Stealing a Saint

According to church tradition, Saint Mark founded the church in Alexandria and ultimately was buried in the church.  I should note that my source for this part of the story is satirist, Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.   According to Twain, a fifth century Venetian priest had a dream of an angel who told him to steal the body of Saint Mark.  According to the angel, if Mark's body resided in Venice, then the city would rise in prominence among the nations.  If Mark's body ever left Venice, the city would perish from the earth.[1]  Leaving Twain, everyone seems to agree that centuries later AD 828, Venetian thieves managed to finally pull it off.  In the seventh century, the Egyptian Arabs had converted to the pork avoiding religion of Islam. Some enterprising Venetians stole the body from the church and buried it in pork products.  The Muslims came to search the ship, but shunned the halal sections which were forbidden.  The stolen body was entombed in St. Mark's Basilica.[2]

Here the Basilica has a slightly less nefarious version of events.  According to the Basilica, the Muslims were actually going to destroy the Alexandrian church for the marble.  The Venetian thieves took the body to comfort the Alexandrian Christians and save it from the Muslims.  Even in this overly amicable retelling of the story, they still have to deceive the local Christians.[3]

After the Basilica burned down, in 1094, supposedly Mark miraculously revealed his body out of solid stone.

It may seem incomprehensible today to believe that a human being can emerge from a column, from a block of stone. We are accustomed to considering stone and walls as inorganic, dead substances. But it wasn't that way in the pre-"rationalistic" ages. In the writings of Andrea Palladio (I quattro libri dell'architettura, 1570) we again find the concept of stone as being literally living, with characteristics we would now call organic. We may imagine a sort of identification between St. Mark and the structure of his burial place. The central point in the "legend" of the miracle of the column consists not only in linking the saint with the basilica which, since it contained his tomb, became a sepulchral basilica, but also in creating a direct bond between the material structure of the building and an event concerning the saint in person. An important effect of the miracle must have been intensified concrete contact with the patron saint and his relics, which is to say his body. The miracle occurred during a period of reinforced popular sensitivity about holy matters and it is legitimate to suppose that precisely this collective desire lay at the heart of the "legend".[4]

According to the Orthodox Church the thieves left the head of Mark, which the church ultimately lost over 250 years ago.  In 1968, the Catholic Church ultimately returned some of Mark's relics to Alexandria, but apparently some still remain in Venice.[5]

This feud between Venice and Alexandria should put Calvinism and Arminianism into perspective.  I follow the Coptic Pope on facebook and he recently commemorated the discovery of Mark's head.[6]  

 

Scientific Atheism to Christ

Fulwiler blogs at http://www.conversiondiary.com/jen.  She reminds me of another Atheist to Catholic convert, Leah Libresco, (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked/).  Libresco won a podcast debate against Hemant Mehta (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/).  Still, Mehta had one good question, how do you get from there is a God to God is a wafer?

I am happy when Atheists find Christ.  Here is the Libresco/Mehta podcast http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid=%7B8851D9D5-7AAA-4F5F-A10B-228E72E9FFD2%7D

Context matters...you didn't build that...part 2

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=33411

I recently wrote a post about how some were misrepresenting the President's recent speech at Roanoke, Virginia.  I mentioned that the theme in question was one of the President's common themes.  I found another example from a November 30, 2011 speech given at Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Now, I mean, I don’t want to exaggerate. It’s not like they’re volunteering. (Laughter.) But if they’re asked, if they feel like it’s going to help middle-class families, help grow the economy, help to reduce the deficit, they’re willing to help. I can’t tell you how many well-to-do folks I meet who say, look, America gave me a chance to succeed. Somewhere along the line, somebody gave me a good education. Somewhere along the line, somebody gave me a college scholarship. Somewhere along the line, somebody built the information and transportation networks that have helped my business grow. Somewhere along the line, somebody gave me a shot. And so now it’s my turn to do the next generation that same good thing. I’ve got to give something back to them as well. (Applause.) [1]

I was challenged to find an example where the President diminished his own accomplishments, by crediting others with his successes.  I hope this counts.  

Again his point is that we all have had help along the way.

PS - Supposedly, he stole this idea from this video of Elizabeth Warren.

Your Grace is Enough - Written by Catholic Matt Maher...What?

I guess the song is truly catholic with a big and a little "C".

 

Matt Maher is a contemporary worship leader in the Catholic faith. Since most people outside of the Catholic faith find “contemporary worship” and “Catholic” to be two things they would never associate as going together, I asked Matt to describe himself and what he does for me. Here is what he had to say …

“I’m a worship leader out of Mesa Arizona. Primarily I work full time at a church. I’ve done some touring and traveling over the years, but I work 20 hours a week as a worship leader and 20 hours a week as young adult minister. I lead a college Bible study. It’s a Catholic Church, which kind of surprises a lot of people. The joy that I really feel, as part of my ministry, is that I’ve been kind of going out more and traveling and working with different people breaking down those stereotypes because people have a lot of Catholic stereotypes. I’m just letting them know that there is a generation, now rising, of Catholics who recognize the gift of Salvation that’s been given to them and that see the need for a daily relationship with Jesus and pursue it. And pursue Him actively in His Word, and also pursue it in the Sacrament. Primarily, I think the way that God has been using me to reach out to people is through worship. I think there’s kind of a format that’s developed. I lead worship every week. I do a mass every Sunday night at 6 PM at my church, Saint Tims, and on Tuesday nights we do a thing called XLT. Basically what it is is a gathering for high school and college students. It’s consistent with about 40 minutes of worship, 20 to 25 minutes of teaching and about 25 to 30 minutes of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It’s been really powerful to see that happen and to see these different elements kind of from post-modern culture and Christianity, not clashing, but colliding with something as ancient and ritualistic as the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And it’s been phenomenal to see the fruit come from that. I just got off the phone this morning and found out that I was asked this fall to Atlanta to the NCYC, which is the National Catholic Youth Conference. It’s the largest single Catholic youth conference in the world, or maybe it’s just North America. I mean, there’s World Youth Day, but a straight-up conference for high school students, I think this is the largest one in the world. We’re going to do a XLT worship night in an auditorium that seats 15000 people. It will be sometime in November or December. So I’m already excited. I’ve done a lot of work throughout the country with a ministry called Life Teen, which is a parish based youth ministry program that’s designed to help provide and develop resources for youth ministers to reach their teens and lead them to Christ. I’ve mostly just done music with them. I’ve also worked with the Franciscan University of Steubenville at the summer youth conferences. I’ve led worship at a couple of those. So that’s kind of what I do. It’s kind of a big myriad or a smattering of things.

What I’ve realized too is that the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. The reality is that because of the denominational barriers that exist, there are so few laborers in the Catholic Church. You know, I think it’s a move that God is doing. It’s not about me, it’s about unity and not just playing at unity by basically saying, “Well, we’ll let Catholics come here and hang out with us.” There’s a guy that I’ve been developing a friendship with whose name is J. D. Walt. He’s the Dean of Chapel at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. He’s just a phenomenal preacher, a great man, a great husband and loving father. He and I have just been dialoging and he said something really profound. He said that unity comes through dialog through relationships. I was like that is really true.

For me, growing up, I always had a cross section of friends from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. So the thing I’ve witnessed is that there has been a lot of misrepresentation out there. A lot of people have been poorly educated about Catholicism. They’re just taking what their pastor said when they were 10 or 11 or a teenager in high school and they give a quick track on 10 things to refute your Catholic students. I was never taught that, through all of my Christian upbringing. There’s this whole buzz-talk now about the “emerging church”. What is that look like? A friend of mine asked me that once and I said, “Well, it starts with candles and creative music!” (laughs) No, seriously, I’m only 30, so what do I know, but I think it starts with solid community, regardless of the denomination, and depth of teaching. It’s about re-presenting, which I think Catholics need to do a better job of, dogmas or doctrines, not as these set rules or laws, but as deeper expressions of God’s love, for God and God’s love of humankind. Not so much as alternate ways to God like a 12-step program. It’s not about that. It’s interesting that people could look at creation and see how God used that to worship Him, and yet look at a 14 year old girl who said “yes” and could have gotten killed for being pregnant outside of marriage 2000 years ago, and not honor her. So I think it’s trying to find new ways to dialog with other Christians to re-present these ancient ideas that I see people stumble on or find out on their own. We have a history or a fascination with the ancient church and I think it’s our job as Catholics to … not to protect it … but for us to know about it and be in dialog with it. I always say that I feel like we’re like the spoiled, adopted kids of God. We have all of these toys and we don’t even know it.” [2006]

Derren Brown - Messiah

• He faked Christian evangelism, alien abduction, psychic powers, New Age theories and contacting the dead.
• Evangelical Curt Nordhielm did not endorse Derren Brown, because he wanted to meet again before granting his public endorsement.  Derren did not meet with him again.
• The other four did endorse him.
• His primary point is that spiritual leaders should be much more skeptical of supernatural claims since people trust their judgement. 
• He would tell them he was a fraud if asked.  No one asked him if he was faking.  

Catholic: Ectopic Pregnancy

On February 8th I said the following on Facebook:

Many Catholics use birth control. I suspect that even though doctrine commands that a woman should die rather than terminate her ectopic pregnancy, most Catholic doctors and most Catholic women choose to terminate the pregnancy. Does anyone know a Tebow like testimony where a woman chose to die from her ectopic pregnancy? 

I misunderstood the following section of the Catholic Encyclopedia.

After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: "Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?" The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: "No; according to thedecree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the lifeof the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for". Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.

However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evilconsequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evilconsequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended[1]

I misinterpreted the Catholic Encyclopedia which never should be taken as a modern source anyways. This is lazy research on my part.  The position in the Catholic Encyclopedia and the modern position is that a mother can be saved by removing the tissue around the ectopic pregnancy thereby indirectly killing the embryo.

28 states require employers to cover contraception

28 states require employers, including most religiously affiliated institutions, to cover contraception in their health plans. For them, the only change is that now they must cover the full cost. In fact, the administration will be expanding conscience protections in eight states, where all religious institutions are required to offer birth control coverage. [1]

Gingrich says life begins at implantation

GINGRICH: Well, I think the question of being implanted is a very big question. My friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through the logic of: ‘So how many additional potential lives are they talking about? What are they going to do as a practical matter to make this real?’

I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life. because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions [1]

2006: Limbo, no more about going low

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – To hope that babies who die without being baptized will go to heaven makes more sense than the idea that they go to limbo, says a group of papally appointed theologians.

While no one can be certain of the fate of unbaptized babies who die, Christians can and should trust that God will welcome those babies into heaven, said members of the International Theological Commission.

The commission, a Vatican advisory board, met Oct. 2-6 to continue work on a statement explaining why the concept of limbo entered the common teaching of the church, why it was never officially defined as Catholic doctrine, and why hope for their salvation makes more sense, said Father Paul McPartlan, a member of the commission and a professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

"We cannot say we know with certainty what will happen" to unbaptized babies, Father McPartlan said, "but we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them to salvation."

Speaking the last day of the commission's meeting, Father McPartlan said the 30 commission members were in agreement on the main thesis of the document, but they had not put the finishing touches on it. If they vote on the final version by mail, the document could be released in 2007.

He said that while affirming people's hope, the document takes pains to explain the Christian belief that baptism is necessary to guarantee salvation and urges parents to baptize their infants.

The document "in no way means to lessen the urgency with which the church invites parents to have their children baptized," Father McPartlan said Oct. 6. "What we are trying to do is to say, 'What does the church say when confronted with the situation of an infant who has died without being baptized?' That and that alone is what prompted our document.

"The answer is not a simplistic, 'Oh, don't worry; everything is fine,'" but rather that God's endless mercy, his love poured out in Jesus Christ and his desire to save all people gives a solid basis for hoping those children will be saved despite not having been baptized.

The commission began formal studies of the question in 2004 when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was president of the advisory body and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Benedict celebrated Mass Oct. 6 with the commission members; in his homily, he spoke about the role of theologians as listening to the word of God in order to help other's hear the good news. But he did not mention the so-called limbo document at all.

Father McPartlan said the commission began considering the question because priests and bishops around the world had asked then-Cardinal Ratzinger for "an updated Catholic statement in response to the distressing human situation" of parents mourning the loss of a baby before baptism.

The commission also hoped to be able to respond to questions raised by those mourning the lives of babies lost through abortion. Because the Catholic Church teaches that human life begins at conception, the question applies to those babies as well, Father McPartlan said.

He also said the theologians felt called to articulate a Catholic expression of hope in a world where hope is often lacking and lives are often laid to waste by war and violence.

Realizing some people could misinterpret the statement as saying that baptism is unnecessary for infants because they are incapable of sinning, the document reaffirms church teaching about the reality of original sin.

The church believes that with the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus, every human being is born marked with the stain of original sin, which distances them from God.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explained: "Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called."

But the catechism, published in 1992, did not mention limbo.

In fact, regarding the fate of children who die without the grace of baptism, it said, the church entrusts them to the mercy of God.

Presenting the commission's work to Pope Benedict last year, Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the doctrinal congregation and president of the commission, said the statement was important because "the number of babies not baptized has increased considerably," and the church knows that salvation "is only reachable in Christ through the Holy Spirit."

He also told the pope last year that he hoped the statement would be published soon.

Father McPartlan said there were "no hiccups" in the drafting process, but the commission's work takes time.

In the 1985 book-length interview, The Ratzinger Report, and in the 2000 book, God and the World, the future Pope Benedict said focusing on hope made more sense theologically then upholding the idea of limbo, where unbaptized babies would enjoy "natural happiness" for eternity, but would not be in heaven in the presence of God.

Limbo, he pointed out, was never a defined article of Catholic faith, but rather was a hypothesis formed on the basis of the church's belief in the need for baptism. [1]

In his own words, Alinsky fought commies

Your only hope is to move first, to beat the Communists at their own game, to show the people you're more interested in their living conditions than the contents of your collection plate. And not only will you get them back again by supporting their struggle, but when they win they'll be more prosperous and your donations will go up and the welfare of the [Catholic] Church will be enhanced. ~ Saul Alinsky [1]

This is not to say that he did not admit to having any involvement in with the communists.

I knew plenty of Communists in those days, and I worked with them on a number of projects. Back in the Thirties, the Communists did a hell of a lot of good work; they were in the vanguard of the labor movement and they played an important role in aiding blacks and Okies and Southern sharecroppers. Anybody who tells you he was active in progressive causes in those days and never worked with the Reds is a goddamn liar. Their platform stood for all the right things, and unlike many liberals, they were willing to put their bodies on the line. Without the Communists, for example, I doubt the C.I.O. could have won all the battles it did. I was also sympathetic to Russia in those days, not because I admired Stalin or the Soviet system but because it seemed to be the only country willing to stand up to Hitler. I was in charge of a big part of fund raising for the International Brigade and in that capacity I worked in close alliance with the Communist Party... But all in all, and despite my own fights with them, I think the Communists of the Thirties deserve a lot of credit for the struggles they led or participated in. Today the party is just a shadow of the past, but in the Depression it was a positive force for social change. A lot of its leaders and organizers were jerks, of course, but objectively the party in those days was on the right side and did considerable good.[1]

Back in the 1930's, if you were opposed to racism, sometimes the Communist Party was the best choice of few options.   Frank Oppenheimer joined to protest the draining of a pool after African Americans swam there for one day.  African Americans were thought to be more germ ridden.

Well, he was - he did join the Communist Party - which Robert did not - in the 1930s, and, you know, a lot of this research was new to me. There were living in Pasadena. He was at Caltech, where he was getting a PhD candidate, and his brother was there, as well. And it turned out that the Communist Party were the only people who were, for example, protesting the fact that the Pasadena public pool was drained - I think it was Thursday - after the blacks were allowed to swim there for their one day. And he was outraged that no one else was addressing racism. And, of course, the Spanish Civil War was the other thing that he thought nobody was addressing.

So he and his new wife, Jackie, who was part of the - she was more associated than he was. They joined the party. And, of course, they immediately thought it was ridiculous because for one thing, they asked him to choose an alias, which he just thought was dumb. So he chose Folsom - which is, of course, the prison, Folsom Prison - as a joke. And in all the FBI files, they have him as alias Frank Folsom. [2]

As with many people, it came back to bite him.

And the HUAC hearings and - you know, to make a long story short. As you know from the book, it's a little bit complicated how exactly he got in trouble. But the interesting thing was he did get fired. He did admit he was a communist. He did not testify against anybody else, which was something that other people didn't do. They actually didn't name names, but did not plead the 5th, either. He and Jackie both - his wife Jackie both talked completely openly about their experience, but refused to talk - so they were in contempt of court. Actually, Clifford Durr, which I didn't know was the only attorney who would take them on. [2]

JFK September 12, 1960, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida--the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power--the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms--an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.

These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues--for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so--and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test--even by indirection--for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none--who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.

This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."

And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition--to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress--on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)--instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.

I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts--why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France--and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.

But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me.

Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith--nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.

If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency--practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution...so help me God.[1]

Also here are articles from 2010 and 2011 about Santorum's criticism of the speech.  

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum rejects JFK's separation of church and state

Santorum "appalled" at JFK church/state comments

The Religion We Need

Ok, why am I, a baptist, putting on a quote by a catholic apologist? Because nobody cares when I put on a quote by an Anglican converted by Catholics: i.e. C.S. Lewis. Seriously, in The Catholic Church and Conversion Chesterton was right on a lot, but he was wrong on the Catholic stuff. For example I am not a “bad Catholic” even though the “good Catholic”, Chesterton thinks so. Anyways the last two paragraphs quoted Chesterton gets it right, even though the conclusion that draws him to the Faith is wrong. I had to add the context otherwise it would make sense and thank goodness for google that allowed me to search for the excerpt without having to type it myself

The Catholic Church [ok, here he starts out wrong, but read on] is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. I have compared it with the New Religions; but this is exactly where it differs from the New Religions. The New Religions are in many ways suited to the new conditions; but they are only suited to the new conditions.[sure there are timeless stuff about the Catholic Church, but a lot of that was in vogue at the time]When those conditions shall have changed in only a century or so, the points upon which alone they insist at present will have become almost pointless. If the Faith has all the freshness of a new religion, it has all the richness of an old religion; it has especially all the reserves of an old religion. So far as that is concerned, its antiquity is alone a great advantage, and especially a great advantage for purposes of renovation and youth. It is only by the analogy of animal bodies that we suppose that old things must be stiff. It is a mere metaphor from bones and arteries. In an intellectual sense old things are flexible. Above all, they are various and have many alternatives to offer. There is a sort of rotation of crops in religious history; and old fields can lie fallow for a while and then be worked again. But when the new religion or any such notion has sown its one crop of wild oats, which the wind generally blows away, it is barren. A thing as old as the Catholic Church has an accumulated armoury and treasury to choose from; it can pick and choose among the centuries and brings one age to the rescue of another. It can call in the old world to redress the balance of the new.

Anyhow, the New Religions are suited to the new world; and this is their most damning defect. Each religion is produced by contemporary causes that can be clearly pointed out. Socialism is a reaction against Capitalism. Spiritualism is a reaction against Materialism; it is also in its intensified form merely the trail of the tragedy of the Great War. But there is a somewhat more subtle sense in which the very fitness of the new creeds makes them unfit; their very acceptability makes them inacceptable. Thus they all profess to be progressive because the peculiar boast of their peculiar period was progress; they claim to be democratic because our political system still rather pathetically claims to be democratic. They rushed to a reconciliation with science, which was often only a premature surrender to science. They hastily divested themselves of anything considered dowdy or old-fashioned in the way of vesture or symbol. They claimed to have bright services and cheery sermons; the churches competed with the cinemas; the churches even became cinemas. In its more moderate form the mood was merely one of praising natural pleasures, such as the enjoyment of nature and even the enjoyment of human nature. These are excellent things and this is an excellent liberty; and yet it has its limitations.

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty allowing us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be social, when they would be social without any religion. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion. They say they want a religion like this because they are like this already. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do without it.

It is a very different matter when a religion, in the real sense of a binding thing, binds men to their morality when it is not identical with their mood. It is very different when some of the saints preached social reconciliation to fierce and raging factions who could hardly bear the sight of each others’ faces. It was a very different thing when charity was preached to pagans who really did not believe in it; just as it is a very different thing now, when chastity is preached to new pagans who do not believe in it. It is in those cases that we get the real grapple of religion; and it is in those cases that we get the peculiar and solitary triumph of the Catholic faith. It is not in merely being right when we are right, as in being cheerful or hopeful or humane. It is in having been right when we were wrong, and in the fact coming back upon us afterwards like a boomerang. One word that tells us what we do not know outweighs a thousand words that tell us what we do know. And the thing is all the more striking if we not only did not know it but could not believe it. It may seem a paradox to say that the truth teaches us more by the words we reject than by the words we receive.  [1]
G.K. Chesterton

Yule Lad #12 Meat Hook

In Iceland, Saint Thorlac Thorhalli was declared a Saint by the Icelandic Parliament in 1198.  Later the Pope officially canonized him in 1984.  St Thorlak's Day is celebrated in Iceland on the December 23 (the day of his death) and is considered the last day to prepare for Christmas cooking as Christmas Eve is tomorrow.[1] Meat Hook sneaks into a house and hides in chimneys and roofs lowing his hook to steal meat smoking or boiling...

Meat Hook, the twelfth one,
his talent would display
as soon as he arrived
on Saint Thorlak's Day.
He snagged himself a morsel
of meet of any sort,
although his hook at times was
a tiny bit short.[2]

Vatican Declares Boy's Recovery A 'Miracle'

December 20, 2011

In February 2006, 5-year-old Jake Finkbonner fell and hit his head while playing basketball at his school in Ferndale, Wash. Soon, he developed a fever and his head swelled. His mother, Elsa, rushed him to Seattle Children's Hospital, where the doctors realized Jake was battling a flesh-eating bacterium called Strep A.

"It traveled all around his face, his scalp, his neck, his chest," she recalls, "and why it didn't travel to his brain or his eyeballs or his heart? He was protected."

Jake was protected, she says, by Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who lived 350 years ago. She had converted to Catholicism and was considered holy enough by the Vatican to be elevated to "blessed" — one step before sainthood — in 1980. The Finkbonners are Lummi Indian, and their family and friends prayed that Kateri would intercede with God for Jake.

But the doctors' efforts to get ahead of the infection were unsuccessful, and Jake was given his last rites. Then, suddenly, the infection stopped, stunning the doctors. The Rev. Paul Pluth, of the Archdiocese of Seattle, says that was the day an acquaintance placed a "relic" of Kateri — in this case, a small pendant — on Jake's pillow. Pluth believes the timing was not coincidental.

"You can pinpoint the exact date on which this relic was brought to Jake's hospital bed," he says. "He was expected to die at that time, and after the relic was brought and placed on his hospital bed, he did begin to improve."

Of course, Jake did receive the best medical treatment from expert doctors.

Still, for nearly five years, Pluth has headed a tribunal investigating Jake's recovery. And now, after considering testimony by the doctors and others, Pope Benedict XVI has declared it was a miracle, meaning that Kateri is expected to become a saint next year.

"I think it's pretty great that she's becoming a saint," says Jake Finkbonner, who is now 11. "And not only that she's so far the only Native American saint, but that I'm pretty much part of it. I don't know anybody else except for myself who's included in the process of becoming a saint."

Jake has fully recovered, although he's had more than 25 surgeries to reduce the scarring on his face. In the short term, he says, he might celebrate with a milkshake. In the long term, he says, he plans to be a plastic surgeon, so he can help children like him. [1][2]

The Contemporaneous Miracle of the Sun Newspaper

The Miracle of Fatima, El Milagro de Fatima, O Milagre De Fatima

All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. That is just a fact.

The Patriot Update says it is a "news source" that provides "timely, accurate news about what concerns patriotic Americans."  They have a new web series call PatriotChicks.  I took notes, but I do not know when I will be able to fact check it.

Ellen Muehlberger,  an assistant professor of Near Eastern studies and
 history at U-M who is writing a book about angels in late ancient times

• "Islam says kill gay people that's why I don't get why liberals are pro-Muslim, and pro-gay. ~ Victoria Jackson
• Snopes.com is owned by George Soros
• Frank Gaffney is one of the experts on Islamization of America
• Oklahoma a man was allowed to beat his wife, because "Sharia said it was OK? (Honestly what I think she did here was take a blog post about the UAE saying something was "OK". She saw "OK" and thought it meant Oklahoma.)
• We are not allowed to say "in Jesus name, Amen", because of Separation of Church and State, but they're allowed to beat of their wives because we are open to all religions. True?
• They are given special foot washing baths on the state campuses on the University of Michigan.
• We can't have our Christmas Trees.
• Muslims are asking for a Catholic University to provide them a place to pray devoid of crosses
• Muslims have more rights in schools than Christians
• The Bible can be used a literature and history in schools, but now we are seeing school use the Quran.
• America was founded on Christian principles not Islamic principles.
• Christians are being tortured, crucified, and murdered in Egypt, because the Muslims are in control.
• Islam is not a religion of peace, because what is peaceful believing that your mission in life is to murder?
• "My Dad said, 'we're lucky that most Muslims are lukewarm or we'd all be dead.'" ~ Victoria Jackson
• "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.  That is just a fact."  (Seriously that was a quote)
• Islam is the opposite of the Bible and it is a religion of death.
• Everyone can say what they want unless you love the country and God.
• These women say that none of what they said is hateful.
• Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano have dead eyes
• Gay marriage is the government trying to force the church to bend its beliefs.  
• Gay marriage is the government trying to take over the churches, but civil unions are OK
• They are bring suits against priests and pastors who will not marry a gay couple

CS Lewis on the Word of God contained in "an untidy and leaky vehicle".

You hear it all the time.  Reading the Bible makes you an atheist.  Many atheists have claimed that running into verses like the one below caused the sparks of their unbelief.  

Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and don't spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing baby, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

1 Samuel 15:3 World English Bible 

As an atheist that converted to Christianity, C.S. Lewis presents an interesting work around.  The Bible contains wickedness, but this is not of God. It is the fault of the human writers.  

…When a series of such re-tellings turns a creation story which at first had almost no religious or metaphysical significance into a story which achieves the idea of true Creation and of a transcendent Creator (as Genesis does), then nothing will make me believe that some of the re-tellers, or some one of them, has not been guided by God.

Thus something originally merely natural – the kind of myth that is found among most nations – will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself it would not have served.  Generalizing this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature – chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of God’s word.  Not all, I suppose, in the same way.  There are prophets who write with the clearest awareness that Divine compulsion is upon them.  There are chroniclers whose intention may have been merely to record.  There are poets like those in the Song of Songs who probably never dreamed of any but a secular and natural purpose in what they composed.  There is (and it is no less important) the work first of the Jewish and then of the Christian Church in preserving and canonizing just these books.  There is the work of redactors and editors in modifying them.  On all of these I suppose a Divine pressure; of which not by any means all need have been conscious.

The Human qualities of the raw materials show through.  Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed.  The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history.  It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

To a human mind this working-up (in a sense imperfectly), this sublimation (incomplete) of human material, seems, no doubt, an untidy and leaky vehicle.  We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form – something we could have tabulated and memorized and relied on like the multiplication table.  One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist’s view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic’s view of the Church.  But there is one argument which we should beware of using for either position: God must have done what is best, this best, therefore God has done this.  For we are mortals and do not know what is best for us, and it is dangerous to prescribe what God must have done – especially when we cannot, for the life of us, see that He has after all done it.

Reflections on the Psalms by CS Lewis

Desecrating the Eucharist brings Reverend to tears

I don't know how to feel about this.  Some people have been desecrating the Eucharist at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Hastings, Minnesota.  Catholicism teaches transubstantiation which means that the communion wafers literally become the body of Christ.  So when these people desecrate the Eucharist by placing it in hymnals, they are desecrating Christ himself.  This church even will not dispose of them down the drain into the sewer.  They have a special sink set aside.

Desecrating the Eucharist is a very intentional act.  The wafer is placed into your mouth.  You must then hold it in your mouth and take it back to your seat.  You then must take it out of your mouth without anyone noticing.  This was very intentional.   

However to me, the Eucharist is not the body of Christ physically.  The crackers that I take during my communion are mere symbols.  I would consider it irreverent to leave garbage in a sanctuary, but that is about  it.  Perhaps I would find the littering with cracker during communion, sacrilegious.  Yet, if you cannot participate in the ritual  with a pure heart, it is best that you littered.

I can seek to understand what brought their reverend to tears, but I have a hard time empathizing.[1]

If you want to know what atheism is then ask an atheist

I AM NOT AN ATHEIST 

I saw this the other day and I immediately thought that strawmen are not your friend.  A strawman is a logical fallacy when you criticize someone for an argument they do not actually hold.  Quickly let us look at this.

The belief 

OK, we have to stop already.  While I consider atheism a "belief"  and a religion. Many atheists consider atheism not a belief, but a lack of a belief.  The saying typically goes something like: if atheism is a belief/religion then not stamp collecting is a hobby.  Some might say, "I do not believe in a God."  For many atheists the idea that atheism is a "belief" is not something they argue.

Perhaps here we should also define atheism.  Dictionary.com defines atheism in both ways.

1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Atheism simply has to do with theology or lack of theology.  There is not embedded in the definition an origin of the universe or an acceptance of a scientific view point.  

that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing 

What is nothing?  First, I may need to do more research, but most of the atheists that I can remember are materialists.  Nature is eternal.  Those that do not believe that nature is eternal are agnostic on the subject.  They do not believe in an ex nihilo creation.  Maybe some do, but I do not think that any atheists that you can name believe in such.  

Also "nothing" in physics can produce something.  Empty space has stuff in it.  Some atheists mean this when they say "nothing".  Also the Big Bang is something, a singularity extending through all space at a single instant.  You can say where did the singularity and space come from?  You might get some answer about a multiverse, but most would not say from "nothing". (meaning no spatial or temporal dimensions, no particles, no energy, no force)

and then nothing magically exploded

Magic?  The point seems to be that there can be no natural explanation for the Big Bang, so an atheist must invoke some unnatural or supernatural explanation.  I don't think that this is so much of a strawman, but more of sarcasm.  Obviously with no supernatural source for fairies, goblins, ghosts, witchcraft, miracles, cursings, blessings there is little place for magic in an atheism.  

Exploded?  I presume that this is in reference to the Big Bang.  Big Bang is a little bit of a misnomer. In the Theory of the Big Bang the singularity did not explode in a conventional sense, but it was rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Universe expanded increasing the distance between particles.  

for no reason,

Apparently natural law is no reason?  It would be true to say that most atheists do not believe in supernatural  reasons, but as long as time has existed there has been a macro cause and effect.  

creating everything 

Yeah according to Big Bang, quarks arranged into atoms clumped together to form stars which their own mass caused the single proton Hydrogen to fuse into Helium.  Still all of this occurs under natural law.

and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.

There is that M word again.  My problem with strawmen is thus:  It is OK to joke as long as everybody gets the joke.  Not everyone believes this to be a joke.  More and more we seem to be inventing arguments for our opponents to fictionally hold.

1. We have enough to discuss without inventing arguments that our opponents do not even hold.
2. We lose trust when our students find out that their opponents do not actually hold said argument.
3. We lose trust of our opponents when we ascribe things to them that they do not hold.

PS - I am a little troubled by the use of the word "magic".  One, there are some notable atheists that are magicians (Penn & Teller, James Randi, Rebecca Watson) however most atheists do not believe in supernatural forces.  Two, most atheists argue that natural forces are sufficient to explain the universe, however most of the people that I have seen using this image believe that natural forces are insufficient.  In fact the tone of the text seem to ridicule atheists who believe that natural forces are sufficient.  This seems ironic to mock atheists for needing the magical/supernatural forces that you hold are necessary.  Three, this seems to set up a false dichotomy.  Most Christians also believe in the Big Bang, Abiogenesis, and Evolution.  They may also believe like Behe that nature was guided or needed a little miracle here and there.  This is the doctrine of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.  Atheists like most Christians believe in the Big Bang, just some believe that God helped it along.