Tag Archives: Christian

In the Guise of Human Rights

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H/T Anchoress,  who hopes for conversion of President Obama on issues of life.  I’ll pray for that!  I’m sure Obama now knows who Mary Ann Glendon is and may give ear to what she has to say he only out of curiousity, due to a well publicized run in with this woman of integrity.

From the text of the address of Mary Ann Glendon, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, to Pope Benedict XVI and reported by Zenit:

“We have also been mindful of the fact that in today’s world, ironically, many threats to the dignity of the person have appeared in the guise of human rights. As you pointed out in your memorable speech to the United Nations last year, there are mounting pressures to ‘move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests.’ “……………

“We have paid special attention to rights that are currently under assault such as the right to life, the right to found a family, freedom of conscience and religion, and to rights that have too long awaited fulfillment such as the right to decent subsistence.”

From Pope Benedict’s response: (Full text here)

“The Church’s action in promoting human rights is therefore supported by rational reflection, in such a way that these rights can be presented to all people of good will, independently of any religious affiliation they may have”. At the same time, “insofar as human rights need to be re-appropriated by every generation and by each individual, and insofar as human freedom … is always fragile, the human person needs the unconditional hope and love that can only be found in God and that lead to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others”.

Striking a Balance in Adversity

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From Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’ Kempis

The Twelfth Chapter

The Value of Adversity

IT IS good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men. When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good. —JOHN XV. 5.  Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that he might be dissolved and be with Christ.—PHIL. I. 23.  Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.

Inner Life vs Distraction

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“Cell phones, Blackberries, e-mail, laptops allowing people to bring their work anywhere, news arriving in perfectly condensed and filtered snippets via the Internet and TV, never before has communication been so instantaneous and information distributed so quickly. Never before have people been so connected.”

“One would assume that this preponderance of advanced communication technology would promote a well-informed and close-knit society. While this is true to some extent and there are many benefits to be gained from these technologies, award-winning author and journalist Maggie Jackson surprisingly has found that compared to past generations, we are in fact less capable of quality analytical thinking, more ignorant about many issues, and more fragmented as a community. Never before have we been so disconnected.”  Source:Medical News Today

The subject caught my attention, so I guess I still am capable of attention.  However,  it caught my attention simply because it seems something is always vying for my attention.  There’s that nagging feeling, I’m forgetting something; worse still, that I’m forgetting Someone.

I can’t complain because things are rather simple around here. Kids are off being mature adults.  Only a husband and dog – neither demanding – have a real claim on my time.  I’m not even as plugged in as the rest of society seems to be.  I don’t walk around talking into space with a thing in my ear.  Why, I’ve even got the computer under control.  (Husband might seriously ???) So, I ask myself, “Why self?  What’s our problem?”

Enter Maggie Jackson, who wrote, DISTRACTED: THE EROSION OF ATTENTION AND THE COMING DARK AGE (Prometheus Books).  Medical News today writes:

Jackson’s definition of “attention” stems from studies in neuroscience that have identified a cognitive system comprised of three networks – awareness, focus, and executive attention (planning and decision making) – that work together to act as the “brain’s conductor, leading the orchestration of our minds.” The awareness and focus networks are systems responsible for gathering information about the environment, and the executive attention network is responsible for making decisions based on that information. Sustained attention is necessary for learning, deep thinking, emotional development, building relationships, and many other essential tasks. Attention is the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. Without it, it would be impossible to function in any meaningful way. In today’s world, this altered perspective has been greatly accelerated. Cell phones, e-mails, and numerous other devices compete for our attention. Because of this constant nagging, it becomes nearly impossible to utilize our capacity for sustained attention, and the implications are felt in business, the home, and society at large.

Jackson notes that the average worker switches tasks every three minutes and once interrupted takes nearly half an hour to go back to the original task. Families and friends find it increasingly difficult to meet face-to-face and even more difficult to do so without interruption or willful multitasking. News segments bombard us with superficially simple pieces of information. We have essentially been ushered into a world of constant distraction in which reflective thinking and undivided attention (single-tasking) has become exceedingly rare.

Jackson further laments: “The erosion of attention is largely equivalent to the erosion of our society.”

Not to worry, forewarned is forearmed.  Awareness is half the battle. Bewareness is the other half.  The  world is a little ditsy in its quest for self-awareness and I think, goes off the deep end into navel-gazing and self-absorption.  Inner strength, on the other hand, stems from an inner joy.  That’s what I don’t want to lose.  The acronym JOY still works for me.  When you’re frazzled, check your priorities: Jesus, Others, Yourself.

Holy Joy – Revisited

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“Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength”

Nehemiah 8:10

Headlines got you down? Propagandizing press infuriating you? I’ll leave off questions of finance, lest you cry. “Good grief, Charlie Brown!” …(long pause……….).  Was Charles Schultz, actually, onto something? Good grief? Could there be such a thing?

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crops fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on the heights.” Habakkuk 3:17-19

Highly enigmatic, as I said in the previous post, and I really do believe the word of God  spoken through his prophet, Habakkuk. So, how do I get to faith from here?

For starters, I must recover my holy joy, not the jolly-jump-about-goin’-drinkin’- joy, but the joy that only the Lord can give. Here’s how it came to me today sometime after my posting. When I ride my bike for mental as well as physical health, I plug in my ear buds and head off with something sounding in my ears. Today, I had a choice, all of them were actually good. One, however, didn’t quite appeal because of my fightin’ mood, but I asked myself which of my choices had a likely hood of touching my soul. So, pugnaciousness aside,I chose Mediations from Carmel and rode off on my peace quest.

It worked! Or rather, God, the Holy Spirit, worked. The hard shell around my heart cracked when the word’s of St. Teresa of Avila struck a chord:

“One might understand the great good God does for a soul that willingly disposes itself for the practice of prayer, even though it is not as disposed as is necessary. If the soul perseveres in prayer, in the midst of the sins, temptations, and failures of a thousand kinds that the devil places in its path, in the end, I hold as certain, the Lord will draw it forth to the harbor of salvation”

And these words, too, hit home; addressed by St. Teresa to Son of the eternal Father,Jesus Christ our Lord,true King of the universe!

What did you leave behind in the world?

What could your inheritors receive from you?
What did  you possess, my God,
other than pain, sorrow and dishonour,
so that at the end
your only help lay
in the trunk of a tree
as you drank the bitter cup of death?
And so, my God,
if we truly seek to be your children by adoption
and not renounce your inheritance,
we must not flee from suffering.
The sign of your family
is your five wounds.

From the Office of Readings, “O God, the world had fallen flat in the dust but your Son’s humility stood it upright once more.”

Holy Joy Must Be Your Strength

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Nehemiah 8:10     “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Highly enigmatic, I say, but I believe it.  So, I do my best to recover the joy that only the Lord can give….. again and again.

In the closing prayer of today’s Divine Office, I read:

O God, the world had fallen flat in the dust but your Son’s humility stood it upright once more.
Fill your faithful people with a holy joy:
take those whom you have torn away from slavery to sin
and make them rejoice eternally.


St. Athanasius – Bishop of Alexandria – Church Father

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St. Athanasius is a favorite “all time tough guy” of Fr. Jeff Wharton.  Fr. Jeff comments that Athanasius lived in a time of errant teaching among priest and bishops and didn’t flinch in defending the Son as “homo-ousios” (meaning “of the same substance, or nature, or essence”) with the Father.  The term, itself, is one that grew out of the Council of Nicea to clarify the Church’s understanding of the Nature of Son as one with the Father. St Athanasius was to spend his life defending the full deity of Christ against emperors, magistrates, bishops, and theologians; James Kiefer explains that for this, he was regarded as a trouble-maker and banished from Alexandria a total of five times by various emperors. Hence the expression “Athanasius contra mundum,” or, “Athanasius against the world.”

James E. Kiefer writes of St. Athanasius:

Outside the pages of the New Testament itself, Athanasius is probably the man to whom we chiefly owe the preservation of the Christian faith. He was born around AD 298, and lived in Alexandria, Egypt, the chief center of learning of the Roman Empire.

In 313 the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which changed Christianity from a persecuted to an officially favored religion. About six years later, a presbyter (elder, priest) Arius of Alexandria began to teach concerning the Word of God (John 1:1) that “God begat him, and before he was begotten, he did not exist.” Athanasius was at that time a newly ordained deacon, secretary to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, and a member of his household. His reply to Arius was that the begetting, or uttering, of the Word by the Father is an eternal relation between Them, and not a temporal event. Arius was condemned by the bishops of Egypt (with the exceptions of Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmorica), and went to Nicomedia, from which he wrote letters to bishops throughout the world, stating his position.

The Emperor Constantine undertook to resolve the dispute by calling a council of bishops from all over the Christian world. This council met in Nicea, just across the straits from what is now Istanbul, in the year 325, and consisted of 317 bishops. Athanasius accompanied his bishop to the council, and became recognized as a chief spokesman for the view that the Son was fully God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.

Those were tumultuous times, the bishops gathered by Constantine were men who lived through the persecutions of the time and bore the scars of living martyrdom in testimony to their faith. Can you imagine their meeting one another in one great hall after their years of torture, lonely exile and torment suffered for the defense of  the Faith?

Athanasius is the perfect model for our day.  As best I can remember, Fr. Wharton said, “So much is not right in this world.  Let it lead us to a zeal for the work and Word of God.”  We, too, can bring Truth to the fore with love, leaving off anger that distresses our balance and prayer, that the Holy Spirit may use us mightily, doing great things even in little ways.