Religious freedom is essential

John Michael Talbot’s Facebook post about Pope Francis’ speech at Independence Hall:

The Pope’s words on Religious Liberty from Philly were just brilliant! He spoke from Independence Hall and the lecturn used by Abraham Lincoln for The Gettysburg Address. Powerful symbols!

He said that religion is not a sub culture of a people, but is inherent in the culture itself! Religious freedom is especially essential in a nation founded on religious freedom for the sake of empowering rather than limiting good religious expressions. How powerful from Independence Hall!

He also challenges those afraid of immigration, not as specific political policies, but as a general moral attitude of humanity. We see people, not just issues and problems. He encourages keeping our respective ethnic traditions alive, but while assimilating properly into the culture we embrace and join.

He spoke wise words on proper globalization that empowers, rather than restricts individual and national rights and diversity. He encouraged us not to be afraid of our ethnic or individual diversity, but learn to celebrate it as a united people of freedom.

Of course, he hopes to confirm and strengthen the traditional family in his visit to Philly. Without mentioning hot button issues that have so divided us, he speaks to the more essential core values that can solve most of them with love and truth in Christ.

This Pope cannot be politically pigeon holed! He confounds the molds of Progressive or Conservative, Democrat and Republican, or Libertarian and Socialist for that matter! But he unites us all in a most simple common love of others as we love ourselves, which is the golden rule of many religions, not the least of which is Catholic Christianity. He makes me proud to be Catholic! I pray that all of us, believer and unbeliever, Christian and non Christian, Catholic and non Catholic to embrace his spirit and words, both of which he gets from Jesus.

He ended with an off script impromptu recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. This was a fitting conclusion to his words on Religious Freedom that was personal and powerful!

China deploying sub capable of nuking our mainland

Source:

• http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-24/pentagon-says-chinese-sub-that-can-hit-u-s-to-go-on-patrol-soon
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_094_submarine

Don’t miss the Super Blood Moon tonight!

The moon will be at perigee (its closest point to the Earth) for this eclipse, making it appear at its largest in our sky.  It should be quite a show!

Eastern time: The moon will start darkening at 8:11 pm, reach peak at 10:47 pm, then start to lighten again. Peak (when the moon turns red) will only last a few minutes.

Why Americans Misunderstand Pope Francis

The following is excerpted from “Why Americans Misunderstand Pope Francis” By Jose Mena | December 24, 2013

In most of the early reactions to Pope Francis’ papacy, one finds the severely confused notion that Catholic social teaching is readily reducible to American political categories. The problem is that these categories are totally inapplicable—if not wholly alien—to the majesty that is the corpus of Catholic social teaching.

It strikes me that few Catholics today are willing to place their Catholicism first and their party allegiance second. Catholics ought to religiously submit their intellect and will to Church teachings in all cases, and not just in those instances in which Church teaching happens to accord with that of one’s favorite politician.

That Pope Francis manages to preach his critiques of the modern Western way of life in a spirit of Christlike joy and compassion is itself a minor miracle. His attitude reflects the ultimate truth that what the Catholic Church is in the business of doing with its social teaching is to proclaim a particularly vivid, compelling, intellectually rigorous, and genuinely beautiful account of what the human person is and what is good for the human person to pursue.

We Catholics must approach this account with humility and grace, and discard whatever cultural and intellectual presuppositions do not concord with this beauty and rigor. We must commit ourselves first to Christ and His Church, clear-eyed and reverently, and trust that they will not lead us astray.

This is the rule that I try to follow:

• If I feel that the Holy Father is criticizing something I hold dear, perhaps I should examine exactly why it is that I value that so highly, instead of leaping immediately to a passionate critique of the Holy Father’s words.
• If, on the contrary, I feel that the Holy Father is endorsing a particular political conviction of mine, I should be immediately skeptical of my comfortable interpretation, and careful that what I want to believe to be true is actually fully justified under Catholic thought.
• And when I do find good reason to disagree with what a pope or a cardinal is saying—and I grant that there are plenty of cases where this holds—, I should do so in a tone and attitude of utter respect and admiration for the intellectual work done by the Church and Her bishops.

Read the original @ https://ethikapolitika.org/2013/12/24/americans-misunderstand-pope-francis/

Refusing to take a side IS taking a side

Source:

• http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/648875-the-refusal-to-take-sides-on-great-moral-issues-is

Bill Whittle: We Need a Better Blowhard

Unspinning the pope … again (and again and again)

The false quotation below began circulating the internet sometime around December 2014. Allegedly, it is a summary of what he said at Mass on Sunday, May 22, 2013. But, as so often happens with this pope, the actual message was quite different from what the person who made the graphic claimed it was.

This pope is very much about walking the walk, not just talking the talk.  We cannot spread the Good News to non-believers if we only talk to fellow believers and we cannot fulfill our God-given duties to serve if we only hang out with people who don’t need anything.

Let me parse the false statement in the graphic and line it up, bit by bit, with what Pope Francis actually said on May 22, 2013.

GRAPHIC: “It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person.”

POPE FRANCIS, May 22, 2013: “The Lord created us in His image and likeness. … He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil.  The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ.”

GRAPHIC: “In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money – for many, nature can be a church.”

POPE FRANCIS, May 22, 2013: “If we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

GRAPHIC: “Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name.”

POPE FRANCIS, May 22, 2013: “This ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war. … To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

The text in the graphic above resembles the pope’s actual message about as much as a stinking pile of road kill resembles the living, breathing animal it once was.  But, as Honest Abe once said …

Source:

• http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/popeatheist.asp
• http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445

If you’re going to kill them anyway, you might as well use the remains

The awesomest “pro-choice” defense of Planned Parenthood…ever

When Dr. Hallervorden learned that Nazis were euthanizing psychiatric patients en masse via carbon dioxide in “killing centers”, he says, “I went up to them and told them ‘Look here now boys, if you’re going to kill all these people, at least take the brains out so that the material could be utilized.’”

“There was wonderful material among those brains, beautiful defectives, malformations and early infantile diseases,” he said. “I accepted those brains, of course. Where they came from and how they came to me were really none of my business.”

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/meet-the-nazi-doctor-who-did-what-planned-parenthoods-doing

Three popes

September 24, 2015: This evening Pope Francis will not be dining with politicians. He’s going to break bread with the homeless.

Source:

• http://www.americanews.com/story/religion/2015/09/23/pope-francis-will-dine-homeless-declines-dinner-politicians

Air Punch!! Pope Francis does it sooo much better than Captain Zero! LOL

Source:

• http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-made-surprise-stop-at-little-sisters-of-the-poor-to-show-support-24045/