Rochester Cathedral Choir - "O Thou Who Camest From Above'

From the Pastor - 'The Privilege of Lent'

A weekly column by Father George Rutler

The privilege of Lent provides an opportunity to adjust a little more to the glory of God. On Ash Wednesday we link with the man who asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17). The splendor of heaven is offered to all, but it is not granted to all without a true longing for it.  That desire begins with recognition of the brevity of life on earth and cooperation with God’s grace.

The harmony of history is an indication that God wants His yoke of obedience to be easy and its burden light (cf. Matthew 11:30).  If it becomes difficult and heavy, the conspiring agent is pride. The forty days of Lent belong to the elegant symmetry by which God shows His graciousness: for forty days Moses was on the mount to receive the Law, and again after the sin of the Golden Calf; Elijah was on Horeb; Jonah was with the Ninevites; Ezekiel lay on his side in penance; Jesus was with Satan in the wilderness, and spent the same length of days teaching His disciples after He rose from the dead.

On Wednesday, the imposition of ashes is a primal declaration of mortality.  The death of anyone who truly desires to be part of God’s plan telescopes the forty days into Ash Wednesday and Easter. That became clear once again this past week with the death of one of our rectory family, Argentina Rivera.  She had come to this country from Guayaquil in Ecuador and reared a family here, including her devoted daughter, Janet, who also assisted in our rectory and now serves the Archdiocese.  Argentina was well enough to rejoice in Janet’s beautiful wedding.  For many years Argentina helped our parish in countless ways, keeping the rectory in order, recording accounts, and lovingly taking care of the sacred vestments and altar linens.  For her this was a work of love and not a burden.  She made our rectory laundry room into a small shrine with images of many saints who had worked for the Lord.  At the vigil on the night before her funeral, a large number of family and friends sang beautiful Spanish hymns.  Her needlework was masterful, and every time my cassock loses a button I shall remember how much Argentina was like the disciple who died in Joppa: “The grieving widows who were her friends showed St. Peter ‘coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them’ ” (Acts 9:39).

May these quickly passing forty days make us worthy of the love of our friends here and the love of God above.  As the friends of Argentina sang, “Que los Ángeles en coro te reciban / En la ciudad santa de Jerusalén . . . May the choirs of angels receive you in the holy city of Jerusalem.”

Father George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

Billboard Company: You Can Question God, Not Obama

 ClearChannel banned 'birth certificate' message, welcomes atheists national outdoor ad campaign

For Clear Channel Communications, one of the largest media conglomerates in the U.S., it's apparently OK to question God on billboards going up around the country, but not OK to question Barack Obama. 

 

That's the observation of WND's Joseph Farah, the force behind a 2-year-old billboard campaign that doesn't even mention Obama's name, but merely asks, "Where's the birth certificate?" While ClearChannel refused to run those ads, along with two other major outdoor advertising companies, Lamar and CBS, ClearChannel is making its inventory of billboards available to the overtly anti-God humanist Center for Inquiry's "Living Without Religion" campaign kicking off this week in Indianapolis, Houston and other major cities.

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Father Robert Barron: 'The YouTube Heresies'

Father Robert Barron's keynote address at an Archdiocesan Congress in Vancouver in 2010.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Defends Country’s ‘Magnificent Heritage’ of Christianity

From LifeSiteNews
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made headlines in France by returning to a theme once common with him, but that he seemed to have abandoned: the importance of France’s Christian heritage. 

Speaking before a crowd of dignitaries in the ancient town of Puy-en-Velay, a key location in the history of French religious devotion, Sarkozy vigorously defended the importance of the Christian contribution to the cultural foundations of France. 

Shahbaz Bhatti Was a Hero of the Catholic Faith, a Martyr by Whose Courage We Should Be Inspired

But the chances for reform of the Pakistani blasphemy laws are now looking slim

People carry the coffin of the murdered Catholic politician Shahbaz Bhatti after a funeral Mass in Islamabad, Pakistan (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash)

From Catholic Herald (UK)

By William Oddie

The night before he was killed, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistani Minister for minorities telephoned the BBC’s Orla Guerin.

This is what he said:

“They say there’s a terrorist plot to assassinate me. They’ve told me to be careful, but didn’t tell me anything else. I haven’t been given any extra security. It’s just the same as it has been since I became a minister.”

Though his voice sounded weary, the minister’s commitment was unwavering. “I have struggled for a long time for justice and equality,” he said.

“If I change my stance today, who will speak out? I am mindful that I can be assassinated any time, but I want to live in history as a courageous man.”

Orla Guerin believes that Shahbaz Bhatti knew his days were numbered. “After we ended our conversation”, she said, “I could not escape the feeling that the minister had called to say goodbye”.

There are questions to be asked about all this. After all, Pakistan will soon be receiving more development aid from this country than any other country: and questions are more and more being asked about our relations with dodgy governments. Pakistan is supposed to be an ally. But is there not something dodgy in the extreme about a government which knows that one of its ministers is in great danger from terrorists and does nothing to protect him? Why was Shahbaz Bhatti refused extra security when he had asked for it? Why was there no security guard in the car with him? Why was he refused a bullet-proof car?

I do not know the answer to these questions. The Pakistani government is clearly itself in an unstable condition. There is a climate of fear in what is now an increasingly unhappy country. And there are things to be said in the Pakistani government’s defence: it may be true that it gave this courageous man inadequate protection, but at least it appointed him to his position as a cabinet minister for minorities in the first place. Will it now make his legacy the reform of the blasphemy laws, increasingly being used as a means of persecuting Christians? Commentators seem to think that his assassination, and that of the Governor of Punjab (also an opponent of the blasphemy laws) make reform less, rather than more likely. If so, the terrorists have won: a profoundly depressing outcome.

Like many courageous Christians in Pakistan, Shahbaz Bhatti was a Catholic (most press reports simply describe him as a Christian). It must surely be said that he died for his faith, and that though his death is an event by which we are rightly horrified, it is also one by which we should be inspired. He died for opposing the persecution of all minorities, most of all for defending Asia Bibi, a Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy, as I recounted some time ago in this column, on the basis of false accusations. He was a truly brave man and a hero of the faith.

Pakistan’s religious minorities are now fearful for the future. Shahbaz Bhatti’s elder brother, Peter, said afterwards that his brother “was the last voice of the minorities of Pakistan. Religious extremism has crossed all limits… We… are desperate and depressed.”

But he also said that his brother’s sacrifice would motivate Pakistani minorities to come out in the open for their rights.

“A thousand Shahbaz Bhattis will now come forward and not stop till these dark forces are defeated,” he said. We must, of course, hope and pray that his words prove to be prophetic: but the omens do not look good.

Russian Patriarch: No True Progress Apart from Moral Norms

From Catholic World News

 

Lamenting the problems that afflict Russian society-- “corruption, disrespect for the law, alcoholism, drug addiction, criminality, the crisis of the family”-- the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said that efforts at “modernization” will fail unless they take moral norms into account.

“Modernization without a moral dimension turns to [the] unrestrained pursuit of temporary goods and pleasures, heartless technocracy, [and] results in perverted relations between people,” said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

State authorities, the patriarch added, need to recognize the indispensable role that civil associations play in renewing society. While the “actions of state authorities are absolutely necessary, these problems can't be solved only from above, without participation of people, without creative activity of an ordinary person, without people's capability to self-organization, to creating what we call institutes of civil society,” he said.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Modernization in Russia to base on moral norms - Patriarch Kirill (Interfax)