Stuff on the web

mainly book marked for reading later

Meditation by Benedict XVI on the Holy Family:
the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things.

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City journal on the rewriting of the history of the crusades.

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In the war against the family, the result will be fragmented lonely people and the huge nanny state, with no true freedom...

Insight press quotes an article about GK Chesterton on family.

Chesterton recognizes a triune attack on the family: divorce, feminism and sexual immorality. Divorce is the most obvious attack, but ironically because it is so obvious it has become the most ignored. We have resigned ourselves to accept divorce almost nonchalantly, as if it were something normal. Marriage has lost its meaning because the vow has lost its meaning. Divorce is only half the problem of divorce. The other half of it is re-marriage. Chesterton points out that if the marriage vow can be conveniently broken and then made again with someone else, it sort of takes the romantic element out of the vow, emptying the vow of its importance. This is what Chesterton calls the "superstition" of divorce: the notion that vows suddenly mean something in a second marriage when they evidently did not mean anything in a first marriage. "The most obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage."
Read the rest


and the importance of the small community:
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InsightPressBlog reminds us GKChesterton wrote about small communities, where you live with everyone, and larger ones where you chose who you live with...

The Nun's Story

the film is now on YOutube in ten minute segments...
watch it before the copyright guys find they posted it.

Panimatha: Apparition Hill

from SpiritDaily, a reports on a little known Apparition of MamaMary...

fromPanimatha

On 29th March 1939, evening around 6.30 pm, Mary appeared on a hill near to the church. She appeared in the middle of bright white light. She wore a veil and looked towards the church and worshiped with folded hands. A water fall was falling down from her feet. Six young people (Gnana Athikkam, S.P.John, M.G.Thomas, D.Thasan, R.Thasan, M.A.Thasan) saw that apparition. They saw that apparition for few seconds and after that it disappeared. Next day morning they went to the apparition hill and found a pair of human foot print on the rock at the apparition site. They marked the foot print and informed that apparition to parish priest Rev. Father Marianoos, school head master Laxmana Iyer and the village people. Rev. Father Marianoos and the people were uncertain about that apparition.

It was a drought time and for 13 years there was no rain in the arid zone Kallikulam.

The school head master told them that he would believe that apparition only if he saw the waterfall on the hill. That day after noon around 3 pm there was a heavy rainfall for one and half an hour time in and around of Kallikulam.

A waterfall formed on the hill top at the apparition site. After that signs, they believed the apparition, and setup a Pandal (temporary structure) with coconut leaves on the apparition site....

but many years earlier, dreams of a woman with a child resulted in a local church being built...

Sister Faustina

the entire movie, in 9 minute segments, is on you tube.

Sister Faustina

the entire movie, in 9 minute segments, is on you tube.

Would you risk death for the Eucharist?

We just watched the old film "The Cardinal", made in the days when priests were still allowed to be shown as men who love God and strive to do the right thing.

A lot of the struggles are out of date: chosing a Caesarian section instead of dismemberment when his sister has obstructed labor (she died from the operation, as doctors predicted); the session in which he confronts the KKK; and the naivity of an Austrian bishop in confronting the Nazis (until the Nazis show their real colours).

Supposedly, some of the incidents were about Cardinal Spellman, who was the NY Archbishop at that time...and some people ridiculed him for his strict "anti communist" stance that made him support the troops in Viet Nam. (Opposing that war is considered a mark of goodness by the elites in the US, yet considering the genocides that followed the communist take over, the part of the movie about the Nazis is eerily predictive of how naivity in politics can allow evil to triumph)

When the Nazis finally attack the bishop, who after learning that the Nazis plan to close all church schools etc. and stages a peaceful protest, the brownshirts enter his residence; the Austrian bishop and the hero (who at this point is in the Vatican diplomatic corps) delay their escape long enough to consume the Eucharist in the chapel...

This action is understandable to Catholics, because we know that the bread is Jesus, present under the appearances of bread (and wine) after the concentration.

No wonder the modernist catholics hate Eurcharistic adoration: Jesus among us.

The Eucharist and Mama Mary: The edge that separates those who believe and those who have their own agenda in the Catholic church.

Philosophical musing

In China, the fear is of anarchy, not loss of freedom...

sounds like Hobbe's Leviathon, that argues the same thing.

Another blog (no link) points out Michael Moore's tirade against Capitalism uses religious images that associate socialism with Christianity.

Actually, Catholicism is neither: it posits something like the old "Holy Roman Empire" where small areas governed themselves, and small farmers and shop keepers were the norm, and minorities could govern themselves, under a king whose power was limited by intermediate institutions (e.g. the church, the guilds) and the high king (the Holy Roman emperor).

The Hapsburgs blew it by extending the idea too far, and by the Protestant reformation, that blew up the idea of hierarchy in authority, placing the individual as the most important part of society.

Many of this was good (for example, Calvinism was behind the idea that one could make money in business and still serve God). But like all ideas, it is getting to the end of it's usefulness by it's faults being exaggerated.

"the old order changes, giving place to new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world"...

The idea of subsidarity and communitarian idealism didn't work too well, so the Holy Roman Empire was replaced in the modern world with a more efficient central government: thanks to Napoleon, it evolved into the Prussian idea of the state doing everything, or the socialist idea of the same (except the leaders were "elected", and religion was subordinated to the state).

So where does this lead us?

"Coast to Coast AM" had a report of the Virgin's statue crying in Ireland, which just voted yes for the European Union.

Developing a NWO where religion is frowned upon? Or, will the Muslims rise up and essentially destroy the atheism in Europe?

developing...

The persecution slowly starts

Let's see.
First, cut out the conscience claus.
Then send money to fund abortions overseas, destroying the HIV program that has saved ten million lives in the name of promoting sexual hedonism.
Then pass a "health care bill" that doesn't promote abortion, but has a clause in it that allows the HHS secretary (the notorious Sibelius, who vetoed twice bills to stop half born babies from being killed) to decide what "procedures" are mandated by all insurance companies.

The latest: They are laying the groundwork to stop religious charities from "discriminating"

Sigh. I'm glad I'm in the rural Philippines