The Greatest Man in History
Jesus had no servants, yet they called Him Master.
Had no degree, yet they called Him Teacher.
Had no medicines, yet they called Him Healer.
He had no army, yet kings feared Him.
He won no military battles, yet He conquered the world.
He committed no crime, yet they crucified Him.
He was buried in a tomb, yet He lives today.
I feel honored to serve such a Leader who loves us!
Abusive Rhetoric
By Chuck Colson
4/26/2007
The New Anti-Catholic Bigotry
The editorial cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. It featured the nine justices sitting on the bench. The five Catholic justices who voted to uphold the ban are depicted wearing bishops’ mitres. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is Jewish, is staring at them with a horrified look. So are the three Protestant justices.
The cartoon’s message was clear: The Catholics had voted, not to uphold the law, but to impose their personal religious views. It’s a graphic example of anti-Catholic bigotry.
The Philadelphia Inquirer was hardly alone. Now, it’s not surprising when irresponsible commentators like Rosie O’Donnell make bigoted remarks about Catholics—as she did. Well, at least she won’t be on ABC for a while. But it is shocking when more respectable observers do so.
For instance, Geoffrey Stone, former dean of the University of Chicago law school, writes that “all five justices in the majority in [this case] are Catholic. The four justices who either are Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent”—note that. And then he adds: “The five justices in the majority [that is, the Catholics] . . . failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality.”
If you uphold a law approved by both parties in Congress and supported by most Americans, you are imposing your morality. But if you vote against the ban, you have nobly kept your religious views from interfering with your job. The ugly implication here is obvious: that it is not possible for faithful Catholic judges to carry out their responsibility to interpret and uphold the law.
Imagine the reaction if a cartoonist had suggested this of other religious groups—if they had portrayed justices wearing yarmulkes or holding the Koran. Joseph Cella, head of a Catholic pro-life group, is right in saying that the Philadelphia Inquirer cartoon is “venomous, terribly misleading, and blatantly anti-Catholic.”
Protestants have a special duty to condemn anti-Catholic bigotry. Shamefully, at one time many Protestants accepted the vile teachings of Paul Blanchard, author of American Freedom and Catholic Power. They supported the anti-Catholic agenda of the group for which he was general counsel: Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Our Catholic brethren should not have to wait to hear our voices forcefully raised against the bigotry now directed against them.
That’s why I am circulating with some other Christian leaders a statement calling on Protestants to join us in condemning this bigotry.
We also call on groups that present themselves as the enemies of prejudice to join us as well. And in particular, we invite Americans United to do so. Let us know once and for all: Are they selective opponents of prejudice? Do they regard anti-Catholicism as an acceptable form of bigotry?
It is appropriate to demand an apology when people in public life use their position to engage in bigotry—just as we did with Don Imus. Subscribers to the Inquirer ought to drop their subscriptions, or boycott the products of their advertisers, until an apology is forthcoming.
All forms of bigotry are vile and must be exposed for what they are: attacks on the very character of a civil society. Apologies are called for.
Directive from Pius XII ordered shelter for Rome's Jews
Apr. 19, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has confirmed the existence of a directive from Pope Pius XII, asking Catholic clergy and religious to shelter Jews from the Holocaust.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (bio - news), the Vatican Secretary of State, acknowledged in short April 19 announcement that Pope Pius XII issued instructions for all religious institutions to open their doors to Jewish people. The catacombs of Rome were also made available for shelter.
The Pope's directive was issued on October 25, 1943. Just over a week earlier, on October 16 of that year, more than 1,000 Jews in Rome's ghetto had been arrested and deported to Germany.
The Vatican memo-- the latest evidence that the wartime Pontiff took action to save Jewish lives-- was acknowledged at a time when the debate about the actions of Pope Pius XII has been revived, particularly in Israel. Archbishop Antonio Franco, the papal nuncio in the Holy Land, last week threatened to boycott a remembrance ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem memorial to Holocaust victims, because the Yad Vashem museum contains an exhibit claiming that Pius XII was indifferent to the suffering of the Jews.
The Italian Catholic monthly, 30 Giorni, recently published pages from the anonymous diary of an Augustinian nun from the Santi Quattro Coronati convent in Rome, referring to the October 1943 order from the Pope. The nun wrote, "In these sad days, the Holy Father wishes to save his children, also the Jews, and orders that monasteries give shelter to those persecuted. Convents must adhere to the desire of the Supreme Pontiff."
Holocaust Survivor, Professor Killed Helping Students Escape
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
JERUSALEM — A 76-year-old professor who survived the Holocaust was shot to death while saving his students from the Virginia Tech assailant, students said.
Liviu Librescu, an internationally respected aeronautics engineer who taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by barricading his classroom door before he was gunned down in the massacre, according to e-mail accounts sent by students to his wife.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," his son, Joe Librescu, said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."
The gunman, identified as 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, an English major and native of South Korea, killed 32 people before committing suicide, officials said, in what was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
On campus, students spoke of Librescu's bravery.
"He should be recognized as a hero," Virginia Tech graduate student Philip Huffstetler said. "We should be in such great debt to his family for the rest of our lives."
"He is the reason that the student could not get inside and shoot more people," said Asal Arad, a Virginia Tech student. "Obviously, he is a hero."
How about the activists listen to him tell them to stop using latex?
Is NFP Just Catholic Birth Control?
((VIDEO message)) Hello HLI Friends,
Our mini-catechesis on contraception this week continues on the topic of why the gift of Natural Family Planning is not tantamount to “Catholic birth control.” This is a common misconception about the practice, and it is good to hear the Church’s actual teaching on the matter! You may access the written script of this video on the side bar and, after viewing, please feel free to forward this email to others.
Blessings to you and your families!
Sincerely,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
President, Human Life International
Cardinal George hospitalized after fall
By Margaret Ramirez
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 7, 2007, 4:09 PM CDT
Cardinal Francis George was hospitalized Saturday after he apparently slipped and fell inside a Chicago church, according to archdiocese officials.
George, 70, was at St. Ferdinand Catholic Church on the Northwest Side Saturday morning to bless baskets of food in preparation for Easter meals when he slipped and fell on some water that was on the marble floor of the church, said Susan Burritt, spokeswoman for the archdiocese.
The Cardinal was rushed to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood in a private car and was believed to be conscious after the fall.
Burritt was unsure of the extent of the injuries and said hospital officials were planning an afternoon press conference to discuss his condition.
George, leader of Chicago's Roman Catholic community and one of the most respected leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church, battled polio as a child and wears a leg brace on his right leg.
Last July, Cardinal George was diagnosed with bladder cancer and underwent surgery to remove his bladder, prostate and a portion of his right ureter. Though he lost 20 pounds after the surgery, the Cardinal appeared to have made a remarkable recovery and resumed an active schedule this year. He was expected to leave for Rome later this month for celebrations to mark 10 years as archbishop of Chicago.
Cardinal George was scheduled to celebrate Easter vigil on Saturday night at Holy Name Cathedral, where 52 adults will be initiated into the Catholic church. But Burritt was doubtful that the Cardinal would still be attending that mass. She was also unsure if he would celebrate Easter mass, scheduled for 11 a.m. Sunday at Holy Name.
'Nazi' Pope helped Jews flee Holocaust
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 1:51am BST 31/03/2007
Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.
Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East-German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.
In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".
A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."
La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.
The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".
In 1999, John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope suggested that Pius XII, who had been the papal envoy to Germany before the war, was sympathetic to the Nazis.
In addition, an international Catholic-Jewish historical commission, set up by the Vatican, said it was clear that Pius knew of widespread anti-Jewish persecution. However, the commission was forced to disband before it finished its work, and one member said it had run up "against a brick wall" from the Holy See.
In his defence, the Pope always maintained he did not speak out further against the Nazis for fear of putting more people in danger.
Over the years more documents have come to light as the Vatican has opened its secret archives to scholars in an attempt to clear what it sees as a communist-funded smear on Pius's name.
Giovanni Sale, the author of Hitler, The Holy See and the Jews, said Moscow had deliberately funded operations to discredit the Vatican after the war. "I have said for 10 years that the Church fought the Nazis on all fronts," he added.
Spirit & Life
"The words I spoke to you are spirit and life." (Jn 6:63)
Human Life International e-Newsletter
Volume 01, Number 62 | Holy Thursday, April, 05 2007
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www.hli.org
"Thou Art a Priest Forever"
In a climate of secular hostility toward faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular, it is worth calling to mind the need we have for priests, a need that is built into the very fabric of who we are as Catholics. Holy Thursday is the day in which the Church celebrates, at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the institution of the sacred priesthood. Today we thank God for the priesthood - and for the good priests who have served us so faithfully!
The institution of the priesthood is intrinsically tied to God's covenant of love for sinful man. This covenant was so perfectly ratified at the Last Supper and consummated by Christ's Blood on the Cross that it is called the "new and eternal covenant" of the Eucharist which will never pass away. So great is this expression of God's love that Padre Pio said, "It would be easier for the world to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." Another holy priest, St. John Vianney, said that if we really knew the value of the Mass we would die!
Christ Jesus offered the new covenant on Calvary as the High Priest of our faith, but He also gave men a share in the gift of His priesthood so that the covenant sacrifice could be renewed until the end of time. It is the ministerial priesthood that allows this perfect sacrifice to penetrate the lives of God's people even on a daily basis. When the priest holds the sacred Host high, he does so in the person of Christ (in persona Christi), not in his own person or name. The priest may be an imperfect man and a sinner, but, thankfully, it is not by his own authority that he serves people! It is Christ who offers the Sacrifice in him. It is Christ who prays for the world with him. It is Christ who ministers to others through him. The priest is spiritually Christ's younger brother, set apart and consecrated for this indispensable work of bringing the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity to the world as no one else can. Without the priest, the Sacrifice does not reach us.
I remember well the day that my favorite priest took me aside and asked me to consider a vocation to the priesthood. It was at my eighth grade graduation, I was fourteen, I was awed beyond belief, and I don't even remember the words he used to sow that seed within me. I only remember the effect of suddenly being brought face to face with a wonderful mystery, and from that moment on, my life has never been the same. It was as if he reached into the bonfire of his priestly heart and brought out an ember to plant in my very tiny heart, a spiritual dynamism of love that God would later consecrate for service to His people. I only pray that I will persevere in fidelity to that great gift which I am sure can literally transform the world when it is lived heroically.
The Letter to the Hebrews says of Christ, "Thou are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," and the Church has always applied this to all priests. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is an eternal gift which ministers the everlasting Eucharistic love of Christ to the world - and apparently even to the members of the Church Triumphant in heaven too. What a marvelous gift!
On this holy day, let us pray not only for the priests that God has given to His Church, but for a renewal of the priesthood and an abundance of good, holy priestly vocations. May many young men hear that call to serve God's people through the Church and be willing to plunge their lives into that purifying fire that only the priest's anointed hands can bring to the world.
Sincerely,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
President, Human Life International
Contraception the Love Killer
By John Mallon
Far too many Catholics think of the Church in terms of laxity or strictness, when in fact to do so is to miss the whole point. Morality is the fruit of love. Love of Christ, who said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (Cf. John 14:15). This was not a threat or some divine arm-twisting, but a statement of fact. Religious obedience is an act of great spiritual maturity and love. It is not that we love Him but that He first loved us (Cf. 1 John 4:19). He is our Bridegroom.
I would be worried about any engaged couple that was caught up in worry about fidelity instead of being so dizzy—or sanely—in love that infidelity was unthinkable. In theological terms we speak of fear of the Lord as a virtue—which of course it is—but it is not a craven timorousness, nor is it simply “awe,” as some proposed in the 60s and 70s to soften the blow of the word “fear.”
Proper fear of the Lord is the horror one feels at the thought of hurting, harming or even simply displeasing our beloved, be it a human love or God. This is called filial fear. Another kind of fear is called “servile fear” based more in fear of getting caught or being punished. While this is not altogether a bad thing, filial fear is superior as it speaks of a higher love.
Little girls do not grow up dreaming of hopping from bed to bed and contraception, they dream of a man who will sweep them off their feet, love them forever and having his many children. A cynicism born of the sexual revolution has brought emptiness to the hearts, wombs and lives of far too many modern women. This emptiness and pain can be avoided or redeemed and healed by the love of Christ and adherence to His teachings. The Catholic Church believes in such dreams because God wrote them on the human heart. And there are men who long for such a woman to love and cherish.
Real lovers want to give without reserve in God’s own superabundance creating more hearts and lives to love. Contraception is like kissing through a screen door and real love cannot tolerate obstacles. Contraception breeds selfishness and separation that drives a wedge between husband and wife that kills love. Real lovers want their love to explode into the posterity of future generations for all eternity. This is the kind of passion and fulfillment God wants for His children. Contraception limits what should be boundless. It spits in the face of this glorious passion and love’s true abandon; and that is why it is a sin. It seeks to “tame” love, thus killing it. The Catholic Church is the last bastion on earth of true romance. The modern world has suffocated love and made sex a thing of deadness.
I am thinking of all this because of the recent confrontation between Father Thomas Euteneuer and conservative talk show host Sean Hannity over Hannity’s public dissent on contraception. As Providence would have it, just days before this confrontation I was visiting with Father Euteneuer at the Headquarters of Human Life International discussing various ways to raise the profile of HLI in order to help the mission. Imagine my surprise a few days later when I looked up from my dinner at home to see the face of my host on a “coming up” announcement on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes program.
That confrontation is now history and, in my view, it is a milestone, a breakthrough for the pro-life movement because the evil of contraception is an essential element of the pro-life message. Contraception is the very core of the Culture of Death. With out “The Pill” in the early 60s there would have been no Roe v. Wade in the early 70s.
Until now it has been near impossible to break through the wall of silence the media has in place regarding an intelligent presentation of the Catholic position on birth control and the scandal that so many Catholics reject that teaching. Father Euteneuer, by the Grace of God, unexpectedly broke through that barrier.
What is shocking is that as a leader in American conservatism, Sean Hannity seems to have been blissfully unaware that there is a significant movement in the Catholic Church of people who refer to themselves as “orthodox” Catholics, meaning they accept Church teachings—all of them—not out “blind obedience” as is often charged, but out of love, conviction and principle. Not to mention coming to see the truth of them and agreeing with them through hard life’s experience. Many of these Catholics also refer to themselves, somewhat imprecisely, as “conservative Catholics” mistakenly using the terms “orthodox” and “conservative” interchangeably.
So it was a shocker to hear Sean, whom many of these Catholics may have seen as a champion, behaving in such a hostile way towards a priest presenting Magisterial Church teaching. It was also a shock to hear a professional debater stoop to the red herrings and other tactics Hannity resorted to in attacking the priest, barely letting him speak.
Further, orthodox Catholics had reason to think of Sean as “one of them” judging from this comment in an article by William F. Buckley:
Sean Hannity said that he was himself Catholic
and that he attends a church which on Sundays
is standing room only. He attributes this in part
to God, but mostly to his pastor, who, says
Hannity, is rigorous in his defense of Christian
doctrines, forswearing temptations to truckle
to modernism. (“Churchbound?” December
19, 2003, National Review Online,
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/
buckley200312191325.asp)
I wonder what Sean’s pastor is thinking now. Has he been rigorous in his defense of Humanae Vitae? If so, where was Sean?
But for all this, this is not about Sean Hannity. It is about the crisis of the Church in the West. It is a crisis that this current generation of affluent, educated Catholics can smugly think they “know better” than 2000 years of pastoral wisdom, Divine Revelation and the “expertise in humanity” of the Church of which the Second Vatican Council spoke. (Cf. Pope Paul VI— Address to the United Nations, 5 October 1965)
This is a crisis the Church Herself must answer for one day before the Lord.
The point is not to pick on Sean, who is a good man, albeit mistaken about his faith, but this incident throws into relief the problem of so many Catholics who share his view. The question for Sean and other Catholics, who are under the impression that this teaching is optional, is: If your moral compass is not calibrated to the True North of the Magisterium, what is it set to? From whom do you take direction? What is the authority you have set above that of the Church’s divinely established teaching authority? “Conventional wisdom?” A “climate of opinion?” Or is it a smug attitude of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” following the naïve assumption that the Church is “behind the times” on these questions and needs to catch up with the “modern world?”) If nothing else, any conservative ought to recognize that the “modern world” is a train wreck, due what Pope Paul VI called “a general lowering of morality” that would ensue if contraception became widespread. (Humanae Vitae, No. 17)
In fact, the Church does not need to get into the modern world; the modern world needs to get into the Church if there is to be any true human progress rather than the decline and degradation we have witnessed over the last 40 years.
But it gets worse. Nothing could have vindicated Father Euteneuer’s questioning of the depth of Sean’s faith than remarks he reportedly made on his radio show:
"If that makes me unwanted in the Catholic Church, then I'll have to just call my buddy Jerry Falwell, and Thomas Road Baptist Church, here I come. I will accept that taking this position publicly could result in me being thrown out of the Church. If that's the case and they don't want me, that's fine."
The level of wrong-headedness this statement demonstrates, which is an attitude found in so many modern Catholics, is enough to make one hang one’s head.
No one is “unwanted” in the Catholic Church but this is a tiresome charge often made by those caught up in the ideologies of homosexual activism, feminism, and others who don’t wish to recognize that being Catholic means that we at least try to be in conformity to Christ. It is the first lesson of philosophy 101 that something cannot be and not be at the same time: the law of non-contradiction. Active homosexuality and its promotion, abortion advocacy and contraception all contradict the teachings of Christ as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit mediated through the Pope and Magisterium which Christ promised would be free from error in matters of faith and morals. One cannot be a Pagan and a Catholic simultaneously.
Furthermore, excommunication is not a statement that one is “unwanted” by the Church. On the contrary, it is an act of the Church’s pastoral love to warn a soul that he has strayed from the truth and is in deep water and needs to rethink some things. Being admitted to Communion means that one is in communion with the Church, not subscribing to some other gospel.
Whatever Sean studied in the seminary it clearly wasn’t ecclesiology or sacramental theology if he could so glibly abandon the Eucharist by going to a Protestant church over this matter. Indeed where does he take his cues? With all due respect to Protestants, Catholics do not “church hop” until they find one that suits them. A Catholic may seek out a Catholic parish they prefer, but no church not in communion with the Chair of Peter—the Pope—fulfills a Catholic’s Sunday obligation (with emergency exceptions for some Eastern Orthodox—capital “O”—churches). No Protestant church believes what the Catholic Church believes about the Eucharist. Does Sean believe in transubstantiation and the Real Presence? If so, is he prepared to walk away from the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ over this? It is a chilling thought for any believing Catholic to contemplate.
Why chilling? Consider the following quote from the Second Vatican Council: “Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it.” (Lumen Gentium, No. 14).
The question is, as a Catholic, is Sean a believer? Does he believe what the Church teaches about the Papacy, that Jesus established it when he told Peter “I call you Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church. What you bind on earth is bound in Heaven” (Cf. Matt. 18:18)? Or when He promised the Apostles, “I will send you the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth” (Cf. John 16:13-15) and “He who hears you hears me” (Luke 10:16)?
Obviously, Protestants don’t interpret these verses as the founding of the Papacy and Magisterium, but does Sean? As a “seminary trained” “devout Catholic?” Being a devout Catholic involves a willingness to be taught by the Church, a willingness to change when mistaken, and above all, a willingness to repent. Contraception is a serious sin and to claim to be Catholic and publicly declare otherwise is to give serious scandal.
Many present day conservatives were once liberal and underwent a “conversion” to conservatism because they saw the error of liberalism’s inherent relativism, which rejects objective truth. It is no accident that there is an alliance between believing Christians (derisively referred to as the “Religious Right.”) My “conversion” to political conservatism followed upon a religious conversion, which convinced me of the Truth of the Catholic Faith in which I was raised. In the Hannity/Euteneuer confrontation Sean showed a serious inconsistency in the philosophy in which he makes his living, showing himself, to the dismay of his Catholic fans, to be politically conservative but a liberal—a dissident—Catholic.
I’m a Fox News junkie. I watch Hannity and Colmes nearly every night. When I see Sean on TV I see him as a friend. I agree with him and admire him on most things, but Sean, you’re wrong on this one.
Father Euteneuer is not your enemy. He is not an ideologue but good man and the kind of priest who genuinely cares for souls. Your soul. He has already proved that. He would be a great friend to you from whom you could learn much. He asked to speak with you in 2004, not to argue with you or embarrass you, but out of concern for you. Contraception does real damage and you owe it to yourself to hear him out, because you are a good man who would not wish to spread harm. True friends tell us the truth even when it hurts and it is a wise man that listens to such friends. These opportunities are all too rare in this life and I urge you to avail yourself of his friendship.
So why then did this President take the time and trouble to take the hand of his political enemy, a man who has said, “We have heard a lot about revisionist history from the White House of late in answer to those who question whether there was a real threat from Iraq. But, it is the President who appears to me to be intent on revising history.”
Why would this President show such deference and respect to a man who has suggested that he, the President, has been guilty of impeachable offenses?
The answer is as simple as the humility of this President. He took the hand of Robert Byrd, to help him into his seat, because Byrd is approaching 90 years of age, and this President is respectful of his elders. He took his hand because he needed help, and this President is not the type of person to turn his back on a fellow human being in need. He took his hand as an act of friendship, because this President does not take his politics personally. He understands that his political enemies are not his personal enemies.
St. Joseph, Pray for Me
St. Francis, Pray for Me
St. John Bosco, Pray for Me
St. Michael the Archangel, Pray for Me
St. Martin de Porres, Pray for Me
Blessed Margaret, Pray for Me
St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pray for Me
Padre Pio, Pray for Me
St. Therese, Pray for Me
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Pray for Me
Pope John Paul II, Pray for Me
Pope Pius XII, Pray for Me
