This is the fifth volume of The Weekly Benedict ebook which is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I pull from Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Benedict.
Since Jimmy did not post a list last week this volume covers the last two weeks along with material from Nov 30th to Dec 31st.
Having followed the new media adventures of Greg and Jennifer Willits from the early days of the Rosary Army podcast to their show on Sirius satellite radio “The Catholics Next Door” I am not surprised at all by the number of ideas that flow out of them.
The latest efforts is “New Evangelizers”, New Evangelizers is both an umbrella group of their other ministries and a ministry of it’s own in providing free tools to others to spread and support the faith.
Rosary Army had the wonderful motto “Make them. Pray them. Give them away” and New Evangelizers also hits on an excellent tri-part motto. “Know your faith. Live your faith. Share your faith.”
We accomplish this by creating and distributing digital (online) and physical (hard-copy) catechetical and spiritual materials and resources for individual growth and study, as well as for mass distribution worldwide. From CDs to DVDs to printed catechetical material, we want to do everything we can to help people know their faith, live their faith, and share their faith more effectively.
In a nutshell: We give away free Catholic stuff to promote New Evangelization and ask you to do the same. Goals Our primary goal is to better equip Christians with tools and
information in order to assist the Catholic Church in re-evangelizing the world for Jesus Christ.
This is an answer to the demands of the Gospel and specifically for Blessed John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization.
Over the years, I have often repeated the summons to the new evangelization. I do so again now, especially in order to insist that we must rekindle in ourselves the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost. We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).
And as Pope Benedict XVI has said “The New Evangelization” must begin with the family. The New Evangelization remains unfulfilled as long as people don’t actually answer the call. It is fine to talk about it, but much finer still to take up the call. This is why I like the motto so much in that it distinctly states the demands of the Christian life. You can’t teach what you don’t know and you just can’t hope others will pick up the call for you. People often don’t know just where to start and the New Evangelizers site provides excellent tools for teaching and passing on the faith in a way that fully takes advantage of the new media professionally done.
Often the quote falsely attributed to St. Francis “Preach the gospel always, If necessary use words.” has been used in such a way as to diminish personal evangelization. Living the gospel in joy and simplicity is the very basis of evangelization, and it is often very necessary to use words, in fact use words, videos, books, blogs, podcasts, movies, and every single tool of media communications. This is just another of the Catholic both/and situations where actions and preaching are both required.
From Mark Steyn’s recent column:
As I was leaving Fox News last night, I glanced up at the monitor and caught Juan Williams expressing mystification to Sean Hannity as to why Republicans in Congress were wasting the country’s time on a “little thing” like abortion.
Gee, I dunno. Maybe it’s something to do with a mass murderer in Pennsylvania, or Planned Parenthood clinics facilitating the sex trafficking of minors. From the Office of the District Attorney in Philadelphia:
Viable babies were born*. Gosnell killed them by plunging scissors into their spinal cords. He taught his staff to do the same.
This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale – and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin’s uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell’s mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture.
As for Juan Williams comment on the “little thing” like abortion, I guess it really is the little things that matter.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Via the Catholic League
The New Jersey Hall of Fame (NJHF) includes luminaries as diverse as Albert Einstein and Shaquille O’Neal. It should not be dishonored by including bigots: Catholics will be outraged to learn that of the 50 nominees for the class of 2012, Thomas Nast made the cut. Nast is not only the most bigoted cartoonist in American history, the 19th-century artist consistently inflamed hatred against the Irish and Catholics alike.
Amazingly, the NJHF’s website omits any mention of Nast’s anti-Catholic legacy. No one is denying his many talents as a creative cartoonist, but to discuss his work without mentioning his virulent anti-Catholicism is on a par with discussing filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s contributions without citing her role in generating anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Nast and Riefenstahl belong in a Bigots Hall of Shame, not in any honorary club.
Nast’s cartoons show a long and pernicious pattern of bigotry born of nativism [click here for a sampling]. He encouraged the mixing of racism and anti-Catholic bigotry in his depictions of the Irish as a race of inferior gorillas; he demonized the Church as a nefarious institution threatening America’s public schools; he depicted an attack on Fort Sumter by priests and bishops; he demonized bishops by portraying them as crocodiles with miters for jaws; and he also depicted them as emerging from slime while prowling towards children.
A song parody via the Sheepcat.
Fr. James Martin published a pier in The Washington Post on December 16th that I am surprised has not got greater attention.
The piece is titled “Five myths bout Christmas” and he goes on to write this:
3. Jesus was an only child.
Catholics, myself included, believe that Mary’s pregnancy came about miraculously — what we call the “virgin birth.” (Frankly, this has always been easy for me to accept: If God can create the universe from nothing, then a virgin birth seems relatively simple by comparison.) Catholics also believe that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, though many Protestants do not.
So when Catholics stumble upon Gospel passages that speak of Jesus’s brothers and sisters, they are often confused. In the Gospel of Luke, someone tells Jesus: “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” In Mark’s Gospel, people from Nazareth exclaim: “Is not this the carpenter’s son? . . . Are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” Even Saint Paul called James “the Lord’s brother.”
Such passages are sometimes explained away by saying that these are Jesus’s friends, relatives, half-brothers or, most often, cousins. But there is a perfectly good word for “cousins” in Greek, which Mark and Luke could have used instead of “adelphoi,” meaning “brothers.” Many Catholic scholars maintain that Jesus indeed had brothers and sisters — perhaps through an earlier marriage of Joseph. So a virgin birth, but (step-) brothers and sisters.
It is a myth that Jesus was an only child?
The Catechism states:
Mary – “ever-virgin”
499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.
500 Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus”, are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary”.They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.
501 Jesus is Mary’s only son, but her spiritual motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save: “The Son whom she brought forth is he whom God placed as the first-born among many brethren, that is, the faithful in whose generation and formation she co-operates with a mother’s love.”
This is one of the four Marian dogmas and to imply otherwise is heresy. Maybe this section is just badly written and does not mean to imply that and this is what I would charitably want to believe. It is certainly possible that Joseph was a widower and had children as is asserted in the apocryphal Proto-evangelium of James. If this is what Fr. Martin wanted to point out than his title of the section is misleading. Plus Catholics do not stumble when they read these references in the Bible, it is Protestants that do since references to brothers can also be cleared up by other passages. Anybody with even a passing interest in Apologetics are aware of this. As Catholic Answers points out:
In John 19:25 we read, “Standing by the foot of the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary of Magdala.” Cross reference this with Matthew 27:56: “Among them [at the cross] were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” We see that at least two of the men mentioned in Matthew 13 were definitely not siblings of Jesus (although they’re called adelphoi); they were Jesus’ cousins–sons of their mother’s sister.
The Bible is simply silent on the exact relationship between Jesus and the other two men, Simon and Jude, mentioned in Matthew 13. This proves two important things. First, it proves that the Greek word for brother is sometimes used to mean something other than sibling, and it proves that Matthew 13:55-56 in no way demonstrates that Mary had other children.
So Fr. Martin’s contention that the Greek word adelphoi must be brothers and not some other relationship is simply false.
Many Catholic scholars maintain that Jesus indeed had brothers and sisters — perhaps through an earlier marriage of Joseph. So a virgin birth, but (step-) brothers and sisters.
Many Catholics scholars believe — lots of stupid things. Plus whenever you insert such a phrase it is used to assert pretty much anything you want.
If Fr. Martin just wanted to point out that it was possible that Jesus had half-brother than this piece is very poorly written since is allows as a conjecture that Mary went on to have other children. It does not deny this possibility in any way. This type of article is exactly why I have so much problems with those who have publicly self-identified themselves a “progressives.” They seem to snip away at dogmas and the magisterium of the Church without actually specifically denying them. It is seemingly a wink-wink to the reader.
When you write a piece concerning the truths of the Catholic faith for the public you must be especially careful and this piece only sows confusion. To say “Jesus was an only child” is a myth is totally inaccurate since there is only a possibility that he had half-brothers and sisters and zero possibility that Mary had other children.
Fr. Martin gets a good amount of public attention and some of what he does is very good, but it does not justify shoddily written pieces like this.
The Nigerian terrorist bomb attacks on Catholics that has killed at least 35 people while they attended Midnight Mass is another great tragedy and one that also occurred last year on Christmas Eve.
Yet the AP puts out a story with this headline.
Nigerian blasts mar pope’s Christmas peace appeal
Really? What the Hell.
First off they minimize the terrorist massacre by reducing it to “blasts” and then they connect it to the Pope’s Ubi et Orbi Christmas message.
…May the Lord come to the aid of our world torn by so many conflicts which even today stain the earth with blood. May the Prince of Peace grant peace and stability to that Land where he chose to come into the world, and encourage the resumption of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. May he bring an end to the violence in Syria, where so much blood has already been shed. May he foster full reconciliation and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. May he grant renewed vigour to all elements of society in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East as they strive to advance the common good.
This is a despicable headline even for the AP and of course the same headline gets published all over the world with no newsrooms seeing a problem with it. The context of 35 people being murdered with scores injured while they attend Midnight Mass is that it “mars” the Pope’s message. I bet they consider it doesn’t “mar” the “Religion of Peace” since it always the fault of “extremists”. They can connect the dots to the Pope’s message, but can’t connect things actually connected-dot-worthy.
I don’t normally do SF book reviews on this blog, but I will make an exception here for John C. Wright’s new book Count to a Trillion
Anybody who as read his books from the Golden Age trilogy to Null-A-Contiuum knows he is a writer of big ideas and this book is an embarrassment of riches. So many great ideas are contained within that they could have been parsed out a basis for a dozen of other SF books. This book follows the rich tradition of the Space Opera where it’s not over until the “voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis” sing.
The specific story follows young Menelaus Illation Montrose from his childhood on. The Western world is in collapse and the world is divided up into various spheres of influence such as the Indosphere and the Hispanosphere. Menelaus is a brilliant polymath who dreams of “shining tomorrows” and the disappointments of actual life and not flying cars and other gee wiz technological developments. His dreams are partially shaped by a comic book series named Asymptote that has many shadows of Star Trek and it’s view of the future of man along with the cornier aspects related to Captain Kirk. As someone whose childhood included the start of the Star Trek series and the race to the moon this young character had many elements I could relate to. His mother though has other plans for him that don’t include such starry-eyed dreaming and seemingly escapist literature.
His path to adulthood leads through various phases of apprenticeship with nothing fully using his talents. He becomes a dueling-lawyer, that is a lawyer that handles things outside of court hi-tech dueling pistols. The description of one of the duels is one of the great ideas the story is so peppered with. These special guns with defenses reminds me of aviation warfare with electronic countermeasures, chaff, and other deceptive techniques along with special missiles. Having worked in this area in my Navy career this brining it down to the dueling level was especially pleasing. But this is only a small part of the plot of the book.
The main thrust of the book deals broadly with space flight, harvesting of a star, and the results of abundant cheap energy on the world as it is politically controlled. Menelaus steps into this future and into a subsequent future a century or so hence is filled with missteps that initially take him out of the action for part of the time. When he becomes able to participate he finds himself in a future where there is no war, but with a very cold war atmosphere where a group of spaceman-scientists have blackmailed the world both with cheap energy and the threat of destruction that can’t be countered. Instead of Mutual Assured Destruction, there is just destruction for those who oppose this rule. This is a more dystopian than utopian future as the lack of wars does not denote actual peace and while technological developments have changed many things for the better, the tensions involving the source of energy are causing other pressures leading to conflict.
Being that John C. Wright has written about the “New Space Princess Movement” and our need for it, it is not surprising that the book indeed includes a beautiful and super intelligent Space Princess. A very enjoyable character who to me has shadows of the thankfulness of G.K. Chesterton. Maybe I am reading this into the story, but there seemed to be a light shadow of Chesterton in it. Of course any story with a Space Princess will set up a love triangle and in this case it is between Menelaus and his best friend and now dangerous foe Del Azarchel and Princess Rania. This of course creates most of the tensions in the latter half of the book leading to a showdown between the two.
But with there’s more. The book also deals with post humanism and contact with an alien civilization which has left an artifact so dense with information that ultimately it can only be read by someone with post human intelligence. The big ideas surrounding this aspect are also very interesting and the consequences of this and possible contact with the aliens that left this drives the plot in multiple ways that are surely to develop since this is first book of the trilogy.
John C. Wright slings a lot of scientific BS in this novel, but it is slung well and is a higher order of scientific BS than of the Star Trek variety. So there is a bit of technobabble, but you also get the feeling it more science-based than just space opera plot filler. The philosophical discussions between the main characters is also interesting and makes the types of distinctions I like to see. Really the dialogue is quite enjoyable and often very funny at times. One description involving hackers and Moby Dick is one of the funniest things I have ever read and his pun on the spanish pronunciation of Jesus is one that will never let me hear the Spanish pronunciation of the name the same again.
One reviewer takes to task how the super-intelling post human version of Menelaus in that he “talks like a caricature of John Wayne in a low-budget Western.” I can understand this criticism, but it seems to me also a bit of a bias as I can think of at least one Texan who I would consider very intelligent and extremely well read and who talks in a folksy Texan style.
The ending of this book though is more in the fashion of a cliffhanger from an old serial than is usual in space opera. Many things are left hanging and since I enjoyed the book so much my patience of waiting for the rest of the trilogy will be quite taxing. The book might not be for everybody, but it was certainly for me who loves both space opera and the old movie serials.
I was wondering when the media would start the death watch for Pope Benedict XVI.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi has dismissed speculation that Pope Benedict XVI’s health is in serious decline, saying the Pontiff continues to carry out an intense schedule, and reasserting he has no specific medical concerns.
Speaking to Newsmax on Wednesday, Lombardi said he “continues to confirm there is no particular illness,” adding that the Pope, who will be 85 next April, “has the strength to carry out very intense activities.” He noted Benedict XVI will be presiding over “many celebrations in the next few days which last many hours.”
“I don’t know what else to say,” he added. “It’s the usual story that tends to appear around Christmas. If you look at the live television programmes, you will see he’s fine.”
Lombardi added that each person is free to comment, but at his most recent public engagement — at a Rome prison last weekend — Benedict XVI was able to respond to questions from prisoners “in a very lively manner, quickly and lucidly. [Source]”
The speculation followed news that the Pope is suffering from arthrosis, leading him to use a mobile platform at Vatican ceremonies. Benedict XVI is also taking measures to preserve his strength; he no longer meets each visiting bishop on a one-to-one basis, nor issues public messages to new ambassadors.
This is quite familiar for anyone who remembers the constant stories on Blessed John Paul II regarding his health for over a decade. He once quipped when asked about his health that he didn’t know since he had not yet read the morning’s paper.
The real story is the fact that the Pope as he moves towards his 85th birthday manages to keep the schedule he has and that the number of papal trips is much more than many people expected for his pontificate. He has also been quite prudent in combining the Ad Limina visits and perhaps improving the quality of them with small group discussions. That the Christmas season is especially taxing on him is no surprise since the same is also true for much younger priests. This is not to deny the increased difficulties he will have because of his age, but mainly to spotlight how well he has managed despite this. The media can hardly wait till he dies and the new progressive pope of their dreams will arrive to save the Catholic Church.
Over at the Over the Rhine and into the Tiber blog:
…commenter Gail F. has a snappy letter in the Cincinnati Enquirer about a page one story in last Sunday’s print edition on Pope Benedict’s unwillingness to resign from the papacy:
Now that we’ve heard the news that Pope Benedict XVI won’t be stepping down, I breathlessly await the similar front-page stories that President Barack Obama will not resign, the Dalai Lama will not make way for another, newer incarnation of himself, and Queen Elizabeth still won’t give the throne to Charles. Come to think of it, these exciting stories could use up column inches on the front page for weeks! It’s a good thing nothing important is happening anywhere in the world. …
Sheilia Liaugminas has a nice summary post concerning Vaclav Havel’s legacy.