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Truths about Palestine |
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DEVOTIONAL |
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Right to buy and burn |
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By Terry Mattingly |
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THE deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are dangerous times for believers whose convictions steer them into Afghanistan.
A Taliban blandly leader told the press: "They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all."
If the gunmen had only waited a few weeks, they could have claimed that their victims were linked to a powerful global conspiracy to burn Korans.
That's the kind of statement that the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was worried about when he -- with countless other evangelicals -- urged the Rev. Terry Jones to cancel his "International Burn a Koran Day" event on Sept. 11. The leader of the tiny Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., did precisely that, but not before forcing religious and political leaders to wrestle with agonizing First Amendment issues.
"The behaviour of this church is not Christian. I cannot imagine Christ burning any religious texts," argued the Rev. Richard Land, in an online Washington Post forum. "This behavior is unfortunately one of the prices we pay for living in a free society with freedom of speech and freedom of expression, even when it is odious and reprehensible."
A protest of this kind would "besmirch the reputation of our Savior, and that makes it blasphemy," he said. The whole idea was "appalling, disgusting and brainless."
The bonfire would have made life more dangerous for missionaries, human-rights activists, diplomats and American soldiers. Those flames also would have made life much more dangerous for Christian converts and members of other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim lands.
Nevertheless, these clergy and politicos had to wrestle with the fact that Jones had every right to buy copies of the Koran and, after planning a fire small enough to wink at local laws, strike a match.
After all, this would, have been another act of painful symbolic speech.
Did the American Nazis have a constitutional right to march in Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb that was home to numerous Holocaust survivors? Yes, and demonstrators in the Reagan White House era burned the American flag. Muslims overseas have burned copies of the novel, "The Satanic Verses," by Salman Rushdie, and Bibles, too.
How many times have followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., waved their lurid signs -- "God Hates the U.S.A." is one of the mildest -- at funerals for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? On Sept. 11, the Westboro Baptist Church crew burned a Koran and an American flag at the same time. For once, most journalists elected to look the other way.
In the case of Jones and his church in Gainesville, the Council on American-Islamic Relations decided that the timing of his Koran travesty was simply too hot to ignore. Even though the group regularly ignores the videos that it receives of people burning, shooting or ripping apart Islam's holy book, CAIR decided to issue a July 19 press release announcing its own protest of "International Burn a Koran Day." The group handed out free copies of the Koran.
The word was officially out and the media storm kept growing as angry reactions -- from Arab streets to the White House -- rolled into the world's newsrooms.
Lost in the din were the quiet, measured words of many religious leaders who tried to walk a knife's edge of logic in their public statements.
For starters, they had to note the painful fact that the Dove World Outreach Center was an independent Pentecostal congregation and its members were responsible to no higher religious authority than their own pastor. Thus, there was no one who could stop this event, other than public officials who, in order to do so, would have had to trample the rights of Jones and his flock.
The bottom line: Blasphemy is not illegal in the United States of America.
As the clock ticked down, Land stressed that the "only thing more dangerous than what this pastor is doing would be to allow the government to interfere. This would set a terrible precedent and would diminish all our First Amendment rights. The best way to combat this is to exercise our free speech right to condemn what he is doing in the simplest way and most direct terms." |
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Witnessing Christ in a Buddhist country |
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By Nou Achhekvichetra |
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By Nou Achhekvichetra, Phnom Penh
Nou Achhekvichetra, a Catholic youth leader, was one of 350 young Cambodians who attended the recent National Youth Synod in Battambang.
In this commentary, he talks about the meeting and the challenges Cambodian Catholics face in witnessing their faith in a predominantly Buddhist country.
Achhekvichetra, who is in his early 20s, is coordinator of the youth commission of Phnom Penh apostolic vicariate.
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I am the Witness of Jesus Christ in Society was the theme of the National Youth Synod held Aug. 23-27. This was the fourth time the synod, which is held every three years, has been organized.
It was a good opportunity for young Cambodian Catholics across the country to meet one another.
It was really awesome to see young Catholics make a commitment and say they are ready to be "a witness of Jesus Christ in society."
We want to strengthen the faith of our young Catholics and those who are studying catechism. We know that nowadays young people are easily lured by materialism and influenced by the cultures and customs of other countries.
Sometimes Catholics don't go to church. Some go to church out of duty but they don't know why they go for Mass every Sunday. We have to understand and appreciate our faith better if we are to be the "light" of the world.
For several days, 350 youths shared their experiences and discussed how to be witnesses for Jesus Christ in society.
This is not easy because Cambodia is a Buddhist country. There are only about 20,000 Catholics in a population of more than 14 million.
In every difficult situation, we have Christ as our model and our salvation. It is with faith that we believe he gives us the Holy Spirit to accompany us and protect us. So then why should we fear?
To be a witness for Christ does not mean advertising him on radio, television or in newspapers. We have to do it through our actions. We must not only proclaim Christ but we must also love others as we love ourselves, attend Mass and pray always.
Synod participants talked about being the "salt" and "light" of the world. Christ's light is always with us but we have to be aware of this reality.
Sometimes we think we are useless but Jesus tells us we are children of God. So we must not be afraid, regardless of whether we are poor, rich, healthy or ugly. Our lives are important.
We must manifest the "salt" and "light' in us by caring for the people around us, especially the poor.
Finally to be witnesses of Christ, we have to be united.
The Church in Cambodia is divided into ethnic Khmer and Vietnamese Catholics and sometimes there are tensions. But faith is not divisive.
If we want to say that we believe in Jesus Christ, we have to love each other.
To proclaim the good news is not only talking about it but living it out because I am sure that those who want to know about Christ will be looking at our actions closely. |
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Hesitant father, willing son |
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By Anonymous |
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EVERY Sunday afternoon, after the morning service at the church, the Pastor and his eleven year old son would go out into their town and hand out Gospel Tracts.
This particular Sunday afternoon, as it came time for the Pastor and his son to go to the streets with their tracts, it was very cold outside, as well as pouring rain.
The boy bundled up in his warmest and driest clothes and said, 'OK, dad, I'm ready.'
His Pastor-dad asked, 'Ready for what?'
'Dad, it's time we gather our tracts together and go out.'
Dad responds, 'Son, it's very cold outside and it's pouring rain.'
The boy gives his dad a surprised look, asking, 'But Dad, aren't people still going to Hell, even though it's raining?'
Dad answers, 'Son, I am not going out in this weather.'
Despondently, the boy asks, 'Dad, can I go? Please?'
His father hesitated for a moment then said, 'Son, you can go. Here are the tracts, be careful son.'
'Thanks Dad!'
And with that, he was off and out into the rain. This eleven year old boy walked the streets of the town going door to door and handing everybody he met in the street a Gospel Tract .
After two hours of walking in the rain, he was soaking, bone-chilled wet and down to his VERY LAST TRACT. He stopped on a corner and looked for someone to hand a tract to, but the streets were totally deserted.
Then he turned toward the first home he saw and started up the sidewalk to the front door and rang the door bell. He rang the bell, but nobody answered.
He rang it again and again, but still no one answered. He waited but still no answer.
Finally, this eleven year old trooper turned to leave, but something stopped him.
Again, he turned to the door and rang the bell and knocked loudly on the door with his fist. He waited, something holding him there on the front porch!
He rang again and this time the door slowly opened.
Standing in the doorway was a very sad-looking elderly lady. She softly asked, 'What can I do for you, son?' With radiant eyes and a smile that lit up her world, this little boy said, 'Ma'am, I'm sorry if I disturbed you, but I just want to tell you that * JESUS REALLY DOES LOVE YOU * and I came to give you my very last Gospel Tract which will tell you all about JESUS and His great LOVE.'
With that, he handed her his last tract and turned to leave.
She called to him as he departed. 'Thank you, son! And God Bless You!'
Well, the following Sunday morning in church Pastor Dad was in the pulpit. As the service began, he asked, 'Does anybody have testimony or want to say anything?'
Slowly, in the back row of the church, an elderly lady stood to her feet.
As she began to speak, a look of glorious radiance came from her face, 'No one in this church knows me. I've never been here before. You see, before last Sunday I was not a Christian. My husband passed on some time ago, leaving me totally alone in this world. Last Sunday, being a particularly cold and rainy day, it was even more so in my heart that I came to the end of the line where I no longer had any hope or will to live.
So I took a rope and a chair and ascended the stairway into the attic of my home. I fastened the rope securely to a rafter in the roof, then stood on the chair and fastened the other end of the rope around my neck. Standing on that chair, so lonely and broken-hearted I was about to leap off, when suddenly the loud ringing of my doorbell downstairs startled me. I thought, 'I'll wait a minute, and whoever it is will go away.'
I waited and waited, but the ringing doorbell seemed to get louder and more insistent, and then the person ringing also started knocking loudly...
I thought to myself again, 'Who on earth could this be? Nobody ever rings my bell or comes to see me.' I loosened the rope from my neck and started for the front door, all the while the bell rang louder and louder.
When I opened the door and looked I could hardly believe my eyes, for there on my front porch was the most radiant and angelic little boy I had ever seen in my life. His SMILE, oh, I could never describe it to you!
The words that came from his mouth caused my heart that had long been dead, TO LEAP TO LIFE as he exclaimed with a cherub-like voice, 'Ma'am, I just came to tell you that JESUS REALLY DOES LOVE YOU.' Then he gave me this Gospel Tract that I now hold in my hand.
As the little angel disappeared back out into the cold and rain, I closed my door and read slowly every word of this Gospel Tract. Then I went up to my attic to get my rope and chair. I wouldn't need them anymore.
You see-- I am now a Happy Child of the KING. Since the address of your church was on the back of this Gospel Tract, I have come here to personally say THANK YOU to God's little angel who came just in the nick of time and by so doing, spared my soul from an eternity in hell.'
There was not a dry eye in the church. And as shouts of praise and honour to THE KING resounded off the very rafters of the building, Pastor Dad descended from the pulpit to the front pew where the little angel was seated..
He took his son in his arms and sobbed uncontrollably.
Probably no church has had a more glorious moment, and probably this universe has never seen a Papa that was more filled with love & honour for his son... Except for One. |
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Way to love |
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By Terry Mattingly |
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AFTER her destructive affairs with married men, after the death of her first child, after an accident left her infant son brain-damaged, after the near-fatal strokes that struck months after her 1964 Oscar win for "Hud," actress Patricia Neal faced yet another personal crisis that left her on the verge of collapse.
While her marriage to British writer Roald Dahl, the author of children's classics such as "James and Giant Peach," had long been troubled, Neal was shattered when she learned he was having an affair with one of her friends. They divorced in 1983.
In her 1988 memoir, "As I Am," Neal admitted: "Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison."
That quotation captured the tone of the tributes published after Neal passed away on Aug. 8 at the age of 84. Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in honor of the Tony Award winner and critics sang the praises of one of Hollywood's ultimate survivors, an actress who literally learned to walk and talk again before returning to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination.
But Neal's story contained angels as well as demons. This is obvious in the overlooked passages in "As I Am" that described her conversion to Catholicism and her visits to the cloister of Regina Laudis (Queen of Praise) Abbey in Bethlehem, Conn., where the sisters helped her confess her sorrows and rage.
Finally, the abbess suggested that Neal move into the abbey for a month.
"Lady Abbess," said Neal, "I don't want to join up, you understand?"
The abbess sighed and said, "Believe me, we don't want you to, either. I don't think we could take it for more than a month."
As she arrived, Neal stubbed out the "last cigarette I would ever smoke."
A priest gave her a blessing and, she recalled, "I felt his cross blaze into my forehead... I traded my street clothes for the black dress of the postulant and scrubbed off my makeup. I removed the rings from my fingers and covered my hair with a black scarf. I looked at the bare wooden walls of my cell... I did not live the exact life of a postulant, but I did my best."
Neal went to church on time, followed the abbey's prayer regime, baked bread, remained silent during meals and, with the help of a spiritual director, began writing the journal that evolved into "As I Am."
Behind closed doors, she unleashed her fury. At one point she screamed so many curses at her counselor that the sister finally cursed right back, urging Neal to be honest about her own faults and mistakes.
The actress finally voiced her secret pain. Monsignor Jim Lisante of Diocese of Rockville Centre (New York) later discussed with Neal the tragedies of her life and asked if there was any one event that she would change.
"She said, 'Forty years ago I became involved with the actor Gary Cooper, and by him I became pregnant. As he was a married man and I was young in Hollywood and not wanting to ruin my career, we chose to have the baby aborted," wrote Lisante, at the Creative Minority Report website. "She said, 'Father, alone in the night for over 40 years, I have cried for my child. And if there is one thing I wish I had the courage to do over in my life, I wish I had the courage to have that baby."
Several of the obituaries for Neal -- including the New York Times feature -- mentioned this episode in the context of her pain and regret. The Washington Post noted that late in life "she suffered periods of depression and suicidal thoughts before finding peace as a Catholic convert."
In the end, Neal decided that, "God was using my life far beyond any merit of my own making" allowing her to reach out to those who were suffering. "I learned that my damaged brain cannot reclaim what is dead. It has to create totally new pathways that allowed me to make choices I would never have made had I not suffered that stroke -- choices that an infallible voice assures me will be blessed."
One final lesson from the abbess, wrote Neal, stood out: "There is a way to love that remains after everything else is taken from us." |
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Love defined |
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By Greg Laurie |
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"If you love me, obey my commandments. "
— John 14:15
What is love? The Beatles recorded the classic song on the subject, "All You Need Is Love," and then they broke up and sued each other. Various philosophers have expressed opinions on love as well. Plato said that love is a serious mental disease. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was more optimistic on the subject, said, "Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness." Another said, "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
We are given probably the greatest definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
The Bible clearly tells us that God is love. We don't have a greater example of love than what we have in God's showing His love for us. And we find the definitive statement on love in John 3:16: "For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." So how should we respond? We ought to love Him back.
We can talk all day about love and how much we love God. We can sing about our love for God. We can speak about our love for God. But probably the best way to show our love for Him is by what we do. Jesus said, "If you love me, obey my commandments" (John 14:15). |
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Cafetaria Catholicism |
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By Terry Mattingly |
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TWO weeks ago, the Sunday Boston Globe magazine ran an essay -- not a news story, I admit -- that I have been thinking about ever since. It was called "What I Believe" and it was written by Charles Pierce, a staff writer at the publication.
This long essay covers a lot of territory and it's possible to criticize it -- either positive criticism or negative criticism -- in several different ways. Most of all, it is a stunningly American look at the earthquakes that have rocked the Catholic Church in the decades after Vatican II and Woodstock.
The key is that Pierce believes that the Catholic hierarchy's claims to unique religious authority are gone. Period. Thus, consider these two important passages in the piece, as he explains that the Catholic Church in which he worships is his alone. He has a personal church and, he states clearly, he does not need a personal Savior:
In the church of my youth, with the priests reciting incomprehensible Latin, their backs to the people, walled off by an altar rail and two millenniums' worth of imperial design, the purple always came out at Advent and at Lent. It was the color of penance, we were told. And so it is, and penitence begins within, in one mind and one soul and in what the nuns used to call an informed conscience. That's where my Catholicism is now. It is a penitential faith. That's where you can look for it. It is possible, I have come to realize, that I've grown up to become an anti-Catholic Catholic.
And then the passage that is being quoted most often:
The Vatican can beg. It can plead. But it can no longer demand.
Which brings me to the most fundamental rule of my Catholicism -- nobody gets to tell me that I'm not a Catholic.
Those of my fellow Catholics who remain loyal to the institutional structure of the Church don't get to do so. People who talk glibly of "cafeteria Catholicism" don't get to do so. People who seek to coin Catholic doctrine into political advantage -- be they left or right -- don't get to do so. No priest gets to do so, and no bishop, either, and that especially means the bishop of Rome himself. No pope can tell me I'm not a Catholic.
Now, it is possible to see this article only through the lens of Catholic faith, practice and doctrine. If you want to see critiques of that kind, they are easy to find. You can start by clicking here and heading over to the conservative site CatholicCulture.org, where you can find this quick and easy linkage between Pierce's faith and, surprise, his employer:
... (For) decades the Globe has operated on the assumption that the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic. At the opening of his article, Pierce cheerfully identifies himself as an "anti-Catholic Catholic." Thus he qualifies perfectly as the man who will tell Globe readers what they should believe...
Nobody can tell Charles Pierce that he's not a Catholic. Nor can anyone tell him what the Catholic Church teaches. The Church teaches what Pierce wants it to teach. And he believes it all.
Or you can read a blunt post on this topic by Rod Dreher, who, it must be noted, made the difficult and painful choice to leave the Catholic Church in a crisis of conscience. If one does not believe all the claims of the Catholic Church, Dreher would say, one should have the integrity not take its vows and not to receive its Sacraments.
One should, in other words, make a serious, informed decision and then hit the exit door. Thus, Dreher writes:
Hey Charles -- you're not a Catholic! Man up and admit it. You are a Catholic by birth and cultural identification, but you have ceased to believe as Catholicism teaches. Why do you lack the courage to be what you are: a non-Catholic Christian? ... A Catholicism in which you have no obligation at all to believe what the Church authoritatively teaches, or to act as it prescribes, is not Catholicism at all. At all. It's one thing to say that you struggle to accept this teaching of the church intellectually, or have trouble living that teaching out. Everyone does, even the saints. But it's entirely another thing to say you don't have to try, and that that's okay, because you are your own pope. If you don't believe this stuff, but like to come by the church for the music, or the camaraderie, okay, fine -- that's between you and your priest, and God. But to reject the Church's authority entirely, as Pierce does, but to still call yourself a Catholic in good standing, is either hypocrisy, or insanity -- the insanity of the solipsist.
In other words, Pierce is a congregationalist in a one-man congregation, which is a very American thing to be.
There are plenty of Baptists like that and, obviously, scores of Unitarians. This was the stance of a devout Episcopalian I once interviewed -- head of the vestry at the church right behind the U.S. Supreme Court -- who was also an atheist. He took his confirmation vows with his intellectual fingers crossed and, Sunday after Sunday, said the creed while redefining the words inside his head. People do things like that and, in his parish, that was what being an Episcopalian was all about.
But the Globe essay would not have stuck in my head like a bad disco tune (and I would not be writing this post) if I didn't think there was a religion-news angle to this, something linked to what GetReligion is all about.
You see, elsewhere in his essay, Piece writes about some of the details of the current crisis in Catholic sanctuaries in this land and elsewhere and then he says:
Church attendance in the United States is down.
A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, released in April 2009, found that one in 10 US adults has left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic -- with Catholicism having had the largest net loss in members of all the major religious groups in the United States. About half of those who departed and now identify themselves as "unaffiliated" left the church because of its views on abortion, homosexuality, and birth control. (In 2009, the American Religious Identification Survey by Hartford's Trinity College found that, between 1990 and 2008, the percentage of people in Massachusetts who identified themselves as Catholic dropped to 39 per cent from 54 per cent.) The sexual-abuse scandal, then, erupted within a church that already was struggling with serious demographic pressures.
The implication is that if the Catholic Church would only modernize on these kinds of social issues, these people would not leave and, thus, the church would enter a new era growth and prosperity. New, progressive Christians and young people would flock into the pews.
Right. Right. I hear the voices of the traditional Catholics out there who have a quick response to that argument: "Yeah, just like the Episcopal Church is growing (surf in this file) and all of the other liberal Protestant churches."
Many traditional Catholics are just as sure that their pews would be full, once again, if only the Pierces of this world would pack up and leave. They note the vitality and growth of a few conservative Catholic orders and the number of men seeking the priesthood in zip codes served by more traditional seminaries and bishops.
But, you see, that's only half the story, too. Neither side of that debate seems to want to talk about all of the facts. There are ghosts and skeletons in Catholic closets on the left and the right. This era of sweeping changes --think birthrates, the rise of the Sunbelt, suburbanization, immigration and a host of other factual changes -- is more complex than that.
At the same time, however, I worry that many journalists think that Pierce's view is accurate in terms of history, that many journalists truly believe that Catholics -- to name one example -- truly do not need to go to confession and struggle to live out the teachings of their faith in order to remain practicing Catholics in the sacramental meaning of that word. In other words, the Catholic Church gets to define the borders of the Catholic Church (ditto for the Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians and others).
Thus, it would help if the Globe ran another piece by another Catholic in the newsroom -- the same placement, the same length -- entitled, "What My Church Teaches and Why I Believe It."
Surely there are Catholics in that newsroom who would welcome the chance to write that essay?
Surely the Globe newsroom is diverse enough for that to happen? Or was Pierce actually speaking for his newspaper, as well as for himself? (Courtesy: www.getreligion.org) |
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