Mixed messages will fly during these days of commencement flurry. Who is Notre Dame honoring?
Michelle Malkin sees a showdown in the making. I would perfer heavenly intervention (thunder and lightening would do.) I would be glad to settle for Catholics being Catholics. What are the chances?
President Obama will give a speech in which his “gift” of gab will leave both sides of the Life issue thinking he gave them something. In the end, for every 23 seconds of Obama’s speech, a human being will have died by abortion without audacious HOPE or CHOICE.
The truth of the value of one human life does not rest on a poll, but as a sign of hope in a very dark time for our country it does show movement in the direction of the law written on the heart. HotAir reports the good news with the results of the latest Gallop Poll:
“May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”
“The new results, obtained from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.
The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.”
Checkout Joan’s Rome for her interesting coverage of the Pope pilgrimage with a personal touch:
PALESTINIANS, INCLUDING GAZANS, WELCOME BENEDICT XVI WITH GREAT JOY, POPE SAYS “HOLY SEE SUPPORTS THE RIGHT OF YOUR PEOPLE TO A SOVEREIGN PALESTINIAN HOMELAND
On May 13, 1917, the Blessed Vrgin Mary, who we now honor as Our Lady of Fatima, our Lady of the Rosary, appeared for the first time to the three seers, Francisco, Jacinta & Lucia at the Cova Da Iria, Fatima, Portugal. She asked that the Rosary be said to obtain peace for the world and to end the war.
The world still needs the peace that Our Lady promises in answer to this powerful prayer. If war was the punishment for unrepented sin in 1917, what do we risk today by abortion ,euthanasia, and unchaste lives? Mercy is still God’s choice if we would but choose Him and begin to live a lifestyle of holiness. He is still sending His own Mother to help us and form us for her Son.
Pope Benedict XVI is a man of patience and hope. God gave the Catholic Church one more giant in the face of mediocrity and meanness from those who look for reasons to find fault where there is none. Rather than build for a future that supports true peace between men called to live as children of the One God of Abraham, some chose nitpicking.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, responded to criticism in the Israeli press that in part misrepresented the Pope’s obligatory enrollment in the Hitler Youth during the war (clarified by the Pope in his book “Salt of the Earth”and also for using the word “killed” in his address at Yad Vashem instead of “murdered” and the word “millions” (of Jews) instead of “six million.” The Pope had already referred to “six million Jews” in an earlier address on his arrival that day.
Zenit reports that Fr. Lombardi pointed out that the speech was not a treatise on the Holocaust and noted other discourses where the Pope has mentioned Germany and his past, and Nazism.
“Moreover in the morning, he had already said that six million Jews died and that we can’t forget, and that there is still anti-Semitism,” the spokesman said, referring to the Holy Father’s first address in Israel at the Tel Aviv airport, delivered just hours before his visit to the Yad Vashem.
Father Lombardi commented that Benedict XVI does not get offended when the press alters or takes issue with his words.
“He does not react superficially or immediately,” the spokesman said. “He is very patient and is ready to listen to the others — everyone can voice their ideas. It’s true, he feels that he has not been understood, and I feel the same, but we know how the world is and how attitudes are. There is not always a willingness to understand well; sometimes there are prejudices and not everyone is open to an attitude of readiness to listen.
“I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name. I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.” With this passage from the Book of Isaiah, Pope Benedict XVI began a recollection of those slain in the Holocaust and memorialized at Yad Vashem. This passage furnished two words: Yad meaning “memorial” and shem “name.” The Pope recalled how each person remembered there bears a name. Though robbed of their life they could never be robbed of the name God had given them. The Pope said that he can only imagine the joyful expectation of their parents as they anxiously awaited the birth of their children; “What name shall we give this child? What is to become of him or her?” He said, that they could never have imagined that they would be condemned to such a degradable fate. Their cries still echos in our hearts. the Pope said that it is the cry of Able rising from the earth to the Almighty. Pope Benedict prayed from the Book of Lamentations proclaiming that the favors of the Almighty are never exhausted and His mercies are not spent.They are renewed each morning. So great is His faithfulness.
Be Holy! 