NARAL President Quitting, Cites Lack of Young Abortion Activists

Nancy Keenan, the president of the pro-abortion group NARAL is quitting her position, saying she needs to be replaced by someone younger. The pro-abortion activist lamented the lack of young pro-abortion stalwarts in the movement. 

Keenan originally made her decision in May, and the chairs of the boards of directors of NARAL and its legislative arm announced she had chosen not to renew her contract , which expires at the end of December. Keenan, who took the reins of the organization in December 2004, will continue heading up the organization’s political action arm until a replacement is found.

Read the rest of this entry at LifeNews.com 

 

Pope Benedict's Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord

Vatican Basilica
Sunday, 6 January 2013

(Video)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

For the Church which believes and prays, the Wise Men from the East who, guided by the star, made their way to the manger of Bethlehem, are only the beginning of a great procession which winds throughout history.  Thus the liturgy reads the Gospel which relates the journey of the Wise Men, together with the magnificent prophetic visions of the sixtieth chapter of the Book of Isaiah and Psalm 71, which depict in bold imagery the pilgrimage of the peoples to Jerusalem.  Like the shepherds, who as the first visitors to the newborn Child in the manger, embodied the poor of Israel and more generally those humble souls who live in deep interior closeness to Jesus, so the men from the East embody the world of the peoples, the Church of the Gentiles – the men and women who in every age set out on the way which leads to the Child of Bethlehem, to offer him homage as the Son of God and to bow down before him.  The Church calls this feast “Epiphany” – the appearance of the Godhead.  If we consider the fact that from the very beginning men and women of every place, of every continent, of all the different cultures, mentalities and lifestyles, have been on the way to Christ, then we can truly say that this pilgrimage and this encounter with God in the form of a Child is an epiphany of God’s goodness and loving kindness for humanity (cf. Tit 3:4).

 
Following a tradition begun by Pope John Paul II, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord also as the day when episcopal ordination will be conferred on four priests who will now cooperate in different ways in the ministry of the Pope for the unity of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the multiplicity of the Particular Churches. The connection between this episcopal ordination and the theme of the pilgrimage of the peoples to Jesus Christ is evident.  It is the task of the Bishop in this pilgrimage not merely to walk beside the others, but to go before them, showing the way. But in this liturgy I would like to reflect with you on a more concrete question.  Based on the account of Matthew, we can gain a certain idea of what sort of men these were, who followed the sign of the star and set off to find that King who would establish not only for Israel but for all mankind a new kind of kingship.  What kind of men were they?  And we can also ask whether, despite the difference of times and tasks, we can glimpse in them something of what a Bishop is and how he is to carry out his task.
 

Feast of the Epiphany

We Three Kings of Orient Are - Robert Shaw Chamber Singers

"O God, Who by the guidance of a star didst this day reveal Thine only-begotten Son to the Gentiles, mercifully grant that we, who know Thee now by faith, may be so led as to behold with our eyes the beauty of Thy majesty. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen."

~Collect for the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Father Rutler: "All Lives that Truly Encounter Christ are Changed"

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

The Twelve Days of Christmas end with the celebration of the visit of the Wise Men to the Holy Child. This “Epiphany” is the showing of Christ to those who were foreign to Judaism. Very little is said of the Wise Men, and we cannot even be sure that there were just three. It may have taken them upwards of two years to make the journey, and — given their familiarity with the Jewish scriptures and astronomy — they probably were Zoroastrians, monotheists who were open to the wisdom and writings of other religions. They would have been wealthy and influential in a culture that esteemed high learning. They certainly were wise in being able to detect the cunning of King Herod. Their saga is so exotic that it is the very stuff of romance, which makes it difficult to believe that they really existed. Yet they were very much a part of the nativity narrative and were the first to take the unwritten Gospel to distant places.

In “The Journey of the Magi,” T. S. Eliot portrays them as utterly changed by what they saw and more than uncomfortable with their homeland — present-day Iran — when they went back:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

All lives that truly encounter Christ are changed. The sublime and most potent examples of that are the saints, heirs of the Wise Men. Pope Benedict XVI canonized some of them this past year as models for what he has called the New Evangelization.

Father Jacques Berthieu, who died in 1896 at age 57, was a French Jesuit missionary martyred in Madagascar. Pedro Calungsod, who died in 1672 at 17, was a Filipino lay catechist martyred in Guam. Father Giovanni Piamarta, an Italian priest who died in 1913 at 71, counted among his works the establishment of technical training schools for disadvantaged youths. Marianne Cope, who died in 1918 at age 80, had come from her native Germany to upstate New York and, as a Franciscan nun, worked among the lepers in Hawaii with St. Damian. Kateri Tekakwitha was an Algonquin-Mohawk who suffered much for the Faith she embraced and died in 1680 at the age of 24. Anna Schäffer, who died in 1925, spent over half of her 43 years in her Bavarian home as an invalid with mystical gifts as a visionary and miracle worker.

Like the Magi, these saints were never able to call their old home their true home, for they set their sights on their promised home in Heaven, and that hope made them all the more useful in this world. “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Winston Churchill Documentary

For years we have wanted to share this superb documentary with our readers.  At last, it is available in its entirety.  We hope you will enjoy this biography of the greatest Briton and the savior of Christian Civilization.

The first video is a playlist of 13;  the concluding parts follow.

What America Buys & Sells

 

Polish Bishop Who Built Secret Communist-Era Churches Dies at 94

Archbishop Ignacy Tokarczuk

(Reuters) - Retired Polish Archbishop Ignacy Tokarczuk, who built churches in secret in defiance of the communist authorities, becoming a folk hero for many, has died at the age of 94, PAP news agency said on Saturday.

One of the Soviet bloc's more colorful anti-communist clerics, Tokarczuk clandestinely built hundreds of churches under the noses of the officially atheist government in the 1960s and 1970s.