Faith & Reason – Page 14

US Commission on International Religious Freedom could cease in November

US Congressman Frank R. Wolf, 72, (Virginia 10th District) proposed the bill in 1998 which created The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom is a bi-partisan US Federal commission, appointed by the US President to advise him and Congress on matters pertaining to the freedom of religion. The CIRF reports to Congress and the State Department, is now in jeopardy.

It’s work is research and advocacy for freedom and human rights. It looks at the practice of religion and it’s freedom to exist.

HOWEVER, there is one senator who is blocking funding, anonymously. We need to write to our senators. We need to speak out!!!

After November 18 the Commission may go out of business.

Congressman Wolf thinks that if the bill is passed, Obama will sign the bill. But truth be told, the President is not really in favor the Commission’s work.

Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice: Stewardship, Solidarity and Subsidiarity

This coming year Pope Benedict is going to spend time teaching matters of Justice. In fact, he’s called for a new emphasis on Justice several times in the past year. St John’s University is a college operated by the Congregation of the Mission (the Vincentians), the religious order founded by the great Saint Vincent de Paul who had a special love for the poor and marginalized but also taught that one can’t effectively serve the poor without an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. For Saint Vincent de Paul, in order to walk with the poor one had to first first walk with the Lord. To that end, the Vincentian Fathers, Brothers and laity organized the Vincentian Center for Church and Society.

Next week, there is the 7th Biennial Vincentian Chair of Social Justice at St. John’s University (Queens, NY Campus) on “Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice: Stewardship, Solidarity and Subsidiarity” to take place on October 22, 2011.

More information can be found here: Poverty Eradication and Intergenerational Justice.pdf

14 countries deny religious freedom, says a US agency

The annual report on religious freedom lists 14 countries which deny religious freedom to their citizens. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (www.uscirf.gov) is a bi-partisan US Federal commission, appointed by the US President to advise him and Congress on matters pertaining to the freedom of religion.

Visit the above link for the report and other interesting information.

Of particular concern are: Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Viet Nam.

Rome Reports gives the story.

Catholic bishops and religious freedom

Amy Sullivan of Time magazine wrote a piece today, “Why Catholic Bishops are Targeting Obama on Religious Freedom.” I don’t particularly think Sullivan’s article is not all that informative, in fact, I think she needs to review it again and republish it. She does, however, indirectly say that Catholics –indeed all people of faith– better wake up today and get with the program: the current presidential administration of the US government is narrowing an understanding and practice of religious freedom. Catholics, unlike the Jews or the Muslims are too often slow to know the horizons of the debate. Catholics don’t often go up to Mount Nebo to survey the geography or their own history. Whether recent events are the most egregious in 30 years is a matter of opinion, but the trampling (or reduction) of religious freedom harms everybody, atheist and the Legion of Mary member alike.

It’s time to get fluent in the terms of religious freedom, pun intended.

This is not a Catholic issue. This is an issue for all people who live a life of faith.

Was John Paul II euthanized?

Well, that’s a question. Provocative or not, I am quiet sure that it is germane 6 years later with little evidence. But Time magazine’s Jeff Israel brings to our attention the hypothesis of Dr Lina Pavanelli who, in an article, “The Sweet Death of Karol Wojtyla” (Micromega), claims Blessed John Paul II was euthanized. The first thing I think of is: someone is trying to make a book deal with conspiracy theory accusing the Vatican of hiding something. But I am wondering, as Israel pointed out, that if the issue is actually the doctor’s reception of Church teaching on life –or not–, especially on issues like euthanasia. Many in the medical community want to dismiss the Church’s teaching on life in order to liberalize medicine enough to reduce the dignity of the human person to absurdity. There’s a vibrancy in questioning Magisterial teaching on life in Europe because of proposed legislation.

Remember all the questions about the death of Pope John Paul I?

Here’s Israel’s article.

Yousef Nadarkhani sentenced to death for being Christian in Iran, the Church silent

Yousef Nadarkhani, 33, is a Christian; he’s never practiced Islam, the faith of his family. He converted Christianity at the age of 19. A court ruled that he’s guilty of apostasy but he’s also being accused of security charges, running a brothel, being a rapist and being a Zionist. And now he faces death.

BUT it seems that the charge of apostasy is being minimized or completely discounted now; information conflict. Nadarkhani was arrested October 13, 2009.

“I am resolute in my faith and Christianity and have no wish to recant,” Yousef Nadarkhani said.

Benjamin Weinthal’s article in The Jerusalem Post gives some more detail.

Continue reading Yousef Nadarkhani sentenced to death for being Christian in Iran, the Church silent

Lorenzo Albacete on 9/11

Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete was interviewed by PBS’s Frontline on the 9/11 tragedy.

That phrase: “I saw death” is a startling thought. What does one really see? The interview is interesting as it tries to deal with facing good and evil, not only in the ad extra but also ad intra, and the worship of the true God.

Monsignor Albacete’s interview is part of the larger project called Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.

Artistic expression is part of that “way of beauty” that leads to God

Pope Benedict gave the following teaching on beauty –a subject near to his heart– on August 31. Some of the paragraphs are here (the entire address is here). Isn’t what the Pope says true???? The beautiful expressed in food, music, art, architecture, the human body, the poerty and friendship is the extroversion of the Holy Spirit.

Today, I would like to consider briefly one of these channels that can lead us to God and also be helpful in our encounter with Him: It is the way of artistic expression, part of that “via pulchritudinis” — “way of beauty” — which I have spoken about on many occasions, and which modern man should recover in its most profound meaning.

Perhaps it has happened to you at one time or another — before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of poetry or a piece of music — to have experienced deep emotion, a sense of joy, to have perceived clearly, that is, that before you there stood not only matter — a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, an ensemble of letters or a combination of sounds — but something far greater, something that “speaks,” something capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message, of elevating the soul.

A work of art is the fruit of the creative capacity of the human person who stands in wonder before the visible reality, who seeks to discover the depths of its meaning and to communicate it through the language of forms, colors and sounds. Art is capable of expressing, and of making visible, man’s need to go beyond what he sees; it reveals his thirst and his search for the infinite. Indeed, it is like a door opened to the infinite, [opened] to a beauty and a truth beyond the every day. And a work of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, urging us upward.

Continue reading Artistic expression is part of that “way of beauty” that leads to God

Why Bill Keller misses the mark with Catholicism

In the NY Times yesterday the editors published a few paragraphs on Bill Keller and his coverage of Catholicism for the 8 last years. It was really a screed on being the priests of truth. However, the article indicates that he has gratitude for his Catholic education, noting his the fervent faith of his parents, especially his mother. But the rub for me is that now Keller identifies himself as a “collapsed Catholic” meaning “beyond lapsed.” Of course, he doesn’t explain how or what concrete events led him to arrive at being a collapsed Catholic.

Essentially Bill Keller’s understanding of Catholic faith is reduced to a set of rigid moralisms that have no vitality, no freedom, no desire. I can only surmise that Keller’s skeptical attitude toward the beauty of Catholic faith rests in his inability to see Jesus Christ as the answer to his human need now due to an absence of wonder, gratitude and true charity. I think he blames his skepticism on the “institution” of the Church on incidental things versus on things of depth. On one level who could disagree with Keller and those like him who walk away from the Church when the desire of the heart is played down.

I’d like to know what Bill Keller’s experience of Jesus is, and what his experience of receiving the sacraments is. Perhaps his problem of a lack of satisfaction in the Faith is a true lack of gratitude for what is given by the newness of the Risen Lord and that Christ is not a thing but a person.

But is there really such a thing as a collapsed Catholic? Or, a Catholic who needs a reawakening by meeting Christ personally?