Feast of the Holy Innocents

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, those infant males killed by Harod in an attempt to kill Jesus.  These children are considered the first buds of Christianity to suffer from the frost of Christian persecution.  They are considered martyrs of the Church

The US State Department Just Forgot to Mention…

According to Captain’s Quarter’s blog, the US State Department has had evidence that former (and now dead) Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was responsible for the murder of two US diplomats (Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore) and a Belgian diplomat in 1973.  Recall that Arafat was one of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Wonderful.

A newly declassified report from 1973 shows that Yasser Arafat personally commanded the terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat. Moreover, the two murders appear to have been the entire point of Arafat’s attack:

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian embassy.Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of the Fatah/BSO [Black September Organization] leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da’ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals of the operation was to strike at the United States because of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.

Seems that not only can we not trust the State Department to look out for US interests, but cannot even expect them to look out for their own kind.  Disgusting.

B16 Speaks to the Curia

Sandro Magister has a posting on www.chiesa.com regarding the Holy Father’s recent remarks before the Roman curia just before Christmas. There is a unifying element in the pope’s world travels and speeches given in his recent travels.

In the address that he gave to the Roman curia just before Christmas, Benedict XVI identified the unifying element of the four trips he took outside of Italy in 2006: to Poland, Spain, Germany, and Turkey.

The unifying and decisive element, he said, was “the correlation of the topic of ‘God’ and the topic of ‘peace’.”

This is because, if this correlation is lacking, and “if reason remains closed before the question of God, this will end up leading to the clash of cultures” and religions: a clash ”that looms threateningly” over the entire planet.

Benedict XVI demonstrated that the response to the fundamental question of God affects a series of related questions.

In Poland, he said that man’s desire to “banish God from history” has its most striking memorial in Auschwitz and Birkenau. But even amid His apparent absence, God “does not cease to remain with us,” like the rainbow after the flood.

In Spain, there arose the great question about why Europe “practically doesn’t want to have any more children.” The pope’s reply is that the man of today has become “unsure about man himself.” And this explains the disintegration of the family, the tendency toward de facto couples, the removal of the differences between the sexes: it is a “denigration of corporeality” that leads to man’s self-destruction. The Church has a duty to raise its voice in defense of this endangered man.

In Germany, the pope continued, preaching about God is all the more necessary today because in some regions most people have not even been baptized, and the faith is seen as belonging to the past. Benedict XVI linked to this issue the priest’s role as a “man of God,” who is celibate not for pragmatic reasons, but precisely because he is “seized by a passion for God.” He also linked to the question of God the dialogue between faith and reason, which he explored in the lecture at the University of Regensburg.

In Turkey, Benedict XVI wanted to show his solidarity with those faithful of Allah who “precisely on the basis of their Muslim religious convictions struggle against violence and in favor of synergy between faith and reason, between religion and freedom.” Because this is exactly Islam’s task today: to elaborate the proper synthesis between the faith and “the real achievements of Enlightenment thinking” that Christians have reached over centuries of “laborious and never-finalized research.”

The latter is an approach to dialogue that is much more effective than a thousand ceremonial embraces, as is proved by the “open letter” addressed to the pope last October by 38 Muslim intellectuals and leaders from various nations, including the grand mufti of Istanbul.

But what follow here are the main passages from the extensive address delivered to the Roman curia by Benedict XVI on December 22, 2006, all of which is worth reading:

And the post goes on to Benedict’s words. This is well worth the read.

B16 on Gesu Bambino

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.

Full text of the midnight Mass homily is posted at the Vatican website.

Christmas Anticipated

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment
in which the Son of God was born
of the most pure Virgin Mary,
at midnight,
in Bethlehem,
in the piercing cold.
In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God,
to hear my prayer and grant my desires,
through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

An Obvious Progression of Secular Thought

Just when it seems that things could not be more misguided in the secular mindset, comes this unbelievable story from the elites in London. Seems that R2D2 and C3PO may have some case against George Lucas.

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive look into the future.

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it says.

This is yet another example of the fruits of modern liberal secular thought. In their minds, there is nothing at all exceptional about human life. They see the world only in material ways and do not even consider man’s soul if even to discount it as relevant. Amazing!

John Henry Cardinal Newman

There are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to atheism.  Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side and liberalism is the halfway house on the other.

John Henry Cardinal Newman  Apologia Pro Vita Sua

What Benedict XVI Really Said

A recent article in the Daily Mail, a liberal British newspaper, attempted to convey the Holy Father’s message delivered on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (also the occasion of World Peace Day.)  If one were to read only the article, one might think that the pope used the occasion to scold the United States for its involvement in Iraq.

Pope Benedict XVI criticised George Bush as he declared states had to set ethical limits in what they do to protect their citizens from terrorism.

He also suggested some countries had flouted humanitarian law in recent wars.

Although the Pope did not identify any specific countries, Vatican sources made it clear he was referring to the U.S. particularly.

Although the article is brief, it clearly mischaracterizes what the Holy Father said.  The remarks do tangentially address the Iraq conflict, but in no way can the remarks be interpreted as a rebuke of the Bush policy in Iraq (neither Iraq nor Bush are mentioned in the pope’s remarks.)  In fact, a careful reading suggests that the emphasis is on the continued jihadi violence in the Middle East and opppressive nature of Islam.  He also addresses the UN (by name) and their pathetic role on the world’s stage.

Kucinich Hopes To Get On The Radar (And Return To Planet Earth)

Well, here we go again.  Dennis Kucinich, loser congressman from Cleveland, Ohio, hopes that he above all the other politicians out there, will be sworn in as US President come 2009.  This pathetically weak man (morally and psychologically) has announced that he will seek the office of the President of the United States.

This loser bankrupted Cleveland as its boy mayor in the 1970’s.  He was against abortion until he figured out that he couldn’t be elected as a Democrat with this kind of morality, so now he panders to the abortion crowd.  Pathetic.  He favors the creation of a Department of Peace (I suppose they would be empowered to cut, paste and present paper flowers to all the thugs and rogues of the world so as to turn them from their evil ways.)  Pathetic.

Even the New York Times considers him a loser from the outset.

Kucinich was not included in the CNN survey, which was conducted Dec. 5-7. And, based on the results of his 2004 run, Kucinich is going to be regarded again as staging a symbolic campaign to gain attention to his mainly liberal political agenda.

Perhaps most disturbing is the rumor that Dennis is really Yoda.  Although there may be a common habitus, this is where the similarities cease.

Bishop Bruskewitz, Please Call Your Brother Bishops

One piece of satisfying news from the Vatican.  Seems that a certain bishop in Lincoln, Nebraska has prevailed in an appeal to the Vatican by excommunicated Catholics in the bishop’s diocese.  From Catholic World News:

Dec. 7, 2006 (CWNews.com) – The Vatican has confirmed an American bishop’s decision to excommunicate members of the dissident group Call to Action.

Call to Action is “causing damage to the Church of Christ,” wrote Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re (bio – news), the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, in a letter to Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska.

In March 1996, Bishop Bruskewitz had announced the excommunication of all Catholics in his diocese who were members of Call to Action or several other dissident groups which he described as “totally incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The Nebraska chapter of Call to Action appealed the bishop’s decision to the Vatican. In his November 24 letter to Bishop Bruskewitz, Cardinal Re reports that Vatican’s finding that the disciplinary action was “properly taken.”

The Vatican has determined that “the activities of ‘Call to Action’ in the course of these years are in contrast with the Catholic Faith due to views and positions held which are unacceptable from a doctrinal and disciplinary standpoint,” Cardinal Re writes. He concludes: “Thus to be a member of this Association or to support it, is irreconcilable with a coherent living of the Catholic Faith.”

The excommunication that Bishop Bruskewitz announced covered not only to Call to Action, but also to members of Catholics for a Free Choice, Planned Parenthood, the Hemlock Society, the Freemasons, and the Society of St. Pius X.

The excommunication order applies only within the Lincoln, Nebraska diocese. But the Vatican’s judgment against Call to Action raises clear questions about the status of the group’s members in other dioceses.

Thank you Bishop Bruskewitz for protecting your flock from the wolves that seek to destroy souls in your care.Š