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Thursday 17 July 2014

Sources indicate two things

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/07/photo-pro-russian-buk-missile-system-under-camo-on-street-in-ukraine/

http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

First is that rebels have the missal capacity to do this horrible act; and the second is that sources are stating terrorists with guns are hindering the crash scene.

News Again

If you want real news on the recent horrible plane crash today, most likely shot down by separatists, watch EU news, not American. American coverage is worthless.


http://www.france24.com/en/


http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

News

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_UKRAINE_PLANE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-07-17-12-00-29

http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

Please Continue Your Prayers

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/07/thom-peters-progress-1-year-after-his-life-changing-accident/

Note on Calls

I am presently living in a place where my cell phone is not working consistently, and where the voicemail number does not work at all.

I can be reached by email. I am not covered on any of these maps.

http://opensignal.com/network-coverage-maps/

Thanks, STM

Stone Soup


This is a story I grew up with at home....



Some travellers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. Then the travellers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavour, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with a few carrots to help them out, so that gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit ofseasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.
In the Portuguese tradition, the traveller is a monk and the story takes place around AlmeirimPortugal. Nowadays many restaurants in Almeirim serve stone soup, orsopa de pedra. Almeirim is considered the capital of stone soup.[citation needed]
In the French and Hungarian versions of the tale, the travellers are soldiers: three returning home from the Napoleonic Wars play the role in the former, and a single, starving one, who encounters several hardships on his journey back to his homeland, is depicted in the latter.
The story is most commonly known as nail soup in Scandinavian and Northern European countries. In these versions, the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he will make nail soup for the both of them if she would just add a few ingredients for the garnish. In Eastern Europe the variation of the story (having more in common with the Northern European rendition) is called axe soup, with an axe being the catalyst. In Russian tradition a soldier eats axe kasha (Каша из топора).

Read The Whole Thing--Spe Salvi


ENCYCLICAL LETTER
SPE SALVI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN HOPE

Introduction
1. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?
Faith is Hope
2. Before turning our attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely to the Bible's testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith”. We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing)[1]: so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.
3. Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesiansquoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father's right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

Poll Alert!

I am a firm believer that horrid photos of aborted babies should be used in protests and at abortion mills.

See the poll for your opinion.

Do any readers get and read this?


No Networking

In the good old days, there was networking. People in professional positions helped each other get jobs. People in factories helped each other get jobs. Families helped each other.

Networking is dead. Why? Networks no longer exists for three reasons:

1) Many old networks have been undermined by governments, such as the Church, as leaders hate Christianity;

2) Many people are so narcissistic that they simply do not want to help others find work;

3) The move towards global government hates networks, which they cannot control.

Those who use to have authority in the society who were Church members know to what I am referring.

Sad. A sign of the death of the Catholic community....

The Medieval View

What is our Catholic journey on this earth supposed to resemble?

What is our place in the world to be in a pagan society?

What is a Catholic worldview?

Who is the true leader of the world?

What should the Kingdom of God look like on earth?

What are my priorities?

Do I realize life is very short?

Am I doing my duty as a Catholic to Church, society, family?




From Msgr. Keith Newton, the Ordinary


Statement from the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
 
The Assisted Dying Bill

The Assisted Dying Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Lords on Friday 18 July. If it became law it would make incitement to suicide routine in our society, thereby putting pressure on the most vulnerable to see themselves as a burden to society. The Church’s teaching is clear: that human life, from conception to natural death, is a gift from God. Christ calls us to offer those facing serious illness care and hope, not despair and killing. The emergence of the hospice movement, which has enabled great progress in palliative care, is one of the fruits of this Christian calling common to Catholics, Anglicans and other Christians. The Assisted Dying Bill is a rejection of this Christian inheritance, and instead promotes what Pope St John Paul II called a ‘culture of death’.

Information on lobbying Peers can be found here:
www.catholicchurch.org.uk/Home/Featured/Assisted-Dying-Bill/Contact-a-Peer 

This conflict against the culture of death is first of all a spiritual one, and therefore I invite members of the Ordinariate and others to dedicate some time today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday) to pray - if possible before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament - for the upholding of the sanctity of human life.
 

I know girls

...who are into national and state competitions for cheerleading and baton-twirling. They practice hours each day. They learn to wear make-up and sexy costumes at the age of five.

Can one imagine how saintly these little girls would be if their moms spent as much time teaching them virtues and how to pray? A lady I know said to me of her young grandchild who is eleven, "She is growing up a little pagan."

Little pagans...

Last year and a long time ago when I was in grad school, the Batontwirling Championships took place at Notre Dame.

I remember a sign in the old bookstore, 'No batons allowed."

Way back then, many of us were scandalized by the heavy make-up, the skimpy costumes, and the purposeful sexualization of little girls.

I cannot, or rather, will not, show photos.