Good Friday Denied to Cranston Teachers

For the first time this year, the Cranston Rhode Island school committee eliminated Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Good Friday as school holidays. Instead, it negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that allows teachers to take up to two days off each school year if they are required to attend religious services during the school day.

AP reports that on Monday the union filed suit because the school system has denied requests from some 200 teachers to take Good Friday off, even though they allowed teachers who requested it to take Rosh Hashanah off last fall. School Superintendent Judith Lundsten says that the Good Friday requests are not covered by the collective bargaining agreement because Good Friday does not require attendance at religious services during school hours. According to the Cranston Patch, the suit claims that the discriminatory denial of religious leave here is a breach of the collective bargaining agreement and a violation of the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

The reasoning of the school committee is flawed. Good Friday is properly a full day of fasting and prayer. It may or may not involve a church service, but it does involve fasting, prayer and quiet contemplation of the Lord's Sacrifice. These activities cannot be done in the context of a routine work day.

Ben Stein Sets the White House Straight

Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as Holiday Trees which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for  being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no  idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country.  I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat...

Or maybe I  can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are  wondering where these celebrities came from and where the  America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

  
 In  light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc..  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she  was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she  didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then  someone said you better not read the Bible in school...   The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and  love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our  children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr.  Spock's son committed suicide).  We said an expert should know what he's talking about..  And we said okay..

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal  to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is  for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to  hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when  you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it... no one will know you  did.  But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.


My Best Regards,  honestly and respectfully,

Ben  Stein

What Dan Cathy Actually Said

Dan Cathy did not speak against same-sex marriage when he responded to a question by a Baptist press outlet whether he believed in the Biblical definition of marriage. Cathy replied that he did. Perhaps the Media have been irresponsible in their handling of this story?

Chick-fil-A’s owners are  Christians and the franchise  remains closed on Sundays.  Dan Cathy said, “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’

Related reading:  What did Chick-fil-A's CEO Really Say?

An African American Friend on Obamacare

I've been following this healthcare deal for a while. I didn't like how it started off. I mean "you won't know what's in it 'till you pass it", what kind of foolishness is that? That's what I call a sucker's deal. Then the unreasonable infringements on religious conscience, not only upon individuals but institutions, definitely violate 2nd Amendment guarantees but mainstream media and the American public seem oblivious to it's effects. History shows, my friend, that politics is like chess: one move precipitates another. In this case it seems the forces of overgrown government are playing against an unsuspecting, indeed unconscious, populace. And the stakes are nothing less than freedom." -- Andre Cross

Julea Ward Freedom of Conscience Act

The Michigan House has passed a bill named after an Eastern Michigan University (EMU) student who was kicked out of the school's counseling program because of her faith.

In 2009, Julea Ward (pictured above) was expelled from the university's counseling program because of her Christian beliefs, particularly against homosexuality. But earlier this year, the Sixth U.S. Circuit of Appeals sided with the student, ruling that "a reasonable jury would conclude that Ward's professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith ...." That opinion reversed an earlier district court decision in favor of the university.

Now, the "Julea Ward Freedom of Conscience Act" has been proposed and approved by the House. It prohibits religious discrimination against college students studying counseling, social work and psychology. Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Jeremy Tedesco is defending Ward in her lawsuit against EMU.

"We certainly welcome their efforts to protect the rights of their citizens," he comments. "Public universities like Eastern Michigan University shouldn't be able to require students to give up or abandon their religious beliefs as a condition of getting a degree."

Ward was ousted from the program after she was permitted to refer a homosexual client to another counselor. She was unwilling to violate her religious beliefs to affirm that sexual orientation.

"If, when you're a counselor, there's a values conflict with your goal or objective of your counseling, it could negatively impair the outcome of the relationship and of the counseling," Tedesco offers. "So the best thing for the client in that situation is to move the client on to a counselor who doesn't have the values conflict."

The bill is now headed for the state Senate for consideration.


H/T to Rick Lobs

MercatorNet Interviews Michael Coren

Canadian columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren has just published another controversial book about Christianity in the public square. “Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity” is on best-seller lists in Canada. MercatorNet interviewed him here about his thought-provoking arguments.

MercatorNet: Tell us a bit about your own background. You’re a convert at a time when most Catholics seem to be dropping away.

Michael Coren: My father was Jewish, but very secular. So it was a mixed family, but one with an implicit respect for God and religion. I remember studying for my history O-Levels when I was a teenager and learning about the Reformation. The assumed line was that the Catholics were the bad guys, but to me the opposite seemed the case. A love for the Church began, but it took until 1985 for the marriage to take place. Yes, people are falling away, but those who stay are stronger and better than ever and the converts coming into the Church are of the highest quality.

MercatorNet: I know that comedian Bill Maher and Comedy Central portray Christians as fanatical fruitcakes. But shouldn’t Christians just have a thicker skin? Aren’t they just crying the victim?

We do have thick skins but truth and balance are important. I think we should laugh at ourselves more, not less. But today there are ever more groups that are off limits for humour, and certainly abuse; simultaneously Christians are abused so often, and to such an extent, that it’s cruel rather than funny.

It’s one thing for an adult, but ask Christian students what university is like, or a child at school who refuses to go along with the prevailing morality because of their Christian faith.

MercatorNet: As the author of books with titles like “Why Catholics are Right” and “Heresy: the Ten Lies they Tell about Christianity”, you obviously like a good fight. What about turning the other cheek?

I so do, every day! You should see my emails and tweets. I’m known as a defender of Christianity in Canada, and the death threats, insults, and venom are as endless. But an individual Christian’s forgiving an attack and turning the other cheek is different from defending the weak and standing up for the truth of Christ and the integrity of the faith.

MercatorNet: Hostility to Christianity has a long history among intellectuals, from at least the time of Voltaire. Even well-known figures like Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Stephen Hawking, or Jimmy Wales have been agnostics or atheists. Aren’t you pushing it uphill to persuade smart, well-educated people to be Christians?

Not at all. I wrote a biography of Wells a few years ago actually – rather a controversial one. There are clever atheists and clever Christians, and stupid atheists and stupid Christians. It’s not really an issue of intellect, although I’ve yet to hear a truly compelling case for genuine atheism. I rather thought myself into faith, and it was cerebral for me in a way, as is it for many.

That, of course, is only one of the roads to Christianity. The point, though, is that if we accept the modern idea that the clever people are the doubters, we make it very difficult for thinking people to even consider Christianity. It’s why there is an entire chapter in Heresy about this.

MercatorNet: With modern communications technology like Facebook and Twitter, people today seem to have the attention span of a particularly thoughtful rabbit. How can Christianity compete?

Yes, well said. C.S. Lewis pointed this sort of thing out in The Screwtape Letters. In his version, the devil has made intellectual argument irrelevant, so that even if Christians make a pristine argument for belief, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s yet another example of Lewis’s brilliance that he saw this long before Facebook and the like.

Yes, it is difficult, but then so is being a Christian. We can use new technology, but we also have to be careful of it. The irony that helps us here is that the easier, more accessible, and even more facile things become, the more people want the permanent things, and the most permanent is God.

MercatorNet: In an era when tolerance seems to be the premier virtue, serious Christians seem rabidly intolerant, especially on hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Your comment?

The imploding notion of tolerance: tolerate everyone apart from those who do not accept tolerance. Actually it’s a misnomer. They don’t mean tolerance, they mean acceptance, even affirmation.

In Canada, for example, since gay marriage was introduced we’ve had around 300 prosecutions and firings of people who are not hateful of gays, but believe marriage is the union of man and woman. Who then is the intolerant party here? Abortion is the taking if innocent life, and we should be proud of refusing to tolerate it.

But, as you say, the rallying cry of the new generation is “I tolerate therefore I am.” It’s meaningless, and these people tend to be grotesquely intolerant of dissent, and especially Christian dissent.

MercatorNet: Is there a common thread? What is the biggest obstacle that Christianity faces in the 21st century in the West?

Difficult, because there are so many. Perhaps the death of the intellect. People are controlled by feelings, and have allowed emotion to dominate their values – witness Oprah, the death of Princess Diana, the morbid mock tears we see so regularly. Added to this is the war on self-restraint, whereas Christianity believes in order out of chaos, and the importance of dignity and self-control.

MercatorNet: Will this year’s election in the United States have an impact upon the future of Christianity?

Very much so. Obama is the first President who does not sincerely believe in the separation of church and state, which is, of course, a means to protect Christians from an established Church, not a way to save the state from Christianity. Even Clinton believed in this, and certainly the other Presidents. If Obama does win, he and some of the people around him will take serious Christianity into a newKulturkampf. I really believe this.

Michael Coren is a broadcaster and writer living in Toronto, Canada. His latest book is Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity, available at Amazon.com. His website is michaelcoren.com

Related reading:  Review of Corn's book Why Catholics Are Right

Obama's Attack on Religious Liberty

The biggest bioethics story this week is President Obama's efforts to soften anger over his Administration's decision to force religious institutions to pay for insurance plans offering "free" contraception. The New York Times argued that this is "a phony crisis over 'religious liberty' engendered by the right."

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders, the White House is planning to adjust its health-care rule requiring religious employers to provide women access to contraception, a senior administration official said.

The new policy would require insurance companies to directly offer free contraceptive services to employees at religious institutions that object to providing them, a senior administration official said.

Mr Obama apparently sees no rational reasons to oppose contraception, which includes the Pill, sterilizations, the abortion pill, and the morning-after pill.  All have brought dramatic social change which have imposed huge costs on the economy, including a rise in STDs, an increase in teen pregnancies, a decrease in marriage rates, a fall in the birth rate, promiscuity, etc.

Obama does not see his contraceptive initiative as an ethical issue, nor does he see any medical reasons to restrict interventions that prevent or terminate life.  However, the Presidential Policy Maker is neither an ethicist nor a medical practitioner.

Last year Obama's secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, told a pro-choice gathering, "We are in a war." The religiously conservative are trying to "roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America."

Now the religiously conservative must agree. "The religious truce is officially over," writes Dr Jennifer Roback Morse in MercatorNet. "The Established Church of Secular Hedonism has declared war on the rest of us, enlisting the might of the United States government on their side."
 
Dr Roback argues that hedonism has become America's official religion under President Obama. Yet another edict from the Obama administration has ended the American experiment in religious liberty.  The President should take a lesson from history. Leaders who overthrow religious liberty and the sanctity of the conscience cause divisions that are rarely repaired.

Egypt Fundamentalists Gain Majority: How will Ethnic Christians Fare?

Placard reads, "If it wasn't for the revolution, the National Democratic Party would still be there."
Credit: Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press

REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- A new political era began in Egypt on Saturday as Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliamentary elections to inherit a nation mired in economic crisis and desperate to move beyond military rule and the corrupt legacy of deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s dominate political and religious force, won 47% of the 498 seats in the lower house of parliament, according to official final results. The ultraconservative Salafi Islamist party Al Nour won nearly 25%, followed by the secular parties New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc, with about 9% each.

The results confirm the dramatic transformation of the Brotherhood, which for decades was banned from politics and endured the mass arrests and torture of its members. The victory by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is a potent sign that political Islam is emerging from a year of uprisings to replace secular autocrats across the Middle East and North Africa.

A new parliament “would not have seen the light if it wasn't for the pure blood of the martyrs who triggered this revolution,” Freedom and Justice Party said in a statement. “The party believes that Egypt's renaissance and development demands participation of all sects of this nation to fulfill this great responsibility.”

The elections were a sobering lesson for young activists whose nascent parties were no match for the grassroots networks and entwined religious and political message of the Islamists. The liberal activists helped ignite the revolution that brought down Mubarak but, winning only seven seats, they have been surpassed by more formidable political powers.

Read more here.
 
 
For Egypt's Coptic Christians, the win of the Islamists at the ballot box was no surprise. Opinion is divided, however, on how to react: stay and fight for equal rights, or leave.
 
It is an understatement to say that 2011 has been a difficult year for Egypt’s exhausted Christians.
 
It began with the bombing of the Two Saints Church, only minutes after the New Year started, and culminated in the victory of Islamists with more than half of the parliament in the first phase of the elections.

Indeed, according to the latest results, the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly licensed Freedom and Justice Party won no less than 40 per cent of the seats, while the Salafist El-Nour Party won 20 per cent of the seats. And this is only the first phase, which covered nine of the country’s governorates. There are two more phases before a final picture of the first post-Mubarak regime can be drawn.

If the first phase results are anything to go by, Islamists will be the overwhelming majority in the next parliament. This outcome, which was expected, has still left the Coptic community reeling.

It has been a year where Coptic churches were burned by Salafist groups, where residents of the southern city of Qena demonstrated and blocked the city’s highways to protest the appointed of a Coptic governor, where Copts repeatedly took to the street to protest increasing discrimination and where deadly clashes between Coptic protesters and the army left at least 28 dead in what became known as the “Maspero massacre,” taking place in front of the State TV building in Maspero.

It’s also been a year where various Islamists speaking on TV shows called Christians kafirs (heretics) and insisted that they should pay the jizya (Islamic fine for non-Muslims), pushing Egypt’s Christians to spiral into an even more intense wave of panic.

Now, however, speaking to Ahram Online, various faces of Egypt’s Christian population talk about their fears, aspirations and predictions of how life under an Islamic dominated parliament will be for them.

Father Filopater Gameel, a Coptic priest, and a leading member of the Maspero Youth Union and eyewitness to the Maspero massacre.

"I am not surprised that the Islamists won the parliament majority. There were many hints in recent months that they were going to easily win many seats. The fact that they were insisting that the elections take place while all the other political forces were pleading that the elections be postponed hints that both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists made a deal with the military council.

"The elections were filled with rigging and violations. The Supreme Electoral Committee (SEC) has already announced that many ballot boxes will be disregarded because concerns that they were rigged. We also saw violations in terms of niqabis (fully veiled women) entering the polling stations and refusing to identify themselves so that they can keep entering the station and vote more than once. We’ve also heard of cases were the Salafist El-Nour Party blocked the door to the polling stations, so that any voter going in would have to pass by them first, which is actually against the law that bans campaigning in front of polling stations.

Also, during the electoral process there was heavy usage of religious slogans and mosques were used for campaigns and to promote the Islamists.

"The Islamists were pushing for the elections even when the martyrs blood had not yet dried in Tahrir Square and Maspero. But we Copts now insist on continuing the electoral process until the end. The Copts are flexible and are able to adapt to any regime. We tasted bitter medicine during the Mubarak regime and we will probably face more of that under the rule of the Islamists.

"The Copts will be the voice in Egypt that will continue to call for freedom, equality and a civil state. We will remain here and continue the fight for the beautiful and ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Read more here.

"Season's Greetings" a Meaningless Slogan

Don’t let Grinches steal your Christmas by substituting meaningless slogans.


Michael Cook

Let’s imagine for a moment that Christmas had never happened and that the Roman Emperor Aurelian had succeeded in establishing the feast of Sol Invictus on December 25 back in the year 274 AD.

Instead of Christmas, we would have had the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. At this time of year, just after the winter solstice, the lantern beaming light and heat hangs low in the sky; the days are dark and cold. But day by day it climbs back, infallibly reaching its fiery zenith at the summer solstice six months later. Yay! High fives all around! This god has got more belts than Manny Pacquiao!

Had this happened, the colourless salutation “Season’s Greetings” might have conveyed something vaguely meaningful, especially if you’re shivering in the northern hemisphere. Something like: gor blimey, I can’t handle this brass monkey weather, but let’s hang in there and may the gods grant us a good harvest.”

It’s a hopeful sentiment, but not an inspiring one, a bit like the experience of eating tofu for Christmas dinner instead of tucking into mince pies and roast turkey. The sun rises and the sun sets; seasons come and seasons go. Whatever good or evil men do, the sun shines on them all alike with a divine indifference. For devotees of Sol Invictus, “Season’s Greetings” would have been a token of our inevitable submission to fate. This was the popular wisdom of the ancient world – from which Christmas has rescued us.

Whether or not you accept the Christian theological beliefs which underpin the celebration of Christmas, they have transformed Western society and they are in the process of transforming nations far from Bethlehem. Christmas, that is, the celebration of the moment in which the all-powerful creator of the Universe took on human flesh and entered human history, sends powerful, if unspoken, messages. Here are seven which are implicitly conveyed when we wish friends a “Merry Christmas”.

God cares. “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport.” This comes from King Lear, but it is the wisdom of paganism. Life’s a bitch, and then you die. What the Incarnation, as the theologians call the act of God becoming man, shows for all time is that the Creator cares about his creatures. As the carol says, “and he feeleth for our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness.” Jupiter, on the other hand, when presented with complaints about our sadness would probably say something like, “Yeah, whatever. Get over it. Stuff happens, you know.”

History matters. The ancients believed in the myth of the eternal recurrence, that history was not linear, but cyclic. Their cosmic fate was to live imprisoned in cycles which end in fire and then return in a new cycle, playing the same role over and over again. Its symbol is the dragon devouring its tail. But the implication of the Incarnation is that history is moving towards a climax which begins at Bethlehem. Our own participation in history makes a difference.

All men are fundamentally equal. We can get used to Christmas paintings of the manger, in which shepherds are rubbing shoulders with the Magi as they peer over Joseph’s shoulder. But the implications of this setting are immense. “With the poor, the scorned, the lowly, lived on earth our Saviour holy”: before the infant in the lowly cattle shed, distinctions of talent, rank and education are insignificant. All men are brothers.

Families are the cornerstone of society. Bethlehem suggested the ideal to which Christian families should aspire: a father and mother doting on their child, willing to make any sacrifice for his welfare. But the homely tenderness of this scene was virtually unknown in the ancient world. The Greeks and Romans were not strangers to domestic affection, but this was not the paradigm of their families. Without Christmas we would never have had the bubbly, loving warmth of the Cratchit family made famous in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Women have dignity. No women appear in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. There are famous women in ancient history, but most of them are queens and empresses like Cleopatra and Zenobia. In Bethlehem, a simple village girl, Mary, is the central figure. Kings bow in homage to her and her child. In the Christian tradition, capacity for motherhood gives women an incomparable dignity. As Cristina Rossetti’s marvellous poem (and carol) says,

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

Children are special. The ancient world defined children by their powerlessness; they were just underdeveloped adults. But Bethlehem suggests that we should treasure their innocence and dependence. “Once in Royal David’s City” is a Victorian carol, but it expresses it nicely:

For he is our childhood's pattern,
day by day like us he grew;
he was little, weak and helpless,
tears and smiles like us he knew.

The fact that a defenceless child is the centre of the Christmas story also means that men and women are not to be valued by how productive they are, but simply because they are with us and share in a common nature. In the Gospel account this is underscored by the sequel to the Nativity, the Massacre of the Innocents by the vicious tyrant Herod.

We should send more Christmas cards. Western art was born on Christmas Day. We take for granted the human drama depicted on Christmas cards. But in other cultures, art was meant to be a faint reflection of unchanging, inalterable divinity. That’s why statues of Buddha depict him in a few stylised postures. Even Greek and Roman art presented idealised figures and seldom depicted ordinary life.

But art of the Christian era is based upon an altogether different philosophy: that all of human life has dignity because the Child of Bethlehem is both God and Man. Since then, everything in human life carries within it a spark of divinity and becomes a worthy subject for an artist. What sort of greeting cards would we have if the cult of Sol Invictus had survived? Probably much like we have now: images of snow-bound homes or decorative calligraphy. But nothing human, affectionate and tender.

So there you have seven reasons to say “Merry Christmas” with greater gusto in 2011. Let’s defy miserabilist Grinches who want to banish it from public life.

In any case, all this has happened before. Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in England. In the 1640s the Long Parliament decreed that no holy days other than Sundays were to be celebrated. December 25 was to be observed with fasting and humiliation for the sins of countrymen who had turned the day into a feast, sinfully “giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights”. Shops and market were to be kept open for trading. Parliament was to meet for business on December 25. Christmas, said the Puritans, was a popish festival with no Biblical justification.

However, the Cromwell failed to convert Merrie England to miserabilism. As soon as Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, the Christmas bans were swept away. Mirth, mistletoe and plum pudding returned and the Christmas fast vanished. Season’s Greeting was no more in Fair Albion.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. Reprinted from here.

Christmas Concert from Lebanon

Not to be missed!  Enjoy this delightful Christmas concert sponsored by The Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music

Choir: the Antonine University Choir, the NDU Choir and the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory Choir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CA2vdo9eOk
 
 

Praying in Captivity

Sergeant Luis Alberto Erazo Mayo, the sole survivor of the recent massacre of four hostages by a Colombian rebel group, said he prayed for his kidnappers during his captivity.

“God exists,” Erazo told reporters, adding that the only hope that sustained him during his ordeal was prayer. Among the few items he brought home in the backpack he made in the jungle was a daily missal.

“I prayed even for the rebels,” he said.

Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported that Erazo had been kidnapped for more than eleven years by the rebel group FARC, who injured him as he escaped on Nov. 26 during an attempted military rescue.

More than eleven years this man was held by FARC in the jungle. This is an amazing story.

Look carefully at the account of what happened in that attempted military rescue. He was shot, but kept running where instincts led him.

“The rebels told me that if there was any combat that we should run alongside of them because they were going to hand us over,” he added. “I forgot that and I ran towards the jungle. My companions went towards them however, and that is when they killed them at point blank.”

Despite his wounds, Erazo kept running as fast as he could and eventually hid in a tree trunk where he stayed for almost eight hours—until he was convinced that the voices he heard were those of Colombian soldiers.

“In a large field I saw some men in uniforms riding motorbikes. When I saw one guy with a helmet and night-vision goggles, I knew they were soldiers and I walked out. They hugged me and wouldn’t let go, they welcomed me back,” Erazo said in tears.

You can feel the human triumph of the moment, for everyone.

A joyful Erazo

Erazo has been able to see his two daughters in his hometown of Narino and learned that he is now a grandfather. His mother told him the parrot and geese he left behind are still alive and are waiting for him.

What a perfect ending. And a sweet beginning.

When I saw the headline of this story I instantly recalled the rescue of another group of hostages, and the faith and prayer of Ingrid Betancourt.

Religious Freedom in America: Don't Take it for Granted

Sheila Liaugminas

4 October 2011


Policies of the federal government under the Obama administration have ignited a blaze of concerns about fundamental religious liberties in America.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops conference, wrote a letter to the president recently.

The Administration’s assault on DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], Archbishop Dolan said, will “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.”

“Will”…?

Archbishop Dolan especially objected to the Justice Department’s legal arguments that equate those in favor of DOMA to racists. It is “particularly upsetting,” he said, when the Administration attributes to those who support DOMA “a motivation rooted in prejudice and bias.It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing,” he said.

He underscored the Church’s position recognizing “the immeasurable personal dignity and equal worth of all individuals, including those with same-sex attraction” and said “we reject all hatred and unjust treatment against any person.”

“Our profound regard for marriage as the complementary and fruitful union of a man and a woman does not negate our concern for the well-being of all people but reinforces it,” he said. “While all persons merit our full respect, no other relationships provide for the common good what marriage between husband and wife provides.The law should reflect this reality."

Archbishop Dolan advised President Obama: “push the reset button on your Administration’s approach to DOMA.”

“Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman.Nor should a policy disagreement over the meaning of marriage be treated by federal officials as a federal offense—but this will happen if the Justice Department’s latest constitutional theory prevails in court.”
Archbishop Dolan asked President Obama to “end its campaign against DOMA, the institution of marriage it protects, and religious freedom.”

“Please know that I am always ready to discuss with you the concerns raised here and to address any questions that you may have.” he added. “I am convinced that the door to a dialogue that is strong enough to endure even serious and fundamental disagreements can and must remain open, and I believe that you desire the same.”

Archbishop Dolan was offering a statesman-like presumption of goodwill in warning that if this course is continued, it “will” result in a national conflict. Because it actually has.

Just days ago, the bishops assembled a new ‘task force’ to tackle this new and historic threat to religious liberties.

Saying they are increasingly distressed over government policies that promote contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage and amount to an assault on religious freedom, the U.S. bishops have established a committee to shape public policy and coordinate the church’s response on the issue.

The Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty was announced Sept. 30 by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., was named chairman of the new committee.

“There is a common and factually grounded perception that religious liberty is increasingly under assault at the state and federal level in the United States, whether through unfriendly legislation or through rules and regulations that impede or tend to impede the work of the church,”…

He says the government is playing God.

Emerging threats to religious freedom have inspired the U.S. bishops to establish a new committee for its protection. Its chairman sees government taking God’s place as the source of the “first freedom.”

Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori told CNA on Sept. 30 that a “principal and overarching error,” connecting several different threats to the free exercise of faith, is “the view that it is the state that grants religious liberty, and not God.”

“Even though religious liberty is enshrined at the head of the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment, there is an increasing tendency to make it a lesser right – and to make it quite relative to other, ‘newly-discovered’ rights in our law and in our culture,” said the Connecticut bishop, whose 2010 pastoral letter “Let Freedom Ring” addressed the subject of state intrusion against believers.

The chair of the new Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty said respect for “religion as a merely private affair” remains largely intact.

But he warned that the “institutional conscience” of religious hospitals and similar establishments is being threatened at high levels – as are the conscience rights of individuals in “clutch situations” like filling prescriptions or issuing marriage licenses.

“Their rights are being trampled upon,” said Bishop Lori.

In his letter announcing the new committee’s formation, Archbishop Dolan said that the “basic right” to religious freedom “is now increasingly and in unprecedented ways under assault in America,” especially from an “an increasing number of federal government programs or policies that would infringe upon the right of conscience of people of faith.”

The ‘national conflict of enormous proportions’ is not coming. It is here.


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Anglican Woman Priest Swam the Tiber

Una Kroll, former GP and an Anglican priest, was known as a campaigners for women’s ordination. She recently gave up her ministry to become a Catholic. She explains why she made that choice.

“just before Advent 2008 I became a Roman Catholic, not on impulse but after at least five years of trying to discern God’s will…”


Kroll disliked some aspects of the Catholic Church, such as interpretations about “the exercise of papal and magisterial authority. Nonetheless, she is went to Romen and explains, "I am there, knowing that I cannot exercise a liturgical diaconal or priestly ministry, nor can I share in decision-making…”


Read the whole article here.

Una is the sixth former female that I know of who set aside the priesthood after a journey in which God moved her to do so.  The six are evenly divided:  three became Eastern Orthodox and three became Roman Catholics.  There may be other women who have left the priesthood, but I only know of six.

George Washington's 1790 Letter to Rhode Island Jews

When Ron Chernow was travelling the country last year to talk about his new biography of George Washington, he was often asked about Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I. — the one that famously promised that the United States government would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

“There were very few speeches that I made where people didn’t ask about that letter,” Chernow recalled. “I can vouch for the fact that there’s tremendous curiosity out there.”

He’s curious, too. Even though Chernow spent six years reading through Washington’s papers to research his book, and was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for his effort, he’s never seen the original letter. In the last decade, hardly anyone has.

Read it all here.

Bishop Ackerman Responds to News of Provincial Visitors in C of E

May 6, 2011

Bishop Keith L Ackerman ssc

Forward in Faith North America rejoices over the appointment of two distinguished Catholic priests in the Church of England to be Provincial Episcopal Visitors. The Episcopal Church in the United States of America would have done well to have adopted the graciousness of the Church of England in providing specific care for those who maintain the Historic Faith, which includes maintaining the received position regarding one of the Sacraments of the Church, namely Holy Orders. Sadly the lack of charity in the Episcopal Church has resulted in unholy disorder. As Anglicanism in North America continues to realign, one wonders what would have happened had the Episcopal Church exercised the same spirit of graciousness extended at this time in England, rather than litigation and depositions of Traditionalists. Forward in Faith North America prays mightily for Fr Banks and Fr Baker, both of whom are held in the highest regard by Anglo Catholics in the United States. They will serve as Bishops in the Church at a time where they will be mightily tested and tried. As learned men formed in the Catholic Tradition, may God use them mightily as Successors to the Apostles in a world that desperately needs to hear the Truth being proclaimed, and the fruits of the Truth being lived.

X Keith L Ackerman


Source: Forward in Faith

"Easter Gift" from Bishop of Oxford

By Toby Young, Telegraph


The Bishop of Oxford has come up with a delightful gift for the Anglican community this Easter. In his capacity as chairman of the Church of England’s Board of Education, he has declared that he wants to see an end to faith-based admissions in church schools.

In the latest edition of the Times Educational Supplement, the Rt Rev John Pritchard says the church’s mission should not be about “collecting nice Christians into safe places”. No, the church’s obligation should be towards the wider, non-Christian community:

I’m really committed to our schools being as open as they can be. I know that there are other philosophies that will start at the other end, that say that these are for our church families, but I have never been as convinced of that as others.

Every school will have a policy that has a proportion of places for church youngsters … what I would be saying is that number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community. Ultimately I hope we can get the number of reserved places right down to 10%.

For defenders of faith schools, this is profoundly demoralising. You expect to be attacked by aggressive secularists like Richard Dawkins, but not by an Anglican bishop.
 
Read it all here.

Egypt's Forgotten Copts

Coptic Christians have been in Egypt for 2,000 years. Why is the Western media ignoring the peril they face?

A disturbing feature of the crisis in Egypt has been the paucity of any discussion of the implications of the possible rise of fanatical Islamists for Christians, particularly the sizeable Coptic Christian population, estimated at between 10-15 percent of the Egyptian population. The few vague references to their fate were generally voiced as an afterthought to reflections on the repression of women.

This puzzling gap is characteristic of Western analysts who respond only to political and economic explanations. But these have little to do with the deeper social historical complexities of the Middle East and everything to do with religion and the culture. Western analysts seldom understand the importance of religion. Unless conflict has an overt political face it is usually a mystery to them. Yet Christians were out on the street with their fellow Egyptians when Mubarak was ousted, desperate to ward off an Islamic take-over.

In fact the persecution of Copts has intensified over the past 20 years even though few in the West have paid attention to it.

The Copts are the descendants of the original Pharonaic Egyptians and their liturgical language is the closest thing we have to demotic Egyptian spoken in Roman times. Christianity was introduced by the Evangelist Mark as early as 42 AD and flourished for hundreds of years. The Christian monastic tradition began in Egypt. In fact Islam did not dominate Egypt until the end of the 12th century.

The Copts are integrated into virtually every strata of life in Egypt from the lowest, like the famous rag pickers of Cairo, to the highest, including the multi-billionaire Telco giant Naguib Sawiris and Boutros Boutros Ghali, former United Nations Secretary-General.

But all this is lost on your average Westerner who equates the rise of Islam with women having to get out of their mini-skirts and into the veil.

If only that were the worst of the problems Copts will face in the event of an Islamic revolution in Egypt!

The lack of interest in the fate of the Copts is doubly curious because a terrible massacre on New Year’s day (the Coptic Christmas) was widely reported. The Coptic bishop of Melbourne, Suriel, told me that the revolution began with the massacre. It is easier to attack a church than a police station.

The Copts are used to these atrocities, although this was the bloodiest of a series of attacks against Christians by fanatical Muslims. The number of massacres has been shocking -- there have been at least 40 incidents in the last 10 years. There is also daily discrimination in jobs and education, property ownership and most particularly in freedom of belief and worship. New churches are routinely destroyed or desecrated. It is very difficult for an Egyptian Muslim to convert to Christianity. The government will not recognise the change of religion on ID cards and makes it difficult for such people to leave the country. There are numerous stories of converted spouses being persecuted and even kidnapped.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed a secular Muslim who expressed his own fears about the rising menace of Islamists: "The issue is not that they have gotten stronger since the revolution. It is that they are getting bolder. There is no counterbalance to their street dominance in certain poor neighborhoods. They're not scared of the government. They're not scared of being prosecuted."

Australian journalist Peter Day has travelled extensively in Egypt and is very familiar with the Coptic culture and situation. He says that the tactics of the regime in relation to the fundamentalists are merely to “outflank the Muslim Brotherhood by indulging the anti-Christian bigotry of the Muslim masses” -- in short, complying with Muslim demands to stifle Christianity in Egypt. Yet so feared is the prospect of an Islamic regime that the Copts supported the Mubarak regime.

According to Day, Australian diplomats have overlooked the discrimination, persecution and violence because of Australia’s own large and possibly strategically significant Muslim population. The growth of the Muslim population in Sydney worries many Australians. Lebanese Muslims, in particular, have a fertility rate four times the national average. Yet Copts and other Middle Eastern Christians with well-founded fears of discrimination and persecution find it difficult to claim refugee status in Australia. (Ironically probably the only country, since the demise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which assures the safety and rights of its Christians is Syria, another dictatorship.) Shouldn’t Australia give priority to Copts and other Christians of Middle Eastern origin who are far closer to traditional Australian values and culture?

We Westerners have to take our blinkers off. Hani Shukrallah, the Coptic editor of the Cairo daily Al Ahram, alerted his countrymen to the danger in a recent English-language editorial titled “J’Accuse!”. He has a message for us in the West as well:

“I am no Zola, but I too can accuse. And it’s not the blood thirsty criminals of al-Qaeda or whatever other gang of hoodlums involved in the horror of Alexandria that I am concerned with…

“I accuse you all, because in your bigoted blindness you cannot even see the violence to logic and sheer common sense that you commit; that you dare accuse the whole world of using a double standard against us, and are, at the same time, wholly incapable of showing a minimum awareness of your own blatant double standard.

“And finally, I accuse the liberal intellectuals, both Muslim and Christian who, whether complicit, afraid, or simply unwilling to do or say anything that may displease “the masses”, have stood aside, finding it sufficient to join in one futile chorus of denunciation following another, even as the massacres spread wider, and grow more horrifying.”

As the Coptic Pope Shenouda remarked of the Islamic fundamentalists to the secular Egyptian press: “Be careful. They will have us for lunch and you for dinner.”


Angela Shanahan is an Australian newspaper columnist. This article is published by Angela Shanahan, and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence.

Egypt: Two-in-One Revolution

Egypt, a country called typically Russian resort, is grasped by the so-called "date revolution." Interfax-Religion correspondent Yelena Verevkina asked renowned expert in Islam Alexander Ignatenko what is the role of Islamists in undermining foundations of this "beach paradise."

Alexander Alexandrovich, what is the role of Islamist underground in organizing disorders in Egypt?

- I think their role is not too significant as the things happening in Egypt, can be called revolution "two in one." On the one hand, it is a revolt of people who have been oppressed by gerontocratic corruption regimen, but on the other hand, it is so called "color revolution" that tries to use this people's impulse to redistribute power and property among elite groups of Egypt. Renowned activist Mohammed al Baradei is the leader of this second revolution.

As to Islamists, they have always been active in Egypt, but they are not playing a leading part in this revolution, here are different moving forces, different infantry. However, today they are in expectation as they have rich political experience. What are the reasons of this expectation? The reason for it is that any political group that will come to power in Egypt (for instance, people who stand for "color revolution") will have to deal with a complex of problems, very difficult, very old that have recently have become more acute, and they won't be able to settle all these problems. It is evident today that they are trying to conclude a kind of agreement, public or secret, with those forces that are trying to kindle this revolution or suppress it, with counterrevolution forces.

What are these forces? They are now trying to make an agreement with Mohammed al Baradei, but at the same time they do not exclude and even suggest a kind of alliance with militaries, with members of the top brass in Egypt. A kind of transitional government can be set up. It won't be a government of national accord or government of national salvation, it will certainly be transitional government where they can participate in this or that form together with militaries and organizers of the "color revolution."

- When you visit Egypt, you've got an impression that majority of its citizens are far from following Islam canons. How many Egyptians can really support "Muslim Brothers" and for what reasons - political or ideological?

- I can't say how many Egyptians can back up "Muslim Brothers." The question is different. Today, Egypt goes through a full-fledged revolution and absolutely different forces from "Muslim Brothers" (but we said they are not the main force) to criminals who have their own interest take part in it. It's not a fact that some Egyptians follow "Muslim Brother" or certain religious slogans. All these events have different organizers. It is not quite right to link this revolution to "Muslim Brothers" and Egyptians who are in sympathy with them.

-What do you think about such an expression as "Islamic democracy"? Is it viable?

- I have never used such an expression. Islam and democracy are incompatible things: you have to choose Islam or democracy.

- What do you think, the power will be gained by pro-Western forces Mohammed al Baradei or Iranian scenario is possible with a rollback to strict Islam?

- I think that Egypt will have such a regimen where the leading role is given to the army and Special Forces. I don't exclude that the United States and the European Union who demonstrated their interest in Egyptian events will strive to set up a pure democracy there as they won't be satisfied with coercion if the militaries block organizers of the "color revolution" and even "Muslim Brothers" who can also participate in political reforms. It's enough to say that they more than once were elected to the Egyptian parliament. I think that Pakistani experience, where military dictator Musharraf was thrown down and changed, not without US pressure, to "democratic government" shows that such replacements of state heads can lead to a negative result, when radical Islamist elements can try to seize power.

Statisticians: "Religion" Becoming Extinct

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Nonlinear dynamics is invoked to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.

One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.

At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.

"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.

"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

Some of the census data the team used date from the 19th century Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.

They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a "network structure" more representative of the one at work in the world.

"Obviously we don't really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society," he said.

Read the rest of this nonsense here.

Muslims Request Europe's Empty Churches

Rome - A Muslim group has asked to use the empty churches in France for Muslims to pray in, solving (at the expense of Christians) the traffic problems caused by Muslims who pray in the streets. Fr. Khalial Samir Samir, an expert scholar of Islam, reflects on the embarrassing proposal, calling for Islam in Europe to become more "European" and less "Arab".

In a press release published Friday, March 11, 2011, the "Banlieuses Respect " Collective asked authorities in charge of organization of the Church of France, to place at Muslims’ disposal "empty churches for Friday prayers". Hassan M. Ben Barek, a spokesman for the Collective, said the measure would "prevent Muslims from having to pray on the streets" and being "politicians’ hostages”.

In fact, for several years now, every Friday, alongside dozens of mosques in France, Muslims have blocked the surrounding streets for an hour or two, spreading mats on the roads to pray. In many cases, local authorities close their eyes to this offense, and in some cases the police are there to ensure the safety of those who block the streets. This situation is on the rise in France (for example, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier. Montreuil, Nice, Paris, Puteaux, Strasbourg, Torcy ...). A situation that is found all over the world (Athens, Brussels, Birmingham, Cordova, Moscow, New York ...) and also in Italy (Albenga, Canicattì, Como, Gallarate, Milan, Modena, Moncalieri, Naples, Rome ...). In the Muslim world this phenomenon is present, especially in Egypt. On 10 December, in Lyon, Marine Le Pen (National Front) denounced the Muslims "street prayers", which led to negative reactions towards the Muslim community in France.

Read it all here.