Come Down, O love Divine is a hymn that is loved around the world. This particular version is performed by the world renowned Choir of King's College, Cambridge and led by director of music Stephen Cleobury. Verse 2 is particularly charming as the male only first half breaks into a full choir fortissimo harmony for the second half.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Friday, September 29, 2017
One Million Polish Catholics Set to Gather on Their Border for Rosary Crusade
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| Young Polish Catholics during a Marian procession, early 2017 |
From FSSPX.NEWS
As many as one million Poles are expected to take part in "The Rosary On the Borders," commemorating the Battle of Lepanto.
Polish Bishops have endorsed and encouraged the attendance of their congregations in this event, which takes place on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The organizers of this event hope to attract a few thousand Catholics, but as the publicity and enthusiasm has grown, so have the numbers.
The crusade was organized independently of the Catholic Church in Poland, for the purposes of honoring Mary as Queen of Poland, asking for her protection and intercession, and begging forgiveness for blasphemies. The organizers describe their effort on their website:
Following the Christian victory in this battle, and with it, the spiritual, cultural, and political future of Europe, the Holy Father commemorated this date as the feast of "Our Lady of Victory". His successor, Gregory XIII, would later change the title of the feast to its current form: "Our Lady of the Rosary.
The organizers and bishops are encouraging participation at the physical border of Poland, hoping to encircle the country with faithful Catholics reciting the rosary. Yet they welcome joining spiritually on the date and time (12:00 GMT) for those who are unable to travel.
Following the Society of Saint Pius X's Rosary Crusade, which ended just over one month ago, this event is an opportunity for faithful who attend SSPX chapels to join with the Polish people in prayer during this historic and grace-laden feast.
The crusade was organized independently of the Catholic Church in Poland, for the purposes of honoring Mary as Queen of Poland, asking for her protection and intercession, and begging forgiveness for blasphemies. The organizers describe their effort on their website:
On this day we will go to the borders of Poland and we will pray on [sic] the rosary. Through this unprecedented prayer of the rosary, we want to show the faithfulness and obedience of Mary, who tirelessly calls us to recite the rosary. We also want to apologize and pay for all blasphemy, insults against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We wish to implore by the intercession of the Mother of God to save Poland and the world. We believe that if the Rosary is prayed by about a million Poles along the borders of the country, it may not only change the course of events, but open hearts of our compatriots to the grace of God.
A Significant Date
The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is a date of significance for this event, particularly for Europeans. On October 7, 1571, one of the most important sea battles in history was fought near the mouth of what is today called the Gulf of Patras, then the Gulf of Lepanto. On one side were the war galleys of the Holy League and, on the other, those of the Ottoman Turks, vying for ultimate control of the Mediterranean. Pope St. Pius V urged the Christian world to pray the Rosary, and ordered churches to be left open day and night.
Following the Christian victory in this battle, and with it, the spiritual, cultural, and political future of Europe, the Holy Father commemorated this date as the feast of "Our Lady of Victory". His successor, Gregory XIII, would later change the title of the feast to its current form: "Our Lady of the Rosary.
The Event in 2017
While the event takes place on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, the participants note that it is also on a First Saturday as well as three anniversaries of note: 140 years since the apparitions of Our Lady in Gietrzwald (the only recognized Polish Marian apparition), 100 years following the apparitions of Fatima, and the eve of Poland's 100th year of independence.
The organizers and bishops are encouraging participation at the physical border of Poland, hoping to encircle the country with faithful Catholics reciting the rosary. Yet they welcome joining spiritually on the date and time (12:00 GMT) for those who are unable to travel.
Following the Society of Saint Pius X's Rosary Crusade, which ended just over one month ago, this event is an opportunity for faithful who attend SSPX chapels to join with the Polish people in prayer during this historic and grace-laden feast.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion: Europe is Committing Suicide
On 22 September 2017, an international symposium on the Christian Future of Europe took place at the residence of Russia’s Ambassador to Great Britain. The keynote address was delivered by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.
Your Eminences and Your Excellencies, dear Mr. Ambassador, conference organizers and participants,
I cordially greet all of those gathered today at the Russian Embassy in London to partake in this conference dedicated to the question of the future of Christianity in Europe. This topic is not only not losing any of its relevance, but is resounding ever anew. Experts believe that today Christianity remains not only the most persecuted religious community on the planet, but is also encountering fresh challenges which touch upon the moral foundations of peoples’ lives, their faith and their values.
Recent decades have seen a transformation in the religious and ethnic landscape of Europe. Among the reasons for this is the greatest migration crisis on the continent since the end of the Second World War, caused by armed conflicts and economic problems in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. According to figures by the European Union agency Frontex, more than 1.8 million migrants entered the EU in 2015 alone.[1] Figures from the UN International Migration Report show that the number of migrants in Europe has increased from 49.3 million people in 2000 to 76.1 million people in 2015.[2] According to research by the UN International Organization for Migration, throughout the world about 1.3 percent of the adult population, which comprises some 66 million people, in the forthcoming year intend to leave for another country in order to live permanently there. Approximately a third of this group of people – 23 million – are already making plans to move. 16.5 percent of potential migrants who were questioned responded that the countries at the top of their list are Great Britain, Germany and France.[3]
The other reason for the transformation of the religious map of Europe is the secularization of European society. Figures in a British opinion poll indicate that more than half of the country’s inhabitants – for the first time in history – do not affiliate themselves to any particular religion. 2942 people took part in an opinion poll conducted in 2016 by Britain’s National Centre for Social Research: 53 percent of those who responded to the question on religious allegiance said that they do not belong to any religious confession. Among those aged from eighteen to twenty-five, the number of non-religious is higher – 71 percent. When similar research was carried out in 1983, only 31 percent of those questioned stated that they did not belong to any confession.[4]
We can see an opposite trend in the Eastern European countries, in particular in Russia. A July opinion poll conducted in Russia by the Levada-Center showed a sharp decline in the number of atheists and non-believers from 26 percent in December 2015 to 13 percent in July 2017.[5] This, of course, does not mean that all the remaining 83 percent are practicing believers. Many defined themselves as “religious to some degree” or “not too religious”, but nevertheless affiliated themselves with one of the traditional religions. However, the number of people who define themselves as being “very religious” is growing steadily.
The contemporary state of religious life in Russian society is directly linked to the tragic events of one hundred years ago. The historical catastrophe of 1917 embroiled Russia in a fratricidal civil war, terror, exile of the nation’s best representatives beyond the confines of their homeland, and the deliberate annihilation of whole layers of society – the nobility, the Cossacks, the clergy and affluent peasants. They were declared to be “enemies of the people,” and their relatives were subjected to discrimination and became the “disenfranchised,” which forced them to the edge of survival. All of this terror took place under the banner of a communist ideology that fought ferociously against religion. Millions of believers were subjected to the cruelest of persecution, harassment, discrimination and repression – from mockery and dismissal in the workplace to imprisonment and execution by firing squad. The Church in those years produced a great multitude of martyrs and confessors for the faith who, as St. Paul said, “were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment” (Heb 11.35-36).
Discussion on the future of Christianity in Europe is impossible without understanding the prospects for the survival of religiosity among its inhabitants. Research carried out by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Cornwell Theological College, USA, indicates that the number of Christians in Europe will be consistently falling: from 560 million people in 2015 to 501 million by 2050.[6] The calculations of the Pew Research Center are more pessimistic and foretell a reduction in Christians in Europe from 553 million people in 2015 to 454 million people by 2050.[7]
These are alarming prognoses, but they reflect the current trends in the transformation of the religious picture of Europe, and they cannot be ignored. Some are suggesting that, unless special force is applied, Europe cannot simply cease to be Christian on the grounds that Europe has for many centuries been Christian. I would like to remind you all that in Russia before 1917 nobody ever proposed that the collapse of a centuries-old Christian empire would happen and that it would be replaced by an atheistic totalitarian regime. And even when that did happen, few believed that it was serious and for long.
The modern-day decline of Christianity in the western world may be compared to the situation in the Russian Empire before 1917. The revolution and the dramatic events which followed it have deep spiritual, as well as social and political, reasons. Over many years the aristocracy and intelligentsia had abandoned the faith, and were then followed by common people. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia spoke of this in January 2017: “The fundamental rupture in the traditional way of life – and I am now speaking… of the spiritual and cultural self-consciousness of the people – was possible only for the reason that something very important had disappeared from peoples’ lives, in the first instance those people who belonged to the elite. In spite of an outward prosperity and appearance, the scientific and cultural achievements, less and less place was left in peoples’ lives for a living and sincere belief in God, an understanding of the exceptional importance of values belonging to a spiritual and moral tradition.”[8]
In the immediate post-war years Christianity played a huge role in the process of European integration, which was viewed in the context of the Cold War as one of the means of containing the expansion of atheist propaganda and communist ideology. The Vatican relied in its anti-communist propaganda upon European unity, upon the Christian democratic parties of Western Europe. The latter firmly believed that Western civilization is closely tied to Christian values, and had to be defended from the communist threat. Pope Pius XII supported the creation of a European community as “Christian Europe’s historical mission.”
The first president of the Federal Republic of Germany Theodor Heuss said that Europe was built on three hills: the Acropolis, which gave her the values of freedom, philosophy and democracy; the Capitol, which represented Roman legal concepts and social order; and Golgotha, i.e. Christianity.[9] It must be noted too that the founding fathers of the European Union were deeply religious men – for example, the French foreign minister Robert Schuman, the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer and the Italian foreign minister Alcide De Gasperi.
And when half a century after the creation of the European Union its constitution was being written, it would have been natural for the Christian Churches to expect that the role of Christianity as one of the European values to have been included in this document, without encroaching upon the secular nature of the authorities in a unified Europe. But, as we know, this did not happen. The European Union, when writing its constitution, declined to mention its Christian heritage even in the preamble of the document.
I firmly believe that a Europe which has renounced Christ will not be able to preserve its cultural and spiritual identity. For many centuries Europe was the home where various religious traditions lived side by side, but at the same time in which Christianity played a dominant role. This role is reflected, particularly, in the architecture of European cities which are hard to imagine without their magnificent cathedrals and numerous, though more modest in size, churches.
A monopoly of the secular idea has taken hold in Europe. Its manifestation is the expulsion of the religious worldview from the public expanse. Article 4 of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based on Religion and Belief, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1981, affirms that “All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.”[10]
The architects of the secular society have seen to the legal aspect of the issue: formally one can confess any religion, but if one attempts to motivate one’s actions through religious belief and freedom of conscience and encourage others to act in accordance with their faith, then at best one will be subjected to censure, or at worst to criminal prosecution.
For example, if one is a doctor and refuses to perform an abortion,[11] or euthanasia,[12] by referring to one’s religious principles, then one is breaking the law. If you are a Protestant pastor and live in a country in which same sex unions are legal, then you have little chance of refusing this couple the right to a church wedding while remaining unpunished by the state. Thus, for example, the Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven recently stated that all pastors of the Church of Sweden ought to be obliged to perform church weddings for same-sex couples, adding that “I see parallels to the midwife who refuses to perform abortions. If you work as a midwife you must be able to perform abortions, otherwise you have to do something else… It is the same for priests.”[13]
Such political figures are the complete opposite to those who were at the foundations of the European Union, and this type of rhetoric, in my view, is suicidal for the continent of Europe. The legalization of abortion, the encouragement of sexual promiscuity, and the systematic attempts to undermine family values have led to a profound demographic crisis in many European countries. This crisis, accompanied by an identity crisis, will lead to a situation whereby in time other peoples will inhabit Europe with a different religion, a different culture and different paradigms of values.
Often the language of hatred in relation to Christians is used when Christians insist on their right to participate in public affairs. They enjoy the same right as much as it is enjoyed by adherents of any other religion or by atheists. However, in practice it is not like this: dozens of instances of discrimination against Christians on the grounds of their beliefs are registered every year. These instances are highlighted by the media and become a topic for public discussion, but the situation as a whole does not change as a result.
In modern-day Europe militant secularism has been transformed into an autonomous power that does not tolerate dissent. It allows well-organized minority groups to successfully impose their will on the majority under the pretext of observing human rights. Today human rights have in essence been transformed into an instrument for manipulating the majority, and the struggle for human rights into the dictatorship of the minority in relation to the majority.
Unfortunately, we should note that these are not isolated incidents, but an already formed system of values supported by the state and supra-national institutions of the EU.
In a situation where we have aggressive pressure of the groups which propagate ideas unacceptable from the perspective of traditional Christian morality, it is essential to unite the Churches’ efforts in opposing these processes, to act jointly in the media, in the sphere of legal support, as well as in propagating common Christian values at all possible levels. It is important that the Churches share their experience in this sphere, and develop cooperation between church human rights organizations and monitoring centers.
I believe it important that Christians of Europe should stand shoulder to shoulder to defend those values upon which the life of the continent has been built for centuries, and that they should view the afflictions and dismay of Christians throughout the world as their own.
[1] Frontex Risk Analysis Network Quarterly Report. Q4 2015. http://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/FRAN_Q4_2015.pdf
[2] International Migration Report 2015. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/PopulationDivision.
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2015.pdf
[3] Measuring Global Migration Potential, 2010–2015. Issue No. 9, July 2017. http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/gmdac_data_briefing_series_issue_9.pdf
[4] Число неверующих в Великобритании впервые превысило 50%. http://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41154931
[5] https://www.levada.ru/2017/07/18/religioznost
[6] http://www.gordonconwell.edu/ockenga/research/documents/StatusofGlobalChristianity2017.pdf
[7] http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/
[8] Presentation by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill at the opening of the XXV Nativity Educational Readings http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4789256.html
[9] Христианские церкви и европейская интеграция: параметры взаимодействия. http://orthodoxru.eu/ru/index.php?content=article&category=publications&id=2012-09-17-1&lang=ru
[10] http://www.un.org/ru/documents/decl_conv/declarations/relintol.shtml
[11] http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/case/medical-directors-dismissal-reversed.html
[12] Catholic care home in Belgium fined for refusing euthanasia. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/07/04/catholic-care-home-in-belgium-fined-for refusing-euthanasia/
[13] http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/case/swedish-prime-minister-priests-should-perform-same-sex-marriages.html
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Pope Benedict XVI, flanked by Metropolite Hilarion Alfeyev, welcomes Italian actress Sophia Loren (Getty Images)
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Your Eminences and Your Excellencies, dear Mr. Ambassador, conference organizers and participants,
I cordially greet all of those gathered today at the Russian Embassy in London to partake in this conference dedicated to the question of the future of Christianity in Europe. This topic is not only not losing any of its relevance, but is resounding ever anew. Experts believe that today Christianity remains not only the most persecuted religious community on the planet, but is also encountering fresh challenges which touch upon the moral foundations of peoples’ lives, their faith and their values.
Recent decades have seen a transformation in the religious and ethnic landscape of Europe. Among the reasons for this is the greatest migration crisis on the continent since the end of the Second World War, caused by armed conflicts and economic problems in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. According to figures by the European Union agency Frontex, more than 1.8 million migrants entered the EU in 2015 alone.[1] Figures from the UN International Migration Report show that the number of migrants in Europe has increased from 49.3 million people in 2000 to 76.1 million people in 2015.[2] According to research by the UN International Organization for Migration, throughout the world about 1.3 percent of the adult population, which comprises some 66 million people, in the forthcoming year intend to leave for another country in order to live permanently there. Approximately a third of this group of people – 23 million – are already making plans to move. 16.5 percent of potential migrants who were questioned responded that the countries at the top of their list are Great Britain, Germany and France.[3]
The other reason for the transformation of the religious map of Europe is the secularization of European society. Figures in a British opinion poll indicate that more than half of the country’s inhabitants – for the first time in history – do not affiliate themselves to any particular religion. 2942 people took part in an opinion poll conducted in 2016 by Britain’s National Centre for Social Research: 53 percent of those who responded to the question on religious allegiance said that they do not belong to any religious confession. Among those aged from eighteen to twenty-five, the number of non-religious is higher – 71 percent. When similar research was carried out in 1983, only 31 percent of those questioned stated that they did not belong to any confession.[4]
We can see an opposite trend in the Eastern European countries, in particular in Russia. A July opinion poll conducted in Russia by the Levada-Center showed a sharp decline in the number of atheists and non-believers from 26 percent in December 2015 to 13 percent in July 2017.[5] This, of course, does not mean that all the remaining 83 percent are practicing believers. Many defined themselves as “religious to some degree” or “not too religious”, but nevertheless affiliated themselves with one of the traditional religions. However, the number of people who define themselves as being “very religious” is growing steadily.
The contemporary state of religious life in Russian society is directly linked to the tragic events of one hundred years ago. The historical catastrophe of 1917 embroiled Russia in a fratricidal civil war, terror, exile of the nation’s best representatives beyond the confines of their homeland, and the deliberate annihilation of whole layers of society – the nobility, the Cossacks, the clergy and affluent peasants. They were declared to be “enemies of the people,” and their relatives were subjected to discrimination and became the “disenfranchised,” which forced them to the edge of survival. All of this terror took place under the banner of a communist ideology that fought ferociously against religion. Millions of believers were subjected to the cruelest of persecution, harassment, discrimination and repression – from mockery and dismissal in the workplace to imprisonment and execution by firing squad. The Church in those years produced a great multitude of martyrs and confessors for the faith who, as St. Paul said, “were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment” (Heb 11.35-36).
Discussion on the future of Christianity in Europe is impossible without understanding the prospects for the survival of religiosity among its inhabitants. Research carried out by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Cornwell Theological College, USA, indicates that the number of Christians in Europe will be consistently falling: from 560 million people in 2015 to 501 million by 2050.[6] The calculations of the Pew Research Center are more pessimistic and foretell a reduction in Christians in Europe from 553 million people in 2015 to 454 million people by 2050.[7]
These are alarming prognoses, but they reflect the current trends in the transformation of the religious picture of Europe, and they cannot be ignored. Some are suggesting that, unless special force is applied, Europe cannot simply cease to be Christian on the grounds that Europe has for many centuries been Christian. I would like to remind you all that in Russia before 1917 nobody ever proposed that the collapse of a centuries-old Christian empire would happen and that it would be replaced by an atheistic totalitarian regime. And even when that did happen, few believed that it was serious and for long.
The modern-day decline of Christianity in the western world may be compared to the situation in the Russian Empire before 1917. The revolution and the dramatic events which followed it have deep spiritual, as well as social and political, reasons. Over many years the aristocracy and intelligentsia had abandoned the faith, and were then followed by common people. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia spoke of this in January 2017: “The fundamental rupture in the traditional way of life – and I am now speaking… of the spiritual and cultural self-consciousness of the people – was possible only for the reason that something very important had disappeared from peoples’ lives, in the first instance those people who belonged to the elite. In spite of an outward prosperity and appearance, the scientific and cultural achievements, less and less place was left in peoples’ lives for a living and sincere belief in God, an understanding of the exceptional importance of values belonging to a spiritual and moral tradition.”[8]
In the immediate post-war years Christianity played a huge role in the process of European integration, which was viewed in the context of the Cold War as one of the means of containing the expansion of atheist propaganda and communist ideology. The Vatican relied in its anti-communist propaganda upon European unity, upon the Christian democratic parties of Western Europe. The latter firmly believed that Western civilization is closely tied to Christian values, and had to be defended from the communist threat. Pope Pius XII supported the creation of a European community as “Christian Europe’s historical mission.”
The first president of the Federal Republic of Germany Theodor Heuss said that Europe was built on three hills: the Acropolis, which gave her the values of freedom, philosophy and democracy; the Capitol, which represented Roman legal concepts and social order; and Golgotha, i.e. Christianity.[9] It must be noted too that the founding fathers of the European Union were deeply religious men – for example, the French foreign minister Robert Schuman, the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer and the Italian foreign minister Alcide De Gasperi.
And when half a century after the creation of the European Union its constitution was being written, it would have been natural for the Christian Churches to expect that the role of Christianity as one of the European values to have been included in this document, without encroaching upon the secular nature of the authorities in a unified Europe. But, as we know, this did not happen. The European Union, when writing its constitution, declined to mention its Christian heritage even in the preamble of the document.
I firmly believe that a Europe which has renounced Christ will not be able to preserve its cultural and spiritual identity. For many centuries Europe was the home where various religious traditions lived side by side, but at the same time in which Christianity played a dominant role. This role is reflected, particularly, in the architecture of European cities which are hard to imagine without their magnificent cathedrals and numerous, though more modest in size, churches.
A monopoly of the secular idea has taken hold in Europe. Its manifestation is the expulsion of the religious worldview from the public expanse. Article 4 of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based on Religion and Belief, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1981, affirms that “All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.”[10]
The architects of the secular society have seen to the legal aspect of the issue: formally one can confess any religion, but if one attempts to motivate one’s actions through religious belief and freedom of conscience and encourage others to act in accordance with their faith, then at best one will be subjected to censure, or at worst to criminal prosecution.
For example, if one is a doctor and refuses to perform an abortion,[11] or euthanasia,[12] by referring to one’s religious principles, then one is breaking the law. If you are a Protestant pastor and live in a country in which same sex unions are legal, then you have little chance of refusing this couple the right to a church wedding while remaining unpunished by the state. Thus, for example, the Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven recently stated that all pastors of the Church of Sweden ought to be obliged to perform church weddings for same-sex couples, adding that “I see parallels to the midwife who refuses to perform abortions. If you work as a midwife you must be able to perform abortions, otherwise you have to do something else… It is the same for priests.”[13]
Such political figures are the complete opposite to those who were at the foundations of the European Union, and this type of rhetoric, in my view, is suicidal for the continent of Europe. The legalization of abortion, the encouragement of sexual promiscuity, and the systematic attempts to undermine family values have led to a profound demographic crisis in many European countries. This crisis, accompanied by an identity crisis, will lead to a situation whereby in time other peoples will inhabit Europe with a different religion, a different culture and different paradigms of values.
Often the language of hatred in relation to Christians is used when Christians insist on their right to participate in public affairs. They enjoy the same right as much as it is enjoyed by adherents of any other religion or by atheists. However, in practice it is not like this: dozens of instances of discrimination against Christians on the grounds of their beliefs are registered every year. These instances are highlighted by the media and become a topic for public discussion, but the situation as a whole does not change as a result.
In modern-day Europe militant secularism has been transformed into an autonomous power that does not tolerate dissent. It allows well-organized minority groups to successfully impose their will on the majority under the pretext of observing human rights. Today human rights have in essence been transformed into an instrument for manipulating the majority, and the struggle for human rights into the dictatorship of the minority in relation to the majority.
Unfortunately, we should note that these are not isolated incidents, but an already formed system of values supported by the state and supra-national institutions of the EU.
In a situation where we have aggressive pressure of the groups which propagate ideas unacceptable from the perspective of traditional Christian morality, it is essential to unite the Churches’ efforts in opposing these processes, to act jointly in the media, in the sphere of legal support, as well as in propagating common Christian values at all possible levels. It is important that the Churches share their experience in this sphere, and develop cooperation between church human rights organizations and monitoring centers.
I believe it important that Christians of Europe should stand shoulder to shoulder to defend those values upon which the life of the continent has been built for centuries, and that they should view the afflictions and dismay of Christians throughout the world as their own.
[1] Frontex Risk Analysis Network Quarterly Report. Q4 2015. http://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/FRAN_Q4_2015.pdf
[2] International Migration Report 2015. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/PopulationDivision.
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2015.pdf
[3] Measuring Global Migration Potential, 2010–2015. Issue No. 9, July 2017. http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/gmdac_data_briefing_series_issue_9.pdf
[4] Число неверующих в Великобритании впервые превысило 50%. http://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41154931
[5] https://www.levada.ru/2017/07/18/religioznost
[6] http://www.gordonconwell.edu/ockenga/research/documents/StatusofGlobalChristianity2017.pdf
[7] http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/
[8] Presentation by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill at the opening of the XXV Nativity Educational Readings http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4789256.html
[9] Христианские церкви и европейская интеграция: параметры взаимодействия. http://orthodoxru.eu/ru/index.php?content=article&category=publications&id=2012-09-17-1&lang=ru
[10] http://www.un.org/ru/documents/decl_conv/declarations/relintol.shtml
[11] http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/case/medical-directors-dismissal-reversed.html
[12] Catholic care home in Belgium fined for refusing euthanasia. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/07/04/catholic-care-home-in-belgium-fined-for refusing-euthanasia/
[13] http://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/case/swedish-prime-minister-priests-should-perform-same-sex-marriages.html
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Father George W. Rutler: The Cross and Not the Crescent
The current mania for tearing down statues and stifling free speech by cultural ingénues ignorant of history and logic, has reached a stellar absurdity in demands to censure “The Star Spangled Banner” on lame claims that it is racist. If ignorance is bliss, then those who indulge their revisionism, must be in Nirvana.Francis Scott Key penned the words in 1814, later set to an English song “To
Anacreon in Heaven,” a tune that is a challenge to singers, as even
Renéee Fleming confessed after performing it at the 2014 Super Bowl. It is often
mutilated by rock stars calling attention to themselves by “interpreting” it. Key
wrote the words after watching 19 British ships fire more than 1,500 cannon
balls, mortar shells and rockets on Baltimore. Key was a slave-owner, which
was, sadly, not in contradiction to common practice. But he ordered the
manumission of his slaves, and in 1820 he embarked on a seven-year effort
pleading before the Supreme Court for the liberation of 300 African slaves captured
off the ship “Antelope” along the Florida coast. He also worked with John Quincy
Adams in the “Amistad” case to free 53 slaves.
Key’s poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry” which, re-named “The
Star-Spangled Banner,” became the national anthem in 1931, was based on verses he
composed in 1805 to celebrate the victory over the Muslim slave -trading pirates on
the Barbary coast, (“the shores of Tripoli,”). “And pale beam’d the Crescent, its
splendor obscured / By the Light of the star-spangled flag of our nation….And the
turban’d heads bow’d to the terrible glare…” -John Langdon, was a Founding Father
who, as first President pro tempore of the Senate, administered the vice-presidential
oath of office to John Adams. In 1805 as governor of New
Hampshire, he set aside a day in thanksgiving “for the termination of our
contest with one of the African powers; the liberation of our fellow-citizens from
bondage…”
Islam, which means “submission,” has never had abolitionists like the Christians
Bartolomé de las Casas and William Wilberforce. Muhammed was a slave
trader, and the Qur’an devotes five times as much space to regulating labor
slavery and sex slavery as it does to prayer. Nearly 200 million slaves, white and
black, were sold by Muslim traders over fourteen centuries, and
almost all the Africans sold to European traders for export to America were
enslaved by Muslims. Muslim slavers even raided Ireland in 1631. So many
Eastern Europeans were enslaved that the word “slave” itself comes from “Slav.”
While lip service is given to abolition in Islamic lands, slavery today is blatant in
Sudan, Niger and Mauritania and was not abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen until
1962 (under Western pressure). Where is the indignation of protestors here?
If revisionists would burlesque the past and mute the voice of reason, they should
first recognize that the value of life is secured best by the standard of the Cross and
not the Crescent.
Saturday, September 23, 2017
After Centuries of Exile, a Grey Friar Returns to Walsingham
Once more at Walsingham Friary, if now to an open sky, the Blessed Sacrament was held aloft.
At the entrance gate, one July day, there stood a figure dressed in dark gray, a member of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, more commonly known as Grey Friars. This was the order that used to live and worship at the Walsingham Friary centuries earlier.
The Grey Friar in question was Fr. James Mary. Each day of his Walsingham pilgrimage, he would stand at the gate that leads to the ruins. He would gaze upon the ruined friary offering supplication for the friars buried there, and also for those who had caused the destruction of this once holy place. He also offered a unique prayer for a specific intention: namely that, one day, the Grey Friars would return to Walsingham.
Upon his arrival in the village, I had noted this friar. With Fr. James Mary, it was immediately observable how he talked to everyone and anyone he met, to say nothing of his gift for disarming even the most confirmed atheist. There was the woman who owns a local teashop. No believer, she was obviously so charmed by the tall, gentle friar who came each day for coffee that when the friar offered to bless her shop, she agreed. Perhaps she thought: ‘Why not?’ The day after she had something to tell the friar. He could ‘bless her shop any day’ because following its blessing, the teashop had enjoyed its busiest custom yet.
It was not just shops that were blessed; souls were touched. I saw pregnant women upon the street having their unborn babies very gently but very publicly blessed. Seemingly, no one refused Fr. James Mary’s offer to impart a blessing. Some, I know, were non-believers; some were Anglicans; many were Catholics.
Read more at National Catholic Register >>
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock
An important new book by Catholic journalist Philip F. Lawler
Faithful Catholics are beginning to realize it’s not their imagination. Pope Francis has led them on a journey from joy to unease to alarm and even a sense of betrayal. They can no longer pretend that he represents merely a change of emphasis in papal teaching. Assessing the confusion sown by this pontificate, Lost Shepherd explains what’s at stake, what’s not at stake, and how loyal believers should respond.
Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock Hardcover – February 12, 2018
Monday, September 18, 2017
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