The Salt of Cadiz

Vatican Cardinal Burke: ‘We’re well on the way’ to Christian persecution in the U.S.

2011-12-02T09:33:00.002-05:00

BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
Mon Nov 28, 2011

VATICAN, November 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the highest ranking cardinals in the Vatican has said that the United States is “well on the way” to the persecution of Christians.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis and now the head of the Vatican’s highest court, told Catholic News Agency that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S., “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.”

Asked if the cardinal could even see American Catholics being arrested for their faith he replied, “I can see it happening, yes.”

In his remarks to several U.S. Bishops meeting with him Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI made similarly emphatic warnings about the U.S. The pope told the bishops that “the seriousness of the challenges which the Church in America, under your leadership, is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated.”

He added: “The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers.”

In the interview published today, Cardinal Burke declared that “it is a war” and “critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law.” Should they not, he warned, “secularization will in fact predominate and it will destroy us.”

Pope Benedict too urged the bishops of the United States to speak out in defense of morality. “The present moment can thus be seen, in positive terms, as a summons to exercise the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry by speaking out, humbly yet insistently, in defense of moral truth, and offering a word of hope, capable of opening hearts and minds to the truth that sets us free,” he said.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue told LifeSiteNews that Cardinal Burke’s remarks were accurate and not exaggerations. “Secularism has become militant,” he said. “Many elites are taking an aggressive secular approach. They have lined up against the Catholic Church and other Christian churches particularly for their stand on moral values.”

Donohue pointed to New York where gay ‘marriage’ was passed without debate or exemptions for clerks who objected to having to grant such licenses. He also noted the closing of Catholic adoption and foster care agencies since they were unable to comply with laws forcing homosexual adoptions.

“The real big one,” he added, “is the HHS of the Obama Administration.” The forcing of abortifacient and contraceptive coverage in private health care plans under penalty of fines was described by the Catholic League President as the Obama Administration “on a full court press to shove its values down the throats of the Catholic Church.”

See the full interview with Cardinal Burke with Catholic News Agency

Link to story: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-cardinal-burke-were-well-on-the-way-to-christian-persecution-in-the

ON BEAUTY AS A WAY TO GOD ~ Pope Benedict XVI

2011-09-01T09:20:00.001-04:00

Art "Is Like a Door Opened to the Infinite"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 31, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience.
* * *
Dear brothers and sisters,
On several occasions in recent months, I have recalled the need for every Christian to find time for God, for prayer, amidst our many daily activities.The Lord himself offers us many opportunities to remember Him. Today, I would like to consider briefly one of these channels that can lead us to God and also be helpful in our encounter with Him: It is the way of artistic expression, part of that "via pulchritudinis" -- "way of beauty" -- which I have spoken about on many occasions, and which modern man should recover in its most profound meaning.

Perhaps it has happened to you at one time or another -- before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of poetry or a piece of music -- to have experienced deep emotion, a sense of joy, to have perceived clearly, that is, that before you there stood not only matter -- a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, an ensemble of letters or a combination of sounds -- but something far greater, something that "speaks," something capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message, of elevating the soul.

A work of art is the fruit of the creative capacity of the human person who stands in wonder before the visible reality, who seeks to discover the depths of its meaning and to communicate it through the language of forms, colors and sounds. Art is capable of expressing, and of making visible, man's need to go beyond what he sees; it reveals his thirst and his search for the infinite. Indeed, it is like a door opened to the infinite, [opened] to a beauty and a truth beyond the every day. And a work of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, urging us upward.

But there are artistic expressions that are true roads to God, the supreme Beauty -- indeed, they are a help [to us] in growing in our relationship with Him in prayer. We are referring to works of art that are born of faith, and that express the faith. We see an example of this whenever we visit a Gothic cathedral: We are ravished by the vertical lines that reach heavenward and draw our gaze and our spirit upward, while at the same time, we feel small and yet yearn to be filled. … Or when we enter a Romanesque church: We are invited quite naturally to recollection and prayer. We perceive that hidden within these splendid edifices is the faith of generations. Or again, when we listen to a piece of sacred music that makes the chords of our heart resound, our soul expands and is helped in turning to God. I remember a concert performance of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach -- in Munich in Bavaria -- conducted by Leonard Bernstein. At the conclusion of the final selection, one of the Cantate, I felt -- not through reasoning, but in the depths of my heart -- that what I had just heard had spoken truth to me, truth about the supreme composer, and it moved me to give thanks to God. Seated next to me was the Lutheran bishop of Munich. I spontaneously said to him: "Whoever has listened to this understands that faith is true" -- and the beauty that irresistibly expresses the presence of God's truth.
But how many times, paintings or frescos also, which are the fruit of the artist's faith -- in their forms, in their colors, and in their light -- move us to turn our thoughts to God, and increase our desire to draw from the Fount of all beauty. The words of the great artist, Marc Chagall, remain profoundly true -- that for centuries, painters dipped their brushes in that colored alphabet, which is the Bible.

How many times, then, can artistic expression be for us an occasion that reminds us of God, that assists us in our prayer or even in the conversion of our heart! In 1886, the famous French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel entered the Basilica of Notre Dame in Paris and there felt the presence of God precisely in listening to the singing of the Magnificat during the Christmas Mass. He had not entered the church for reasons of faith; indeed, he entered looking for arguments against Christianity, but instead the grace of God changed his heart.

Dear friends, I invite you to rediscover the importance of this way for prayer, for our living relationship with God. Cities and countries throughout the world house treasures of art that express the faith and call us to a relationship with God. Therefore, may our visits to places of art be not only an occasion for cultural enrichment -- also this -- but may they become, above all, a moment of grace that moves us to strengthen our bond and our conversation with the Lord, [that moves us] to stop and contemplate -- in passing from the simple external reality to the deeper reality expressed -- the ray of beauty that strikes us, that "wounds" us in the intimate recesses of our heart and invites us to ascend to God.

I will end with a prayer from one of the Psalms, Psalm 27: "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple" (Verse 4). Let us hope that the Lord will help us to contemplate His beauty, both in nature as well as in works of art, so that we might be touched by the light of His face, and so also be light for our neighbor. Thank you.

[Translation by Diane Montagna]
[The Holy Father then greeted pilgrims in several languages. In English, he said:]
I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors here today, especially those from Scotland and Malta. Today we reflect on the need to draw near to God through the experience and appreciation of artistic beauty. Art is capable of making visible our need to go beyond what we see and it reveals our thirst for infinite beauty, for God. Dear friends, I invite you to be open to beauty and to allow it to move you to prayer and praise of the Lord. May Almighty God bless all of you!

© Copyright 2011 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
[In Italian, he said:]

Lastly, I address a word of cordial welcome to the Italian-speaking pilgrims. In particular, I greet the bishops who are friends of the Community of Sant'Edigio, the faithful of the various parishes, who are accompanied by their parish priests, and newlyweds. I hope that this meeting strengthens each of you in a renewed adherence to God, fount of light, of hope and of peace.
[After the prayer:]

Thank you, a good day to you all. Thank you!

[Translation by Diane Montagna]

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-33326?l=english

BUILDING A CHURCH IN EGYPT? IT MIGHT GET EASIER

2011-06-21T09:32:00.001-04:00

ZE11062008 - 2011-06-20
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-32900?l=english

New Government Proposal Could Ease Restrictions

ASSIUT, Egypt, JUNE 20, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The Coptic bishop of Assiut, Egypt, is optimistic about a new government proposal that, if passed, would make building a Church in Egypt a little easier.

Bishop Kyrillos Kamal William Samaan told Aid to the Church in Need that a new proposal to ease restrictions on church-building mark a crucial step forward for the 10 million Christians in Egypt, where tight restrictions on Church-building are frequently cited as one of the most serious forms of anti-Christian oppression.

Currently, the law states that permission to build a Church must be given by the president himself, and decisions over applications for new churches can take years, even decades.

According to the new law, put forward by the interim military regime that replaced President Hosni Mubarak’s government in February 2011, proposals would go before the regional governor for a decision within three months.

"If these proposals come into law," Bishop Samaan said, "it could mean that building churches will be almost on the same level as constructing mosques. It is a major step forward for the citizenship of Christians."

"What we are seeing here is one of the first fruits of the demonstrations back in January," he added. "When the Christians demonstrated, they asked for their rights and the first right they demanded was the construction of churches.
"Everybody knows that this has been a big problem for the Christians. Many moderate people have recognized it. In fact more than 50% of the problems Christians face will be resolved if we can make progress on this issue."

The bishop reported that permission to build two churches in his diocese in Upper Egypt came through before the January Revolution that ended with Mubarak’s departure from office. Applications for another three churches have been approved in the last few weeks, he added, leaving just one outstanding, with a decision expected soon.

Duke lacrosse accuser charged with murder

2011-04-19T12:36:00.002-04:00

And a few years after the reputations and lives of some college kids were ruined....

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Mike Baker, Associated Press – Tue Apr 19, 7:24 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110419/ap_on_re_us/us_duke_lacrosse_accuser

RALEIGH, N.C. – A murder charge against the woman who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her is but the latest problem for a woman friends say is still haunted by the stigma of the lacrosse case.

Crystal Mangum, 32, was indicted Monday on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny. She has been in jail since April 3, when police charged her with assault in the stabbing of her boyfriend Reginald Daye, 46. He died after nearly two weeks at a hospital.

An attorney for Mangum did not return a call seeking comment. The district attorney's office declined to discuss the case.

Friends said Mangum has never recovered from the stigma brought by the lacrosse case and has been involved in a string of questionable relationships in an attempt to provide stability for her children.

Mangum, who is black, falsely accused the white lacrosse players of raping her at a 2006 party for which she was hired to perform as a stripper. The case heightened long-standing tensions in Durham about race, class and the privileged status of college athletes.

The district attorney who championed Mangum's claims was later disbarred. North Carolina's attorney general eventually declared the players innocent of a "tragic rush to accuse."

Prosecutors declined to press charges for the false accusations, but Mangum's bizarre legal troubles continued.

Last year, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after setting a fire that nearly torched her home with her three children inside. In a videotaped police interrogation, she told officers she got into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time — not Daye — and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.

A federal judge recently ruled the three players accused of rape — Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans — can pursue a lawsuit against former District Attorney Mike Nifong and the police investigators who handled their case. The players have not sued Mangum.

Vincent Clark, a friend who co-authored Mangum's self-published memoir, said he hopes people don't rush to judgment — echoing one of the oft-cited lessons of the lacrosse case itself.

Clark said Mangum realizes she has mental health problems.

"I'm sad for her. I hope people realize how difficult it is being her," Clark said.

Even when Daye's nephew talked to a 911 dispatcher after the stabbing, he referenced the notoriety Mangum still carries.

"It's Crystal Mangum. THE Crystal Mangum," said the nephew, whose name was removed from a publicly-released version of the emergency call. "I told him she was trouble from the damn beginning."

Italy arrests six suspected Moroccan militants

2011-02-25T13:27:00.001-05:00

Justice and Charity movement activists arrested for planning to "punish" Pope Benedict XVI for converting a Muslim journalist to Catholicism.

Middle East Online - http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=44602

ROME - Italian police said Friday they had arrested six suspected Moroccan militants, with one report saying they wanted to "punish" Pope Benedict XVI for converting a Muslim journalist to Catholicism in 2008.

They "are accused of setting up a group that aimed to incite discrimination, racial and religious hatred, violence and jihad against Christians and Jews," police in the northern city of Brescia said in a statement.

Five of the Moroccans have been put under house arrest, while the sixth is in jail. The six are all suspected of belonging to an Islamist fundamentalist movement called Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Charity), the statement said.

ANSA news agency reported that a note had been found on one of the Moroccans that called for revenge against the pope for converting Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, a former columnist for Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Allam, who condemned Islam for being a "violent" and "conflictual" religion was baptised by the pope in March 2008. The comment against the pope was found in a notebook hidden inside a jacket, the report said.

The Truth about genocide by NY Senator Ruben Diaz

2011-02-24T11:22:00.001-05:00

by New York State Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz

February 23, 2011

This weekend I read an article online “Caution should be used when using the word 'genocide” which gives short shrift to blatant examples of genocide. The author left out reference to the history of abortion and the fact that Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was a proud racist and advocate of genocide by abortion.

Genocide is an ugly term used to define the evil, deliberate and systemic approach to the eradication of an ethnically, racially or religiously identifiable group. The UN’s definition of genocide includes “measures intended to prevent births within the group”.

49 percent of New York City’s Hispanic pregnancies are aborted every year. 59 percent of New York City’s Black pregnancies are aborted every year. These statistics are staggering, and it is nothing less than responsible to use the term genocide to define what is happening to our children’s lives.

Perhaps some prefer to reserve the term genocide for circumstances like the systematic slaughter of ethnic groups as seen in Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia’s killing fields. Nevertheless, the evil behind this term can also apply to the victims of the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments on Black men whose lives were eliminated without the use of bullets or machetes, but with the insidious use of medical practitioners. And it also applies to the institution of abortion in the US, fulfilling Margaret Sanger’s goal to reduce Blacks and other "unworthy" lives in this country.

As part of her “Negro Project” and other such programs, she hoped that “(S)uch a plan would ... reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry.”

While pro-abortion advocates will fall back on the changing legal definitions of what is a person, Margaret Sanger had no problem heading off the problem before these unborn Black and unborn “socially undesirable” lives started being born, started going to schools and started living in our communities.

Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is on record stating: "I can remember the days when Jesse Jackson was pro-life, and he went across the country calling abortion genocide….I personally believe that any leader, especially African-American leaders -- and I can say this because I'm African-American -- should be compelled to remember the days of slavery and to remember their responsibility toward the children we call the unborn. They are real people too, and they actually have civil rights."

Like the growing number of pro-life Democrats, I will not be silent about genocide against Hispanic and Black children in New York City or anywhere in the US. I welcome all to join us in this effort.

***

(Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz represents the 32nd Senatorial District in New York State, which covers a large section of the South Bronx. He serves as Chair of the New York State Senate Puerto Rican and Latino Caucus. He also continues to serve as an Advisory Board Member of Democrats for Life-New York.)

Pope: Ecumenical Pessimism Is Lack of Trust in God

2011-01-26T09:39:00.000-05:00

Says Holy Spirit's Power Shouldn't Be Underestimated

ROME, JAN. 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Though Christians are still far from the unity that Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper, resignation and pessimism are a lack of trust in the Holy Spirit's power, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope affirmed this today as he closed the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity with a service at St. Paul's Outside the Walls. Today's feast of the Conversion of St. Paul brought the prayer week to a close.

The Holy Father called the faithful to gratitude, since the ecumenical movement over the last few decades has "taken significant steps forward," such that there is "encouraging convergence and consent on varied points," as well as "mutual esteem and respect" and "concrete collaboration."

"We are well aware, however, that we are still far from that unity for which Christ prayed and which we find reflected in the portrait of the first community of Jerusalem," the Pontiff acknowledged. His reference to Jerusalem alluded to the theme for this year's week of prayer, which was prepared by the Church of Jerusalem and pointed to the community of the first Christians.

Benedict XVI affirmed that the unity Christ desires is not only at the level of structures, but also in the confession of one faith and the common celebration of worship.

"The search for the re-establishment of unity among divided Christians cannot therefore be reduced to a recognition of the reciprocal differences and to the obtaining of a peaceful coexistence," he said. "What we long for is that unity for which Christ himself prayed and which by its nature is manifested in the communion of the faith, of the sacraments, of the ministry.

"The path toward this unity must be seen as a moral imperative, response to a precise call of the Lord."

In this light, the Pope asserted, "the temptation must be overcome to resignation and pessimism, which is lack of trust in the power of the Holy Spirit."

"Our duty," he said, "is to continue passionately on the path toward this goal with a serious and rigorous dialogue to deepen the common theological, liturgical and spiritual patrimony; with reciprocal knowledge, with the ecumenical formation of the new generations and, above all, with conversion of heart and prayer."

--- --- ---

On ZENIT's Web page:

Full text: www.zenit.org/article-31567?l=english

Holy See Blasts China for "Intransigent Intolerance"

2010-12-18T23:29:00.001-05:00

Laments Forced Participation in National Church Meeting

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 17, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See today responded to China's decision to force participation in the 8th Assembly of Chinese Catholic Representatives, saying the convention manifested a "repressive attitude" and that China has a "persistent desire to control the most intimate area of citizens’ lives."

The Vatican communiqué expressed "profound sorrow" because of the Dec. 7-9 meeting, held in Beijing.

The assembly was convened to elect leaders for two organizations that direct China's national Catholic church, both without papal approval. One is the assembly of Chinese bishops; the other is the Patriotic Association, the group which approves all religious practice in the country. Catholics who do not abide by the Patriotic Association have formed the "underground" or "clandestine" Church, faithful to the Bishop of Rome.

Today's communiqué noted how participation in the Beijing assembly was "imposed on numerous bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful."

"The manner in which it was convoked and its unfolding manifest a repressive attitude with regard to the exercise of religious liberty, which it was hoped had been consigned to the past in present-day China," the Holy See statement said. "The persistent desire to control the most intimate area of citizens’ lives, namely their conscience, and to interfere in the internal life of the Catholic Church does no credit to China.

"On the contrary, it seems to be a sign of fear and weakness rather than of strength; of intransigent intolerance rather than of openness to freedom and to effective respect both of human dignity and of a correct distinction between the civil and religious spheres."

Responsible before God

The Holy See recalled how it had let it be known, primarily to the bishops, but also to the faithful, that they should not participate in the Beijing assembly.

"Each one of those who were present knows to what extent he or she is responsible before God and the Church," the communiqué stated. "The bishops in particular and the priests will also have to face the expectations of their respective communities, who look to their own pastor and have a right to receive from him sure guidance in the faith and in the moral life."

The Holy See affirmed its condemnation of the forced participation, calling it a "grave violation of [the participants'] human rights, particularly their freedom of religion and of conscience."

On the other hand, it expressed "deepest esteem for those who, in different ways, have borne witness to their faith with courage."

Steadfast and patient

The Church sent a word for the faithful "whose hearts are full of dismay and profound suffering, those who are wondering how it is possible that their own bishop or their own priests should have taken part in the assembly."

The Holy See encouraged them to "remain steadfast and patient in the faith; it invites them to take account of the pressures experienced by many of their pastors and to pray for them; it exhorts them to continue courageously supporting them in the face of the unjust impositions that they encounter in the exercise of their ministry."

Deplorable

The Holy See reiterated that neither the "so-called Episcopal Conference" nor the Patriotic Association have Church approval.

It explained: "In particular, the present College of Catholic Bishops of China cannot be recognized as an Episcopal Conference by the Apostolic See: the 'clandestine' bishops, those not recognized by the government but in communion with the Pope, are not part of it; it includes bishops who are still illegitimate, and it is governed by statutes that contain elements incompatible with Catholic doctrine. It is deeply deplorable that an illegitimate bishop has been appointed as its president."

"Furthermore, regarding the declared purpose to implement the principles of independence and autonomy, self-management and democratic administration of the Church, it should be remembered that this is incompatible with Catholic doctrine, which from the time of the ancient Creeds professes the Church to be 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic.' It is therefore lamentable also that a legitimate bishop has been appointed president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association."

Not the path

The Holy See lamented that this month's assembly "rendered more difficult the path of reconciliation between Catholics of the 'clandestine communities' and those of the 'official communities.'"

It said a "deep wound" was inflicted, not only upon the Church in China but also upon the universal Church.

The Holy See called China a "great and noble nation" but said it is following the wrong path.

And it deplored that the assembly as well as a recent episcopal ordination without papal mandate "have unilaterally damaged the dialogue and the climate of trust that had been established in its relations with the Government of the People’s Republic of China."

"The Holy See, while reaffirming its own wish to dialogue honestly, feels bound to state that unacceptable and hostile acts such as those just mentioned provoke among the faithful, both in China and elsewhere, a grave loss of the trust that is necessary for overcoming the difficulties and building a correct relationship with the Church, for the sake of the common good," the communiqué stated.

The Holy See statement concluded by reiterating an appeal to prayer: "In the light of what has happened, the Holy Father’s invitation -- addressed on Dec. 1, 2010, to all the Catholics of the world to pray for the Church in China which is going through a particularly difficult time -- remains pressing."

--- --- ---

On ZENIT's Web page:

Full text: www.zenit.org/article-31268?l=english

European Court: No Right to Abort

2010-12-17T11:27:00.001-05:00

Upholds Irish Constitution on Prohibiting Abortion

STRASBOURG, France, DEC. 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- In a case regarding a challenge to the Irish constitution, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that there is "no human right to abortion."

The Grand Chamber of the European court decided today on the A, B and C v. Ireland case, noting that the Irish constitutional prohibition of abortion does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

The challenge against Irish law was brought to the court last December by three women who allegedly were "forced" to go abroad for abortions, which they claim put their health in danger.

The court decided that the country's laws do not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, which stresses the "right to respect for private and family life."

The European Centre for Law and Justice, a third party in this case, lauded the court's further recognition of the "right to life of the unborn."

Grégor Puppinck, director of the center, explained to ZENIT the concern that the court would "recognize a right to abortion" as a "new right stemming from the always broader interpretation of article 8."

However, he added, "the court did not recognize such a right;" rather, it "recognized the right to life of the unborn as a legitimate right."

Puppinck clarified that "the court doesn't recognize the right to life of the unborn as an absolute right, but as a right that has to be balanced with other competing interests, such as the health of the mother or other social interests."

Balance of interests

Nonetheless, he added, "the states hold a broad margin of appreciation in the balancing of those competing interests, even if there is a vast pro-abortion consensus in European legislation."

"This is important: The broad pro-abortion consensus in European legislation doesn't create any new obligation, like in other socially and morally discussed issues," the director asserted.

He continued: "So, a state is free to provide a very high degree of protection to the right to life to the unborn children.

"The right to life to the unborn children can legitimately overcome other competing guaranteed rights.

"As such, there is no autonomous right to get an abortion based on the convention."

Puppinck noted, "I do not remember a previous case recognizing clearly an autonomous right to life to the unborn children."

The European Centre for Law and Justice noted in a communiqué that "the natural purpose and duty of the state to protect the life of its people; the people, consequently, hold the right to have their lives protected by the state."

"The reciprocity between people's rights and the duty of the state in the field of life and security is traditionally seen as the foundation of public society; moreover, it is the foundation of state authority and legitimacy," it affirmed.

"Therefore," the statement continued, "the authority to prescribe the protection of the right to life belongs originally to the state and is exercised within the framework of its sovereignty."

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-31255?l=english

Attack on Iraqi Cathedral Highlights Anti-Christian Violence

2010-11-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

ZE10110203 - 2010-11-02
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30820?l=english

US Bishops Say Their Country has Moral Obligation to Help

WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- At the conclusion of the recent Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishop, Benedict XVI said: "Peace is possible. Peace is urgent. Peace is the indispensible condition for a life of dignity for individuals and society."

Yet, on Sunday, the Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad was attacked, leaving 58 dead and 75 wounded. The event has shocked and horrified the people of Iraq, as well as Christians around the world.

At the synod, the Iraqi bishops told of the terrorism and violence Christians, as well as other minorities, are facing: kidnappings, bombings of churches, schools and other Christian properties, and threats to Christian businesses, as well as to their lives. Combined with the attack on the cathedral, these all point to the fact that there is a basic lack of security in the area.

Christians have been forced to leave their homes in search of safety, with little hope of returning to Iraq in the near future. According to a statement released by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the synod called for the international community to help Iraq "put an end to the consequences of a deadly war and to reestablish security, something which will protect all its citizens."

"Having invaded Iraq," said Cardinal George, "the U.S. government has a moral obligation not to abandon those Iraqis who cannot defend themselves." He adds, "We stand with the bishops, Church and people of Iraq in their urgent search for greater security, freedom and protection."

Prior to the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, the conference of bishops raised moral questions regarding the maneuver, and later called for a "responsible transition."

While they "welcome the end of U.S. led combat in Iraq," the bishops are calling on the U.S. government to follow through on its responsibility to work with the Iraqi government to put an end to the violence. The U.S. bishops agree with their Iraqi counterparts that the United States failed to help Iraqis develop definitive ways of protecting themselves and securing safe living conditions, especially for the most vulnerable, including Christians, refugees and other minority groups.

"We offer our payers and solidarity with the suffering Christians of Iraq at this terrible time of loss and horrific violence," said Cardinal George.

The Attraction to Sagrada Familia

2010-10-29T09:33:00.001-04:00

ZE10102810 - 2010-10-28
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30794?l=english

Interview With Cardinal Martínez Sistach of Barcelona

By Miriam Díez i Bosch

BARCELONA, Spain, OCT. 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Some four million people a year visit the Church of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) in Barcelona, and they come because not only of its beauty, but also because the theological richness of its symbols, says the archbishop of Barcelona.

Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach is the architect of the Pope's Nov. 7 visit to Barcelona, where he will consecrate the Holy Family Church and its altar, which was designed by Servant of God Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926). The Pontiff will also designate the church a basilica.

Some 7,000 people will pack the basilica for the ceremony -- which will be concelebrated by 1,100 priests -- while another 40,000 will be accommodated outside the church.

In this interview with ZENIT, Cardinal Martínez Sistach spells out the type of fruits he expects from this event, and he also explains what makes the Holy Family Church an attraction for believers and nonbelievers alike.

ZENIT: A papal visit always creates expectations and leaves a trail. You have said that you hope it will leave "many spiritual fruits." Do you expect a vocational flowering, a new evangelizing impulse, a greater involvement by Catholics in public life?

Cardinal Martínez Sistach: I think so. In general, the Pope's visits to countries give these fruits. The Pope is concerned about the whole universal Church and he will enrich us with an evangelizing and missionary dynamism.

Thanks to the Pope's presence and to his message, I would like us to discover more that our life belongs to God and he has entrusted it to us to realize the vocation he has given each one of us.

I would like vocations to increase to Christian marriage, to the priesthood, to consecrated life and to the missions. The Pope reiterates the specific vocation of the Christian laity, which consists in its involvement in public life. Here and in general throughout the world we need this presence to sow the values of the Gospel in the realities of the world. We expect many spiritual and pastoral fruits from this apostolic visit.

ZENIT: What do you think will attract Benedict XVI most about this consecration of the Holy Family Church?

Cardinal Martínez Sistach: Benedict XVI has understood -- in addition to appreciating the beauty of the Church of the Holy Family -- the theological conception of the church or temple that Antoni Gaudí had and which harmonizes with the Holy Father's.

This brilliant architect was inspired by Chapter 47 of the prophet Ezekiel and Chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation, projecting the Church of the Holy Family as the heavenly Jerusalem, the new and holy city come down from heaven.

The Pope has been attracted by the symbolic, biblical, liturgical and catechetical richness that Gaudí gave his project. And also the exemplary Christian life of this "architect of God" -- as he regarded himself -- whose cause of canonization is under way.

ZENIT: Is Catalonia doing its utmost in the preparations, or do you still hope for greater involvement?

Cardinal Martínez Sistach: Catalonia is going all out in the preparations. Gaudí's church is very rooted in the hearts of the people of Barcelona, but also of the Catalans.

All the Catalan dioceses will come for the celebration on Nov. 7, as they will also come from the rest of Spain. We have published more than 100,000 copies of seven catechesis of preparation for Benedict XVI's apostolic visit, three on the ecclesial service of Peter and his Successors, two on Antoni Gaudí, and two on the symbols of the church and the meaning of its dedication to God.

ZENIT: Gaudí attracts masses of tourists. Can he also bring about vocations?

Cardinal Martínez Sistach: Gaudí attracts the masses. Every year some three million people visit the inside of the church, and four million the outside.

Why do they come? They are attracted by the harmony, beauty and symbols. I think the church evangelizes. Gaudí wanted all his buildings to lead people to God. I think he has more than achieved this with the Church of the Holy Family. There have been conversions, and we know some of them.

The building of the church increasingly converted the architect himself, until he gave himself completely to this work, refusing proposals for new buildings offered to him in Paris and New York.

Another example is that of Japanese sculptor Etsuro Soto who, working on the church, received the gift of faith for himself and his wife. We know other examples of conversion, but no doubt they happened because a visit to the church helps to reflect on creation and salvation as works of God.

As Benedict XVI said to artists gathered in November of last year in the Sistine Chapel, beauty is a path to the transcendent, to the ultimate mystery, to God. The Pope wished to express and renew the Church's friendship with the world of art, a consolidated friendship given that Christianity has always understood the value of the arts and has used its manifold languages to communicate her unchanging message of salvation.

ZENIT: What is the uniqueness of the Holy Family Church?

Cardinal Martínez Sistach: Its peculiarity is its originality. Being planned in the year 1883, this church is different, new, does not repeat an old style. But the principal peculiarity is the symbolic richness that Gaudí projected, fruit of knowledge and esteem for the liturgy, as on his night table he had the book "L'Annee Liturgique" of Dom Prosper Gueranger, abbot of Solesmes. All the liturgical, biblical and catechetical contents have been thought out.

This church, which the Holy Father will declare a basilica on Nov., has the peculiarity of being visited every year by millions of people from all the continents -- believers and nonbelievers. It is like a "courtyard of the Gentiles" for very many people who are still not in the Church, but for whom the symbols and beauty of this magnificent church gives them something to think about.

Bishop Laffitte's Address to Couple to Couple League

2010-09-27T10:13:00.001-04:00

"The Church Becomes the Basis of Our Hope"

GREEN LAKE, Wisconsin, SEPT. 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of an address given by Bishop Jean Laffitte, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, at a Couple to Couple League Convention. The convention was held in August in Wisconsin.

* * *

Introduction

It is apt and proper to acknowledge with gratitude at the beginning of this talk the great initiative of the Couple to Couple League to make its members more aware of the duties of the Pontifical Council for the Family. The council believes that this effort certainly opens many ways for further collaborative effort to uphold the grandeur of Conjugal love and the family. Effectively, marriage and the Family constitute one of the most precious of human values. Gaudium et Spes says the well being of the individual person and of the human society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and the family. Nevertheless, if we are to honestly ask ourselves whether such excellence or importance is reflected with equal brilliance in our contemporary society, such is a big point for reflection for all of us.

I would like to proceed then with this talk elaborating the context where we all find ourselves in thus further understanding the immensity of the Church's concerns. To do this is to try to outline the actual challenges that confront marriage and the family today, its implications and effects. Afterwards, we look into what the reflection of the Church has been in this field at the theological, anthropological, ethical and spiritual level. This eventually leads us to grasp the importance of the mission of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

I-Today's Challenges to Marriage and the Family

It is commonplace to qualify Western society of today as permissive. Effectively, in the matters of social mores, sexuality, and marriage, we are well within a permissive society where subjective or partial values are exalted, values that in reality are not experienced at an ethical level. Among them, absolute individual liberty, well-being under its hedonistic form (the search for the greatest possible pleasure), or still the casting off of moral constraints; within the sphere of the affective life, only immediate emotion, affective well-being and physical desire are so considered to be constitutive of the nature of love. A strict separation is worked between liberty and nature. Eventually, this contributes to the destruction of the structural and foundational link between marriage and family.

a) A systematic deconstruction of the structures of Marriage and Family

We see today a total separation between the traditional and religious conception of Marriage and the so called new family model proposed by the post modern culture. Traditionally, there was no difference between what the civil authorities and the religious families understood about the concept of marriage. Till 30 or 40 years ago, when a man and a woman would come to the Mayor to be civilly married, they were asked to take the same vows a Christian couple does in a Christian marriage. They promised each other fidelity, and manifested their openness to welcome eventual fruits of their love; and naturally marriage was fundamentally understood as the union between a man and a woman. The only difference was the Christian education the Christian couple commit had to give to their Children.

It is important to note that the Church never changed in this. Still today she requires the same from the engaged couple who come to the parish to receive the sacrament of Marriage. The Church with all the due preparations assures the spouses of her support and acceptance as a new couple in the Christian community and helps them in building a better family. In all this, the Church remains perfectly relevant and consistent. She has always recognized the fact that the family is founded upon a contractual commitment between a man and a woman called marriage, an institution inscribed in the nature of man: a fact that even the entire body of legislations accepted until several decades ago.

On the contrary we can say that a systematic deconstruction of the institution of Marriage and Family is at the fore; to wit, in some countries, marriage does not mean anymore the union between man and a woman but "between persons". How is this possible? Simply by denying the existence of two different ways of being human, masculine and feminine; and sexual difference is reduced to a mere question of choice and culture. It is exactly what the ideology of the gender proposes. But where does this bring us?

Consequently, any disregard of the natural law boils down to the relativization of the public good and the foundations of human life held for centuries. Let us look into the so called "new models of family"; the extension of the term "family" and of the term "marriage" to all kinds of social realities: reconstructed families, free unions (with no other founding act other than the sole wish of the partners), homosexual unions, etc.. What underlies all these? That living together, is founded no longer on an objective good of a communal scope (an objective good of the society), but only upon the individual desires of persons; desires which invoke the principle of equality, meant not in the classical sense of the term but in its ideological sense. The genuine principle of equality between men is an equality of dignity that, when it is recognized by the law, means that the citizens are equal in fact by right. The rights that are recognized of a family founded upon marriage are, normally, a recognition that the family unit is a good for society, this unit favors a progressive socialization of future adult citizens by means of the education of children, and finally the family participates in the stability of the social bond. Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948, affirms that the family is the fundamental core of society and of the State and, as such, it must be recognized and protected. This allows us to affirm that, if the family has so great an importance for society and for the State, it is because it fulfills a public and general interest.

b) Banalization of Human Sexuality

Corrollary to the first problem we have just mentioned, the systematic deconstruction of the structures of marriage and family, is the obscuring of the true meaning of human sexuality. Marriage has always been esteemed as the only and proper locus for the exercise of man's sexual faculty. This has been put into question by present realities. Human sexuality is perceived nowadays only from the perspective of personal gratification and feeling, therefore, forgetting the intrinsic value of conjugal act as intrinsically aimed at transmitting life; at the moment sexuality is emptied of its social significance, from the transmission of life within the stable relation between man and woman, what you have is a mere revindication of pleasure. Thus, it results to contraceptive sex and the practice of homosexuality for the sake of seeking a maximum sexual satisfaction. In this manner, sexuality ceases to be a language of total self-giving and the importance of the complimentarity of the sexes is lost.

Furthermore, if sexuality is exercized only for the sake of pleasure, then marriage and family become just a private locus where the individual continues to find gratification for his sexual and affective aspirations. And all the attempts to extend the meaning of marriage and family to whatever kind of social realities that resemble marriage and the family are connected to this: same sex unions, de facto unions etc.. Unfortunately, the State begins to consider it as an exercise of one's right; afterwards, it enacts laws to guarantee it as liberty of private choice. In effect, the individual is considered to be possessing "the right" to form a family, according to the so-called "new models" of family; nevertheless, since this "so-called right" rests only on the personal desire of the person, then everything is arbitrary. In the end, marriage and the family wouldn't require absolute commitment anymore. Commitment comes to be a limited responsibility. The gift of oneself signified by the sexual act is denatured and transforms itself into a loan, of provisional duration, if it intentionally includes the hypothesis of a subsequent change.

The exercise of the sexual faculty itself loses its richness of meaning from the moment when it no longer expresses an irrevocable gift, solely and exclusively of the spouses. If the physical union of the spouses is not founded upon an absolute fidelity, excluding absolutely everything seeking the unity of marriage, it ceases to express symbolically (nuptial symbolism) conjugal love; though rewarding, it limits itself thus only to be an affective expression.

c) From a Sexual Revolution to a Political Revolution

The above mentioned challenges nevertheless are born of the sexual revolution of the 20th century, a cultural revolution which effectively has turned itself to a political revolution. We are pretty much aware of different states and governments putting into laws what has been scandalous and disdainful till half centuries ago. For example, very recently, is the legalization of homosexual union as an alternative to marriage in Argentina. We can mention of the other european countries and few states of America having the same such legislations. This makes things rather more complicated. We are dealing here not just anymore with the problem of an individual but a political problem with the force of law.

A glimpse of the story of this evolution would certainly be of help to understand further even indirectly its implications. In 1920, Wilhelm Reich and Otto Gross worked to develop at the sociological level the work of Sigmund Freud. But taking what Freud wanted to study in the context of personal therapy into the social context, they opened a horizon that affected particularly the social conception of sexuality. The sexual discourse that had always remained accompanied with reservation and modesty became little by little a subject of public debates, provoking a series of studies and researches and even a political revendication. Before, a discourse on sexuality was always connected to procreation; now, the discourse on the exercise of the human sexual faculty is only considered in its pure physical and gratifying dynamism; and in a way, it has become totally autonomous from its relation to a possible transmission of life. Sooner or later, such theories turned to concrete practices within the society. Meanwhile, other subjects related to sexuality never discussed before continuesly occupy public debates and discussions; homosexual practices, the search for maximum pleasure in a relation and the revendication of a sexuality outside of any commitment and responsibility.

Eventually, the great sexual revolutionists in the name of Reich and Marcuse explicitly referred the sexual revolution to the dialectic materialism of Karl Marx, giving it an ambit not just personal but social; the revolution then had become a social revolution which radically contested the institution of conjugal love and of the family which civilly is the only sphere where the exercise of the sexual faculty is normally carried out. Consequently, even the position of the Church who is the main promoter of an ethical and spiritual discourse on sexual matters, had been challenged. All these elements help us understand that a discourse that banalizes the exercise of sexuality in diverse and contradictory forms contributes to the radical destruction of all the values that have been structuring society for centuries: the exclusivity of loving relations between spouses, the veneration of human life, which was always considered a blessing, the love for the child, the respect of the precedent generation, the sense of belonging to a familial history, etc..

Obviously, the emergence of this permissive morality is accompanied by the destruction of any form of authority in all its aspects: family, politics, education, religion. Systematic refusal and defiance of figures of authority follows; the paternal figure at the womb of the family, the figure of a government leader at the heart of the nations, the figure of the educator at the educational system; at the end, the figure of the moral and spiritual authority of the priests, bishops and the magisterium of the Church in general.

In reality, the passage from the discourse founded on natural law to a truly social revolution leads little by little to a political revolution in all possible aspects of human life. Here follows some historical observations; this revolution became symbolically strong in the 30's; in 1948 the study of the personal sexual behavior of man by Kinsey was published and some years later the same study was done for the woman. This was the object of the famous report of Masters and Johnson in 1966; at the end of the 50's, contraceptive pill for the woman was invented and got into the US market in 1960, and later, in Europe. Contraception became the subject of debates during this period. We recall, it was on 25 July 1968 that "Humanae Vitae", the church definitive document on contraception was published. During this period too, a strong feminist movement came about; in 1975 in France, the first law that depenalizes abortion was legislated; at the beginning of the 80's "In Vitro Fertilization" was developed; within this period, the suppression of the difference between legitimate and illigitimate child took place and the public debate on euthanasia grew; in 1998, juridical status was given to "De Facto Union"; within this period, the development of the application of genetics beyond therapeutic perspective thrived, which is in the end eugenics; and presently, we have the legislations on same sex unions.

Through this historical illustration, we see clearly today, an attempt to separate the two dimensions of human sexuality, unitive and procreative. The consequences of this are of two sorts. On the one hand, a sexuality excluding procreation becomes hedonistic and devoid of any responsibility; it develops a recourse to contraception and implies the progressive loss of the sense of beauty of transmitting human life; pregnancy becomes a menace, and sexual intercourse has to be "protected". On the other hand, the recourse to a procreation totally detached from a concrete loving intercourse implies a kind of a manipulation of human life, where a child is seen as merely the satisfaction of a personal desire. The essential interest of the child and his right to be born in a stable and loving relationship of his parents are not taken into account. This same thing can be said of the sad reality of divorce. All these signal as well the loss of the sense of the sanctity of marriage.

Above all these reforms is the intention to impose a new morality. There exists a political pressure from international organizations to impose new ethical criteria. They do this by introducing new concepts such as: reproductive health, the liberalization of abortion as right of the woman over her body, etc. Within this pretext of imposing new culture and ethical criteria, what is aimed at is to acquire a perfect dominion over human life, in particular over its transmission. This explains then the presence of national legislations which are anti-life and anti-family in many different countries at present.

II- Human love and hope: the teachings of the Church

The little overview of the actual societal realities we've just done appears to be alarming; socially, politically and morally. But I hope that I have not given you an impression that we are in a desperate situation. Yes, our present situation maybe difficult, but not without hope. But with the actual realities, we ask, is there really a reason for our hoping? Benedict XVI in his 2nd Encyclical Spe Salvi, speaks of the nature of hope as something rooted on anything that is constant and stable. The fact that the church has never wavered on her teachings on sexuality, marriage and family, the Church becomes the basis of our hope and she remains the only institution that has the capacity to direct and guide us. I believe, contrary to the actual circumstances, as christians and people of good will, these realities become a providential invitation for us to profoundly deepen our perceptions and understanding of human life and its transmissions thru the exercise of human sexuality.

Briefly, let us see how the Church has been a constant and relevant guide for us. During the 20th century where all these circumstances we have seen a while ago, took place and developed, there, came along paradoxically, a new fervor for the spirituality of married couples, which without doubt, was a positive response to the Encyclical Letter of Pius XI "Casti Connubii". In effect, "Casti Connubii" reaffirmed marriage and family to be the true and proper way for the spouses's perfection and therefore their sanctification. Considerably, the personalistic philosophy that thrived during this century, stimulated as well this fervor among married christians. This makes us realize that never the Church abandoned her faithful particularly in the times of great trials. To mention a few among the magisterial documents of the Church that have been published, Gaudium et Spes, Humanae Vitae, the Instruction Donum Vitae, Apostolic Exhortations Familiaris Consortio, the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem; the Encyclical on the sanctity of life Evangelium Vitae, the Cathechesis of JP II on Human Love sometimes known as the Theology of the Body, the Deus Carits Est of Benedict XVI which focuses on reunderstanding love; all these documents are apt to help and guide us.

Equally important to have in mind, in favor of marriage and the family is the creation and mobilization of a great number of ecclesiastical structures; the Pontifical Council for the Family, the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, The Pontifical Academy for Life, and the active political presence of the Church in the international organizations and assemblies. I would like to invite you now to join me and let us have another look on some of the essential subjects which have been deepened by the Magisterium concerning marriage and family.

a) The nature of marriage

The Church always speaks of marriage as an intimate community of life and love founded by the Creator with its own proper laws. She understands that man and woman have been structurally created in such a way that they are capable of giving oneself totally to another for the rest of their lives. It is man's nature to tend to communion, as he was created by God according to God's nature which is a communion of Divine Persons. JP II speaks of man's fulfillment not in man's solitude but when he is in communion. Truly man becomes an image of God when he is experiencing a true communion with the other. This means that when the Church speaks of marriage and family, she is doing it from the logic of nature which is accessible to human reason. In effect, the human being created as masculine and feminine, is called to a communion of persons.

This communion of man and woman in marriage is directed towards the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. Such communion is destined to be indisolluble. In a society that is marked by permissiveness and individualism, indisollubilty becomes questionable, a delimitation of one's liberty and many times contested to be a mere imposition by the Church. Hoever in reality, the indissoluble characteristic of the conjugal bond belongs to the nature of conjugal love itself and never an imposition by the Church. Properly, marriage is a personal gift in which man and woman exclusively vow themselves to one another, an expression of a total giving of oneself. A gift presupposes totality without which one cannot speak of fidelity in marriage. Otherwise, as I've mentioned before, the gift turns out to be a loan. At times, this indissolubility is tested, but the church always believes that if the Creator made man for this communion, He must have given man the same capacity to live by it.

Some of you may ask, why there exists a Sacrament of Marriage if it is true that indissolubility belongs to the nature of conjugal love? The Sacrament consolidates the indissolubility of the union, making the spouses more capable to live their union according to their spiritual nature. God entered into a definitve covenant with his people and the sacrament of marriage becomes the actual realization of such great love of God for his people.

b) The Family as the place for the transmission of life

The Church considers marriage as the natural place in which life is transmitted and therefore the family is the place where human life is cared for through the education of the children.There is nothing original to this. However, the explosion of the family in the West with its consequences to the children, the technologies that render scientifically possible a procreation independently from the loving relation of the spouses, they call for a profound anthropological question related to human life and its transmission. If marriage is ordained to to the procreation and education of children, it is according to this natural predisposition of the creator, that we would be able to understand that the union between man and woman can be fecond to have a consequence the birth of a new human being. In marriage, this union is an expression of a donation of oneselft that is total, exclusive, and definitive. In such a manner, the spouses becomes cooperator of the love of God, at the same time procreators with God. God remains the sole creator. It is God alone that can create the soul that gives life to the human body. Thus human life always comes as a gift and the couple must be open to receive it. Therefore, this implies that the spouses do not possess the right to have a child; they are gifted with a child. If to have a child is held as a spouses's right, then it may lead to hostile practices of contraceptive sex, or to scientific practices that make procreation possible outside the conjugal act, or to practices that entail violation of the exclusivity of marriage.

This boils down to stripping the child of his dignity as a gift to be cherished, and not only as something that satisfies the interest of the couple. On the one hand, the decision not to have a child expresses something like a lack an internal lack of hope: either the spouse don't see any value that they can transmit; or they do not consider themselves valuable enough, worthy of being transmitted. Somebody who does not have the sense of posterity doesn't therefore believe much in himself. This is an anthropological pessimism. Christian hope is something that animates human action and is not only a static virtue that does not have any influence on one's way of action. Here we have been talking about the couples choosing not to have a child for whatever reason, and not of the couples having the sincere desire of a child and not being in the position of having it for whatever reason. We all know that sterility is difficult to accept for many couples. But the presence and the intensity of their desires are already a testimony of human and Christian hope, and that human life is good, worthy to be desired, defended and promoted

c) The Family in the Society

Conjugal communion is not an end in itself. But it constitutes a foundation that edifies the family which the church considers a communion truly of service to the person first of all; secondly, to the diverse interpersonal relations among persons: paternity, maternity, filiation, fraternity. The family is a place of natural contact between members of different generations, and assumes the role of mediation among individuals and society, and serves as the first institution for socializations among persons. Familiaris Consortio speaks of the family as a school of deeper humanity. Through the absolute spirit of gratuity, love and respect experienced within the family, man knows how to be human. In effect, the existence of a sound and healthy family is an efficient social subject and resource for the humanization and personalization of the society.

There exists therefore a grand number of family functions that renders necessary the defense of the family: the education of the children, the care of the sick and the assistance to the aged which no other institution could do better. It is for this reason why the church defends the family strongly according to its classical model; otherwise, its decadence renders possible the collapse of the society. The society's common good can only be served by institutions that fundamentally and essentially contribute to it: the marriage between man and woman on which is founded the true essence of the family. No other alternative form of unions except the union between man and woman that can guarantee the common good of the society.

For reason of time, I have limited the reflection on the contribution of the Church to the fundamental topics of the indissolubility of Marriage, on marriage as the place for the transmission of life and on the family and its service to the society. There are many other aspects the Church has been dealing with especially in the last fifty years. At this juncture, I would like to present to you now the mission of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

III-The mission of the Pontifical Council for the Family

May 13, 1983 is a day to reckon not only because it's the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima but because it is the day when the attempt against John Paul II was carried out. On that very same day, during the audience, the Pope intended to announce the creation of two very important institutions, willed to concentrate on matters related to Marriage and the Family: the creation of an Academic Institute known now as the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family which through the years has acquired a worldwide distinction in the field of Marriage and Family; then the creation of the Pontifical Council for the Family as an organism of the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church. The Council had been established on May 9, 1981 replacing actually the Committee for the Family that Pope Paul VI had established in 1973.

The pope considered equally important an academic approach and a pastoral one, to safeguard the dignity of marriage and family. For while the Institute has been commissioned to deepen understanding of the different aspects of human love, marriage and the family from the theological, ethical and anthropological point of view, the Pontifical Council was mandated to offer pastoral service to the universal Church for the benefits of families. It has to assists bishops, family associations, universities and various organisms of the Roman Curia in line with those among their functions which relate them to the family. Thus, as both institutions, John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family the Pontifical Council for the Family, work on their particular fields, they but compliment fundamentally for the service of marriage and the family.

a) Structure of the Council

In the Palazzo San Calisto in the famous quarter of Trastevere, there, work for the service of the family, 12 to 15 people under the Presidency of His Eminence Ennio Antonelli, the Secretary and the Under Secretary. It also has created its body of members and consulters each group comprised of 40 persons. This system allows us to be constantly updated as regards the different realities surrounding the family in the world and be immediately aware especially of any anti- family and anti-life legislations in the national and international level with which the Council can act accordingly. The Council does much certainly with the help of the family associations, movements, local Church organizations, committed couples, families and single individuals devoted to uphold the dignity of marriage and the family.

b) The General Concerns of the Council

Just like any other dicastery of the Roman Curia, the Pontifical Council for the Family receives bishops from around the world when they do their Ad Limina visit to Rome. It means that we are able to receive more or less 3,500 bishops of the Church every five years. Normally we receive at the Council's office a visit of a "National Bishops' Conference" every after two weeks. If the Council can address the challenges to the Family, it is thanks to these bishops whom we dialogue with and who inform us of the concrete situations of the families in their respective dioceses.

Moreover, the Council for the Family functions independently but in collaboration with the various Family and Pro-life Associations around the world. To my personal knowledge, at present we are in contact with around 350 to 400 Associations from about 70 countries. Some associations come to visit us at the council while others invite us to be part of what they organize in their respective localities such as colloquia, congresses and seminars; exactly what you the Couple to Couple League have done. Thank you for giving me this happy opportunity to meet, thank you and encourage you further to continue with the useful activities you are doing for the Church and in particular for the Family. The presence of the various movements and associations committed to the service of life signify further realizations of the value of marriage and family.

Another significant concern the Council does is to work hand and hand as well with the different organisms of the Holy See, most especially with the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and the Secretary of the State. Moreover, we work closely as well with the Apostolic Nunciatures around the world, not solely for diplomatic purposes, but to help National Episcopal Conferences dealing with anti family legislative issues in their respective countries. In such a case, the Bishop's Conference may bring up a particular issue to the Nunciature, who in turn asks the Holy See for an expert, to help them deal with the issue. The informal colloquia with responsible politicians on any debatable legislative matters, the good relations with different civil and political institutions, all these build up the council's capacity to shed light on political matters. To wit, I've been asked to visit next month the European Parliament and meet up with a certain number of Christian European Legislators.

c) Programs and Undertakings

Among other things, the most important activity that the Council organizes is the World Meeting of Families. You must have heard of the last meeting held in Mexico in January 2009, or of the previous one in Valencia, Spain, in July 2006, or of the one in Manila last 2003. With the impact and successes they all these previous meetings had, the council looks forward with great anticipation to the next meeting which will take place in Milan, Italy, from May 30 to June 3, 2012. Obviously you may take this announcement as an invitation. The preparation is extremely demanding.

I've mentioned earlier that the council works in close collaboration with pro-life and pro-family movements and associations. In this aspect, the council more importantly creates an avenue where all these movements and associations meet in view of working together and enriching one another thru a sharing of experiences and resources. For instance, we had last March a three day congress in which 30 pro-life associations had the opportunity to meet and work together on different topics. Come November, we shall organize as well a meeting of different family associations which will be working on the theme "The Family: Subject of Evangelization." The venerable John Paul II many times elaborated and deepened the fact that the Family is not only a recipient and object of pastoral activity but likewise a true and first agent of evangelization. The idea is to gather a certain number of associations and ask them to explain how they involve and help families realize such an evangelical identity. Why do we do this? It's because there exist tremendous beautiful and fruitful pastoral experiences in many various countries which have made the families immensely involved in evangelization. Coming together to share those experiences, we hope to contribute in building a better communion and communication among these movements and associations, so that they profit from one and the other's experiences; as what can be effective in one country may be tried in another. The first of this kind took place in Rome in 2009. For this year 2010, it will focus on two particular subjects: Preparation for Marriage and "Ministering" to the Family. This November 27-29 congress would be concluded by a prayer vigil at the Basilica of St. Peter with the probable presence of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI as presider. In lieu of these aims, the Council has begun to create a Vademecum (Pastoral Manual) that would serve as reference and guide for pastors, priests and couples doing the preparation of the engaged couple, in view of their reception of the sacrament of marriage.

Finally, the council has also initiated a huge inquiry on the topic "The Family: A resource for Society." It's a study on the relevance of the traditional family set up vis-a-vis the new model of family being introduced today. It's a scientific sociological study that would delve on the efficacy of the traditional family in relation to the stability of the society; it is to let the fact speak that the traditional family set up, albeit imperfect in some aspects, is fundamentally and largely beneficial to the society, while the so-called new model of family life menaces it. In Italy this has been started. The Episcopal Conference of Spain will be doing the same and we do hope that these would be replicated in four other countries. We are hoping that even in the States such study would be conducted.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, I would like to express a personal conviction. First, Christians should never be conditioned by the diffusion of these post modern ideologies or by the actual realities that confront marriage and family, alarming as they are. I understand it is easy to be discouraged and distressed seeing all these realities. Nevertheless, the family remains rich in itself by grace, nature, and mission entrusted to it; therefore, we have to love it. And loving the family means appreciating its values and capabilities, and fostering them always. Furthermore, we can love the family by identifying the dangers and the evils that menace it and overcome them; loving the family means endeavouring to create for it an environment favourable for its development. As we look around, we could see other regions in the world, in which their social life is largely permeated by a sound family life, especially in Asia and Africa, and this is something that should inspire us. By faith we know that we have an extra reason to care for this reality which is the family.

Second, while we have to give a testimony of reasonable optimism, it should be always grounded on the good news of the gospel. If man and woman find happiness in building a family, it is because God created them capable of establishing this kind of communion. And into their communion, He offers his spirit of love, and the grace of His Son enables the spouses to live well this communion. When God imbued the family with His Presence thru the Incarnation of His Son within its bosom, family life has never been the same; its splendour has been manifested and her mission revealed: as truly a way for man's perfection and his salvation. In the end, we have to hear again the resounding challenge of John Paul II to every family: "Family become what you are"!

ZE10092501 - 2010-09-25
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30473?l=english

Scholars Decry Distortion of Pius XII Quotation

2010-09-22T09:34:00.001-04:00

Explain Context of Pacelli's Words

ROME, SEPT. 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The latest attempt to discredit Pope Pius XII is based on a manufactured quote that distorts his words, assert two authors.

Ronald Rychlak, author of "Hitler, the War, and the Pope," stated this in an article written with William Doino, Jr., contributor to "The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII."

Their article, "Pius XII and the Distorting Ellipsis," pointed out that "as charge after charge that Pope Pius XII failed to resist the Germans or even that he was indeed 'Hitler's Pope' has been refuted, the critics have advanced new and more remote accusations."

"First," it noted, "critics attacked him for what he said or did -- or failed to say or do -- during the war. When those accusations were proved to be without merit, they charged him with failures after the war."

"When those were refuted," the scholars said, "they shifted to the Pope's actions before he was Pope."

They explained, "The current charge claims that in a presentation Pius XII gave at an International Eucharistic Congress in Hungary in 1938 -- when he was still Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican secretary of state -- he referred to Jews as enemies of Christ and the Catholic Church."

Misquoted

The article reported: "The critics claim that on May 25, 1938, just after the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria), but before the Shoah or even the outbreak of World War II, Pacelli said: 'Jesus conquers! He who so often was the recipient of the rage of his enemies, he who suffered the persecutions of those of whom he was one, he shall be triumphant in the future as well … As opposed to the foes of Jesus, who cried out to his face, 'Crucify him!' we sing him hymns of our loyalty and our love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today.'"

The scholars noted that "one major critic of Pius, Moshe Y. Herczl, claimed that Pacelli was clearly assailing Jews." This claim was echoed by critics Michael Phayer and John Cornwell.

However, the authors said, "there is reason to be suspicious of this quotation, and the anti-Semitic interpretation applied to it."

They continued: "First, no one at the time thought that Pacelli was speaking of Jews. He spoke of the 'military godless' and those who wanted to 'impose a new Christianity,' statements applicable only to the Communists and Nazis."

"Second, look at the quotation the papal critics use," the scholars pointed out. "One has to wonder what the ellipsis is replacing."

They added, "Despite the importance of this quotation to the argument of many Papal critics, it seems that none of them traced it back to its origin."

Original source

The scholars reported: "With the assistance of Vatican historian (and relator of Pope Pius XII's sainthood cause) Father Peter Gumpel, we reviewed the text of the speech as it was published in "Discorsi e Panegirici." The quote as given by the critics does not appear therein.

"The ellipsis was used to link very diverse passages from different pages of Pacelli's speech, producing a complete distortion of Pacelli's words. (To be certain that we were not overlooking anything, we reviewed transcripts from all seven of the talks he gave in Hungary)."

The article explained that "early in the talk, Pacelli spoke about biblical history. He recalled the Passion of Christ, and he mentioned the defiance of disciples, the solitude of Gethsemane, the crowning of thorns, the cynicism of Herod, and the opportunism of Pilate."

It noted that "he referred to the masses that called for the Crucifixion and said they had been 'deceived and excited by propaganda, lies, insults and imprecations at the foot of the Cross.'

The article affirmed: "Those identified as enemies of Christ included Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Roman soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and their followers. He did not call out 'all Jews' or 'the Jews.'"

"About two pages later in the manuscript," the scholars reported, "Pacelli referred to those who were persecuting the Church at that time by doing things like expelling religion and perverting Christianity."

Nazi persecution

"Jews were not doing this, but Nazi Germany certainly was," they asserted. "The future Pope was clearly equating the Nazis, not Jews, to those who persecuted the Church at earlier times."

The article continued: "Pacelli then returned to the theme of Christ's sufferings during the Passion which were being repeated against the Mystical Body of Christ in modern times, contrasting them with the Church's offering of love: 'Let us replace the cry of 'Crucify' made by Christ's enemies, with the 'Hosanna' of our fidelity and our love.'

"Pacelli was rebuking the totalitarians of his day, not the Jews of earlier times."

"Nowhere in the address did he mention or single out Jews as the specific, much less sole, enemies of Jesus Christ, past or present," it asserted. "There is no legitimate way to argue that Pacelli was blaming Jews when he spoke about the enemies of Christ."

The article asked, "Where did the distorted quotation come from?"

It added that "Herczl was not present at the speech and did not even look at Pacelli's script" or "even the Italian version that appeared in the Vatican newspaper."

The scholars noted that "in his book, he cited a Hungarian newspaper, Nemzeti Ujsag (National Journal), with a long and controversial history as a political outlet."

Anti-Semitic

They continued: "As its name implies and as numerous articles in the newspaper itself attest, Nemzeti Ujsag was a political journal, not a religious one.

"It was, at least in the relevant years, overtly anti-Semitic and truly despicable. Randolph L. Braham, a noted scholar in the field, called it a voice of National Socialism."

The authors posited: "It is likely that the newspaper manufactured the quotation to support its anti-Semitic position.

"Pacelli, after all, was criticizing the exact political position the paper held. Then as now, Vatican support was a very useful thing to claim."

"Herczl and those who followed him should have been skeptical of this source," they asserted. "Neither he nor anyone else would have accepted what that paper said about Jews, yet with several other reliable sources available, why did he turn to an unreliable source for this crucial information about Pacelli?"

"More importantly," the authors added, "why have critics like Phayer and Cornwell simply repeated the charge, relying upon this English translation of a Hebrew translation from a Hungarian translation of a speech originally made in French by a native Italian speaker?"

"The manufactured quotation blatantly distorted the words of the future Pope," the article stated.

It continued: "Inasmuch that quote was inconsistent with so much other evidence of Pacelli's character, it should have been strictly scrutinized.

"Instead it was readily accepted and insufficiently analyzed by critics eager to discredit the papacy and the Catholic Church. They should be ashamed."

ZE10092107 - 2010-09-21
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30442?l=english

Christian Churches, Schools Burned in India

2010-09-15T09:02:00.001-04:00

17 Killed in Police-Protestors Clash

SRINAGAR, India, SEPT. 14, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Various schools and churches were burned in another wave of anti-Christian violence in India and Pakistan.

Vatican Radio reported that these attacks, as well as other demonstrations in Indonesia and Afghanistan over the weekend, were a reaction to a U.S. man's proposal to hold a "Qur'an Burning Day" on Saturday.

Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, proposed publicly burning a Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, on Saturday's anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists.

Church and political leaders worldwide vehemently denounced the plan. Thus, Jones backed off from his proposal and decided not to burn the book.

Muslim extremists have nonetheless commenced their attacks on Christian buildings and communities.

Not enough

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said Monday that "stopping the Qur'an burning plan […] is not enough and the American government should be responsible and take pre-emptive measures," Reuters reported.

Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi, an Iranian Islamic leader, said that Muslims would not be satisfied "with only condemnations" of the plan, Isna news agency reported.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the "incident had nothing to do with Church and Christianity." He added, "We Muslims will never act this same way with the sanctities of other religions."

However, AsiaNews reported today that a Catholic school near Srinagar, India was burned Monday evening, and two other Protestant schools were attacked. That morning, another Protestant school and a church were burned.

The authorities attempted to intervene, but the clashes between police and demonstrators turned violent, killing at least 17 and wounding 80 more.

Peace

Bishop Peter Celestine of Jammu-Srinagar said: "I am deeply saddened by this mob-incited violence. We are a micro minority community [0.0014% of the population], which is peaceful and tolerant.

"Additionally, we give good witness through our schools. And this school was targeted last night, yesterday the Christian Mission Society School, in Tangmarg, was completely burnt down, and the resulting violence led to many deaths."

"Peace must be restored," the prelate said. "We religious leaders have a responsibility to lead peace and tolerance and coexistence."

The bishop said that the small Catholic community has always had "cordial relations with our Muslim brothers and with the authorities."

He called on all Muslims, therefore, "to protect members of minorities and their religious sites."

"We must maintain at all costs the ancient brotherhood and harmony between communities, for which Kashmir is known throughout the world," Bishop Celestine said.

Pakistan

In neighboring Pakistan, a grenade was exploded in a Lutheran church. Two policemen and a watchman were injured, UCA News reported.

Father Amir Yaqub, the pastor of Holy Name Catholic Church in Nowshera, Pakistan, said: "Christians in the vicinity have fled the area. The protest diminished at midnight.

"Police has also warned us to be careful, [saying] 'We can stop people, but can't stop a possible rocket attack.'"

The priest added, "People here don't calm down only until there is a loss of life and property."

ZE10091405 - 2010-09-14
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30342?l=english

Don Bosco Relics Coming to US and Canada

2010-09-08T09:21:00.000-04:00

World Prepares for Saint's 200th Birthday

SAN FRANCISCO, SEPT. 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The relics of St. John Bosco will arrive Saturday in San Francisco to begin the U.S. and Canadian segments of a worldwide tour.

The relics have been traveling worldwide in preparation for Don Bosco's 200th birthday celebration, which will take place in 2015.

On Sept. 19, the relics -- bones and tissue from the right hand and arm that have been placed in a wax replica of the saint's body -- will be brought to New Orleans.

The pilgrimage will then take the relics through Florida: St. Petersburg, Belle Glade and Miami.

The tour will continue in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, where the faithful can venerate the saint at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Two days later, the pilgrimage continues in New York, with events that include a youth rally and a Mass with Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Chicago will see the relics on Oct. 2, before the pilgrimage crosses the border into Canada to arrive in Toronto by Oct. 5.

From there, the tour will go to Montreal and finally to Surrey, British Columbia.

A Web site has been created for the "Don Bosco Among Us" pilgrimage, which offers a theme song and a store for commemorative items.

In its worldwide tour, which started Jan. 31, 2009 in Turin, Italy, the reliquary has traveled to Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Mexico.

It will visit 130 countries before the pilgrimage is over.

St. John Bosco is the founder of the Salesians, who serve as educators for the poor worldwide. He is the patron saint of apprentices, editors and laborers.

--- --- ---

On the Net:

Pilgrimage Web site: http://www.donboscoamongus.org

ZE10090704 - 2010-09-07
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30273?l=english

Crusades: Truth and Black Legend

2010-09-01T12:10:00.000-04:00

Italian Writer Vittorio Messori Joins Debate
ROME, 27 JUL 1999 (ZENIT).

Debate over the nature of the Crusades has not abated in this 900th anniversary year of the first Crusade. At the end of the millennium it might well be exacerbated by lack of understanding between the West and Islam.

According to Italian Catholic writer Vittorio Messori, the Enlightenment cast a "black legend" shadow on the Crusades, and used it as a weapon in its psychological war against the Roman Catholic Church. In an article in "Corriere della Sera," Italy's most important newspaper, Messori wrote, "In order to complete the work of the Reformation, it was 18th century Europe that began the chain of 'Roman infamies' that have become dogma."

"In connection with the Crusades, it was anti-Catholic propaganda that invented the name, just as it invented the term Middle Ages, chosen by 'enlightened' historiography to describe the parenthesis of darkness and fanaticism between the splendors of Antiquity and the Renaissance. It goes without saying that those who attacked Jerusalem 900 years ago would have been very surprised had they been told that they were engaged in what eventually would be known as the 'first Crusade.' For them it was an itinerary, a 'pilgrimage,' a route, a passage. Those same 'armed pilgrims' would have been even more surprised had they foreseen the accusations leveled against them of trying to convert the 'infidel,' of securing commercial routes to the West, of creating European 'colonies' in the Middle East..."

Sadly, Messori said, "the dark invention of the 'Crusade' has ended by instilling a feeling of guilt in the West, including among some members of the Church, who are ignorant of what really happened." In addition, "in the East, the legend has turned against the entire West: we all pay -- and will continue to pay, the consequences of the Islamic masses' desire for revenge, of their call for vengeance against the 'Great Satan,' which, by the way, is not just the United States, but the whole of Christianity, the very one responsible for the 'Crusades.' After all, is it not Westerners themselves who insist on saying that it was a terrible, unforgivable aggression against the pious, devout and meek followers of the Koran?"

"But there is a question we must ask ourselves. In the context of more than a thousand years of Christian-Islamic relations, who has been the victim and who the aggressor?" asked the journalist who interviewed the Pope in "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." When Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem in 638, the city had been Christian for over three centuries. Soon after, the Prophet's disciples invaded and destroyed the glorious churches of Egypt, first, and then of North Africa, causing the extinction of Christianity in places that had had Bishops like St. Augustine. Later it was the turn of Spain, Sicily and Greece, and the land that would eventually become Turkey, where the communities founded by St. Paul himself were turned into ruins. In 1453, after seven centuries of siege, Constantinople, the second Rome, capitulated and became Islamic. The Islamic threat reached the Balkans but, miraculously, the onslaught was stopped and forced to turn back at Vienna's walls. If the Jerusalem massacre of 1099 is execrated, Mohammed II's action in Otranto [Italy] in 1480 must not be forgotten, a raw example of a bloody funeral procession of sufferings," Messori stated.

Messori concluded by asking a number of questions: "At present, what Moslem country respects the civil rights and freedom of worship of any other than their own? Who is angered by the genocide of Armenians in the past, and of Sudanese Christians at present? According to the devotees of the Koran, is the world not divided between the 'Islamic territory' and the 'war territory' -- all those areas that must be converted to Islam, whether they like it or not?"

The Italian journalist provided his answers to these questions in his final remarks. "A simple review of history, along very general lines, confirms an obvious truth: Christianity is constantly on the defensive when it comes to Moslem aggression; this has been the case from the beginning until now. For example, in Africa at present there is a bloody offensive by the Moslems to convert ethnic groups that the heroic sacrifices of generations of missionaries had succeeded in baptizing. Admittedly, some in the course of history need to ask for forgiveness. But, in this instance, must it be Catholics who ask for forgiveness for actions in self-defense, and for keeping the road open for pilgrimage to Jesus' places, which was the reason for the Crusades?" ZE99072705

This article has been selected from the ZENIT Daily Dispatch
© Innovative Media, Inc.
ZENIT International News Agency
Via della Stazione di Ottavia, 95
00165 Rome, Italy
www.zenit.org

Link: http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/zcrusade.htm

Unmasking the "Ella" Masquerade

2010-08-26T09:51:00.001-04:00

ZE10082511 - 2010-08-25
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30157?l=english

Blurring the Line Between Contraception and Abortion

By E. Christian Brugger

WASHINGTON, D.C., AUG. 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- On Aug. 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the approval of a new "emergency contraceptive" called "Ella." Its competitor, Plan B, is said to "prevent pregnancy" up to 72 hours (3 days) after intercourse. Ella boasts of 120 hours (5 days) of post-coital effectiveness. The drug is produced by the Paris-based pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma and will be marketed by Watson Pharmaceuticals based out of Morristown, New Jersey. The FDA advisors voted unanimously to approve the drug.

Pro-lifers are no strangers to the euphemistic tactics of abortion activists. But the new depths to which the FDA has sunk with its recent approval will test their patience. The secret that the Ella establishment doesn't want you to know is this: from a pharmacological perspective, Ella is not an emergency contraceptive (EC). It is an abortion drug.

Chemical contraceptives, both long-term and emergency, use a synthetic version of the hormone progestin. Progestin has effects similar to the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for regulating the female menstrual cycle and supporting pregnancy. Progestin (alone, or in combination with estrogen) also can prevent ovulation, which is its primary contraceptive quality. The most common progestin drug in ECs is levonorgestrel, the active ingredient in several familiar brands, such as Plan B, Escapelle, Levonelle, NorLevo, and Next Choice.[1] The FDA refers to Ella as an emergency contraceptive, even comparing it in its literature to levonorgestrel.[2]

But Ella (generic name ulipristal acetate) is not a synthetic progestin that mimics the action of progesterone. The FDA press release states forthrightly that Ella is what is known as a "progesterone antagonist."[3] Unlike progestins, progesterone antagonists block the action of progesterone. The drug binds to the progesterone receptor sites excluding progesterone from binding and hence eliminating its activity. Since progesterone is necessary for promoting and preserving a uterine lining hospitable to a nesting embryo, its suppression results in an environment hostile to embryonic life. The other common progesterone-blocking drug on the market is the abortion pill RU-486 (generic name mifepristone).

The FDA description insists that Ella's mode of action is contraceptive, not abortive. It states flatly: "Ella is not indicated for termination of an existing pregnancy."[4] While it is true that a progesterone antagonist can prevent ovulation, the drug's principal value to the family planning industry is and has been as an abortion drug. Literature going back to the 1980s makes this very clear.[5] Deprived of a nutritive uterine lining, the embryo starves to death. Dress them up as "contraceptives" all you want, progesterone antagonists are abortion drugs.

By "pregnancy," the FDA obviously means to include only the post-implantation period, employing the definition of pregnancy supported by the American College (now "Congress") of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, The Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood (ACOG: "A pregnancy is considered to be established only after implantation is complete").[6] A "termination of pregnancy" then does not include killing an embryo before implantation.

Are you starting to see the picture? If the killing is not a "termination of pregnancy," then likely it will not be excluded from federal funding under the Hyde Amendment. Ella, then, unlike RU-486, will evade the federal restrictions on abortion funding.

Moreover, though most provisions of President Barack Obama's health care plan will take years to go into effect, a handful take effect this September. Among them is the requirement that all new private plans (i.e., only those created or changed after Sept. 22, 2010) must cover certain "preventative" care and screenings for women and children. The final rules on what will be considered "preventative" are being written right now, to be unveiled next month. But "family planning services" are already listed among them. If Ella continues to be categorized as an EC, there is a strong likelihood that it will be included under mandatory coverage for preventative services for women.

In other words, federal funds would be allowed to cover Ella abortions, and private insurance plans will be forced to pay for them.[7]

Birth defects

Does Ella cause birth defects in children who survive their mother's ingestion of the drug? We don't know. Remarkably, the FDA while knowing its pharmacological kinship with RU-486, has performed no controlled human studies on the effects of Ella on an implanted embryo and fetus. One of the members of the FDA advisory committee even recommended against controlled studies arguing that pregnancy studies would be "biased" because women who experience negative outcomes are more likely to report than women experiencing no problems.[8] (So much for trusting women to report accurately.)

In animal studies, however, the FDA reported that 100% of confirmed pregnant rats and 50% of pregnant rabbits suffered miscarriage as a result of Ella ingestion.[9] Accordingly, the product labeling seriously cautions women with confirmed pregnancies to avoid the drug. Although no malformations were observed in the newborn rabbits that survived the drug's effects, nobody doubts that Ella would be gravely dangerous to gestating fetuses.

The empirical question of whether or not progestin-based ECs such as Plan-B sometime act as abortifacients is still hotly debated; hence so too is the ethical conversation in Catholic bioethics whether or not they rightly can be used to treat victims of sexual assault.[10] But the evidence of the abortive effects of progesterone antagonist drugs such as Ella is conclusive. The empirical question is settled; and thus so too is the ethical question.

Notes

[1] Levonogestrel is also the active ingredient in the Intra-uterine contraceptive Mirena and the contraceptive implants Norplant and Jadelle.

[3] www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm222428.htm

[4] www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2010/022474s000lbl.pdf; see sec. 5.1.

[5] Nieman, et al., "The Progesterone Antagonist RU 486," New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 316, no. 4 (January 22, 1987), 187-191; see also Marie Hilliard, "Ulipristal and Catholic Hospitals," Ethics & Medics, vol. 35, no. 9 (Sept. 2010), p. 2, especially footnotes 13-15.

[6] Quoted in Rachel B. Gold, "The Implications of Defining When a Woman Is Pregnant," The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, vol. 8, no. 2 (May 2005), 8; see also www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/how-pregnancy-happens-4252.htm

[7] I Thank J. Margaret Datiles, Esq, for supplying this information on Ella and President Barack Obama's plan for health care reform.

[8] www.cwfa.org/printerfriendly.asp?id=19109&department=cwa&categoryid=life

[9] www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2010/022474s000lbl.pdf; see sec. 8.1

[10] Those interested in the scholarly conversation among Catholic bioethicists might be interested to read chapter eleven dedicated to the debate in the 2009 Catholic Health Care Ethics Manual, published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

* * *

E. Christian Brugger is a Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation and is an associate professor of moral theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado. He received his Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford in 2000.

The Introduction to Fr. Jean Bernard's Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau

2010-08-24T09:41:00.000-04:00

The Introduction to Fr. Jean Bernard's Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau | Robert Royal | Ignatius Insight

http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/rroyal_intropriestblock_aug2010.asp

This story is both ordinary and extraordinary. It is ordinary because Catholic priests and religious were regularly rounded up and sent to concentration camps in large numbers during the nightmare of Nazism in Europe. It is extraordinary, as all such accounts are, because they give us vivid and unforgettable indications of both the depths of depravity and heights of sanctity to which the human race is capable. Father Jean Bernard offers a straightforward picture of how Good and Evil played out around him in his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. He takes great pains to be accurate about the ever shifting conditions as he witnessed them personally. His strict regard for truth, even in such circumstances, is itself an implicit rejection of the violence built on lies that the Third Reich inflicted everywhere it could. If there is any truth missing in this moving story, it is Father Bernard's own quiet heroism and holiness, which he is too humble to include, but which we may intuit in his primary emphasis on the plight of his fellow inmates.

People who have not looked carefully at the position of the Catholic Church under the Third Reich may be particularly surprised by this story. The Nazis did not want to exterminate all Catholics, but they most certainly did want to exterminate all Jews, and they nearly succeeded. So the Shoah cannot and should not be described as if the Nazis did as much harm to Catholics as they did to Jews. Yet it is a fact of history that millions of Catholics were murdered in the Nazi camps, and that is something we must never forget.

During and right after World War II, it was commonly assumed that Christians as well as Jews suffered a great deal under Hitler. Jews were grateful to Catholics and others for such assistance as they were able to provide, and especially esteemed Pope Pius XII, who quite probably saved more Jews from the Nazis than any other single person. That was why Golda Meir, one of the founders and later Prime Minister of the newly created Jewish state of Israel, thanked the pope and honored him among the righteous gentiles: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims." Similarly, Moshe Sharett, the second Prime Minister of Israel, remarked after meeting with Pius: "I told him [the Pope] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."

But beginning in the 1960s, following a play entitled The Deputy by the Communist-inspired revisionist, Rolf Hochuth, there has been a massive attempt to deny these facts and paint the Church as all but a Nazi accomplice and Pius as "Hitler's pope."

One of the advantages of a memoir like this is its concrete evidence that the anti-Catholic smears are false. Pius was aware not only of the threats to Jews but the widespread persecution of his own priests by the Nazis. Careful study of the records in recent years has even given us some concrete numbers that were not available to the pope at the time. In 1932, for instance, just before the Nazis came to power, there were about twenty-one thousand priests in Germany. By the time Nazism was defeated a decade later, more than eight thousand of these men had either been threatened, beaten, imprisoned, or killed by the regime. In other words, well over one-third of Germany's priests came into open conflict with the Third Reich. We can be morally certain that the number who, seeing the treatment of their fellows, opposed Nazism in more subtle or quiet ways was even higher.

Father Bernard was not a German. He came from Luxembourg and joined the 2,670 priests who have been documented to have passed through Dachau, some 600 to their death, from Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and other nations. Priests were sent to every camp that Nazis had created, either because they had expressed dislike for Nazism or because Nazism disliked them. (Bogus charges of financial misdealing or sexual impropriety were often trumped up, but many priests, like Father Bernard, never knew what, exactly, they had been arrested for.) For some reason, however, the Gestapo particularly favored Dachau as a destination for priests and Protestant clergy, perhaps as a way of keeping them together and thereby preventing them from "infecting" other prison populations with Christianity.

Because in the end the Nazi hatred of the Church and of what they called "negative" Christianity is a spiritual orientation. Both Hitler and Mussolini shared that spirit, but the Italian convinced the German that a direct attack on the Church had historically always led to failure. The case called for delicacy, tact, indirect and subtle means that would not make anyone a conspicuous Christian martyr, but would eventually result in, as Hitler put it, the chance to "crush the Church like a toad." Anyone who looks over these pages will not encounter Nazi subtlety. Camp administrators preferred the most outrageous brutality. Clever attempts at manipulating public opinion, in Germany and around the world, took place at a much more public level. But what we see here is the brutal and sadistic reality behind the misinformation and propaganda.

We lost a lot of what we knew about this history in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the 1970s Jewish historians were quite energetic and successful in reminding the world about the Shoah, the attempted genocide of Europe's Jews during World War II. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Catholics and other Christians virtually forgot their own heroic witnesses and even had a hard time in keeping before the eyes of world opinion ongoing persecutions and martyrdoms of Christians by the thousands in places like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Soviet Bloc. That was why Pope John Paul II made it a part of the program for the Third Millennium, which was celebrated in 2000 in Rome and around the world, to remember the modern Christian martyrs (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant). As he writes in Tertio Millennio Adveniente, "their witness must not be forgotten."

His words continue to hold a lesson for us today. This little book works against one temptation that those of us who have never had a similar experience may never have felt, but which we may become complicit in by a failure of truthfulness on the order of the author's. Anyone who suffers a trauma of this magnitude or who has come upon such horrors will be tempted to turn away. But to do so always has repercussions, not only for our understanding of the past, but for our very lives in the present and the future. As Father Bernard writes, "Wanting to forget would also be a weakness on the part of those who suffered... it would be turning a blind eye to similar events taking place today, in full view, in many other parts of the world... Forgetting would be cowardice on the part of the people against whom all these crimes were committed."

The anti-Christian currents in Nazism and Fascism and Communism did not entirely disappear from our world with the fall of the regimes associated with those ideologies in the twentieth century. They are still among us today in disguised cultural forms that demand our constant vigilance.

This republication of Priestblock 25487 is a valuable reminder of the price of failing to be vigilant both for the Church and for the world, because the persecution of Catholics in the twentieth century is not merely a part of religious history. It is an important but widely neglected part of the secular record of our time as well.

Mexican Bishops Protest Same-Sex "Marriage"

2010-08-19T09:29:00.001-04:00

Appeal for Rights of Children to a Father and Mother

MEXICO CITY, AUG. 18, 2010 (Zenit.org).- After two Mexican cardinals were criticized for speaking out against the legalization of same-sex "marriage," the rest of the bishops in that country rose to the defense of free speech.

Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop of Mexico City, and Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, archbishop of Guadalajara, were accused of "intolerance" for having spoken out against same-sex "marriage" and adoptions by homosexual couples.

In response, the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate published a communiqué Tuesday, stating, "We lament that on expressing these concepts in public opinion, there are those who recriminate and threaten, warning of intolerance, when tolerance is the possibility that we all express our opinion and positions."

In addition to warning about attacks on the liberty of expression, the bishops reiterated their opposition to the process carried out in Mexico to legalize same-sex "marriage" and adoption by homosexual couples.

They asserted that the assembly of the Federal District approved it "hastily, without the necessary consultations of the different social authors and without paying attention to the consensus of the majorities, which disagreed with such unions and especially the adoption of children."

Lawmakers legalized same-sex "marriage" in Mexico City a few months ago. Earlier this month, the Mexican Supreme Court decided that these unions must be recognized in the entire country. On Monday, the court upheld the decision to permit homosexual couples to adopt children.

The decision essentially puts Mexico among the most liberal nations with regard to same-sex "marriage." In July, Argentina became the 10th nation to pass a law allowing same-sex marriage, preceded by the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Iceland. In the United States, same-sex "marriage" is recognized in only five states and Washington, D.C.

Disrespectful

The bishops' conference stated that the Supreme Court's decision was carried out "without going to the bottom of the matter."

The conference affirmed its "total disagreement with the ruling."

"We believe that equating these unions with the name of marriage is a lack of respect, both of the very essence of marriage between a woman and a man, expressed in Article 4 of the country's Constitution, as well as of the customs and culture itself that have governed us for centuries," the bishops affirmed.

They continued, "The Church, of which all of us baptized form part, watches over the rights of those who cannot defend themselves, and in this case, the weakest of whom are infants."

The communiqué noted that "the increasing ecological awareness of so many supporters to safeguard the different species by respecting their natural processes must include the human species, the most worthy and aware of its own development."

"Because of this," it added, "in nature itself the Church discovers the dignity of marriage between a man and a woman. This encourages us to promote the dignity of the couple and their offspring appealing to natural and moral values."

The episcopate expressed its "solidarity" and heartfelt support to the cardinals and affirmed that "the moment Mexico is living through requires a lofty debate that unites us and in which all the members of society as a whole resolve the many problems that afflict us."

Finally, the prelates invited the faithful to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe "for the decisions of political leaders and for all children who do not have a voice but do have the right to a family that is for them an example of virtues."

The archbishopric of Guadalajara also published a communiqué, in which it warned that the American Psychological Association has indicated that children who grow up with parents who are in a homosexual relationship have three times as much risk of suffering from depression.

It appealed that the rights of children be respected, noting that they "deserve the best opportunity to be incorporated in society," taking into account that "all currents of psychology in the world acknowledge that a father and a mother are the best environment for them."

"The minors were born from the union of a man and a woman," the communiqué affirmed. "No one has ever been born from the union of two persons of the same sex."

"Hence," it concluded, "their development is intimately linked to their origin, and this is their right, which has now been transgressed by the nation's Supreme Court of Justice."

ZE10081803 - 2010-08-18
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-30086?l=english

Auschwitz and Catholic Jews

2010-08-09T17:24:00.000-04:00

Auschwitz and Catholic Jews | Dr. Ralph McInerny | Foreword to Edith Stein and Companions, On the Way to Auschwitz, by Father Paul Hamans | Ignatius Insight

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/rmcinerny_edithsteinfrwd_may2010.asp

Once, in monasteries, religious houses, and seminaries, the Roman Martyrology was read in the refectory before meals. Each day some of those who had given their lives in witness to the faith were commemorated by name, and often the tortures they underwent were described. Each day's entry ended with a sentence beginning "et alibi aliorum plurimorum sanctorum.... " And elsewhere many other saints. ... This tradition continues in some monasteries.

We may feel sad for all the anonymous martyrs gathered into that commodious final sentence, but that would be a mistake. They are all entered in the Book of Life, and the names of each are known to God. For all that, it is important for us, not for them, that the names and sufferings of some be explicitly known by us. The saints are put before us as models of the Christian life, and martyrs are the ultimate models. We need to know more about some of them.

In this remarkable book, Dr. Paul Hamans, Father Hamans, has undertaken the onerous task of compiling biographies, often accompanied by photographs, of many of the religious and laity who were rounded up from their various convents and monasteries and homes on the same day as Saint Edith Stein, August 2, 1942; most of them were taken to the Amersfoort concentration camp and from there put on trains to Auschwitz, where the majority, soon after their arrival at the camp, were gassed and buried in a common grave between August 9 and September 30, 1942. They were all Catholic Jews, and their arrest was in retaliation for the letter of the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands that was read from the pulpits of all churches on July 26, 1942.

Over the past few years, in striking contrast to contemporary acknowledgments and the magnificent book of Jewish theologian and historian Pinchas Lapide, many authors have accused the Church of silence during the Nazi persecution of the Jews. None of the counterevidence to this shameful thesis has had any effect on the critics. The experience of Jews in the Netherlands, particularly Catholic Jews, is eloquent witness of what could result from public condemnation of the Nazis. The victims whose stories are included in this book were told that they were rounded up in direct retaliation of the condemnation of the Nazi "final solution" by the Dutch bishops.

Elsewhere, as was once acknowledged and celebrated, the Church in many ways, and in many countries, provided the principal help to European Jews. Indeed, the Catholic Church, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII, is credited by Lapide with saving the lives of some 860,000 Jews. These efforts were effective largely because they were not accompanied by noisy public declarations. With the appearance of the mendacious play of Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, in 1963, the tide turned, and a series of progressively more intemperate accusations against the Church and Pius XII began to appear. Some Jews reacted to mention of the non-Jewish victims of the Nazi persecution as if it were in some way an effort to diminish the tragedy that had befallen the Jewish people under the reign of Hitler. There were even objections from some Catholics when Edith Stein was canonized and characterized as a martyr. Their argument was that she was put to death as a Jew, not as a Catholic. And some sad souls objected to acknowledgment of what had happened to Catholic Jews like Edith Stein and her companions. This book is an indirect reply to such criticisms and will speak to all who have ears with which to hear.

That the ultimate sacrifice of the Catholic Jews arrested in the wake of the Dutch bishops' protest should become a cause of controversy is a sad indictment of these last days. But it cannot touch the nobility and holy resignation with which they met their end. Pondering the people commemorated in this book should be an occasion, not for argument, but for edification. Father Hamans has put us in his debt for having taken on the enormous task of making them flesh-and-blood persons for his readers. During the ordeal, one nun wrote to her superior that they had all become numbers to their captors. Lists had been drawn up with diabolical bureaucratic efficiency by the Nazis, which is why the arrests were made so promptly.

Thanks to this book, they are no longer mere numbers. Like those mentioned in the Martyrology, their names have been restored. But, again, the importance of that is largely for us. They would have been content, like perhaps millions of others, with the collective mention of the army of martyrs in the Te Deum Laudamus:

Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus.

Ralph McInerny
University of Notre Dame
September 2010

Fr. Paul Hamans is a diocesan priest in Roermond, Netherlands, where he teaches Church history at the seminary there. He has a doctorate in history from the University of Augsburg, Germany, and is an expert on the Dutch martyrs of the twentieth century. His other publications include History of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands.

U.S. Attacks Egypt Over Homosexual Rights at UN

2010-07-15T10:21:00.002-04:00

C-FAM
Volume 13, Number 30
July 8, 2010

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

NEW YORK, July 8 (C-FAM) At the United Nations (UN) last month, several U.S. representatives attacked Egypt for asking for further investigation into a homosexual advocacy organization which has applied for special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. These attacks culminated in a sharp rebuke delivered last week by U.S. ambassador Susan Rice. The actions seem to contravene President Obama’s strategy of engaging Egypt and other Muslim societies in key foreign policy aims such as Middle East peace.

At a UN committee meeting, three American representatives rose in protest of an Egyptian-led group of nations seeking further investigation of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). One U.S. representative attacked Egypt so aggressively that the Egyptian delegate called a point of order on the matter. The committee is in charge of deciding which organizations are granted consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Ambassador Rice then announced, “The United States Mission to the UN is, among other efforts, working to reverse an attempt by some members of the NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] Committee of the Economic and Social Council to deny UN consultative status to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.” The U.S. is planning to circumvent Egypt and the committee by bringing the matter to a vote at the upcoming ECOSOC meeting.

Rice used the occasion of the Obama administration’s celebration of “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” to make the announcement. Rice further asserted that, “In some nations, sexual orientation is considered a crime, and punished with unspeakable violence and humiliation.” However, “sexual orientation” is generally not criminalized, and Rice did not refer to specific cases. Homosexual sex or “sodomy” is banned in nearly half of all UN member states.

Similarly, Rice asserted that “Public pride is sometimes met with brutal, state-sanctioned beatings and arrests.” While Rice did not back up the claim or define “public pride,” the remark seems to be a reference to “Gay Pride” rallies, which according to IGLHRC include “marches, demonstrations and protests” to promote homosexual rights. The US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Warlick, came under fire in June for promoting a demonstration in Sofia, over the objections of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and pro-family groups.

While campaigning against Egypt at ECOSOC, Rice is seeking to enlist Egyptian support elsewhere at the UN. In April, Rice told reporters that Egypt was essential to U.S. aims during the “complicated and difficult” issue of the Middle East during the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. And last year Rice expressed “deep appreciation to President Mubarak and the Government of Egypt for their persistence in promoting a durable ceasefire in Gaza and southern Israel and in hosting Palestinian reconciliation talks.” The U.S. Congress appropriated $250 million in aid to Egypt in 2010. The aid package gives the Mubarak government veto power on which NGOs receive the U.S. funds.

President Obama’s high profile U.S.-Muslim relations strategy, launched in June 2009 at Cairo University, seeks closer relationships with Muslim societies in order to deal successfully with ongoing U.S. military operations, Middle East peace, and the Iran nuclear crisis, as well as to promote democracy, religious freedom, and women’s rights in the region.

Sexual orientation was not mentioned in the president’s hour-long Cairo speech. It is unclear whether Rice’s speech represented a shift in Obama’s policy.

An Out-of-Touch Ogre?

2010-07-13T10:08:00.002-04:00

The media’s mau-mauing of Bishop Thomas Olmsted
By George Neumayr | July 2010
Catholic World Report

In the past, bishops sparked shocked headlines in newspapers by betraying Church teaching. Now a brave few make headlines by upholding it. Consider the case of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has likened him to a member of the hierarchy during the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.”

That sounds pretty bad. What, exactly, has Olmsted done? Shown corrupt indifference to the protection of children? Profited off the abuse of them? No, it turns out his cruel sin in the eyes of Kristof and company is that he wants to protect children, including the forgotten unborn ones often killed under the worldly logic of false compassion.

In May, it came out that Bishop Olmsted had upheld canon law after learning, to his alarm, that a nun at a Catholic hospital in the diocese of Phoenix, several months earlier, formally cooperated in the killing of an unborn child from a patient’s difficult pregnancy.

Olmsted had quietly, conscientiously, and properly followed Church teaching and discipline in the matter (under canon law, Mercy Sister Margaret McBride incurred “automatic excommunication” through her action; he simply informed her of that, and she lost her executive position at the hospital).

But the media, hungry for stories that pit “progressive” nuns against “reactionary” bishops, publicized it, at which point Olmsted issued a laudably straightforward comment:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

Every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life at all its stages; from conception to natural death. This obligation is also placed upon every Catholic individual. If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action. The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty….

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, where the abortion took place, also made a statement, though considerably more vague, saying that in “this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” and that its “ethics” committee signed off on it.

Just the “termination of an 11-week pregnancy”? No, an unborn child was terminated too. But it is easier to say a “pregnancy” was terminated than an innocent unborn child suctioned to death. Showing no interest in that victim, the media’s ensuing coverage cast Sister McBride as the big-hearted “saintly” nun and Bishop Olmsted as the out-of-touch ogre.

Yet he is the only figure in the controversy in touch with what actually happened: an unborn child was killed at a Catholic hospital with a nun’s formal cooperation and help, and he is not about to let that happen again. At a time when derelict bishops are justly criticized for ignoring canon law to the detriment of children, the media’s treatment of the conscientious Bishop Olmsted looks even more outrageous and perverse.

It always comes as a rude surprise to the media these days when an American bishop turns out to be a believing Catholic and displays a willingness to govern his diocese according to Church norms. The Fifth-Column newspaper National Catholic Reporter finds his conduct very puzzling indeed, breaking the news, through one troubled source, that Olmsted is “very much governed by canon law and obedience and fidelity to church teaching and the magisterium….” How odd. This makes him, in NCR’s telling, a “strict constructionist” and a backwoods simpleton. “It helps to know that he grew up on a Kansas farm near the Nebraska border and attended a one-room rural school,” observed another of the paper’s sources.

But, wait, Olmsted is also like a pampered Borgia-era bishop. One of Nicholas Kristof’s sources hissed, “True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

It apparently doesn’t occur to commentators like Kristof that the very modernist scorn of canon law they demand from Olmsted is what got decadent bishops into the abuse scandal and exposure of children to harm, both spiritual and physical, in the first place. Kristof speaks of the “cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance” while oblivious to the cruel and debauched days of modern liberalism. Both came through the infidelity of soft and corrupt bishops to canon law and orthodox teaching.

Olmsted, needless to say, is the antithesis of a Borgia-era bishop. He has risked his comfort for the sake of thankless duty. He deserves praise for resisting the media’s mau-mauing and the Catholic left’s claimed monopoly on “compassion,” which never extends to the unborn child torn limb from limb.

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report.

Argentina Wants Mommies, Daddies for Children

2010-07-13T09:45:00.001-04:00

National March Against Same-Sex "Marriage" Set for Tuesday

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, JULY 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Marching under the motto "We Want a Mommy and Daddy for Our Children," citizens of Argentina will demonstrate Tuesday before Congress, as legislators contemplate approving same-sex "marriage."

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires and primate of Argentina, appealed to parish priests, rectors and chaplains of churches to facilitate the participation of the faithful.

The march is expected to draw participants from a range of social groups, including Church movements and groups from a variety of creeds, as well as labor unions and other civil organizations. The cardinal recalled that marchers are to carry "only Argentinean flags or positive slogans for man-woman marriage."

Last Sunday, the bishops' statement "On the Unalterable Good of Marriage and the Family," was read at Masses.

There, the bishops stress that "marriage as a stable relationship between man and woman, who in their diversity complement one another for the transmission and care of life, is a good that does much for the development of persons as well as society. We are not before a private event or religious option, but before a reality that has its root in the very nature of mankind."

They affirmed that "heterosexuality as a requisite for marriage is not to discriminate," but rather to base marriage on an objective premise. "The contrary would be to ignore its essence."

"Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the numerous variations that it might have undergone in the course of the centuries in various cultures, social structures and spiritual attitudes," the prelates noted. "These differences must not make one forget its common and permanent features."

ZE10071203 - 2010-07-12
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29862?l=english

Venezuelan Cardinal Denounces Marxist Socialism

2010-07-12T11:23:00.001-04:00

Responds to Criticisms of President Chávez

ROME, JULY 9, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela, is denouncing the government's attempts to install a Marxist Socialist regime through "unconstitutional" and "illegal" methods violating the rights and will of the people.

Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino underlined the need to speak publicly, to voice "my conscience as a Venezuelan and as archbishop of Caracas, given the reality that we are experiencing."

He wrote a statement, issued Wednesday, denouncing "the danger that is threatening our beloved homeland."

"Going beyond the national constitution," the cardinal wrote, President Hugo Chávez "and his government want to lead the country on the path of Marxist Socialism, which monopolizes all spaces, is totalitarian, and leads to a dictatorship, not even of the proletariat, but of the leadership that governs."

"Going against the popular will, which on Dec. 2, 2007, rejected the proposal of nationalizing and the socialist reform of the national constitution, through unconstitutional laws, there is an attempt to implant in Venezuela a Marxist regime, as the president has openly proclaimed on repeated occasions," the prelate stated.

He asserted that "such conduct is unconstitutional and illegal but, above all, it attempts against the human, civil and political rights of Venezuelans."

"The failure of Marxist Socialism in other countries is more than evident," Cardinal Urosa noted.

Economic concerns

He continued, "Moreover, the pretension to monopolize all productive activities through, for example, the progressive monopolization of importation, distribution and commercialization of foods, is in the line of dismantling the national productive apparatus so that we will all depend on the government even to eat."

Chávez has progressively nationalized many major national companies in various industries: oil, telephone, electric, steel, and cement. In addition, he has taken over supermarkets and large areas of farmland. This nationalization, along with government-issued price controls and other factors, has contributed to a rapid decrease in food production in the country. Thus Venezuela currently imports around two-thirds of its food needs.

The cardinal pointed out that this will not benefit "the Venezuelan producers, peasants and workers, but those of other countries."

"Together with the progressive indebtedness of the country," he added, it will lead "to the ruin of our economy as well as to a foreign dependence, totally contrary to the necessary food sovereignty."

"Concerned about installing a Marxist Socialist system, the government neglects its primary constitutional tasks: to protect the security of the people hit especially in the poorest sectors by violence and delinquency; to promote better care in the field of health, to build and maintain the infrastructure of highways and means of transport," among other things, Cardinal Urosa stated.

Attacks

The prelate, who wrote the statement while on a scheduled trip to Rome for various meetings, published these words after Chávez leveled attacks against the cardinal himself and the entire Venezuelan episcopate.

During a national assembly on Monday, the day his nation celebrates its independence, the Venezuelan president called the archbishop of Caracas a "troglodyte" for trying to "scare people about communism."

"This gentleman is unworthy of calling himself cardinal," Chávez said, and asked the papal nuncio to Argentina, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, to tell Benedict XVI to send a replacement.

Cardinal Urosa said in response, "The president does not have license to insult, defame or abuse any Venezuelan."

"He has attacked me verbally on several occasions, exposing me unjustly to public ridicule," the prelate stated. "I totally reject these aggressions, which are unbecoming to the one who does them."

"The appointment of all the bishops of Venezuela and of the world is in the hands of the Church," he emphasized, "not in the hands of politicians."

The cardinal affirmed that all the bishops are builders of peace, and thus "without pretending to assume quotas of power or becoming political operators, we claim our right to pronounce ourselves on everything that has to do with the life and future of the Venezuelan people."

"We want the good, coexistence and progress of Venezuela," he affirmed, "with opportunities for all, without exclusions or injustices or intolerance, with longings for unity, well-being, progress and peace."

Cardinal Urosa encouraged "all men and women of good will to work ceaselessly and fearlessly, in the framework of the national constitution, so that fraternity and solidarity, liberty, justice and peace will reign in Venezuela."

He affirmed, "We Venezuelan bishops are solidly united in the task of serving the people as witnesses and ambassadors of Jesus Christ, and pastors of the People of God in Venezuela."

Solidarity

Several Church entities have expressed support and solidarity for Cardinal Urosa.

The semi-official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, stated its Thursday edition, "The Catholic Church in Venezuela firmly rejects the indescribable verbal aggression of which the cardinal archbishop of Caracas has been the object."

It added that the president took "advantage of the celebrations of the bicentenary of national independence," to pour "gasoline on the fire of Church-state relations."

The secretary-general of the Venezuelan episcopal conference, Auxiliary Bishop Jesús González de Zárate Salas of Caracas, also publicly rejected the accusations.

The council of priests of the Archdiocese of Caracas issued a communiqué, in which it stated that, "as a Venezuelan citizen, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino has the full right and duty to opine and contribute to the common good."

It added, "As archbishop of Caracas he has the full right, more than that, he has the sacred duty to guide Catholics on religious and moral principles and values that are at stake in the present social and political situation of our country."

Manuel Arcaya, president of the National Council of the Laity of Venezuela, said in a communiqué Wednesday, on behalf of the laypeople, movements and diocesan councils, "We categorically reject the adjectives and insults" brought against the cardinal.

Arcaya said he shares "with His Eminence the very grave concern that the country is being led to a Cuban style Communism."

"The objective of the government's campaign of despair is to generate sadness and passivity, sentiments that are foreign to our faith," he said.

This electoral year, Arcaya affirmed, "is an opportunity for us to be involved in the problems that afflict the country and to revise the basic proposals that the candidates of the various political parties offer us because our active and conscious participation will have consequences in the immediate future."

ZE10070910 - 2010-07-09
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29851?l=english

Chávez Launches Attack Against Cardinal Urosa

2010-07-08T09:50:00.001-04:00

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29825?l=english
ZE10070707 - 2010-07-07

Venezuelan President Asks Pope for Replacement

CARACAS, Venezuela, JULY 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is playing with fire, says the semi-official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

The newspaper reported this in reference to the insults the Venezuelan president leveled Monday against Cardinal Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino, the archbishop of Caracas, calling him a "troglodyte" for trying to "scare people about communism."

“We don’t deserve a cardinal like [Urosa],” Chávez said during a national assembly on the day his nation celebrates its independence. “This gentleman is unworthy of calling himself cardinal.”

He asked the papal nuncio to Argentina, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, to tell Benedict XVI to replace the current cardinal with Bishop Mario del Valle Moronta of San Cristobal.

L'Osservatore Romano says the president took "advantage of the celebrations of the bicentenary of national independence," to pour "gasoline on the fire of Church-state relations."

"Addressing the National Assembly in a solemn commemorative session, Chávez directed very harsh insults to the cardinal, who recently criticized the closing of many of the opposition media and invited the government to respect the democratic rights recognized by the Constitution, insults also repeated in a television broadcast," reports the Vatican newspaper.

"The Catholic Church in Venezuela firmly rejects the indescribable verbal aggression of which the cardinal archbishop of Caracas has been the object," states the article, which will appear Thursday in the Italian edition.

In an interview with Globovision network, the secretary-general of the Venezuelan episcopal conference, Auxiliary Bishop Jesús González de Zárate Salas of Caracas, rejected the accusations. He has become the spokesman of the manifestations of solidarity that the cardinal has received from the whole country.

Right and duty

In the same line, the council of priests of the archdiocese of Caracas issued a communiqué, in which it states that, "as a Venezuelan citizen, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino has the full right and duty to opine and contribute to the common good, in keeping with his ample cultural preparation and his personal convictions."

The note continued: "As archbishop of Caracas he has the full right, more than that, he has the sacred duty to guide Catholics on religious and moral principles and values that are at stake in the present social and political situation of our country. This is a part of his office that he cannot give up as principal pastor of our Caracas Church and eminent member of the Venezuelan episcopate.

"In this connection it should be pointed out that all the public statements on topics that affect the collectivity and, hence, the common good, have been very pointed and specific and have been made from the plane of the great principles of the Gospel, and from the systematic application of the latter in the field of social topics, that is, from the Social Doctrine of the Church."

The council also stated that it rejected Chavez's attempt to interfer with the internal decision s of the Church by telling the Pope who he should name as archbishop of Venezuela. "The Holy Father, as Universal Pastor of the Catholic Church, enjoys total autonomy and liberty to appoint the bishops for the different diocesan sees in the whole world and to institute the members of the College of Cardinals.

"The clergy of the archdiocese, together with their faithful, reiterate their unbreakable communion with the archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, our legitimate pastor."

Pius XII's Efforts to Save Jewish Culture Revealed

2010-07-02T12:24:00.001-04:00

Mobilized Church Leaders to Defend Synagogues

NEW YORK, JULY 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The recently opened sections of the Vatican Secret Archives have revealed that Pope Pius XII not only helped save thousands of Jews, but also their patrimony, from the Nazis.

Pave the Way Foundation reported Tuesday that its researchers found documents of "great importance."

Michael Hesemann, a historian and foundation representative from Germany, has been researching documents in the Vatican archives and he found a letter sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pius XII, on Nov. 30, 1938, only three weeks after the Kristallnacht.

In this letter, which was sent to the nunciatures and apostolic delegations as well as 61 bishops, the cardinal requested 200,000 visas for "non-Aryan Catholics." Just over a month later, on Jan. 9, 1939, he sent three additional letters.

Hesemann explained that this language, in which Cardinal Pacelli speaks about "converted Jews" and "non-Aryan Catholics," is most likely a cover to hide the real scheme from the Nazis.

At that time, under the concordat of 1933, Germany allowed the Holy See to aid those considered "non-Aryan Catholics."

The foundation added that Cardinal Pacelli specifically requested in his letter: "Care should be taken that sanctuaries are provided to safeguard their spiritual welfare and to protect their religious cult, customs and traditions."

Persecuted

The communiqué explained that this seems to refer to a group other than converted Jews, who, upon their baptisms, "just became normal Catholics" without any "sanctuaries, customs, or traditions on their own."

Furthermore, many of the bishops responded to the cardinal's request, and documents show that they referred to aiding the "persecuted Jews" rather than the "converted Jews" or "non-Aryan Catholics."

Matteo Luigi Napolitano, political science professor at the University of Urbino, Italy, told ZENIT that one of the Jan. 9, 1939, letters was even more explicit.

It too was sent to over 60 prelates, and the instructions, written in Latin, "leave no room for doubt about the intentions of the Holy See and about Eugenio Pacelli's thoughts," the scholar said.

The letter, he reported, reads, "Do not engage in saving only Jewish people but also synagogues, cultural centers and everything that pertains to their faith: the Torah scrolls, libraries, cultural centers, etc.)."

The foundation explained that this point is important, because many historians have only acknowledged the efforts of Pius XII to save converted Jews, but the evidence seems to paint a different picture.

It continued: "Since many of the critics of this papacy have not yet accepted the proven Nazi threat against the Vatican State and the life of Pope Pius XII directly, they seem not to understand that there was a need for deception sending only encrypted or verbal directives.

"In many cases the historians are ignorant of the unique Vatican language sometimes using ancient Latin to express the hidden meaning of these requests."

It added that "the terms non-Aryan Catholics, non-Aryans, and Catholic Jews all indeed meant Jews," thus coded so that "if documents were intercepted, this deception would not raise a red flag since the concordat signed in 1933 specifically provided protection for Jews who converted to Christianity."

Eliminate obstacles

The foundation's president, Gary Krupp, underlined the mission "to identify and eliminate non-theological obstacles between religions," such as the discrepancies regarding the World War II papacy of Pius XII.

In this light, he said, the foundation undertook a "document retrieval project of the war time era to publicly post as many documents and eye witness testimonies as possible to bring the truth to light."

Elliot Hershberg, the foundation's chairman, stated that the organization "will continue to reveal as many documents as possible since everything we have found thus far seems to indicate the known negative perception of Pope Pius XII is wrong."

The foundation has over 40,000 pages of documents on its Web site, along with eyewitness videos available for public perusal.

Hershberg affirmed, "We also believe that many Jews who were successful in leaving Europe may not have had any idea that their visas and travel documents were obtained through these Vatican efforts."

Ronald Rychlak, author of "Hitler, the War and the Pope," acknowledged that this discovery by the foundation is "another confirmation" of the "good works of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church."

He stated, "The important aspect of this document is that it shows what many of us have been saying all along: Efforts that appear to have been directed to protect only converted Jews actually protected Jews regardless of whether they had converted."

[With the contribution of Jesús Colina]

--- --- ---

On the Net:

Pave the Way Foundation: http://www.ptwf.org

ZE10070105 - 2010-07-01
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29766?l=english

G8 Countries Launch Global Initiative on Maternal Health without Reference to Abortion

2010-07-02T10:01:00.001-04:00

C-FAM / Volume 13, Number 29 / July 1, 2010
http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1657/pub_detail.asp

By Terrence McKeegan, J.D.
Co-Authored by Nick Dunn

TORONTO, July 2 (C-FAM) The Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial countries held their annual forum here last week and, following the lead of the Canadian government, launched a new global initiative on maternal and child health. The Muskoka Initiative pledges “to accelerate progress” towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) dealing with maternal and child health. While the host government was successful in keeping references to abortion out of the final document, the initiative calls for G8 countries to “commit to promote integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health, rights and services within the broader context of strengthening health systems.”

Since announcing his plan for an initiative to improve maternal health in January, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had insisted that it would contain no funding of abortion, but would include clean water, sanitation, better nutrition, and treatment and prevention of diseases. Beverley Oda, Canada’s International Cooperation Minister, has said that the government would consider the use of family planning methods such as contraception, but reinforced its opposition to abortion funding.

The initiative has as one of its global targets “universal access to reproductive health by 2015”—a direct allusion to MDG 5b, a controversial target that was never accepted by Member States in the negotiations of the MDGs, but only included in the annex of a report by the United Nations (UN) Secretary General.

The G8 initiative has drawn the support of pro-abortion organizations, such as the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Planned Parenthood. Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA’s Executive Director, praised the initiative earlier this week, particularly its emphasis on “expanding sexual and reproductive health services.”

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, calls the Muskoka Initiative “an important step forward,” but noted her frustration with Harper’s opposition to the inclusion of abortion in improving maternal health. “No effective maternal health improvements can occur without comprehensive reproductive health care, including access to safe and legal abortions,” Richards says.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted to Harper’s announcement that there would be an initiative to improve maternal health, saying: “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions.” Over 100 women’s rights groups agreed, and last week wrote Harper a letter, urging him to include access to contraception and safe abortion in the initiative.

Abortion advocates usually cite research suggesting that maternal deaths could be cut by up to 70 percent with a greater emphasis on access to “safe” abortion and family planning. However, this “research” was sponsored by the Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) and UNFPA, not exactly a neutral source on this issue.

In fact, the newest available research shows that there is no verifiable data to back the claim that abortion improves maternal and child health, and reveals lower maternal mortality rates in countries with more restrictions on abortions.

G8 pledges to the Muskoka Initiative totaled $5 billion, including $1.3 billion from the United States over two years, while another $2.3 billion came from non-G8 countries and the Gates Foundation.

Christianophobia at Work in "Crucifix Trial," Says Cardinal

2010-06-24T09:57:00.002-04:00

Roundtable Event Held in Rome Ahead of Public Hearing

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The decision of the European Court of Human Rights to ban the crucifix from Italian classrooms is a result of the encroachment of "secularist fundamentalism" and "Christianophobia," says the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

Cardinal Julián Herranz Casado said this today in Rome at a round table event organized by the Christian Humanism Association, with the sponsorship of the office of Italy's prime minister. The title of the event was "Values and Rights: The Value of the Crucifix."

In November, the human rights court ruled in favor of an Italian citizen of Finnish origin who complained in 2002 that the state school where her two children studied violated their freedom by displaying crucifixes.

Italy launched an appeal in January, contending that the crucifix is part of Italian cultural patrimony. Since then, 10 other member states have joined Italy's appeal as third parties. At stake is not only the crucifix ban, but also the limits of the jurisdiction of the human rights court.

The court's Grand Chamber will hold a public hearing on June 30, and the final judgment on the case is expected by the end of the year.

Cardinal Herranz explained that the ruling is a result of a growing "secularist fundamentalism" that seeks to "relegate the Christian faith and religion in general to the mere private realms of personal conscience, excluding all signs, symbols or external manifestation of the faith in public places and civil institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.)."

Errors

The 80-year-old cardinal said the erroneous reasoning behind the court's decision asserts that the presence of the crucifix in classrooms is "contrary to the right of parents to educate their children in line with their own convictions, and to the right of children to religious liberty," as the atmosphere of the school would be "marked by a specific religion."

The court, he continued, also wrongly affirmed that the presence of the crucifix might be "emotionally disturbing," and that its display might not "foment critical thought in pupils" or the "educational pluralism" that is essential to preserve a "democratic society."

"This decision," the Spanish cardinal responded, "makes reference without a motive -- because the mere display of the crucifix does not have an imperative or discriminatory character -- to the religious liberty of non-Christian pupils, while it does not respect Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affects Christian pupils of Italian schools and the 'patria potestas' of their parents."

"This norm," Cardinal Herranz stressed, "guarantees the right of religious liberty, which includes among other things: 'the liberty to manifest one's religion or belief, individually and collectively, both in public as well as in private, by teaching, practice, worship and observance.'"

In second place, the cardinal indicated that "secularism certainly represents a constitutive principle of democratic states," but noted that the court ignores the rights of states to "determine in each case their concrete forms of application, in the light of the different circumstances and local traditions."

Secularism, he insisted, "is not an ideological principle that must be imposed on society violating the traditions, feelings and religious beliefs of the citizens."

Anti-confessional

Cardinal Herranz said that the Strasbourg Court confuses the meaning of "the neutrality or a-confessionality of the state" with the idea that "the state must be 'anti-confessional,' that is, opposed to the presence in public institutions of any religious sign or symbol."

"This attitude of rejection of religion would make of atheism a sort of ideology or state religion," he stressed.

Moreover, the Opus Dei cardinal continued, "it seems that the court has exceeded illegitimately the limits of its own competence, pronouncing itself on a question that affects the legitimate and due safeguarding on the part of the state of the national traditions and culture, as well as the commitments assumed with concordats or particular conventions with the Catholic Church and eventually with other religious confessions."

He spoke of "strong media powers and some political groups that for a long time have supported the ideology of secularist fundamentalism" and who hope for a law of religious liberty that would prohibit "crucifixes and other religious signs [...] in public institutions and official ceremonies (schools, courts, hospitals, state funerals, etc.)."

And they do this, the cardinal added, knowing that "the majority of citizens, if consulted in a referendum, would vote against this."

ZE10062306 - 2010-06-23
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29688?l=english

Lasers uncover first icons of Sts. Peter and Paul

2010-06-23T09:47:00.001-04:00

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jun 22, 4:16 pm ET
AP via Yahoo News

ROME – Twenty-first century laser technology has opened a window into the early days of the Catholic Church, guiding researchers through the dank, musty catacombs beneath Rome to a startling find: the first known icons of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Vatican officials unveiled the paintings Tuesday, discovered along with the earliest known images of the apostles John and Andrew in an underground burial chamber beneath an office building on a busy street in a working-class Rome neighborhood.

The images, which date from the second half of the 4th century, were uncovered using a new laser technique that allows restorers to burn off centuries of thick white calcium carbonate deposits without damaging the brilliant dark colors of the paintings underneath.

The technique could revolutionize the way restoration work is carried out in the miles (kilometers) of catacombs that burrow under the Eternal City where early Christians buried their dead.

The icons were discovered on the ceiling of a tomb of an aristocratic Roman woman at the Santa Tecla catacomb, near where the remains of the apostle Paul are said to be buried.

Rome has dozens of such burial chambers and they are a major tourist attraction, giving visitors a peek into the traditions of the early church when Christians were often persecuted for their beliefs. Early Christians dug the catacombs outside Rome's walls as underground cemeteries, since burial was forbidden inside the city walls and pagan Romans were usually cremated.

The art that decorated Rome's catacombs was often simplistic and symbolic in nature. The Santa Tecla catacombs, however, represent some of the earliest evidence of devotion to the apostles in early Christianity, Vatican officials said.

"The Christian catacombs, while giving us value with a religious and cultural patrimony, represent an eloquent and significant testimony of Christianity at its origin," said Monsignor Giovanni Carru, the No. 2 in the Vatican's Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, which maintains the catacombs.

Last June, the Vatican announced the discovery of the icon of Paul at Santa Tecla, timing the news to coincide with the end of the Vatican's year of St. Paul. Pope Benedict XVI also said tests on bone fragments long attributed to Paul "seemed to confirm" that they did indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint.

On Tuesday, Vatican archaeologists announced the image of Paul was not found in isolation, but was part of a square ceiling painting that also included icons of three other apostles — Peter, John and Andrew — surrounding an image of Christ as the Good Shepherd.

"They are the first icons. These are absolutely the first representations of the apostles," said Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of archaeology for the catacombs.

Bisconti spoke from inside the intimate burial chamber, its walls and ceilings covered with paintings of scenes from the Old Testament, including Daniel in the lion's den and Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Once inside, visitors see the loculi, or burial chambers, on three sides.

But the gem is on the ceiling, where the four apostles are painted inside gold-rimmed circles against a red-ochre backdrop. The ceiling is also decorated with geometric designs, and the cornices feature images of naked youths.

Chief restorer Barbara Mazzei noted there were earlier known images of Peter and Paul, but these were depicted in narratives. The images in the catacomb — with their faces in isolation, encircled with gold and affixed to the four corners of the ceiling painting — are devotional in nature and as such represent the first known icons.

"The fact of isolating them in a corner tells us it's a form of devotion," she said. "In this case, saints Peter and Paul, and John and Andrew are the most antique testimonies we have."

In addition, the images of Andrew and John show much younger faces than are normally depicted in the Byzantine-inspired imagery most often associated with the apostles, she said.

The Vatican's Sacred Archaeology office oversaw the two-year $73,650 (euro60,000) project, which for the first time used lasers to restore frescoes in catacombs, where the damp air makes the procedure particularly difficult.

In this case, the small burial chamber at the end of the catacomb was encased in up to two inches (five centimeters) of calcium carbonate. Restoration using previous techniques would have meant scraping away the buildup by hand, leaving a filmy layer on top so as not to damage the painting underneath.

Using the laser technique, restorers were able to sear off all the deposits by setting the laser to burn only on the white of the calcium carbonate; the laser's heat stopped when it reached a different color. Researchers then easily chipped off the seared material, revealing the brilliant ochre, black, green and yellow underneath, Mazzei said.

Similar technology has been used on statues, particularly metallic ones damaged by years of outdoor pollution, she said. However, the Santa Tecla restoration marked the first time lasers had been adapted for use in the dank interiors of catacombs.

Many of Rome's catacombs are open regularly to the public. However, the Santa Tecla catacombs will be open only on request to limited groups to preserve the paintings, she said.

Sea creatures flee oil spill, gather near shore

2010-06-17T09:49:00.001-04:00

By JAY REEVES, JOHN FLESHER and TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press Writers
June 17, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water off Florida beaches, like forest animals fleeing a fire. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily be devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

The nearly two-month-old spill has created an environmental catastrophe unparalleled in U.S. history as tens of millions of gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Scientists are seeing some unusual things as they try to understand the effects on thousands of species of marine life.

Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died — numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died.

Researchers say there are several reasons for the relatively small death toll: The vast nature of the spill means scientists are able to locate only a small fraction of the dead animals. Many will never be found after sinking to the bottom of the sea or being scavenged by other marine life. And large numbers of birds are meeting their deaths deep in the Louisiana marshes where they seek refuge from the onslaught of oil.

"That is their understanding of how to protect themselves," said Doug Zimmer, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For nearly four hours Monday, a three-person crew with Greenpeace cruised past delicate islands and mangrove-dotted inlets in Barataria Bay off southern Louisiana. They saw dolphins by the dozen frolicking in the oily sheen and oil-tinged pelicans feeding their young. But they spotted no dead animals.

"I think part of the reason why we're not seeing more yet is that the impacts of this crisis are really just beginning," Greenpeace marine biologist John Hocevar said.

The counting of dead wildlife in the Gulf is more than an academic exercise: The deaths will help determine how much BP pays in damages.

As for the fish, researchers are still trying to determine where exactly they are migrating to understand the full scope of the disaster, and no scientific consensus has emerged about the trend.

Mark Robson, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries Management with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said his agency has yet to find any scientific evidence that fish are being adversely affected off his state's waters. He noted that it is common for fish to flee major changes in their environment, however.

In some areas along the coast, researchers believe fish are swimming closer to shore because the water is cleaner and more abundant in oxygen. Farther out in the Gulf, researchers say, the spill is not only tainting the water with oil but also depleting oxygen levels.

A similar scenario occurs during "dead zone" periods — the time during summer months when oxygen becomes so depleted that fish race toward shore in large numbers. Sometimes, so many fish gather close to the shoreline off Mobile that locals rush to the beach with tubs and nets to reap the harvest.

But this latest shore migration could prove deadly.

First, more oil could eventually wash ashore and overwhelm the fish. They could also become trapped between the slick and the beach, leading to increased competition for oxygen in the water and causing them to die as they run out of air.

"Their ability to avoid it may be limited in the long term, especially if in near-shore refuges they're crowding in close to shore, and oil continues to come in. At some point they'll get trapped," said Crowder, expert in marine ecology and fisheries. "It could lead to die-offs."

The fish could also fall victim to predators such as sharks and seabirds. Already there have been increased shark sightings in shallow waters along the Gulf Coast.

The migration of fish away from the oil spill can be good news for some coastal residents.

Tom Sabo has been fishing off Panama City, Fla., for years, and he's never seen the fishing better or the water any clearer than it was last weekend 16 to 20 miles off the coast. His fishing spot was far enough east that it wasn't affected by the pollution or federal restrictions, and it's possible that his huge catch of red snapper, grouper, king mackerel and amberjack was a result of fish fleeing the spill.

In Alabama, locals are seeing large schools hanging around piers where fishing has been banned, leading them to believe the fish feel safer now that they are not being disturbed by fishermen.

"We pretty much just got tired of catching fish," Sabo said. "It was just inordinately easy, and these were strong fish, nothing that was affected by oil. It's not just me. I had to wait at the cleaning table to clean fish."

___

Lush contributed from Barataria Bay, La., Flesher from Traverse City, Mich.

Obama: BP agrees to $20B fund; chairman apologizes

2010-06-16T15:47:00.001-04:00

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
June 16, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and BP reached agreement Wednesday on a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the giant British company's chairman apologized to America for the worst environmental accident in the nation's history.

BP is suspending its dividends to shareholders to help pay for the costs, said chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Obama announced the agreement after a four-hour meeting with BP officials. He also said the company had agreed to set up a separate $100 million fund to compensate oil rig workers laid off as a result of his six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

"The structure we are establishing today is an important step toward making the people of the Gulf Coast whole again, but it will not turn things around overnight," Obama said. He said the vulnerable fishermen, restaurant workers and other people of the Gulf "are uppermost in the minds of all concerned. That's who we're doing this work for."

Likewise, Svanberg, speaking for a company that has been assailed from every corner for the past two months, said, "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are — are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people."

The claims system sets up a formal process to be run by a specialist with a proven record. Instead of vague promises by BP, there will be a White House-blessed structure with substantial money and the pledge that more will be provided if needed. The news was applauded in the Gulf — a rare positive development in a terrible two-month period since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed a flood of oil that has yet to be stemmed.

Company officials talked separately outside the White House.

Svanberg announced the dividend suspension and expressed sorrow for victims of the spill. "This tragic accident ... should have never happened," he said, and he also used the occasion to "apologize to the American people."

Obama said the independent fund will be directed by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. There will be a three-member panel to adjudicate claims that are turned down.

"This is about accountability. At the end of the day, that's what every American wants and expects," Obama said.

BP would pay $5 billion a year over the next four years to set up the $20 billion fund.

"The people of the Gulf have my commitment that BP will meet its obligations to them," Obama said. "This $20 billion amount will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored."

He emphasized that the $20 billion was "not a cap" and that BP would pay more if necessary.

The eight-week disaster in the Gulf, with oil still pouring from the broken well, is jeopardizing the environment as well as the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people across the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

BP has taken the brunt of criticism about the oil spill because it was the operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig that sunk. It also is a majority owner of the undersea well that has been spewing oil since the explosion, which killed 11 workers.

But when the day of reckoning finally comes, BP may not be the only one having to pay up. That's because Swiss-based Transocean Ltd. owned a majority interest in the rig. Anadarko Petroleum, based in The Woodlands, Texas, has a 25 percent non-operating interest in the well.

Word of the fund was well received on the Gulf Coast. Applause broke out during a community meeting in Orange Beach, Ala., when Mayor Tony Kennon briefed participants on the White House meeting.

"We asked for that two weeks ago and they laughed at us," Kennon said. "Thank you, President Obama, for taking a bunch of rednecks' suggestion and making it happen." Obama visited Orange Beach on Monday.

In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also sought to take some credit. "While this fund will in no way limit BP's liability, it is a good first step toward compensating victims," he said. Reid and other Senate Democrats proposed a $20 billion BP-financed fund earlier in the week.

Feinberg, the official who will direct the effort, is currently known as Obama's "pay czar," setting salary limits for companies getting the most aid from a $700 billion government bailout fund. He also ran the $7 billion government compensation program after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was a job that lasted nearly three years as he decided how much families should get, largely based on how much income victims would have earned in a lifetime.

As pay czar, Feinberg has capped cash salaries at $500,000 this year for the vast majority of the top executives at the five major companies that received bailout funding: American International Group, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler and General Motors.

The president met at midday with the top BP leaders to press the London-based oil giant to pay giant claims.

Wednesday's White House meeting came the morning after Obama vowed in a TV address that "we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."

For the president, Wednesday's meeting with a few company officials behind closed doors was a bookend to his attempt to reach millions at once. Using a delivery in which even the harshest words were uttered in subdued tones, Obama did not offer much in the way of new ideas or details in his Tuesday night speech. He recapped the government's efforts, insisted once again that BP would be held to account and tried to tap the resilience of a nation in promising that "something better awaits."

Obama's forceful tone about BP's behavior shows how far matters have deteriorated. The White House once described BP as an essential partner in plugging the crude oil spewing from the broken well beneath nearly a mile of water. Now Obama says BP has threatened to destroy a coastal way of life.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday showed 52 percent now disapprove of Obama's handling of the oil spill, up significantly from last month and about the same as President George W. Bush's rating after Hurricane Katrina. Most people — 56 percent — think the government's actions in response to the oil disaster really haven't had any impact on the situation.

___

Associated Press writer Harry Weber in Houston, Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., and Kenneth Thomas, Martin Crutsinger, Darlene Superville, Daniel Wagner and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this story.

NO! Empire State Building refuses to light up in honor of Mother Teresa

2010-06-09T14:57:00.002-04:00

It is sad that it doesn't surprise me that this is happening....

BY Adam Lisberg
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Wednesday, June 9th 2010, 2:06 PM

The Empire State Building has a message to Mother Teresa - you don't deserve to be honored in lights.

The building has colored its famous lighting in the past for Mariah Carey, stock car driver Jimmie Johnson and drug-loving musicians the Grateful Dead, but its owner said Wednesday that Mother Teresa doesn't qualify.

"As a privately owned building, ESB has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations," said Anthony Malkin, head of the family company that owns the building.

The firm "no" comes after the Catholic League and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn both urged the city's tallest tower to turn its lights blue and white on Aug. 26 for what would have been her 100th birthday.

Quinn said she spoke to Malkin on Tuesday and hoped he would change his mind.

"He said he would reflect on it," Quinn said today. "It's a really wrong-headed decision that he has made. It's his private building, and he has the right to make it, but I think it's a hugely lost opportunity for the city."

Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the tower was lit red and white when Cardinal O'Connor died in 2000, and the lights were extinguished to mark the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005.

"Malkin has made his decision to stiff Catholics," said Donohue, who now plans an Aug. 26 demonstration outside the building. "His decision to double down at this juncture - in the face of massive support for our request - is something he will regret for the rest of his life."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said. He earlier said he was stumped why a nun who devoted her life to helping the suffering was not deserving of the honor.

"I kind of shrug my shoulders with everybody else," Dolan said in March. "I guess there must be a reason. It'd be tough for me to understand a credible one, but I wish they'd kind of tell us. It's tough to be against Mother Teresa?"

The City Council is scheduled to consider a resolution Wednesday calling on the skyscraper to change its mind.

Malkin said the building lights itself up for religious holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah and Id al-Fitr, but not individuals.

"We try to use the lighting to celebrate everybody who thinks highly of the building," he told the New York Times last year. "We do important Western holidays, we have fun with the Mets versus the Yankees or the Jets versus the Giants."

The decision outraged tourists lining up to tour the building's 86th-floor observation deck today, who saw no earthly reason not to honor a heavenly nun.

"She's not just a Catholic figure - she's an inspiration to everybody," said Mary Shull, 54, visiting from northeast Tennessee.

Added Wesley Dessert, a 28-year-old social worker from Brooklyn: "It's an iconic building in New York, and she's an icon too. It's special to honor her 100th birthday. It's a milestone."

With Frank Lombardi and Samantha Shirley

Why Time Magazine Misses the Point

2010-06-09T10:17:00.001-04:00

Benedict XVI's Pontificate Is Marked by Reform and Renewal

By Gregory Erlandson

HUNGTINGTON, Indiana, JUNE 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- It would probably be too much to ask that Time magazine run a cover story on the bold statements and concrete actions that Benedict XVI has taken to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

No self-respecting journalistic enterprise wants to be separated from the pack when it comes to covering a controversial news story, which means it must always follow the herd, even when the evidence points elsewhere.

But the Time magazine June 7 cover story is a particularly frustrating example of a media enterprise playing to prejudices with half-truths even to the point of severely misrepresenting the story.

"Why Being Pope Means Never having To Say You’re Sorry: The Sex Abuse Scandal and the Limits of Atonement" is the provocative headline splashed across the most recent Time cover, which also features an image of the back of Benedict XVI's mitered head.

Lest we have any doubts where this is heading, the lead sentence of the story manages to drag in the Inquisition: "How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?"

The gist of the story is that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he wasn't so up to apologizing for the Inquisition, and he isn’t really doing enough to apologize for the clergy sexual abuse crisis, either. Time magazine wants the Pope to offer a personal mea culpa, particularly for his handling of a case in Germany when he was archbishop of Munich, and more generally for the fact that he "was very much part of a system that had badly underestimated and in some cases enabled the rot of clergy abuse that spread through the Church in the past half-century."

The target

The story, written by Jeff Israely (reporting from Rome) and Howard Chua-Eoan, while appearing to be about the sexual abuse crisis, is really a subtly written assault on the papacy itself, making the following case:

1. For the past two centuries, the Vatican has centralized power and authority over the Church, including the declaration of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.

2. This centralization is how it has managed to control its docile flock even as it has lost temporal power.

3. At stake in the sexual abuse crisis is the prestige and power of the papacy and the Church’s own authority.

4. There needs to be some sort of acceptance of personal guilt on the part of Pope Benedict for his actions, despite all he has done to address the crisis.

5. Such an admission of guilt and apology would call into question, however, the "theological impregnability of the papacy" and hasten other changes in the Church that will diminish its size and authority.

The provocative headline of the article -- "Why Being Pope Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry" -- makes more sense in this narrative because it yokes the claim of infallibility to the current crisis, making the papacy the center of the abuse story.

The fact that the Pope has apologized repeatedly thus becomes irrelevant for Time magazine -- despite the obvious contradiction of the headline -- because the apologies are just a public relations strategy to head off a greater challenge.

In laying out this political analysis of the last 200 years of Church history, the article also serves to bolster the case of those lawyers seeking damages from the Vatican for sexual abuse cases that occurred in the United States. Since the Vatican was so centralized and domineering, the question of its liability for the handling of individual local cases becomes more plausible.

Infalibility

Thus, after recounting the many positive steps the Pope has taken, Time still concludes that he is hedging: "He assigned wrongdoing not to the Church but to its servants." This, the magazine suggests, is to protect the Church from legal liability. "The consequences of sin are subject to divine salvation, but the consequences of crime lie within the purview of human judges and entail courts of law, prison, public humiliation and the loss of property."

Time quotes an Irish theologian: "This very centralized Church [tightly managed out of Rome] has only really been the case since the end of the 19th century." Here it ties everything back to the First Vatican Council and its statement on papal infallibility. In keeping with the heavy editorializing of the entire story, it sums up Vatican I as a "stage-managed" council that used a "suspect majority of bishops" to approve infallibility, thus allowing the Roman Curia to become "ever more centralized and domineering."

While the article dismisses "a purportedly impromptu crowd of 150,000 people" who showed up to cheer the Pope one Sunday (although no one claims it was impromptu), it lauds plans for a "Reformation Day" in October being organized by victims of clergy sexual abuse to "pressure the Vatican to act" and to "take back" the Church.

The story gets so many details wrong, that defenders of Benedict XVI in some ways don't know where to start.

Papal authority

Infallibility has nothing to do with the story of sexual abuse. The centralization of authority is more stereotype than truth, as witnessed by the diversity of Catholic voices, the independent actions of many bishops, the rise of the national bishops' conferences and on and on. If anything, what is frustrating to many Catholics and puzzling to non-Catholics who hold a simplistic view of papal authority is that the Pope cannot just rule by arbitrary decree. (It is ironic that this same misunderstanding permeates the controversy surrounding Pope Pius XII and the struggle with Nazism.)

The real story is this: Benedict XVI is aware of the scale and the scope of the crisis worldwide. He has taken decisive actions (such as the removal of the founder of the Legion of Christ). He has intervened strongly in Ireland, with a remarkably honest and plain-spoken letter to the Irish Catholics, a visitation of top prelates to study the root causes of the crisis and how it was handled, the acceptance of several resignations by bishops, and a high-level meeting with Irish prelates at the Vatican. He has quite clearly led the way in encouraging local bishops’ conferences to address their scandals head on, and he has laid out the language for understanding the crisis: Endorsing the search for truth, calling for penance, not blaming the media or enemies outside the Church, but pointing to the enemies within.

Mistakes have been made. Grievous mistakes. Mistakes were made by bishops, by priests, by psychiatrists and police and judges and yes, even by well-intentioned and grief-stricken relatives. The cost of these mistakes is very high, and the Church will have to pay these costs. But efforts to make Benedict XVI part of the problem rather than part of the solution would be an even bigger mistake, for it is he who is providing real leadership on this issue.

It is Benedict XVI who is refusing to circle the wagons and understands the spiritual as well as the canonical and civil issues at stake. It is Benedict XVI who is championing the necessary reform and renewal that the scandals demand.

* * *

Greg Erlandson is the president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, and co-author of the newly released "Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal" (2010, Our Sunday Visitor).

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29530?l=english

Personal Memories of Pius XII

2010-06-08T14:05:00.001-04:00

Interview With Sister Margherita Marchione

ZE10060711 - 2010-06-07
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-29521?l=english

By Carmen Elena Villa

ROME, JUNE 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The future Pope Pius XII enjoyed spending his summer vacations at the beach of Santa Marinella.

Last Saturday, a bronze bust of him was placed at that beach, to honor the World War II Pope and all the "righteous of the world."

Before being placed at the site, the bust was presented to Benedict XVI. The honor of this task was held by Sister Margherita Marchione, of the community of Religious Teachers Filippini. She is one of the world's principal biographers of Pius XII.

"So many pictures were taken of me in a few seconds," Sister Marchione recounted to ZENIT while she looked at the images of her brief meeting with the Pontiff.

This nun, born the daughter of Italian immigrants in New Jersey in 1922, has a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. In the last 15 years, she has published 10 book in English and Italian on Pius XII.

ZENIT: You met Pius XII. What was this experience like?

Sister Marchione: I met him in fact in St. Peter's Basilica in 1957; I came to Rome with his niece Elena Rossignani Pacelli. He approached us. We were in the first row. I held his hands in mine and kissed them, and spoke with him. He asked me questions. He wanted to know what I was doing in Rome. I was already a sister, but young, in a certain sense. I explained to him that I traveled and did research. I was writing my thesis on the poet Clemente Rebora. He asked me about the family. He gave me his blessing. It was such an impressive occasion for me that I can still see it again. He spoke to me as if we were friends of many years. I was struck by his kindness, his smile. The emotion I experienced, the impressions I have from this meeting are precious, indelible memories, which I have had my whole life. In fact, he exuded holiness.

ZENIT: Why did you decide to become Pius XII's principal biographer?

Sister Marchione: In 1995, almost 40 years after my meeting with Pius XII, I was here in Rome for a general chapter and I learned that our sisters, the Religious Teachers Filippini, saved 114 Jews in three convents of Rome. I was amazed and I said: How come? These are things that no one speaks about, that no one writes about. I learned this by chance. I became interested in Pius XII. I spoke with the sisters [involved] who were still alive and I was impressed by the work they -- as so many other Italians -- had done to hide the Jews. On my return to America, I began to be interested in the issue, I interviewed Jews who had been our guests and I wrote a first book. I have [now] written 10. I was able to interview some persons who had suffered, who were here in Rome during that period. I abandoned all my other interests and I began to write only about Pius XII.

ZENIT: How were the sisters of your community able to hide the Jews?

Sister Marchione: The sisters in all the convents were very courageous in hiding Jewish women. Even if bread was lacking for themselves, they gave half of what they had to these women. There were 60 Jewish women. If the Nazis had not believed the sister who said that no one was there, not only these women but also the sisters who were hosting them would all have been sent to Auschwitz. Hence, much courage was needed. I admired what they did and I wanted to make these facts known.

ZENIT: Other works of yours speak of Pius XII's silence.

Sister Marchione: Yes. Some Jews accuse him of silence, but it isn't true. His silence was prudent. He did everything possible to save the Jews, it could be said "behind the scenes." He could not start to fight America, England, Germany, the Russians. In the book "Architect of Peace" I reported important documents. Pius XII's charitable work was universal, magnanimous, assiduous and, above all, paternal in Christian terms, in the most profound sense of the term.

Pius XII maintained a diplomatic network in the Vatican during the whole war. He was personally interested in every human case made known to him. Young people and old went to him to receive help and to find dispersed relatives. Innumerable requests arrived daily from all countries worldwide, and all received his attention.

To make possible correspondence with prisoners' families, he instituted the Office of Information for Research, a unique archive that contained information on prisoners of war. The task of Holy See employees [there] was to inform the families on the state of prisoners.

ZENIT: What do you think of the negative judgments of Pius XII?

Sister Marchione: History must tell the truth, that the Catholic Church saved more than 5,000 Jews in Rome alone. It is a disgrace not to recognize it. For me it is necessary to tell the truth. In these books I have wished to make known Pius XII's virtues, the theological and cardinal virtues. I will give a few examples: He ate very little, he did not drink alcohol or mixed it with water during meals, he did not eat deserts, he was very mortified and had a strong character. He demonstrated he had faith, hope and charity.

ZENIT: Can you tell us about this Pope's personality?

Sister Marchione: He had the gifts of the Holy Spirit to a heroic degree, with all the virtues, theological and cardinal. He was prayerful -- a serene, tranquil person dedicated to every duty as Pontiff. By nature he was a timid person, and preferred tranquil environments. Gentleness as opposed to severity, persuasion as opposed to imposition. He was very humble and sincere, for him everyone was equal. I remember him as a saint, that's all.

[Translation by ZENIT]

Charles Curran, martyr for the life-destroying gospel of the "modern life"

2010-06-07T14:46:00.002-04:00

By Carl Olson
IgnatiusInsight.com

I have a big deadline Monday, am behind on that and other projects, but I simply can't let this one pass by: A Re-Declaration of Victim Status by Charles Curran, titled, "Banned By the Pope," and written for Newsweak's "My Turn" column. Tssk, tssk; fisk, fisk:

I knew that the letter—approved by Pope John Paul II and issued by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—was unlikely to be good news.

Because, for one thing, Curran had been openly undermining, scoffing at, rejecting, and attacking key moral teachings of the Church since the mid-1960s. (Quick note: the Summer 2009 issue of Nova et Vetera has a great essay, "The Cultural and Ecclesial Situation 1964 to 1967: Paving the Way for Dissent From Church Teaching on Contraception", by Dr. William E. May, which provides a lot of helpful information and context.) Note how long the process of evaluating and dealing with dissenters takes—a loooong time. And yet the common (mis)perception is that "the Vatican" or the CDF deals in a knee-jerk, off-the-cuff, reactionary manner. False. Completely false. This priest was publicly rejecting the Church's moral teachings for almost twenty years before he was finally stripped of his ability to teach theology at a Catholic school.

It was 1986, and for the previous seven years, Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the office charged with safeguarding official theology—had been investigating my work.

Seven. Years. That's. A. Long. Time. See point above.

As a professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., I lectured and wrote about traditional church teachings.

"About." Well, how to say this? It's a rather meaningless word in this case; in fact, it's something of a weasel word. As in: Arius spoke and sang about the Logos. Nestorius wrote and spoke about the Theotokos. Hans Küng has written volumes and volumes about Christianity. What Curran doesn't make clear here is that as far back as 1966 or 1967 he was already contradicting Church teaching on contraception. A sympathetic (to Curran) September/October 1989 article in Academe (PDF format) states:

In articles and in his first book, Christian Morality Today, published in 1966, Professor Curran established himself as a scholar who subjected accepted views, including noninfallible teachings of the Church, to careful scrutiny and did not hesitate to publicize his conclusions. An interest in sexual ethics led him specifically to dissenting views on such subjects as abortion, birth control, and homosexuality.

TIME magazine reported in an April 1967 article: "Curran had been fired by the trustees, without a hearing, largely because of his unconventional teaching on doctrinal issues — most notably, approval of birth control." Curran, you see, had been fired by Catholic University of America for holding and teaching positions directly contrary to clear Church teaching. But, it being the late 1960s, all it took were some student protests and threats, and CUA caved. (Hey, it was all the rage back then.) And so Curran continued to lecture and teach "about" traditional Church teachings. And:

But I also pointed out areas where I believed Catholicism and modern life were misaligned, including Rome’s opposition to birth control for married couples; its stance on homosexuality, divorce, and remarriage; and the status of women in the church.

Hmmm. "Misaligned." That's a nifty way of putting it. First, a weasel word. Now a slithery word. But note what Curran is saying, plain as day: he, as a young Catholic priest (he was 33 in 1967), was solidly and publicly on the side of "modern life" over against Catholicism and Rome. He was opposed to the Church's teaching on homosexuality, divorce, contraceptives, women's ordination, masturbation, euthanasia, and sterilization (goodness, what's left??). And so he as ever been.

The Vatican had finally had enough. “One who dissents from the Magisterium as you do,” the letter said, “is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology.”
Despite that rebuke, I remain a committed Catholic, a priest in good standing, and a professor of Catholic theology (albeit at a Methodist institution).

I bet good money that a Methodist would do a better job of accurately and fairly teaching Catholic theology than Curran, but I digress. Curran, who is something of an American Hans Küng (a dissenter who whines in the press, mocks or openly attacks the pope and Church teaching, but insists on being a "Catholic theologian" despite denying nearly every point of Catholic doctrine), likes to have it both ways, as most dissenters do. He wants to be recognized and known for rejecting the Church, but then complains that he is a victim, a martyr, when the Church says, "Uh, we have a problem..." He's been employing this stunt routine for over forty years, a routine that Jeremy Lott reported about in the October 2006 issue of Catholic World Report:

In response to the [1986] Vatican condemnation, [Curran] insisted to reporters that "I neither denied nor disagreed with the core elements of the Catholic faith." Rather, he had "dissented from noninfallible church teachings on a few moral issues . . . far removed from the core beliefs of the Catholic faith."

So what, exactly, were all those peripheral issues that the Vatican was making such a fuss about? "I was asked to reconsider and retract my positions on contraception and sterilization, abortion and euthanasia, masturbation, premarital sexuality, and the indissolubility of marriage," he writes. In other words, by the mid-1980s, he had come to disagree with the Vatican on pretty much every moral issue in the catechism.

And this from a man who had, as Lott notes, "wrote, edited, contributed to, or was the subject of Dissent in and for the Church, The Responsibility of Dissent, Dissent in the Church, Faithful Dissent, Vatican Authority and American Catholic Dissent, and now we have Loyal Dissent. The subtitle is 'Memoir of a Catholic Theologian.'" Curran, in other words, is not only a one-trick pony, he is the poster boy for Catholics who want to be "Catholic" without actually being Catholic (the ponies and the posers go well together, actually). And, of course, he is constantly trying to justify his legless position:

I also continue to care deeply about the church, which I believe is facing a crisis that predates the sex-abuse scandal of recent years. Today, about a third of people who were raised Catholic have left the church; no other major religion in the United States has experienced a larger net loss in followers in the last 30 years.

Ah, the last thirty years. Say, isn't that the same era during which the many wonders and joys of "modern life" finally came to full fruition, with the sexual revolution in bloom, contraceptives as common as candy, divorce rates skyrocketing, cohabitation likewise, etc., etc., and so forth? What, then, is Curran's point? Is he suggesting that if the Church had embraced and endorsed divorce, contraceptives, premarital sex, abortion, et al, that those Catholics would not have left the Church/stopped going to Mass? You have to either be smoking crack or be a full-blown, hyper-committed believer in The Glories of Modern Life to believe such rot. You either have to be quite stupid or quite arrogant to go for that line of argumentation:

Many of the issues that troubled me decades ago have contributed to this decline. Some, like those related to contraception, homosexuality, and family life, are considered matters of divine or natural law—the will of God—and, therefore, are immutable. I disagree, and I’m not alone, but we have been unable to persuade the church to make changes.

Arrogant it is.

Other matters are considered a product of human law, which is alterable if the church thinks that doing so is in its best interest. The vow of priestly celibacy is one such statute: none, I believe, would be easier to change or, quite possibly, is more important to the short-term health of the church.

Because, of course, what motivates Curran is his love for the Church—the same Church whose consistent and credible teachings on sexuality and morality he has spent his entire adult life rejecting, undermining, and dismissing. Please. This is like a five-time divorcee explaining, with nary a hint of irony or cynicism, that he not only loves the institution of marriage, he is a completely devoted husband who is so in love with wife #5. Spare us.

Lifting the ban might help address the pedophilia crisis—which, at least in the popular mind, was caused in part by the frustrations of celibacy.

Is that...an argument?

More important, it would reverse a damaging shortage of clergy. Between 1975 and today, the number of Catholic priests in the United States has slid from nearly 60,000 to about 40,000. Protestant churches, which allow their minsters to have families, have suffered no such struggles. I can only conclude that celibacy laws are to blame.

Right. And the rapid rise of the divorce rate from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s wouldn't have happened if all of those darned marriage laws hadn't made spouses feel so constricted, misunderstood, tied down, and otherwise obligated to fulfill their marriage vows. Why has divorce increased so much in the past forty years? I can only conclude that marriage laws were to blame!

The shortage has created related problems. For example, the church has tried to make up for the shortfall by using foreign priests. Without strong English skills or a knowledge of American culture, however, some of these substitutes struggle to connect with their followers.

Which is completely different from having an American priest who rejects most or all of Catholic teaching trying to pastor a parish where the majority of the parishioners accept and adhere to Catholic teaching. Right? Besides, this sounds more than a little xenophobic, even rather racist, doesn't it?

Some parishes are closing because no one can be found to lead them, while others remain open but no longer offer the eucharistic liturgy—the heart of Catholic faith and life—because there’s no priest to preside at it.

Again, Curran's concern for the health of the Catholic Church is so...unbelievable. It's like the aforementioned divorcee complaining that married couples just don't get enough quality time together because of all the obligations that come with marriage and family life. Perhaps Curran hasn't figured out that when the Catholic laity see priests denounce or disregard Church teaching and thumb their noses at the pope and the Magisterium, they get the message: "Do whatever you want. The Church has no meaningful or real authority. Why bother being here if it isn't true?" Need I point out that many Catholics have gotten that message over the past forty years and have acted on it?

(Catholic bishops have had to devise alternative services for those communities.) In essence, by mandating celibacy, the church contributes to a dilution of Catholicism.

Because, as everyone knows, clerical celibacy has been dragging down the Church for centuries! Of course, if celibacy were the real problem, the Church would have gone away in the early medieval era, or earlier. Curran continues to implicitly argue that the problem is that the Church hasn't embraced "modern life" enough, when a big part of the problem is that many Catholics have, in fact, embraced "modern life" with life-killing gusto over the past several decades.

Now, I’m not wholly at peace with would-be reformers placing all the emphasis on the celibacy issue.

Oh man, I just spewed coffee all over my computer. (Not really, but close.) Well, if anyone knows something about "would-be reformers," it would be Curran. Would-be, has-been, and who-cares?, all rolled into one.

Women, whom the church treats as second-class citizens, are hurting most today;

Yes, yawn. Which is why approximately 85% of those working for the Catholic Church in the U.S. are women. (Which is not, by the way, a criticism, just a factual observation.) Oh, wait, I think he's referring to priestettes:

changing the laws that forbid male clergy from marrying will do nothing to speed women’s path to the priesthood. We should treat rewriting the celibacy laws as an initial edit—a change on the way to redressing the multitude of other needed reforms. Even at the risk, I’d argue, of getting an unfriendly letter one day from Rome.

Ooh, he's soooo courageous, trying to turn the Catholic Church into a branch of the Episcopalians! And, as we all know, the Episcopalians—who support everything Curran does while also rejecting the Magisterium—are thriving, bursting at the seams! Turning down seminarians! Sending out missionaries to all of the world! Building new churches! Uh, no, not really. (Had you going there, didn't I?)

But Curran, who misread the "signs of the times" back in the mid-60s, is still madly trying to remake the times, even though time is now against him. The young Catholics who are filling the pews across the U.S. and throughout the world not only reject Curran's religious devotion to the "modern life," many of them are sick of much that "modern life" brings, and most of them have never heard of Curran. He and his fight to Episcopalinize the Church is quickly becoming a matter of ancient history, even while the ancient teachings and moral stances of the Church are as life-affirming and vibrant as ever.

Long road to oil cleanup looms over Gulf Coast

2010-06-07T09:55:00.001-04:00

By JAY REEVES and RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writers
June 7, 2010
AP via Yahoo News

GULF SHORES, Ala. – A geyser of oil spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is slowly tapering off with the help of a wellhead cap, but there's no containing much of the crude that's already escaped, a reality becoming increasingly evident at the region's beaches and marshes.

The battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall, the government's point man on the spill warned. The cap will trap only so much of the oil, and relief wells being drilled won't be completed until August. Meanwhile, oil will continue to shoot out.

To Kelcey Forrestier, a 23-year-old biology graduate visiting Okaloosa Island, Fla., it was already clear Sunday that the spill and its damage will last long into the future.

"Oil just doesn't go away. Oil doesn't disappear," said Forrestier, of New Orleans. "It has to go somewhere and it's going to come to the Gulf beaches."

Lifeguards found a "very minor" set of fingernail-size tar balls over the weekend on the western edge of the island about 35 miles east of Pensacola, marking the easternmost point oil has been discovered ashore.

Officials reported Sunday afternoon that a sheen of oil was spotted about 150 miles west of Tampa, though they did not expect the slick to reach the western Florida peninsula in the near future.

Officials put out a report late Sunday that dead, oiled birds had been found in Texas but retracted it Monday morning. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Zach Zubricki said authorities were still trying to determine the cause of the error.

BP said Monday that the cost of the response has reached about $1.25 billion. The company said the figure does not include $360 million for a project to build six sand berms meant to protect Louisiana's wetlands from spreading oil.

The prospect that the crisis could stretch beyond summer devastated residents along the Gulf, who are seeing more and thicker globs of oil appear all along the coast.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., Jerry Chessey went for a walk on the beach Monday, stopping on a sandy spot. He was surrounded by clumps of brown seaweed full of rust-colored oil. At his feet, a small yellow cup was coated with black crude, which apparently washed ashore overnight from deeper water.

"It's disappointing," said Chessey, who drove to Gulf Shores with his wife from their home in Cincinnati. "We walked on the beach last night and didn't see any oil. But we walked up to the condo, and it was all over our feet."

In Florida, tar balls continued to roll onto Pensacola Beach and left a distinct line in the sand from the high-rise condos above as the sun rose Monday morning.

Beach walkers had to stay between the line of dime and quarter-sized tar balls and the retreating surf or risk getting the gummy, rust-staining, gunk stuck to their feet.

Jody Haas, a tourist from Aurora, Ill., was among the few walking the beach early Monday after a crowded weekend here.

Haas, who has visited this beach before, says it is not the same now.

"It was pristine, gorgeous, white sand," she said. "This spot is light compared to some of the other spots farther down and (the tar) is just everywhere here. It's just devastating, awful."

Environmental and consumer advocate Erin Brockovich planned to visit southern Louisiana on Monday to speak to people who say they've been sickened by dispersants used to break up the oil spill.

At Pensacola Beach on Sunday, the turquoise waves also were flecked with floating balls of tar. Buck Langston, who has been coming to the beach to collect shells for 38 years, watched as his family used improvised chopsticks to collect the tar in plastic containers.

"Yesterday it wasn't like this, this heavy," Langston, of Baton Rouge, La., said Sunday. "I don't know why cleanup crews aren't out here."

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, overseeing the government's response to the spill, has expressed similar frustration, ordering cleanup crews to the Alabama coastline after surveying the scene from the air. But he acknowledged the relative futility of their efforts.

"It's so widespread, and it's intermittent," he told The Associated Press on Saturday. "That's what's so challenging about this. Everyone wants certainty. With an oil spill like this, there isn't any."

Since it was placed over the busted well on Thursday, the cap has been siphoning an increasing amount of oil. On Saturday, it funneled about 441,000 gallons to a tanker on the surface, up from about 250,000 gallons it captured Friday.

But it's not clear how much is still escaping from the well, which federal authorities have estimated was leaking between 500,000 gallons and 1 million gallons a day. Since the spill began nearly seven weeks ago, roughly 23 million to 50 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf.

The inverted funnel-like cap is being closely watched for whether it can make a serious dent in the flow of new oil. Allen reserved judgment, saying he didn't want to risk offering false encouragement.

"This will be well into the fall," he said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "This is a siege across the entire Gulf. This spill is holding everybody hostage, not only economically but physically. And it has to be attacked on all fronts."

Researchers Asked to Hide Scientific Debate over Maternal Deaths

2010-06-04T11:32:00.001-04:00

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
Co-authored by Catherine Foster

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) At a meeting on maternal and child health research in Washington last week, United Nations (UN) staff and abortion advocates told scientists they should “harmonize” their findings or discuss them “in a locked room” so that the press could not report maternal death numbers that conflicted with the ones they use to lobby policy makers and major international donors.

Ann Starrs, co-founder and president of the abortion advocacy organization Family Care International (FCI), told a roomful of scientists to “lock all the academics in a black box and have them come out with a consensus set of numbers” or “at least hide that there is disagreement” and “infighting.” FCI is the founder of Women Deliver, which is hosting a massive UN-backed reproductive rights fundraising conference in Washington next week.

The comments were made at a symposium hosted by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the British medical journal, The Lancet. The journal recently published an IHME study, which refuted the UN-sanctioned but highly controversial figure of 500,000 annual maternal deaths, finding the number to have declined to 342,900 including 60,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS. Abortion advocates and some UN staff have been using the higher figure for two decades to promote a version of maternal and child health policy that includes abortion.

Tessa Wardlow, Chief of Statistics and Monitoring at UNICEF, shared Starrs’ concerns, saying that there is a “system in place for harmonizing estimates for child mortality and I would invite the IHME to participate in that process and contribute to the methodological dialogue.”

Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, pushed back saying researchers should not come to a “consensus” or “harmonize” but rather have a “scientific summary view of what the totality of available evidence should be.” He argued that this should not be centered at the UN, but housed “independently within the scientific community.” Horton responded to Starr’s objection by saying, “Unless we subject numbers to that peer-review process, I think we are accepting second-class data, and that applies wherever the numbers come from.”

When he published the IHME study, Horton told the press that he withstood significant pressure from activists not to release it until after major global funding conferences concluded this year, such as the G8 summit, UN General Assembly, and next week’s Women Deliver conference.

Highlighting the tension in the room between the researchers’ desire for openness and activists call for secrecy, Horton said, “For God’s sake, your country, the United States, was founded on the press! One of the best documents in the history of humankind is the Federalist Papers; if it wasn’t for the press, we wouldn’t have a United States! So learn to love the press.”

The confrontation between the maternal health advocates and researchers may be behind the decision by Women Deliver conference organizers to re-write their schedule to include Dr. Horton in the agenda for next week’s conference.

You can find this online at: http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1641/pub_detail.asp

Roman Catholic bishop stabbed to death in Turkey

2010-06-03T13:31:00.001-04:00

By SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser

Via Yahoo News

ANKARA, Turkey – A Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southern Turkey on Thursday, a day before he was scheduled to leave for Cyprus to meet with the pope, officials and reports said.

Luigi Padovese, 63, the apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun. The killing was not believed to be politically motivated.

Dogan news agency video footage of the scene showed the bishop lying dead in front of a building.

Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz, the governor for the province of Hatay, said police immediately caught the suspected killer. He said the man, identified only as Murat A., was Padovese's driver for the last four and a half years and was mentally unstable.

"The initial investigation shows that the incident is not politically motivated," Lekesiz said. "We have learned that the suspect had psychological problems and was receiving treatment."

Padovese, who is the equivalent of the bishop for the Anatolia region, was scheduled to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet with the pope, who is visiting the island, and fellow bishops from around the region to prepare for a synod of Roman Catholic bishops in the Middle East. The synod is scheduled for October.

The Vatican-affiliated Asia News agency cited unnamed witnesses as saying the driver appeared to be "depressed, violent and threatening," in recent days.

No one answered phones at his church in Iskenderun.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told The Associated Press in Rome that the Vatican felt "immense pain, consternation, (and) bewilderment" over the death and noted that it showed the "difficult conditions" of the Catholic community in the region.

He said the pope's upcoming visit to Cyprus and the upcoming synod of bishops on the Middle East showed "how the universal church is in solidarity with this community."

The killing is the latest in a string of attacks in recent years on Christians in Turkey, where Christians make up less than 1 percent of the 70 million population.

In 2007, a Roman Catholic priest in the western city of Izmir, Adriano Franchini, was stabbed and slightly wounded in the stomach by a 19-year-old man after Sunday Mass. The man was arrested.

The same year, a group of men entered a Bible-publishing house in the central Anatolian city of Malatya and killed three Christians, including a German national. The five alleged killers are now standing trial for murder.

The killings — in which the victims were tied up and had their throats slit — drew international condemnation and added to Western concerns about whether Turkey can protect its religious minorities.

In 2006, amid widespread anger in Islamic countries over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a 16-year-old boy shot dead a Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. The boy was convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Padovese was appointed to his post in 2004.

Mustafa Sinanoglu, the mufti or top Muslim cleric for Hatay province, told the Anatolia news agency that he and Padovese had been working together toward establishing closer dialogue between their faiths.

"I have been deeply affected by the death of a colleague with whom I had been working together on projects for the region, Turkey and world peace," he said.

"These kinds of incidents are damaging our country's image," he added.

Asia News said the Bishop was also involved in work for the unity of the Christian church and to revive the tiny Christian community in Turkey.

Turkey's Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay paid tribute to Padovese saying he had "made important contributions to the culture of tolerance through his services in Hatay."

The Foreign Ministry said the death of Padovese was an "important loss from a religious and scholarly point of view," adding that the Bishop had written extensively on Turkey.

In a 2006 telephone interview with the AP, following another knife attack that injured another priest, Padovese expressed concern over the safety of Catholics priests in Turkey.

"The climate has changed," he said. "It is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."

BP cuts pipe, plans to lower cap over Gulf spill

2010-06-03T13:19:00.001-04:00

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writers
Via Yahoo News

METAIRIE, La. – BP sliced off a pipe with giant shears Thursday in the latest bid to curtail the worst spill in U.S. history, but the cut was jagged and placing a cap over the gusher will now be more challenging.

BP turned to the shears after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck in the pipe halfway through the job, yet another frustrating delay in the six-week-old Gulf of Mexico spill.

The cap will be lowered and sealed over the next couple of hours, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster. It won't be known how much oil BP can siphon to a tanker on the surface until the cap is fitted, but the irregular cut means it won't fit as snugly as officials hoped.

"We'll have to see when we get the containment cap on it just how effective it is," Allen said. "It will be a test and adapt phase as we move ahead, but it's a significant step forward."

Even if it works, BP engineers expect oil to continue leaking into the ocean.

The next chance to stop the flow won't come until two relief wells meant to plug the reservoir for good are finished in August.

This latest attempt to control the spill, the so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser removed a kink in the pipe, and could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.

Live video footage showed oil spewing uninterrupted out of the top of the blowout preventer, but Allen said it was unclear whether the flow had increased.

"I don't think we'll know until the containment cap is seated on there," he said. "We'll have to wait and see."

President Barack Obama will return to the Louisiana coast Friday to assess the latest efforts, his third trip to the region since the April 20 disaster. It's also his second visit in a week.

BP's top executive acknowledged Thursday the global oil giant was unprepared to fight a catastrophic deepwater oil spill. Chief executive Tony Hayward told The Financial Times it was "an entirely fair criticism" to say the company had not been fully prepared for a deepwater oil leak. Hayward called it "low-probability, high-impact" accident.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit," Hayward said in an interview published in Thursday's edition of the London-based newspaper.

Oil drifted six miles from the Florida Panhandle's popular sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe.

The Coast Guard's Allen directed BP to pay for five additional sand barrier projects in Louisiana. BP said Thursday the project will cost it about $360 million, on top of about $990 million it had spent on response and clean up, grants to four Gulf coast states and claims from people and companies hurt by the spill.

Mark Johnecheck, a 68-year-old retired Navy captain from Pensacola, sat on a black folding chair as rough surf crashed ashore at Pensacola Beach and children splashed in the water. Johnecheck has lived in the Pensacola area since the 1960s, but doesn't come to the beach very often.

"The reason I'm here now is because I'm afraid it's going to be gone," he said. "I'm really afraid that the next time I come out here it's not going to look like this."

He said the arrival of the oil seems foregone: "I don't know what else they can do," he said. "It just makes you feel helpless."

His wife walks up and becomes emotional thinking about the oil. "It's like grieving somebody on their dying bed," said Marjorie Johnecheck, 62.

Next to her chair is a small white pail full of sugary Panhandle sand. She will take it home and put it in a decorative jar.

"I'm taking it home before it gets black," she said.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.

Anne Wilson, a 62-year-old retired teachers aide who has lived in Pensacola Beach for the last year and a half, felt helpless.

"There's nothing more you can do," said Wilson, who lived in Valdez, Alaska, near the Exxon spill in 1989. "It's up to Mother Nature to take care of things. Humans can only do so much."

Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers — particularly those from overseas — how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.

The effect on wildlife has grown, too.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

Dead birds and animals found during spills are kept as evidence in locked freezers until investigations and damage assessments are complete, according to Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This includes strict chain-of-custody procedures and long-term locked storage until the investigative and damage assessment phases of the spill are complete," she wrote in an e-mail.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Geller and Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, Melissa Nelson and Matt Sedensky in Pensacola and Travis Reed in Miami also contributed to this report.

Oil nears Fla. beaches as BP tries risky cap move

2010-06-02T09:11:00.001-04:00

By GREG BLUESTEIN and BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writers

June 2, 2010

Via Yahoo News

PORT FOURCHON, La. – The BP oil slick drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time as submersible robots a mile below the Gulf of Mexico made the latest risky attempt to control the seafloor gusher.

Even if it works, the current mission to cut a major pipe and cap it would only reduce the flow, not stop it. If it fails, it could make the largest oil spill in U.S. history even worse. The best hope for sealing the leak, until a permanent fix is possible in August, failed Saturday, when engineers were unable to plug it with heavy mud in a maneuver called a top kill.

Investors ran from BP's stock for a second day Wednesday, reacting to the top kill failure and the Justice Department's announcement that it was looking at criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Shares in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.

In Florida, officials confirmed an oil sheen Tuesday about nine miles from Pensacola beach, where the summer tourism season was just getting started.

Winds were forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the slick closer to western Panhandle beaches.

Emergency crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom. County officials will use it to block oil from reaching inland waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to protect and easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a similar situation.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53, said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help. "Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

Le, like other of the fishermen, received $5,000 from BP PLC, but it was quickly gone.

"I call that 'Shut your mouth money,'" said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire, who's been fishing for nearly 30 years. "That won't pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?"

BP may have bigger problems, though.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans.

The federal government also ramped up its response to the spill with President Barack Obama ordering the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too.

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some of the flow.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing — they're using little robots to do this."

Engineers have put underwater robots and equipment in place this week after a bold attempt to plug the well by force-feeding it heavy mud and cement — called a "top kill" — was aborted over the weekend. Crews pumped thousands of gallons of the mud into the well but were unable to overcome the pressure of the oil.

The company said if the small dome is successful it could capture and siphon a majority of the gushing oil to the surface. But the cut and cap will not halt the oil flow, just capture some of it and funnel it to vessels waiting at the surface.

BP's best chance to permanently plug the leak rests with a pair of relief wells but those won't likely be completed until August.

___

Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Pete Yost from Washington, Curt Anderson from Miami, Brian Skoloff from Port Fourchon, Mary Foster in Boothville, and Michael Kunzelman also contributed to this report.

How a Strategy of "Silence" Saved Thousands of Jews

2010-05-26T16:10:00.002-04:00

Documents and Testimonies Point to Pius XII's Efforts

NEW YORK, May 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Pave the Way Foundation has initiated a document retrieval project to reveal as much information and as many testimonies as possible regarding the papacy of Pope Pius XII, the World War II Pontiff, in order to break the academic "log jam" caused by the lack of publicly available information.

New findings have revealed documents and testimony, which clearly show that on Oct. 16, 1943, it was the intentional lack of a public denunciation by Pope Pius XII against the arrest of the Roman Jews, which saved their lives and enabled their rescue.

We have a signed 1972 deposition of General Karl Wolff, SS commander for Italy and deputy to Heinrich Himmler, which states that in September 1943 Adolf Hitler ordered him to develop a plan to invade the Vatican, kidnap the Pope, seize the Vatican assets, and kill the Roman Curia. This plan was to be carried out immediately.

General Wolff knew that if this invasion were executed, massive riots throughout Europe would ensue, resulting in a military disaster to the German war effort. General Wolff stated that he was successful in convincing Hitler to delay the invasion. This view of a potential military disaster was shared by the military governor of Rome, Major General Rainer Stahel, and German ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von Weizsäcker.

Pius XII learned of the invasion plan, and likewise believed that the result would be massive riots potentially killing thousands of innocent people and that the Vatican’s neutrality would be breached, thereby enabling German forces to enter all Vatican properties. Handwritten minutes exist, which state that on Sept. 6, 1943, Pius XII secretly called the cardinals together to tell them the Vatican would be invaded and he would be taken to the north and probably killed. The cardinals were to be prepared to leave for a neutral country immediately, upon the invasion of Vatican territory.

He also signed a letter of resignation, and placed it in his desk. He instructed the cardinals to form a government in exile and to elect a new Pope once they were safe. We have a handwritten letter from the secretary of state ordering the Swiss Guard not to resist invading German forces with firepower, and numerous documents detailing how they were to protect the Vatican Library and museum contents.

Throughout this period, von Weizsäcker sent deceptive positive messages about the Pope to Berlin to calm Hitler, not to justify an order to invade. Some critics of Pius XII have erroneously based their theories of papal complicity and collaboration on these intentionally misleading cables -- what von Weizsäcker’s lieutenant, Albrecht von Kessel, later called "tactical lies."

We have additional testimony from Lieutenant Nikolaus Kunkel, a German officer from the headquarters of the military governor of Rome, which corroborates documented evidence and testimony of exactly how Pius XII directly saved the Roman Jewish community and that they were expecting the invasion order from Berlin any day.

When the early morning arrests began Oct. 16, 1943, Pius XII was alerted to this by Princess Enza Pignatelli Aragona Cortes. He immediately took multiple steps to force the Germans to stop the arrests. He summoned the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Maglione, and instructed him to launch a vehement protest against the arrests. Cardinal Maglione warned von Weizsacker that same morning, that the Pope could not remain silent as they arrested the Jews under his very windows, in his own diocese. Pius XII then sent his nephew, Carlo Pacelli, to meet with a German sympathizer, Bishop Alois Hudal, to instruct him to write a letter to his German contacts to immediately stop the arrests.

This too proved ineffective. Pius XII's last effort, the most successful, was to send his close confidant, Salvatorian Superior General Father Pankratius Pfeiffer, to meet directly with the military governor of Rome, General Stahel. Father Pfeiffer warned Stahel that the Pope was going to launch a loud and public protest against these arrests if they were not stopped. Fear that this public protest would result in Hitler's ordering the invasion of the Vatican prompted Stahel to act.

General Stahel immediately telephoned Heinrich Himmler, and fabricated military grounds to stop the arrests. Trusting Stahel's assessment, Himmler advised Hitler to stop the arrests. The order to stop the arrests was issued at noon on Oct. 16, resulting in its implementation by 2 p.m. on the day they began.

This sequence of events was independently confirmed by General Dietrich Beelitz, the liaison officer with Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s office and Hitler’s command. Beelitz personally heard the Stahel-Himmler conversation. When Stahel’s deception later became known, Himmler punished General Stahel by sending him to the Eastern front.

It was known that the Vatican was infiltrated with spies. The Pope could only send trusted priests and confidants throughout Rome and Italy with verbal and written papal orders to lift cloister, allowing men and women to enter Catholic convents and monasteries, and ordered all ecclesiastical institutions to hide the Jews wherever they could.

According to famed British historian Sir Martin Gilbert, the Vatican hid thousands of Jews in literally one day (See supporting documents here and here). Once hidden, the Vatican continued to feed and support their Jewish “guests” until Rome’s liberation on June 4, 1944.

Documents from Berlin and the Eichmann Trial in Israel also show that the 8,000 Roman Jews that were to be arrested were not supposed to go to Auschwitz, but were to be sent to the work camp at Mauthausen and held as hostages. This order was later countermanded by persons unknown and 1,007 Jews were sent to Auschwitz to their death. Sadly only 17 survived. While there are those who repeatedly criticize Pius XII for not saving the 1,007, they remain completely silent on his direct actions, which saved this 3,000 year old Jewish community of Rome.

It was recently discovered, in the American archives, that the allies had broken the German codes and knew almost a week in advance of the intended arrests of the Roman Jews. The allies decided not to warn the Romans since this might alert the Germans to this intelligence breach. This “military decision” left Pope Pius XII alone, without advance notice, to try to end the arrests.

When speaking of Pope Pius XII, the foremost Jewish scholars of the Holocaust in Hungary, Jeno Levai, stated that it was a "particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others."

* * *

Gary Krupp is the founder of Pave the Way Foundation (PTWF), a non-sectarian organization whose mission is to identify and try to eliminate obstacles between religions and to initiate positive gestures in order to improve interreligious relations.

--- --- ---

On the Net:

For more information: www.ptwf.org

Expression of gratitude by the Italian Jewish communities (1946): www.pavethewayfoundation.org/Downloads/Italian%20Jewish%20Community%20Placard.pdf

Jewish praise for Pius XII: www.pavethewayfoundation.org/Downloads/Jewish%20Praise.pdf

Testimony of Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel (Video 9): www.barhama.com/PAVETHEWAY/INTERVISTA_A_GUMPEL/GUMPLE.html

Original Article: http://www.zenit.org/article-29380?l=english

“It’s BP’s Oil”

2010-05-25T16:13:00.003-04:00

Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana's crude-covered beaches.

— By Mac McClelland
Mon May. 24, 2010 12:14 AM PDT
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, even after all the warnings, looks worse than I imagined. Pools of oil black and deep stretch down the beach; when cleanup workers drag their rakes along an already-cleaned patch of sand, more auburn crude oozes up. Beneath the surface lie slimy washed-up globules that, one worker says, are "so big you could park a car on them."

It's Saturday, May 22nd, a month into the BP spill, and I've been trying to get to Elmer's Island for the past two days. I've been stymied at every turn by Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies brought in to supplement the local police force of Grand Isle, a 300-year-old settlement here at the very southern tip of Louisiana. Just seven miles long and so narrow in some spots that you can see from the Gulf side to the inland side, Grand Isle is all new clapboard and vinyl-sided bungalows since Katrina, but still scrappy—population 1,500, octuple that in tourist season. It's also home to the only route to Elmer's, a barrier island to the west. I arrived on Thursday with my former University of New Orleans lit prof, John Hazlett; a tandem kayak is strapped to his Toyota Tacoma. At the turn to Elmer's Island Road, a deputy flags us down. Can't go to Elmer's; he's just "doing what they told me to do." We continue on to Grand Isle beach, where toddlers splash in the surf. Only after I've stepped in a blob of crude do I realize that the sheen on the waves and the blackness covering a little blue heron from the neck down is oil.

The next day, cops drive up and down Grand Isle beach explicitly telling tourists it is still open, just stay out of the water. There are pools of oil on the beach; dolphins crest just offshore. A fifty-something couple, Southern Louisianians, tell me this kind of thing happened all the time when they were kids; they swam in rubber suits when it got bad, and it was no big deal. They just hope this doesn't mean we'll stop drilling.

The blockade to Elmer's is now four cop cars strong. As we pull up, deputies start bawling us out; all media need to go to the Grand Isle community center, where a "BP Information Center" sign now hangs out front.

Inside, a couple of Times-Picayune reporters circle BP representative Barbara Martin, who tells them that if they want passage to Elmer they have to get it from another BP flack, Irvin Lipp; Grand Isle beach is closed too, she adds. When we inform the Times-Pic reporters otherwise, she asks Dr. Hazlett if he's a reporter; he says, "No." She says, "Good." She doesn't ask me. We tell her that deputies were just yelling at us, and she seems truly upset. For one, she's married to a Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy. For another, "We don't need more of a black eye than we already have."

"But it wasn't BP that was yelling at us, it was the sheriff's office," we say.

"Yeah, I know, but we have…a very strong relationship."

"What do you mean? You have a lot of sway over the sheriff's office?"

"Oh yeah."

"How much?"

"A lot."

When I tell Barbara I am a reporter, she stalks off and says she's not talking to me, then comes back and hugs me and says she was just playing. I tell her I don't understand why I can't see Elmer's Island unless I'm escorted by BP. She tells me BP's in charge because "it's BP's oil."

"But it's not BP's land."

"But BP's liable if anything happens."

"So you're saying it's a safety precaution."

"Yeah! You don't want that oil gettin' into your pores."

"But there are tourists and residents walking around in it across the street."

"The mayor decides which beaches are closed." So I call the Grand Isle police requesting a press liason, only to get routed to voicemail for "Melanie" with BP. I call the police back and ask why they gave me a number for BP; they blame the fire chief.

I reach the fire chief. "Why did the police give me a number for BP?" I ask.

"That's the number they gave us."

"Who?"

"BP."

When I tell Chief Aubrey Chaisson that I would like to get a comment on Barbara's intimations—and my experience so far—that BP is running the show, he says he'll meet me in a parking lot. He pulls in, rolls down the window of his maroon Crown Victoria, and tells me that I can't trust the government or big corporations. When everyone saw the oil coming in as clear as day several days before that, BP insisted it was red tide—algae. Chaisson says he's half-Indian and grew up here and just wants to protect the land. When I tell him BP says the inland side of the island is still clean, he spits, "They're fucking liars. There's oil over there. It's already all up through the pass." The spill workers staying at my motel later tell me they've been specifically instructed by BP not to talk to any media, but they're pissed because BP tried to tell them that the crude they were swimming around in to move an oil containment boom was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud.

The next morning at breakfast, the word at Sarah's Restaurant is that the island will have to be shut down; the smell of oil was so strong last night one lady had to shut all her windows and turn on her AC; if her asthma keeps up like this, she'll need to go on her breathing machine tonight.

I've corralled Irvin Lipp, who drives me and a few wire photographers out to Elmer's. (He tells me ruefully that he has history with Mother Jones, having once been a flack for Dupont.) The shoreline is packed with men in hats and gumboots and bright blue or white shirts. Nearly all are African-American, all hired from around New Orleans. They tell me they've been standing in these exact same spots for three days. It's breathtakingly hot. They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing. Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day. When I joke with one worker that he should pocket the solid gobs of oil he's digging up to show me how far beneath the sand they go, he stops dead and asks me if BP's still trying to use the oil they all collect. "Aw, I knew it!" he says. Another leans on his rake to ask me, "Have they at least shut the oil off yet?" He randomly picks three spots in a three-foot-wide expanse of sand that he's already raked clean and drops his rake in an inch deeper to show me how the oil bubbles up from underneath. He can't count how many times he's raked this same spot in the 33 hours he's worked it since Thursday, but one thing he's sure of, he says, is that he'll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.

Mac McClelland is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, writer of The Rights Stuff, and the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War. Read more of her stories and follow her on Twitter.

God is not dead. He isn't even tired

2010-05-19T10:18:00.004-04:00

Christendom College Commencement Address

Dr. Charles E. Rice, Professor Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School

May 17, 2010

The following Commencement Address was given at Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, on Saturday, May 15th. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Dr. Rice.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When President O'Donnell asked me to give this address, I expressed one concern: "Will there be a protest? And will you prosecute the protestors? Or at least 88 of them?" He made no commitment. I accepted anyway.

So what can I tell you? This is a time of crises. The economy is a mess, the culture is a mess, the government is out of control. And, in the last three years, Notre Dame lost 21 football games. But this is a great time for us to be here, especially you graduates of this superbly Catholic college. This is so because the remedy for the general meltdown today is found only in Christ and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Let's talk bluntly about our situation and what you can do about it.

We are living through a transformation of our federal government. A one-party regime, the leader of which was elected with 54 percent of the Catholic vote, is substituting for the free economy and limited government a centralized command system of potentially unlimited jurisdiction and power. Its takeover of health care, against the manifest will of the people, not only funds elective abortions and endangers the elderly and conscience rights. It was enacted in disregard of legislative process and by a level of bribery, coercion and deception that was as open as it was unprecedented.

To find a comparable example of the rapid concentration of executive power by a legally installed regime, we have to go back to 1933. Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30. Over the next few weeks he consolidated his power. The decisive event was the Reichstag's approval of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933, by which it ceded full and irrevocable powers to Hitler. That was the point of no return. The Enabling Act received the needed two-thirds vote only because it was supported by the Catholic party, the Centre Party.[1] Our "Health Care Reform," enacted with the decisive support of Catholic members of both houses of Congress, may be the Enabling Act of our time in the control it cedes to government over the lives of the people. It includes the federal takeover of student aid. What do student loans have to do with health care? The common denominator is control. No student will be able to get a federally guaranteed educational loan without the consent of a federal bureaucrat. This opens the way to make political loyalty a test for educational advancement, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This confirms the wisdom of Christendom's decision to forego all federal aid.

Unlike Germany in 1933, we have legal means of redress. I am proud to say I am a Tea Party guy. In November, the reaction may dislodge the Congressional arm of the ruling class. But that reaction will be only temporary unless we go to the source of the evil. The root problem is not political or economic. It is religious. And that is where you come in. "The social crisis," said Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, "happens when we elect people to rule over us who are immoral. .... [P]eople who don't have a moral bearing to elect other moral people, elect immoral politicians to serve over them.... So immoral lifestyles produce immoral leaders."[2] In other words, we elect immoral, rather than moral, people because we have lost the ability, or the desire, to tell the difference. The answer, said Fr. Euteneuer, is "to turn back to God. ... What we need is a conversion of heart."

We rightly urge fidelity to the Constitution. But no paper charter can survive the disappearance of the morality that produced it. In 2001, thirteen days after 9/11, Pope John Paul II, in Kazakhstan, cautioned the leaders of that Islamic republic against a "slavish conformity" to Western culture which is in a "deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment" caused by "the fatal attempt to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme Good."

You graduates will enter a culture in which the intentional infliction of death upon the innocent is widely seen as an optional problem-solving technique. The Columbine shootings set a precedent. If you have a grievance against your classmates, fellow employees or IRS agents, the answer is to blow them away. Legalized abortion is the prime example of murder as a problem solver. And the execution of someone like Terri Schiavo occurs routinely, without public notice, when the family and caregivers agree to withhold food and water because it is time for the patient to "die with dignity." The separation of morality from killing has counterparts in the separation of morality from economics, from sex and from personal decisions in general.

There is no mystery in this. We are living through what Fr. Francis Canavan, S.J., called "the fag end of the Enlightenment," the collapse of the effort by philosophers and politicians, over the past three centuries and more, to build a society as if God did not exist.[3] That Enlightenment culture is built on three lies, secularism, relativism and individualism. They are components of what Benedict XVI called a "dictatorship of relativism... that recognizes nothing as absolute and which leaves only the 'I' and its whims as the ultimate measure."[4] Those three lies are weapons deployed by our enemy, Satan, the father of lies. Your job, for which you are well equipped, is to counter his lies with the truth. If you speak the truth, you will have an impact beyond what you know. Cardinal Edouard Gagnon described a conversation he had with John Paul II:

[T]he Holy Father... told me, "error makes its way because truth is not taught. We must teach the truth.... not attacking the ones who teach errors because that would never end—they are too numerous. We have to teach the truth." He told me truth has a grace attached to it. Anytime we speak the truth.... an internal grace of God... accompanies that truth. The truth may not immediately enter in the mind and heart of those to whom we talk, but the grace of God is there and at the time they need it, God will open their heart and they will accept it. He said, error does not have grace accompanying it.[5]

Remember that Truth, with a capital T, "is a person, Jesus Christ."[6] And Christ is not some lawyer, CEO or community organizer. He is God. Cardinal Avery Dulles described three foundational principles: "that there is a God, that he has made a full and final revelation of himself in Jesus Christ and that the Catholic Church is the authorized custodian and teacher of this body of revealed truth."[7] The Catholic faith is not a set of doctrines. It is a lived encounter with Christ, who lives in, and teaches through, the Church.[8]

The Magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church, is a great gift, not only for Catholics but for others to whose conscience it appeals "on the basis of reason and natural law."[9] The forces of evil concentrate their fire on the Vicar of Christ, who is the authoritative interpreter of the moral law. We must respond with loyal defense of him and of the Church. We are not, to borrow Fr. Euteneuer's phrase, the Church Impotent. We are part of the Church Militant. Our job is to fight for the Truth. Don't be conned by their lies:

1). The first lie is secularism: There is no God or he is unknowable. They say that is what the First Amendment means, but that, too, is a lie. On September 24-25, 1789, the First Congress approved the First Amendment and called on the President to proclaim a day of "thanksgiving and prayer... acknowledging... the many ... favors of Almighty God."[10] President Washington proclaimed that day of prayer. The First Amendment required neutrality on the part of the federal government among religious sects while recognizing the power of the state and federal governments to affirm the existence of God. The Supreme Court has now imposed a duty on all governments to maintain an impossible neutrality between theism and non-theism. The words "under God," according to Justice William Brennan's still accurate description of the Court's approach, may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance only because they "no longer have a religious purpose or meaning." Instead they "may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded 'under God.'" [11]

At all levels of government, the suspension of judgment on the existence of God has evolved into an establishment of secularism. Today, affirmations of God are considered non-rational, and are generally excluded from the public discourse which is shaped by utility and power rather than right or wrong.

The existence of God is not self-evident. But it is unreasonable, even stupid, not to believe in God, an eternal being that had no beginning and always existed. The alternative is that there was a time when there was absolutely nothing. But that makes no sense. St. Thomas Aquinas said, "if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd."[12] As Julie Andrews put it in The Sound of Music, "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could."

The only basis for transcendent rights against the State is the creation of the immortal person in the image and likeness of God. Every state that has ever existed, or ever will exist, has gone out of business or will go out of business. Every human being that has ever been conceived will live forever. That is why you have transcendent rights against the State. The person does not exist for the State. The State exists for the person. And for the family.

2). The second lie of Satan is relativism. To say that all things are relative is absurd, for that statement itself must be relative. The jurisprudence of relativism is some form of legal positivism, which asserts that there is no higher law that limits what human law can do. A law of any content is valid if it is enacted pursuant to prescribed procedure and is effective. Hans Kelsen, the leading legal positivist of the 20th century, said that Auschwitz and the Soviet Gulags were valid law. He could not criticize them as unjust because justice, he said, is "an irrational ideal."[13] Kelsen claimed that relativism is the philosophy of democracy. John Paul II said relativism leads instead to totalitarianism: "If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to ... impose his own interests ... with no regard for the rights of others."[14]

In your personal and professional lives you will be pressured to be a relativist, to lie, cheat or steal. As John Paul put it, the negative prohibitions of the Commandments, which are a specification of the natural law, "allow no exceptions."[15] But you will pay a price for your fidelity.

Let me tell you a story. Captain James Mulligan, of the United States Navy, spent seven years, half of them in solitary confinement, in the Hanoi Hilton after his plane was shot down in 1966. He was a cell-mate for a time of later Senator Jeremiah Denton. He, as were the others, was tortured severely and often to try to make him betray his fellow prisoners and his country. Captain Mulligan put his reliance on prayer, especially the Rosary. Under torture, he laid it on the line in a prayer he composed that we ought to make our own: "Lord, give me the strength and the guts to see this thing through to the end, one way or another. No one else knows, Lord, but you and I know, and that's all that's necessary. You suffered for your beliefs, and I must suffer for mine. Right is right if no one's right; wrong is wrong if everyone's wrong."[16] That is the answer to relativism.

3). The third lie you will confront is individualism. Social contract theories denied the social nature of man. They postulated a state of nature in which each person was an autonomous, isolated individual with no relation to others unless he consents. That is the origin of pro-choice as we know it today. Planned Parenthood didn't think it up. The mother has no relation to her unborn child unless she consents. The husband and wife have no continuing relation unless they continue to consent. And so on. The autonomous individual is his own god. Conscience is not a judgment about the objective rightness or wrongness of an act. It is the individual's unfettered decision as to what he wills to do. Whatever he chooses is, for him, the right thing to do. That is portrayed as the way to freedom. But "authentic freedom" cannot be separated from the truth.[17]

You are "free" to choose to put sand in the gas tank of your car. But you will no longer be free to drive your car because you have violated the truth of the nature of your car. You are "free" to choose to lie, to fornicate, etc., but you will diminish yourself because you have violated the truth of your nature. You have chosen the moral equivalent of putting sand in your gas tank. And there is one thing the autonomous individual of liberal mythology can never do. He can never put himself out of existence. He is going to live forever and will spend eternity someplace. Where, is up to him.

It is time for us to shed our inferiority complex. We allow ourselves to be conned into thinking that the smart guys are the academics who think that something can come from nothing, who are sure that they can't be sure of anything and who think that freedom means, without limit, the power and right to do whatever they want. This culture has lost not only its faith but also its mind. They need to hear the truth, especially about the right to life.

But there we have a problem. Our prolife efforts are compromised by our timidity on contraception. The Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 was the first time that any Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. The Magisterium teaches the truth, that contraception is wrong, first, because it deliberately separates the unitive and procreative aspects of sex; second, by so changing the nature of the conjugal act, the man and woman make themselves, rather than God, the arbiters of whether and when life shall begin; and third, contraception frustrates the total mutual self-donation that ought to characterize the conjugal act. If man makes himself the arbiter of whether and when life shall begin, he will make himself the arbiter of when it shall end as in abortion and euthanasia. John Paul II described abortion and contraception as "fruits of the same tree."[18] If it is man's decision whether sex will have any relation to reproduction, why can't Freddy and Harry get a marriage license? In 2004, Pastor Donald Sensing of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, TN, wrote that opponents of same-sex marriage are "a little late. The walls of traditional marriage were breached 40 years ago" with the general acceptance of the contraceptive pill.[19]

God has chosen to depend on human cooperation for the creation of new citizens for the kingdom of heaven. The contracepting couple alter the conjugal act to prevent that creation. What they say to God is something like this: "For all we know, God, it may be your will that from this act of ours a new human person will come into existence who will live forever. For all we know, that may be your will. And we won't let you do it." That is awesome. "Contraception," said John Paul II, "is so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God."[20]

Catholics practice contraception at the same rate as everyone else. One reason is that they have not been adequately informed. Many Catholic churches and schools are closing or consolidating for lack of parishioners and students. A fair response would be respectfully to say: "Most Reverend Bishop (or Father), you would not have this problem if you and your predecessors had been doing your job, over the past four decades and still today, of educating your people about the evil of contraception and about the entire positive teaching of the Church on marriage and the gift of life." Christendom graduates know the score on this. Don't be afraid to live it. And teach it, by word and example.

The link is clear between the premises of the Enlightenment and of contraception and such evils as pornography, promiscuity, divorce, in vitro fertilization, cloning and others.[21] Scientists at Newcastle University, in England, announced last month that they had created a "designer embryo" with the DNA of one man and two women, a child with two mothers.[22] Our scientists are probably not far behind.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, addressed this point in 2002. He discussed the description in Genesis 3 of the posting of angels east of Eden with flaming swords to keep man, after the Fall, from eating of the Tree of Life. After the Fall, man was forbidden to eat of that tree which gave immortality, "since to be immortal in this [fallen] condition would... be perdition." People are now, Ratzinger said, "starting to pick from the tree of life and make themselves lords of life and death, to reassemble life....[P]recisely what man was supposed to be protected from is now... happening; he is crossing the final boundary....[M]an makes other men his own artifacts. Man no longer originates in the mystery of love, by... conception and birth... but is produced industrially, like any other product.... [W]e can ... be certain of this: God will take action to counter an ultimate crime, an ultimate act of self-destruction, on the part of man. He will take action against the attempt to demean mankind by the production of slave-beings. There are indeed final boundaries we cannot cross...."[23]

This is serious business. Nineveh repented, prayed and was spared. Sodom and Gomorrah did not and were destroyed.[24] Those options could be ours.

If we look at all this in merely human terms, our cause is hopeless. But we don't depend on our own strength. And we don't know everything. Don't be discouraged when bad things happen. "God permits everything," said St. Maximilian Kolbe, "in view of a greater blessing."[25] Trust God. Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J., who spent 23 years in Soviet prisons, said what God wants, especially in times of adversity or danger, is "an act of total trust," demanding "absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me."[26]

Trust God. And pray, especially, to Mary, his Mother and ours. At Lepanto in 1571, the odds against the Christian fleet were so great that Las Vegas would have taken that bet off the board. But they prayed the Rosary and Mary gave the victory. She can take care of our problems today. This really is a great time for us to be here. We know we are on the winning side. God is not dead. He isn't even tired.

Thank you for the privilege to be with you. God bless you, your families and Christendom College. And God bless the United States of America.

-----------------------------------

ENDNOTES:

[1]Eliot Barculo Wheaton, The Nazi Revolution: 1933-35 (1969), 286-93; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (1959), 88, 276-79.

[2] LifeSiteNews.com, Jan. 6, 2010.

[3] Catholic Eye, Dec. 10, 1987, 2.

[4] Homily, April 18, 2005.

[5] Lay Witness, March, 1990, 6-7.

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Youth, April 19, 2008.

[7] Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., "Catholic Colleges and Universities Today," Assumption College, Oct. 11, 2007.

[8] Ecclesiam Suam (1964), nos. 30, 55.

[9] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), no. 28 (a).

[10] Annals of Congress, I, 949.

[11] Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 304 (1963).

[12] S.T., I, Q.2, art. 3.

[13] Hans Kelsen, "The Pure Theory of Law, Part I," 50 Law Quart. Rev. 474, 482 (1934).

[14] Veritatis Splendor, no. 99.

[15] Veritatis Splendor, no. 52.

[16] James Mulligan, The Hanoi Commitment (1981), 48, 93-94.

[17] Veritatis Splendor, No. 87.

[18] Evangelium Vitae, no. 13.

[19] Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2004.

[20] Pope John Paul II, Discourse, Sept. 17, 1983.

[21] See Charles E. Rice and Theresa Farnan, Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? (2009), 141-164.

[22] Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, April 14, 2010.

[23] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (2002), 133-135.

[24] Genesis 19:1-28; Jonah 3:1-10.

[25] St. Maximilian Kolbe, Writings, 1205.

[26] Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me (1973), 77.

British author blasts the new atheists, "secular inquisition"

2010-04-27T12:05:00.001-04:00

by Carol Olson
Ignatius Insight

Yeah, yeah, yeah—yet another hyper-reactionary papal apologist whining and complaining about how the Pope is being treated:

It’s worth asking why otherwise fairly intelligent thinkers get so dementedly exercised over the pope and the Catholic Church. What exactly is their beef? What are they objecting to? Very few (if any) of the pope-hunters were raised Catholic, so this isn’t about personal vengeance for some perceived slight by a priest or nun. And despite their current lowdown, historically illiterate attempt to equate a priest fondling a child with a state’s attempt to obliterate an entire people – under the collective tag ‘crime against humanity’ – the truth is that some of these pope-hunters don’t really think child abuse is the worst crime in the world. In 2006, Dawkins criticised ‘hysteria about paedophilia’ and said that, even though he was the victim of sexual abuse at boarding school, he would defend his abusive former teachers if ‘50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers’. Yet now he wants to put abusive priests on a par with genocidaires.

But what do you expect from a brainwashed pope-worshiper who refuses to acknowledge The Truth about Benedict the Cover Upper and the Vile Vatican Filled With Old, Perverted Men?

The reason this crusade is so hysterical is because it is not really about the pope at all – it is about the New Atheists themselves. The contemporary pope-hunting springs from a secularist movement which feels incapable of asserting a sense of purpose or meaning in any positive, human-centred way – as the great atheists of old such as Marx or Darwin might have done – and which instead can only assert itself negatively, in contrast to the ‘evil’ of religion, by posturing against the alleged wickedness of institutionalised faith. It is the inner emptiness, directionless and soullessness of contemporary secularism – in contrast to earlier, Enlightened and more positive secular movements – which has given birth to the bizarre clamour for the pope’s head.

Secularism is in crisis. In Enlightened times, progressive secular movements, those which eschewed the guidance of God in favour of relying on mankind to work out what his problems were and how to solve them, were all about having a positive view of humanity. Their vision was both terrifying and extremely liberating: that man alone could master the complexities of life on Earth and improve it for himself and future generations. Today, however, we live in misanthropic, deeply downbeat times, where mankind is looked upon as a greedy, destructive, unreliable force whose behaviour and thoughts must be governed from without.

Well, sure, what else could you expect from an ultra-right-wing, atheist-hating Romanist?

This is what drives their war against religion: an instinct for ridiculing those who still, unlike contemporary secularists themselves, have an overarching outlook on life and a strong belief system. That is really what they find so alien about the Catholic Church in particular – its beliefs, its faith, its hierarchy. An atheism utterly alienated from the mass of humanity and from any future-oriented vision can only lash out in an extreme and intolerant way against those who still seem to have strong beliefs: the religious, or the ‘deluded ones’, as the New Atheists see it.

Pah-leaze! Stop the papal propaganda already!

No doubt some will accuse me of ‘defending paedophile priests’ in contrast to the New Atheist campaign on behalf of ‘powerless victims’. In truth, my only concern, as an atheistic libertarian—

Uh. What? What?? You're not a Catholic? You're a former Catholic? And an atheist? Really?

Yes, really, he most certainly is all of that. Brendan O’Neill, the editor of spiked, is a former Catholic and an "atheistic libertarian" who has been sticking his neck out on this subject for a while now and who deserves some kudos and thanks for good Catholics, in my estimation. There's no doubt all all that O'Neill and Catholics disagree about a whole host of very significant issues, but his analysis of the ongoing media furor—"witch-hunt", he calls it—is all the more powerful because O'Neill is not trying so much to defend the Catholic Church (although he is doing so), but because he is trying to save a form of rational, reasonable atheism, and he sees the attacks by Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. as being anything but rational and reasonable. And he's right. Is he right about there being a viable form of rational, reasonable atheism to be lived in today's world? Well, that would be a fascinating topic for a conversation over a pint, but for the time being it is worth noting that non-Catholics—non-theists!—are capable of some excellent insights and cool reasoning about all of this. Again, bravo to Mr. O'Neill, to whom I tip my hat, once again.

La crisis de la pederastia en la Iglesia en 1.001 palabras

2010-04-27T09:52:00.002-04:00

Y la respuesta de Benedicto XVI

ROMA, domingo 25 de abril de 2010 (ZENIT.org).- El New York Times (NYT) publica (12/3/10) que en 1980 la archidiócesis de Múnich y Freising, siendo Joseph Ratzinger obispo, acogió y finalmente reincorporó a un sacerdote acusado de abusar sexualmente de niños. El cura perpetró más tarde nuevos abusos y fue procesado. Como se ha demostrado después, quien tomó la decisión de readmisión no fue Ratzinger sino el vicario general: la reasignación tuvo lugar en septiembre de 1982, cuando Ratzinger ya estaba en Roma .

Por las mismas fechas (5/03/10) se intenta implicar al hermano de Ratzinger, pero la acusación no se sostiene.

La respuesta de Benedicto XVI

Benedicto XVI (19/03/10) escribe una carta a los católicos de Irlanda sobre los abusos a niños y jóvenes por parte de clérigos, destapados por los informes Murphy (julio 2009) y Ryan (mayo 2009). Irlanda es el segundo país tras Estados Unidos donde se investiga a fondo.

En la misiva, Benedicto XVI apunta 8 causas de este desastre: 1) inadecuada respuesta a la secularización, 2) descuido de prácticas sacramentales y devocionales (confesión frecuente, oración diaria y retiros anuales), 3) tendencia a adoptar formas de pensamiento y juicio sin referencia suficiente al Evangelio; 4) tendencia a evitar enfoques penales de las situaciones canónicamente irregulares; 5) procedimientos inadecuados para determinar la idoneidad de los candidatos al sacerdocio y a la vida religiosa; 6) insuficiente formación humana, moral, intelectual y espiritual en los seminarios y noviciados; 7) tendencia social a favorecer el clero y otras figuras de autoridad y 8 ) preocupación fuera de lugar por el buen nombre de la Iglesia y para evitar escándalos.

A las víctimas dice: "Habéis sufrido inmensamente y eso me apesadumbra en verdad. Sé que nada puede borrar el mal que habéis soportado. (...) Es comprensible que os resulte difícil perdonar o reconciliaros con la Iglesia. En su nombre, expreso abiertamente la vergüenza y el remordimiento que sentimos todos. Al mismo tiempo, os pido que no perdáis la esperanza". A los sacerdotes y religiosos que han abusado de niños: "Debéis responder de ello ante Dios todopoderoso y ante los tribunales debidamente constituidos". A los obispos: "No se puede negar que algunos de vosotros y de vuestros predecesores habéis fallado, a veces gravemente, a la hora de aplicar las normas, codificadas desde hace largo tiempo, del derecho canónico sobre los delitos de abusos de niños. Se han cometido graves errores en la respuesta a las acusaciones".

Benedicto XVI propone cinco medidas: 1) un año de penitencia, 2) redescubrir el sacramento de la Reconciliación (la confesión), 3) fomentar la adoración eucarística; 4) una Visita Apostólica (una inspección) en algunas diócesis, seminarios y congregaciones religiosas; 5) una misión para todos los obispos, sacerdotes y religiosos. En otras palabras: hacer limpieza.

Más cargos aún

El 24/03/10,NYT apunta directamente a Benedicto XVI como responsable de un caso, cuando era todavía cardenal: el de Lawrence Murphy, que abusó de niños sordos en los 70 en Milwaukee y no fue condenado ni por la justicia ordinaria ni por el arzobispado. Como se ha visto después, la falta de diligencia en el castigo del malhechor fue culpa del propio arzobispado local: el caso no llegó al Vaticano hasta los 90. El sesgo de la noticia periodística puede explicarse por errores de traducción y porque el artículo bebe de dos fuentes: los abogados que han denunciado al Arzobispado (uno de ellos, Jeffrey Anderson, tiene litigio abierto contra la Santa Sede) y el arzobispo retirado de Milwaukee Rembert Weakland, en activo cuando sucedió todo.

El 2/2/10 Associated Press lanzó otra acusación contra Benedicto XVI, cuya pruebas se demostraron falsas. El 9/4/10 volvió a la carga NYT con más acusaciones, con igual suerte.

En resumen, las acusaciones contra la Iglesia son tres: 1) algunos sacerdotes católicos abusaron de niños, 2) muchos obispos lo ocultaron, y 3) Benedicto XVI es personalmente responsable. Con datos en la mano, el n. 1 es lamentablemente cierto en una ínfima minoría del colectivo; n. 2 se afirma en determinados prelados y n. 3 es rotundamente falso.

Las consecuencias

Algunos piden juzgar al Papa por encubrimiento, y aprovechan para suspender al catolicismo en su conjunto. Otros de funesto recuerdo ya habían intentado, tiempo atrás usar los delitos de unos pocos para desacreditar a toda la institución. Algunos abogados intentan sacar provecho. No han faltado voces amigas del Papa desde el judaísmo, desde el agnosticismo y, en general, desde ambientes intelectuales.

El Vaticano ha puesto sobre la mesa la información que tiene. Tal ejercicio de transparencia ha llegado al extremo de que el fiscal del Vaticano hable sobre los casos de abusos en una documentada entrevista. La Santa Sede ha publicado los reglamentos por los cuales se juzgan estos casos y abundante documentación.

Dentro de la Iglesia, ha habido partidarios de la ruptura y partidarios de la renovación. Ruptura: 1) algunas voces reclaman una revisión del celibato y de la moral católica, aunque expertos y opinadores incluso no católicos han denunciado con datos la inexistencia de tal vinculación causa-efecto. 2) exponentes antirromanos de cierta edad han reclamado la dimisión del Papa o una reforma.

Renovación: muchos han aplaudido el posicionamiento de Benedicto XVI de tolerancia cero, petición de perdón y penitencia y conversión. Muchos católicos han salido de la perplejidad buscando la verdad de los hechos. La operación limpieza iniciada años atrás ha retomado impulso: desde la carta a Irlanda han dimitido dos obispos irlandeses, un americano, un alemán, unnoruego y un belga. El liderazgo interno de Benedicto XVI es mayor ahora: se percibe Benedicto XVI como parte de la solución, y no parte del problema.

Además de la Iglesia, pocos han priorizado la protección de las víctimas y las medidas para acabar con la pederastia. Es una lástima, tanto más cuando se constata que es un problema transversal: afecta más gravemente a muchos otros colectivos sociales. Países como Alemania, ya lo afrontan globalmente. Algunos articulistas han apuntado a la culpa que en la extensión del fenómeno haya podido tener la revolución sexualde los sesenta y su simpatía declarada hacia la pedofilia.

Zenit Link: http://www.zenit.org/article-35118?l=spanish
Por Marc Argemí, creador del blog http://bxvi.wordpress.com/

The Resurrection Puts Everything Together Again

2010-04-07T09:28:00.000-04:00

Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | The Resurrection of the Lord | April 4, 2010

http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/schall_easter_apr2010.asp

The events of recent weeks—the enormous concentration of power now vested in the Executive Branch of our Government, the effective lack of checks and balances, the cost of it all—sometimes make the truths of faith seem irrelevant. This sense of helplessness is exponentially increased for many when they realize that those who call themselves Catholics have played a central role in bringing about this increasing absolute rule among us. We might be somewhat consoled if this were a system imposed upon us by some alien or demonic power. But, at bottom, it is the result of free choices of presumably otherwise normal citizens. We also might console ourselves that it may not be as bad as it looks were it not for the suspicion that it is in fact much worse. We just do not want to know.

Catholics could have prevented this radical political turning, but in fact many were and are supportive, indeed enthusiastically so. The key issues of the faith are no longer considered to be basic public issues. The teaching authority of the Church, even when it is clear, is ignored or relativized. We are encouraged to "move on." Generally, this admonition means accepting or accommodating ourselves to what are now taken to be settled facts no matter what they are.

We are becoming like Jews and Christians in Muslim lands. If we politely agree to have no effect in the public order, if we submissively pay the taxes to support this new system, we will be allowed to survive after a fashion. We can have a private, not a public presence.

Easter, the commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ, goes on, of course, no matter in what the social or political order in which we find ourselves. The teaching of Easter is needed if we would make ultimate sense of our lives. Intellectual history, in one sense, is a desperate effort to find a sensible alternative explanation to Christian revelation. The modern mind is, in a way, embarrassed that it has not come up with such an alternative that makes as much ultimate sense as the Resurrection. But, of course, this teaching is the consequence of a fact that happened not of our own making. We might, in some sense, say that it was prophesized to happen, but that does not change the astonishing fact.

Various theories are proposed to explain why the Resurrection "cannot" be true or could not have happened. We have historical analyses seeking to demonstrate that Christ did not exist. Or if He did, He was only human. The evidence of His resurrection is called unreliable. The Apostles dreamed it up after the fact.

Then we have the scientific theories, all of which strive to prove that this doctrine is incoherent, that it lacks evidence that can be repeated or tested in a laboratory.

We have psychological theories which reduce the objective order to wishes or dreams. Volumes have been filled with endeavors to "prove" that this event could not have happened, did not happen, or may not happen.

The truth of the Resurrection, however, is seen as a critique of the actual public order, which it is. The fact and teaching of the Resurrection of Christ and of our own as a result are, none the less, teachings independent of the historical time or place we now live. They belong to the order of things that will happen whether we believe it or not. Nothing—no political or social order—will be more important than the understanding of our being implied in resurrection. This reality teaches us what each of us is. The Creed says that "we believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting."

We can rightly assume that the teaching of the resurrection of the body is a minority opinion. We can also suspect that few see any relation between how we live our lives and what this doctrine is about. It has been the abiding task of the teaching Church to relate doctrine to practice. Things will not "go" rightly if we do not live rightly. We will generally not live rightly if we do not think rightly.

We are given intelligence in order that we might understand what we are. We are given freedom in order that, understanding what we are, we might choose to be what we are. This combination of reason and liberty results in the possibility of our choosing to reject what we are.

Why would we reject what we are? We would do it if we did not want to be what we are intended to be. We can only choose this rejection if we think we can come up with something better. We are inclined to think this way when we suspect that the kind of being and end that we are given interferes with something we think we want.

We will thus reject what we are in order to establish a way of life and explanation that depends on nothing but ourselves. "As man grows up and becomes emancipated, he wants to liberate himself from this submission and become free and adult, able to organize himself and make his own decisions, even thinking he can do without God," Benedict XVI recently observed. "Precisely this state is delicate and can lead to atheism, yet even this frequently conceals the need to discover God's true Face" (L'Osservatore Romano, English, March 17, 2010).

Paradoxically, the rejection of God can be, in another sense, a seeking for the Face of God. The very rejection of God implies that we search for an alternative that includes the rejection of what is said to be the Christian God. This alternative will never be complete. The celebration of Easter always implies an understanding of what we are and of what the world is that makes more sense than the alternatives when we see them spelled out and lived out. The resurrection will seem preposterous until we think about it.

We might propose an alternate "creed." Thus, "I do not believe in God; He did not 'create' the heaven and the earth. Christ did not rise again. Man will not be risen again either. He will not be judged. He will complete his life at the end of his days however it happens. Nothing will be heard of him again. His existence meant nothing to anybody including to himself or to a 'God.' His highest aspirations are to be left alone in the Cosmos for the fleeting moments of his existence."

The resurrection of the body puts things together again. It restores our face to the Face of God as we see in Christ. What strikes us about the Apostles, those curious men, was that after the Resurrection of Christ, they rushed to "see," to "hear," to "touch." They even "smelled" the fish being grilled on the seashore. They "tasted" it. They did not begin from some theory. Whatever theory they may have had ahead of time, they doubted. Their own "theory" began with what they saw and heard.

We do not know what percentage of human beings who will come into existence on this planet are already dead having been initially judged, awaiting the judgment that puts it all together. Christ will come to judge the living and the dead. He, having been crucified, died, was buried, and rose again. He told us that we were made to follow Him.

Nothing better has been proposed to us. It is not a myth. It is based on the fact that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Our minds keep coming back to this fact if we would know what we are. The world is composed of those who know what they are and those who are afraid to know what they are if it involves even their own resurrection.

Yet, in nothing else is there hope. This is what Easter is about.

Terrible names for children... and my comments on them

2010-04-05T12:29:00.000-04:00

My comments on a list of baby names that are becoming terrifyingly common, found at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-03/next-years-hot-baby-names/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsL2

GIRLS

1. ABITHA – Abitha for Humanity? Forgot the T in Tabitha?
2. AMABEL – Amabel. You’re a bell, we’re all bells.
3. AMARYLLIS – No. Just no.
4. ARAMINTA. Sounds like the capital of a 3rd world country.
5. AVITA – not to be confused with “Evita”
9. CALLA – Hey ma, can you iron my calla on dis shirt?!
11. CALYPSO – great, name your daughter after the witch-whore who tried to seduce Odysseus
12. CARYS and CERYS – sound like computer software
14. CLEA – middle name “Patra”
16. CYRA and SIRI – another 3rd world capital
17. ELIZABELLA – No. You cannot do this.
18. ELODIE – I met someone named Elodie and I think it is foreign, so it is OK as it is actually a name.
19. FABLE – when you’re not sure if you had a daughter, or if it was just a dream
20. HOLLAND – no there was absolutely no marijuana involved in this decision
24. LARK – Lark? I’m gonna go on a lark here…
26. LEONIE – As in Sierra Leone? Get her some blood diamond earrings.
31. MAELLE – Another made up name which is not acceptable.
33. NOLA – New Orleans, Louisiana?
35. PERSEPHONE – better hope Hades doesn’t come up from the underworld and kidnap her
37. REMEMBER – We had a good name for our daughter, remember….?
38. RHEYA – sounds like some disease
39. ROMILLY - No
41. SAFFRON –It would be funny if she married Jerry Rice.
44. TAMSIN – Tamsin? Sounds like a name some Bombay man gives to his pet dog
45. TIERNEY – the last name of an old Irish woman.
46. VEGA – Vega… one of the badguys from Street Fighter
47. VERITY – she will never be able to tell a lie.
49. VIRTUE – wow she has a lot to live up to!
50. XANTHE – isn’t this a product used in shampoo?

BOYS

51. ACE – Sounds like his father is the kind who won’t accept that 2nd place little league trophy. I hope their insurance includes adolescent psychiatry
52. ALCOTT – last name, sorry.
53. ARCHER – like Robin Hood?
56. BEAU – I bet he won’t speak a word of French
57. BECKETT – yuck, obviously a Red Sox fan…
58. BENNETT – last name
59. BLAZE – wow, he can team up with Holland and have some fun times in Amsterdam.
60. BRECCAN – Breccan? Sounds like… either some kind of Native American snack or an old Irish village
61. CALLUM – sounds like a chemical
65. CAVAN – destined to drive a Dodge Caravan
66. CORMAC – good luck not getting made fun of
68. DHANI – name of a midly successful NFL linebacker
69. DJANGO – good luck again
71. GERMAN – well I hope he is at least German!
72. HAITIAN – $100 says this kid is white
73. HUXLEY – a brave new name
74. JAX – because
76. LAZARUS - did he crawl out from behind a stone?
78. LENNON – imagine if people gave their kids normal names
80. LONAN - Loner
82. MAGNUS – watch this kid be an effeminate, skinny ballet dancer
83. NASH - Ville
86. PHILOMON – the correct spelling is Philemon.
87. PIERS – instead of docks
88. POE – Poe child….
89. RALEIGH - Durham
91. ROAN – isn’t this an adjective for a red cow?
94. TARQUIN – great, name your child after the hated dictators of Rome
100. WYLIE - Coyote

God help us all...

Barcelona Invites Pope to Consecrate Gaudí Church

2010-02-19T09:23:00.001-05:00

Cardinal Notes Benedict XVI's Appreciation for Art

BARCELONA, Spain, FEB. 18, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The archbishop of Barcelona is affirming that Benedict XVI expressed interest in an invitation to consecrate the Sagrada Familia Church in that city, though he has not yet confirmed.

The church, designed by Antoni Gaudí, has been under construction since 1882 and is not expected to be completed until 2026.

However, this September, a portion of the building's completed interior is set to be opened for worship and tours.

Barcelona's archbishop, Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, invited the Pope to consecrate the church before it is opened for use.

He reported this Wednesday in a press conference at his episcopal palace, which was held for the beatification of Venerable José Tous y Soler, a Capuchin priest and founder who died in 1871 in Barcelona.

The cardinal stated that "the Holy Father was interested in the invitation because of what the Sagrada Familia is and signifies as a church of the universal genius of architect Antoni Gaudí, whose cause of canonization is under way."

He added that this church, named after the Holy Family, also has special significance "given the extreme importance the family has for the Holy Father, since the good of persons, of society and of the Church are directly related to the protection, defense and promotion of the family."

The Sagrada Familia is a religious monument which has been declared patrimony of humanity. It draws some 3 million visitors every year.

The archbishop of Barcelona clarified that "there is still no confirmation of this trip of the Pope to Barcelona to dedicate or consecrate the Sagrada Familia, as it depends on the Holy Father's calendar of trips."

The cardinal noted that the Pontiff "gives much importance to art, to beauty as a way to God."

He recalled, for example, Benedict XVI's Nov. 21 meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, and his address to them that was "very rich in content and very affectionate."

Cardinal Martínez Sistach noted that the Pope affirmed on that occasion that "artists speak to humanity's heart." He asked them to be, through their art, "witnesses and heralds of hope for humanity."

Blair Saw Catholic Ban as "Ridiculous"

2010-02-17T09:57:00.002-05:00

Comments on Requirement for UK Envoy to Holy See

LONDON, FEB. 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Tony Blair overturned British government policy to ban Catholics from representing the nation to the Holy See because he considered the ban "the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

This is what the former prime minister -- now himself a Catholic -- reveals on a documentary to be aired Wednesday by the BBC Northern Ireland.

In the documentary, titled "Our Man in the Vatican," Blair recounts his surprise at learning in 2005 of the policy, when the ambassador post became vacant.

"I said, 'It's the Vatican, the Pope, he's a Catholic. You mean we actually as a matter of policy ... say you can't have a Catholic?' I said, 'What is this? It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,'" Blair said, as reported by the BBC.

"Can you imagine we say for years and years and years the one category of person we shouldn't have as ambassador to the Holy See is someone who shares their faith?" he added. "I don't think that is very sensible -- not in this day.

"Quite apart from being discriminatory, how stupid is it?"

Formal diplomatic links between England and the Holy See were first established in 1479; in fact, the ambassador position before the Holy See is the oldest in the United Kingdom's diplomatic service.

However, when England's relationship with the Vatican went sour under Henry VIII, ties were broken and were not restored until 1914.

Rational

The BBC noted how in 1917, a Foreign Office memorandum stated Britain's Holy See representative "should not be filled with unreasoning awe of the Pope."

The Blair administration's selection of Francis Campbell, still the British ambassador, finally broke that trend.

Now, the embassy is considered a "vital part of the UK’s overseas network," as explained on the embassy's site. "The mission works jointly with the Holy See on international development, interfaith and climate change. But those examples are replicated many times over in ecumenism, conflict prevention, disarmament and human rights, not to mention the value of the Holy See as a global listening post.

"In an era when religion has once more emerged in international relations, the Vatican is key to the continuing policy debate on the proper boundary between faith and politics. The Vatican is a key stabilizing influence in the global faith/politics debate and helps keep discussion rational."

Faith and politics

Campbell's role as ambassador will be unique this year as he prepares for Benedict XVI's trip to Great Britain in September.

The Holy Father already caused a stir in England when he told the nation's bishops Feb. 1 that some legislation designed to protect equality imposes "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs," and sometimes "actually violates the natural law."

British government is considering the Equality Bill, defended as protection from discrimination due to sex or sexual orientation.

Critics caution that it could restrict the Church from selecting staff or even priests who live according to Church teaching and morality.

Source

New Prague Bishop Endured Communist Prison

2010-02-17T09:54:00.000-05:00

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, FEB. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- A bishop who was forced to work in a factory instead of as a priest, and who endured time in a Communist prison, has been named the archbishop of Prague.

Bishop Dominik Duka of Hradec Kralove, 66, succeeds Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, 77, who has retired for reasons of age.

Dominik Duka was born in 1943. He entered the Dominican Order, making his temporary profession in 1969, and receiving priestly ordination the next year.

For five years he worked in several parishes in Prague, and made his perpetual vows in 1972.

Three years later, he was deprived of authorization to exercise his priestly ministry, and was forced to work in a car factory in Plzen for almost 15 years (until 1989).

Meanwhile, he worked in secret within his congregation as master of novices and professor of theology.

He was imprisoned in Plzen between 1981 and 1982, according to the biography issued by the Vatican press office.

After the fall of Communism, he was elected president of the Federal Conference of Major Superiors and, from 1992 to 1996 was vice-president of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors.

From 1990 to 1999 he was a professor in the faculty of theology of Palacky University in Olomouc. On June 6, 1998, Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of Hradec Kralove.

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-28359?l=english

Vatican Secret Archives Documents Going Online

2010-02-15T09:22:00.001-05:00

Pave the Way Foundation Proposal Approved

By Jesús Colina

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II.

The initiatives is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions.

The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945.

Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder, told ZENIT that "the 'Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War],'" which were "previously published and mostly ignored," will "shortly be available for worldwide scrutiny and study online, free of charge."

He explained that these documents will be available on the Web site of his foundation as well as that of the Vatican.

This project is part of the mission of the foundation, a non-sectarian organization that works to remove obstacles between religions, foster cooperation and to end the misuse of religion for private agendas.

The organization's president, who is from New York but of Jewish decent, stated, "In the furtherance of our mission we have recognized the papacy of the war time Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) as a source of friction impacting over one billion people."

A plot

"Controversy abounds on whether he did enough to prevent the slaughter of Jews at the hands of the Nazis," Krupp affirmed.

He continued: "Our research has revealed that five years after Pius XII's death, the KGB hatched a plot to discredit their enemy, the Roman Catholic Church, called 'Seat 12.'

"A dirty trick, which condemned Pope Pius XII for his 'silence' during the Holocaust in the form of Rolf Hochhuth's fictitious 1963 play 'The Deputy.' The result was the worst character assassination of the twentieth century."

Based on his foundation's research, Krupp stated that in 1964, Pope Paul VI asked a team of three Jesuit historians, Father Pierre Blet, Father Burkhart Schneider, and Father Angelo Martini, to "conduct intensive research to identify relevant documents from the war years from the closed section of the Vatican Secret Archives."

He added: "A few years later Father Robert Graham joined the group. The first volume was published in 1965, the last in 1981."

Krupp explained that in 1999, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, at that time the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, called for a special commission of Jewish and Catholic scholars to come together to study these documents.

"This positive advance unfortunately ended July 21, 2001 in failure," he added, "partly because the scholars simply did not read the languages of the collection."

"They issued a list of 47 questions and demanded the opening of the yet un-catalogued archives" from the 1939-1958 period, the foundation president said.

He stated that his foundation "sought to gain permission to digitize this collection, making it broadly available for study" so as to further "our mission to publicly disclose as many documents as possible to help to move this obstacle between Jews and Catholics into the light of documented truth."

Black legend

Krupp explained that "this effort is simply to show clear evidence of Pope Pius XII's efforts to mitigate suffering during the war and that the 'black legend,' which besmirched his name, is simply not true."

He added that this initiative is "not meant to be a substitute for the full access" to the archives, "but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime."

"Ironically," he said "the Vatican Secret Archives [from the period prior] to 1939 were opened over two years ago," and they showed that "65% of Pacelli's ministry has simply been ignored by the critics who call for the war years to be opened."

On behalf of the foundation, the president expressed gratitude to the Pope's Secretary of State and the Libreria Editrice Vaticana "for their confidence in us by allowing us this unprecedented privilege."

He continued: "We sincerely hope that international historians will carefully scrutinize these records. We expect the digitization process of over 9000 pages will take about four weeks to complete [at which time] we will announce their posting on Internet."

In the meantime, the foundation already has thousands of documents and eyewitness videos available on their Web site for study.

Krupp concluded by requesting that "French, Italian and German scholars consider helping us by translating documents into English and forward this work to Pave the Way Foundation so that we can make the information available to more scholars for research."

He added, "We also would like to receive any comments, positive or negative, relative to the content of these documents."

--- --- ---

On the Net:

Pave the Way Foundation: http://www.ptwf.org

The BBC and Anti-Catholic Bias

2010-02-12T09:15:00.001-05:00

Director Mark Thompson Defends Its "Rounded" Approach

By Edward Pentin
www.Zenit.com

ROME, FEB. 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is not known to be one of the Catholic Church's closest friends.

Although it has a worldwide reputation for high quality programming, the vast state-funded broadcaster has often been accused of treating the Church and the Catholic faith unfairly at best, and maliciously at worst.

Many examples back up this accusation, beginning with a number programmes over the past 10 years that have been blasphemous and highly offensive to Catholics.

In 2003, the BBC broadcast -- to a large international audience -- a documentary entitled "Sex and the Holy City," which intentionally misrepresented the Church and its teaching on condoms and AIDS. Two years later, it aired "Jerry Springer the Opera," a blasphemous and very offensive programme that ridiculed Jesus and the faith in general. Earlier, the BBC had spent £2 million ($3.13 million) on a program called "Popetown" -- an animated series set in the Vatican that mocked the Church and included plotlines about bestiality. Due to protests, it was banned in Britain but broadcast overseas and sold in Britain on DVD.

The BBC has also been accused of failing in other areas when it comes to Catholicism. The persecution of Catholics in the Middle East or Asia is rarely covered or warranted adequate attention; the immense good work that Catholic priests, religious and laity do around the world is generally passed over; and the Church's invaluable contribution to Western culture tends to be disparaged in favour of focusing on the sins of Church members in the past.

The BBC has also been blamed for more subtle instances of anti-Catholic bias. Discussion panels, news reports and web articles tend to focus on the sensational; they also often comprise contributions from secular figures or dissenting Catholics but hardly ever from orthodox Catholics who will properly convey the Church's teaching.

The corporation's treatment of clergy not infrequently involves interrogations by disparaging and dismissive presenters who seem to view them as guilty until proven innocent. Stephen Glover, a non-Catholic British newspaper columnist, wrote how a BBC television interviewer, quizzing English Archbishop Vincent Nichols in 2007, "treated him like a member of some extreme sect, interrupting him continually, and sneering at him as though he were a half-wit."

Bias

Most of this bias is attributed to a predominantly secular mindset in the corporation that embraces, or is sympathetic to, the culture of death, whether it be abortion, radical feminism, the homosexual agenda, euthanasia, or unethical science such as embryonic stem cell research. "The BBC," Glover once wrote, "represents a materialist, mechanistic consensus which has rejected God, and deludes itself that science is capable of providing a complete explanation of existence."

Even one of the BBC's most accomplished journalists, Andrew Marr, admitted the difficulty the corporation has in offering unbiased coverage. "The BBC is not impartial or neutral," he told a secret summit of BBC executives in 2006. "It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

At that same meeting, one veteran BBC executive was reported in the British press as saying there was "widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness" and that much of this mentality is "so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it." It was also reported that "nearly everyone" at the summit agreed the Bible could be thrown into the bin on a comedy show, but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

Denial

The BBC's managers are, of course, quick to publicly reject most allegations of anti-Catholic bias. Last week, Mark Thompson, the corporation's director-general -- essentially its editor-in-chief -- gave a speech at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on the theme "Broadcasting and Civil Society." Disappointingly and perhaps revealingly his speech didn't specifically mention religion at all but rather focused on how well the BBC is performing as an independent state broadcaster, and how a forthcoming review promises to deliver better quality programmes.

But during the question and answer session afterward, he admitted some anti-Catholic bias "may be the case" in relation to news coverage, although as far as the corporation's religious broadcasting was concerned, he said the BBC tries and generally succeeds in giving "a rounded picture."

He then gave examples of BBC documentaries and live coverage of the Church, from the funeral of Cardinal Basil Hume, the former archbishop of Westminster, to the exposition in Britain of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux. Asked if he believed the BBC tends to favour an ideology at odds with the Church's teaching, he replied: "No, I really don't," and recalled another programme, this time on the Passion shown at Easter in 2008.

Mother's advice

This wasn't the first time he'd had to confront such criticism. Speaking on the theme of religious broadcasting at a London lecture in 2008, Thompson, who is a Catholic, recalled how his mother shook her head when told her son had been appointed director-general. "The BBC is anti-Catholic and anti-God," she told him in no uncertain terms.

But such anti-God labels, he explained to the audience in London, were "not just too sweeping; they are not even directionally true." He said that naturally, inside the BBC are many people "who take a strongly sceptical view of religion," but you'd also find "thousands of people for whom religion plays a central role in their lives." He accepted that coverage of religion as "faith and lived experience" rather than as a story or controversy was "unusual" but noted there is more interest in "high profile" religious affairs programming than there was 25 years ago.

And yet on his watch, BBC television coverage of religious affairs has fallen, from 177 hours in 1987-88 to 155 hours in 2007-08. This week the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, is debating whether the BBC marginalises Christianity, treating it like a "freak show" or a "rare species" to be studied on a nature programme.

Marginalization

At last week's lecture, Thompson said he didn't address religion specifically because he didn't want to put it into a special category, preferring instead to include religion in his comments on history, knowledge and culture. Yet such a vision risks sidelining it further, and is perhaps one reason why the BBC rarely airs programmes aimed at a particular faith but instead lumps them together into a relativist muddle.

As one priest asked after hearing Thompson's speech: Why not have programmes dedicated to each religion, for example one made up of a group of Catholic theologians discussing the role of works in justification, or another of Muslim scholars debating the interpretation of the Koran?

Speaking with Thompson later on, he appeared open to having an honest dialogue with the Church and to listening to ideas on how to improve coverage. The main purpose of his visit was to meet the Holy Father and Vatican officials to discuss the Pope's visit to Britain later this year.

A hopeful sign, though how genuinely serious BBC management takes the Church remains very much open to doubt.

Should any reader wish to propose ideas to Mark Thompson on how to improve coverage of the Church on the BBC, e-mail me and I'll send you details on how you can drop him a line.

Chilean Maternal Mortality Study Undercuts Pro-Abortion Claims

2010-02-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. and Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Preliminary findings by a prominent biomedical researcher examining the dramatic decrease in maternal mortality, over the past fifty years in the Latin American nation of Chile, appear to undercut claims by global abortion lobbyists that liberal abortion laws are necessary to reduce maternal mortality rates.

According Dr. Elard Koch, an epidemiologist on the faculty of medicine at the University of Chile, Chile's promotion of "safe pregnancy" measures such as "prenatal detection" and accessibility to professional birth attendants in a hospital setting are primarily responsible for the decrease in maternal mortality. The maternal mortality rate declined from 275 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1960 to 18.7 deaths in 2000, the largest reduction in any Latin country.

Because Chile is a nation that protects unborn life in its penal laws and constitution, the decline is therefore not attributable to access to legal abortion. In fact, the preliminary study shows, maternal mortality in Chile declined over the last century regardless of whether abortion was legal or illegal. Chile tightened its restrictions on abortion in the late 1980s.

According to Dr. Koch, "From 1960 onwards, there has been a breakthrough in the public health system and primary care" in Chile, with resources devoted to the development of "highly trained personnel, the construction of many primary health centers and the increase of schooling of the population.” Education appeared to be a primary factor in the country’s improved maternal health. Chile today touts a maternal health record comparable to those of developed nations.

Statistics released the World Health Organization (WHO) support such conclusions. In South America, according to WHO, Chile boasts of the lowest rate of maternal mortality, whereas Guyana, which significantly liberalized its laws in the mid-1990s citing concern over maternal deaths, has the highest.

Indeed, perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the decline of maternal death rates in the developed world, a peer-reviewed article by Irvine Loudon appearing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2000 confirms that the “sudden and dramatic decline in maternal mortality rates, which occurred after 1937, took place in all developed countries and eliminated the previously wide country-level differences in national mortality rates. The main factors that led to this decline seem to have been successive improvements in maternal care.”

As with Chile today, these strides in the developed world occurred at a time before access to abortion had been liberalized. Thus it appears that improving access to quality maternal health care, rather than permissive abortion laws, is what drives reductions in maternal death during pregnancy and delivery.

Maternal health experts such as noted obstetrician Donna Harrison, MD, point out that introducing abortion in a developing world setting without first improving basic maternal health care increases the risk of maternal death since health systems cannot adequately respond to complications from invasive surgical procedures such as abortion. Indeed, nations such as South Africa, which has one of the continent’s most liberal abortion regimes, has seen an increase in maternal deaths attributable in part to complications arising from legal abortion.

Dr. Koch presented his initial findings at the inaugural meeting of the International Working Group for Global Women's Health Research last month in Washington, DC.

The Obama Spell Is Broken

2010-02-02T14:29:00.001-05:00

Unlike this president, John Kennedy was an ironist who never fell for his own mystique.

Wall Street Journal Online

By FOUAD AJAMI

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation's faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished. In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural "cool" and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.

The white working class had been slow to be convinced. The technocracy and elitism of Mr. Obama's campaign—indeed of his whole persona—troubled that big constituency, much more, I believe, than did his race and name. The promise of economic help, of an interventionist state that would salvage ailing industries and provide a safety net for the working poor, reconciled these voters to a candidate they viewed with a healthy measure of suspicion. He had been caught denigrating them as people "clinging to their guns and religion," but they had forgiven him.

Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Americans don't deify their leaders or hang on their utterances, but Mr. Obama succumbed to what the devotees said of him: He was the Awaited One. A measure of reticence could have served him. But the flight had been heady, and in the manner of Icarus, Mr. Obama flew too close to the sun.

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness.

In this extraordinary tale of hubris undone, the Europeans—more even than the people in Islamic lands—can be assigned no small share of blame. They overdid the enthusiasm for the star who had risen in America.

It was the way in Paris and Berlin (not to forget Oslo of course) of rebuking all that played out in America since 9/11—the vigilance, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sense that America's interests and ways were threatened by a vengeful Islamism. But while the Europeans and Muslim crowds hailed him, they damned his country all the same. For his part, Mr. Obama played along, and in Ankara, Cairo, Paris and Berlin he offered penance aplenty for American ways.

But no sooner had the country recovered its poise, it drew a line for Mr. Obama. The "bluest" of states, Massachusetts, sent to Washington a senator who had behind him three decades of service in the National Guard, who proclaimed his pride in his "army values" and was unapologetic in his assertion that it was more urgent to hunt down terrorists than to provide for their legal defense.

Then the close call on Christmas Day at the hands of the Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab demonstrated that the terrorist threat had not receded. The president did his best to recover: We are at war, he suddenly proclaimed. Nor were we in need of penance abroad. Rumors of our decline had been exaggerated. The generosity of the American response to Haiti, when compared to what India and China had provided, was a stark reminder that this remains an exceptional nation that needs no apologies in distant lands.

***

A historical hallmark of "isms" and charismatic movements is to dig deeper when they falter—to insist that the "thing" itself, whether it be Peronism, or socialism, etc., had not been tried but that the leader had been undone by forces that hemmed him in.

It is true to this history that countless voices on the left now want Obama to be Obama. The economic stimulus, the true believers say, had not gone astray, it only needed to be larger; the popular revolt against ObamaCare would subside if and when a new system was put in place.

There had been that magical moment—the campaign of 2008—and the true believers want to return to it. But reality is merciless. The spell is broken.

Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).

Nothing Novel Seen in New Pius XII Documents

2010-02-02T09:37:00.001-05:00

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-28224?l=english

L'Osservatore Romano Gives Context of Two Texts From 40s

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Two more documents regarding Pope Pius XII and his handling of the Third Reich and the Holocaust have resurfaced, refueling allegations that he was silent and bringing historians to his defense.

The Vatican's semi-official daily, L'Osservatore Romano, today took up the news generated by researcher Giuseppe Casarrubea, who has analyzed two documents found in an English archive.

The Italian press is reporting Casarrubea's presentation of a brief document from Oct. 19, 1943, and a letter of Nov. 10, 1944.

The first document reports on a meeting between Pius XII and U.S. diplomat Harold Tittmann. Though the meeting took place just three days after the deportation of Roman Jews, the document makes no mention of that tragedy.

It does speak about the Pope's concern to keep Rome in peace.

Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, retired prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, who entered Pius XII's diplomatic service in 1953, told the Italian newspaper La Stampa today that although the Pope did not raise his voice in face of the deportation, he dedicated himself to concrete actions.

In the interview, cited by L'Osservatore Romano, the cardinal said the Holy Father's activity on behalf of the Jews would not have been possible should relations with the Germans have grown tense.

"In that tragic period, the Pope was concerned that the Germans leave Rome in peace and respect its sacred character," Cardinal Silvestrini explained.

"And this was not an option against the Jews. On the contrary. Precisely that attitude of prudence made it possible to act in an effective and concrete manner in favor of the Jews and many others who were persecuted. Every gesture of protest or rebellion with a lot of publicity would have been counterproductive," the L'Osservatore Romano article stated.

"At the same time the Pope mobilized so that Catholic churches and institutions would receive the greatest possible number of Jews," Cardinal Silvestrini said. "But an explicit protest would have caused more damages than advantages."

Cardinal Silvestrini recalled how Pius XII was no stranger to German affairs, having been nuncio in Munich and in Berlin from 1917 to 1929: "He knew what Nazism was."

A time to speak

The other document, a letter of Nov. 10, 1944, makes reference to a dialogue between British ambassador Francis D'Arcy Osborne and Pius XII on the massacres of Jews in Hungary. Osborne urged a public condemnation of the tragedy.

The Holy Father noted how the Apostolic See was receiving continual appeals to denounce the crimes of Stalin in the Baltic countries and in Poland.

In this regard, however, the ambassador suggested silence, to protect public opinion of the allies.

For both situations, Pius XII chose his customary prudence.

Cardinal Silvestrini explained that "Pius XII considered what happened to the Dutch bishops as a warning not to be repeated."

He observed: "Holland's episcopate wrote a letter condemning 'the cruel and unjust treatment of Jews.' That document was read in Dutch churches in July of 1942.

"The intentions were excellent, but the results were disastrous."

"Precisely in the country in which the priests had denounced the Jewish persecutions most harshly, there were more deportations than in any other state of Western Europe," Cardinal Silvestrini said. "In face of the Shoa the Allies kept silent as did all the others, but only Pius XII is called to account. The others are never up for discussion."

Much-maligned pontiff

2010-02-02T09:24:00.001-05:00

By Dimitri Cavalli, Haaretz.com

Some things never go away. The controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II was recently reignited when Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree affirming that his predecessor displayed "heroic virtues" during his lifetime. When the pope visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on Sunday, Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community, told him: "The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done."

This was not the first time the wartime pope, who is now a step closer to beatification, has been accused of keeping silent during the Holocaust, of doing little or nothing to help the Jews, and even of collaborating with the Nazis. To what extent, if any, does the evidence back up these allegations, which have been repeated since the early 1960s?

On April 4, 1933, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state, instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies.
Advertisement

On behalf of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli drafted an encyclical, entitled "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Anxiety"), that condemned Nazi doctrines and persecution of the Catholic Church. The encyclical was smuggled into Germany and read from Catholic pulpits on March 21, 1937.

Although many Vatican critics today dismiss the encyclical as a light slap on the wrist, the Germans saw it as a security threat. For example, on March 26, 1937, Hans Dieckhoff, an official in the German foreign ministry, wrote that the "encyclical contains attacks of the severest nature upon the German government, calls upon Catholic citizens to rebel against the authority of the state, and therefore signifies an attempt to endanger internal peace."

Both Great Britain and France should have interpreted the document as a warning that they should not trust Adolf Hitler or try to appease him.

After the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope, on March 2, 1939. The Nazis were displeased with the new pontiff, who took the name Pius XII. On March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: "Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as pope."

During the war, the pope was far from silent: In numerous speeches and encyclicals, he championed human rights for all people and called on the belligerent nations to respect the rights of all civilians and prisoners of war. Unlike many of the pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well. After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: "In a manner never known before the pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report.)

In early 1940, the pope acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Hitler and the British government. Although the conspiracy never went forward, Pius XII kept in close contact with the German resistance and heard about two other plots against Hitler. In the fall of 1941, through diplomatic channels, the pope agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that America's Catholics could support the president's plans to extend military aid to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by the Nazis. On behalf of the Vatican, John T. McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, delivered a well-publicized address that explained that the extension of assistance to the Soviets could be morally justified because it helped the Russian people, who were the innocent victims of German aggression.

Throughout the war, the pope's deputies frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. Up until Pius XII's death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest, wrote: "It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews ... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."

The campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure because his detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him - that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews - with evidence. Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation.

Dimitri Cavalli is an editor and writer in New York City. He is working on books on both Pope Pius XII and Joe McCarthy, the late manager of the New York Yankees.

Haitian diary

2010-02-01T12:48:00.002-05:00

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port au Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnal house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompeyent or outright anti american. Most are French or French speakers, worthless every damn one of them. While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communisrts that openly speak against America) These two organizations exemplared their parochialism by:

USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.

Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.

Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldnt release a drop of it to the resuers.

No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.

No latrine facilities, less digging a hole if you set up a shitter everyone was trying to use it.

I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. " You dont know what your president wants! The military isn’t in charge here, we are!"

If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN don't waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the Liberal left.

If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans. Where the hell is that vocal minority that is alweays screaming about the injustice of American society.

Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times. Haiti doesn't need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That's not just my opinion , that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. The French run the UN treat us the same as when we were a colony, at least Papa Doc ran the country.

Oh, and as a last slap in the face, the last four of us had to take US AIRWAYs home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us. The girl at the counter was almost in tears because she couldn't give us a discount or she would lose her job. Pass that on to the flying public.

Nick Brockhausen

via email

Matthews' remark exposes complexity of 'transcending race'

2010-01-28T23:07:00.001-05:00

By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer – Thu Jan 28, 5:09 pm ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/ap_on_an/us_forgetting_blackness_analysis

Five little words — "I forgot he was black" — have exposed a contradiction in the idea of a post-racial nation.

The comment came from MSNBC host Chris Matthews after President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday.

"He is post-racial, by all appearances," the liberal host said on the air. "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about."

The staunch Obama supporter meant it as praise, but it caused a rapid furor, with many calling the quote a troubling sign that blackness is viewed — perhaps unconsciously — as a handicap that still needs to be overcome.

Apparently, Matthews forgot to ask black people if they WANT to be de-raced.

"As a black American I want people to remember who I am and where I come from without attaching assumptions about deficiency to it," said Dr. Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton's Center for African American Studies.

Although she thought Matthews was well-intentioned, she found his statement troubling, because "it suggests that if he had remembered Obama's blackness, that awareness would be a barrier to seeing him as a competent or able leader."

"The ideal is to be able to see and acknowledge everything that person is, including the history that he or she comes from, as well as his or her competencies and qualities, and respect all of those things," Perry said.

That's a very different vision of "transcending race" — a consistent theme of Obama's political history — than one in which race has disappeared altogether.

"It's important for us to remember that everyone has a race," Blair L.M. Kelley, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. "When you say we're going to transcend race, are white people called on to transcend their whiteness?"

"When (black people) transcend it, what do we become? Do we become white?" she asked. "Why would we have to stop being our race in order to solve a problem?"

Matthews didn't get that far down the post-racial road on Wednesday night. But his comments instantly exploded online, especially on Twitter. Ninety minutes later, he clarified his comments on the air.

"I'm very proud I did it and I hope I said it the right way," Matthews said, noting that he grew up in the racially fraught 1960s.

"I walked into the room tonight, you could feel (racial tension) wasn't there tonight and that takes leadership on his part, to get us beyond those divisions, really national leadership," Matthews said.

"I felt it wonderfully tonight, almost like an epiphany. I think he's done something wonderful. I think he's taken us beyond black and white in our politics."

Plenty of people supported Matthews on Thursday, saying his sentiments, although poorly worded, reflected the view that all Americans are now equal.

But for many blacks, it was hard to forget the word "forgot."

Kevin Jackson, a black conservative and author of "The BIG Black Lie," hews to the same philosophy as the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck — that people should be judged on their merits, not their color.

Yet Jackson does not want his blackness to be forgotten.

"Absolutely not," he said. "Because we have an amazing history."

He pointed out that if Don Imus had made the same comment as Matthews, "everybody on God's green earth would be out to hang him by his you-know-what."

Sophia Nelson, a black attorney, former lobbyist and founder of PoliticalIntersection.com, which focuses on politics, race and gender, said she has been offended by people calling her articulate and intelligent: "That's saying that people who look like me normally aren't those things."

She said Matthews' comment showed the same unconscious bias as those by Vice President Joe Biden when he was still a senator that Obama was "clean" and "articulate," and Sen. Harry Reid's saying that Obama was more electable because he was light-skinned and lacking a "Negro dialect."

"Matthews was saying exactly what he meant," Nelson said. "He forgot he was black because he's so articulate and so compelling."

Another common interpretation of Matthews' comment was that if he forgot Obama was black during his speech, it must be part of his thinking the other 23 hours of the day.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, said Kelley, the North Carolina State professor.

"Obama is forcing people to see blackness," she said, "in a way they haven't had to in the past."

___

Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He can be reached at jwashington(at)ap.org or http://www.twitter.com/jessewashington.