Pope Francis: The Lord Has Redeemed All of Us…Even Atheists!

The Lord has redeemed everyone with the Blood of Christ, including atheists. So says, Pope Francis:

As he celebrated Mass this morning, Francis said that the possibility of doing good is part of creation, and that Christ redeemed all of us, not only Catholics. Doing good “is a beautiful path towards peace” whilst “killing in the name of God is blasphemy.”

Asia News continues:

Pope Francis spoke about doing good as a principle that unites all humanity.

The pontiff began his reflection with today’s Gospel about the disciples who wanted to prevent a person from outside their group from doing good.

“They complain” because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” But Jesus corrected them. ‘Do not stop him,’ he said. ‘Let him do good’.”

“The disciples,” the Pope said, “were a little ‘intolerant’, set on the idea that they owned the truth, believing that ‘all those who do not have the truth cannot do good.’ And ‘this was wrong’.” In fact, “Jesus ‘broadens the horizon.”

“The root of this possibility of doing good,” which we all have, “lies in creation. The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: Do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, he is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. ‘He cannot.’ He must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, such ‘closing off’ [of the mind], which makes us think that all those outside [of our group] cannot do good, is a barrier that leads to war as well as to what some throughout history have thought [possible], namely killing in the name of God, [the idea] that we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply put, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“On the contrary, the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in our heart: Do good and do not do evil. The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, what about the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us first class children of God! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all!

Rest here.

 

Man Commits Suicide Inside Notre Dame

Some 1,500 visitors were cleared out of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after a man put a letter on the altar of the 850-year-old monument Tuesday, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.

It’s the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral’s rector, told The Associated Press.

“It’s unfortunate, it’s dramatic, it’s shocking,” Jacquin said.  The motives for the suicide, and the contents of the man’s letter, were unclear.

The Paris prosecutor’s office identified the man as 78-year-old Dominique Venner.

Venner’s blog describes him as a historian and essayist, and includes description of his involvement in the campaign against France’s new law authorizing gay marriage. In some posts he criticizes “massive immigration” and what he describes as encroaching Islam; others include historical analysis of revolution or American-European relations.

It says he fought with French forces against Algerian independence fighters a half-century ago in a war that ended with France losing its most prized colony.

Police ushered people out of the cathedral after the shooting, Interior Minister Manuel Valls told reporters from the grand stone plaza in front of Notre Dame. “We call for compassion,” he said.

“Notre Dame is the cathedral of Paris, one of the capital’s – and the country’s – most beautiful monuments, so we realize how symbolic this event truly is.”

It’s highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

The cathedral reopened for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday’s death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame’s two towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.

Source

UPDATE:  Topless Woman Arrested At Notre Dame Cathedral

A topless activist of the FEMEN movement was arrested inside Notre Dame Cathedral Wednesday, one day after far-right essayist and historian Dominique Vesser committed suicide in the Paris landmark.

The bare-chested woman was photographed in front of the altar, pointing a fake gun at her mouth. The slogan “May Fascists Rest In Hell” was written across her torso.

FEMEN leader Inna Schevchenko commented to Le HuffPost that the protest was a message to “anyone who supports fascism and who honored the memory of the extreme-right militant who committed suicide at Notre Dame.”

On Tuesday, 78-year-old far-right activist Dominique Venner took his own life in front of the altar inside the Cathedral. According to the Associated Press, Venner ran a blog that included pieces criticizing immigration and gay marriage.

On its Facebook page, FEMEN France called the topless activist “FEMEN’s angel of Death”…

The Cathedral is desecrated.

 

What the Anglo-Catholics Have to Offer to Anglicanism

Via Ordinariate Expats:

Those who have read the recent post on Fr. Philip’s North lead story in the May 2013 issue of New Directions may well have wondered what the specific gifts are which in Philip North’s view the Anglo-Catholics have to offer to the Church of England.

Cleverly Fr. North had already given the answer to this question in the previous month’s lead story. Here is a summary of the article and some quotations:

“What is the point in having us now? What does our tradition have to offer the wider Church?”

1. “We witness to (the) true identity (of the Church of England) as part of the Universal Catholic Church.” Fr. North wonders whether this argument has perhaps already been lost, saying that many view the C of E as “free, independent, Protestant”. Should this be the case, he believes that “then we have no excuse for staying in the Church of England”.

Linked with this guardianship of the true ecclesial identity of Anglicanism is “a passion for the unity of Christ’s Church“. Again the signs are not good. Relations with the Roman Catholic Church are at a low, suspicion of Rome is rife. And ecumenism with the other Protestant denominations is in the doldrums. Indeed “the whole movement towards Christian unity is in crisis” and Fr. North considers this a scandal. Anglo-Catholics have the vocation to “keep alive relationships with the Roman Catholic Church” and – in constant conversation with their own Church of England – to try to “create the conditions required for ecumenical discussion”. Again he says: “If we think the argument is lost once and for all, our self-justification is lost.”

2.  The second gift is to offer the wider Church a “sacramental world view“. The Mass is not one worship option among many but “the primary way in which God invites us to worship him“. It is the duty of Anglo-Catholics “to remind people of the primacy of the sacramental life” and of the role of the Mass to make effective the saving work of Christ in the present, to proclaim the Kingdom, to feed and commission God’s people and to sanctify all creation.

And without the priest there is no sacrament, so Anglo-Catholics offer “a proper view of Christian priesthood”. In the C of E priesthood is often viewed as a waste of young people’s lives, a squandering of their educational opportunities, even “synonymous with child abuse”. Priests are seen by many as an expensive luxury and as “part of a hierarchical cabal holding back the gifts and talents of the laity”. Priests are “a problem that needs solving”.

Philip North believes that people are, however, willing to listen when told about the “correct context” of priesthood in a sacramental view of the world, and he tells a story of a talk he gave at Holy Trinity, Brompton, by which the listeners were “fascinated and moved”.  Fr. North concludes that Anglo-Catholics “are the ones who can lead (the) debate” about “a proper and balanced vision of priesthood“.

3. The third gift concerns “the proper ordering of public worship“. Fr. North finds much public worship is ”inept, unimaginative, banal and pointless”. Few, he believes, “understand the books”. Anglo-Catholics., on the other hand, “know how to offer worship which is both dignified and numinous and yet human enough to meet needs and engage people”, “to show confidence in the Mass”, “to order spaces and beautiful buildings and plan dignified ceremonial”. He also underlines the “enormously imaginative and broad” use of music and the “first-rate preachers who can put across sharp, challenging and relevant messages without banging on all day”.

4. The fourth gift is the “long tradition … of ministering in areas of poverty and social deprivation“. “We don’t bus in the middle classes” Fr. North writes, “but rather we serve local people”, including vulnerable adults, ethnic minority groups, those with mental health problems, the neglected and sidelined and the broken. ”Our movement has a long and proud history of locating itself where human need is greatest”.

He is of the opinion that the wider Church “is forgetting how to pay anything more than lip-service to the bias to the poor”, and that Anglo-Catholics “have a great deal to offer the evangelical world in this respect”. Many evangelical churches are accused of being “a white, professional, middle-class, graduate movement” and are “desperately longing for ways to offer service to poorer communities and for a theological underpinning to such work”.

He sees examples of “the middle classes seeking to improve the lives of the poor by imposing upon them their own lifestyles and values” and believes that this would be “unthinkable” within the Catholic movement, because Anglo-Catholics “instinctively see things from the point of view of local people”, “the incarnational approach to community development is in our bloodstream”.

5. And the fifth gift he identifies is a “disciplined, devotional life”, and he specifically names two aspects of the (Anglo-)Catholic spiritual life: the Sacrament of Confession and the “proper place of Mary within the Christian life“.

(to be completed)

David Murphy

Sometimes, Second Careers Are A Leap Of Faith

Via the Huff Po:

Call it a midlife epiphany.

After decades of pursuing money, titles and ever more stuff, baby boomers are coming to a big realization: Success and security just aren’t enough anymore. They want something more fulfilling out of life, something that feeds their spiritual side and connects them to a bigger purpose.

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal

 

Katharine Jefferts Schori: Diversity, Not Jesus, Saves

The Presiding heretic:

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has denounced the Apostle Paul as mean-spirited and bigoted for having released a slave girl from demonic bondage as reported in Acts 16:16-34 .

In her sermon delivered at All Saints Church in Curaçao in the diocese of Venezuela, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori condemned those who did not share her views as enemies of the Holy Spirit.

The presiding bishop opened her remarks with an observation on the Dutch slave past. “The history of this place tells some tragic stories about the inability of some to see the beauty in other skin colors or the treasure of cultures they didn’t value or understand,” she said.

She continued stating: “Human beings have a long history of discounting and devaluing difference, finding it offensive or even evil.  That kind of blindness is what leads to oppression, slavery, and often, war.  Yet there remains a holier impulse in human life toward freedom, dignity, and the full flourishing of those who have been kept apart or on the margins of human communities.”

Read it all in Anglican Ink.

 

Continuing Anglicanism

Wikipedia has modified their page on Continuing Anglicanism and it makes for rather interesting reading:

The Continuing Anglican movement encompasses a number of Christian churches in various countries that profess Anglicanism while remaining outside the Anglican Communion. These churches generally believe that “traditional” forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some Anglican Communion churches in recent decades. They claim, therefore, that they are “continuing” or preserving Anglicanism’s line of Apostolic Succession as well as historic Anglican belief and practice.

The modern “Continuing” movement principally dates to the 1977 Congress of St. Louis in the United States, at which meeting participants rejected the ordination of women and the changes that had been made in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer.

Much more here.

 

Episcopal Priest Suspended for Plagiarism

This should serve as fair warning to lazy priests.

One of the Ten Commandments is “thou shall not steal,” but an Episcopal priest has been suspended for allegedly lifting more than a dozen Sunday sermons verbatim from a book.

The Rev. John E. McGinn, 65, who has led the 300-plus families at St. John’s Episcopal Church since 1993, was placed on administrative leave amid allegations that he plagiarized sermons dating back to 2006, said the Rev. Mally Lloyd, canon to the ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, a position equivalent to the bishop’s chief of staff.

As many as 15 sermons have been identified as direct copies, Lloyd said.

They were allegedly taken from a book called “Dynamic Preaching,” which can be accessed only with an online subscription…

The Cape Cod Times has the rest.

 

God Save the Queen

Which God?

The coronation of the next monarch will include a role for people of other faiths besides Christianity, in a break with a thousand years of history, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt…

Church of England leaders have accepted the need to be “hospitable” to other faiths within any future service at Westminster Abbey, in order to reflect the spiritual diversity of modern Britain.

More here.

‘Spiritual diversity?’ That doesn’t matter. Britain will be a Muslim country within the next 50 years or so and then they’ll see how well they do with their ‘spiritual diversity’.

And almost as if to make my point:

A new analysis…

… shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.

It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time.

Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim…

And:

The flag of St George will not be flying over Radstock any time soon after town councillors decided it was inappropriate because of its links with campaigns against Islam hundreds of years ago.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson (Lab, Radstock), a university lecturer and teacher, said its use during the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries could mean the English national flag could be seen by some as offensive.

She added: “My big problem is that it is offensive to some Muslims…”

And this:

A disturbing story of child sex abuse has been gripping the people of Oxford, England.

Seven local men have been found guilty of rape, trafficking and arranging a child prostitution ring.

The convicted men are of Pakistani and North African backgrounds.

Their victims were as young as 11-years-old…

Along with the police chief, members of Oxford’s Muslim community are doing some some soul searching of their own wondering how the abusers were able to commit their crimes for so long.

Or this:

There are “hundreds” of Europeans now fighting in Syria, some of whom are with groups linked to al Qaeda, the Home Office told MPs.

The British-born jihadis are said to have joined the fight with Jabhat al-Nusra, the country’s most militant al-Qaeda gang…

Officials warned of the risk to Britain and other European nations posed by foreign fighters now gaining military experience in Syria…

 

Pentecost

2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³ Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

- Acts 2:1-13

 

Archbishop Samuel Prakash: Whit Sunday Message

Whit Sunday Message (pdf.)

- The Most Rev. Samuel P. Prakash