouse Trails Research - By Editors at Lighthouse Trails - March 5, 2009
On March 20-22, what is being called "the first-ever Catholic-Emergent conference" will take place. The name of the conference is The Emerging Church: Conversations, Convergence and Action. Spencer Burke, of the Ooze, calls it "one of the magical moments in this movement of God."1
The event is being erroneously advertised as a meeting of Catholic and Protestant leaders. Emergent Village states: "[T]his will be the first gathering to be planned and hosted by a team of Catholic and Protestant leaders working together for the good of the church at large."1 The Center for Action and Contemplation (web home of Catholic priest and contemplative Richard Rohr and host to the event) also identifies the non-Catholics as "Protestants" and "Evangelicals." However, the non-Catholic speakers for the conference would be more accurately described as emerging church leaders. The reason for this distinction is vital: Many of the leaders in the emerging church movement do not resonate with some of the most foundational doctrines of historical Protestantism and Evangelicalism (e.g., substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture as being the inspired word of God), thus it is erroneous for them to be called Protestant or Evangelical.
Speakers for the 2009 event, on the "emerging" side include Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, and Phyllis Tickle. Richard Rohr represents the Catholic side. Rohr's spirituality would be in the same camp as someone like Matthew Fox (author of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ) who believes in pantheism and panentheism. Rohr wrote the foreword to a 2007 book called How Big is Your God? by Jesuit priest (from India) Paul Coutinho. In Coutinho's book, he describes an interspiritual community where people of all religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity) worship the same God. ...
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Early Alarm for Church on Abusers in the Clergy
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But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.
- 1 Timothy 4:1-3
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Laurie Goodstein - April 2, 2009
The founder of a Roman Catholic religious order that ran retreat centers for troubled priests warned American bishops in forceful letters dating back to 1952 that pedophiles should be removed from the priesthood because they could not be cured.
The Rev. Gerald M. C. Fitzgerald, founder of the order, Servants of the Paraclete, delivered the same advice in person to Vatican officials in Rome in 1962 and to Pope Paul VI a year later, according to the letters, which were unsealed by a judge in the course of litigation against the church.
The documents contradict the most consistent defense given by bishops about the sexual abuse scandal: that they were unaware until recently that offenders could not be rehabilitated and returned to the ministry.
Father Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, even made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island where he planned to build an isolated retreat to sequester priests who were sexual predators. His letters show he was driven by a desire to save the church from scandal, and to save laypeople from being victimized. He wrote to dozens of bishops, saying that he had learned through experience that most of the abusers were unrepentant, manipulative and dangerous. He called them "vipers."
"We are amazed," Father Fitzgerald wrote to a bishop in 1957, "to find how often a man who would be behind bars if he were not a priest is entrusted with the cura animarum," meaning, the care of souls.
His collected letters and his story were reported this week by The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly. Father Fitzgerald's papers were unsealed by a judge in New Mexico in 2007 and are now becoming public in litigation, although some letters were public before now, said Helen Zukin, a lawyer with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, a firm in Los Angeles. The letters were authenticated in depositions with Father Fitzgerald's successors.
The scandals, which began in the 1980's and reached a peak in 2002, revealed that for decades bishops had taken priests with histories of sexual abuse and reassigned them to parishes and schools where they abused new victims.
It was not until 2002 that the American bishops, meeting in Dallas, wrote a charter requiring bishops to remove from ministry priests with credible accusations against them. ...
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U.S. Investigates Los Angeles Archdiocese Officials
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By John R. Emshwiller - January 29, 2009
LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities are investigating the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to see whether top church officials tried to cover up the sexual abuse of minors by priests, said a person familiar with the matter.
A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas and begun calling witnesses in the probe, which began late last year, said this person. The investigation is still in its early, fact-gathering stage, and it isn't known whether any criminal charges will result.
Thomas O'Brien, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, declined to comment on the investigation.
J. Michael Hennigan, a lawyer for the archdiocese, said in an email on behalf of church officials: "The Archdiocese has received requests from the U.S. Attorney's office for information about a number of individual priests, two of whom are deceased; none of whom remain in ministry. We have been and will continue to be fully cooperative with the investigation."
Cardinal Roger Mahony, who heads the archdiocese, the largest in the U.S., has been criticized by victims' groups for his past handling of sexual-abuse allegations against priests. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has been investigating allegations of such abuses for several years.
District Attorney Steve Cooley criticized the archdiocese in 2007 for its "institutional moral failure" to "supervise predatory priests." A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said their investigation is still open.
Catholic Church leaders said they have done much to address the priest sexual-abuse problem. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, set up a national review board in 2002 aimed at "preventing the sexual abuse of minors in the United States by persons in the service of the Church," according to the organization's Web site. Individual dioceses "have made significant strides to instill practices that will ensure the safety of children in the church," said the organization's Web site.
The district attorney's investigation began in 2002, around the same time that internal archdiocese emails about priests accused of abuse surfaced in the media.
Over the following two years, dozens of alleged victims stepped forward, with many filing lawsuits. They claimed the archdiocese shielded priests accused of molestation by keeping the allegations secret and allowing them to keep working, sometimes moving them from one parish to another.
In 2004, the archdiocese, which covers three Southern California counties containing more than four million Catholics, issued a report on the priest sex-abuse scandal. Cardinal Mahony apologized to victims and acknowledged "my own mistakes during my 18 years" as the archdiocese's leader.
In 2007, the Los Angeles archdiocese agreed to pay $660 million to 508 alleged victims, among the largest settlements in the U.S. priest scandal.
No senior Catholic Church officials have been criminally charged in the national scandal. But representatives of abuse victims alleged that senior officials helped perpetuate the crimes by ignoring or covering up evidence of misdeeds. They have argued that prosecuting senior church officials would help stop future abuse.
"Everything else has been tried with minimal impact except charging an individual bishop. That would have to an impact," says David Clohessy, national director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a nonprofit victims-advocacy group based in Chicago.
A spokeswoman for the Catholic bishops conference said her organization has seen no evidence that senior church officials were involved in criminal acts. "Enormous strides have been made" in recent years by the Catholic church in dealing with the priest-abuse problem, she said. More than 1.8 million clergy and other church personnel have been trained to create a safe environment for children and to prevent abuse, she said, and a similar number of background checks also have been done on clerics and other church workers.
The federal investigation in Los Angeles is the latest chapter in government's efforts to grapple with the priest-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church that have struck in waves over the past three decades.
Numerous individual priests have been criminally charged and convicted in abuse cases, and Catholic dioceses around the U.S. have agreed to settle civil lawsuits.
While most of the investigations have been done by state and local officials, federal investigators also have gotten involved at times. In 2005, the Archdiocese of Boston resolved a federal criminal investigation into whether the church officials had withheld information about an allegedly abusive priest. The archdiocese, which denied any criminal wrongdoing, agreed to new disclosure requirements and audits regarding its child-protection practices.
Write to John R. Emshwiller at john.emshwiller@wsj.com
Original Report
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Indian nun claims sex is rife within Catholic Church
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THE INDEPENDENT, UK [APN / INM / O'Reilly] - By Dean Nelson in New Delhi - February 20, 2009
An Indian nun has stunned the Catholic Church with a confessional autobiography claiming widespread sexual abuse and bullying within its cloisters.
Bookshops throughout India's Christian communities in Kerala have already sold out of Amen, the autobiography of Sister Jesme, who has alleged that priests and nuns not only broke their vows of celibacy with each other but regularly forced novices to have sex with them.
The Catholic Church in India is mired in a series of sexual controversies, and has only just begun to recover from the dismissal of a senior bishop who "adopted" an attractive 26-year-old female companion as his "daughter".
The book by the former nun reveals how as a young novice she was propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to "divine kisses". Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. "She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her," she claims.
When she was sent to Bangalore to stay with a priest known for his piety, he lectured her about the need for "physical love" and later assaulted her. ...
According to Sister Jesme, senior church officials twice tried to admit her into rehabilitation clinics and claimed she had mental problems after she complained about the scale of sexual abuse and the number of illicit affairs between nuns and priests.
Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. ....
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In Quiet Rebellion, Parishioners Keep Faith
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Abby Goodnough - January 5, 2009
SCITUATE, Mass. - There are sleeping bags in the sacristy at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church and reclining chairs in the vestibule, but no one here gets too relaxed. "Please be ever vigilant!" a sign by the door warns, and the parishioners who have occupied the church since it closed more than four years ago take it as seriously as a commandment.
St. Frances was among dozens of churches that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston decided to close and sell in 2004, not least because of financial turmoil made worse by the abuse scandal in the clergy. But while most churches closed without a fight, parishioners at St. Frances, a brick A-frame on a wooded hill, and at four other churches rebelled.
For 1,533 days, the group at St. Frances has taken turns guarding the building around the clock so that the archdiocese cannot lock them out and put it up for sale. They call it a vigil, but by now it is more of a lifestyle. ...
The archdiocese will not provide priests to most of the vigil churches, and it has removed most statues, altar cloths and sacred objects. It changed the locks at St. Frances in October 2004 but unwittingly left a fire door open, an error the parishioners call a miracle. ...
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Rome bows to Obama Protesters Arrested at Notre Dame |
FOX NEWS [News Corporation/Murdoch] - May 15, 2009 Protesters opposed to President Obama's address to the graduating class of Notre Dame were arrested Friday after they disobeyed rules about staging their demonstration and walked onto the university campus. Obama is also receiving an honorary law degree on Sunday, a decision that has upset abortion opponents who say the Catholic university is violating its own beliefs by honoring the president. Protesters were told they could protest all they want in the town of South Bend, Ind., but once they stepped onto Notre Dame property, they would be arrested. Former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes, and a Roman Catholic priest were among the 21 arrested. ... Read Full Report |
Iranian Official: Nobody Sees What Pope Does in Vatican
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - March 19, 2009
Ed note: The comments of Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi translated by MEMRI are clearly a mixture of truth and error, truth regarding the much of what the pope does and some error regarding WWII. However, it is clear he understands much of how the world works and how Worldview and history is shaped.
BE/\LERT!
A member of Iran's Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution has claimed that the Pope traveled overseas to compensate alleged victims of sexual attacks by alleged homosexual priests. The comments of Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi were made several months ago and translated for publication on Wednesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Azghadi, addressing viewers on Iranian television, charged that the pope traveled to the United States and Australia to compensate victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests.
The Iranian official's function is to help export the Islamic Revolution and act against Western influence and feminism.
He stated in one speech, "The corrupt Pope went on a tour in order to cover up the homosexuality of his priests. As you know, he made a tour from America to Australia, saying: 'We are sorry that our priests are pedophiles and homosexuals.' ... He paid three billion dollars in compensation to families whose little children were abused by priests in churches. But nobody sees what the pope himself does in the Vatican. It's not clear who should apologize for the pope's deeds."
In another speech, he took aim at the U.S., stating its values are "sex, violence and melancholy." We do not want to coexist with America. We want to combat America - not just America, but Zionism, England, and the leaders of global capitalism, who are exploiting the Muslims and the oppressed throughout the world," said Azghadi. ...
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False Signs & Wonders:
Our Lady of Fatima's Antidote to the Crisis
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ZENIT NEWS AGENCY [Innovative Media] - May 13, 2009
FATIMA, Portugal - The Virgin Mary keeps alive attitudes that combat the economic crisis and the lack of values in the world, says the cardinal who directs Caritas Internationalis.
Cardinal �scar Rodr�guez Maradiaga spoke today about the ongoing importance of the Fatima message, as the Church marks 92 years since the first of Our Lady's apparitions there. ...
Some 200,000 people gathered in the chill Monday evening at the sanctuary of Fatima, for a candlelight procession and a Mass also celebrated by the cardinal. It was followed by a prayer vigil that lasted until 7 a.m. today. ...
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Catholics ordered to keep quiet over Virgin visions
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THE INDEPENDENT, UK [APN / INM / O'Reilly] - By Jerome Taylor and Simon Caldwell - January 13, 2009
Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the apparitions until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles.
The Pope has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to draw up a new handbook to help bishops snuff out an explosion of bogus heavenly apparitions.
Benedict XVI plans to update the Vatican's current rules on investigating apparitions to help distinguish between true and false claims of visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, messages, stigmata (the appearances of the five wounds of Christ), weeping and bleeding statues and Eucharistic miracles.
Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, a respected Spanish Jesuit archbishop, has been placed in charge of drawing up the handbook, known as a "vademecum", which will update the current rules set in 1978.
According to Petrus, an Italian online magazine which leans towards conservative elements in the Vatican, anyone who claims to have seen an apparition will only be believed as long as they remain silent and do not court publicity over their claims. If they refuse to obey, this will be taken as a sign that their claims are false.
The visionaries will then be visited by a team of psychiatrists, either atheists or Catholics, to certify their mental health while theologians will assess the content of any heavenly messages to see if they contravene Church teachings.
If the visionary is considered credible they will ultimately be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful.
Guidelines for the approval of apparitions and revelations were last issued in 1978. They lay down that a diocesan bishop can "either on his own initiative or at the request of the faithful" choose to investigate an alleged apparition. He then submits a report to the Vatican for approval.
Original Report |
| Pope finally launches crackdown on world's largest illicit Catholic shrine and suspends 'dubious' priest |
LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Simon Caldwell - September 3, 2008
The Pope has begun a crackdown on the world's largest illicit Catholic shrine - by suspending the priest at the centre of claims that the Virgin Mary has appeared more than 40,000 times.
Benedict XVI has authorised 'severe cautionary and disciplinary measures' against Father Tomislav Vlasic, the former 'spiritual director' to six children who said Our Lady was appearing to them at Medjugorje in Bosnia.
The Franciscan priest has been suspended after he refused to cooperate into claims of scandalous sexual immorality 'aggravated by mystical motivations'.
He has also been accused of 'the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism and disobedience towards legitimately issued orders', and is suspected of heresy and schism.
Father Vlasic was a central figure in promoting the apparitions that allegedly began in 1981 and continue to this day.
In 1984 he boasted to Pope John Paul II that he was the one 'who through divine providence guides the seers of Medjugorje' and the visionaries even said that the Virgin had told them he was a living saint.
But the Bosnian cleric later took a back seat when it emerged that he had fathered a child with a nun called Sister Rufina, and that he refused to leave his order to marry her but instead begged her not to expose him. ...
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| Faith and ritual mix on Good Friday in Philippines |
REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - By Manny Mogato - April 10, 2009
CUTUD, ANGELES CITY - Dozens of Catholic devotees were nailed to crosses, scores more whipped their backs and others chanted the Passion of Jesus Christ as Filipinos mixed faith and gory ritual on Good Friday.
Frowned on by church authorities, the voluntary crucifixions in villages north of the capital Manila are one of the most extreme displays of religious devotion in Asia's largest Roman Catholic state.
Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said the church discourages such rituals because the penitents were expecting rewards for hurting themselves.
"We only encourage the faithfuls to fast, pray and confess their sins," Quitorio told Reuters. "We can't stop the practice. It is not necessary, but the church has no police power. These rituals challenge us to guide our flock on the true teachings of the Catholic church."
In the small village of Cutud in Angeles City in Pampanga, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Manila, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was re-enacted in a colorful street play with dozens of men carrying wooden crosses as heavy as 50 kg (110 pounds) and scores whipping their backs to a bloody pulp.
After walking barefoot for more than a kilometer around the village in scorching heat, the drama ended at a man-made hill where 11 men were nailed to crosses with three-inch nails driven into their hands and feet. ...
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Bishop Offers Apology for Holocaust Remarks
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Rachel Donadio - February 26, 2009
ROME - A bishop whose recent rehabilitation by Pope Benedict XVI provoked global outrage has apologized for remarks in which he denied the Holocaust, a Catholic news agency reported on Thursday.
The bishop, Richard Williamson, was one of four traditionalist bishops whose excommunications Pope Benedict revoked last month. In an interview broadcast on Swedish television several days before that, Bishop Williamson denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers and the scope of the Holocaust.
In a statement published by the Zenit news agency on Thursday, Bishop Williamson said, "I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them."
He added, "To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologize."
His statement did not address the content of his televised remarks, in which he said that no more than 300,000 people died in the Holocaust and none in gas chambers. In recent weeks, he has said in interviews that he needs more time to study documentation about the Holocaust.
In his statement on Thursday, he said that the views he expressed on Swedish television were those of "a nonhistorian," and that his perspective was formed "20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available, and rarely expressed in public since."
The impact of a German pope pardoning a Holocaust denier prompted widespread criticism, engulfing the Vatican in an international political crisis. Many local churches were sent scrambling to reassure parishioners worried about the Vatican's moral authority.
In an effort to control the damage in recent weeks, the pope has repeatedly condemned Holocaust denial. This month, in a rare instance of the Vatican's expanding on comments by the pope himself, the church said that Bishop Williamson must distance himself from his statements on the Holocaust or he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican also said that Benedict was not aware of Bishop Williamson's remarks when he decided to revoke his excommunication. ...
Some outside observers were not convinced by Bishop Williamson's statement. "He does everything except confront the central issue of this whole crisis," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Has he changed his mind about the Holocaust, and does he believe that the Holocaust is a historic fact?"
He said he did not think that Bishop Williamson should be accepted as a bishop in the Catholic Church until his apology included recognition of the Holocaust.
The Society of St. Pius X is an ultraconservative group founded in opposition to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. ...
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More Reports:
Call for pope to step down over Holocaust denier
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - February 2, 2009
Attacks on Pope Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denier escalated Monday, with one theologian calling on him to step down as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Criticism following the pope's January 24 announcement has been particularly cutting in Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime punishable with a jail sentence.
"If the pope wants to do some good for the Church, he should leave his job," eminent liberal Catholic theologian Hermann Haering told the German daily Tageszeitung.
"That would not be a scandal, a bishop has to relinquish his position at 75 years, a cardinal loses his rights at 80 years," he said. Pope Benedict is 81.
Meanwhile, a senior Vatican official acknowledged the Vatican administration may have made "management errors" with the decision to lift excommunication against four bishops, including Richard Williamson, whose comments sparked the controversy.
"I observe the debate with great concern. There were misunderstandings and management errors in the Curia," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is in charge of the Vatican department that deals with Jewish relations.
"The Pope wanted to open the debate because he wanted unity inside and outside," the German cardinal told Vatican Radio.
He also noted that "these bishops are still suspended."
An international uproar followed the decision to rehabilitate Williamson, an English bishop who has dismissed as "lies" historical evidence that six million Jews were gassed by the Nazis during World War II. Jews and Catholics alike have produced widespread criticism.
"A pardon that tastes of poison," wrote Franco Garelli, an expert in religious history, in Italy's daily La Stampa Monday. ...
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Pope, Expressing Solidarity With Jews, Reacts to Uproar Over a Holocaust Denier
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Rachel Donadio - January 28, 2009
ROME - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday addressed for the first time the uproar over his decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, expressing solidarity with Jews and strongly condemning Holocaust denial.
In his weekly audience with the public on Wednesday, Benedict said he "renewed with love" his "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews, whom he called "our brothers of the first covenant."
He added that he had repeatedly visited Auschwitz, the location of the "brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred," and said that the Holocaust "should be a warning for everyone against forgetting, denying or diminishing its significance." ...
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Angela Merkel rebukes Pope in Holocaust row
THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Richard Owen in Rome - February 4, 2009
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, became the first world leader yesterday to condemn Pope Benedict XVI over his rehabilitation of an ultra-conservative British bishop who denies that Jews died in the Nazi Holocaust.
Ms Merkel called on the German Pope to reject publicly the views of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied that six million Jews were gassed in Nazi concentration camps. In a highly unusual rebuke to the Pope she said that she did not believe there had been "sufficient" clarification.
"This should not be allowed to pass without consequences," Ms Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, said. "The Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial and that there must be positive relations with the Jewish community overall." ...
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German Jews Break Ties with Vatican Over Holocaust Denier
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - January 30, 2009
The Central Council of Jews in Germany was the latest in a march of national and international Jewish umbrella organizations to announce it would sever ties with the Church over the matter on Thursday.
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Council of Jews, told Germany's Rheinische Post newspaper in an interview published Thursday, "Under these conditions, there will certainly be no talks between myself and the Church for the time being - I stress the words 'for the time being.' "
Knobloch called for a general boycott against the Catholic Church in response to the removal of Bishop Williamson's excommunication. "I would like an outcry in the church against such actions from the pope," she urged. ...
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Original Story Here
Pope Removes Ban on British Holocaust Denier Bishop
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By David Shammah - January 26, 2009
In a move that many Jewish community officials said would cause relations between Jews and Catholics to further deteriorate, the Vatican on Saturday lifted an excommunication ban against Bishop Richard Williamson, one of four bishops who were banned in 1988 for taking on the office of bishop against the wishes of then-Pope John Paul II. ...
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Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin
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THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Richard Owen in Rome - February 11, 2009
The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.
A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin's theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. "In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God," said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a "higher power" for the complexities of life.
Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as "poor theology and poor science". Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a "cultural phenomenon", rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.
The conference is seen as a landmark in relations between faith and science. Three years ago advocates of Intelligent Design seized on the Pope's reference to an "intelligent project" as proof that he favoured their views.
Conceding that the Church had been hostile to Darwin because his theory appeared to conflict with the account of creation in Genesis, Archbishop Ravasi argued yesterday that biological evolution and the Christian view of Creation were complementary. ...
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Pope visits Africa's growing flock
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - By Scott Baldauf - March 18, 2009
JOHANNESBURG, south africa - As Pope Benedict XVI makes his first trip to Africa as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, he will confront a phenomenon that can only be called a mystery.
Why is it that Africa - a continent of bloody conflicts, forced migration, rampant health problems, and profound poverty where as many as 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger - contains some of the most exuberantly religious people on earth? How do Africans find so much hope amid the hopelessness?
Unlike Europe and much of the Western world, where church membership seems to be on a constant decline, Africa is a kind of religious Klondike, where mainstream Christian churches, evangelical churches, and Muslim faiths all appear to be growing with no end in sight. The Catholic Church alone has 185 million members in Africa - 20 percent of the continent's population. In countries, like Angola, with a Catholic colonial past, Catholics make up 60 percent of the population. ...
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Politics as Usual
A Genial Conservative for New York's Archdiocese |
NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Michael Powell - February 23, 2009
MILWAUKEE - For a few deeply unpleasant days, the Rev. David Cooper found himself in the crosshairs of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
It was 2003, and the priest had opined to a reporter that women should be ordained. Faraway bishops rumbled about censure. Then he picked up the telephone and heard the baritone of Milwaukee's archbishop, Timothy M. Dolan. Father Cooper immediately offered to resign.
No, no, the archbishop replied, we just need to repair the damage. "He was very pastoral and caring," Father Cooper recalled.
And how was it resolved? "Oh, I agreed to recant," he said. "He effectively silenced me."
Archbishop Dolan, whom Pope Benedict XVI named on Monday to lead the Archdiocese of New York, is a genial enforcer of Rome's ever more conservative writ, a Falstaffian fellow who talks of his love of the Brewers baseball team and Miller beer, and who takes obvious joy in donning his bishop's robes and pounding his bishop's staff as he tromps into church. When talking with parishioners, he places his hand on their shoulders, sidles in close and, out of the corner of his mouth, cracks a joke. ...
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