Playing politics with the global war on Christians

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Christina - - -
To: Donald - - -
Sent: Thursday, 13 September 2012, 3:05
Subject: Fw: CathNews--National curriculum at risk/Asian gender selection/Abbott's low-key Catholicism  

Dear Don,  Greetings from Down Under where we are at present welcoming lovely Spring weather. Many thanks for all your inspiring emails. I am forwarding this Cath News bulletin as it has an interesting article about the attack on Latroun and the general situation for minority groups in Israel. . . . Chris. --- On Wed, 12/9/12, Church Resources <database@churchresources.com.au> wrote:

  http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=33152

CathNews website - CathNews is a service of Church Resources. It is a daily news service with prayer, meditation and Catholic website reviews. It is the most visited Catholic website in Australia, providing a mix of news, opinions, features and prayer updated daily. The newsletter is available free of charge by email. As of September 2010, there were more than 157,000 email subscribers and almost 160,000 unique visits to the site every month. 

Playing politics with the global war on Christians
Published: September 11, 2012

Most people, most of the time, are fundamentally decent. Hence if they knew that there's a minority facing an epidemic of persecution - a staggering total of 150,000 martyrs every year, meaning 17 deaths every hour - there would almost certainly be a groundswell of moral and political outrage, writes John Allen in NCR Online.

There is such a minority in the world today, and it's Christianity. The fact that there isn't yet a broad-based movement to fight anti-Christian persecution suggests something is missing in public understanding.

In part, of course, the problem is that unquestionable acts of persecution, such as murder and imprisonment, are sometimes confused with a perceived cultural and legal "war on religion" in the West, a less clear-cut proposition. In part, too, it's because of the antique prejudice that holds that Christianity is always the oppressor, never the oppressed.

Yet as with most things, politics also has a distorting effect, and a story out of Israel last week makes the point.

On Tuesday, the doors of a Trappist monastery in Latrun, near Jerusalem, were set ablaze, with provocative phrases in Hebrew spray-painted on the exteriors walls, such as "Jesus is a monkey." The assault was attributed to extremist Jews unhappy with the recent dismantling of two settlements on nearby Palestinian land.

Founded in 1890 by French Trappists, the Latrun monastery is famed for its strict religious observance. Israelis call it minzar ha'shatkanim, meaning "the monastery of those who don't speak." Ironically, it's known for fostering dialogue with Judaism, and welcomes hundreds of Jewish visitors every week.

Tuesday's attack was not an isolated incident. In 2009, a Franciscan church near the Cenacle on Mount Zion, regarded by tradition as the site of Christ's Last Supper, was defaced with a spray-painted Star of David and slogans such as "Christians Out!" and "We Killed Jesus!" According to reports, the vandals also urinated on the door and left a trail of urine leading to the church.

Last February, the Franciscan Custodian of the Holy Land wrote to Israeli authorities to appeal for better protection after another wave of vandalism struck a Baptist church, a Christian cemetery and a Greek Orthodox monastery. That time, slogans included "Death to Christianity," "We will crucify you!" and "Mary is a whore."

FULL STORY Playing politics with the global war on Christians (NCR)

HE AND I mysteries 1946 May 30

HE AND I mysteries 1946 May 30

HE AND I mysteries 1946 May 30

HE AND I, Gabrielle Bossis

1946 May 30 - Ascension.

     "Do you believe - do you really believe in My mysteries?"

     "Yes, Lord, I do believe, and they are the source of my greatest happiness."

"But do you believe to the point of merging your thought entirely with Mine? To the point of living for one thing only - to please the ever-living heart of your Bridegroom, to be a faithful comforter for Him? Do you believe enough to find in each Eucharist the food that should strengthen your love? You know that this is all that counts: to make love grow in your heart. When you love Me perfectly and above all things, all beings, all ideas, everything will be fulfilled in you because you will have attained the end for which I created and redeemed you. Don't be afraid to offer yourself to the fulfilment of My dream of you, as though I were waiting to be encouraged by your burning desires. Say, ' Lord, make me what You wanted me to be.' At least form the wish that we never be of two minds and that, seeking to know all My will for you, you take care to respond as faithfully as you can. And this too will comfort Me for the lack of love, the scorn and hatred that I meet, just as I did during.

    My life on earth. My child, take care of Me. Haven't I taken care of you? Tenderly?"

Butterfly silhouette in log from Beech tree from recent storms.

Beech tree - seasoned timber

Holy Pagans of the Old Testament - Jean Danielou 'pagan' saints Abel, Henoch, Danel, Noe, Job, Melchisedech, Lot and The Queen of Saba.

Abram and Lot divide the land.

COMMENT

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2012

Holy Pagans of the Old Testament - Jean Danielou

This is a great little book from 1957. It has short chapters on  'pagan' saints Abel, Henoch, Danel, Noe, Job, Melchisedech, Lot and The Queen of Saba.

These were non-Jews in the Old Testament who were not covered by the covenants with Abraham and Moses. They are the saints of the cosmic religion. They are under the 'cosmic covenant'.

It written in a similar style to Danielou's Angels and their mission with plenty of quotations from the era of Origen, Iranaeus and apochryphal writings.  For example...

'Now the vision appeared to me in this wise: Clouds called me and the winds caused me to take wing.They carried me on high. I passed through them until I reached a high wall built of hailstones. Tongues of fire surrounded me and I drew near to a great house. Its roof was like the pathway to the stars: in the midst stood Cherubim and its roof was of water.'  
 
The Angels book was better but this is still a good second. A pleasure to read. Highly recommended
.

http://janitorsofshadowland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/holy-pagans-of-old-testament-jean.html

Danielou - Holy Pagans of the Old Testament - Lot: Hospitality.

Holy Pagans of the Old Testament 

Not heard a word from the Second Nocturn Reading but, for the purpose, went back to the Lectern. It was exciting to follow the seeming inverse of order of clues.  

• Danielou -  
• Holy Pagans of the Old Testament - 
• Lot  - Hospitality.

Danielou, Jean (1905-1974) was born into a privileged family; his father being a politician and his mother an educationalist. He did brilliantly at his studies, and in 1929 entered the Society of Jesus, where he came under the influence of de Lubac and got to know Teilhard de Chard in. In 1940 he was chaplain to students in Paris and committed to the cause of resistance. Widely ecumenical in his views, he was a peritus at Vatican II under Pope John XXIII, and was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. As an author he was at home in many fields of erudition, including scripture, patristics, theology, and spirituality. 

+ + +

TWENTY-THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

TUESDAY    Year II

First Reading  2 Peter 2:1-8
Verse 2:7, "And he rescued righteous Lot ..." (AMB)

Second Reading

From the writings of Cardinal Jean Danielou

(Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, 112-115)

Hospitality

Lot is a witness to the fact that, in the natural order, certain men were able to know the true God and to serve him, and he is one of the saints of the cosmic religion, of the first covenant. 

But, while the outstanding thing to be observed in Henoch is knowledge of the true God, in Lot it is the practice of true virtue. God reveals himself in two ways in the natural order. On the one hand he reveals his existence through his providence in the cosmos. But he makes known his law in another way, through the conscience. The sense of good and evil is written in the heart of man apart from all positive revelation. This is Saint Paul's teaching:

For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them. And this law is a revelation from God, for there is no purely human morality; there is only religious morality. Love of the good can have no other basis but the infinitely holy will of a personal God.

Lot stands as the model of the man who is righteous according to this natural law written in the heart, and that in a twofold way. First of all because of his hospitality; he gives a welcome to the two angels whom he takes for travelers; he washes their feet and gives them unleavened bread. Hospitality is one of the basic virtues of the natural order. It signifies in effect that every man, for the very reason that he is a man, is to be treated with respect. It is a sign that the biological variations of races and nations are overridden. This hospitality Lot practices to the point of heroism; he is persecuted because of it. He is the saint of hospitality.

Lot is also the model of purity , and in this his example has a salutary value, for Sodom and Gomorrah have become symbols of sexual perversion. Lot bears witness to the truth that the actualities of love are subject to the law of God. Moreover, Saint Paul teaches in the Letter to the Romans that perversion of love was the result of the abandonment of God. Lot's purity  in the midst of an impure world is thus a testimony of his fidelity to God. And in a world like ours, in which an insidious sensuality is corroding a certain spiri­tual integrity, his example is a reminder that even before all posi­tive law true religion was always manifested by purity .

But what makes for Lot's greatness is not only that he was a righteous man, but the fact that he lived as such in the midst of a sinful world.

Being devoted to God and to his law, he is afflicted at the sight of sin. This antipathy to sin is the hallmark of a soul that loves God, for God detests sin. Yet Lot is willing to live among sinners. Not that he can do anything for them. He exemplifies a world in which witness alone is possible, and in this sense he witnesses to the impotence of natural holiness in the face of the world's sin. But at least he can suffer, and that must often be the portion of the righteous one, accepting his loneliness in a world submerged by materialism and impurity .