I saw this on Spirit Daily today. I thought this kind of harrassment was going to end, since people often get uppity about things for a week or two, and then drop it. But I think our Pope is in serious trouble, and is probably feeling like
Christ is his only friend these days.
Please pray for the Pope. From what I can see, he is doing his ACTUAL job beautifully. It just so happens that many people do not understand what his job is.
Pray for the Pope!
» 02/26/2009 14:12
VATICAN
At Lent, let us pray for the Pope
Bernardo Cervellera
A group of Muslim converts to Christianity asked us to pray for Benedict XVI, who is under attack from all sides. Non-Catholic Churches, progressives and traditionalists, politicians and radicals are all casting stones at the scapegoat of the week. With ideologies and economies in crisis, this is the last attempt to remove a champion of the dignity of man and God himself.
Rome (AsiaNews) – For this Lent we are inviting our readers to devote a special prayer for Pope Benedict XVI. The idea came to us from a number of Muslim converts to Christianity who wrote to AsiaNews launching a novena for the Pontiff. They see in Benedict XVI as a “defender of the weak” and “a sign of Jesus’ love” in a world that is trying to attack him every which way. As new converts they too are among the weak, forced to hide their conversion even from their family. Moreover, the Pope himself had asked for a special prayer.
On the day the Church celebrated the Chair of Peter (22 February), Benedict XVI spoke to pilgrims in St Peter’s Square during the Angelus, asking them to “accompany me with your prayers so that I may faithfully accomplish the high task Divine Providence has placed upon me as Successor to the Apostle Peter” and bishop of Rome. Indeed, the Church is “called to fulfil a special service for the People of God as a whole.”
We all know how difficult ecumenism, the struggle for Christian unity, can be. Every step the Pope takes is met by coldness, indifference and prevarication from other Churches. Here is one example among many. Despite Benedict XVI’s many prayers and attention, the new Orthodox patriarch of Moscow said, a day after his election, that a trip by the Pontiff to Moscow was not possible for the foreseeable future.
The Pope’s search for unity also suffers from trying to hold together various Catholic strands, still too much divided (perhaps confused) between “progressive” and “traditionalists”, “North” and “South”, “rich” and “poor”, each missing the chance of respecting one another other, and acting as one in bearing witness to the faith in a world that is increasingly becoming atheistic.
The lifting of the excommunication on Lefebvrist Bishop Williamson gave many politicians, big and small, an opportunity to accuse the Pope of anti-Semitism, without getting their facts straight or realising that Benedict XVI is the one who build a strong relationship with the Jewish world over the years. It is almost as if everyone got together to cast stones against the scapegoat of the week. In fact Benedict XVI is one of the few voices saying that humans cannot be bought by politics or that the state must serve the public good.
In a continent like Europe where plans are underway to introduce euthanasia and eugenics, the Pope has insisted that “Man will always be greater than all that which makes up his body.” He has slammed the mindset that views life and personal dignity as “based [only] on one's own desire and individual freedom,” giving precedence to the “active faculties, to proficiency, to physical perfection and beauty.”
In all these “incidents” there may have been some errors or clumsiness by the Roman Curia, but in the “war” against Benedict XVI there is above all an attempt to stifle those who tell everyone that there is an absolute value in human beings.
As crises overtake ideologies and economies, overwhelming the world, this is the latest attempt to get rid of God as if he was a final burden.
Photo: CPP
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Home executive advice
From the Common Room, this is an excellent post. I'm so glad she put it up. SO glad It is very important that we realize that "what I'm supposed to do" is based on expectations of other people who don't live in your body or your house. Remember, you are supposed to do what's right for YOU and your family! Not what it says in Parenting Magazine. Enjoy!!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Lenten update
Here's a cute picture just to focus on the peace I hope to achieve during Lent.
I'm really not sure when I'm going to be making my Lenten plans.
I do know that I would like very much to have them figured out. I think I need to look at some books and make some easy plans. There is a soup supper and Stations of the Cross over at our parish on Fridays this Lent, and I'd like to make it to those. Tomorrow, being Ash Wednesday, I can go to Mass and then babysit for a good part of the day for my friend Rikki. Good thing we had a good homeschooling day today.
My Lenten commitment is really going to be not yelling at the kids. I know, I know, that's a silly one. First, of COURSE I should not yell at them. Um... yeah. But secondly, can I really do better? We will soon find out. I will also limit my online time much more severely, at least for six weeks. The other thing we need to do is PURGE. I am so going through their TOYS!! Oh. My. Goodness. We do not need this many tiny toys for me to step on. We are going to decide which ones we truly love and get rid of the rest. I mean it this time! Tantrum, tantrum, tantrum.
Rikki showed up this morning with strings of real Mardi Gras beads from New Orleans. She and her husband went some years ago, and they still had quite a bundle, which my children are in love with. They really are fun to see. Someday I'd like to go see the real thing.
In other news, while I am not naming this relative here, I'd like you to pray for them. A relative of mine (not immediate family) is considering Catholicism as a home for the family. They were not raised Christian, but do love God, whatever you may call Him. They have a deep sense of the mystic and spiritual. I am very excited for them and plan to send a little package this Lent. And only really because of Facebook are we even having that conversation. God is so good.
Enjoy Fat Tuesday, see you during Lent!!
A very cute interview
The DHM, of Common Room fame, often posts about this family. They have eleven kids, and in that batch is included twins and quads. She has some pretty amazing stories, of course, but I really loved this interview at Smockity Frocks.
I hope you enjoy it too!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Putin warns US about socialism
You know things are bad when the Russians are warning the US, of all people, not to go toward socialism out of fear over the economy. That is crazy. I'm not old, but I do remember having a Russian pen pal in fourth grade, and we were told that some of our letters would probably be crossed out with black pen and sensored, so if some of our questions weren't answered, that was why. I remember sending them pencils because they didn't have pencils with erasers and that kind of pencil was a real treasure.
I remember it was just before my dad's birthday when the Soviet Union began to fall apart. It was funny, because my mom had bought my dad a biography, and I think it was the biography of Mikhail Gorbachev. And here was the end of the Soviet Union, all of a sudden, after real fears of nuclear war and bunkers and things, that was it! And suddenly at the Olympics, they managed to keep their superstar program together for one more go, and after that, it was athletes from all these "new" nations, like Georgia, and all the "stans". And history was forever changed.
Things were hard and remain hard for Russia and friends. Very hard. There are four times as many abortions there as there are here in the US. Children adopted from orphanages there often have RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) and are difficult to help or live with, no matter how much one wants to help and provide a normal life. They are not. having. fun.
The fact that Putin is warning us away from a system that didn't work is noteworthy. I'm glad it was in the Wall Street Journal, but it should have honestly been front page news!
In any case, read it and weep. I can't believe Putin is possibly smarter than most of our US government officials.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317069332125243.html
I remember it was just before my dad's birthday when the Soviet Union began to fall apart. It was funny, because my mom had bought my dad a biography, and I think it was the biography of Mikhail Gorbachev. And here was the end of the Soviet Union, all of a sudden, after real fears of nuclear war and bunkers and things, that was it! And suddenly at the Olympics, they managed to keep their superstar program together for one more go, and after that, it was athletes from all these "new" nations, like Georgia, and all the "stans". And history was forever changed.
Things were hard and remain hard for Russia and friends. Very hard. There are four times as many abortions there as there are here in the US. Children adopted from orphanages there often have RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) and are difficult to help or live with, no matter how much one wants to help and provide a normal life. They are not. having. fun.
The fact that Putin is warning us away from a system that didn't work is noteworthy. I'm glad it was in the Wall Street Journal, but it should have honestly been front page news!
In any case, read it and weep. I can't believe Putin is possibly smarter than most of our US government officials.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317069332125243.html
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Pelosi and the Pope
I'd been following it anyway, but The Common Room also noticed this and wondered why this trip was being paid for by taxpayers. That is a very good question. Why can't they do more phone calls these days? Those are expensive trips!
But in any case, this is a pretty good article about what transpired. The culture wars cometh, I tell ya. I mean, they are already here, but I think they are going to get much, much nastier when people finally get fed up and say, "No, you may NOT do this." And then follow through. The follow through is going to be beastly. It's like finally deciding to discipline one's brat of a kid after 10 years of spoiling him. When you finally crack down, it's like the end of the world, so you put it off til you are good and ready.
I'm ready.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Were They At The Same Meeting? [George Weigel]
From the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:
It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, today. In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.
From the Press Office of the Holy See:
Following the General Audience, the Holy Father briefly greeted Mrs. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, together with her entourage. His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception until natural death, which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists, and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of development.
Were Benedict XVI and Nancy Pelosi in the same meeting, or even in the same city, this morning?
Charity requires that one concede the possibility that genuine piety was a part of Pelosi’s (rather boorish, and certainly irregular) insistence on being given a private moment with the pope during her current taxpayer-funded junket to Rome. But her office’s statement on today’s meeting makes it clear something else was afoot: that Pelosi, who shamelessly trumpets her “ardent” Catholicism while leading congressional Democrats in a continuing assault on what the Catholic Church regards as the inalienable human rights of the unborn, was trying to recruit Benedict XVI (“Joseph Ratzinger, D., Bavaria”?) to Team Nancy.
His Holiness wasn’t buying it.
He told Pelosi, politely but unmistakably, that her relentlessly pro-abortion politics put her in serious difficulties as a Catholic, which was his obligation as a pastor. He also underscored — for Pelosi, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Mikulski, Rose DeLauro, Kathleen Sebelius, and everyone else — that the Church’s opposition to the taking of innocent human life, at any stage of the human journey, is not some weird Catholic hocus-pocus; it’s a first principle of justice than can be known by reason. It is a “requirement of the natural moral law” — that is, the moral truths we can know by thinking about what is right and what is wrong — to defend the inviolability of innocent human life. You don’t have to believe in papal primacy to know that; you don’t have do believe in seven sacraments, or the episcopal structure of the Church, or the divinity of Christ, to know that. You don’t even have to believe in God to know that. You only have to be a morally serious human being, willing to work through a moral argument — which, of course, means being the kind of person who understands that moral truth cannot be reduced to questions of feminist political correctness or partisan political advantage.
As her performance on Meet the Press prior to last year’s Democratic national convention made painfully clear, Pelosi is deeply confused about what her church teaches on the morality of abortion, and why. She may have come to her bizarre views on her own; it’s far more likely that she has been un-catechized, so to speak, by Catholic intellectuals and clerics who find Catholic teaching on life issues an embarrassment among their high-minded friends and colleagues of the progressive persuasion. Whatever the source of her confusion, Pelosi has now been informed, and by a world-class intellectual who happens to be the universal pastor of the Catholic Church, that she is, in fact, confused, and that both her spiritual life and her public service are in jeopardy because of that.
Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that Pope Benedict did not have only Pelosi in mind when he said what he had to say about the obligations of moral reason and the duties of statesmanship. President Obama is not a Catholic, but he should understand that he will get the same message if, as expected, he meets with His Holiness later this year.
— George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
02/18 11:19 AM
But in any case, this is a pretty good article about what transpired. The culture wars cometh, I tell ya. I mean, they are already here, but I think they are going to get much, much nastier when people finally get fed up and say, "No, you may NOT do this." And then follow through. The follow through is going to be beastly. It's like finally deciding to discipline one's brat of a kid after 10 years of spoiling him. When you finally crack down, it's like the end of the world, so you put it off til you are good and ready.
I'm ready.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Were They At The Same Meeting? [George Weigel]
From the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:
It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, today. In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.
From the Press Office of the Holy See:
Following the General Audience, the Holy Father briefly greeted Mrs. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, together with her entourage. His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception until natural death, which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists, and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of development.
Were Benedict XVI and Nancy Pelosi in the same meeting, or even in the same city, this morning?
Charity requires that one concede the possibility that genuine piety was a part of Pelosi’s (rather boorish, and certainly irregular) insistence on being given a private moment with the pope during her current taxpayer-funded junket to Rome. But her office’s statement on today’s meeting makes it clear something else was afoot: that Pelosi, who shamelessly trumpets her “ardent” Catholicism while leading congressional Democrats in a continuing assault on what the Catholic Church regards as the inalienable human rights of the unborn, was trying to recruit Benedict XVI (“Joseph Ratzinger, D., Bavaria”?) to Team Nancy.
His Holiness wasn’t buying it.
He told Pelosi, politely but unmistakably, that her relentlessly pro-abortion politics put her in serious difficulties as a Catholic, which was his obligation as a pastor. He also underscored — for Pelosi, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Mikulski, Rose DeLauro, Kathleen Sebelius, and everyone else — that the Church’s opposition to the taking of innocent human life, at any stage of the human journey, is not some weird Catholic hocus-pocus; it’s a first principle of justice than can be known by reason. It is a “requirement of the natural moral law” — that is, the moral truths we can know by thinking about what is right and what is wrong — to defend the inviolability of innocent human life. You don’t have to believe in papal primacy to know that; you don’t have do believe in seven sacraments, or the episcopal structure of the Church, or the divinity of Christ, to know that. You don’t even have to believe in God to know that. You only have to be a morally serious human being, willing to work through a moral argument — which, of course, means being the kind of person who understands that moral truth cannot be reduced to questions of feminist political correctness or partisan political advantage.
As her performance on Meet the Press prior to last year’s Democratic national convention made painfully clear, Pelosi is deeply confused about what her church teaches on the morality of abortion, and why. She may have come to her bizarre views on her own; it’s far more likely that she has been un-catechized, so to speak, by Catholic intellectuals and clerics who find Catholic teaching on life issues an embarrassment among their high-minded friends and colleagues of the progressive persuasion. Whatever the source of her confusion, Pelosi has now been informed, and by a world-class intellectual who happens to be the universal pastor of the Catholic Church, that she is, in fact, confused, and that both her spiritual life and her public service are in jeopardy because of that.
Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that Pope Benedict did not have only Pelosi in mind when he said what he had to say about the obligations of moral reason and the duties of statesmanship. President Obama is not a Catholic, but he should understand that he will get the same message if, as expected, he meets with His Holiness later this year.
— George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
02/18 11:19 AM
Education at it's best
I really like this story. Maybe you have seen it before. Hilarious!
Lipstick in School
According to a news report, a certain private school in
Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A
number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick
and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but
after they put on their lipstick, they would press their
lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the
next day the girls would put them back.
Finally the principal decided that something had to be
done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them
there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these
lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian
who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just
imagine the yawns from the little princesses).
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the
mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how
much effort was required.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the
toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.
Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers .. and then there are educators!
Lipstick in School
According to a news report, a certain private school in
Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A
number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick
and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but
after they put on their lipstick, they would press their
lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the
next day the girls would put them back.
Finally the principal decided that something had to be
done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them
there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these
lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian
who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just
imagine the yawns from the little princesses).
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the
mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how
much effort was required.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the
toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.
Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers .. and then there are educators!
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