tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90985942170525705482024-03-13T11:10:56.180-04:00+ PAPIST + FILIOQUIST + AZYMITE +<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>ΤΗ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ ΗΜΑΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΗΛΕΥΘΕΡΩΣΕΝ<br>ΣΤΗΚΕΤΕ ΟΥΝ ΚΑΙ ΜΗ ΠΑΛΙΝ<br>ΖΥΓΩ ΔΟΥΛΕΙΑΣ ΕΝΕΧΕΣΘΕ. ΓΑΛ 5/1<br><br><br>QVI ME ALIT ME EXTINGVIT + QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT<br>
TEMPIS FUGIT . MOMENTO MORI
<br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger358125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-50849901136853625712012-10-16T07:57:00.001-04:002012-10-16T07:57:45.798-04:00A Catholic View: St. Hedwig and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque<a href="http://acatholicview.blogspot.com/2012/10/st-hedwig-and-st-margaret-mary-alacoque.html">A Catholic View: St. Hedwig and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-91372336494312749032010-08-13T19:01:00.001-04:002010-08-13T19:01:38.828-04:00RUSSIAN CATHOLIC NUNS IN ROME<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/810HHxNUcjg?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/810HHxNUcjg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-35055519454529628142010-06-19T04:02:00.001-04:002010-06-19T04:04:20.234-04:00That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill: Tu Es Petrus!<a href="http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.com/2010/06/tu-es-petrus.html#links">That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill: Tu Es Petrus!</a><br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-523676571769620692010-06-19T02:55:00.005-04:002010-06-19T03:01:24.715-04:00FROM BENEDICT XVI'S CONVERSATION WITH PRIESTS<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5gpJN0rcQ-e-9ZGZYzyY3jOjGfeQlL7xmNgUgyyTIlTJEzDK_bJSbTogPHlTf_a7M0HAZv6C8UcGHVk6oIQOxCjmgwFLJsrAS9JxfvipC_7HFyygHxDmDqG5BV8xwHX42CDmFbPFvPR6w/s1600/good-friday-2010-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 347px; height: 455px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5gpJN0rcQ-e-9ZGZYzyY3jOjGfeQlL7xmNgUgyyTIlTJEzDK_bJSbTogPHlTf_a7M0HAZv6C8UcGHVk6oIQOxCjmgwFLJsrAS9JxfvipC_7HFyygHxDmDqG5BV8xwHX42CDmFbPFvPR6w/s400/good-friday-2010-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484375670757404866" border="0" /></a><br /><strong></strong>Rome, Saint Peter's Square, June 10, 2010<br /><strong></strong><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Q: Holy Father, I am Fr. Karol Miklosko and I am from Europe, specifically from Slovakia, and I am a missionary in Russia. When I celebrate the holy Mass, I find myself and I understand that there I encounter my identity and the root and energy of my ministry. The sacrifice of the cross reveals to me the Good Shepherd who gives everything for his flock, for each sheep, and when I say: "This is my body, this is my blood" given and poured in sacrifice for you, then I understand the beauty of celibacy and of obedience, which I freely promised at the moment of ordination. In spite of the natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ, but I find myself disoriented in reading the many worldly criticisms of this gift. I humbly ask you, Holy Father, to enlighten us about the profundity and the authentic meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.</span><br /><br />Answer from the Holy Father:<br />Thank you for the two parts of your question. The first, where you show the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy; the second, which shows all of the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our time.<br /><br />The first part is important, that is: the center of our life must really be the daily celebration of the holy Eucharist; and here the words of consecration are central: "This is my body, this is my blood"; that is: we are speaking "in persona Christi." Christ permits us to use his "I," we speak in the "I" of Christ, Christ "pulls us into himself" and permits us to unite ourselves, unites us with his "I." And so, through this action, this fact that he "pulls" us into himself, in such a way that our "I" becomes united with his own, he realizes the permanence, the uniqueness of his priesthood; in this way he really is always the one priest, and nonetheless very much present in the world, because he "pulls" us into himself, and so makes present his priestly mission. This means that we are "pulled" into the God of Christ: it is this union with his "I" that is realized in the words of consecration.<br /><br />Also in the "I absolve you" – because none of us can absolve from sins – it is the "I" of Christ, of God, who alone can absolve. This unification of his "I" with our own implies that we are also "pulled" into his reality as the Risen One, we advance toward the full life of the resurrection, of which Jesus speaks to the Sadducees in Matthew, Chapter 22: it is a "new" life, in which we are already beyond marriage (cf. Mt. 22:23 –32). It is important that we always let ourselves be penetrated again by this identification of the "I" of Christ with us, by this being "pulled out" toward the world of the resurrection.<br /><br />In this sense, celibacy is an anticipation. We transcend this time and go forward, and so we "pull" ourselves and our time toward the world of the resurrection, toward the newness of Christ, toward the new and true life. So celibacy is an anticipation made possible by the grace of the Lord who "pulls" us to himself, toward the world of the resurrection; he invites us always anew to transcend ourselves, this present, toward the true present of the future, which becomes present today.<br /><br />And here we are at a very important point. <span style="font-size:180%;">One big problem of Christianity in today's world is that God's future is no longer considered, and the now of this world alone seems sufficient. We want to have only this world, to live only in this world. So we close the doors to the true greatness of our existence</span>. The meaning of celibacy as an anticipation of the future is precisely to open these doors, to make the world bigger, to show the reality of the future that must be lived by us as already present. <span style="font-size:180%;">To live, therefore, in a testimony of faith: we really believe that God exists, that God is part of my life, that I can base my life on Christ, on the future life.</span><br /><br />And we know now the worldly criticisms of which you spoke. It is true that for the agnostic world, the world in which God has no place, celibacy is a great scandal, because it shows precisely that God is considered and lived as a reality. With the eschatological life of celibacy, the future world of God enters into the realities of our time. And this is supposed to disappear!<br /><br />In a certain sense, this permanent criticism of celibacy can be surprising, at a time in which not getting married is becoming increasingly fashionable. But this not getting married is something totally, fundamentally different from celibacy, because not getting married is based on the desire to live only for oneself, not to accept any definitive bond, to have life at every moment in full autonomy, to decide at every moment what to do, what to take from life; and therefore a "no" to commitment, a "no" to definitiveness, a having life only for oneself. While celibacy is precisely the opposite: it is a definitive "yes," it is allowing ourselves to be taken in hand by God, giving ourselves into the hands of the Lord, into his "I," and therefore it is an act of fidelity and trust, an act that the fidelity of marriage also supposes; it is the exact opposite of this "no," of this autonomy that does not want to be obligated, that does not want to enter into a bond; it is precisely the definitive "yes" that supposes, that confirms the definitive "yes" of marriage. And this marriage is the biblical form, the natural form of being man and woman, the foundation of the great Christian culture, of the great cultures of the world. And if this disappears, the root of our culture will be destroyed.<br /><br />For this reason, celibacy confirms the "yes" of marriage with its "yes" to the future world, and so we want to move forward and make present this scandal of a faith that bases all of existence upon God. We know that next to this great scandal, which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our insufficiencies, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make people think: "But they don't really live on the foundation of God." But there is so much faithfulness! Celibacy, as the criticisms themselves show, is a great sign of faith, of the presence of God in the world. Let us pray to the Lord that he help us to free ourselves from the secondary scandals, that he make present the great scandal of our faith: the trust, the power of our lives, founded on God and on Christ Jesus!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-66044822045818536682010-06-19T02:48:00.001-04:002010-06-19T02:51:14.649-04:00Obama to be given the right to shut down the internet with 'kill switch'<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:180%;">G A D S !<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;">By <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Paul+Thompson" class="author" rel="nofollow">Paul Thompson</a><br /></div></div><div class="thinFloatRHS"><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div>President Obama will be given the power to shut down the Internet with a 'kill switch' in a new law being proposed in the US.</div><p>He would be able to order popular search engines such a Google and Yahoo to suspend access their websites in times of national emergency.</p><p>Other US based Internet service providers as well as broadband providers would also come under his control in times of a 'cybersecurity emergency.' Any company that failed to comply would be subject to huge fines.</p><p>Critics of the new law, which has been proposed by former presidential candidate Joe Liebermann, said it would be an abuse of power to let the White House control the internet.</p><p>TechAmerica, one of the largest U.S. technology lobby groups, said the new law had the 'potential for absolute power.'.</p><p>The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by Lieberman who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.</p><p>A sustained terror attack on multiple cities would be considered a national emergency as would a cyber attack by 'hackers' on the US financial system.</p><p>The director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair warned earlier this year that the US is 'severely threatened' by malicious cyber attacks.</p><p>The number of attacks on Government departments has increased by 400 per cent in the last three years.</p><p>Under the proposed bill, which has been dubbed an Internet kill switch', the US Government would effectively seize control of access to the internet.</p><p>Lieberman argued the bill was necessary to 'preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people'.</p><p>He said: 'For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets.</p><div class="clear"> </div><div class="thinCenter"> <img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/06/18/article-1287695-02EBE8C700000578-770_468x286.jpg" alt="Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange floor." class="blkBorder" height="286" width="468" /> <p class="imageCaption">Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange floor. US senators fear a cyber-attack on the US could paralyse the nation</p></div> <p>'Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies--cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.' <br /></p><p>His bill is formally titled the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA.</p><p>While the US Government would not be able to control the internet in other countries access to the most popular sites would be cut off.</p><p>Google,Yahoo and YouTube, the top three most visited sites, are all based in the US.</p><p>Google logs an estimated two billion hits a day from 300 million users.</p><p>Under the cyber law any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also 'relies on' the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. 'information infrastructure' would be subject to command by a new National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.</p><p>Google, the world's most popular search engine, refused to comment. A spokesman said the law was not yet Government policy.</p><p> Read more: <a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 153);" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1287695/Obama-given-right-shut-internet-kill-switch.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0rHMrPe00">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1287695/Obama-given-right-shut-internet-kill-switch.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0rHMrPe00</a><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /><br /></p><br /><p><br /><br /></p><br /><p><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-49574446060513212552010-06-19T02:23:00.004-04:002010-06-19T02:40:46.094-04:00Can Christians Live Under Moslem Rule?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWjDZD9ZN_vJXKUVnWmlNXPXpfd1CKmS3ORWHgedrDsWA9TKoH9_IvcugoKBNmw0oelhBxBCFPI6XH0mADVQKWwcbBu1PsByQ40ekf-CMYkWmXWIYQOzH-sE33bCJHs32JQ3dseyCycXS/s1600/islamdominateworld.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 362px; height: 454px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWjDZD9ZN_vJXKUVnWmlNXPXpfd1CKmS3ORWHgedrDsWA9TKoH9_IvcugoKBNmw0oelhBxBCFPI6XH0mADVQKWwcbBu1PsByQ40ekf-CMYkWmXWIYQOzH-sE33bCJHs32JQ3dseyCycXS/s400/islamdominateworld.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484370311573458210" border="0" /></a><br /><p>from:<span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.noonanfornevada.com/" id="blogname" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous; text-indent: 0pt; width: auto;"><span class="blod"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>NoonanForNevada</span></a></span></p><br />The recent story about an Egyptian court essentially ruling that the Coptic Church in Egypt must violate Christian teaching opened up, for me, the fundamental issue of whether or not Christians can live in peace and justice under Moslem rule. <p>The Copts of Egypt – who are the <span style="font-size:100%;"><a id="KonaLink0" target="undefined" class="kLink" style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;" href="http://beforeitsnews.com/news/81/006/Can_Christians_Live_Under_Moslem_Rule.html#"><span style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" ><span class="kLink" style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" >descendants</span></span></a> of the</span> pre-Moslem population of Egypt – have suffered for a very long time, but of late the persecution of the Church in Egypt has gotten worse. Various fanatics incite violence against the Christian community (which makes up officially about 5% of the population, but is probably closer to 10%; anywhere from 4 to 8 million or so Christians…the Moslem government likes to downplay the number of Christians in Egypt), and nothing is ever done to the perpetrators.</p> <p>And so it goes around the Moslem world – where there are Christians under Moslem rule, persecution, robbery, rape and murder are common and justice is impossible to obtain. In the Assyrian area of Iraq, <span style="font-size:100%;">the <a id="KonaLink2" target="undefined" class="kLink" style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;" href="http://beforeitsnews.com/news/81/006/Can_Christians_Live_Under_Moslem_Rule.html#"><span style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" ><span class="kLink" style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" >Christian </span><span class="kLink" style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" >communities</span></span></a> of Lebanon and Pakistan – anywhere you care to mention, if Moslems rule over <a id="KonaLink1" target="undefined" class="kLink" style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;" href="http://beforeitsnews.com/news/81/006/Can_Christians_Live_Under_Moslem_Rule.html#"><span style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" ><span class="kLink" style=";font-family:";color:#000000;" >Christians</span></span></a>, then the Christians are in a bad way. Meanwhile, Moslems under Christian rule can n</span>ot only be sure of justice, but can actually be sure of kid glove treatment by people of the West determined to show they bear no ethnic or religious hostility to Moslems.</p> <p>It is time, I believe, to consider that it isn’t possible for Christians to live under Moslem rule. When one thinks about it, the fact that Christians are forbidden to live and worship in Mecca is all that needs be said – we Christians are considered to be the merest filth to Moslems. We are unclean and unfit to come within sight of Islam’s holiest city. This attitude very naturally spills over to other areas of life – very easy for a Moslem to move from “you aren’t as good as me” to “why don’t I just take what I want from you?”.</p> <p>Unless and until Moslems drop this attitude – unless and until they allow a Christian church to open in Mecca (and there are secret Christians there – we can’t live openly there, but Moslems do lack the willingness to do hard, dirty work on their own…so, they hire foreigners, a large number of whom are Christian, to do it for them, even in Mecca), we simply cannot trust Christians to be under Moslem rule.</p> <p>Out of the Moslem States, where there is a sufficiently large and compact Christian population, we should assist in the creation of non-Moslem nations. Part of Egypt, part of Iraq, part of Sudan, part of Lebanon – and part of the West Bank – must be freed from Moslem rule, at least to the point of internal autonomy which will prevent some Moslem hate-monger from stirring up violence and persecution for whatever reason.</p> <p>Such a process would not be easy, but far easier than just allowing things to continue as they are now, with endless bloodshed and persecution. Additionally, by starting to make an issue out of this, we might even start to force some Moslems of good will to rethink the Moslem attiude towards “infidels”. Change some times does not grow organically in a society – every now and again, the pace must be forced. As regards Christians under Moslem rule, the time for forcing things has arrived.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-91306374996601887872010-06-19T01:38:00.001-04:002010-06-19T02:41:37.772-04:00Priests will soon be 'inundated' with exorcism requests, asserts author<p><span class="noticia_byline">Front Royal, Va., Jun 18, 2010 / 06:52 am (<a href="http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/priests-will-soon-be-inundated-with-exorcism-requests-asserts-author/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+catholicnewsagency%2Fdailynews+%28CNA+Daily+News%29" target="_self">CNA/EWTN News</a>)</span>.- In an exclusive interview with CNA, author and pro-life leader Fr. Thomas Euteneuer discussed his recent book on the often misunderstood topic of exorcism, asserting that due to an increased exposure of young people to the occult, priests within the next decade are going to be “inundated” with exorcism requests. </p> <p>Speaking on his new book, “Exorcism and the Church Militant,” which was released on June 14, Fr. Euteneuer, who also serves as director of Human Life International (HLI), elaborated on the need for exorcism to be clarified in modern society. </p> <p>When asked why the ancient rite is often shrouded in misconception, Fr. Euteneuer explained that, “first of all, it's misunderstood because most people's perception of exorcism come from the movie the Exorcist or the Exorcism of Emily Rose,” or “some of the horror flicks that disguise themselves as exorcism movies.”</p> <p>“One of the purposes of the book,” he noted, “was to take back the proper understanding of exorcism by placing it squarely in the context of the Church's pastoral ministry.”</p> <p>In regard to the need for this pastoral ministry, Fr. Euteneuer asserted that “priests are going to be inundated in the next decade or so at least with requests for exorcism because I can already see it happening now where the younger generations especially have been affected by a lot of hard and soft occultism.” </p> <p>“Soft forms of occultism are like Wicca and New Age,” he explained, adding that “Harry Potter contributes to that with over 400 million books being sold.” The popular book series, he claimed, has helped educate “younger generations in the language and the symbolism of the occult.” </p> <p>Although many young people have treated the books merely as “entertainment,” he observed, “it actually leads them more deeply into occult practices.” </p> <p>“All of this is inevitably, with the lack of faith, going to lead to serious spiritual problems for younger people and those problems are going to be laid at the foot of the Church.”</p> <p>Though “Exorcism and the Church Militant” is intended for a “general audience,” said Fr. Euteneuer, it is meant specifically to make an appeal “to priests to read it, learn it and get more involved in it.” </p> <p>“Because,” he clarified, “exorcism is a pastoral ministry and the explicit form of exorcism is a liturgical rite which can only be done by priests.”</p> <p>Addressing what could be seen by many to be a daunting and frightening topic, Fr. Euteneuer said, “I encourage people to take the view of the Church towards this and that is, we have nothing to fear with regard to evil.”</p> <p>“We just simply must apply the authority of the church to the power of evil in this world and I don't believe we're doing that adequately.”</p> <p>“Fear is what keeps us from doing it adequately,” he said. “Fear is what keeps the Church from actually taking the spiritual resources that have been given to the Church and applying them to the very serious forms of evil.”</p> <p>“Remember that in Jesus' ministry,” Fr. Euteneuer underscored, “He healed the sick, He preached the Gospel and He cast out demons. He continues to do those works in and through the Church and that it what he handed on to the Church to do.”<br /></p><p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-57872545978162591752010-06-18T23:45:00.002-04:002010-06-19T02:41:58.795-04:00CHRIST HIMSELF, OUR PASCH!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91Pm-iQLL9CU4uyb4n2u0tXoBN_HcxFwfuINLr-w8cWU7QTrAYw9KbpmXRW0_ZIfqzEwPk8JE0Bed59ZT_IwCp7zCkrAgQ_ljZqioeiApBPFkiuGWzkp88uN0m-jfQoSmVBbBa6H_jMmd/s1600/t_christ.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 418px; height: 541px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91Pm-iQLL9CU4uyb4n2u0tXoBN_HcxFwfuINLr-w8cWU7QTrAYw9KbpmXRW0_ZIfqzEwPk8JE0Bed59ZT_IwCp7zCkrAgQ_ljZqioeiApBPFkiuGWzkp88uN0m-jfQoSmVBbBa6H_jMmd/s400/t_christ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484326876770828002" border="0" /></a><br /> <!-- Begin #content --> <!-- Begin #main --><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">“</span></span>Faith can never be presupposed, because every generation needs to receive this gift through the proclamation of the Gospel and to know the truth that Christ has revealed to us. The Church, therefore, is always engaged in proposing to all the deposit of the faith; contained in it also is the doctrine on the Eucharist -- central mystery in which "is enclosed all the spiritual good of the Church, namely, Christ himself, our Pasch" -- doctrine that today, unfortunately, is not sufficiently understood in its profound value and in its relevance for the existence of believers. Because of this, it is important that a more profound knowledge of the mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord be seen as an exigency of the different communities of our diocese of Rome. At the same time, in the missionary spirit that we wish to nourish, it is necessary to spread the commitment to proclaim such Eucharistic faith, so that every man will encounter Jesus Christ who has revealed the "close" God, friend of humanity, and to witness it with an eloquent life of charity.<br /><br />In all his public life, through the preaching of the Gospel and miraculous signs, Jesus proclaimed the goodness and mercy of the Father towards man. This mission reached its culmination on Golgotha, where the crucified Christ revealed the face of God, so that man, contemplating the Cross, be able to recognize the fullness of love. The sacrifice of Calvary is mysteriously anticipated in the Last Supper, when Jesus, sharing with the Twelve the bread and wine, transforms them into his body and his blood, which shortly after he would offer as immolated Lamb. The Eucharist is the memorial of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, of his love to the end for each one of us, memorial that He willed to entrust to the Church so that it would be celebrated throughout the centuries. According to the meaning of the Hebrew word "zakar," the "memorial" is not simply the memory of something that happened in the past, but a celebration which actualizes that event, so as to reproduce its salvific force and efficacy. Thus, "the sacrifice that Christ offered to the Father, once and for all, on the Cross in favor of humanity, is rendered present and actual" (<span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html">Compendium of the Catechism</a> of the Catholic Church,</span> No. 280). Dear brothers and sisters, in our time the word sacrifice is not liked, rather it seems to belong to other times and to another way of understanding life. However, properly understood, it is and remains fundamental, because it reveals to us with what love God loves us in Christ....<br /><br />The Holy Mass, celebrated in the respect of the liturgical norms and with a fitting appreciation of the richness of the signs and gestures, fosters and promotes the growth of Eucharistic faith. In the Eucharistic celebration we do not invent something, but we enter into a reality that precedes us, more than that, which embraces heaven and earth and, hence, also the past, the future and the present. This universal openness, this encounter with all the sons and daughters of God is the grandeur of the Eucharist: we go to meet the reality of God present in the body and blood of the Risen One among us. Hence, the liturgical prescriptions dictated by the Church are not external things, but express concretely this reality of the revelation of the body and blood of Christ and thus the prayer reveals the faith according to the ancient principle "lex orandi - lex credendi." And because of this we can say "the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself well celebrated". It is necessary that in the liturgy the transcendent dimension emerge with clarity, that of the mystery, of the encounter with the Divine, which also illumines and elevates the "horizontal," that is the bond of communion and of solidarity that exists between all those who belong to the Church. In fact, when the latter prevails, the beauty, profundity and importance of the mystery celebrated is fully understood. Dear brothers in the priesthood, to you the bishop has entrusted, on the day of your priestly Ordination, the task to preside over the Eucharist. Always have at heart the exercise of this mission: celebrate the divine mysteries with intense interior participation, so that the men and women of our City can be sanctified, put into contact with God, absolute truth and eternal love....<br /><br />Communion with Christ is always communion also with his body, which is the Church, as the Apostle Paul reminds, saying: "The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Corinthians:16-17). It is, in fact, the Eucharist that transforms a simple group of persons into ecclesial community: the Eucharist makes the Church....<br /><br />This City of ours asks of Christ's disciples, with a renewed proclamation of the Gospel, a clearer and more limpid testimony of charity. It is with the language of love, desirous of the integral good of man, that the Church speaks to the inhabitants of Rome. In these years of my ministry as your Bishop, I have been able to visit several places where charity is lived intensely. I am grateful to all those who are engaged in the different charitable structures, for the dedication and generosity with which they serve the poor and the marginalized.<br /><br />The needs and poverty of so many men and women interpellate us profoundly: it is Christ himself who every day, in the poor, asks us to assuage his hunger and thirst, to visit him in hospitals and prisons, to accept and dress him. A celebrated Eucharist imposes on us and at the same time renders us capable of becoming, in our turn, bread broken for brothers, coming to meet their needs and giving ourselves. Because of this, a Eucharistic celebration that does not lead to meet men where they live, work and suffer, to take to them the love of God, does not manifest the love it encloses. To be faithful to the mystery that is celebrated on the altars we must, as the Apostle Paul exhorts us, offer our bodies, ourselves, in spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God (cf. Romans 12:1) in those circumstances that require dying to our I and constitute our daily "altar." Gestures of sharing create communion, renew the fabric of interpersonal relations, marking them with gratuitousness and gift, and allowing for the construction of the civilization of love. In a time such as the present of economic and social crisis, let us be in solidarity with those who live in hardship to offer all the hope of a better tomorrow worthy of man. If we really live as disciples of God-Charity, we will help the inhabitants of Rome to discover themselves brothers and children of the one Father.<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">”</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">--Pope Benedict XVI<br /><a href="http://zenit.org/article-29633?l=english">Address to the Annual Convention</a> of the Diocese of Rome<br />Basilica of St John Lateran<br />15 June 2010<br /></span><p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-74638907598580041912009-12-03T02:01:00.005-05:002010-06-19T02:42:06.408-04:00Liturgy, Beauty and Truth<div class="headline_area"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Interview With Artist David Clayton<br /></span></span><h1 style="text-align: right;"><span><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:100%;" > <span style="font-size:78%;">(Zenit.org)</span></span></span></h1> <div style="text-align: left;">MERRIMACK, New Hampshire, DEC. 2, 2009 - Catholic liturgy has a great capacity to instruct people in appreciating beauty, which will in turn help attract them to truth, says artist David Clayton. Clayton is an artist-in-residence at Thomas More College, and a teacher for the newly launched Way of Beauty program. In this interview with ZENIT, he speaks about the program's goals to instruct artists and their patrons in the appreciation of true beauty. Clayton reflects on Benedict XVI's words in a Nov. 18 general audience, when the Pontiff spoke about Christian architecture, focusing on Gothic cathedrals such as Chartres and Notre Dame. ZENIT: What struck you about the Pope's statement? Clayton: Well, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts has put into place a program aimed at training students to do exactly what he is calling for. He even used the same name, the Way of Beauty (except, being the Pope he used Latin of course, "via pulchtritudinis," and that makes it sound even better!) Beauty has an important part to play in attracting people to the truth. We have to state clearly what the truth is, but we must do so beautifully, otherwise people are less likely to be attracted to it. ZENIT: Is it pure coincidence that the Pope delivered this speech just after you launched the program? Clayton: It is a coincidence that we have just started it in the last couple of months, but in another way it isn't. He made the point that his two predecessors had asked for a return to a culture of beauty. We are doing what we are doing as a direct response to them as well. It was John Paul II especially and his Letter to Artists that inspired me to try to establish a program at a Catholic school that would enable the "new epiphany of beauty" that he called for. The writings of the current Pope just seem to build on this. Every week, it seems, his addresses have focused on the Church Fathers in such a way that he seemed to be leading up to this. So, for example, he refers often to Augustine of course, and he has drawn our attention also to St. Boethius, who is the father whose work was so influential in the teaching of the quadrivium, the "four ways" -- the higher part of the seven liberal arts. This is pretty much a traditional education in beauty and was influential in the School of Chartres, which was at the center of the gothic tradition of the Church. ZENIT: The Pope had a meeting with artists from all over the world on Nov. 22. What impact do you think this event will have on art? Clayton: In itself, probably little. Most of the figures are prominent in the current creative environment, which is secular. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it will be difficult for them to just turn on a tap of beauty in any way that is very different from what they are already doing. It is asking them to change course in what they are already doing and that's not easy. However, they may be inspired to get involved in long term projects that point the way to the next generation, and very importantly it draws attention to the issue and gets a lot of publicity, highlighting how important this is from the perspective of within the Church. ZENIT: What has the Church done, or what could it do, to reach out more to the world of art? Clayton: I think that more important than persuading the artists, we should be persuading the patrons of the arts. The artists will always do what they are paid to do. I think that we need enlightened patrons. Part of this is training priests in seminaries to understand exactly what Catholic culture is. However, I think that as much, if not more, can be done by the laity -- really it comes down to us to demand better art and to come up with the money to pay for it. I am on the board of an organization called the Foundation for Sacred Arts that is trying to promote the idea of knowledgeable artists and architects going into seminaries to give talks and courses that will help the priests to choose what is good. And of course, we have the Way of Beauty at Thomas More College. It rests on understanding our own culture and, very importantly, how it is rooted in the liturgy. ZENIT: Why is beauty so often missing from modern art and architecture? And what could or should be done to go back to the original beauty? Clayton: Modern culture is secular. It reflects a worldview in which God is not acknowledged. It does this very well and so this is why it is so powerful and yet so ugly. Catholic culture should not, in my view, look to secular culture for inspiration. To do so would be to look at art forms that were developed to communicate an anti-Christian worldview. If you try to Christianize popular culture, for example, you end up with a form that is trying to communicate values that are good through the medium that was developed to communicate something else. The result is that it loses all its power and it comes across as weak and sentimental. There is another reason. There is a saying that all the great art movements began on the altar. Catholic culture is always rooted in the cult that is central to Catholicism, that is, the Mass and the Divine Office. If our liturgy is lacking in dignity and beauty, then Catholic culture will be too. One of the great things that is happening in the Church now is a liturgical renewal. This is more powerful in creating a culture of beauty than anything else, and it is the current Pope who, more than anyone, is overseeing a restoration of liturgical orthodoxy. This is the most powerful way to reach out to artists, and for that matter anyone else (if I can come back to your earlier question) that the Church has at its disposal. The reaching out is done by the Holy Spirit; it is a supernatural magnet! Once we get the liturgy sorted out, everything else will fall into place. ZENIT: Tell us about your project of the way of beauty. Why did you choose an academic environment in which to establish it? Clayton: Thomas More College offers a unique practical training in beauty that will enable ordinary Catholics to contribute to the culture of beauty. Rooted in our own tradition, it is trying to further what the West has been waiting for. We need skillful artists, of course. We also need knowledgeable patrons of the arts. But most of all we need people who know what beauty is, know how to use it in their worship, and demand it in their churches, their homes, their workplaces. This is why every student at the college goes through this course. They learn to participate in, and create, a culture of beauty that directs us to God. It is based upon the traditional quadrivium that I mentioned earlier. The subjects are number, geometry, harmony/music and cosmology, but these are not taught as they would be normally. It is a tradition that teaches the patterns and harmony that comprise all that is beautiful and how they correspond to the patterns in the liturgy. This is reflected in what we think of first when we talk of Catholic culture: art, architecture, literature, music. But these are values and principles that can be employed in all our human activity. Whatever we do, we can do it beautifully, inspired by God. As beauty is apprehended intuitively, an education in beauty develops our intuitive faculty -- we become more creative. True originality is that which looks to the origin of all that is good, God. Crucial to this education of beauty and creativity is the guided practice of the creation of beauty. This begins in the teaching of people to pray with visual imagery in the context of the Mass and the Divine Office. We teach through practice, sacred geometry -- the traditional abstract art form that manifests these principles and is the basis for the proportion and compositional design in art and architecture. Those who are artistic can choose to do iconography courses and fine carpentry courses. Everyone is required to do creative writing courses that teach using traditional methods. The result is that we also teach people to recognize the theological language of the artistic traditions of the Church, the iconographic, the gothic and the baroque. We teach people the visual language. As the students go through the whole of our liberal arts program, which is a great books program, they will start to see how the whole of Catholic culture is run through with these values. As well as being a fascinating journey through our culture, this will give us the knowledge to be enlightened patrons for the Church and to choose images discerningly for our own pray and worship. It is also an excellent foundation for Catholics wishing to go on and study art intensively. They will know how to apply their skills in the service of the Church. ZENIT: It sounds as though this would be of interest to more than just your students. Is there a way that others can get access to this? Clayton: Yes, we are running a summer program in 2010. This is for anyone aged 16 and above. It will take place at our college campus in New Hampshire. As well as a course in the Way of Beauty -- teaching people the basics of the quadrivium- we also run courses in drawing and painting. We teach iconography and naturalistic drawing in the baroque style using the academic method. What people should be aware of is that talent has very little to do with being an artist. If you love art and love the Church, then with the right training, you will learn the necessary skills to do it. We have internationally known artists doing the training here and people will be amazed at the results they achieve.</div></div><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:100%;" >Way of Beauty: www.thomasmorecollege.edu/WayofBeauty<br /><br />Foundation for Sacred Arts: www.thesacredarts.org</span><br /></h1><h1 style="text-align: center;">__________________</h1><span style="font-size:100%;">from the website of :</span><br /><br /><h1 style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVreQtkORtUcAZ3CDffqdU8CdLcWxr0XxRk3Mk3RFzvNp6LlrXzwVdEwYPnb7qc8FW7tpoNIN5fgGBMSKlHWjbn4XlVfNAG0j0HPctIEsiO1n-XiJkvBqscv0lbqXuGPe3nJPYqoZxhNw/s1600-h/tmc_sealtitle.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVreQtkORtUcAZ3CDffqdU8CdLcWxr0XxRk3Mk3RFzvNp6LlrXzwVdEwYPnb7qc8FW7tpoNIN5fgGBMSKlHWjbn4XlVfNAG0j0HPctIEsiO1n-XiJkvBqscv0lbqXuGPe3nJPYqoZxhNw/s400/tmc_sealtitle.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410902458330820466" border="0" /></a></h1><h1 style="text-align: center; font-weight: normal;">Way of Beauty</h1> </div> <blockquote><p>God called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman’s task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him.<br /><em>-Pope </em><em>John Paul II, Letter to Artists</em></p></blockquote> <p><span class="drop_cap">T</span>he traditional quadrivium is essentially the study of pattern, harmony, symmetry and order in nature and mathematics, viewed as a reflection of the Divine Order. Along with Church tradition, they provide the model for the rhythms and cycles of the liturgy. Christian culture, like classical culture before it, was patterned after this cosmic order, which provides the unifying principle that runs through every traditional discipline. Literature, art, music, architecture, philosophy—all of creation and potentially all human activity—are bound together by this common harmony and receive their fullest meaning in the Church’s liturgy.</p> <p><img style="width: 508px; height: 336px;" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1136" title="Way of Beauty 2" src="http://www.thomasmorecollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Picture-113-300x199.jpg" alt="Way of Beauty 2" />This course teaches a deep understanding of these principles and their practical application through both lectures and workshops.</p> <p>When we apprehend beauty we do so intuitively. So an education that improves our ability to apprehend beauty also develops our intuition. All creativity, even that employed in business or scientific endeavors, is at its source intuitive. Furthermore, the creativity that an education in beauty stimulates generates not just more ideas, but better ideas—better because they are more in harmony with the natural order. The recognition of beauty moves us to love what we see, and leaves us more inclined to serve God and our fellow man.</p> <p>The Way of Beauty courses are taught by the College’s Artist-in-Residence David Clayton, an internationally known painter of icons, who was trained in the natural sciences at Oxford University and in the techniques of Baroque painting at one of the ateliers of Florence. He has received commissions at churches and monasteries in the U.S. and in Europe, and has illustrated a variety of Catholic books, most recently one written by scripture scholar and apologist Scott Hahn. All students will learn to understand the principles and techniques that make classic works of art beautiful; those interested in creating their own works are welcome to join his optional evening classes in drawing and painting.</p> <p><img style="width: 576px; height: 384px;" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1140" title="Students in Art Class" src="http://www.thomasmorecollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Students-in-Art-Class-300x200.jpg" alt="Students in Art Class" /><br /></p><p>The course draws on works of pre-Christian classical thinkers, the Church Fathers (especially St. Augustine and Boethius) who established it as a Christian tradition, the developments of later medieval thinkers such as Aquinas and Bonaventure, and the writings of more recent figures such as popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI which place it in a modern context.</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-14608937724994772302009-12-03T01:56:00.005-05:002010-06-19T02:43:27.316-04:00Orthodox & Catholic Churches Inch Closer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjugwbW9PRj4aJ6Pny2Flj1zT-XRbMozIsR6p2p_oVQhAAeOyqJSmFdr0hwyb7I44Rfs2qvlfErgYF-gGJA3jwTWtsZIhDZdgUOsipId_P5zbsfmDGw0JvxixamRibx2VOlnQo8cW_Jhoy_/s1600-h/benedict-and-kirill.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 486px; height: 583px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjugwbW9PRj4aJ6Pny2Flj1zT-XRbMozIsR6p2p_oVQhAAeOyqJSmFdr0hwyb7I44Rfs2qvlfErgYF-gGJA3jwTWtsZIhDZdgUOsipId_P5zbsfmDGw0JvxixamRibx2VOlnQo8cW_Jhoy_/s400/benedict-and-kirill.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410901378876399442" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-size:130%;" ><br /></span> <!-- CURRENT SECTION: Array ( [ID] => 1010 [TIMESTAMP_X] => 2009-10-12 15:36:44 [IBLOCK_ID] => 42 [IBLOCK_SECTION_ID] => [ACTIVE] => Y [GLOBAL_ACTIVE] => Y [SORT] => 100 [NAME] => News [PICTURE] => [LEFT_MARGIN] => 7 [RIGHT_MARGIN] => 28 [DEPTH_LEVEL] => 1 [DESCRIPTION] => [DESCRIPTION_TYPE] => text [SEARCHABLE_CONTENT] => NEWS [CODE] => news [XML_ID] => mt_cat_4 [TMP_ID] => [DETAIL_PICTURE] => [MODIFIED_BY] => 71102 [DATE_CREATE] => [CREATED_BY] => ) --> <div class="newstextblock" id="newstextblock"><div style="text-align: right; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;">03 December 2009 </span></div><div style="text-align: right; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" class="autors"><span style="font-size:130%;">Reuters</span></div> <div class="text"> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church are making progress toward healing their 1,000-year-old rift, a senior Russian official said ahead of President Dmitry Medvedev’s first visit to the Vatican.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">But Medvedev will not invite Pope Benedict to make a historic visit to Russia when the two meet on Thursday because he believes that church heads should take the initiative, said the official, who refused to be identified.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">“It is not appropriate for a secular leader to raise the issue in the absence of a hierarch,” the official said. “They [church leaders] should decide the issue themselves.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">“However, a movement toward normalization is clearly seen, and things are moving in the right direction,” he added.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Visits by Russian leaders to the Holy See in the past have failed to help heal the rift between the churches. But new hopes emerged when Patriarch Kirill took power after the death of his theologically more conservative predecessor, Alexy II, last December.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Patriarch Alexy, who spearheaded the revival of his church after decades of Communist persecution, treated rival religions and churches with suspicion.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">The Russian Orthodox Church has accused the Vatican of poaching for converts in its territory, including in Ukraine. The Catholic Church says it is only ministering to an existing flock of about half a million Russian Catholics.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">The medieval Christian church split into Eastern and Western branches in the Great Schism of 1054 amid disputes over papal authority and the insertion of a clause into the Nicene Creed. The divide has never been healed.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Patriarch Kirill, who headed the church’s foreign relations department for many years before taking his present job, has shown less hostility toward Catholics than did Alexy.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">German-born Pope Benedict, a theological conservative, is viewed by Orthodox hierarchs as a more welcomed partner than his predecessor, John Paul II.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></p> </div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-81027552139222726862009-11-29T20:26:00.002-05:002009-11-29T20:29:10.952-05:00Turkish Military Planned Attacks on Christians<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58IqWxpFhIQjYJEiKAY8gR2vcZ3Fhu9qVHFgz1Y-6P_K9GFqNBE5W7u7y0fDapKQwrLGpUgNsRpNZ86rUOw8E-zzhBsB0k4ltMP_YSVg4qclhzM_9zdNN0Uu4HkJY12H7jxwl-FLU8lYo/s1600/turkey5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 567px; height: 382px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58IqWxpFhIQjYJEiKAY8gR2vcZ3Fhu9qVHFgz1Y-6P_K9GFqNBE5W7u7y0fDapKQwrLGpUgNsRpNZ86rUOw8E-zzhBsB0k4ltMP_YSVg4qclhzM_9zdNN0Uu4HkJY12H7jxwl-FLU8lYo/s400/turkey5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409702598495028354" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><b>By Dikran Ego</b><br />Freelance Journalist<br />AcsaTV.com<br /></div><p class="itemText"><br />Senior Turkish military officers had made extensive plans to terrorize non-Muslims in Turkey. In the large Ergenekon[1] scandal recently a well-planned terrorist operation was revealed. The operation which is called "Kafes Operasyonu Eylem Planı", in English meaning "the execution of the cage - operation" was to eliminate the remaining small group of Christians living in Turkey today.<br /><br />The plan was revealed when police arrested Levent Bektas, a major in the Turkish army. The evidence seized reveals more than 27 officers and senior military officers involved in the conspiracy against Christians.<br /><br />In order to identify key persons among the Christians and then kill them, this terrorist network has broken into a Greek Church congregation compound and stolen computers. The purpose of this was to access the congregation’s member lists.<br /><br />"When our office was emptied of computers and files, church members were very concerned. Since the murder of the monk Santoro, the journalist Hrant Dink and the brutal murder of three publishing workers in Malatya, Christians are living in constant fear", said lawyer Kezban Hatemi, representing the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople (Istanbul).<br /><br />On 28 November 2007, the Syriac Orthodox monk Daniel Savci in Turabdin was kidnapped in southeastern Turkey. The monk resides in the St. Gabriel monastery, which Turkish authorities are trying to confiscate. A few days later the monk was found beaten. Shortly after, the police arrested some village guards, a state-sanctioned militia subordinate to the Turkish army, for the kidnapping. Many people with insight into the situation interpret the kidnapping as a direct threat to the remaining Assyrians in Turabdin.<br /><br />Christians were attacked across the country. To implement the strategic attacks, the country's Christian population was mapped out and 939 key persons from different parts of the country were identified as potential targets.<br /><br />The fully detailed operation consists of four phases: preparation, spreading propaganda, shape opinion and execute.<br /><br />The newspaper Taraf, which has been able to access the information, has published several articles about this. On its website <a href="http://www.taraf.com.tr/" target="_blank">www.taraf.com.tr</a> it is described in detail how the plan to attack the Christians was to be implemented.<br /><br />Below are some points that constitute the plan's main lines.</p><blockquote><ul><li>Christians are mapped</li><li>Famous and wealthy Christian businessmen kidnapped</li><li>Systematic fires and looting of Christian businesses</li><li>The Armenian newspaper AGOS be subjected to several explosions</li><li>Murder patrols executing attacks against selected individuals</li><li>Christian cemeteries subjected to explosions</li><li>Churches and institutions belonging to Christians subjected to explosions</li><li>Put the blame on imaginary militant organizations</li></ul></blockquote>From the late 1980s to the 2000s, thousands of people have been killed, among them there were also many Christians. The perpetrators of the killings have never been found. But officially they have been systematically identified as an organization named "Hizbullah".<br /><br />A military arsenal provides the network with weapons. The police have, after following the tracks, at a house search in Poyrazköy outside Istanbul found a weapon cache to be used in the attacks. Among the weapons were several items, from C4 explosives to Uzi firearms and other sophisticated weapons.<br /><br />According to the newspaper Taraf, major Eren Günay has been arrested for having provided the attackers with arms and ammunition. According to the newspaper there are indications that the plan is sanctioned by the highest Turkish military leadership.<br /><br />For a long time, Christians’ houses, property and businesses in the Christian areas of the cities of Istanbul and Izmir have been labeled, in order to identify them. MP Sebah Tuncel notified the Turkish government with a written question last summer. The question addressed the Ministry of Interior and was about what the government intends to do against the labeling of Christian properties and about Christians being identified. Even today, the government has not replied to this question yet.<br /><br />As long as the attacks were aimed at Christians and other minority groups, the Turkish government acted indifferently. Not until the ruling government party AKP themselves felt threatened they began to act. In recent years the relationship between the government and the military has been strained and on several occasions the military has made attempts to make a coup d'état, without succeeding fully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-72867286746024896752009-11-29T20:15:00.005-05:002009-11-29T20:24:57.492-05:00Fr. Daniil murder a warning to +Kyrill?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYKYAYoS2Jhy190BHQS3WXlyPczIq-uxCg_hqyv6wXVgCPjGffRVhq3jVmEiTDlFG4mkGOypBOSThFNsswbSxMN6yQaeZtYNrZLbRiLN2xbf2o7mXt6qoMcQ2ydys6-FCnxIKi1XlzSQM/s1600/Kyrill+10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 318px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYKYAYoS2Jhy190BHQS3WXlyPczIq-uxCg_hqyv6wXVgCPjGffRVhq3jVmEiTDlFG4mkGOypBOSThFNsswbSxMN6yQaeZtYNrZLbRiLN2xbf2o7mXt6qoMcQ2ydys6-FCnxIKi1XlzSQM/s400/Kyrill+10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409701021268820338" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><h1 class="page-title"><span style="font-size:100%;">Sunday November 29, 2009</span></h1><h1 class="page-title"><span style="font-size:100%;">From CrunchyCon</span><br /> </h1> <div class="EntryCategories"> <b><br /></b> </div> <p>an American Orthodox priest reader living temporarily in Russia writes:</p> <blockquote>"I wanted to thank you for reporting about the martyred priest Fr. Daniil. I thought you might also be interested to know that there is some thought in the Church here that Fr. Daniil was murdered as a warning to Patriarch Kyrill. The patriarch has been very outspoken about missionary work. He believes that the years since the fall of communism have seen the "restructuring" of the Church here, but now is the time for real mission work, not only making the new Orthodox truly Orthodox (or "churching the people" as he often puts it), but reaching outside the Church to those who are non-Orthodox. He was very supportive of Fr. Daniil and all missionary priests here; openly so and very vocal about it. <p>So, Fr. Daniil was murdered on the evening of the Patriarch's birthday as a perverted "gift" to him. By killing one of the most visible and well-known of his missionary priests, they were warning him what the cost would be to him and the Church if missionary work continues.</p> <p>This is still very much a place where one's faith has a high cost. A number of friends (and family) have warned me about always wearing my cassock and cross in public, on the subway, on the streets, at the university. But I find that so many people are attracted to a priest and are very sincerely interested in the faith, and have so many questions to ask, that just wearing the cassock in public is 'missionary.'"</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjGzBOaJLJfMF2mqOmoFcVOdM7RGKOHGqWF6DGguX4obAkYpifyNkd8EmFJPDoKHiD-PeXdjNV9Yrjx6NAlMSXXLLu3ZnT6lLroC24ACxB9dZztW2h35F2myZ1QoHGmFSC0AoWdG8AZt0/s1600/kyrill-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 644px; height: 428px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjGzBOaJLJfMF2mqOmoFcVOdM7RGKOHGqWF6DGguX4obAkYpifyNkd8EmFJPDoKHiD-PeXdjNV9Yrjx6NAlMSXXLLu3ZnT6lLroC24ACxB9dZztW2h35F2myZ1QoHGmFSC0AoWdG8AZt0/s400/kyrill-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409701086444921394" border="0" /></a></p></blockquote><br /><br /></div><br />___________________________________________<br /></div><p>background story:</p><p><br /></p><p>Today, the parishioners of St Thomas church are praying for the repose of the soul of Fr Daniil Sysoev, who died last night after an unknown assailant shot him. “This morning, we celebrated three Pannikhidas for Fr Daniil. In spite of it being a working day, people continue to come forward”, a spokesman for the parish told our <em>Interfax-Religion</em> correspondent. They told us <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMy2ZKJgVV4ST-sS-bak3Nz_f3gYdyJvH_OfRWNM_MhQzyiqo7NqjegMqZiqfb3_3svj4KMIQRKU8A-wPoOXxlsFby5oLJCNHvUdxEZhN5IQsDhZPcWukvOawPSMSCaphyphenhyphenZ6vzZgkPnB8/s1600/frdaniilsysoev.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 184px; height: 217px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMy2ZKJgVV4ST-sS-bak3Nz_f3gYdyJvH_OfRWNM_MhQzyiqo7NqjegMqZiqfb3_3svj4KMIQRKU8A-wPoOXxlsFby5oLJCNHvUdxEZhN5IQsDhZPcWukvOawPSMSCaphyphenhyphenZ6vzZgkPnB8/s400/frdaniilsysoev.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409699242589190130" border="0" /></a>that Fr Daniel had many friends in the clergy, and, probably, they will continuously perform Pannikhidas for him until the day of his funeral. “Anyone can come to our church and pray, however, we don’t allow reporters to use photo and video equipment here”, the sexton on duty said.</p> <p>On early Friday morning, at St Thomas church in the Kantemirov district of Moscow, there was continuous reading from the Psalter in honour of Fr Daniil Sysoev, killed the night before. Parishioners and spiritual children of Fr Daniil read from the Psalms and offered prayers for the repose of his soul at an analogion set up for the purpose in the centre of the church, according to our <em>Interfax-Religion</em> correspondent. Mourners lit dozens of candles.</p> <p>One constantly sees all sorts of people bringing flowers to the church, including priests, members of the parish community and missionary clubs that Fr Daniil sponsored, and friends and relatives of the deceased priest. Most of them are weeping disconsolately. People light candles and quietly discuss the tragedy amongst themselves, as they recall their personal contact with Fr Daniil; they remember his care and assistance for his parishioners in their specific needs.</p> <p>In the small wooden church, a memorial to the right of the altar marks where an unknown assassin murdered Fr Daniil the night before. Two white and two red roses lie crosswise around bouquets of flowers on the rug where he fell. Meanwhile, on the street outside, believers have laid more bouquets of flowers at the entrance to the church. Announcements of parish events signed by Fr Daniil still hang on the door of the church. Near the church fence, a few cops are on duty to keep order, but, the church is open to anyone who wants to come and pray. Several Russian television crews are on the scene, as well.</p> <p>Hundreds of Russian-speaking users of the internet service <em>Live Journal</em> passed on a message urging everybody to participate in a procession on the day of the funeral of Fr Daniil Sysoev, who died early Friday morning after being shot in the head on Thursday evening. “We would like 400,000 to show up for a procession to remember the murder of a priest in Moscow. It would stretch from Tver to the Kremlin,” political scientist Aleksandr Morozov wrote on his blog. According to most Orthodox bloggers who expressed a desire to come to any such procession, it should be a prayerful religious event blessed by the Archpastors of the Church without any political dimension.</p> <p>Boris Yakemenko, the head of the Orthodox section of the youth movement Nashi, a member of the Public Chamber of Russia, sees the murder of Fr Daniel Sysoev as evidence of our country’s moral crisis. “This heinous crime shows just how far society has gone in its spiritual degeneration. If the walls of a church, or an ordained priest, or even the cross itself didn’t stop such wicked men, it means that we see the onset of a crisis that is much worse than any global economic crisis… a crisis of consciousness, a crisis of the heart and soul”, Boris Yakemenko told <em>Interfax-Religion</em> on Friday. In his opinion, “Everyone with a heart and a conscience, not only Orthodox, but, anyone with an open soul, must oppose this spiritual decay now, or, we shall pay once again for our indifference with the best things in our lives, leaving our house in ruins. Fr Daniil was a bright, talented, and very active missionary; he was a very significant figure. He preached, spoke, wrote books, and dashed off anywhere at a moment’s notice to where anyone needed his help, pastoral support, or word of comfort”.</p> <p>Mr Yakemenko noted that Fr Daniil worked with Muslims, with migrant workers, with counterculture types, “with very different sorts of people. Like any other exceptional or gifted man, not everyone cared for his ways, but, no one could say that he wasn’t the kind of missionary that people really need today”. He told us that Fr Daniil spent the entire term of the Orthodox youth camp this summer at Lake Seliger “because there were thousands of people there, and he just couldn’t stay away. He baptised, preached, and talked to the kids… It seemed that he was everywhere doing everything. We collected petitions in support of his church (when some wanted to tear it down), and he and I met on several occasions, and we discussed our plans for next summer”.</p> <p>According to tentative plans, the funeral service of Fr Daniil Sysoev shall be on Monday at Ss Peter and Paul church in the Yasenevo district in Moscow. “In addition, people may pay their respects to Fr Daniil on Saturday and Sunday at St Thomas church in the Kantemirov district of Moscow, where he was the rector and where he was shot”, a source in the MP told <em>Interfax-Religion</em> on Friday. According to our source, on one of those days, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all the Russias shall come and pay his respects to the late Fr Daniil. At one time, Fr Daniil was a cleric at Ss Peter and Paul church in Yasenevo, which is a <em>podvorie</em> of the Optina Pustyn Monastery. His father, Fr Aleksei Sysoev (also a priest), is rector of St John the Evangelist church in the Yasenevo Orthodox classical gymnasium, also served in this <em>podvorie</em> as well.</p><h3>Fr Aleksei Sysoev</h3><h3><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">Biography</span><strong> </strong></h3> <p style="text-align: justify;">In his own words, he is “half Russian, half Tatar”. His father is a priest, Fr Aleksei Sysoev. Fr Aleksei is rector of the church of St John the Divine at the Yasenevo Orthodox classical gymnasium and a clergyman of the Ss Peter and Paul church in Yasenevo. His mother, Anna Midhatovna Amirov, teaches Orthodox catechism at the same school.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">He graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 2000 with a <em>Kandidatura</em> in Theology. {Editor’s note: Literally, a <em>kandidat</em> is a “candidate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, equivalent to a Western PhD, but, perhaps, a bit more stringent in requirements and more rigorous.} His thesis was entitled, <em>The Anthropology of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Watchtower Society and its Analysis</em>.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">His career as a cleric began in 1994, when he became a reader. In 1995, he received ordination as a deacon, and in 2001, as a priest. He is married and has three daughters. Fr Daniil Sysoev actively engaged in missionary work among Muslims, and converted many to the Orthodox faith. He held a conservative stance towards yoga exercises, karate, Latin American dance, and belly dancing, urging Christians not to attend these classes. Rev Sysoev was critical of the Darwinian theory of evolution</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Fr Daniil was the rector of St Thomas parish; he developed an active missionary movement, which included training Orthodox “street missionaries”, whose task was to attract people to Orthodoxy by appealing to passers-by on the street.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">On 19 November 2009, D. A. Sysoev was mortally wounded in St Thomas church by two shots from a pistol (other sources say that four shots were fired). The masked assailant managed to escape. At 00.20 Moscow Standard Time on 20 November 2009 (21.20 UTC 16.20 EST 13.20 PST, all of these 19 November), Fr Daniil died on the operating table.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">At present, detectives believe that the most plausible explanation for the crime is that the murderer had a religious motivation for the killing. Earlier, members of various extremist groups repeatedly threatened Rev Sysoev. “Fr Daniil was a prominent figure amongst the Moscow clergy, creative and vigorous, and a true preacher and missionary. I think that he was murdered because of his strong views”, said Fr Vladimir Vigilyansky, a spokesman for the MP. Indeed, Rev Sysoev himself stated that he had received death threats on 14 separate occasions.</p> <h3><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">Church of the Apostle Thomas </span></h3> <p style="text-align: justify;">In 2005, the Moscow city government allocated the community led by Fr Daniil Sysoev 0.5 hectares (a little under 1.25 acres) of land near the Kantemirovskaya metro stop on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line for the construction of a stone church dedicated to the prophet Daniel. By November 2006, the parishioners had cleared all of the undergrowth and debris on the site and erected a temporary wooden church dedicated to the Apostle Thomas. The parish runs missionary courses, singing lessons, iconography classes, and a scout group. In 2009, four years after the allocation of land, the Moscow City Department of Environmental Management believed that the community was in violation of environmental legislation, although many use the floodplain of the Chertanovka River as a dump for construction debris. The Department stated that the land at this location should be a park and nature reserve, and the construction of a church would result in irreparable harm to the unique natural habitat. In August 2009, deputy prefect of YuVAO stated he approved in principle for the construction of a church in Kantemirov district, and, during public hearings on the new Master Plan of Moscow, residents demanded that a church be part of the draft General Plan.</p> <h3><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">Criticism </span></h3> <p style="text-align: justify;">In 2007, Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, Co-chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, sued in court [against Fr Daniil] for his book <em>Marriage to a Muslim</em>, which, he said, contained expressions offensive to Muslims. Journalist Khalida Khamidulina accused Fr Daniil of inciting hatred of Islam in his publications and filed a suit in court against him. At the same time, Neo-Nazi groups expressed their displeasure with the Fr Daniil’s views and ultra-rightwing Orthodox publications criticised him for his anti-monarchist position. In addition, some spokesmen for Old Ritualists {Editor’s note: These are mistakenly called “Old Believers” in Western circles… all too many of them are nothing but Protestants in Orthodox drag.} expressed a negative assessment of D. A. Sysoev. They believed that he attacked their faith, considering his publications on Old Ritualists as “slander against the Old Orthodox Church”. {Editor’s note: The so-called Old Orthodox Church is not in communion with any of the recognised Orthodox Local Churches. It is a sect of <em>popovtsy</em> (“priested”) Old Ritualists, in opposition to the sort known as <em>bezpopovtsy</em> (“unpriested”). The latter are literally what their Russian name indicates… they are priestless. The former have a hierarchy ordained by a renegade Orthodox bishop in the old Hapsburg Empire. Neither group is in the Church, as I said above, no Local Church considers them Orthodox. Neophytes should best avoid both sorts. Don’t be fooled by their icons and chanting… they are nothing but Protestants who reject the Church.} They accused him of poor reasoning, faulty judgement, and distortion of historical facts.</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-41353009999046915502009-11-29T20:03:00.004-05:002009-11-29T20:09:09.776-05:00Russian patriarch seeks 'powerful reply' to train bomb<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcfm0POezH-F7nL2U8ytA6lOZWRm14tSJu97N471yj3hWRTCEYhyAa1hbV0fInm0_JAsZilImnSrp2xymr-O9faYms5VRSE77VrVV1aePS4FXxWDfMFr6SUW485IzpjwUvhgw5dIZkAAy/s1600/document-11-ElectionofRussianPatriarchKirll.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 503px; height: 598px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcfm0POezH-F7nL2U8ytA6lOZWRm14tSJu97N471yj3hWRTCEYhyAa1hbV0fInm0_JAsZilImnSrp2xymr-O9faYms5VRSE77VrVV1aePS4FXxWDfMFr6SUW485IzpjwUvhgw5dIZkAAy/s400/document-11-ElectionofRussianPatriarchKirll.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409696483401788114" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;">By Conor Humphries<br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">MOSCOW<br />Nov 29 (Reuters)<br /></div><br />The head of Russia's Orthodox Church on Sunday called on authorities to give a <span style="font-weight: bold;">"powerful reply"</span> to the people behind a train bombing that killed 25 people, as police probed whether Islamist rebels were involved.<br /><br />A blast derailed a high-speed Russian train on Friday night on the main line between Moscow and Russia's second city, St Petersburg, raising fears of a new wave of attacks five years after a bombing campaign in Moscow by Chechen rebels.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"We believe the reply will be effective and powerful enough to show these shameful, terrible people that ... when the hand of an enemy is lifted against our lives, we are able to defend our citizens," </span>Patriarch Kirill said at a memorial service in Moscow.<br /><br />The comments were the strongest statement of anger against the perpetrators by a senior public figure. President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday called for calm and ordered officials to do everything to help the victims of the attack.<br /><br />No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, but security analysts said militant groups from Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus were the most likely culprits.<br /><br />A claim of responsibility by Islamist rebels could heighten tensions between Russia's Christian majority and its Muslim minority weeks after an Orthodox priest who was critical of Islam was shot dead in his church.<br /><br />Russian investigators on Sunday combed the site of the blast and questioned residents of the rural area where it happened. The Emergency Ministry said 25 people were confirmed dead.<br /><br />Passenger services resumed on the track on Sunday, with commuter trains rolling past an overturned carriage disguised by a green camouflage net, television pictures showed.<br /><br />Television stations cancelled entertainment shows on Sunday and football matches observed a minute of silence.<br /><br /><br />(editors note: okey dokey...ee gads!)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-24207149672354906662009-11-29T19:53:00.002-05:002009-11-29T20:03:47.357-05:00Scientist says to be 'very careful' when interpreting writing on Shroud of Turin<p style="text-align: right;"><span class="noticia_byline">Rome, Italy, Nov 25, 2009<br /></span></p><p><span class="noticia_byline"> (CNA)</span> A researcher in the Vatican secret archives claims to have interpreted a death certificate supposedly imprinted on the Shroud of Turin. However, a leading scientist and researcher on the Shroud cautions against reading too much into the images. </p> <p>Dr. Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archive, claims that she has reconstructed the death certificate of a man named “Jesus the Nazarene or Jesus of Nazareth” from fragments of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin words she sees imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, reports the U.K. Times Online. The letters Frale claims to be interpreting were first found in a 1978 examination of the Shroud. Other letters have allegedly been found since then. </p> <p>Dr. Frale told “La Repubblica” that Jewish burial practices at the time of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem mandated that a body buried after execution of a death sentence had be in a common grave and could only be returned to the family after a year had passed. Therefore, a death certificate was glued to the burial shroud, usually on the cloth near the face, so that the body could be easily identified. </p> <p>Frale's reconstruction of the death certificate reads, “In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year." Dr. Frale noted that many of the letters were missing from the Shroud, and that Jesus, for example, was referred to as "(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos." </p> <p>Dr. John P. Jackson, director of the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado, told CNA, “you have to be very careful when interpreting these things.” He cited the example of an image on the Shroud thought to have been the rope which led Jesus to Calvary which, under scientific investigation, turned out to be nothing more than a watermark. </p> <p>“I'm not trying to demean someone else's work that I'm not familiar with,” Jackson said. He did, however, point out that “there is a long history of people finding things on the Shroud which are tied into subjectivity.” </p> <p>The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth used as a burial shroud which bears the distinct image of a crucified man bearing wounds matching the Gospel accounts of the Passion of Christ. Scholars concur that the Shroud cannot be a work of art, and traces of blood, as well as the pollen of plants found only in the Middle East, have been found nestled within the fibers of the cloth. </p> <p>The object of much scientific study, the authenticity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus Christ has neither been confirmed nor denied by the Church.</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-51749845614290947442009-11-29T19:38:00.007-05:002009-11-29T19:51:30.861-05:00Jesus Christ's 'death certificate' found on Turin Shroud<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1B_mbH_OpD2_8gwUJRh1S4pjDBqORBs63zKIF-oWdwaYuwd8jRyX7B0uysu0b5mM-SHI1s19EXRqnUAsleujgXiukM2JkMcri3_Ai-YmSBfedGUrcJAyc_IzE9fjj85m1LNBiwZ5hV2p/s1600/shroud_of_turin_001.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 567px; height: 377px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1B_mbH_OpD2_8gwUJRh1S4pjDBqORBs63zKIF-oWdwaYuwd8jRyX7B0uysu0b5mM-SHI1s19EXRqnUAsleujgXiukM2JkMcri3_Ai-YmSBfedGUrcJAyc_IzE9fjj85m1LNBiwZ5hV2p/s400/shroud_of_turin_001.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409691664603630978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Researcher says she found text on Shroud of Turin</span> <p>ROME — A Vatican researcher claims she has found a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin and says the discovery proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth.</p><p>The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.</p><p>Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says the faint writing emerged through computer analysis of photos of the shroud, which is not normally accessible for study.</p><p>Frale says the jumble of Greek, Latin and Aramaic includes the words "Jesus Nazarene" and mentions he was sentenced to death. She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk to identify the body and the ink then seeped into the cloth.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">_______________________________________________</p><p style="text-align: right;">By Nick Squires in Rome</p><p> The historian and researcher at the secret Vatican archive said she has found the words "Jesus Nazarene" on the shroud, proving it was the linen cloth which was wrapped around Christ's body. </p> <p> She said computer analysis of photographs of the shroud revealed extremely faint words written in Greek, Aramaic and Latin which attested to its authenticity.<br /></p><p> Her claim was immediately contested by scholars who said that radiocarbon dating tests in 1988 showed the shroud to be a medieval forgery. </p> <p> Dr Frale asserts in a new book, <i>The Shroud of Jesus the Nazarene</i>, that computer enhancement enabled her to detect the archaic script, which appea</p><p>rs on various parts of the material. </p> <p> She suggested that it was written by low-ranking Roman officials or mortuary clerks on a scroll or piece of papyrus to identify Christ's corpse. Such a document would have enabled the relatives of a dead person to retrieve a body from a communal morgue, she suggested. </p> <p> It would have been attached to the corpse with a flour-based glue and the ink could have seeped through into the cloth below, leaving a faint imprint. </p> <p> Scholars first noticed that there was writing on the shroud in 1978 but when the radiocarbon tests a decade later suggested that the shroud was a forgery, historians lost interest in the script, Dr Frale said. </p> <p> She claimed she had been able to decipher a jumble of phrases written in three languages, including the Greek words (I)esou(s) Nnazarennos, or Jesus the Nazarene, and (T)iber(iou), which she interprets as Tiberius, the Roman emperor at the time of Christ's crucifixion. </p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD5a-au1Rt0OWvZqGtCdZV1_edq4OPcbYCJOX9UrziMmN0rpR32vt7IBPyvCKF77XGOQPDF_LnrvJkpn_PmEMDU2EJ2UHhryAwHtBM2WGBbld2rTE7JebtAakopl1onoQhktQVx1fu5cWY/s1600/shroud2_1527921f.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 455px; height: 605px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD5a-au1Rt0OWvZqGtCdZV1_edq4OPcbYCJOX9UrziMmN0rpR32vt7IBPyvCKF77XGOQPDF_LnrvJkpn_PmEMDU2EJ2UHhryAwHtBM2WGBbld2rTE7JebtAakopl1onoQhktQVx1fu5cWY/s400/shroud2_1527921f.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409691601486269666" border="0" /></a></p> <p> The text also mentions that the man who was wrapped in the shroud had been condemned to death, she believes. The hidden text was in effect the "burial certificate" for Jesus Christ, Dr Frale said. </p> <p> "I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside," she said. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place." </p> <p> But other experts were sceptical. "People work on grainy photos and think they see things," said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written books about the shroud. "It's all the result of imagination and computer software."<br /></p><p><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">_______________________________________________</p><br /><h1 style="text-align: center;" class="heading"><span style="font-size:130%;">Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin,</span></h1><h1 style="text-align: center;" class="heading"><span style="font-size:130%;">says Vatican scholar</span></h1><br /><p> A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate" imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus. </p> <p> Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said "I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." She said that she had reconstructed it from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing imprinted on the cloth together with the image of the crucified man. </p> <p> The shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral and is to be put in display next spring, is regarded by many scholars as a medieval forgery. A 1988 carbon dating of a fragment of the cloth dated it to the Middle Ages. </p> <p> However Dr Frale, who is to publish her findings in a new book, <i>La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno</i> (The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth) said that the inscription provided "historical date consistent with the Gospels account". The letters, barely visible to the naked eye, were first spotted during an examination of the shroud in 1978, and others have since come to light.<br /></p><p> Some scholars have suggested that the writing is from a reliquary attached to the cloth in medieval times. But Dr Frale said that the text could not have been written by a medieval Christian because it did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as "the Naz</p> <p>arene". This would have been "heretical" in the Middle Ages since it defined Jesus as "only a man" rather than the Son of God. </p> <p> Like the image of the man himself the letters are in reverse and only make sense in negative photographs. Dr Frale told <i>La Repubblica </i>that under Jewish burial practices current at the time of Christ in a Roman colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave. </p> <p> A death certificate was therefore glued to the burial shroud to identify it for later retrieval, and was usually stuck to the cloth around the face. This had apparently been done in the case of Jesus even though he was buried not in a common grave but in the tomb offered by Joseph of Arimathea. </p> <p> Dr Frale said that many of the letters were missing, with Jesus for example referred to as "(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos" and only the "iber" of "Tiberiou" surviving. Her reconstruction, however, suggested that the certificate read: "In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year". It ends "signed by" but the signature has not survived. </p> <p> Dr Frale said that the use of three languages was consistent with the polyglot nature of a community of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony. Best known for her studies of the Knights Templar, who she claims at one stage preserved the shroud, she said what she had deciphered was "the death sentence on a man called Jesus the Nazarene. If that man was also Christ the Son of God it is beyond my job to establish. I did not set out to demonstrate the truth of faith. I am a Catholic, but all my teachers have been atheists or agnostics, and the only believer among them was a Jew. I forced myself to work on this as I would have done on any other archaeological find."</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSi4dZg3xnm4r_fmwXr_TwrVJXzAi5ASlFbOIh15HDQeclNBW7KVHOyu_fO6lhDj7WkedTyfuCpoh4ktzFNL629UFOo_kAEopIiZJdvqaPBljs1aeoV0vAz-yqB08NKEe6RVCPkPHkWqZs/s1600/ShroudTurin.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 542px; height: 531px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSi4dZg3xnm4r_fmwXr_TwrVJXzAi5ASlFbOIh15HDQeclNBW7KVHOyu_fO6lhDj7WkedTyfuCpoh4ktzFNL629UFOo_kAEopIiZJdvqaPBljs1aeoV0vAz-yqB08NKEe6RVCPkPHkWqZs/s400/ShroudTurin.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409691501321381138" border="0" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p> The Catholic Church has never either endorsed the Turin Shroud or rejected it as inauthentic. Pope John Paul II arranged for public showings in 1998 and 2000, saying: "The Shroud is an image of God's love as well as of human sin. The imprint left by the tortured body of the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one's fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age." Pope Benedict XVI is to pray before the Shroud when it is put on show again next Spring in Turin.<br /></p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-44166559733502307792009-11-29T18:49:00.004-05:002009-11-29T19:50:42.958-05:00Islamic Imperialism: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Middle East<table class="contentpaneopen"><tbody><tr align="right"><td valign="top"><span class="small">Written by Thomas O. Hecht </span> </td> </tr> <tr align="right"> <td class="createdate" valign="top"> Saturday, 28 November 2009<br /><br /></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top"> <p style="text-align: justify;">EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Samuel Huntington predicted that only the Islamic civilization would re-emerge as the nemesis to the West. Recently, there is a rebirth of the Islamic struggle to reassert control over parts of the world, with <em>jihad</em>, or its modern manifestation - international terrorism - as its tool. The US is losing its dominance in the Middle East and is gradually being replaced by Iran. The Western world is in urgent need of a leader who will powerfully defend Western values against the growing influence of radical Islam.<br /><br />Samuel Huntington remains relevant as ever. His book, <em>The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order</em> (1996), presented a thesis that ran counter to the zeitgeist euphoria over globalization and a borderless world after the end of the Cold War.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"> </p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Huntington unequivocally stated that the end of the Cold War would bring about a clash of civilizations. He inferred that soil, ethno-cultural devotion, and religion-based energy would claim and define the world in conflict. Huntington also drew a map of the world which can be described as "The West and The Rest." He recognized other less challenging civilizations - Hindu, African, Buddhist - but to him in the post-Cold War world, only the Islamic civilization would re-emerge as the nemesis to the West. According to Huntington, "The twentieth century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist Leninism was only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflicting relations between Islam and Christianity." Unfortunately, the West displays weakness and lack of courageous leadership.<br /><br /><strong>Islamic History</strong><br /><br />A review of the onslaught of Islam, from its foundation in the seventh century to its current attempts to dominate the world, elucidates the gravity of the challenge currently faced by the West. Bernard Lewis has noted that since its birth, Islam has sought to merge religion and state authority, and to expand its influence. Christian awareness of the new competing Islamic faith began almost immediately after its advent with the triumphant emergence of the new religion from its Arabian homeland and its spread eastward to the borders of India and China, and westward across North Africa and the Mediterranean Islands into Europe. Islamic penetration of Western Europe ended with the Christian re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. The struggle lasted eight centuries.<br /><br />Islam made inroads also in parts of Russia during the wars waged by the Ottoman Turks. There is still an ongoing conflict between Russia and its Chechen Islamic province. For close to 200 years, the Ottoman Empire advanced into Europe spreading Muslim domination in the Balkans and South Central Europe, including Budapest. The Ottoman Turks were defeated at the gates of Vienna on two occasions. The final defeat took place as recently as 1683.<br /><br />The conquests stretching over a millennium are the antecedents to the rebirth of a struggle on the part of Islam to reassert control over parts of the world, with <em>jihad</em>, or its modern manifestation - international terrorism - as its tool. In this context, Bernard Lewis' caution about political terminology is important. He warned against the phraseology: "the war against terrorism." This, he says, is as if Churchill had told us we were engaged in a war against submarines. Terrorism, like submarines, are a tool, but are not the enemy. The enemy, Lewis says, is radical Islam.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZHKAjg1HtO8HpTM0xYwnLgCXke5zbBW5LDBnTqYw7uQ-ihjMwyc_8mRBJ-qa_ztvpKQsHc5M9W6zlA1gn48LtrXOZJeTUc4Bqg6FLK3z46mVl1lhxELpPl83kVo4XsbYtCplHku3Gl5o/s1600/hqdefault.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZHKAjg1HtO8HpTM0xYwnLgCXke5zbBW5LDBnTqYw7uQ-ihjMwyc_8mRBJ-qa_ztvpKQsHc5M9W6zlA1gn48LtrXOZJeTUc4Bqg6FLK3z46mVl1lhxELpPl83kVo4XsbYtCplHku3Gl5o/s400/hqdefault.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409677606502544338" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>The Current Radical Islamist Challenge</strong><br /><br />Today, it is politically correct to say that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims want to live in peace. This may be true, but in light of worldwide Muslim terrorist acts in Bali New York, the northern Chinese provinces, Mumbai, and Madrid, the reference to the religion of peace becomes questionable. Using such terms obfuscates the issue by causing a false optimism while diminishing the specter of the fanatics who rampage the globe in the name of Islam. The peaceful majority in Muslim lands is cowed into a non-existent force.<br /><br />Unfortunately at this moment in history, it is fanatics who set the tone in Islamic countries. Their impact on ordinary citizens manifests openly with the mass celebrations in Islamic countries when "infidels" are killed, or Muslim terrorists are released from prison. It is fanatics from the Muslim world who slaughter children and non-Muslim tribal groups daily in Darfur, and are progressively taking over segments of Africa, be it Nigeria or Somalia. Islamic fanatics bomb, behead, murder, and carry out "honor" killings. They also stone rape victims and homosexuals. Muslim fanatics teach in the schools the virtues of becoming suicide bombers and acquiring the coveted status of a <em>shahid</em> (martyr).<br /><br />Therefore, the peaceful majority is not always relevant. In communist Russia, the country was comprised of Russians who wanted to live in peace, but were terrorized by the communist leadership, who was responsible for the murder of at least 20 million of their own people. Similarly, 80 million Germans were not all Nazis, but they were irrelevant when Hitler and his murderous minions brought about World War II and caused the death of tens of millions, including one-third of the world's Jewish population. China's huge population was also peaceful, but Chinese communists under Mao Tse-tung managed to kill 70 million people in China.<br /><br />History's lessons, when analyzed, are simple and blunt. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence, just as the majority of Germans, Russians, and Chinese. It is the extremists like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the Wahabists in Saudi Arabia, who dictate policies, set the agenda, and cause the majority to remain silent and to progressively even lose their naturally endowed rights to human freedom and dignity.<br /><br />Like Nazism and cruel communism, the radical Islamist must be defeated not only for the sake of the silent majority in the Islamic world, but also for the sake of our own survival in the wars in which we are waging today.<br /><br /><strong>Combating Radicalism and Defending the West</strong><br /><br />The Western world today needs a leader who will powerfully defend Western values against radical Islamic usurpers and their allies in the West. Huntington was pessimistic in this regard. He expressed an anxiety about the will and the coherence of the West, and said that the West neither monitors nor defends the ramparts of its free society. Islam will remain Islam, while he was equally dubious that the West would remain true to its mission of defending freedom, the rule of law, and human rights.<br /><br />Today, the main leader of radical Islamist forces is Ahmadinejad, who wishes to establish his influence across the entire Middle East. Facing him are America, pacifist-oriented Europe, and America's alleged Sunni Arab allies. Israel - Ahmadinejad's target for elimination - is the only democratic state in this part of the world allied to the values of the West. Israel is surrounded by a sea of cultural, intellectual, and socioeconomic decay - which describes the current Muslim Middle East.<br /><br />Iran, in its challenge to the West, arms Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah. Al Qaeda also supports the Iranian vision of challenging Western values. The Iranian daily <em>Kayhan</em> has clearly defined the participants in this struggle, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides, Iran and the US." So far, Team America has been losing on many fronts. Thomas Friedman of the <em>New York Times</em> gave a short explanation: "Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak. And the Sunni Arab world is feckless, unreliable, and divided."<br /><br />Ehud Yaari, Israel's outstanding Arab affairs commentator, defines the present Middle East as a <em>Pax Iranica</em>, which follows the US' <em>Pax Americana</em> after the end of World War II and the Cold War. America let this hegemony slip from its grasp, while Iran now calls the shots in the Middle East, with a <em>jihad</em> motivated by religiously-inspired fervor to recreate a Persian empire and a Muslim Caliphate.<br /><br />Yaari observes that anyone destroying Iran's atomic facilities will create a massive conflagration in the Middle East involving the Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, and the Emirates. The realization of this possibility creates a strategy of inaction - neither Western powers nor the United Nations will want to face such an event.<br /><br />In the short period of time since Jimmy Carter capitulated to the Ayatollahs, Iran has progressively influenced events in the Middle East. Today, it strongly influences Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and manipulates Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran also has built Hizballah into a military force equipped with 50,000 rockets that controls Lebanon and threatens Israel, and has supported the creation of Hamastan in Gaza.<br /><br />Over eight years, the Bush Administration dragged America into a position where it was neither liked, feared, nor respected. Aaron David Miller, a negotiator with both Republican and Democratic administrations, says, "We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled under George Bush over how to make war, with the result that America is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and cannot abandon."<br /><br />Churchill's admonition to the world when Chamberlain returned from the Munich Conference in 1938 practicing his policy of appeasement has relevance today, "We are existentially threatened by the malice of the wicked, enhanced by the weakness and hesitation of the allegedly virtuous."<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What is urgently needed today is a Western awakening.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /><em>Dr. Thomas O. Hecht is the founder of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies and Chairman of its International Advisory Board.</em></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><em><br /><br /><br /><br /></em> </p></td></tr></tbody></table>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-72016501411879645992009-11-29T18:38:00.004-05:002009-11-29T18:49:29.910-05:00Some notes from the past...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ztYEVGl7y60wujdXFMy4sdLEj7RLovtxYF5gpcsWw4WKSUVzMG8JNdS505FJAK9bmzJzOyU2R4XetKqLB64wC3-RzQiL4eAIn0Yif2zfaVUX-oKFNInjG4uht-KL1cYZDD_00nQA3f1G/s1600/pat-buchanan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 395px; height: 296px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ztYEVGl7y60wujdXFMy4sdLEj7RLovtxYF5gpcsWw4WKSUVzMG8JNdS505FJAK9bmzJzOyU2R4XetKqLB64wC3-RzQiL4eAIn0Yif2zfaVUX-oKFNInjG4uht-KL1cYZDD_00nQA3f1G/s400/pat-buchanan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409676695142710818" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >Here are some past articles from<br />Pat Buchanan</span><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________________________ </div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;" class="post-headline"> <h1>Is Islam a Religion of Peace? </h1> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: right;">by Patrick J. Buchanan</p><p style="text-align: right;">December 3, 2002 </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">“I think Muhammad was a terrorist … a violent man, a man of war,” said the Rev. Jerry Falwell on “60 Minutes.” He added, “Jesus set the example for love. … Muhammad set an opposite example.” Murderous riots broke out in India, and an Iranian cleric threatened Falwell with assassination. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">“The Koran teaches that the end of the world will not come until every Jew is killed by Muslims,” says the Rev. Pat Robertson. He compares the Koran’s message on Jews to “Mein Kampf.” “There is no doubt the religion of Muhammad … is extreme and violent.” </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">“I don’t believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion,” adds Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, “When you read … the verses from the Koran, it instructs the killing of the infidel … those that are non-Muslim.” </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">What does President Bush think of this bashing of Islam by his Christian friends? He rejects it. “Islam is a religion of peace.” </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Colin Powell is less charitable: “We will reject the kind of comments … where people in this country say that Muslims are responsible for the killing of all Jews, and who put out hatred. This kind of hatred must be rejected.” </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Is Islam a religion of peace? Why, then, was an American Christian woman murdered in south Lebanon by an Islamic fanatic, after Christians were warned to stop proselytizing for the faith? </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">If Islam is a religion of peace, how do you explain four days of Muslim rioting in Kaduna, Nigeria, against a Miss World pageant, after a journalist wrote that Muhammad might have chosen one of the beauty queens as one of his wives? Those riots left 1,500 hospitalized and 215 dead. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Islam has “bloody borders,” says Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington. Is he not right? From Algeria to Afghanistan to the Philippines, Muslim insurgencies rage in a dozen countries. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Yet the president, too, has a point. In America, a huge Islamic community lives at peace with its Christian and Jewish neighbors. Around the world are a billion Muslims, only a tiny fraction of whom are waging jihad against Christian minorities or their own rulers. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">How to explain the dichotomy? We are at the beginning of a religious and political revolution in the Islamic world. Like all revolutions, it is marked at its extremes by militancy, intolerance and a sometimes murderous xenophobia. What is being worked out, often violently, are the terms of Islam’s engagement with a hedonistic, triumphalist West that both attracts and repels the Muslim faithful. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">In northern Nigeria, this revolution is religious and cultural – at war with both Christianity and a neo-pagan MTV culture. In Algeria, Islamic jihadists seek to overthrow a secular-socialist state brought to power by the war of independence. In southern Lebanon, militants want Christians out, now that Hezbollah has driven the Israelis out. In Palestine, Hamas and Islamic Jihad add religious fanaticism to a nationalist cause. Should Arafat become president of Palestine, he will face an Islamic party more rabid than the religious parties Sharon must cope with. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">In Chechnya and western China, Islamic guerrillas seem more secessionist than fundamentalist. In Egypt, Islamic extremism is manifest in assassination attempts of pro-Western scholars, the slaughter of tourists and the persecution of the Copts. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Yet, while all this violence is the daily fare of our front pages, how many Islamic terrorists, guerrillas, assassins and rioters are there, when you consider that if they add up to 1,000,000, it would be less than 0.1 percent of the Muslims on earth? And not all the causes for which Muslims fight – independence for Chechnya and Palestine, secession from Russia, Indonesia and China – are inherently unjust or evil. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Islam is in a revivalist phase. In the lands where it is predominant, there is often little tolerance of rival religions seeking the conversion of Muslims. So it is that Falwell, Robertson and Graham, too, have a point. Between militant Islam and Christian fundamentalism, there is an unbridgeable chasm of belief, and in the Islamic world, devout Christians are citizens under suspicion – just as Jews and Muslims were in Isabella’s Spain and Catholics were in Elizabethan England. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Yet, in his sense that we must avoid war with militant Islam, lest we find ourselves at war with all Islam, President Bush is surely right. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">In the last century, America was threatened by a global communist revolution. Avoiding all-out war, we outlasted it. And we can outlast this Islamist revolution. What we must avoid is a war of faiths, a war of civilizations between Islam and America. And those who propagandize for such a war are the unwitting or willful collaborators of Osama bin Laden.</p><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________________________ </div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;" class="post-headline"> <h1>Coming Clash of Civilizations?<br /></h1><h1><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFstrn7hTPhhkZ9fTGZpCSV91cMfjA1oJGDhSBTDAHemSElHdImU6JW5N59bq8zLj8QzeFVPJ81Y0QBoQcO-briZsBN-9v54EqXKuJVgKz1x5Cy8HzQ89a-VUtZOI_Ww0HfhFBX9fAF15u/s1600/pat-buchanan.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 322px; height: 468px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFstrn7hTPhhkZ9fTGZpCSV91cMfjA1oJGDhSBTDAHemSElHdImU6JW5N59bq8zLj8QzeFVPJ81Y0QBoQcO-briZsBN-9v54EqXKuJVgKz1x5Cy8HzQ89a-VUtZOI_Ww0HfhFBX9fAF15u/s400/pat-buchanan.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409676368792484610" border="0" /></a></h1> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: right;">By Patrick J. Buchanan</p><p style="text-align: right;">December 7, 2001</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">With the ouster of the Taliban and eradication of the al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Islamic extremism has sustained a crushing defeat. But what continues to unsettle Americans is that film of Arab and Islamic people, wildly cheering the barbaric atrocities of Sept. 11.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Is a war of civilizations coming?</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Clearly, not a few in the Islamic world and the West so believe, and ardently desire. And, with the War Party cawing for an attack on Iraq, with Sharon unleashed after the atrocities in Jerusalem and Haifa, with the U.S. press calling for a reappraisal of our ties to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a clash of civilizations has moved from the possible to the probable.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">President Bush, however, seems instinctively aware such a war would be a disaster. For no matter how many deaths or defeats we inflict, we cannot kill Islam as we did Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism and Soviet Bolshevism. Islam has survived for nearly 1,600 years; it is the predominant faith in 57 countries; it is indestructible.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Astonishingly, 63 years ago, when Islam lay dormant under the heel of Western empires, a famous Catholic writer predicted Islam would rise again. Wrote Hillaire Belloc: “It has always seemed to me … probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent.” </p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Islam was a Christian heresy, Belloc believed, whose strength lay in its “insistence on personal immortality, the Unity and Infinite Majesty of God, on his Justice and Mercy [and] … its insistence on the equality of human souls in the sight of their Creator.”</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">While The Prophet “gave to our Lord the highest reverence, and the Mother of God was ever for him the first of womankind,” he rejected the Incarnation. Mohammed “taught that our Lord was the greatest of all Prophets, but still only a prophet, a man like other men.” Belloc believed Islam to be a “Reformation” movement with parallels to “the Protestant Reformers – on Images, the Mass and Celibacy.”</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">When Christians were illiterate, Islam spread “for 700 years, until it had mastered the Balkans and the Hungarian plain, and all but occupied Western Europe itself,” almost destroying Christendom “through its early material and intellectual superiority.”</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Three heroes saved the West. In 732, at Poitiers, Charles Martel, the Hammer of the Franks, stopped Islam’s invasion in France. In 1571, the Christian fleets of Don Juan of Austria, an illegitimate son of Charles V, destroyed the Mohammedan armada in an epic battle immortalized in Chesterton’s “The Ballad of Lepanto.” And Polish Catholic King John Sobieski stopped the Turks at Vienna “on a date that ought to be famous in history, September 11, 1683.”</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">One of history’s great questions is why the Islamic world collapsed. A century before Yorktown, Constantinople was superior in arms. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Islamic world was not only superseded by the West, it fell backward – in technology, industry, communications, arms and governance. The Ottoman Empire became “the sick man of Europe.”</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Colonization by the West followed. In the 20th century, only at Gallipoli – the 1915 battle that cost its architect, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, his post – can one recall an Islamic victory over a Western army.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">But if a clash of civilizations is coming, how stands the balance of power? In wealth and might, the West is supreme – though wealth did not prevent the collapse of the Western empires and did not prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire. Rome was mighty, and early Christianity pathetically weak. Yet, Christianity triumphed.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">If belief is decisive, Islam is militant, Christianity milquetoast. In population, Islam is exploding, the West dying. Islamic warriors are willing to suffer defeat and death, the West recoils at casualties. They are full of grievance; we, full of guilt. Where Islam prevails, it asserts a right to impose its dogma, while the West preaches equality. Islam is assertive, the West apologetic – about its crusaders, conquerors and empires.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">Don’t count Islam out. It is the fastest growing faith in Europe and has surpassed Catholicism worldwide. And as Christianity expires in the West and the churches empty out, the mosques are going up.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">To defeat a faith, you need a faith. What is ours? Individualism, democracy, pluralism, la dolce vita? Can they overcome a fighting faith, 16 centuries old, and rising again?</p><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________________________ </div><br /></div><div class="post-headline"> <h1>The Rage of Islam </h1> </div> <div style="text-align: right;" class="post-kicker">September 19th, 2006</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: right;">by Patrick J. Buchanan</p> <p>To bank the firestorm ignited by his address in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI declared himself “deeply sorry” for the effect his remarks have had on the Muslim world. The words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted, Benedict explained, were “from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thoughts.” The pope’s subject was the “profound harmony” of biblical truth and Greek thought…</p> <p>————–</p> <p>The Rage of Islam<br />by Patrick J. Buchanan – September 19, 2006</p> <p>To bank the firestorm ignited by his address in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI declared himself “deeply sorry” for the effect his remarks have had on the Muslim world. The words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted, Benedict explained, were “from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thoughts.” </p> <p>The pope’s subject was the “profound harmony” of biblical truth and Greek thought. No conflict exists, he argued, between true faith and right reason. Contending violence is the antithesis of reason, he cited the “erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus,” during a siege of Constantinople, between A.D. 1394 and 1402. </p> <p>Benedict’s words merit being put into context. </p> <p>“I would like to discuss one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole – which … can serve as the starting point for my reflections on this issue. </p> <p>“In the seventh conversation … the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 (of the Quran) reads, ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ </p> <p>“According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions developed later and recorded in the Quran concerning holy war. … </p> <p>“(The emperor) addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence … saying, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’” </p> <p>The explosion followed. For it was reported that Pope Benedict had endorsed the view that the only innovations the prophet made to the monotheistic faiths were “evil and inhuman.” The pope did not say this and has denied that he believes this. </p> <p>Yet the issues he raised, that true faith and right reason are never in conflict, that force is intolerable in advancing God’s word, merit discussion in light of history and the present. </p> <p>How did the Christians conquer the Roman Empire after 300 years of persecution? By living the Gospel, preaching the Word and dying for the faith – martyrdom. But Islam came out of the desert to conquer the Holy Land, North Africa and Spain in a single century, by the sword. Islam is a fighting faith. Wrote J.M. Roberts in “The History of Europe,” “Islam from the start has been a religion of conquest.” </p> <p>In 1095, Urban II preached the First Crusade to end the abuse of Christian pilgrims and recapture the Holy City and Holy Sepulcher. Muslims view these Crusades as Christian wars of aggression. Yet the martial means the Crusaders used to recapture Jerusalem were the same as those the Caliph Umar had used to conquer the Holy City. </p> <p>Until our time, Western man did not apologize for the Crusades. Gen. Eisenhower even titled his war memoir “Crusade in Europe.” </p> <p>For centuries, European Christians fought the Islamic world. In 1492, Muslims were forcibly expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. In the early 16th century, Suleiman the Magnificent invaded the Balkans, defeated the Hungarians at Bohacs and besieged Vienna. The Balkan wars of Suleiman bear little resemblance to the Christian crusades of Dr. Billy Graham. In 1571, the fleets of the Ottoman Turks were destroyed at Lepanto by a fleet organized by Pius V. </p> <p>In the 19th century, the Ottoman Turks began their long retreat from the Balkans. At the end of the First World War, Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate, put the caliph on the Orient Express, severed the ties between mosque and state, and made Turkey a secular state. </p> <p>In our own time, however, the issues Pope Benedict addressed – the harmony between faith and reason, and the disharmony between force and faith – have re-arisen. </p> <p>In Afghanistan this year, a Christian convert was threatened with beheading for apostasy. Most imams and Afghans seemed to approve. In Indonesia, Nigeria and Sudan, Muslims are at war with Christians, in the Middle East with Israelis, in Chechnya with Russians, in India with Hindus, in Thailand with Buddhists. Other issues are involved, but faith seems ever present as a prime motivator of violence. </p> <p>In the West, men and women convert to Islam and imams preach and proselytize. In Islamic nations, conversion to Christianity can mean death, as can preaching and proselytizing. Do Muslim faithful believe it is legitimate to use state power to impose Shariah or maintain religious orthodoxy, as Henry VIII and Isabella believed? </p> <p>In the West, a militant secularism has seized state power and the de-Christianization of America is well advanced. In the East, we had best recognize that the rage, militancy and intolerance so often on display are the unmistakable marks of a rising, not a dying, faith.</p><p><br /><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-51149438258080740422009-11-29T18:29:00.004-05:002009-11-29T18:35:04.345-05:00Swiss voters' clear decision to ban construction of minarets<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY01_gBJJXgSnzpT3lhDDxKpVlYwMvRObfkL9o3DHqMkPJ0sSu9sjLRRqqEgdpf7SZn0H49D0b6YqXrwosxJhh8wkGfYCtCZqmUn5NHC7pSvrLtXIE3Z3iX5wGiQt5FP4sRYkZ-41kD1fZ/s1600/keyimg20090112_10185771_0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 362px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY01_gBJJXgSnzpT3lhDDxKpVlYwMvRObfkL9o3DHqMkPJ0sSu9sjLRRqqEgdpf7SZn0H49D0b6YqXrwosxJhh8wkGfYCtCZqmUn5NHC7pSvrLtXIE3Z3iX5wGiQt5FP4sRYkZ-41kD1fZ/s400/keyimg20090112_10185771_0.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409672716488633698" border="0" /></a><h2 class="lead1">Swiss voters' clear decision on Sunday to ban the construction of minarets has generated a wide range of emotions, from stunned joy to rueful concern.</h2> <p>Supporters of the initiative said the Swiss electorate wanted to put a brake on the Islamicisation of their country, whereas opponents were concerned about the violation of rights, not to mention an international backlash and possible boycott of Swiss products.</p> <p>"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure – we don't have that in Switzerland and we don't want to introduce it," said Ulrich Schlüer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.</p><p>Oskar Freysinger, a member of the rightwing Swiss People's Party and a driving force in the campaign, said he was "stunned and dumbfounded" by Sunday's result "since the entire establishment was against us".</p><p>"I would like to say to all the Muslims listening that this will in no way change their right to practise their religion, to pray or to gather [in mosques]," he said. "However, society wants to put a safeguard on the political-legal wing of Islam, for which there is no separation between state and religion."</p><p>The president of the People's Party, Toni Brunner, said voters had clearly rejected the idea of parallel societies and the further expansion of Islam – including radical, political Islam – in Switzerland.</p><p>According to final results, 57.5 per cent of voters and a majority of cantons backed the initiative – up from 34 per cent last month. Turnout was high at around 53 per cent.</p><p>Brunner said people who settled here had to realise that they couldn't turn up to work in a head scarf or get special dispensation from swimming lessons.</p> <h2 class="detail">Government reaction</h2> <p>The government said in a statement it respected the decision.</p><p>For Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the outcome reflected fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies, "which reject our national traditions and which could disregard our legal order". </p><p>"These concerns have to be taken seriously. The government has always done so and will continue to do so in future. However, we take the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies," she said.</p><p>Widmer-Schlumpf underlined that Sunday's vote was only directed against the construction of new minarets. "It is not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture. Of that the government gives its assurance."</p> <h2 class="detail">"Switzerland has lost"</h2> <p>Nevertheless, Saida Keller-Messahli, president of the Forum for an Advanced Islam, said the public's fears had been too great and "hatred had won over reason".</p><p>She said there would now be legal consequences, since the ban violated the freedom of religion.</p><p>The Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland also regretted the result, saying the propaganda of the campaign supporters had succeeded in frightening the majority of voters.</p><p>The federation said it was too soon to judge the negative social and legal consequences – what was important now was to strengthen their public relations and clear up any misunderstandings or prejudices concerning Islam.</p><p>"Switzerland has lost," said Rifa'at Lenzin from the European Project for Interreligious Learning in Zurich, adding that the country was "leading the way" for Islamophobia.</p><p>Lenzin was only partly surprised by the result, "which corresponds to the current mood". She said she was astonished, however, that the "subjective and far-fetched arguments" of the minaret opponents had found such great support.</p><p>She added that the opponents of the initiative had completely underestimated the situation and that the political parties had been asleep, with only the centre-right Radical Party actively campaigning. The public spaces had been dominated by the campaign supporters, she said.</p> <div class="caption-float" style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt; width: 11.125em; float: right;"> <div class="grey-999999" style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt;"><br /></div> </div> <h2 class="detail">Swiss values</h2> <p>Reinhard Schulze, a professor of Islamic studies at Bern University, said he was "very surprised" by the acceptance of the initiative.</p><p>He described the result as a "turning point", in that after many years of going in the other direction, voters had once again spoken for an unequal treatment of faiths.</p><p>"The next thing is obviously to look at how this plays with international law," he said, adding that he could already envisage complaints from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.</p><p>The Council of Religions, a body comprising Christian churches, Jews and Muslims, said in a statement it regretted the result. People of all faiths must work together even harder, it said, for the respect of rights of freedom, for dialogue with the Muslim community and for integration.</p><p>"These are values that make Switzerland strong," it said.</p> <h2 class="detail">Swiss image abroad</h2> <p>Looking at political reaction, the centre-left Social Democratic Party warned in a statement against the exclusion of Muslims in Switzerland.</p><p>"The yes vote was probably the result of a diffuse fear of a religious minority," it said.</p><p>This fear must be taken seriously, it added, but it must not be misinterpreted as a vote of mistrust against all Muslims living in Switzerland.</p><p>The party said it was also concerned about Switzerland's image abroad, saying that a foreign ministry offensive was clearly necessary, along with stronger integration efforts at all state levels.</p><p>Jacques Neyrinck from the centre-right Christian Democratic Party stressed that Switzerland would be the only country in the world to ban the construction of minarets.</p><p>"Switzerland is heading straight for a battle with Islam," he said, adding that he feared a boycott of Swiss products.</p> <h2 class="detail">"Dirty campaign"</h2> <p>The four minarets already attached to mosques in the country are not affected by the initiative, and the president of the Islamic community in Langenthal, canton Bern, assumed his organisation would be able to add a minaret to their mosque since it had already been approved.</p><p>Mutalip Karaademi said he was disappointed by the strong level of support and the "dirty campaign", describing Muslims and Islamists and terrorists.</p><p>But Langenthal mayor Thomas Rufener, from the People's Party, said he didn't think the minaret would be built "for political reasons".</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixTdhNCjR0NH2zTiuPxmTLq73KRIjYPBgOC4XfA3sZGXQSNe2ynleG7R0Srwq250o10W79nJfZj69n-OcUdKXJmfscW1VZCqn7LD_B_1NDPs1610HTahrNNIr5tJWIsHw3tBiVXJjT6BWq/s1600/keyimg20091129_11554119_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 628px; height: 475px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixTdhNCjR0NH2zTiuPxmTLq73KRIjYPBgOC4XfA3sZGXQSNe2ynleG7R0Srwq250o10W79nJfZj69n-OcUdKXJmfscW1VZCqn7LD_B_1NDPs1610HTahrNNIr5tJWIsHw3tBiVXJjT6BWq/s400/keyimg20091129_11554119_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409672824444074290" border="0" /></a></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p><h2 class="lead1">Reaction to the Swiss anti-minaret vote in the wider Islamic community has reflected shock, sadness and concern, but also a determination to try to build bridges.</h2> <p>The vote revealed the hidden fears of many Swiss, and Muslims should respond by trying to build harmony across society, a leading Muslim scholar says.</p> <p>The reaction of Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, was echoed by a number of other Muslim scholars and commentators whom swissinfo.ch spoke to outside Switzerland.</p><p>"This result should draw our attention to the reality of the hidden fears which have been underestimated by decision makers," said Gomaa.</p><p>"We think that priority should be given to meeting the challenge of building societies capable of integrating diversity and difference... and we are ready to give every support to such an effort," he told swissinfo.ch.</p><p>The grand mufti is the highest official of religious law in a Sunni Muslim country. Gomaa is regarded as a champion of moderate Islam.</p><p>"My first reaction is one of surprise and disappointment," Babacar Ba, the Geneva ambassador of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), told swissinfo.ch.</p><p>"It is a bad answer to a bad question. I fear that this kind of thing is simply a gift to extremism and intolerance."</p><p>"I think we must be very vigilant in the face of the upsurge of islamophobia," he added. "This vote is an open door to the dangerous process of calling fundamental freedoms into question."</p> <h2 class="detail">Islamophobia</h2> <p>It had been widely expected that the ban would be rejected by voters, but Jaber al-Alawani, a Muslim thinker and director of the Cordoba Institute in the United States, told swissinfo.ch that he was not surprised.</p><p>"Islamophobia is widespread in Europe, all the more so because rightwing extremists see it as a kind of defence of European identity, which they haven't so far quite been able to define."</p><p>A British Muslim, Imam Abduljalil Sajid, imam of Brighton, and a member of the national executive committee of Interfaith UK, warned that ordinary Muslims were likely to react angrily, even though, as he stressed, the minaret is not a religious requirement.</p><p>"It will be seen negatively throughout the Muslim world, [as yet] another problem of Islam versus the West. I don't want to see it develop negatively, but unfortunately that will be the case," he told swissinfo.ch.</p><p>Palestinian law professor Anwar Abu Aisheh, speaking to the Swiss News Agency, agreed.</p><p>"The vote will give arguments to Muslim extremists. They will see a frontal attack against Islam and its symbols," he warned.</p> <h2 class="detail">Measured response</h2> <p>Despite the disappointment felt by many Muslims, Gomaa called for a measured response.</p><p>"It is really important not to exploit this result wrongly for political ends, but to regard it as a call to build cooperation and harmony between our different religions and societies, in a new spirit," he said.</p><p>Ba agreed on the importance of not over-reacting and of trying to build bridges.</p><p>"The main thing is to keep calm and to realise how much work still needs to be done to defend basic freedoms. I think we must do this by ... taking a constructive part in the debate on all issues which cause fear and concern, and to try to bring people together in order to confront extremism wherever it comes from."</p><p>Alawani also appealed to Swiss Muslims to keep calm.</p><p>"Avoid irrational reactions, and respect the views of the Swiss voters," he said.</p><p>Misfer al-Kahtani, a Muslim thinker from Saudi Arabia agreed. He pointed out that many Swiss had voted against the initiative, but said that the Muslim minorities in Europe had to take into account the fears that many Europeans have about their religion.</p><p>"The real challenge is for the Muslim community to accept the decision by Swiss society ... and work to change the clichés adopted by those who called for the ban on minarets, by showing a good example and applying the ideas and values of Muslim civilisation," he told swissinfo.ch.</p> <h2 class="detail">Freedoms</h2> <p>A number of commentators reflected on what the vote said about Switzerland.</p><p>"Switzerland is noted for its capacity to integrate culturally diverse components ... and article 15 of the Swiss constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and belief," Gomaa commented.</p><p>"This isn't a show of racism by the Swiss, just an upsurge of selfishness, [they are] worried that nothing should come and trouble their peace," said law professor Abu Aisheh.</p><p>Mohamed Munir al-Ghodban, a Muslim thinker from Syria, pointed out that minarets had nothing to do with the basic tenets of Islam. But he also told swissinfo.ch that Muslims in Switzerland felt the vote interfered with their religious practices "which contradicts the basic principles of freedom and democracy, which Switzerland has been so proud of for such a long time."</p> <h2 class="detail">Praise from European right</h2> <p>"Extreme right groups everywhere, in France, in Holland or anywhere in the world will use this vote in their favour," Imam Sajid warned, and immediate comments by rightwing leaders bear him out.</p><p>There were warm words of praise for the Swiss vote from Italy's Reform Minister, Roberto Calderoli, who told the Italian news agency ANSA that a clear sign had come from Switzerland: "Yes to church towers, no to minarets". He said Switzerland should be a model for Italy in this respect.</p><p>The head of Austria's rightwing Freedom Party, quoted by the Austrian news agency, also sees Switzerland as a model, a sentiment echoed by the general secretary of another rightwing party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria.</p><p>Marine le Pen, of the French National Front, said in a statement on the party's website that the Swiss had demonstrated their attachment to their "national identity, their countryside and their culture", despite calls from the "élites" not to vote in favour of the ban.</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-23472390640279671882009-11-14T22:50:00.003-05:002009-11-14T22:52:00.826-05:00Albert Einstien answering the question...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6ZVtI-JhSujzmnjWeldAhhY8KpiCiGVzdnH1Tjbr0374waEfC56KUNLnsti-OlU6Ovjch2a01kUPS87vyStfY_CSnPCJoDA3yZvGMAWKn8oU8pQ7HQpL2cXQ0dPgMFqpTHdvrzOAlYYA/s1600-h/ad081167b0887560be0fb9a75101af2c-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 162px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6ZVtI-JhSujzmnjWeldAhhY8KpiCiGVzdnH1Tjbr0374waEfC56KUNLnsti-OlU6Ovjch2a01kUPS87vyStfY_CSnPCJoDA3yZvGMAWKn8oU8pQ7HQpL2cXQ0dPgMFqpTHdvrzOAlYYA/s400/ad081167b0887560be0fb9a75101af2c-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404172839568617234" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">"If God created everything<br />then He created evil.<br />If God created evil<br />then is He evil?"</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/x0r6qymvopw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/x0r6qymvopw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-85998891982217311462009-11-14T22:24:00.003-05:002009-11-14T22:28:53.697-05:00US State Department Publishes Annual Survey on Religious Freedom<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:100%;">By Father John Flynn, LC</span></div><div id="article"> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">ROME, NOV. 8, 2009 (<a href="http://www.zenit.org/" target="_blank">Zenit.org</a>).- Almost completely ignored by the media, the U.S. Department of State released its latest annual report on religious freedom on Oct. 26. The 2009 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom deals with the year ending June 30, 2009, and surveys 198 countries and territories.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Before going into the details on each country, the report's introduction explains why the United States' government considers it important to defend religious freedom.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">"Religious freedom is the birthright of all people, regardless of their faith or lack thereof," it asserts.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The introduction also brings into play the concept of the common good. "On balance, freedom tends to channel the convictions and passions of faith into acts of service and positive engagement in the public square," the text affirms.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">From a more political perspective the State Department argues that when religious groups </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and ideas are suppressed then this tends to lead to their radicalization, which in turn can foment separatism or insurgency.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">On the international level the report argues that if governments manipulate religion or marginalize groups, then this only helps radical groups that will in turn be a threat to global security.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">"Environments of robust religious freedom, on the other hand, foster communal harmony and embolden voices of moderation to openly refute extremists on religious grounds," the introduction concludes.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Noteworthy</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">A section of the report deals with those countries where violations of religious freedom have been noteworthy. Among those is Afghanistan. The report notes how the Constitution states that Islam is the "religion of the state" and that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The State Department commented that non-Muslim minority groups, including Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, continued to face incidents of discrimination and persecution. Another problem is that of conversion. Many citizens, the report noted, understand conversion as contravening the tenets of Islam and Shariah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In Egypt the report observed that, while the Constitution provides for freedom of belief and the practice of religious rites, in practice the government places restrictions on these rights. In fact, respect for religious freedom by the authorities declined somewhat during the reporting period, according to the State Department.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">This was mainly due to the failure to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of sectarian violence. This practice, the report added, contributed to a climate of impunity that encouraged repetition of the assaults. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Christians and members of the Baha'i faith face personal and collective discrimination in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">many areas, the report affirmed. One example given was that of a court that sentenced a Coptic priest to five years of hard labor for officiating at a wedding between a Copt and a convert from Islam who allegedly presented false identification documentation. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In Pakistan the report didn't mince its words and said that: "Discriminatory legislation and the government's failure to take action against societal forces hostile to those who practice a different religious belief fostered religious intolerance, acts of violence, and intimidation against religious minorities."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In general discrimination against religious minorities was widespread, and extremist groups and individuals targeted religious congregations.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Iran and Iraq were both singled out by the report as problematic countries when it comes to religious freedom. In the former it noted that despite constitutional guarantees, in practice those who are not Shi'a Muslims faced substantial discrimination. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also mentioned, due to his "virulent anti-Semitic </span><span style="font-size:100%;">campaign," which included questioning the existence and scope of the Holocaust. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">As well, the government enforced its prohibition on proselytizing by some Christian groups by closely monitoring their activities, closing some churches, and arresting Christian converts. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In Iraq the existence of constitutional guarantees was vitiated by violence from terrorists and criminal gangs that restricted the free exercise of religion and posed a significant threat to the country's vulnerable religious minorities, the report stated.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">"Very few of the perpetrators of violence committed against Christians and other religious minorities in the country have been punished," the State Department noted.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Attacks</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">India, where there have been numerous incidents of violence against Christians, was also dealt with in the report. The State Department commented that some state and local governments imposed limits on religious freedom.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Religious extremists committed numerous terrorist attacks throughout the country during the reporting period covered by the report. The State Department mentioned the violence that erupted in August 2008 in Orissa, when, according to government statistics, 40 persons died and 134 were injured. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">According to several independent accounts, an estimated 3,200 refugees remained in relief camps, down from 24,000 in the immediate aftermath of the violence, the report noted.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In Burma the government continued to infiltrate and monitor activities of virtually all organizations, including religious ones, according to the report. Moreover, authorities systematically restricted efforts by Buddhist clergy to promote human rights and political freedom. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Restrictions on Christians and other non-Buddhist minority groups also continued throughout the country, the report added.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In Vietnam the report opined that, while respect for religious freedom continued to </span><span style="font-size:100%;">improve in some regards, significant problems remained. Thus, during the last year the government granted national recognition to five Protestant denominations and some additional religions. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">But there were unresolved property claims with virtually all religious groups, some resulting in large-scale Catholic protests that were forcibly repressed.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The State Department had some strong words when it came to China. The report commented that during the 12-month period examined, officials continued to scrutinize and in some cases interfere with the activities of religious and spiritual groups. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">As well, in some areas government officials violated the rights of members of unregistered Protestant and Catholic groups, Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and members of the Falun Gong. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Authorities also strongly opposed the profession of loyalty to religious leadership outside the country, most notably the Pope and the Dalai Lama, the report noted. China's repression of religious freedom remained severe in Tibetan areas and in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the report stated.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Reaction</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">In a press release issued the same day as the report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) urged "the prompt designation of "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) as well as implementation of targeted policies on those countries."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The statement explained that a country that has seriously violated religious liberty is required by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to be designated a "country of particular concern," and the U.S. government is required to take action, ranging from negotiating a bilateral agreement to sanctions.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">USCIRF explained that it wants 13 countries -- Burma, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam -- to be designated as CPCs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">The press release also stated that USCIRF recommended stronger actions be taken against </span><span style="font-size:100%;">the eight countries currently listed as CPCs by the State Department: Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Benedict XVI recently dealt with the topic of religious freedom, when he addressed the new ambassador of Iran to the Holy See. In his Oct. 29 speech the Holy Father said that: </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUcOT6jwpCircn82jEBSUK4p0udrbVYe7INHoOt9TB9ze7Zf-dASQ8-cz_x-qzAtBUGA1irq-sjOwW8HEavUVGqp30NKywEIxTycdDVEMSp9fgLSTiNl24INh-iX1QHHp0bzlTCQ3Xdhxu/s1600-h/_30014_Pope_Benedict.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 384px; height: 281px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUcOT6jwpCircn82jEBSUK4p0udrbVYe7INHoOt9TB9ze7Zf-dASQ8-cz_x-qzAtBUGA1irq-sjOwW8HEavUVGqp30NKywEIxTycdDVEMSp9fgLSTiNl24INh-iX1QHHp0bzlTCQ3Xdhxu/s400/_30014_Pope_Benedict.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404166876021197906" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">"Among the universal rights, religious liberty and freedom of conscience occupy an </span><span style="font-size:100%;">essential place, because they are the source of the other liberties."</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Interestingly, both the Catholic Church and a secular institution such as the State Department can both agree that religious liberty is a vital right and important for the international community. All the more reason to renew efforts to safeguard such a fundamental right in the many countries where it is under threat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><br /></span><b><br /></b></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-14851830288898747812009-11-14T22:19:00.001-05:002009-11-14T22:21:07.765-05:00Pope, Moscow patriarch moving slowly towards possible meeting<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNXR6MnXW8Y7E-BwJPi6HFVHwdokvGwYUlHMGU6tKb-G9OzsOOEV5DHEiQY1FsZ0XloS6W0DA56q6j2JGU5AVeo_2dHEe2DHbkLj8exRcAJlPN19Hw9HXfqC5lEQzlm5ObT7IXfgGVCyN/s1600-h/hilarion.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 613px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNXR6MnXW8Y7E-BwJPi6HFVHwdokvGwYUlHMGU6tKb-G9OzsOOEV5DHEiQY1FsZ0XloS6W0DA56q6j2JGU5AVeo_2dHEe2DHbkLj8exRcAJlPN19Hw9HXfqC5lEQzlm5ObT7IXfgGVCyN/s400/hilarion.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404165075421249266" border="0" /></a><br />A senior Russian Orthodox leader has said the idea of a meeting between Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict <a href="http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6633">could be moving towards the preparation stage</a>. Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the “foreign minister” of the Russian church, made clear that neither a date nor a location for such the long-awaited meeting was under discussion. But given the glacial pace at which progress on this issue is made, even the change in tone from Moscow is worth noting. <p>There has never been a meeting between a pope and the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the Orthodox Churches that make up the second biggest Christian family after Roman Catholicism. The late Pope John Paul II wanted to make history with a visit to Russia, but strains between the Vatican and Moscow over alleged Catholic proselytising in the former Soviet Union got in the way.</p> <h6 style="font-weight: normal; text-align: right;"><span style="color: rgb(128, 128, 128);">(Photo: Archbishop Hilarion in Brussels, 11 May 2009/Francois Lenoir)</span></h6> <p>The election of Pope Benedict in 2005 and of <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/01/27/russian-othodox-church-picks-kirill-better-vatican-ties-expected/">Patriarch Kirill early this year</a> seemed to close that chapter of the churches’ bilateral relations and open a new one moving towards a possible meeting. But despite the warmer tone in comments from each side, problems still remained. Only last month, Hilarion denied reports of an impending meeting and said relations needed a <a href="http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6522"><em>“radical improvement.”</em></a></p> <p><a title="kasper" href="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/files/2009/11/kasper.jpg"><img class="attachment wp-att-9583" src="http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/files/2009/11/kasper.jpg" alt="kasper" align="left" height="400" width="163" /></a>The <a href="http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6633">Interfax news agency quoted Hilarion</a> as telling reporters in Moscow: <em>“Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow … There are no specific plans for the venue or timing of such a meeting but on both sides there is a desire to prepare it.”</em></p> <h6 style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: rgb(128, 128, 128);">(Photo: Cardinal Kasper in Moscow, 29 May 2008/Alexander Natruskin)</span></h6> <p>Hilarion added with approval that that Benedict is <em>“a very reserved, traditional man who does not seek the expansion of the Catholic Church to traditionally Orthodox regions.”</em></p> <p>Cardinal Walter Kasper, the top Catholic official for ecumenical relations, <a href="http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0904162.htm">made positive sounds</a> back in September after Hilarion met Benedict at the Vatican. Last month, he said a Catholic-Orthodox theologians’ meeting in Cyprus had gone well and even <a href="http://www.radiovaticana.org/ted/Articolo.asp?c=329973">discussed the question of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome</a>, one of the main issues dividing Catholics and Orthodox. There was no agreement, of course, but the two sides agreed to continue to talk — in September 2010 in Vienna.</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-84645169054654928272009-11-14T22:14:00.002-05:002009-11-14T22:18:57.371-05:00Russian Orthodox and Catholic Church move toward end of 950-year rift<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJL4AhuvLOhV4yN46GGyD4J4Ha9K544X80hFdC56MjR2UZseFf4yfBb9p9xWB5PRtQwz2iNgaNU2QXQJ6aQaRKVbLSB0fc7XM3YhpmoN2pXj8suIBNZPaN4t7kaY8Fp1F4VO-sUao6myY1/s1600-h/3631575191_24118492ff.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 562px; height: 431px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJL4AhuvLOhV4yN46GGyD4J4Ha9K544X80hFdC56MjR2UZseFf4yfBb9p9xWB5PRtQwz2iNgaNU2QXQJ6aQaRKVbLSB0fc7XM3YhpmoN2pXj8suIBNZPaN4t7kaY8Fp1F4VO-sUao6myY1/s400/3631575191_24118492ff.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404164475364335522" border="0" /></a><br /><div class="storyHead"> <h1><span style="font-size:100%;">The Catholic and Russian Orthodox Church have held high-level talks to lay the groundwork for a historic meeting of their two leaders after centuries of frostiness. </span></h1> </div> <div class="headerOne"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: right;"> <!-- Make sure there is no whitespoace at the end of the bline --><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /> By Rachel Cooper<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church have been tense for centuries, but in a sign that relations are finally thawing, Archbishop Ilarion, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign relations department, said that both sides wanted a meeting, although he emphasised that problems remained.</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ilarion spoke of a rapprochement under Pope Benedict XVI that would allow for a meeting with the new Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kiril, who took up his office in February after the death of the previous patriarch.</span><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;">“There have been visits at a high level,” said Illarion. “We are moving towards the moment when it will become possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Moscow patriarch.”</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">He added that in recent years there had been “noticeable improvements” in relations between the two churches.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">“The progress in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church began after Benedict XVI became pope. He is…a person who does not aim to grow the Catholic Church in traditional Orthodox regions.”</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Some observers had hinted a meeting between the two Church leaders was forthcoming, but many issues still stand in the way of bridging the split, which dates from 1054 when Patriarch of Constantinople was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">The breach heralded the Great Schism that finally divided the Christian churches of East and West – which had long had political and theological differences, including the wording of the Nicene Creed – and led to the creation of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Relations have been tense ever since, and were strained again in recent years by Orthodox accusations of Catholics proselytising in Russia - although historians have cast doubt on such claims.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Mark Nash of the Agency for Evangelisation, who has studied the relationship between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Church, said a "a lot of the instances of 'proselytising' were in orphanages and children's programmes.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">"The chancellor of the Russian Bishops' Conference, Father Igor Kovalevsky, who was on the joint committee tasked with investigating the allegations, said they were 'misunderstandings'."</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Dr Jeremy Smith, senior lecturer in Russian history at the University of Birmingham, added that his impression was that the Catholic Church "had not really engaged in proselytising".</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">"Consequently, [the Catholic church] has remained on relatively good terms with the Orthodox clergy, especially at a local level," he said.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">He added that the Russian authorities aimed anti-proselytising laws "more strongly against organisations like the Moonies".</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Such legislation, he added, marked an attempt by the government to establish the Russian Orthodox Church as "a centrepiece of Russian identity, albeit as a pillar of the state, after the fall of Communism".</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-11091628221847657642009-11-12T04:09:00.001-05:002009-11-12T04:09:50.717-05:00Pope: True knowledge of God comes from inner purification<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ue8eXk5wsiA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ue8eXk5wsiA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-19003677898765750882009-11-12T03:38:00.005-05:002009-11-12T04:03:35.298-05:00Who's afraid of H1N1 virus when receiving the Most Holy Mysteries?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-la0WJbP0RkuPVxL_rqhOOhMFI1H05MRLmW485iJva-likwh_GIzMbivq4rictsfjXKQQamvTAoqYu04ioVlK9m-_ZvqIGSnY7qEYWAJnCaUT5tc3tmdWF79VCilfhVlFn-LlHmdUt9Ic/s1600-h/eucharist.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 263px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-la0WJbP0RkuPVxL_rqhOOhMFI1H05MRLmW485iJva-likwh_GIzMbivq4rictsfjXKQQamvTAoqYu04ioVlK9m-_ZvqIGSnY7qEYWAJnCaUT5tc3tmdWF79VCilfhVlFn-LlHmdUt9Ic/s400/eucharist.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403139056257826178" border="0" /></a>"In order to receive, we must have faith, but unfortunately sometimes our brothers and sisters with little faith put up obstacles to freely approaching tHoly Communion. Indeed when we are receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord, there is no fear, because “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18). On the other hand, when we are afraid of anything: disease, accidents, misfortune, who do we ask for help?<br /><br />Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.<br /><br />Our Lord is here to bless us and help us, not to make us sick. With this kind of understanding, we can give the answer to ourselves. When we think about receiving the Body and Blood, we realize that there have been many diseases over the past 2000 years, most of them more serious and deadly than the H1N1 virus. However I believe that we should explain to the Faithful what there are receiving and why. After all, we clergy consume all the elements left after Holy Communion is offered, and according to my knowledge, I have never heard of a priest, deacon or bishop falling ill afterwards."<h2>The Real Presence</h2> The doctrine of the Real Presence asserts that in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus is literally and wholly present—body and blood, soul and divinity—under the appearances of bread and wine. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists frequently attack this doctrine as "unbiblical," but the Bible is forthright in declaring it (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–17, 11:23–29; and, most forcefully, John 6:32–71).<br /><br />The early Church Fathers interpreted these passages literally. In summarizing the early Fathers’ teachings on Christ’s Real Presence, renowned Protestant historian of the early Church J. N. D. Kelly, writes: "Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood" (<i>Early</i> <i>Christian Doctrines</i>, 440).<br /><br />From the Church’s early days, the Fathers referred to Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Kelly writes: "Ignatius roundly declares that . . . [t]he bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood. Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. . . . Irenaeus teaches that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity" (ibid., 197–98).<br /><br />"Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares, ‘do violence to his body and blood, a sin more heinous against the Lord with their hands and mouths than when they denied him.’ Later he expatiates on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the Real Presence literally" (ibid., 211–12).<br /><br /><p class="section">Ignatius of Antioch :</p> "I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible" (<i>Letter to the Romans </i>7:3 [A.D. 110]).<br /><br />"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (<i>Letter to the Smyrnaeans </i>6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Justin Martyr :<br /></p> "We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (<i>First Apology </i>66 [A.D. 151]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Irenaeus:<br /></p> "If the Lord were from other than the Father, how could he rightly take bread, which is of the same creation as our own, and confess it to be his body and affirm that the mixture in the cup is his blood?" (<i>Against Heresies </i>4:33–32 [A.D. 189]).<br /><br />"He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receives the Word of God and becomes the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life—flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is in fact a member of him?" (ibid., 5:2).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Clement of Alexandria :<br /></p> "’Eat my flesh,’ [Jesus] says, ‘and drink my blood.’ The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children" (<i>The Instructor of Children </i>1:6:43:3 [A.D. 191]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Tertullian :<br /></p> "[T]here is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed [in baptism], in order that the soul may be cleansed . . . the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands [in confirmation], that the soul also may be illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds [in the Eucharist] on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may be filled with God" (<i>The Resurrection of the Dead </i>8 [A.D. 210]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Hippolytus :<br /></p> "‘And she [Wisdom] has furnished her table’ [Prov. 9:2] . . . refers to his [Christ’s] honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-memorable table of the spiritual divine supper [i.e.,<br />the Last Supper]" (Fragment from <i>Commentary on Proverbs </i>[A.D. 217]).<br /><br /><p class="section">Origen :<br /></p> "Formerly there was baptism in an obscure way . . . now, however, in full view, there is regeneration in water and in the Holy Spirit. Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food; now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the flesh of the Word of God, as he himself says: ‘My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink’ [John 6:55]" (<i>Homilies on Numbers </i>7:2 [A.D. 248]).<br /><div style="text-align: right; font-style: italic;">(editor's note: even this self-castrated heretic got it right!)<br /></div><br /><p class="section">Cyprian of Carthage :<br /></p> "He [Paul] threatens, moreover, the stubborn and forward, and denounces them, saying, ‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. All these warnings being scorned and contemned—[lapsed Christians will often take Communion] before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, [and so] violence is done to his body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord" (<i>The Lapsed </i>15–16 [A.D. 251]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Council of Nicaea I :<br /></p> "It has come to the knowledge of the holy and great synod that, in some districts and cities, the deacons administer the Eucharist to the presbyters [i.e., priests], whereas neither canon nor custom permits that they who have no right to offer [the Eucharistic sacrifice] should give the Body of Christ to them that do offer [it]" (Canon 18 [A.D. 325]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Aphraahat the Persian Sage :<br /></p> "After having spoken thus [at the Last Supper], the Lord rose up from the place where he had made the Passover and had given his body as food and his blood as drink, and he went with his disciples to the place where he was to be arrested. But he ate of his own body and drank of his own blood, while he was pondering on the dead. With his own hands the Lord presented his own body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood as drink" (<i>Treatises</i> 12:6 [A.D. 340]).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Cyril of Jerusalem :<br /></p> "The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ" (<i>Catechetical Lectures </i>19:7 [A.D. 350]).<br /><br />"Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the body and blood of Christ. . . . [Since you are] fully convinced that the apparent bread is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and that the apparent wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so, . . . partake of that bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul" (ibid., 22:6, 9).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Ambrose of Milan :<br /></p> "Perhaps you may be saying, ‘I see something else; how can you assure me that I am receiving the body of Christ?’ It but remains for us to prove it. And how many are the examples we might use! . . . Christ is in that sacrament, because it is the body of Christ" (<i>The Mysteries </i>9:50, 58 [A.D. 390]).<br /><br /><p class="section"><br /></p><p class="section">Theodore of Mopsuestia :<br /></p> "When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but, ‘This is my body.’ In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but, ‘This is my blood’; for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their nature, but receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord. We ought . . . not regard [the elements] merely as bread and cup, but as the body and blood of the Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit" (<i>Catechetical Homilies </i>5:1 [A.D. 405]).<br /><br /><p class="section"><br /></p><p class="section">Augustine :<br /></p> "Christ was carried in his own hands when, referring to his own body, he said, ‘This is my body’ [Matt. 26:26]. For he carried that body in his hands" (<i>Explanations of the Psalms </i>33:1:10 [A.D. 405]).<br /><br />"I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ" (<i>Sermons </i>227 [A.D. 411]).<br /><br />"What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction" (ibid., 272).<br /><br /><br /><p class="section">Council of Ephesus :<br /></p> "We will necessarily add this also. Proclaiming the death, according to the flesh, of the only-begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, confessing his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, we offer the unbloody sacrifice in the churches, and so go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are sanctified, having received his holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ the Savior of us all. And not as common flesh do we receive it; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. For he is the life according to his nature as God, and when he became united to his flesh, he made it also to be life-giving" (Session 1, <i>Letter of Cyril to Nestorius </i>[A.D. 431]).<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><i>NIHIL OBSTAT</i>: I have concluded that the materials<br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.<br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;"><i>Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004</i><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;"><i>IMPRIMATUR</i>: In accord with 1983 CIC 827<br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> permission to publish this work is hereby granted.<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><i><span style="font-size:78%;">+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004</span><br /></i></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Let's be more afraid of receiving these awesome gifts unworthily!</span><br /><br /><br /></div></div><p class="text" align="center"> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098594217052570548.post-44345100976543357172009-11-12T03:34:00.000-05:002009-11-12T03:35:30.477-05:00<center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">APOSTOLIC LETTER<br /><b><i><span style="font-size:+1;">ORIENTALE LUMEN</span></i></b><br />OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF<br />JOHN PAUL II<br />TO THE BISHOPS, CLERGY AND FAITHFUL<br />TO MARK THE CENTENARY<br />OF <i>ORIENTALIUM DIGNITAS</i><br />OF POPE LEO XIII</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"> </span></p></center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><i>Venerable Brothers,<br />Dear Sons and Daughters of the Church</i></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">1. The light of the East has illumined the universal Church, from the moment when "a rising sun" appeared above us (<i>Lk</i> 1:78): Jesus Christ, our Lord, whom all Christians invoke as the Redeemer of man and the hope of the world.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">That light inspired my predecessor Pope Leo XIII to write the Apostolic Letter Orientalium Dignitas in which he sought to safeguard the significance of the Eastern traditions for the whole Church.(1)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">On the centenary of that event and of the initiatives the Pontiff intended at that time as an aid to restoring unity with all the Christians of the East, I wish to send to the Catholic Church a similar appeal, which has been enriched by the knowledge and interchange which has taken place over the past century.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Since, in fact, we believe that the venerable and ancient tradition of the Eastern Churches is an integral part of the heritage of Christ's Church, the first need for Catholics is to be familiar with that tradition, so as to be nourished by it and to encourage the process of unity in the best way possible for each.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Our Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters are very conscious of being the living bearers of this tradition, together with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. The members of the Catholic Church of the Latin tradition must also be fully acquainted with this treasure and thus feel, with the Pope, a passionate longing that the full manifestation of the Church's catholicity be restored to the Church and to the world, expressed not by a single tradition, and still less by one community in opposition to the other; and that we too may be granted a full taste of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church(2) which is preserved and grows in the life of the Churches of the East as in those of the West.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">2. My gaze turns to the Orientale Lumen which shines from Jerusalem (cf. <i> Is</i> 60:1; <i> Rev</i> 21:10), the city where the Word of God, made man for our salvation, a Jew "descended from David according to the flesh" (<i>Rom</i> 1:3; 2 <i> Tim</i> 2:8), died and rose again. In that holy city, when the day of Pentecost had come and "they were all together in one place (<i>Acts</i> 2:1), the Paraclete was sent upon Mary and the disciples. From there the Good News spread throughout the world because, filled with the Holy Spirit, "they spoke the word of God with boldness" (<i>Acts</i> 4:31). From there, from the mother of all the Churches,(3) the Gospel was preached to all nations, many of which boast of having had one of the Apostles as their first witness to the Lord.(4) In that city the most varied cultures and traditions were welcomed in the name of the one God (cf. <i> Acts</i> 2:9 - 1 1). In turning to it with nostalgia and gratitude, we find the strength and enthusiasm to intensify the quest for harmony in that genuine plurality of forms which remains the Church's ideal.(5)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">3. A Pope, son of a Slav people, is particularly moved by the call of those peoples to whom the two saintly brothers Cyril and Methodius went. They were a glorious example of apostles of unity who were able to proclaim Christ in their search for communion between East and West amid the difficulties which sometimes set the two worlds against one another. Several times I have reflected on the example of their activity,(6) also addressing those who are their children in faith and culture.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">These considerations now need to be broadened so as to embrace all the Eastern Churches, in the variety of their different traditions. My thoughts turn to our brothers and sisters of the Eastern Churches, in the wish that together we may seek the strength of an answer to the questions man is asking today in every part of the world. I intend to address their heritage of faith and life, aware that there can be no second thoughts about pursuing the path of unity, which is irreversible as the Lord's appeal for unity is irreversible. "Dearly beloved, we have this common task: we must say together from East and West: Ne evacuetur Crux! (cf. 1 <i> Cor</i> 1:17). The cross of Christ must not be emptied of its power because if the cross of Christ is emptied of its power, man no longer has roots, he no longer has prospects: he is destroyed! This is the cry of the end of the 20th century. It is the cry of Rome, of Moscow, of Constantinople. It is the cry of all Christendom: of the Americas, of Africa, of Asia, of everyone. It is the cry of the new evangelization."(7)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I am thinking of the Eastern Churches, as did many other Popes in the past, aware that the mandate to preserve the Church's unity and to seek Christian unity tirelessly wherever it was wounded was addressed to them. A particularly close link already binds us. We have almost everything in common;(8) and above all, we have in common the true longing for unity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">4. The cry of men and women today seeking meaning for their lives reaches all the Churches of the East and of the West. In this cry, we perceive the invocation of those who seek the Father whom they have forgotten and lost (cf. <i> Lk</i> 15:18 - 20; <i> Jn</i> 14:8). The women and men of today are asking us to show them Christ, who knows the Father and who has revealed him (cf. <i> Jn</i> 8:55; 14:8 - 11). Letting the world ask us its questions, listening with humility and tenderness, in full solidarity with those who express them, we are called to show in word an deed today the immense riches that our Churches preserve in the coffers of their traditions. We learn from the Lord himself, who would stop along the way to be with the people, who listened to them and was moved to pity when he saw them "like sheep without a shepherd" (<i>Mt</i> 9:36; cf. <i> Mk</i> 6:34). From him we must learn the loving gaze with which he reconciled men with the Father and with themselves, communicating to them that power which alone is able to heal the whole person.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">This appeal calls on the Churches of the East and the West to concentrate on the essential: "We cannot come before Christ, the Lord of history, as divided as we have unfortunately been in the course of the second millennium. These divisions must give way to rapprochement and harmony; the wounds on the path of Christian unity must be healed."(9)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Going beyond our own frailties, we must turn to him, the one Teacher, sharing in his death so as to purify ourselves from that jealous attachment to feelings and memories, not of the great things God has done for us, but of the human affairs of a past that still weighs heavily on our hearts. May the Spirit clarify our gaze so that together we may reach out to contemporary man who is waiting for the good news. If we make a harmonious, illuminating, life - giving response to the world's expectations and sufferings, we will truly contribute to a more effective proclamation of the Gospel among the people of our time.</span></p> <center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b>I</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b>KNOWING THE CHRISTIAN EAST<br />AN EXPERIENCE OF FAITH</b></span></p></center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">5. "In the study of revealed truth East and West have used different methods and approaches in understanding and confessing divine things. It is hardly surprising, then, if sometimes one tradition has come nearer to a full appreciation of some aspects of a mystery of revelation than the other, or has expressed them better. In such cases, these various theological formulations are often to be considered complementary rather than conflicting."(10)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Pondering over the questions, aspirations and experiences I have mentioned, my thoughts turn to the Christian heritage of the East. I do not intend to describe that heritage or to interpret it: I listen to the Churches of the East, which I know are living interpreters of the treasure of tradition they preserve. In contemplating it, before my eyes appear elements of great significance for fuller and more thorough understanding of the Christian experience. These elements are capable of giving a more complete Christian response to the expectations of the men and women of today. Indeed, in comparison to any other culture, the Christian East has a unique and privileged role as the original setting where the Church was born. The Christian tradition of the East implies a way of accepting, understanding and living faith in the Lord Jesus. In this sense it is extremely close to the Christian tradition of the West, which is born of and nourished by the same faith. Yet it is legitimately and admirably distinguished from the latter, since Eastern Christians have their own way of perceiving and understanding, and thus an original way of living their relationship with the Savior. Here, with respect and trepidation, I want to approach the act of worship which these Churches express, rather than to identify this or that specific theological point which has emerged down the centuries in the polemical debates between East and West.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">From the beginning, the Christian East has proved to contain a wealth of forms capable of assuming the characteristic features of each individual culture, with supreme respect for each particular community. We can only thank God with deep emotion for the wonderful variety with which he has allowed such a rich and composite mosaic of different tesserae to be formed.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">6. Certain features of the spiritual and theological tradition, common to the various Churches of the East mark their sensitivity to the forms taken by the transmission of the Gospel in Western lands. The Second Vatican Council summarized them as follows: "Everyone knows with what love the Eastern Christians celebrate the sacred liturgy, especially the Eucharistic mystery, source of the Church's life and pledge of future glory. In this mystery the faithful, united with their bishops, have access to God the Father through the Son, the Word made flesh who suffered and was glorified, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And so, made 'sharers of the divine nature' (2 <i> Pt</i> 1:4) they enter into communion with the most holy Trinity."(11)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">These features describe the Eastern outlook of the Christian. His or her goal is participation in the divine nature through communion with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In this view the Father's "monarchy" is outlined as well as the concept of salvation according to the divine plan, as it is presented by Eastern theology after Saint Irenaeus of Lyons and which spread among the Cappadocian Fathers.(12)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Participation in Trinitarian life takes place through the liturgy and in a special way through the Eucharist, the mystery of communion with the glorified body of Christ, the seed of immortality.(13) In divinization and particularly in the sacraments, Eastern theology attributes a very special role to the Holy Spirit: through the power of the Spirit who dwells in man deification already begins on earth; the creature is transfigured and God's kingdom inaugurated.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers on divinization passed into the tradition of all the Eastern Churches and is part of their common heritage. This can be summarized in the thought already expressed by Saint Irenaeus at the end of the second century: God passed into man so that man might pass over to God.(14) This theology of divinization remains one of the achievements particularly dear to Eastern Christian thought.(15)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">On this path of divinization, those who have been made "most Christ - like" by grace and by commitment to the way of goodness go before us: the martyrs and the saints.(16) And the Virgin Mary occupies an altogether special place among them. From her the shoot of Jesse sprang (cf. <i> Is</i> 11:1 ). Her figure is not only the Mother who waits for us, but the Most Pure, who - the fulfillment of so many Old Testament prefigurations - is an icon of the Church, the symbol and anticipation of humanity transfigured by grace, the model and the unfailing hope for all those who direct their steps towards the heavenly Jerusalem.(17)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Although strongly emphasizing Trinitarian realism and its unfolding in sacramental life, the East associates faith in the unity of the divine nature with the fact that the divine essence is unknowable. The Eastern Fathers always assert that it is impossible to know what God is; one can only know that he is, since he revealed himself in the history of salvation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.(18)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">This sense of the inexpressible divine reality is reflected in liturgical celebration, where the sense of mystery is so strongly felt by all the faithful of the Christian East.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">"Moreover, in the East are to be found the riches of those spiritual traditions which are given expression in monastic life especially. From the glorious times of the holy Fathers that monastic spirituality flourished in the East which later flowed over into the Western world, and there provided a source from which Latin monastic life took its rise and has often drawn fresh vigor ever since. Therefore, it is earnestly recommended that Catholics avail themselves more often of the spiritual riches of the Eastern Fathers which lift up the whole man to the contemplation of the divine mysteries."(19)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Gospel, Churches and Culture</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">7. As I have pointed out at other times, one of the first great values embodied particularly in the Christian East is the attention given to peoples and their cultures, so that the Word of God and his praise my resound in every language. I reflected on this topic in the Encyclical Letter Slavorum Apostoli, where I noted that Cyril and Methodius "desired to become similar in every aspect to those to whom they were bringing the Gospel; they wished to become a part of those peoples and to share their lot in everything";(20) "it was a question of a new method of catechesis."(21)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">In doing this, they expressed an attitude widespread in the Christian East: "By incarnating the Gospel in the native culture of the peoples which they were evangelizing, Saints Cyril and Methodius were especially meritorious for the formation and development of that same culture, or rather of many cultures."(22) They combined respect and consideration for individual cultures with a passion for the universality of the Church, which they tirelessly strove to achieve. The attitude of the two brothers from Thessalonica is representative in Christian antiquity of a style typical of many churches: revelation is proclaimed satisfactorily and becomes fully understandable when Christ speaks the tongues of the various peoples, and they can read scripture and sing the liturgy in their own language with their own expressions, as though repeating the marvels of Pentecost.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">At a time when it is increasingly recognized that the right of every people to express themselves according to their own heritage of culture and thought is fundamental, the experience of the individual Churches of the East is offered to us as an authoritative example of successful inculturation.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">From this model we learn that if we wish to avoid the recurrence of particularism as well as of exaggerated nationalism, we must realize that the proclamation of the Gospel should be deeply rooted in what is distinctive to each culture and open to convergence in a universality, which involves an exchange for the sake of mutual enrichment.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Between memory and expectation</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">8. Today we often feel ourselves prisoners of the present. It is as though man had lost his perception of belonging to a history which precedes and follows him. This effort to situate oneself between the past and the future, with a grateful heart for the benefits received and for those expected, is offered by the Eastern Churches in particular, with a clear - cut sense of continuity which takes the name of Tradition and of eschatological expectation.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Tradition is the heritage of Christ's Church. This is a living memory of the Risen One met and witnessed to by the Apostles who passed on his living memory to their successors in an uninterrupted line, guaranteed by the apostolic succession through the laying on of hands, down to the bishops of today. This is articulated in the historical and cultural patrimony of each Church, shaped by the witness of the martyrs, fathers and saints, as well as by the living faith of all Christians down the centuries to our own day. It is not an unchanging repetition of formulas, but a heritage which preserves its original, living kerygmatic core. It is Tradition that preserves the Church from the danger of gathering only changing opinions, and guarantees her certitude and continuity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">When the uses and customs belonging to each Church are considered as absolutely unchangeable, there is a sure risk of Tradition losing that feature of a living reality which grows and develops, and which the Spirit guarantees precisely because it has something to say to the people of every age. As Scripture is increasingly understood by those who read it,(23) every other element of the Church's living heritage is increasingly understood by believers and is enriched by new contributions, in fidelity and in continuity.(24) Only a religious assimilation, in the obedience of faith, of what the Church calls "Tradition" will enable Tradition to be embodied in different cultural and historical situations and conditions.(25) Tradition is never pure nostalgia for things or forms past, nor regret for lost privileges, but the living memory of the Bride, kept eternally youthful by the Love that dwells within her.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">If Tradition puts us in continuity with the past, eschatological expectation opens us to God's future. Each Church must struggle against the temptation to make an absolute of what it does, and thus to celebrate itself or abandon itself to sorrow. But time belongs to God, and whatever takes place in time can never be identified with the fullness of the Kingdom, which is always a free gift. The Lord Jesus came to die for us and rose from the dead, while creation, saved through hope, is still suffering its birth pangs (cf. <i> Rom</i> 8:22). The Lord himself will return to give the cosmos to the Father (cf. 1 <i> Cor</i> 15:28). The Church invokes this return, and the monk and the religious are its privileged witnesses.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The East expresses in a living way the reality of tradition and expectation. All its liturgy, in particular, is a commemoration of salvation and an invocation of the Lord's return. And if Tradition teaches the Churches fidelity to what give birth to them, eschatological expectation urges them to be what they have not yet fully become, what the Lord wants them to become, and thus to seek ever new ways of fidelity, overcoming pessimism because they are striving for the hope of God who does not disappoint.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">We must show people the beauty of memory, the power that comes to us from the Spirit and makes us witnesses because we are children of witnesses; we must make them taste the wonderful things the Spirit has wrought in history; we must show that it is precisely Tradition which has preserved them, thus giving hope to those who, even without seeing their efforts to do good crowned by success, know that someone else will bring them to fulfillment; therefore man will feel less alone, less enclosed in the narrow corner of his own individual achievement.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Monasticism as a model of baptismal life</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">9. I would now like to look at the vast panorama of Eastern Christianity from a specific vantage point which affords a view of many of its features: monasticism.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">In the East, monasticism has retained great unity. It did not experience the development of different kinds of apostolic life as in the West. The various expressions of monastic life, from the strictly cenobitic, as conceived by Pachomius or Basil, to the rigorously eremitic, as with Anthony or Macarius of Egypt, correspond more to different stages of the spiritual journey than to the choice between different states of life. In any event, whatever form they take, they are all based on monasticism.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Moreover, in the East, monasticism was not seen merely as a separate condition, proper to a precise category of Christians, but rather as a reference point for all the baptized, according to the gifts offered to each by the Lord; it was presented as a symbolic synthesis of Christianity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">When God's call is total, as it is in the monastic life, then the person can reach the highest point that sensitivity, culture and spirituality are able to express. This is even more true for the Eastern Churches, for which monasticism was an essential experience and still today is seen to flourish in them, once persecution is over and hearts can be freely raised to heaven. The monastery is the prophetic place where creation becomes praise of God and the precept of concretely lived charity becomes the ideal of human coexistence; it is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people, bearing them in his heart and helping them to seek God.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I would also like to mention the splendid witness of nuns in the Christian East. This witness has offered an example of giving full value in the Church to what is specifically feminine, even breaking through the mentality of the time. During recent persecutions, especially in Eastern European countries, when many male monasteries were forcibly closed, female monasticism kept the torch of the monastic life burning. The nun's charism, with its own specific characteristics, is a visible sign of that motherhood of God to which Sacred Scripture often refers.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Therefore I will look to monasticism in order to identify those values which I feel are very important today for expressing the contribution of the Christian East to the journey of Christ's Church towards the Kingdom. While these aspects are at times neither exclusive to monasticism nor to the Eastern heritage, they have frequently acquired a particular connotation in themselves. Besides, we are not seeking to make the most of exclusivity, but of the mutual enrichment in what the one Spirit has inspired in the one Church of Christ.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Monasticism has always been the very soul of the Eastern Churches: the first Christian monks were born in the East and the monastic life was an integral part of the Eastern lumen passed on to the West by the great Fathers of the undivided Church.(26)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The strong common traits uniting the monastic experience of the East and the West make it a wonderful bridge of fellowship, where unity as it is lived shines even more brightly than may appear in the dialogue between the Churches.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Between Word and Eucharist</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">10. Monasticism shows in a special way that life is suspended between two poles: the Word of God and the Eucharist. This means that even in its eremitical forms, it is always a personal response to an individual call and, at the same time, an ecclesial and community event.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The Starting point for the monk is the Word of God, a Word who calls, who invites, who personally summons, as happened to the Apostles. When a person is touched by the Word obedience is born, that is, the listening which changes life. Every day the monk is nourished by the bread of the Word. Deprived of it, he is as though dead and has nothing left to communicate to his brothers and sisters because the Word is Christ, to whom the monk is called to be conformed.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Even while he chants with his brothers the prayer that sanctifies time, he continues his assimilation of the Word. The very rich liturgical hymnody, of which all the Churches of the Christian East can be justly proud, is but the continuation of the Word which is read, understood, assimilated and finally sung: those hymns are largely sublime paraphrases of the biblical text, filtered and personalized through the individual's experience and that of the community.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Standing before the abyss of divine mercy, the monk can only proclaim the awareness of his own radical poverty, which immediately becomes a plea for help and a cry of rejoicing on account of an even more generous salvation, since from the abyss of his own wretchedness such salvation is unthinkable.(27) This is why the plea for forgiveness and the glorification of God form a substantial part of liturgical prayer. The Christian is immersed in wonder at this paradox, the latest of an infinite series, all magnified with gratitude in the language of the liturgy: the Immense accepts limitation; a virgin gives birth; through death, he who is life conquers death forever; in the heights of heaven, a human body is seated at the right hand of the Father.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The Eucharist is the culmination of this prayer experience, the other pole indissolubly bound to the Word, as the place where the Word becomes Flesh and Blood, a heavenly experience where this becomes an event.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">In the Eucharist, the Church's inner nature is revealed, a community of those summoned to the synaxis to celebrate the gift of the One who is offering and offered: participating in the Holy Mysteries, they become "kinsmen"(28) of Christ, anticipating the experience of divinization in the now inseparable bond linking divinity and humanity in Christ.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">But the Eucharist is also what anticipates the relationship of men and things to the heavenly Jerusalem. In this way it reveals its eschatological nature completely: as a living sign of this expectation, the monk continues and brings to fulfillment in the liturgy the invocation of the Church, the Bride who implores the Bridegroom's return in a maranatha constantly repeated, not only in words, but with the whole of his life.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>A liturgy for the whole man and for the whole cosmos</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">11. In the liturgical experience, Christ the Lord is the light which illumines the way and reveals the transparency of the cosmos, precisely as in Scripture. The events of the past find in Christ their meaning and fullness, and creation is revealed for what it is: a complex whole which finds its perfection, its purpose in the liturgy alone. This is why the liturgy is heaven on earth, and in it the Word who became flesh imbues matter with a saving potential which is fully manifest in the sacraments: there, creation communicates to each individual the power conferred on it by Christ. Thus the Lord, immersed in the Jordan, transmits to the waters a power which enables them to become the bath of baptismal rebirth.(29)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Within this framework, liturgical prayer in the East shows a great aptitude for involving the human person in his or her totality: the mystery is sung in the loftiness of its content, but also in the warmth of the sentiments it awakens in the heart of redeemed humanity. In the sacred act, even bodiliness is summoned to praise, and beauty, which in the East is one of the best loved names expressing the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured,(30) appears everywhere: in the shape of the church, in the sounds, in the colors, in the lights, in the scents. The lengthy duration of the celebrations, the repeated invocations, everything expresses gradual identification with the mystery celebrated with one's whole person. Thus the prayer of the Church already becomes participation in the heavenly liturgy, an anticipation of the final beatitude.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">This total involvement of the person in his rational and emotional aspects, in "ecstasy" and in immanence, is of great interest and a wonderful way to understand the meaning of created realities: these are neither an absolute nor a den of sin and iniquity. In the liturgy, things reveal their own nature as a gift offered by the Creator to humanity: "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (<i>Gen</i> 1:31). Though all this is marked by the tragedy of sin, which weighs down matter and obscures its clarity, the latter is redeemed in the Incarnation and becomes fully "theophoric," that is, capable of putting us in touch with the Father. This property is most apparent in the holy mysteries, the sacraments of the Church.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world's salvation. This does not mean, however, an absolute exaltation of all that is physical, for we know well the chaos which sin introduced into the harmony of the human being. The liturgy reveals that the body, through the mystery of the Cross, is in the process of transfiguration, pneumatization: on Mount Tabor Christ showed his body radiant, as the Father wants it to be again.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Cosmic reality also is summoned to give thanks because the whole universe is called to recapitulation in Christ the Lord. This concept expresses a balanced and marvelous teaching on the dignity, respect and purpose of creation and of the human body in particular. With the rejection of all dualism and every cult of pleasure as an end in itself, the body becomes a place made luminous by grace and thus fully human.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">To those who seek a truly meaningful relationship with themselves and with the cosmos, so often disfigured by selfishness and greed, the liturgy reveals the way to the harmony of the new man, and invites him to respect the Eucharistic potential of the created world. That world is destined to be assumed in the Eucharist of the Lord, in his Passover, present in the sacrifice of the altar.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>A clear look at self - discovery</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">12. The monk turns his gaze to Christ, God and man. In the disfigured face of Christ, the man of sorrow, he sees the prophetic announcement of the transfigured face of the Risen Christ. To the contemplative eye, Christ reveals himself as he did to the women of Jerusalem, who had gone up to contemplate the mysterious spectacle on Calvary. Trained in this school, the monk becomes accustomed to contemplating Christ in the hidden recesses of creation and in the history of mankind, which is then understood from the standpoint of identification with the whole Christ.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">This gaze progressively conformed to Christ thus learns detachment from externals, from the tumult of the senses, from all that keeps man from that freedom which allows him to be grasped by the Spirit. Walking this path, he is reconciled with Christ in a constant process of conversion: in the awareness of his own sin and of his distance from the Lord which becomes heartfelt remorse, a symbol of his own baptism in the salutary water of tears; in silence and inner quiet, which is sought and given, where he learns to make his heart beat in harmony with the rhythm of the Spirit, eliminating all duplicity and ambiguity. This process of becoming ever more moderate and sparing, more transparent to himself, can cause him to fall into pride and intransigence if he comes to believe that these are the fruits of his own ascetic efforts. Spiritual discernment in continuous purification then makes him humble and meek, aware that he can perceive only some aspects of that truth which fills him, because it is the gift of the Spouse, who alone is fulfillment and happiness.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">To the person who is seeking the meaning of life, the East offers this school which teaches one to know oneself and to be free and loved by that Jesus who says: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (<i>Mt</i> 11:28). He tells those who seek inner healing to go on searching: if their intention is upright and their way is honest, in the end the Father's face will let itself be recognized, engraved as it is in the depths of the human heart.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>A father in the Spirit</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">13. A monk's way is not generally marked by personal effort alone. He turns to a spiritual father to whom he abandons himself with filial trust, in the certainty that God's tender and demanding fatherhood is manifested in him. This figure gives Eastern monasticism an extraordinary flexibility: through the spiritual father's intervention the way of each monk is in fact strongly personalized in the times, rhythms and ways of seeking God. Precisely because the spiritual father is the harmonizing link, monasticism is permitted the greatest variety of cenobitic and eremitical expressions. Monasticism in the East has thus been able to fulfill the expectations of each church in the various periods of its history.(31)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">In this quest, the East in particular teaches that there are brothers and sisters to whom the Spirit has granted the gift of spiritual guidance. They are precious points of reference, for they see things with the loving gaze with which God looks at us. It is not a question of renouncing one's own freedom, in order to be looked after by others. It is benefiting from the knowledge of the heart, which is a true charism, in order to be helped, gently and firmly, to find the way of truth. Our world desperately needs such spiritual guides. It has frequently rejected them, for they seemed to lack credibility or their example appeared out of date and scarcely attractive to current sensitivities. Nevertheless, it is having a hard time finding new ones, and so suffers in fear and uncertainty, without models or reference points. He who is a father in the spirit, if he really is such -- and the people of God have always shown their ability to recognize him -- will not make others equal to himself, but will help them find the way to the Kingdom.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Of course, the wonderful gift of male and female monastic life, which safeguards the gift of guidance in the Spirit and calls for appropriate recognition, has also been given to the West. In this context and wherever grace has inspired these precious means of interior growth, may those in charge foster this gift and use it to good advantage, and may all avail themselves of it. Thus they will experience the great comfort and support of fatherhood in the Spirit on their journey of faith.(32)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Communion and service</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">14. Precisely in gradual detachment from those worldly things which stand in the way of communion with his Lord, the monk finds the world a place where the beauty of the Creator and the love of the Redeemer are reflected. In his prayers the monk utters an epiklesis of the Spirit on the world and is certain that he will be heard, for this is a sharing in Christ's own prayer. Thus he feels rising within himself a deep love for humanity, that love which Eastern prayer so often celebrates as an attribute of God, the friend of men who did not hesitate to offer his Son so that the world might be saved. In this attitude the monk is sometimes enabled to contemplate that world already transfigured by the deifying action of Christ, who died and rose again.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Whatever path the Spirit has in store for him, the monk is always essentially the man of communion. Since antiquity this name has also indicated the monastic style of cenobitic life. Monasticism shows us how there is no true vocation that is not born of the Church and for the Church. This is attested by the experience of so many monks who, within their cells, pray with an extraordinary passion, not only for the human person but for every creature, in a ceaseless cry, that all may be converted to the saving stream of Christ's love. This path of inner liberation in openness to the Other makes the monk a man of charity. In the school of Paul the Apostle, who showed that love is the fulfilling of the law (cf. <i> Rom</i> 13:10), Eastern monastic communion has always been careful to guarantee the superiority of love over every law.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">This communion is revealed first and foremost in service to one's brothers in monastic life, but also to the Church community, in forms which vary in time and place, ranging from social assistance to itinerant preaching. The Eastern Churches have lived this endeavor with great generosity, starting with evangelization, the highest service that the Christian can offer his brother, followed by many other forms of spiritual and ministerial service. Indeed it can be said that monasticism in antiquity - and at various times in subsequent ages too - has been the privileged means for the evangelization of peoples.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>A person in relationship</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">15. The monk's life is evidence of the unity that exists in the East between spirituality and theology: the Christian, and the monk in particular, more than seeking abstract truths, knows that his Lord alone is Truth and Life, but also knows that he is the Way, (cf. <i> Jn</i> 14:6) to reach both; knowledge and participation are thus a single reality: from the person to the God who is three Persons through the Incarnation of the Word of God.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The East helps us to express the Christian meaning of the human person with a wealth of elements. It is centered on the Incarnation, from which creation itself draws light. In Christ, true God and true man, the fullness of the human vocation is revealed. In order for man to become God, the Word took on humanity. Man, who constantly experiences the bitter taste of his limitations and sin, does not then abandon himself to recrimination or to anguish, because he knows that within himself the power of divinity is at work. Humanity was assumed by Christ without separation from his divine nature and without confusion,(33) and man is not left alone to attempt, in a thousand often frustrated ways, an impossible ascent to heaven. There is a tabernacle of glory, which is the most holy person of Jesus the Lord, where the divine and the human meet in an embrace that can never be separated. The Word became flesh, like us in everything except sin. He pours divinity into the sick heart of humanity, and imbuing it with the Father's Spirit enables it to become God through grace.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">But if this has revealed the Son to us, then it is given us to approach the mystery of the Father, principle of communion in love. The Most Holy Trinity appears to us then as a community of love: to know such a God means to feel the urgent need for him to speak to the world, to communicate himself; and the history of salvation is nothing but the history of God's love for the creature he has loved and chosen, wanting it to be "according to the icon of the Icon" - as the insight of the Eastern Fathers expresses it(34) - that is, molded in the image of the Image, which is the Son, brought to perfect communion by the sanctifier, the Spirit of love. Even when man sins, this God seeks him and loves him, so that the relationship may not be broken off and love may continue to flow. And God loves man in the mystery of the Son, who let himself be put to death on the Cross by a world that did not recognize him, but has been raised up again by the Father as an eternal guarantee that no one can destroy love, for anyone who shares in it is touched by God's glory: it is this man transformed by love whom the disciples contemplated on Tabor, the man whom we are all called to be.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>An adoring silence</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">16. Nevertheless this mystery is continuously veiled, enveloped in silence,(35) lest an idol be created in place of God. Only in a progressive purification of the knowledge of communion, will man and God meet and recognize in an eternal embrace their unending connaturality of love.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Thus is born what is called the apophatism of the Christian East: the more man grows in the knowledge of God, the more he perceives him as an inaccessible mystery, whose essence cannot be grasped. This should not be confused with an obscure mysticism in which man loses himself in enigmatic, impersonal realities. On the contrary, the Christians of the East turn to God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, living persons tenderly present, to whom they utter a solemn and humble, majestic and simple liturgical doxology. But they perceive that one draws close to this presence above all by letting oneself be taught an adoring silence, for at the culmination of the knowledge and experience of God is his absolute transcendence. This is reached through the prayerful assimilation of scripture and the liturgy more than by systematic meditation.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">In the humble acceptance of the creature's limits before the infinite transcendence of a God who never ceases to reveal himself as God - Love, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the joy of the Holy Spirit, I see expressed the attitude of prayer and the theological method which the East prefers and continues to offer all believers in Christ.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">We must confess that we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of him who is adored: in theology, so as to exploit fully its own sapiential and spiritual soul; in prayer, so that we may never forget that seeing God means coming down the mountain with a face so radiant that we are obliged to cover it with a veil (cf. <i> Ex</i> 34:33), and that our gatherings may make room for God's presence and avoid self - celebration; in preaching, so as not to delude ourselves that it is enough to heap word upon word to attract people to the experience of God; in commitment, so that we will refuse to be locked in a struggle without love and forgiveness. This is what man needs today; he is often unable to be silent for fear of meeting himself, of feeling the emptiness that asks itself about meaning; man who deafens himself with noise. All, believers and non - believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the Other to speak when and how he wishes, and allows us to understand his words.</span></p> <center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b>II</b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b>FROM KNOWLEDGE TO ENCOUNTER</b></span></p></center> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">17. Thirty years have passed since the bishops of the Catholic Church, meeting in council in the presence of many brothers from other churches and ecclesial communities, listened to the voice of the Spirit as he shed light on deep truths about the nature of the Church, showing that all believers in Christ were far closer than they could imagine, all journeying towards the one Lord, all sustained and supported by his grace. An ever more pressing invitation to unity emerged at that point.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Since then, much ground has been covered in reciprocal knowledge. This has increased our respect and has frequently enabled us to pray to the one Lord together and to pray for one another, on a path of love that is already a pilgrimage of unity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">After the important steps taken by Pope Paul VI, I have wished the path of mutual knowledge in charity to be continued. I can testify to the deep love that the fraternal meeting with so many heads and representatives of churches and ecclesial communities has given me in recent years. Together we have shared our concerns and expectations, together we have called for union between our churches and peace for the world. Together we have felt more responsible for the common good, not only as individuals, but in the name of the Christians whose pastors the Lord has made us. Sometimes urgent appeals from other churches, threatened or stricken with violence and abuse, have reached this See of Rome. It has sought to open its heart to them all. As soon as he could, the Bishop of Rome has raised his voice for them, so that people of goodwill might hear the cry of those suffering brothers and sisters of ours.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">"Among the sins which require a greater commitment to repentance and conversion should certainly be counted those which have been detrimental to the unity willed by God for his People. In the course of the thousand years now drawing to a close, even more than in the first millennium, ecclesial communion has been painfully wounded, 'a fact for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame.'(36) Such wounds openly contradict the will of Christ and are a cause of scandal to the world. These sins of the past unfortunately still burden us and remain ever present temptations. It is necessary to make amends for them and earnestly to beseech Christ's forgiveness."(37)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The sin of our separation is very serious: I feel the need to increase our common openness to the Spirit who calls us to conversion, to accept and recognize others with fraternal respect, to make fresh, courageous gestures, able to dispel any temptation to turn back. We feel the need to go beyond the degree of communion we have reached.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">18. Every day I have a growing desire to go over the history of the Churches in order to write, at last, a history of our unity and thus return to the time when, after the death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the Gospel spread to the most varied cultures and a most fruitful exchange began which still today is evidenced in the liturgies of the Churches. Despite difficulties and differences, the letters of the Apostles (cf. 2 <i> Cor</i> 9:11 - 14) and of the Fathers(38) show very close, fraternal links between the Churches in a full communion of faith, with respect for their specific features and identity. The common experience of martyrdom, and meditation on the acts of the martyrs of every church, sharing in the doctrine of so many holy teachers of the faith, in deep exchange and sharing, strengthen this wonderful feeling of unity.(39) The development of different experiences of ecclesial life did not prevent Christians, through mutual relations, from continuing to feel certain that they were at home in any Church, because praise of the one Father, through Christ in the Holy Spirit, rose from them all, in a marvelous variety of languages and melodies; all were gathered together to celebrate the Eucharist, the heart and model for the community regarding not only spirituality and the moral life, but also the Church's very structure, in the variety of ministries and services under the leadership of the Bishop, successor of the Apostles.(40) The first councils are an eloquent witness to this enduring unity in diversity.(41)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Even when certain dogmatic misunderstandings became reinforced -- often magnified by the influence of political and cultural factors -- leading to sad consequences in relations between the Churches, the effort to call for and to promote the unity of the Church remained alive. When the ecumenical dialogue first began, the Holy Spirit enabled us to be strengthened in our common faith, a perfect continuation of the apostolic kerygma, and for this we thank God with all our heart.(42) Although in the first centuries of the Christian era conflicts were already slowly starting to emerge within the body of the Church, we cannot forget that unity between Rome and Constantinople endured for the whole of the first millennium, despite difficulties. We have increasingly learned that it was not so much an historical episode or a mere question of pre - eminence that tore the fabric of unity, as it was a progressive estrangement, so that the other's diversity was no longer perceived as a common treasure, but as incompatibility. Even when the second millennium experienced a hardening of the polemics and the separation, with mutual ignorance and prejudice increasing all the more, nonetheless constructive meetings between church leaders desirous of intensifying relations and fostering exchanges did not cease, nor did the holy efforts of men and women who, recognizing the setting of one group against the other as a grave sin, and being in love with unity and charity, attempted in many ways to promote the search for communion by prayer, study and reflection, and by open and cordial interaction.(43) All this praiseworthy work was to converge in the reflections of the Second Vatican Council and to be symbolized in the abrogation of the reciprocal excommunications of 1054 by Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I.(44)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">19. The way of charity is experiencing new moments of difficulty following the recent events which have involved Central and Eastern Europe. Christian brothers and sisters who together had suffered persecution are regarding one another with suspicion and fear just when prospects and hopes of greater freedom are appearing: is this not a new, serious risk of sin which we must all make every effort to overcome - if we want the peoples who are seeking the God of love to be able to find him more easily - instead of being scandalized anew by our wounds and conflicts. When, on Good Friday 1994, His Holiness Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, offered the Church of Rome his meditations on the Way of the Cross, I recalled this communion in the recent experience of martyrdom: "...We are united in these martyrs from Rome, from the 'Hill of Crosses,' the Solovets Islands and so many other extermination camps. We are united against the background of these martyrs; we cannot fail to be united."(45)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Thus it is urgently necessary to become aware of this most serious responsibility: today we can cooperate in proclaiming the Kingdom or we can become the upholders of new divisions. May the Lord open our hearts, convert our minds and inspire in us concrete, courageous steps, capable if necessary of breaking through clichés, easy resignation or stalemate. If those who want to be first are called to become the servants of all, then the primacy of love will be seen to grow from the courage of this charity. I pray the Lord to inspire, first of all in myself, and in the bishops of the Catholic Church, concrete actions as a witness to this inner certitude. The deepest nature of the Church demands it. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, the sacrament of communion, we find in the Body and Blood we share the sacrament and the call to our unity.(46) How can we be fully credible if we stand divided before the Eucharist, if we cannot live our sharing in the same Lord whom we are called to proclaim to the world? In view of our reciprocal exclusion from the Eucharist, we feel our poverty and the need to make every effort so that the day may come when we will partake together of the same bread and the same cup.(47) Then the Eucharist will once again be fully perceived as a prophecy of the Kingdom, and these words from a very ancient eucharistic prayer will resound with full truth: "Just as this broken bread, once scattered on the hills and gathered up, became one, so may your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom."(48)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Experiences of unity</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">20. Particularly significant anniversaries encourage us to turn our thoughts with affection and reverence to the Eastern Churches. First of all, as has been said, the centenary of the Apostolic Letter Orientalium Dignitas. Since that time a journey began which has led, among other things, in 1917, to the creation of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches(49) and the foundation of the Pontifical Oriental Institute(50) by Pope Benedict XV. Subsequently, on June 5, 1960, John XXIII founded the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.(51) In recent times, on October 18, 1990, I promulgated the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches,(52) in order to safeguard and to promote the specific features of the Eastern heritage.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">These are signs of an attitude that the Church of Rome has always felt was an integral part of the mandate entrusted by Jesus Christ to the Apostle Peter: to confirm his brothers in faith and unity (cf. <i> Lk</i> 22:32). Attempts in the past had their limits, deriving from the mentality of the times and the very understanding of the truths about the Church. But here I would like to reassert that this commitment is rooted in the conviction that Peter (cf. <i> Mt</i> 19:17 - 19) intends to place himself at the service of a Church united in charity. "Peter's task is to search constantly for ways that will help preserve unity. Therefore he must not create obstacles but must open up paths. Nor is this in any way at odds with the duty entrusted to him by Christ: 'strengthen your brothers in the faith' (cf. <i> Lk</i> 22:32). It is significant that Christ said these words precisely at the moment when Peter was about to deny him. It was as if the Master himself wanted to tell Peter: 'Remember that you are weak, that you, too, need endless conversion. You are able to strengthen others only insofar as you are aware of your own weakness. I entrust to you as your responsibility the truth, the great truth of God, meant for man's salvation, but this truth cannot be preached or put into practice except by loving.' Veritatem facere in caritate (To live the truth in love; cf. <i> Eph</i> 4:15); this is what is always necessary."(53) Today we know that unity can be achieved through the love of God only if the Churches want it together, in full respect for the traditions of each and for necessary autonomy. We know that this can take place only on the basis of the love of Churches which feel increasingly called to manifest the one Church of Christ, born from one Baptism and from one Eucharist, and which want to be sisters.(54) As I had occasion to say: "the Church of Christ is one. If divisions exist, that is one thing; they must be overcome, but the Church is one, the Church of Christ between East and West can only be one, one and united."(55)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Of course, in today's outlook it appears that true union is possible only in total respect for the other's dignity without claiming that the whole array of uses and customs in the Latin Church is more complete or better suited to showing the fullness of correct doctrine; and again, that this union must be preceded by an awareness of communion that permeates the whole Church and is not limited to an agreement among leaders. Today we are conscious - and this has frequently been reasserted - that unity will be achieved how and when the Lord desires, and that it will require the contribution of love's sensitivity and creativity, perhaps even going beyond the forms already tried in history.(56)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">21. The Eastern Churches which entered into full communion with Rome wished to be an expression of this concern, according to the degree of maturity of the ecclesial awareness of the time.(57) In entering into catholic communion, they did not at all intend to deny their fidelity to their own tradition, to which they have borne witness down the centuries with heroism and often by shedding their blood. And if sometimes, in their relations with the Orthodox Churches, misunderstandings and open opposition have arisen, we all know that we must ceaselessly implore divine mercy and a new heart capable of reconciliation over and above any wrong suffered or inflicted.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">It has been stressed several times that the full union of the Catholic Eastern Churches with the Church of Rome which has already been achieved must not imply a diminished awareness of their own authenticity and originality.(58) Wherever this occurred, the Second Vatican Council has urged them to rediscover their full identity, because they have "the right and the duty to govern themselves according to their own special disciplines. For these are guaranteed by ancient tradition, and seem to be better suited to the customs of their faithful and to the good of their souls."(59) These Churches carry a tragic wound, for they are still kept from full communion with the Eastern Orthodox Churches despite sharing in the heritage of their fathers. A constant, shared conversion is indispensable for them to advance resolutely and energetically towards mutual understanding. And conversion is also required of the Latin Church, that she may respect and fully appreciate the dignity of Eastern Christians, and accept gratefully the spiritual treasures of which the Eastern Catholic Churches are the bearers, to the benefit of the entire catholic communion;(60) that she may show concretely, far more than in the past, how much she esteems and admires the Christian East and how essential she considers its contribution to the full realization of the Church's universality.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Meeting one another, getting to know one another, working together</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">22. I have a keen desire that the words which Saint Paul addressed from the East to the faithful of the Church of Rome may resound today on the lips of Christians of the West with regard to their brothers and sisters of the Eastern Churches: "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world" (<i>Rom</i> 1:8). The Apostle of the Gentiles then immediately and enthusiastically stated his intention: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine" (<i>Rom</i> 1:11 - 12). Here, the dynamic of our meeting is wonderfully portrayed: knowledge of the treasures of others' faith - which I have just tried to describe - spontaneously produces the incentive for a new and more intimate meeting between brothers and sisters, which will be a true and sincere mutual exchange. It is an incentive which the Spirit constantly inspires in the Church and which becomes more insistent precisely in the moments of greatest difficulty.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">23. I am also well aware that at this time certain tensions between the Church of Rome and some of the Eastern Churches are making the path of mutual esteem more difficult with regard to future communion. Several times this See of Rome has made a point of issuing directives favoring the common progress of all the Churches at so important a time for the life of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, where dramatic events of recent history have often prevented the Eastern Churches from properly fulfilling the mandate of evangelization which they nevertheless felt keenly.(61) Situations of greater freedom are offering them fresh opportunities today, although the means available to them are limited because of difficult circumstances in the countries where they are active. I would like forcefully to affirm that the communities of the West are ready to encourage in every way - and many are already working along these lines - the intensification of this ministry of "diakonia," making available to such Churches the experience acquired in the years when charity was more freely exercised. Woe to us if the abundance of some were to produce the humiliation of others or a sterile and scandalous rivalry. On their part, Western communities will make it their duty above all to share, where possible, service projects with their brothers and sisters in the Eastern Churches, or to assist in bringing to successful conclusion all that the latter are doing to help their people. In any case, in territories where both are present, the Western communities will never show an attitude which could appear disrespectful of the exhausting efforts which the Eastern Churches are making, efforts which are all the more to their credit, given the precariousness of the resources available to them.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">To extend gestures of common charity to one another and jointly to those in need will appear as an act with immediate impact. To avoid this or even to witness to the contrary, will make all those who observe us think that every commitment to a rapprochement in charity between the Churches is merely an abstract statement, without conviction or concreteness.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I feel that the Lord's call to work in every way to ensure that all believers in Christ will witness together to their own faith is fundamental, especially in the territories where the children of the Catholic Church - Latin and Eastern - and children of the Orthodox Churches live together in large numbers. After their common martyrdom suffered for Christ under the oppression of atheist regimes, the time has come to suffer, if necessary, in order never to fail in the witness of charity among Christians, for even if we gave our body to be burned but had not charity, it would serve no purpose (cf. 1 <i> Cor</i> 13:3) We must pray intensely that the Lord will soften our minds and hearts, and grant us patience and meekness.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">24. I believe that one important way to grow in mutual understanding and unity consists precisely in improving our knowledge of one another. The children of the Catholic Church already know the ways indicated by the Holy See for achieving this: to know the liturgy of the Eastern Churches;(62) to deepen their knowledge of the spiritual traditions of the Fathers and Doctors of the Christian East,(63) to follow the example of the Eastern Churches for the inculturation of the Gospel message; to combat tensions between Latins and Orientals and to encourage dialogue between Catholics and the Orthodox; to train in specialized institutions theologians, liturgists, historians and canonists for the Christian East, who in turn can spread knowledge of the Eastern Churches; to offer appropriate teaching on these subjects in seminaries and theological faculties, especially to future priests.(64) These remain very sound recommendations on which I intend to insist with particular force.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">25. In addition to knowledge, I feel that meeting one another regularly is very important. In this regard, I hope that monasteries will make a particular effort, precisely because of the unique role played by monastic life within the Churches and because of the many unifying aspects of the monastic experience, and therefore of spiritual awareness, in the East and in the West. Another form of meeting consists in welcoming Orthodox professors and students to the Pontifical Universities and other Catholic academic institutions. We will continue to do all we can to extend this welcome on a wider scale. May God also bless the founding and development of places designed precisely to offer hospitality to our brothers of the East, including such places in this city of Rome where the living, shared memory of the leaders of the Apostles and of so many martyrs is preserved.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">It is important that meetings and exchanges should involve Church communities in the broadest forms and ways. We know for example how positive inter - parish activities such as "twinning" can be for mutual cultural and spiritual enrichment, and also for the exercise of charity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I judge very positively the initiatives of joint pilgrimages to places where holiness is particularly expressed in remembering men and women who in every age have enriched the Church with the sacrifice of their lives. In this direction it would also be a highly significant act to arrive at a common recognition of the holiness of those Christians who, in recent decades, particularly in the countries of Eastern Europe, have shed their blood for the one faith in Christ.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">26. A particular thought goes to the lands of the diaspora where many faithful of the Eastern Churches who have left their countries of origin are living in a mainly Latin environment. These places, where peaceful contact is easier within a pluralist society, could be an ideal environment for improving and intensifying cooperation between the Churches in training future priests and in pastoral and charitable projects, also for the benefit of the Orientals' countries of origin.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I particularly urge the Latin Ordinaries in these countries to study attentively, grasp thoroughly and apply faithfully the principles issued by this Holy See concerning ecumenical cooperation(65) and the pastoral care of the faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches, especially when they lack their own hierarchy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">I invite the Eastern Catholic Bishops and clergy to collaborate closely with the Latin Ordinaries for an effective apostolate which is not fragmented, especially when their jurisdiction covers immense territories where the absence of cooperation means, in effect, isolation. The Eastern Catholic Bishops will not neglect any means of encouraging an atmosphere of brotherhood, sincere mutual esteem and cooperation with their brothers in the Churches with which we are not yet united in full communion, especially with those who belong to the same ecclesial tradition.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Where in the West there are no Eastern priests to look after the faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Latin Ordinaries and their co - workers should see that those faithful grow in the awareness and knowledge of their own tradition, and they should be invited to cooperate actively in the growth of the Christian community by making their own particular contribution.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">27. With regard to monasticism, in consideration of its Importance in Eastern Christianity, we would like it to flourish once more in the Eastern Catholic Churches, and that support be given to all those who feel called to work for its revitalization.(66) In fact, in the East an intrinsic link exists between liturgical prayer, spiritual tradition and the monastic life, For this reason precisely, a well - trained and motivated renewal of monastic life could mean true ecclesial fruitfulness for them as well. Nor should it be thought that this would diminish the effectiveness of the pastoral ministry which in fact will be strengthened by such a vigorous spirituality, and thus will find once more its ideal place. This hope also concerns the territories of the Eastern diaspora, where the presence of Eastern monasteries would give greater stability to the Eastern Churches in those countries, and would make a valuable contribution to the religious life of Western Christians.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><b><i>Journeying together toward the "Orientale Lumen"</i></b></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">28. In conducting this letter, my thoughts turn to my beloved brothers and sisters the Patriarchs, Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the men and women of the Eastern Churches.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">On the threshold of the third millennium we all hear in our Sees the cry of those oppressed by the burden of grave threats, but who, perhaps even without realizing it, long to know what God in his love intended. These people feel that a ray of light, if it is welcomed, is capable of dispelling the shadows which cover the horizon of the Father's tenderness.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Mary, "Mother of the star that never sets,"(67) "dawn of the mystical day,"(68) "rising of the sun of glory,"(69) shows us the Orientale Lumen.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Every day in the East the sun of hope rises again, the light that restores life to the human race. It is from the East, according to a lovely image, that our Savior will come again (cf. <i> Mt</i> 24:27).</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">For us, the men and women of the East are a symbol of the Lord who comes again. We cannot forget them, not only because we love them as brothers and sisters redeemed by the same Lord, but also because a holy nostalgia for the centuries lived in the full communion of faith and charity urges us and reproaches us for our sins and our mutual misunderstandings: we have deprived the world of a joint witness that could, perhaps, have avoided so many tragedies and even changed the course of history.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">We are painfully aware that we cannot yet share in the same Eucharist. Now that the millennium is drawing to a close and our gaze turns to the rising Sun, with gratitude we find these men and women before our eyes and in our heart.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">The echo of the Gospel - the words that do not disappoint - continues to resound with force, weakened only by our separation: Christ cries out but man finds it hard to hear his voice because we fail to speak with one accord. We listen together to the cry of those who want to hear God's entire Word. The words of the West need the words of the East, so that God's word may ever more clearly reveal its unfathomable riches. Our words will meet for ever in the heavenly Jerusalem, but we ask and wish that this meeting be anticipated in the holy Church which is still on her way towards the fullness of the Kingdom.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">May God shorten the time and distance. May Christ, the Orientale Lumen, soon, very soon, grant us to discover that in fact, despite so many centuries of distance, we were very close, because together -- perhaps without knowing it -- we were walking towards the one Lord, and thus towards one another.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">May the people of the third millennium be able to enjoy this discovery, finally achieved by a word that is harmonious and thus fully credible, proclaimed by brothers and sisters who love one another and thank one another for the riches which they exchange. Thus shall we offer ourselves to God with the pure hands of reconciliation, and the people of the world will have one more well - founded reason to believe and to hope.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">With these wishes I impart my Blessing to all. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><i>From the Vatican, on May 2, the liturgical memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, in the year 1995, the seventeenth of my Pontificate.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><i>find footnotes here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_02051995_orientale-lumen_en.html<br /></i></span></p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com