Tag Archives: United States

Pope Francis washes the feet of God’s wayward children, boys and girls. Mommies and daddy’s wipe noses and evangelize just by being present in the midst of community.

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Pope Francis washes the feet of God’s wayward children, boys and girls. Mommies and daddy’s wipe noses and evangelize just by being present in the midst of community.

Kathleen's avatarKathleen M. Basi

Triduum with young children is not a blissful devotional experience. But we do it anyway, because it’s important.

Michael is a wiggleworm during church at all times, but at bedtime, after immunization shots, it increases exponentially. I kept having to take him to the back so he could run back and forth, put his arms up to be picked up only to squirm back to the floor (rinse & repeat). Then he grabbed my face between his hands and started playing Eskimo kiss. It was less charming than it sounds, considering his version involves crashing foreheads and a runny nose.

But somewhere amid toddler wrestling and trying to show the 6- and 4- year-olds what’s so special about this particular day and why we go to Mass at night, something occurred to me that had I had never processed before:

Jesus washed Judas’ feet.

Now that has some pretty profound…

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Obama’s Middle East Map Erases Israeli Territory | Washington Free Beacon

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Obama’s Middle East Map Erases Israeli Territory | Washington Free Beacon.

Hello Kitty Meets the Disintegrator

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My husband’s been waiting for a sunny day with no wind to spend at the shooting range. Today was the day. He was like a kid in the candy shop, with rifles, ammo,mount, binoculars and tripod at the ready for his get away.  As he made a break for it, I minded him, “Be careful out there. Watch out for crazy people.” With all the anti-gun hysteria, I actually felt he was going to a place that was well managed, with people who minded their p’s and q’s and had their acts together, unlike many in the media  blowing smoke at good citizenry and at the 2nd amendment, both barrels blasting.

My guy wore himself out walking back and forth to targets at one hundred yards and then 200 yards. All in all it was a very good day. He wrapped it up with these words when he got home, “You know those ‘crazies you told me to watch out for…they were right next to me. Seems the couple in the next lane, equipped with 2 AR-15s must have come to the range for the first time, and jumped right in, ignorant of the protocol.

First the guy trots out with his target paper, thinking he’s going to mount it to the frame “out there”, my husband’s, of course.  “Oh no you’re not!”, says my man, fearless in the face of ignorance.  After filling the newbie in on the niceties, my guy blasted holes happily til he checked his target, now peppered by rounds from, you guessed it, an AR-15.  Seems the wife of the other fella was shooting from another lane, beside her husband’s, at his target, which just happened to line up with my husband’s target, from her perspective.

Simply carrying on, patching her hits in his target and wishing they’d tire quickly, my husband still had very good day! There are scarier things out there:

I know what I want for Christmas:

B 16 on Homosexual “Marriage”

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Here we offer an “interview” with Pope Benedict XVI that draws on his previous writings on the subject of homosexuality, on giving legal recognition to homosexual unions, and on the duties of Catholic politicians.

1) Your Holiness, thank you for joining us today. You recently referred to the “powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage” in the United States. How should the Catholic Church in America respond to such pressure?

The Church’s conscientious effort to resist this pressure calls for a reasoned defense of marriage as a natural institution consisting of a specific communion of persons, essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation.

Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage.

Defending the institution of marriage as a social reality is ultimately a question of justice, since it entails safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike.

2) Many try to dismiss this as a matter of religion and say that it should have no place in a modern, pluralistic society. What do you say?

Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.

The Church’s teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world.

No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman.

3) Many people think think of homosexual unions as on par with heterosexual unions–only with the genders changed. What should we make of this view?

There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.

Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts as a serious depravity (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10).

This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.

This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.

4) What does this say about people with same-sex attraction? How should they be treated? And how should they view their situation? Read more here:

SECRET INFO: Pope Benedict on Homosexual “Marriage” – 

Vatican celebrates Knights of Malta’s 900 years

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The Knights of Malta, one of the most peculiar organizations in the world, marked its 900th birthday Saturday with a colorful procession through St. Peter’s Square, a Mass in the basilica and an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, himself a member of the onetime chivalrous order drawn from Europe’s nobility.

The Knights are at once a Roman Catholic religious order, an aid group that runs soup kitchens, hospitals and ambulance services around the globe, and a sovereign entity that prints its own passports and enjoys diplomatic relations with 104 countries — yet has no country to call its own.

The order’s international legal status is entirely unique, a sovereign entity that prints its own stamps, coins, license plates and passports, yet has no territory over which it rules. Its forces once occupied Cyprus, Rhodes and Malta, but Napoleon expelled the order from Malta in 1798, depriving it of the final patch of land it ruled.

Nevertheless, the order still enjoys many of the trappings of a small country: U.N. observer status and diplomatic relations with 104 countries, most of them in the developing world where such ties can smooth the delivery of humanitarian aid. But the United States, for one, has no relations, precisely because it’s a stateless state.

In his speech Saturday, Benedict affirmed the sovereign status that the order enjoys. He acknowledged its peculiar nature, saying the order’s guiding spirit “aims not to exercise power and influence of a worldly character, but in complete freedom to accomplish its own mission for the integral good of man, spirit and body … with special regard for those whose need of hope and love is greater.”

 

» We Are a Species That Kills Our Own Young | ABQ Journal

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» We Are a Species That Kills Our Own Young | ABQ Journal

by Sid Gutierrez – Retired Astronaut

The issue of abortion really comes down to two very basic observations and the answer to a single question. First, the observations. If an abortion really involves the removal of nothing more than growing tissue within the womb, then no justification is necessary. If abortion actually involves taking the life of an innocent unborn child, then no justification is sufficient.

So the only question that needs to be resolved is whether that which is growing within the womb is tissue or child. Arguments not addressing this question are irrelevant.

Krueger provides the answer to this question in her article. She describes the proposed requirement to “view a play by play obstetric ultrasound and listen to the heartbeat of the unborn child” as a “gruesome experience.”

Why would it be gruesome? I recall my wife and I listening carefully in the doctor’s office for the heart beat of our unborn children. My grown daughters now proudly place ultrasound images of their unborn children on Facebook for all of their friends to see. These actions are viewed as beautiful and joyous, not as “cruel.”  Click to read the full article