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Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

In #55 of Sister Faustina Kowalska’s Diary she received spiritual counsel from Father Adrasz, S.J.  This is one of Father’s instructions for St. Faustina:

“Let God push your boat out into the deep waters, toward the unfathomable depths of the interior life.” 

 

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shallow water

 

 

 

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deep water

 

Are we afraid to let Jesus into the deep depths of our interior life?  Do we allow God into our lives enough so He can change us?    So the Lord is able to transform each of us into better beings?  Do we stop our boat from entering into deep waters?  Do we put limits on what we will allow God to do in each of our lives?  Do we put a shield up because we are afraid to change?

I pray, talk to God, trust in the Lord’s will for me more than I used to but. . . I find myself asking whether I allow God into the deep waters of my soul.  Do I only allow God to enter the shallow depths of my interior self?  Do I stop God from pushing my boat into deep waters?  I am guarded to a certain degree because of past events which happened in my life.  While I trust in God more than I used to I know that I need to allow Him enter the deepest depths of my soul.  I need to not push back and stop my boat from entering deeper waters.  God Bless.

 

 

H/T for images: amustard.com

integrateddigitalpublishing 

 

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The trustees have chosen a new president to succeed Fr. Terence Henry at Franciscan University of Steubenville.  His name is Father Sean Sheridan.  He has a strong legal background which will help in the fight against the unjust HHS mandate which does not respect conscience rights or citizens’ religious liberty.

“I am honored to serve as the next president of Franciscan University,” Father Sheridan said in a statement. “It is inspiring and truly humbling for me to be here at Franciscan University with the students who are pouring their hearts into their education and their prayer life, falling in love with God and the Church and striving to become saints.”

Here is a little bit about Father Sheridan’s credentials:

Father Sheridan entered the Franciscan Third Order Regular in 2000, leaving behind a career as an attorney focused on health-care litigation. He made his solemn profession of vows in 2005 and was ordained to the priesthood the following year. Father Sheridan continued his legal education in the Church, earning a doctorate in canon law from Catholic University of America in 2009. He wrote his dissertation addressing seven challenges — and potential solutions — to implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II’s 1992 apostolic constitution for Catholic higher education.

Father Sheridan served as an assistant professor of canon law at CUA from 2009 until last fall, when he became a professor in Franciscan University’s theology department.

“He’s got the right mix of academic, pastoral and professional experience,” Hernon said. “He’s got the mission of the university in his heart, and he wears it on his sleeve. We know he’s going to continue to see how the university can respond to the call St. Francis received from Christ, to ‘Go, rebuild my Church.’”

We have a story of authentic courage of someone who has stuck by their beliefs even among pressure in these ever changing times of what our culture deems as acceptable.  Chris Broussard is the ESPN analyst who was asked to comment on on the NBA basketball player Jason Collins who announced that he is gay for all the world to hear.  Broussard said that homosexuality is a sin. He went onto say:

“If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever that may be,” including heterosexual sex outside of marriage, you are “walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”

Instead of being respectful and tolerant of his point of view some people have taken to twitter to call for ESPN to fire Chris Broussard.

It looks like the Southern Poverty Law Center has some explaining to do.  It appears that the SPLC influenced a domestic terrorist attack by labeling the Family Research Council as a “hate” group.  Seeing this information on the SPLC’s website spurred Floyd Lee Corkins to shoot at innocent workers at the Washington-based Family Research Center. Corkins has pleaded guilty to a charge of domestic terrorism and will be charged in June. Lives were spared as a result of the heroic actions of Leonardo Johnson, the security guard/building manager. 

Apparently religious freedom for Christians in the military will not be tolerated.  Here our military men and women are fighting to protect our freedoms which are outlined in the Constitution and yet their rights won’t be protected while serving.  Geesh! This is disgraceful. Totally unconscionable!  

From ChristianPost: 

President Obama’s new “religious tolerance” consultant to the Pentagon, Mikey Weinstein, wants Christian military service members who openly talk about their faith in uniform to be charged with treason, which is a crime punishable by death according to military law.

By employing his consulting services, and as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama is effectively endorsing Weinstein’s recently voiced and written views such as: “Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized [sic] and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

President Obama is someone who claims that he is a Christian.  If he is a Christian why would he employ a “religious tolerant” consultant that calls Christians “monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans”?  By “fundamentalist” does Weinstein mean, actually follows the Bible and adheres to timeless biblical truths?  So I guess he thinks modernism and moral relativism “true Christianity”?  This administration has been the most hostile to Christians (traditional Christians) in recent modern history.  This is not only intolerance but is persecutory in nature. And some people wonder why we a number of say that Obama is shredding the Constitution. It is obvious that he has no respect for the Constitution or citizens’ rights.  He acts as if he were king.  I do pray for his conversion of heart and soul.  

Israeli President Shimon Perez has invited Pope Francis to visit Israel.  Pope Francis has accepted the invitation “with willingness and joy” .  No date has been set for the visit. 

A Vatican statement said they discussed prospects for a resumption of negotiations for a solution that would respect “the legitimate aspirations of the two Peoples, thus decisively contributing to the peace and stability of the region.”

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It wasn’t reported until recently, but about a month ago Muslims attacked Christians at St. Mark Cathedral in Egypt after a funeral Mass.  How dare Muslims show such utter disrespect during a most Holy occasion as a funeral Mass. The persecution and slaying of Christians breaks my heart.  The worldwide Islamization and the intolerance, persecution, and killing of people who believe in other faiths by Muslims has got to stop.  And Western governments thought Mubarek was bad?  Now there is a president in Egypt, Morsi, who is apart of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The attacks have progressively gotten worse. The U.S. government needs to stop giving Egypt aid of any kind, especially money.  The West should not have messed in the internal affairs of Egypt’s government because now we have a much bigger mess on our hands.  My prayers go out to all the Christians’ safety as they struggle while living in a hostile environment.

ChristianPost:

Coptic Christians attending a funeral service Sunday for four Copts killed two days earlier in an anti-Christian rampage were in turn attacked themselves by at least 200 Muslim rioters.

The incident, which started with a few dozen men pelting the mourners with stones, quickly escalated into a massive attack against Christians at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia area of Cairo involving firearms, flash-bang grenades, tear gas, fire bombs and other improvised weapons, besides cars set ablaze.

A Morning Star News reporter observed that police took more than an hour to respond, and when they arrived, they did nothing to stop the attack. Instead, most stood and watched men throw rocks at the Christians gathered at the gates of the cathedral compound or hurl stones over walls at the Christians trapped inside.

 

From the Catholic Herald:

Hundreds of Egyptian Christians were besieged inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral last night after a mob, reportedly with the help of security forces, launched an attack on worshippers.

One person died and 84 were injured during the attack, which began after a funeral mass for five Copts who were killed in sectarian violence on Saturday, in which a Muslim man also died.

Wael Eskandar, an Egyptian blogger at the funeral, said he saw people being showered with broken bottles from the roof of a block of flats. After being attacked, he said, the people “started racing out of the side street and destroying the nearby cars”.

 

Here is another video which shows Christians being attacked as police stand by.

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I feel a bit of umbrage when someone who hasn’t experienced problems with female health issues makes the assertion that the pill,  ”contraception for women were NEVER designed to improve their health.”   This gives the implication that the pill can never be used to help with more severe female health issues when that isn’t the case.  As a female who has severe endometriosis I have experienced the good of the “pill”, it helping with me severe pain.  Maybe I’m being a little touchy on this subject but it is so disappointing when men or women who have had no experience in this area, as far as experiencing major female problems, insinuate or claim that the “pill” can never improve your health.  Obviously the intention of the creator of the “pill” and other contraceptives was to prevent conception.  The pill was designed particularly for this purpose.  With the exception of the above issue which ruffled my feathers Fr. Jason Smith at Biltrix wrote a great post called What Every Married Couple Should Know About the Truth of Sex and the Lie of Contraception which I encourage everyone to read.

Last year when I struggled in making a decision of whether it was licit to take birth control pills if it was for a severe health condition I wrote a post called Women’s Health, Conscience, and Humanae Vitae asking for people’s’ opinions and advice on the matter.  Unfortunately, in the end “the pill” didn’t help and I needed a hysterectomy.  When taking the “pill” for a medical condition the woman needs to weigh the risks of the side effects with the need to take the pill for the medical condition.  There are some serious side effects that can occur when taking the ” pill” – blood clots in legs and brains and breast cancer – but then again, every medicine has side effects so women just need to make informed decisions.  Now, there may be better health care options to treat certain female conditions which are more aligned with Catholic teaching but I’m not sure whether there is or not.

I will leave you with a quote from the encyclical Humanae Vitae:

15. On the other hand, the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever. (19)

So taking the “pill” for therapeutic reasons is NOT illicit and is in line with teachings of the Catholic Church.

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While talking about Lent today I thought, “What is the meaning of Lent and when did it start?”. Since Kevin didn’t know I looked the term Lent up on the internet and what I found was quite interesting.  The word “Lent” originally simply meant the spring season.  It was then used to translate the Latin term Quadragesima which means “forty days” or more literally “fortieth day” and has been used from the time of the Anglo-Saxon period.  Quadragesima was the Latin rendering for the Greek name for what we now call Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste).

As I continued to read about Lent on the New Advent Catholic site I noticed that from the time of Eusebius and St. Irenaeus to St. Athanasius to the time of St. Gregory in the 6th century there was a no consensus on whether Lent would last forty days or a shorter period of time.  There was also no consensus on the type and timing of fasting among the Church Fathers during this period of time.  At the time of St. Gregory in Rome there were six weeks and six days per week that people fasted, which equaled thirty-six days of fasting.  The medieval writers continued this tradition and described the thirty-six day period, one tenth of three hundred sixty-five days, as spiritual tithing. It wasn’t until a later date that Lent as being a total of forty days starting from Ash Wednesday came into fruition.  This makes perfect sense since the Latin term Quadragesima means “forty days”.

“Some of the Fathers as early as the fifth century supported the view that this forty days’ fast was of Apostolic institution. For example, St. Leo (d. 461) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may “fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days” — ut apostolica institutio quadraginta dierum jejuniis impleatur (P.L., LIV, 633), and the historian Socrates (d. 433) and St. Jerome (d. 420) use similar language (P.G., LXVII, 633; P.L., XXII, 475).”

But there was such a wide spectrum of practices regarding Lent and Easter during the first three centuries that the modern scholars nearly unanimously reject the view by some of the Fathers that the forty days fast was of Apostolic origin.  But could the forty day period have been a revival from time of the Apostles? Were the Apostles following Jesus’ example of prayer and fasting in the desert for forty days?

 

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In “Song of the Sparrows” Father Murray Bodo, O.F.M. talks about his vows and the significance they make to him as a Franciscan Friar. While Father says that his vows should be a commitment to grow into a new in Christ I believe that as children of God we are all called to grow into new persons in Christ. While priests may be called to this commitment to manifest itself in a more profound way we are each called to transform ourselves to be like Christ. Vows or no vows it is every person’s fundamental call to grow in the Lord. God Bless.

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Apparently there has been some hullabaloo about news sites claiming that Pope Francis as Cardinal Bergoglio endorsed civil unions back in 2010. That’s a bunch of hooey. According to one of the Pope’s confidants Francis was faced with gay “marriage” being thrust upon citizens in Argentina so he offered the lesser of two evils as to have further discussion on the matter. It is the same when voting for a piece of legislation. Canon law allows for the politician voting for the legislation that is the lesser of two evils when there is no good option.

Woites’s statements contradict a New York Times article published yesterday stating, “Faced with the near certain passage of the gay marriage bill, Cardinal Bergoglio offered the civil union compromise as the ‘lesser of two evils,’ said Sergio Rubin, his authorized biographer. ‘He wagered on a position of greater dialogue with society.’”

Here is the article http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bergoglio-didnt-suggest-endorsing-homosexual-civil-unions-in-2010-says-conf

Fr. Orsi at Ave Maria is taking bishops to task for being unwilling to refuse Holy Communion to politicians who are in grave sin those who support abortion and euthanasia.  I’d add being in support of same-sex marriage to the list. Both Biden and Pelosi received Communion at Pope Francis’ installation mass. These type of politicians have been obstinate for so long and the bishops’ pastoral approach hasn’t worked over a lengthy period of time that a more visible act of standing for the faith and against scandal is necessary.  Here is a bit of what Fr. Orsi has to say:

Politicians such as Biden and Pelosi have been stubborn and contumacious in their pro-abortion policies and in presenting themselves for reception of the Eucharist. They know that the American bishops, for the most part, prefer a “pastoral approach,” which means basically let’s talk to them and help them to see the error of their ways. It has not worked, and there is no indication that it will. The topic of this essay is proof enough! They also know that Catholic priests are instructed not to cause a scene on the Communion line and that the person be permitted to receive. Thus, they opt to take advantage of these charitable loopholes.

There is a solution and perhaps some hope for stronger enforcement of Church policy on offending pols. The Vatican should clearly state that politicians who promote a culture of death, abortion, and euthanasia, are subject to excommunication by their bishop. Pope-Emeritus  Benedict XVI  made an unofficial statement on a trip to Mexico, in 2007, stating  that excommunication for pro choice legislators was not arbitrary and is part of canon law.  This would strengthen Canon 915 and some bishops’ backbones.

It is well known that Pope Francis forbade pro- choice politicians from receiving Holy Communion in his diocese, in Argentina.  Perhaps the new Pope can move this project along?

By the bishops refusing to take strong action, such as excommunication, politicians will continue their “in your face” attitude toward the church and her leaders. Such a failure will also continue to allow Catholics and people of good will to be scandalized. Even worse, it gives the impression that others may follow the behavior of wayward  politicians with impunity.

Biden and Pelosi only did at the Vatican what they have been allowed to do at home.  As the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonheoffer stated so well, dear bishops;  Not to act is to act!

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ave-maria-law-priest-takes-bishops-to-task-for-failing-to-deny-communion-to?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=80c9604d99-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines_03_20_2013&utm_medium=email

Dang those sequester cuts. Bang. Bop. That hurts… Wait!!! Hold on… stop listening to the MSM meme. Were there really cuts to government agencies because of the sequester? To Find out you can visit The Sequester Lies: Where are the Republicans? at Conservative Hideout. It’s all laid out neatly in a graph.

The Conservative Lady has a post titled A New “Most Dangerous” Man in America?   This person is a mayor of a major city but he has much influence over national politics.  He is a radical who wants to change (er take away) your rights using force.  He is not only against illegal guns but is also against legal guns.

1CatholicSalmon has a good post called Palm Sunday – the day after tomorrow, and Holy Week begins. Doesn’t it seem like Lent has flown by? Hard to believe it’s already almost one day before Holy Week begins.

Biltrix has a great post called Father, Forgive Them!  Fr. Jason Smith explains about having the urge to throw away his anger toward Judas betrayal when he hears the words ”Father forgive them.”  This had me questioning, should we really be angry at Judas? Wasn’t he apart of God’s divine plan? An essential part? Without Judas would Jesus have died to save our sins? Possibly…. but since this is what happened in God’s divine plan to save all of humanity from sin wouldn’t giving thanks to Judas be more appropriate?  We all sin and whether the sin be big or small if we ask for forgiveness God will grant His mercy and forgive us. For this reason and with there being conflicting accounts of Judas’ death  I do believe that it is possible that Judas repented before his death. This would mean that Judas would have been forgiven by God just as the rest of us are forgiven when we repent in Reconciliation.

 

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Reblogged from theraineyview:

In the early 1990s, someone who was a Christian but not a Catholic told me that John Paul II was the third-to-last Pope.

It worried me,though I couldn't understand my anxiety. After all, I didn't believe any of it, so what did it matter to me?

It turned out it came from a prophecy some say was written by St. Malachy in the 12th Century -- but some say it wasn't.

Read more… 309 more words

I just recently became aware of the prophecies of St. Malachy via Christopher at Conservative Perspective and honestly didn't know much about them or there authenticity. But this sheds some more light on St. Malachy and the one specific prophecy which claims the next to last prophecy of the popes which refers to Pope Benedict. That would mean that the last pope would be whoever is the next pope. It looks like there are some holes in the prophecy or some things that cast doubt about the legitimacy of the prophecy (ies). But the prophecies may still be true.

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