Islamic Outreach, Part CXVII

From an earlier post on this blog: Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam." MEANWHILE...

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I HATE CHRISTMAS PARTIES!

 

A bunch of Islamist radicals attacked a fellow Muslim for posting photos online of a Christmas party he had attended. The incident occurred in the northeastern city of Belfort, France, where a 20-year-old man was assaulted by Islamists for participating in a Christmas party, a report published on RT.com said.

Soon after the victim uploaded photos of Christmas party he had attended, he was threatened by an acquaintance, an Islamist fundamentalist, who was reportedly angry about the man attending non-Muslim festivities. The 20-year-old victim is the son of law enforcement officers.

The acquaintance reportedly rebuked the 20-year-old victim as a “dirty son of a white, son of a snake, son of police” and vowed to show him what a “real Arab” should be. Even though the tone of the conversation was rather belligerent, the young man still agreed to meet his accuser in-person to sort out their differences.

A French man was ambushed and attacked by fellow Muslims for eating a Christmas meal. He agreed to meet with his attacker after he was called a ‘dirty son of white people’ who needed to be shown ‘what it is to be a real Arab’. But he was ambushed by five people who left his face ‘bloody’ and his ‘body covered in bruises’, according to local newspaper L’Est Républicain. It comes as tensions have been mounting in France with protests all over the world calling for the boycott of French products over ‘offensive’ cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. ADVERTISEMENT The victim, whose mum is Arab and stepdad is white, posted a photograph of his family’s lunch on Snapchat.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/28/french-muslim-attacked-by-gang-for-eating-christmas-lunch-13815859/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

A French man was ambushed and attacked by fellow Muslims for eating a Christmas meal. He agreed to meet with his attacker after he was called a ‘dirty son of white people’ who needed to be shown ‘what it is to be a real Arab’. But he was ambushed by five people who left his face ‘bloody’ and his ‘body covered in bruises’, according to local newspaper L’Est Républicain. It comes as tensions have been mounting in France with protests all over the world calling for the boycott of French products over ‘offensive’ cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. ADVERTISEMENT The victim, whose mum is Arab and stepdad is white, posted a photograph of his family’s lunch on Snapchat.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/28/french-muslim-attacked-by-gang-for-eating-christmas-lunch-13815859/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

A French man was ambushed and attacked by fellow Muslims for eating a Christmas meal. He agreed to meet with his attacker after he was called a ‘dirty son of white people’ who needed to be shown ‘what it is to be a real Arab’. But he was ambushed by five people who left his face ‘bloody’ and his ‘body covered in bruises’, according to local newspaper L’Est Républicain. It comes as tensions have been mounting in France with protests all over the world calling for the boycott of French products over ‘offensive’ cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. ADVERTISEMENT The victim, whose mum is Arab and stepdad is white, posted a photograph of his family’s lunch on Snapchat.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/28/french-muslim-attacked-by-gang-for-eating-christmas-lunch-13815859/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

A French man was ambushed and attacked by fellow Muslims for eating a Christmas meal. He agreed to meet with his attacker after he was called a ‘dirty son of white people’ who needed to be shown ‘what it is to be a real Arab’. But he was ambushed by five people who left his face ‘bloody’ and his ‘body covered in bruises’, according to local newspaper L’Est Républicain. It comes as tensions have been mounting in France with protests all over the world calling for the boycott of French products over ‘offensive’ cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. ADVERTISEMENT The victim, whose mum is Arab and stepdad is white, posted a photograph of his family’s lunch on Snapchat.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/28/french-muslim-attacked-by-gang-for-eating-christmas-lunch-13815859/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

I Guess I Should Feel Sad

 

A source close to the Vatican has reported that Pope Francis will be stepping down from the Papacy before the end of the year. There is “no doubt” the Pontiff “will resign in 2020”, the source confirmed.

Pope Francis became head of the Catholic Church following the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 and has been unpopular among U.S. Catholics for his radical stances on same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, and global warming as well as his support for Black Lives Matter.

The Daily Express reports:

The 83-year-old became head of the Catholic Church following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI – a controversial move and the first of its kind in more than 500 years. However, a source close to Pope Francis claimed he would only serve for seven years, stating he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor. Austen Ivereigh is the former Director for Public Affairs of the previous Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and continues to work closely with the Vatican.

He said: “I don’t think there’s ever been any doubt that he will resign in 2020.

“He made clear from the beginning that he regarded Pope Benedict’s (XVI) act as a prophetic act of great modesty and he would have absolutely no problem in doing the same.

 

It's a Christmas Miracle!

 A headline at CNA:

Pope Francis to offer Midnight Mass at 7:30pm

I Wonder If They Know "Lord of the Dance"?

 

 CNA Staff, Dec 21, 2020 / 04:00 am MT (CNA).- When the singers of the Schola Cantorum of the London Oratory School gathered earlier this year to create a new album, they knew they had little margin for error.

A terrifying new virus was spreading across the world and there were rumors that Britain was about to enter a previously unheard-of state known as “nationwide lockdown.”

“We recorded our album in the final week before the first lockdown,” choir director Charles Cole recalled. “It was very much a race against time, because the political situation was developing quickly and we knew that a shutdown was imminent, so we were very fortunate indeed to get the sessions finished and complete the repertoire.”

It was against this menacing background that the choir at the London Catholic school produced a sublime recording of such works as “Surge, illuminare, Jerusalem” by Palestrina and “Videte miraculum” by Thomas Tallis. 

“Looking back, I think it is probably true to say that the general sense of widening panic only added to a sense of determination amongst the boys to get the album completed and to really make it special,” Cole told CNA in an email interview.

The completed album features a sequence of music for Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas, the Feb. 2 feast also known as the Presentation of the Lord.

Art...Is a Window Washer - Inside joke. Sorry.

 

A Bishop Who Actually is DOING Something!

 

Bishop Lucia

Denver Newsroom, Dec 18, 2020 / 12:01 pm MT (CNA).- In a revival of an historic custom of the Church, Bishop Douglas Lucia of Syracuse has invited Catholics of his diocese to participate in the Ember Days, traditional days of fasting and prayer, for the intention of an increase in vocations.

The bishop established the Ember Days for a diocesan year of vocations, and granted a partial indulgence to their observance, in a Nov. 19 decree.

Fr. Christopher Seibt, the Diocese of Syracuse's liturgy director, told CNA that the idea came about because the diocese is also observing a year of prayer for vocations, and Ember Days have traditionally been days of prayer for vocations.

“Ember Days are days of prayer and fasting that mark the changing of times and seasons in order to bring about deeper spiritual renewal,” Seibt told CNA.

“On these days, the Church ‘entreats the Lord for the various needs of humanity’ and gives thanks to God for various blessings received,’” he added, quoting the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar.

Ember Days were traditionally days of fast and abstinence. They are tied to the seasons of the year, and are held on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of four weeks: the third week of September, the third week of Advent, the first week of Lent, and the octave of Pentecost.

The word “ember” is an English adaptation of the Latin name, “quattuor tempora” meaning four seasons.

The Ember Days were attested to as traditional by St. Leo I, and they were prescribed for the whole of the Latin rite by the time of St. Gregory VII.

 The Ember Days of this liturgical year fall Dec. 16, 18, and 19; Feb. 24, 26, 27, 2021; May 26, 28, 29, 2021; and Sept. 22, 24, 25, 2021.

 

I Made It to the Minute 42 Second Mark

The Magic 8-Ball says, "YES"

 

I'm Too Smart to be a Bishop

 

 

Rome Newsroom, Dec 14, 2020 / 12:55 pm MT (CNA).- Catholic bishops in northeast Italy have said that the risk of illness amid the ongoing pandemic constitutes a “grave necessity” permitting priests to confer the Sacrament of Reconciliation under the “third form,” also called general absolution, before and during the Christmas season.

General absolution is a form of the Sacrament of Reconciliation which may be imparted, as defined by canon law, only in moments when death is believed to be imminent and there is no time to hear the confessions of individual penitents, or for another “grave necessity.” 

The Apostolic Penitentiary, a dicastery of the Roman Curia, issued a note in March saying it believed that during the COVID-19 pandemic there were cases which would constitute grave necessity, and therefore make general absolution lawful, “especially in places that are most greatly affected by the pandemic contagion, and until the phenomenon subsides.”

A penitent who receives absolution in such a manner -- sometimes known as collective absolution -- must also individually confess his or her mortal sins when possible.

It Looks Like It's Made of Legos to Me

 

 

 

I wish this wasn't real, but it is...

 It is not what we expected, and not what most of us want. This year’s Vatican creche has been laughed at and ridiculed for looking like a science fiction story or children’s toys. One figure was often described as looking like Darth Vader, though to me he looks more like a Sontaran from Doctor Who. More excitable people called it demonic, pagan, and idolatrous. Conservative English writer Tim Stanley called it “absolutely terrifying” in a tweet. This tweet from Edward Pentin has a short video of the whole creche.

“At the end of this extremely difficult year people are looking for beauty, for something to elevate, inspire, and unite them, and the scene offered in Saint Peter’s Square gives them something else altogether,” said the art historian Elizabeth Lev. “The misshapen figures in the Nativity scene lack all the grace, proportion, vulnerability, and luminosity that one looks for in the manger scene. The entire point of this holiday is the second person of the Holy Trinity taking human form, born as a baby of flesh and blood, and there is nothing particularly human about the forms we see before us.”...

 The creche is embarrassing. It’s not the depiction of the birth of our Lord faithful Catholics want and the world needs to see. I’ve often complained that Catholics ought to be more careful about airing our dirty laundry before the world, or allowing our internal debates over theology and praxis to become stumbling blocks to those outside the Church. I don’t want to give scandal with this piece. I want to admit the obvious — this creche is comically awful — but I also want to try to put it in some perspective.

Speaking of Net Zeroes...

 

Vatican City, Dec 12, 2020 / 09:00 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis urged Saturday the adoption of a “climate of care,” and said the Vatican City State is committed to reducing its net emissions to zero by 2050.

Speaking in a video message during the virtual Climate Ambition Summit Dec. 12, the pope said “the time has come for a change of course. Let us not rob the new generations of hope in a better future.”

He also told summit participants that both climate change and the current pandemic disproportionately affect the lives of the poorest and weakest in society.

“In this way, they appeal to our responsibility to promote, with a collective commitment and solidarity, a culture of care, which places human dignity and the common good at the center,” he stated.

In addition to the goal of net zero emissions, Francis said the Vatican is also committed to “intensifying environmental management efforts, already underway for some years, that enable the rational use of natural resources such as water and energy, energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, reforestation, and the circular economy also in waste management.”

                                                             2050 Popemobile

 

Well, He IS a Bishop

Jimmy Lai has embraced his destiny. Last Wednesday the founder of one of Hong Kong’s most popular newspapers, Apple Daily, was arrested on ginned-up fraud charges. On Thursday he was clapped into jail as a national security risk. Thus did a man who started the week a Hong Kong billionaire end it a Chinese dissident.

Mr. Lai’s jailing has provoked condemnation from figures as diverse as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky and New York Rep. Eliot Engel. They have been joined by journalists, activists and politicians such as the Labour Party’s Sarah Champion and other members of Parliament who on Monday raised Mr. Lai’s plight in Britain’s House of Commons.

 But there is one place where China’s bullying elicits only silence: the Vatican. Which is strange, because Jimmy Lai is not only Hong Kong’s most well-known champion of democracy; he is also its most prominent Catholic layman. At a moment when he and his family most need their shepherd, Pope Francis is MIA.

The silence might be understandable if Pope Francis were in the tradition of pontiffs who hold themselves aloof from worldly affairs. But Pope Francis is a man who readily weighs in on outrages wherever he finds them, whether it be modern air conditioning, American capitalism or Catholic moms who breed “like rabbits.”

 

 But on China . . . silence. It’s the deliberate consequence of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with Beijing, just recently renewed, that gives the Communist state extraordinary say over the selection of Catholic bishops—and whose terms Rome insists on keeping secret. The Vatican defends the deal as the means for carving out protections for the church’s continued presence in China. Unfortunately, rather than herald a thaw in China’s hostility toward religion, persecution has increased—and not only against Catholics.

“China is one of the world’s worst abusers of religious liberty,” says William Mumma, CEO of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “What makes China’s repression especially repugnant is the heavy involvement of the highest levels of government. Whether it is Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong or Uighur Muslims, the government attacks religious freedom in pursuit of absolute power. No religious believer, no religious leader, can in good conscience turn their gaze away from this repression.”

But this is precisely what Pope Francis is doing. Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen notes it is not a recent development, that Hong Kong hearts have been “broken” by the lack of encouragement from the pope amid the protests and mass arrests that have marked their continuing struggle with Beijing. “It has been 1½ years that we are waiting for a word from Pope Francis,” he says, “but there is none.”

 

OH MY! The USCCB Made SENSE!

 

CNA Staff, Dec 10, 2020 / 07:01 pm MT (CNA).- The doctrine committee of the US bishops’ conference (USCCB) earlier this year produced a guide to evaluating the lyrics of hymns on the basis of their doctrinal content, noting that Vatican II declared sacred music’s purpose to be “the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.”

“Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western, has from antiquity been acutely aware that hymns and other songs are among the most significant forces in shaping – or misshaping – the religious and theological sensibility of the faithful,” the committee wrote in “Catholic Hymnody at the Service of the Church,” which is dated September 2020.

 

“It is all the more important, then, that hymnody selected for the liturgical life of the Church successfully draw out the beauty of the Christian mysteries themselves. This cannot be done if language is used that is out of keeping with the sensibility created by scriptural texts and universal liturgical usage.”

 Examples of hymns that offend the presentation of Eucharistic doctrine, they said, include “God is Here! As We His People”; “Now in This Banquet”; “Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees”; and “All Are Welcome”. 

 The bishops wrote that hymns “that imply that the Jews as a people are collectively responsible for the death of Christ” would be ruled out, naming in particular “The Lord of the Dance” and “O Crucified Messiah”.

 The document on hymns said that “Canticle of the Sun” “teaches that death is natural and necessary for our life to have something at stake and thus be ‘real.’ In fact, it is the Resurrection of Christ that makes our life ‘real,’ restoring what we had lost in Adam, and it is the Passion of Christ, not death per se, that ‘helps us to feel.’ Death is not a necessary part of human nature.”

Not Giving Communion to Biden is "Political", But Not...

 

CNA Staff, Dec 9, 2020 / 03:30 am MT (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) applauded a federal judge’s recent decision to restore the full Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, including the resumption of new applicants.

Auxiliary Bishop Mario Dorsonville of Washington, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, praised the decision in a Dec. 8 statement. He emphasized the Church’s support of immigrant communities.

 

                                                              The USCCB is on the case!

“We welcome the full reinstatement of the DACA program and are particularly pleased that with this ruling, youth who are first-time applicants are allowed to apply for the program for the first time since 2017. The DACA program directly benefits immigrant youth, their families, and the communities we serve,” he said.

“To all Dreamers, the Catholic Church continues to stand with you and will advocate with you to ensure you reach your God-given potential here in the United States.”

The Best Bishop We Have Is Retired

 

A retired archbishop has said that President-elect Joe Biden should not receive Holy Communion because of his stance on abortion -- an issue that has divided Catholic leadership in the U.S.

The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Biden’s support for abortion rights presents the church with a “difficult and complex situation,” but Charles J. Chaput, a retired archbishop, has made his stance clear: Biden has demonstrated that “he is not in full Communion with the Catholic Church.”

                                                               Archbishop Chaput
 

“The implications for the present moment are clear,” Chaput wrote in the magazine First Things. “Public figures who identify as 'Catholic' give scandal to the faithful when receiving Communion by creating the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional.”

 “When bishops publicly announce their willingness to give Communion to Mr. Biden, without clearly teaching the gravity of his facilitating the evil of abortion (and his approval of same-sex relationships), they do a serious disservice to their brother bishops and their people.”

 Catholics have been sharply divided over the issue of denying Holt Communion to public figures who take controversial stances on issues near and dear to the church, with bishops sharply divided over Biden in particular.

The USCCP president, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, ahead of Thanksgiving announced a working group of bishops who would assess the dilemma. Gomez rankled conservative bishops when he congratulated Biden on his victory and praised many of the president-elect's stances, including on immigration and racial justice.

 Washington archbishop Cardinal Wilton Gregory already declared that he would not deny Biden any Communion. Cardinal Gregory would Biden’s local bishop, and he called the issue of denial a “confusion” over Church teaching. 

 

                                                                     Cardinal Gregory

Should Joe Biden Be Allowed Communion?

Wilton Gregory thinks so...

People who think pro-choice Catholic politicians like President-elect Joe Biden shouldn’t be given Communion are often accused of politicizing the sacrament. But the real politicizers are the accusers, who introduce politics into the discussion. The accused aren’t motivated by politics but by reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, much as St. Paul was in cautioning the Christians of Corinth against receiving it unworthily. (cf.1 Cor 11:27)

It helps to see these matters in the broader context of respect and disrespect for the Eucharist generally. There is a neat formulation of the problem in the newly published first volume of Cardinal George Pell’s Prison Journal. Speaking of the too-casual reception of the sacrament, which is common today, he says: “Every type of Catholic should realize there is an exclusion zone around the Eucharist, where adults without faith and without basic good practice should not enter.”

Then he quotes a prison warden’s explanation of why a prominent Catholic criminal attended Mass without receiving Communion. “Because he has faith,” the warden said.

 

But when all is said and done, the heart of this problem remains. It’s a grave scandal being given to Catholics – who are led to conclude that, when push comes to shove, neither the evil of abortion nor the holiness of the Eucharist is all that important to certain Church leaders.

On that point, give the final word to Cardinal Pell, still speaking about the problem posed by loose practice in regard to the Blessed Sacrament:

It will be very difficult pastorally to reform the “open house” inclusive approach, because many regard the reception of Communion as being like accepting a biscuit and a cup of tea. . . .In an age of religious indifference and ignorance, the indiscriminate reception of Holy Communion is against the tradition and bad for the spiritual health of the Church.

Wouldn’t you think it was time and then some for everyone – popes, bishops, priests – to do something about that?