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Aug
29
After Legalizing Same-Sex ‘Marriage,’ More Canadians Want to Redefine Marriage
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After Legalizing Same-Sex ‘Marriage,’ More Canadians Want to Redefine Marriage
Now Polygamy
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BY STEVE WEATHERBE | REGISTER CORRESPONDENT | September 2-8, 2007 Issue | Posted 8/29/07 at 1:17 PM
VICTORIA, British Columbia — British Columbians, arguably Canada’s most morally permissive population, are discovering that tolerance has its limits.At issue is the polygamous behavior of the breakaway Mormons of Bountiful, a community of about 700, tucked away in the mountainous southeast corner of the province close to the American border.
British Columbia Attorney General Wally Oppal repeatedly has stated his desire to prosecute the handful of middle-aged men with multiple partners like Bountiful’s unofficial leader, Winston Blackmore, who has reportedly fathered 100 children by 20 wives.
But Oppal’s own legal advisers have warned him that Canada’s century-old anti-polygamy law would probably be overturned by the protection of religious freedom enshrined in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And the legal fate of the obscure border community could have international ramifications: According to some observers, other countries that follow Canada’s lead and legalize same-sex “marriage” may be forced to sanction polygamous unions, as well.
Bountiful was established in 1946 by followers of the Arizona-based United Effort Order, whose founders broke with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when the latter dropped polygamy in 1890 as part of a deal with the U.S. government. Read more
Aug
29
God wills that all people be saved. After all, he is the Creator of all and he loves what he has created. He created men for life, not for death. He created the world to exist, not to be destroyed. The Creator is himself also the Redeemer. But how does this redemption come about? For this elementary question there is a basic answer: God wills that everyone be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. Salvation is not to be separated from truth. The Bible then, cannot possibly be saying that we must all do what seems right to us; when all is said and done, God cannot condemn his own creatures. Such expressions are only apparently expressions of confidence in God’s goodness. In reality, there is concealed in them a contempt for God and for mankind. For they label human life as being, in the last analysis, indifferent: it becomes just a theater; actually, it matters not at all what we do. Our own decision seem much too unimportant to be important before God. Freedom from moral responsibility is not really thereby entrusted to men. On the contrary, the ability to know the truth is thereby denied them. But is it really worth God’s while to bother himself about such wretched creatures? And what value can there be in salvation that is based neither on truth nor on true moral freedom? The Bible sets a higher value on mankind. It tells us that God created us for the truth. The joyfulness of its message is precisely this: that we encounter in Jesus Christ the one genuine truth about God and ourselves. If only we Christians were to find once again the courage to say this and to think it - what joy would dwell in us! What joy would radiate from us!
From: Roman homilies, September 18, 1983
Aug
29
Mark 6:17-29
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17 For Herod had sent and seized John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Hero’di-as, his brother Philip’s wife; because he had married her.
18 For John said to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”
19 And Hero’di-as had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not,
20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and kept him safe. When he heard him, he was much perplexed; and yet he heard him gladly.
21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and the leading men of Galilee.
22 For when Hero’di-as’ daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will grant it.”
23 And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.”
24 And she went out, and said to her mother, “What shall I ask?” And she said, “The head of John the baptizer.”
25 And she came in immediately with haste to the king, and asked, saying, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”
26 And the king was exceedingly sorry; but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her.
27 And immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard and gave orders to bring his head. He went and beheaded him in the prison,
28 and brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl; and the girl gave it to her mother.
29 When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.
Aug
28
St. Augustine
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Christian at 33, a priest at 36, a bishop at 41: many people are familiar with the biographical sketch of Augustine of Hippo, sinner turned saint. But really to get to know the man is a rewarding experience.There quickly surfaces the intensity with which he lived his life, whether his path led away from or toward God. The tears of his mother, the instructions of Ambrose and, most of all, God himself speaking to him in the Scriptures redirected Augustine’s love of life to a life of love.
Having been so deeply immersed in creature-pride of life in his early days and having drunk deeply of its bitter dregs, it is not surprising that Augustine should have turned, with a holy fierceness, against the many demon-thrusts rampant in his day. His times were truly decadent—politically, socially, morally. He was both feared and loved, like the Master. The perennial criticism leveled against him: a fundamental rigorism.
In his day, he providentially fulfilled the office of prophet. Like Jeremiah and other greats, he was hard-pressed but could not keep quiet. “I say to myself, I will not mention him,/I will speak in his name no more./But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,/imprisoned in my bones;/I grow weary holding it in,/I cannot endure it” (Jeremiah 20:9).
Comment:
Augustine is still acclaimed and condemned in our day. He is a prophet for today, trumpeting the need to scrap escapisms and stand face-to-face with personal responsibility and dignity.
Quote:
“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved you! And behold, you were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for you; I was deformed, plunging amid those fair forms, which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you—things which, if they were not in you, were not at all. You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed and shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors and I drew in breath—and I pant for you. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace” (St. Augustine, Confessions).
(This entry appears in the print edition of Saint of the Day.)
Aug
28
Father Cantalamessa Calls Her Saint of the Media Age
VATICAN CITY, AUG. 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s dark night of the soul kept her from being a victim of the media age and exalting herself, says the preacher of the Pontifical Household.
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said this in an interview with Vatican Radio, commenting on previously unpublished letters from Mother Teresa, now made public in Doubleday’s book “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator of the cause of Mother Teresa’s canonization.
In one of her letters, Mother Teresa wrote: “There is so much contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God — so deep that it is painful — a suffering continual — and yet not wanted by God — repulsed — empty — no faith — no love — no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means nothing — to me it looks like an empty place.”
Father Cantalamessa explained that the fact that Mother Teresa suffered deeply from her feeling of the absence of God affirms that it was a positive phenomenon. Atheists, he contended, are not afflicted by God’s absence but, “for Mother Teresa, this was the most terrible test that she could have experienced.”
He further clarified that “it is the presence-absence of God: God is present but one does not experience his presence.”
Martyrdom
Father Cantalamessa contended that Mother Teresa’s spiritual suffering makes her even greater.
He said: “The fact that Mother Teresa was able to remain for hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament, as many eye-witnesses have testified, as if enraptured … if one thinks about the condition she was in at that moment, that is martyrdom!
“Because of this, for me, the figure of Mother Teresa is even greater; it does not diminish her.”
The Capuchin priest further lauded Mother Teresa’s ability to keep her spiritual pain hidden within her. “Maybe, this was done in expiation for the widespread atheism in today’s world,” he said, adding that she lived her experience of the absence of God “in a positive way — with faith, with God.”
Not scandalous
Father Cantalamessa affirmed that Mother Teresa’s dark night should not scandalize or surprise anyone. The “dark night,” he said, “is something well-known in the Christian tradition; maybe new and unheard of in the way Mother Teresa experienced it.”
He added: “While ‘the dark night of the spirit’ of St. John of the Cross is a generally preparatory period for that definitive one called ‘unitive,’ for Mother Teresa it seems that it was one stable state, from a certain point in her life, when she began this great work of charity, until the end.
“In my view, the fact of this prolongation of the ‘night’ has meaning for us today. I believe that Mother Teresa is the saint of the media age, because this ‘night of the spirit’ protected her from being a victim of the media, namely from exalting herself.
“In fact, she used to say that when she received great awards and praise from the media, she did not feel anything because of this interior emptiness.”
© Innovative Media, Inc.
Aug
28
Mother Teresa
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August 26, 2007 | by
September 5, 2007 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa. Now declared “Blessed,” she continues to inspire disciples of Christ worldwide.
My own interaction with her came shortly after I took leadership of Priests for Life. I asked if I could visit with her in Calcutta, and spent a week with her in June of 1994 discussing the new ministry I was leading, and the direction of pro-life strategy overall. Two events that had recently occurred shaped our conversations.
One was the speech she had given in February at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. She spoke in the presence of President and Mrs. Clinton and Vice-President and Mrs. Gore. It was an unforgettable moment, as this short, humble woman proclaimed to those in power: “…If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?…Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
I told her what an impact the speech made on the pro-life community. “What about the rest of the American people?”, she asked me at once. She then gave me a homework assignment to spread the speech far and wide, which Priests for Life has been doing ever since. Read more
Aug
28
Co-Workers of the Truth 8/28
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The Saints are like older brothers and sisters to us in the family of God. They want to take us by the hand and lead us. They encourage us to say: “If this or that person can do it, why can’t I?” These are the words Saint Augustine thought he heard at the time of his conversion, and they were among the last encouragements he needed for risking the leap into faith and into God’s love. Throughout the centuries, there has been hardly another saint who has remained as close to us., as understandable, as Saint Augustine.
In his writings, we encounter all the depths and heights of the human spirit, all the questioning and seeking and searching that we also experience today. Not without reason has he been called the first modern man. Nietzsche once said he could not abide Saint Augustine - he seemed too plebeian and common. There is some justification for Nietzsche’s attitude, but it is precisely in these qualities that we discover Saint Augustine’s true Christian greatness. He could have been an aristocrat of the spirit, but for the sake of Christ and for the sake of his fellow men, in whom he saw Christ coming toward him, he left the ivory tower of the gifted intellectual in order to be wholly man among men, a servant of the servants of God.
For the sake of Christ he became increasingly an ordinary person and the servant of all. In doing so he became truly a saint. For Christian holiness does not consist in being superhuman and in having an extraordinary talent or greatness that others do not have. Chirstian holiness is simply the obedience that puts us at God’s disposal wherever he calls us.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, p. 415
Aug
28
Matthew 23:23-26
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23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity.
26 You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
Aug
27
Matthew 23:13-22
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13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.
15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, `If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’
17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?
18 And you say, `If any one swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’
19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
20 So he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it;
21 and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it;
22 and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
Aug
27
Our love for the Blessed Sacrament should be carried to the highest degree: the highest degree of love and adoration is the silence which prays and pours itself out in adoration before the grandeur of a hidden God.
– St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier
