My friend Ed put this up on his Vimeo account this morning and it seemed to work for me…

I think I’m pretty much done with the Catholic church at this point. It took a lot of thinking and pondering, but they’ve finally rubbed me the wrong way in a way that I don’t know if I can ever forgive them for.

When Pope Benedict was put into his position as Pope, I was happy. I felt that the church would move in a more conservative direction and stop trying to twist in the wind toward every social pressure under the sun. They wouldn’t cave to outside interference and would stay true to who they were. For the most part, that has happened. Benedict has gone a long way toward making sure that people understand that the church is the church and the world is the world, and just because something is socially acceptable or fashionable, that doesn’t mean it should be accepted into the church with a sigh of resignation.

I’m totally with that, and I’m more than happy putting my disagreements with the church on hold for a consistent message that I can understand.

Last week, however, the church decided that they needed to interject themselves into the secular world by turning secular issues into a new set of seven “social” sins. In doing so, the church has now made littering, drug abuse, stem cell research (they don’t specify embryonic or not), excessive wealth, and causing poverty sins. In a way, the church has turned things that were merely failings of the human condition into codified things that make you a bad Catholic.

Forgetting all the others, the one that sealed the deal for me was the excessive wealth part. Vatican City is a city clad in gold and marble, adorned with some of the finest paintings and sculptures ever created by some of the finest artists that have ever lived on this earth. The church in general is a continuous show of flashy wealth from its gold trinkets to the ring the pope wears to the staff he carries to the insanely expensive robes he wears. St. Peter’s Basilica is the largest Christian house of worship in the world, holding over 60,000 people simultaneously during pilgrimmage seasons. As a whole, the Catholic church is the single largest private land owner in the world.

The world.

People are asked to tithe ten percent of their annual salary to the church so as to avoid the fires of hell, and are chided for not giving enough to charity, the poor, and of course the church in the form of both money and service. Most Catholic churches in the United States even have their own schools directly attached to them. For a mere $5,000 a year (and in some cases a lot more) you’re able to give your kids a quality education while, of course, lining the pockets of the church.

And amongst all that, the church has the audacity to point out that we, the people of the church, need to live like paupers as they live like kings?

Is this the 17th century all over again?

I didn’t go to mass yesterday even though it was Palm Sunday. I don’t see myself going back any time soon. Maybe I just need to collect myself and go back to sleeping in on Sundays until I feel the need to go back. Either way, when the super rich tell the plebes that their wealth is a problem, I find it hard to sit there on Sunday and take moral advice from them.

Maybe it’s just me.

Okay, so the title of my post was intentionally stick-poking, but Tony Blair has joined the Catholic faith:

“It can be confirmed that Tony Blair has been received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor,” the head of the church in England and Wales, the church said in a statement.

“I’m very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church,” the statement quoted Murphy-O’Connor as saying.

“For a long time he’s been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he’s been following a program of formation for his reception into full communion. Our prayers are with him, his family and his wife at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together,” Murphy-O’Connor said.

Welcome to the fold, Mr. Blair. It’s very nice to have you.

An interesting stat from the same article:

In England’s last census, 72 percent of people identified themselves as Christian. Many are Anglicans affiliated with the Church of England, which was created by royal proclamation during the 16th century after King Henry VIII — who married six times — broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church in a dispute over divorce.
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The Church of England has said that less than 10 percent of its members are regular churchgoers.

Less than 10 percent?

Why bother identifying yourself as anything if you aren’t even gonna bother heading out to church once a week?

Just sayin’.

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.

What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters? The kind of fantasy that doesn’t care that human beings and these prefossilized thunder-lizards are usually thought to have been separated by millions of years? No, this really is meant to be more like one of those literal dioramas of the traditional natural history museum, an imagining of a real habitat, with plant life and landscape reproduced in meticulous detail.

For here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall.

It hasn’t taken the atheist left to jump all over this as “proof” that every God-fearing Christian is a rabid wide-eyed idiot kook (not surprising really, anti-Christian bigotry is never frowned upon in this country anyway and stereotypes are no different) that thinks Tyrannosauruses high-fived Joseph and Mary.

Here’s the truth: 99% of Christians think this is complete and utter bullshit, and most Christians question how to reconcile Dinosaurs with humans if God created humans first. Most Christians struggle to reconcile what the real world presents with what they believe as far as their religion.

Most importantly, most Christians, if you asked an educated one or two, would probably laugh their asses off at the sheer idiocy of this “museum.”

Not that that’ll stop the bigotry, hatred, and mocking, but it’s worth trying to put into words nonetheless.

via the NY Times

Technorati Tags: christianity, evolution, dinosaurs, stupidity

The United States Supreme Court yesterday decided not to review a case challenging the constitutionality of a New York City public school policy that expressly permits the display of the Jewish menorah and Islamic star and crescent during their respective religious holidays, but completely bans the display of Nativity scenes during Christmas.

The constitutional challenge was brought by the Thomas More Law Center, a national, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on behalf of Andrea Skoros and her two minor children, devout Roman Catholics, who attend the New York City’s schools. The lawsuit was filed only after William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, made several unsuccessful attempts to convince school officials to allow Nativity displays alongside the other religious symbols.

[...]

In the petition, the Law Center asked the Supreme Court to review a February 2006 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in which a sharply divided panel upheld the constitutionally of the City’s Nativity ban. The Circuit Court held that this policy of permitting Jewish and Islamic religious symbols but banning Christian religious symbols was permissible in part because it achieved a valid “pedagogical endeavor” by “us[ing] children’s natural excitement about various year-end holidays to teach the lesson of pluralism by showing children the rich cultural diversity of the city in which they live and by encouraging them to show tolerance and respect for traditions other than their own.”

I don’t understand this on so many levels.

1: How is banning a nativity and not banning menorahs, kwanzaa whatevers and Islamic crescents even remotely close to being fair to all religions?

2: If the logic behind this is that the lesson is that of diversity and pluralism, how much diversity and pluralism can exist when a symbol of a religion (Christianity) that 85% of the country follows is not only not represented, but actively banned from the premises?

It just seems like a silly arbitrary ruling by some feel-good judge. Either all or nothing, folks. I have no problem with a menorah, crescent, and nativity together, but to ban the nativity and allow the others in the name of diversity and pluralism smacks of hollow phoniness.

via PC Watch

Technorati Tags: religion, nativity, christmas, eid, chanukah

You have to wonder if any of our comrades on the left of the blogosphere have ever seen the Arab media. It’s striking how quickly they’ve jumped on the Pope for his comments a few days ago. In fact, they did it with a swiftness usually matched only by their zeal to call President Bush a liar and right wing conservatives fascist neocons.

In a speech, the Pope made the following comments, and in doing so I will add something sorely lacking in the analysis of his remarks.

Context.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels,” he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death….

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: “For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

Now I ask every single one of you, critic and sympathizer alike, have you even read the remarks? I have. And they’re pretty clear. I’ve bolded the relevant sections which somehow got omitted in 99% of the articles I’ve read about the speech. In fact, the first part of the “offensive” quote from the Emperor Paleologus, most papers quoted only the part up to the word “inhuman” completely ignoring the text preceding and succeeding it. Of course they do. It changes the context of the article dramatically.

Many on the right have taken this speech and twisted it into an attack on Islam, which is convenient because most of the Islamic fundamentalist idiots have done the same thing. In fact, seeing as most of the faithful they’re passing it along to are both oppressed and illiterate, I can see how that would get spread. The right (American, Canadian, and otherwise) seem to want to turn it into a call to action for Christians against the evil boogeyman, the muslims.

Many on the left have, as expected, taken this opportunity to, yet again, go after the Catholic Church, a favorite target of theirs, with so much zeal that it’s obvious they didn’t read the text, don’t understand the text, or are clearly interested in taking cheap shots at the church regardless of the meaning of the passage the purport to have read, understood, and analyzed.

And in the middle of it all are stupid sheeple in white robes burning effigies, bombing churches, and shooting nuns, while proclaiming that they are peaceful people. Then of course there are the ones, cowering in corners, saying those that are committing these acts don’t represent the majority of the 1.5 billion muslims in the world, they’re just a whole lot louder for some reason.

People, something is wrong here, and it isn’t the words of the Pope.

It’s the manipulators.

It’s the manipulators on the right who are so desperate for a shot to prove how evil muslims are that they’ll spin anything into an attack on Islam so they can say they have higher orders from God for their hatred.

It’s the manipulators on the left who are so desperate for something they can attack Benedict with that they completely ignore the obvious text in the speech he gave and the equally obvious conclusions that can be drawn from it.

It’s the manipulators in robes with beards who feed their people a steady diet of anti-Christian (Crusaders), anti-Jewish (Pigs) hatred on a daily basis who capitalize on the illiteracy and religious fervor of their people that whip crowds into a frothing frenzy because what the Pope says is directly opposed to the “indoctrinate or kill” fundamentalist message they preach.

And throughout all this carping, yelling, and death, the one thing that has oddly gone missing is the truth. Closely following that one thing is a sense of scale.

The truth
The Pope was clearly (as evidenced by both the quoted section and the bolded text therein) explaining how one cannot be made to follow God at the tip of a sword. He couldn’t have been any clearer in his speech and any educated person with a reading level above that of a third grader should be able to comprehend that.

A sense of scale
As outraged muslims crowd the street, burning, pillaging, plundering, and murdering, and the Pope is accused of delivering a message of hatred by those with nary the comprehension required to understand the speech to begin with, while muslim schools, textbooks, and preachers preach a consistent message of killing the infidels, bringing back the Caliphate, and uniting the world under the Koran. Doesn’t it strike any of you as odd that none of the critics of the Pope have even mentioned the true hatred that’s frothing in the Middle East from every building owned by a man in a black robe and gray beard? One comment by the Pope is misinterpreted and suddenly, all things are equal, and the systematic teaching of hatred and jihad is forgotten; ironically enough, in the same manner the point of the speech (jihad and conversion by the sword) are also forgotten.

I’m sure that since the Pope has now been called on the carpet by such tolerant people as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the left will join in the chorus of “This Pope hates brown people.” The right will pound back, “You’re on the side of the terrorists.” And, finally, the undeducated folks in robes burning dolls, shredding flags, and shooting nuns will continue to be offended by something they don’t understand and shouldn’t be offended by while proclaiming their peaceful theology.

In other words, the one kind of reaction you’d expect from uneducated ideologues on all sides.

Typical.

Jeff, who’s not a Catholic apologist by any stretch of the imagination, writes about Pope Benedict, and makes a lot of sense…

[E]very little boy in Nazi Germany was in the Hitler Youth. It would have been amazing had Benedict stood up and said no. If he had he would have been a martyr though. I’m no hardcore Catholic. I have no problem listening to a honest critique of the Pope or Catholicism. It just seems a little much to ask a boy to stand up to the facism of Nazi Germany at the age of 14.

‘Nuff said.

Technorati Tags: pope, catholicism, benedict

William Donohue, who’s usually pretty spot on with his analysis of the institutionalized anti-Catholic bias in this country asks a great question in Wednesday’s New York Daily News:

It may be that “The Da Vinci Code” is one of the most inane movies to appear in some time, and it may be that its failure to persuade means Catholics have nothing to worry about. But if so, this is by default. After all, the book upon which the film is based is built on malicious lies about the Catholic Church.

One of the co-producers of “The Da Vinci Code,” John Calley, was quoted last year saying the movie was “conservatively anti-Catholic.” Leaving aside the silly qualifier, ask yourself: Is there a single producer in all of Hollywood who would boast that his movie is anti-Semitic, racist or homophobic? And to top it off, ask yourself why inoffensive depictions of Muhammad are rarely shown on TV or in newspapers?

While I’d disagree with his next paragraph (plenty of groups are subject to ridicule; that’s the beauty of this country), and his assertion that you being conservatively anti-Semitic wouldn’t be a problem, the question he asks is a valid one. What other group could you validly make the claim that your movie is “anti” and not incur the wrath of hell?

If I were to make a movie tomorrow and call it “conservatively anti-gay,” would there be one single second of my life where someone wasn’t calling me out on it? What about movies and documentaries that aren’t so obviously labelled, but still might offend… You know the shitstorm that sort of thing tends to generate, right? So why is that different?

The Satanic Verses, when it was introduced, resulted in a fatwa, death threats, and is still considered a volume of unmitigated hate toward Islam. In other words, it wasn’t okay. So why the double standard?

Maybe Catholics and Christians should just start marching in “pride” parades, and slicing off people’s heads. After all, it seems that’s the only way to get a little respect in the world.

I could care less about the DaVinci code. I don’t have a habit of trying to find deeper meaning in my life or my faith at a movie theater, but for those in this country who look to condemn every word from the mouth of everyone who dares say gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry as hateful and bigoted, there is a clear and obvious double standard. I have a feeling it’ll never disappear, either, because it’s a fashionable and socially acceptable one.

Technorati Tags: catholicism, religion, davinci code, bias

Mark Frauenfelder, a complete, total, and utter bore who posts on Boing Boing, noted last week an article about a Manga book that was removed from the shelves of the San Bernardino County public library because it had depictions of animal sex in it. Numerous news outlets noted this, but of course Boing Boing in their obsession to point out how bad the big bad government is, wrote the following:

The 2004 trade paperback, written by Paul Gravett and published by Harper Design, is a history of Japanese comics, and includes, in several chapters, discussion of adult comics that depict sex and violence. The violence was apparently not an issue, nor was the fact that the reproductions of panels that feature sexual situations were, as far as we could tell, all R-rated and treated in a serious, scholarly way. Postmus’ statement and the local newspaper coverage made much of the fact that the book contains “sex with animals,” but we couldn’t find it; we must not have looked as hard.

Apparently, you snarky ass, you didn’t look as hard. A reader submitted the following overnight:

“The offending picture was on page 144, a picture of a fairy having sex with a squirrel. The original image was from Bondage Fairies.

“What probably got the book pulled was the fact that it was shelved as a Young Adult book, despite a Library Journal article mentioning the numerous pictures of sex and gore. It’s a great book, but it needs to be shelved as an adult book.”

Guess you didn’t look as hard, Mark. Give credit where it’s due, folks. They were big enough to admit they f’ed up, but that still doesn’t excuse the boorish nature of Mark’s original post. Oh, and just for the record, the book is only 176 pages long, meaning Mark probably never even got through the whole book.

Either that, or he just wasn’t looking as hard.

Oh, and he may want to apologize for calling Bill Postmus a jerk for having it removed. I won’t expect that, though, as Boing Boing has a habit of printing corrections but not one of actually apologizing. I wrote this to Mark in the hopes of encouraging such actions:

Mark,

So… Now that you’ve admitted your mistake (which apparently involved reading the whole book you dismissed as “not obscene,”) you think you’ll be airing a public apology for calling Bill Postmus a jerk for doing the right thing…

You know… Seeing as you were wrong and all…

I know you wrote a correction, but an apology wouldn’t kill you either.

Vinny

Don’t worry. I’m not dumb enough to hold my breath waiting for that one.

Technorati Tags: boing boing, mark frauenfelder, bill postmus, manga

“But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”

Acts 2:24

Happy Easter to everyone!

PARIS (Reuters) - After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.

Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.

Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.

“If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.

“We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: catholicism, islam

So many Christians are acting like jerks right now it makes me sick. Of course, the Phelpsesque fundamentalists are all clammoring to tell the world that Katrina is God’s judgment wrought upon a sinful city.

How stupid can you be?

If most of these fundies believed the book that they carried under their arm once a week and smacked with fervor during their singing, they would know that there’s no way this is God’s “wrath” as they call it. For those who have never picked up the book, Genesis 9:8-17

8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

Now can we move along to helping the people down there as opposed to pointing out how we humans in our feeble minds believe that God wanted it that way?

I have all of her albums, and every one of them is a keeper. Some of the songs are so perfectly woven together that you sit in amazement as you listen to the words. This song below is one of them, and there’s an important lesson (subtly presented, yet obvious upon reflection) that we all (myself included) should do a better job of incorporating into our life:

Wide-Eyed

Having lives in Hollywood for about a year,
I was forced to come face to face
with many diverse people everyday.
I was surprised and embarrassed by how sheltered
my life had been until then…
Surrounding myself mostly with people who were like-minded,
and consequently, safe to know.
I really had to come to terms with my quickness to judge,
to laugh, to dismiss anyone who threatened my sense of normalcy.
And it made me wonder -
how would I have reacted to Jesus
if I’d met Him in Los Angeles?

When I met him on a sidewalk
He was preaching to a mailbox
Down on 16th Avenue
And he told me he was Jesus
Sent from Jupiter to free us
With a bottle of tequila and one shoe
He raged about repentance
He finished every sentence
With a promise that the end was close at hand
I didn’t even try to understand

He left me wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
I was tongue tied, drawn by my conclusions
So I turned and walked away
And laughed at what he had to say
Then casually dismissed him as a fraud
I forgot he was created in the image of my God

When I met her in a bookstore
She was browsing on the first floor
Through a yoga magazine
And she told me in her past life
She was some plantation slave’s wife
She had to figure out what that might mean
She believes the healing powers of her crystals
Can bring balance and new purpose to her life
Sounds nice

She left me wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
I was tongue tied, drawn by my conclusions
So I turned and walked away
And laughed at what she had to say
Then casually dismissed her as a fraud
I forgot she was created in the image of my God

Not so long ago, a man from Galilee
Fed thousands with His bread and His theology
And the truth He spoke
Quickly became the joke
Of educated, self-inflated Pharisees like me

And they were wide eyed in disbelief and disillusion
They were tongue tied, drawn by their conclusions
Would I have turned and walked away
And laughed at what He had to say
And casually dismissed Him as a fraud
Unaware that I was staring at the image of my God.

Definitely a lot to be learned in those lines.

Just once, I’d like to see people use their brains instead of their instincts.

There is no such thing as an ordained catholic priest that is a woman. It just doesn’t happen. In order to be ordained a priest, a candidate must be ordained under the authority of the Vatican. That’s the way the RC church works. If you aren’t ordained under the authority of the Vatican, you aren’t ordained. You cannot call yourself a Roman Catholic priest unless you are ordained such by the Vatican.

This is not debatable.

Keeping that in mind, the following story really got me in a twist:

OTTAWA (AFP) - Nine women, including one Canadian and one American, plan to defy the Vatican and become the first female Roman Catholic priests and deacons ordained in North America during a ceremony on a boat on the St. Lawrence River next month.

The ceremony, which is not sanctioned by the Vatican, is to take place July 25 on the river near Gananoque in eastern Canada following a conference on women as priests at Carleton University in Ottawa.

The location for the ceremony was chosen because organizers considered it to be international waters between the United States and Canada where no diocese has juridiction and thus cannot interfere.

“I only have my faith and my hope and what the global scene says to me that I believe it’s time to take this step,” said former nun Michele Birch-Conery, 65, who was ordained as a deacon last year in Europe. She will be the first Canadian woman to be ordained as a priest next month.

You cannot defy the sanctioning body and claim to be that which the sanction of the body makes you. You cannot “defy” the church by becoming a priest any more than you can “defy” the AMA and become a doctor. You can call yourself whatever you want, but you aren’t that which you are not. In this case, the article from the AFP claims that these women will be ordained as priests.

They will not.

They will have a quaint little ceremony and a feel-good touchy feely reception, and then they will be excommunicated. Why? Because their “ordanation” is not a legitimate one done under the authority of the Catholic Church.

AFP goes on with some token quotes, and then, in the big crescendo and the “leave ‘em thinking” quote hands over this:

Once ordained, the women will not lead a flock or perform liturgies, but Birch-Conery has already been invited to talk about her faith with several small groups.

“We know we may be discredited. But, levels of faith expression have opened for me that I didn’t have before. It’s a calling for me,” she said. “We’ll just have to see if this leads to change.”

It will not lead to change because the very people to whom you are asking acceptance are also the ones who believe in the organization you’re openly defying in your quest to be a “priest.”

This is not a debate about the validity of a woman’s claim to be a priest, a claim I do not think they rightfully have. Moses was given very clear instructions on the ordanation of priests and who they were. They were his sons. Exodus 28 clearly states that Aaron (brother of Moses) and his sons will be the first priests of the Church:

1″Then (A)bring near to yourself Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the sons of Israel, to minister as priest to Me–Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.

The Vatican has made numerous pronouncements on female priests, all of them opposed. The most straight-forward pronouncement against female priesthood comes in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

VI. WHO CAN RECEIVE THIS SACRAMENT?

1577 “Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.”66 The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry.67 The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.68

There is no such thing as “becoming a priest in defiance of the church.” It’s just not logically possible, and referring to these women as priests should be viewed as an affront to Catholics everywhere. I admire these women for their devotion to God, but I cannot in anyway condone what they’re doing. I know it’s not my place to give a blessing of any kind to their actions or not, however, I see it as offensive to my religion and I refuse to just stand for it and not at least say something.

AFP/Yahoo! via Phil

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:13-16

Catholics of the world unite…

When Queen Victoria was a child, she didn’t realize that she was in line for the throne of England. Her instructors, trying to prepare her for the future, were frustrated because they couldn’t motivate her. She just didn’t take her studies seriously. Finally, her teachers decided to tell her that one day she would become the queen of England. Upon hearing this, Victoria quietly said, “Then I will be good.” The realization that she had inherited this high calling gave her a sense of responsibility that profoundly affected her conduct from that day forward.

Our Scripture reading for today tells how Saul had been chosen from among the people of Israel as their anointed king (1 Samuel 15:17). Almighty God had honored him greatly in giving him this position as leader of His special nation. But Saul didn’t think about the kind of attitude that should accompany his high calling. If he had, he would not have pounced on the loot of battle as if he were the leader of an outlaw band (v.19).

As believers, we are children of God and joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16-17). We have a noble calling. Let’s always keep in mind who we are. This will help us to say, as young Victoria said, “I will be good.” —Herb Vander Lugt

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A kind mouth multiplies friends, and gracious lips prompt friendly greetings.
6
Let your acquaintances be many, but one in a thousand your confidant.
7
When you gain a friend, first test him, and be not too ready to trust him
8
For one sort of friend is a friend when it suits him, but he will not be with you in time of distress.
9
Another is a friend who becomes an enemy, and tells of the quarrel to your shame.
10
Another is a friend, a boon companion, who will not be with you when sorrow comes.
11
When things go well, he is your other self, and lords it over your servants;
12
But if you are brought low, he turns against you and avoids meeting you.
13
Keep away from your enemies; be on your guard with your friends.
14
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure.
15
A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.
16
A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, such as he who fears God finds;
17
For he who fears God behaves accordingly, and his friend will be like himself.

If God places men in positions of leadership, he expects them to take their roles seriously and to perform them with integrity and grace. For them to show more interest in their own affairs than in those of their “flock,” and to become so absorbed with their own lives that they fail to serve the needs and interests of those placed in their care, will merit divine displeasure.

Every man who has married a wife has been invested with a shepherding role in her life by God. The man who uses his wife for his own purposes, demanding of her sexual favors, expecting from her menial service, insisting that she meet his every whim and satisfy his every desire with little or no thought for her own well-being, should answer the question, “Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep?” If he does not answer it now-he will answer for it later!

-Stuart Briscoe

When you don’t read the bible directly, you run the risk of being subjected to interpretations of it that may be somewhat dubious.

One of my daily reads is a Pocket PC application called Daily Reader. It’s a devotional reader program that has 365 days worth of readings stored away in it. At the beginning of each reading is a small verse, and then a discussion by the author of its application for daily life. All in all it’s been a very eye-opening experience, and I enjoy doing those devotional readings in the morning. I always like seeing the bible applied to the “real world.”

Two days ago, the topic was Pharaoh and his treatment of the Israelites during the period of their slavery. In the midst of the explanation and application of the story, we come across this paragraph:

The Israelites must have wondered how anything could change the heart of Pharaoh, the cruel tyrant who dominated their lives during their captivity in Egypt. Even a series of divinely inspired disasters had served only to strengthen Pharaoh’s resolve to oppress them and had stoked his antipathy to the Lord and his people. The Lord said, “Pharaoh is very stubborn, and he continues to refuse to let the people go” (Ex 7:14). With each succeeding disaster, Pharaoh’s pattern of stubbornness and heart-hardening made further confrontation necessary. But through it all, the Lord was at work, determined to turn things around so completely that eventually Pharaoh would beg the children of Israel to leave.

Now, if you’ve never read the book of Exodus, this comes off as a perfectly acceptable rendition of the story. But if you have read Exodus, you know that’s it’s only about half the story. Before God unleashed the plagues upon Egypt, he told Moses that he would make Pharaoh obstinate so that the plagues would have to be unleashed (Ex 4:21):

And the Lord said to him as he was returning into Egypt: See that thou do all the wonders before Pharao, which I have put in thy hand: I shall harden his heart, and he will not let the people go.

So God told Moses that he would make Pharaoh unwilling to release the Israelites to freedom, obviously so that He could demonstrate His power to the unbelieving Egyptians. The clip from the reading I pasted makes it sound as if God was helping Moses to deliver the signs that he had taught Moses, but that Pharaoh’s stubbornness was his own. I have to wonder what would make the writer understand that section of Exodus any differently.

Has anyone else read it and think I have it wrong?