“[God] has assigned as a duty to every man the dignity of every woman.”
–Pope John Paul II
“To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something as beautiful for him.”
–Blessed Mother Teresa
via PODCAzT 135: Encyclical Letter “Lumen fidei” – AUDIO files of entire encyclical | Fr. Z’s Blog.
“Posted on 7 July 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
Writes Fr. Z:
In my desire to get my ears and mind around the new encyclical, Lumen fidei, of Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, to sort the “voices” and get to know the trajectory of its arguments, I decided to read it aloud.
Wanna hear?PODCAzT 135: Encyclical Letter “Lumen fidei” – AUDIO files of entire encyclical | Fr. Z’s Blog”
Michael Amerhom Youssef writes:
…”while millions of Egyptians responded to Morsi’s ouster by joyfully dancing in the streets, the Muslim Brotherhood advisers in the White House helped Obama produce a non-descript statement
. With his wishy-washy message about those who are democratically elected, Obama confirmed in Egyptian minds that he is in the pocket of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is downright depressing to see the leader of the free world unable to comprehend the Islamic understanding of democracy. To the Islamist, democracy means “one man, one vote, one time.” Once they have their power, there’s no reason to ever have another election.
Thank God for the wise and courageous Egyptian people who comprehended that plan and stopped it before it was too late.”
(Michael Amerhom Youssef was born in Egypt in 1948. He studied at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia and was later ordained there as a minister. His ancestors, like all Christian ancestors, belonged to the Coptic orthodox church. He is a third generation protestant. Youssef moved to the United States with his wife in 1977. In 1978, he received a master’s degree in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. In 1984, he became a United States citizen. Youssef founded The Church of the Apostles in Atlanta in 1987 and currently leads a congregation of over 3,000.)
Some in Congress have argued that Morsi’s ouster was a “coup” by the Egyptian military to depose a democratically elected leader, which under U.S. law triggers a suspension of U.S. aid.
Coup, schmoo. If so, President Obama needs to go to Congress and request a waiver.
Morsi might have been democratically elected, but so was Hitler. Once elected, Hitler set about systematically crushing anyone who disagreed with him — in Parliament, in the Courts, in the military, in the media.
Hitler persecuted religious minorities. Morsi was well on his way to doing the same thing in Egypt, sacking opposition leaders, putting his Muslim Brotherhood cronies in power, ignoring Muslim Brotherhood persecution of Christians.
Looking back, the world would have been a better place if the German military had succeeded in ousting Hitler when they had the chance. Thank goodness the Egyptian military was wiser.
Right now, the world is focussed on Egypt’s political machinations — was it a “coup”?
What will the Muslim Brotherhood do next? What will Obama do?
But even in Egypt, “it’s the economy, stupid.” After just one year in office, the Muslim Brotherhood has so mangled things that the Egyptian economy has gone into free fall.
via What’s at stake if Obama goes 0-3 with Egypt | Fox News.
For the third time in as many weeks, Pope Francis has warned not to speak ill of others, and again mentioned the devil in another striking homily this morning in the chapel of the Vatican’s Santa Martha residence.
Calumny, he said, is worse than sin and is the direct expression of Satan. “We are all sinners; all of us. We all commit sins. But calumny is something else. It is of course a sin, too, but it is something more,” he said, according to a Vatican Radio report.
“Calumny aims to destroy the work of God, and calumny comes from a very evil thing: it is born of hatred. And hate is the work of Satan. Calumny destroys the work of God in people, in their souls. Calumny uses lies to get ahead.” Be in no doubt, he said: “Where there is calumny, there is Satan himself.”
via Pope Francis: Where Calumny is, There is the Devil |Blogs | NCRegister.com.
It’s time once again for Sunday Snippets. We are Catholic bloggers sharing weekly our best posts with one another. Join us to read and/or contribute. To participate, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets–A Catholic Carnival. Make sure that the post links back to here, and leave a link to your snippets post on our host, RAnn’s, site, This, That and the Other Thing.Pass it on:
Father John McCloskey writes:
Robert Spencer, perhaps the foremost Catholic expert on Islam in our country, has written a new book entitled Not Peace But a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (Catholic Answers, 2013). Spencer has advised the highest levels of the military on the Islamic threat to the United States, and has authored several books for the general public on the topic of Islam, including Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith.
This book is his most interesting yet, as it makes the case for the fundamental disagreement between Christianity and Islam. Spencer writes: “One of the oddities of contemporary ‘interfaith dialogue’ is that all too often, out of overzealous irenicism, it glosses over, or ignores altogether, the disagreements between religious traditions, as if pretending that they didn’t exist would make them go away.” He expands on the vast differences between Christianity and Islam on the character of God, Jesus and Divine Revelation; the nature of truth and the moral law; religious freedom and other basic rights; life issues, marriage and sexual morality, including the rights and dignity of women.
An example of this great divide: Converts from Islam to Christianity are often hunted in the Muslim world, where virtually all Islamic authorities agree that such individuals deserve death. In fact, Muhammad himself commanded this: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 84:57). In Egypt, at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious and influential educational institution in the Islamic world, an Islamic manual states that a person who has reached puberty is sane, and if he voluntarily apostatizes from Islam deserves to be killed.
The great Catholic author of the early 20th century Hilaire Belloc was prophetic in predicting: “We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our faith it will rise.”
via NCRegister | The Christian-Muslim Gulf.
About Father C. John McCloskey,III STD
Father C. John McCloskey, III, STD is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He currently is Research Fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC. From 1985-1990, he was a chaplain at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for guiding into the Church such luminaries as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Lawrence Kudlow, Robert Novak, Judge Robert Bork and Senator Sam Brownback. more »
Be Holy! 
