10.31.07

“And Sister Lucy Told Me…”

Posted in Dr. Robert Moynihan at 2:19 pm by Brian Schuettler

A conversation with Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the Catholic archbishop in Moscow for the past 16 years, on the eve of his departure for Belorussia

- by Dr. Robert Moynihan

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz drummed his powerful fingers nervously against the arms of the chair.

“Yes, I did speak with Sister Lucy,” he told me. “Three times.”

(He was referring to Sister Lucy of Fatima, one of the three Portuguese shepherd children who had visions of Mary on six occasions in 1917, 90 years ago. Sister Lucy died at the age of 98 in 2005, just six weeks before Pope John Paul II died on April 2 of that year.)

“You went to Portugal to see her?” I asked. (We spoke in English, which the archbishop speaks fluently.)

“Yes, three times,” said Kondrusiewicz. He held up three fingers. (The archbishop, who came to Russia on May 28, 1991, had agreed to sit down with me for a brief chat before his departure for his difficult new assignment in Minsk, Belorussia; he will leave on Wednesday, October 30, exactly 16 years, five months and two days after his arrival in Moscow.)

“And you spoke to her personally?” I asked. “One on one?”

“Yes,” he replied, continuing to drum the fingers of his right hand into the arm of the armchair. (We were sitting in a simple room on the third floor of the impressive, 100-room curia Kondrusiewicz has just finished building next to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Moscow. He was able to build the multi-million dollar structure over the past decade thanks to the support of many Catholics in the West, but, he tells me, also with considerable cooperation from the city government of Moscow, which he says “could have thrown up endless administrative roadblocks,” but did not.) “Yes, three times…”

He paused.

“And what did she say to you?” I asked.

As he seemed to hesitate, I added: “It must have been a bit dramatic, since you were the Catholic bishop in Moscow, and part of the message of Fatima is: ‘in the end, Russia shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world’…”

Still Kondrusiewicz was silent.

“Or perhaps you cannot speak about it?” I added.

He looked intently at me.

“Well, she did say many things to me,” he said. “I did ask her about the conversion of Russia, since I felt my mission might be directly connected, despite my own limitations, with this mystery.

“And Sister Lucy said that I should think of conversion as a long process, not as something immediate and dramatic, something that happens overnight or instantaneously.

“She said I should consider that the essential thing is the salvation of souls, and the conversion of sinners. In this sense, she said, I needed to think of the word ‘Russia’ as in some way standing for the entire world, and the reference to the ‘conversion’ as a reference to the conversion of sinners.”

***

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The archbishop told me he was somewhat concerned about the legal status in Russia of his successor, Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, who was installed as the new Catholic archbishop of Moscow on October 27.

“It is really not the fault of the Russian government,” he said. “In this case, I will defend the Russian government. It is because of a European Union policy on visas, which requires that foreigners with 1-year visas spend only 90 days in a row in a country, and only 180 days out of a year. And Russia last month agreed to reciprocate this European Union policy. This means that now Catholic priests and nuns in Russia on a visitor’s visa can only stay for 90 days before leaving the country, and only for 180 days out of a year. And Archbishop Pezzi, who is an Italian citizen, and is here on a 1-year visa, faces this problem.

“Each time a religious group in Russia changes its leader, the change must be reported to the Russian government,” Kondrusiewicz continued. “The report must be made within three days of the change. So it will be made either tomorrow or Wednesday.

“But then the government must accept the report,” he continued. “And the current legislation requires that only a citizen of Russia, or a permanent resident, can be the leader of a religious group in Russia. This suggests that, under the current legislation, the report of the change in our leadership will not be accepted.

“Fortunately, I’ve just signed all the papers the diocese must file each quarter, so Archbishop Pezzi will not have to sign any important papers until the end of December,” Kondrusiewicz said. “Hopefully, even if the problem is not resolved immediately, it will be resolved before then.”

I was startled.

“Are you telling me that Archbishop Pezzi may not be able to be confirmed officially this week by the Russian government as the leader of the Catholic Church in Russia?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kondrusiewicz said. “Perhaps the nuncio, Archbishop (Antonio) Mennini, has already worked this problem out with the authorities. His role is to handle this type of diplomatic matter.”

“But have you had a conversation about this problem with Archbishop Mennini?”

“I raised the entire matter as soon as I was informed of the Pope’s decision to replace me,” Kondrusiewicz said. “That was just four weeks ago. It has all happened so fast.”

“But Archbishop Mennini has not advised you that this matter will not be a problem, that he has already worked out something with the Russian government?”

“No,” Kondrusiewicz said.

***

Our conversation continued for more than an hour.

The archbishop told me that John Paul II always kept in close touch with him, and asked him to come to the Apostolic Palace often to report on developments in Russia.

“John Paul was profoundly interested in everything related to our Church in Russia,” Kondrusiewicz said. “I would visit Rome two or three times a year, and almost always he would invite me to come talk with him.”

***

“I just read your email report about me yesterday,” he said. “And I have to ask you to change one word.”

“What word?” I asked.

“You wrote that I said I was ’sad’ to be leaving Moscow,” Kondrusiewicz said. “That’s not quite true. I am not sad.”

“Then what word would you like me to use,” I asked. “I can make a correction.”

“Just don’t say I am sad,” he said. “That’s not the right word. I am not sad. I am a soldier. The Holy Father has given me a new task, and I obey. I am obedient.”

“Well, in Italian there is the word ‘commosso,’ which in English would be moved, deeply moved,” I said. “Would that be right?”

“Perfect,” he said. “That’s the perfect word. Not sad. I am not sad. But deeply moved, yes.”

***

In numerous conversations over the past several days, Catholics and Russian Orthodox in Rome, Vienna and Moscow have expressed varying opinions about the affect of the change in Catholic leadership in Moscow on the future of the Catholic Church in Russia, and on the course of Catholic-Orthodox relations in general.

The conversations have revealed some deep fissures within Russian Orthodoxy itself, some divisions between the Russian Orthodox and other Orthodox Churches, and even some differing emphases within the Roman Catholic Church herself.

At the same time, they have made clear that there is, at the highest levels of all these Churches, a profound desire to find ways to work together effectively to bear witness to a shared Christian faith and hope, in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, despite nearly 1,000 years of schism, in the face of an increasingly secularized western culture, and of a resurgent Islam.

In reports in coming days, I will discuss these and other issues in other letters from Russia.

***

As I left Kondrusiewicz, I asked him one last question.

“One last question,” I said. “After growing up in the Soviet Union, after being bishop in Moscow for 16 sometimes difficult and lonely years, now, on the eve of your departure, what is your most inward feeling about whether the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches will ever be in full communion?”

He was silent for a moment, then raised both his hands to shoulder height and said, “Certainly, it must be so,” he said. “That day will come. It is the will of Christ himself. ‘Ut unum sint’ (’that they may be one’). That was Christ’s final prayer, and it shall be so.”

A Very Special “Russian Christmas” in Washington, D.C.

On December 17, a week before Christmas, the Moscow Boys’ Choir and a leading Russian orchestra will travel to America to perform an exceptional “world premiere” concert of Russian Christmas music at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington… For more information, please visit our Web site.

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Give light to my eyes that I may not sleep in death

Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 7:05 am by Brian Schuettler

Reading 1
Rom 8:26-30

Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God’s will.

We know that all things work for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose.
For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.
And those he predestined he also called;
and those he called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 13:4-5, 6

R. (6a) My hope, O Lord, is in your mercy.
 Look, answer me, O LORD, my God!
Give light to my eyes that I may not sleep in death
lest my enemy say, “I have overcome him”;
lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.
R. All my hope, O Lord, is in your loving kindness.
 Though I trusted in your mercy,
Let my heart rejoice in your salvation;
let me sing of the LORD, “He has been good to me.”
R. All my hope, O Lord, is in your loving kindness.

Gospel
Lk 13:22-30

Jesus passed through towns and villages,
teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem.
Someone asked him,
“Lord, will only a few people be saved?”
He answered them,
“Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.
After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,
then will you stand outside knocking and saying,
‘Lord, open the door for us.’
He will say to you in reply,
‘I do not know where you are from.’
And you will say,
‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’
Then he will say to you,
‘I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!’
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth
when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God
and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the Kingdom of God.
For behold, some are last who will be first,
and some are first who will be last.”

10.30.07

Joseph Pearce on Graham Greene and George W. Bush

Posted in Great Catholic Writers at 4:41 pm by Brian Schuettler

Graham Greene 

Joseph Pearce is writer-in-residence and associate professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Florida. He is the author of biographies of G.K. Chesterton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and is editor of the Saint Austin Review. He wrote in the recent issue on The American Conservative an article entitled The Unquiet Graham Greene:

There was something bizarre, indeed something almost surreal, about George W. Bush’s recent reference to Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American in his speech to the National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Attempting to draw a parallel between the conflict in Vietnam and the current conflagration in Iraq, Bush criticized Greene’s suggestion that the “quiet American’s” patriotism was dangerously naïve:

In 1955 … Graham Greene wrote a novel called The Quiet American. It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism—and dangerous naïveté.

Bush’s unexpected sortie into the fictional world of Greene was itself dangerously naïve, especially as several commentators had already suggested that Bush is little more than a real-life incarnation of Alden Pyle. It was also both bemusing and amusing to see Bush reference a work that almost everyone presumed he had never read. Certainly, if he had read The Quiet American, he would not have made the rudimentary error of referring to Pyle as the novel’s “main character,” a distinction that belongs to Thomas Fowler, a disillusioned and cynical English journalist. Such is the pitiable state of American politics in these sorry days that an uncultured president relies for his semblance of erudition on equally unlettered speechwriters.

Be that as it may, The Quiet American is a good place to look at the relative merits of Messieurs Bush and Greene and serves as a meditation on the relationship between New World naïveté and Old World cynicism. If, for example, there is a great deal of George W. Bush in the transparent (and dangerous) shallowness of Alden Pyle, there is more than a hint of Graham Greene in the world-weary depths of Thomas Fowler. Pyle is certain that “Democracy,” “Freedom,” and “America” are not only inseparable but synonymous. It is almost as though they form an indivisible trinity as holy as the Trinity of the Christians and as worthy of praise. This quasi-religious zeal turns every war for Democracy into a jihad, with Pyle emerging as a fanatic for the cause of “America” in much the same way that the new breed of Muslim terrorists emerge as fanatics for “Islam.” It must be said, however, that Pyle is much more likeable than any Islamic fanatic and is even disarmingly charming in his simple, unquestioning faith in the Motherland. Parallels with Bush are not only palpable, they positively palpitate from the pages of The Quiet American!

 

               *******************************************************

Back in 1987, Greene was one of the most vocal critics of the Israeli government following the abduction of Mordechai Vanunu from Italy by Israeli agents. Vanunu’s “crime,” in the eyes of the Israelis, was to have exposed the fact that Israel possessed nuclear weapons that, by any stretch of the imagination, can be described as “weapons of mass destruction.” Why is it, one wonders, that some countries in the Middle East can possess weapons of mass destruction, with Bush’s blessing, while others cannot? Why did previous American governments arm the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in the name of “Freedom” and “Democracy”? Why did Bush’s own government declare war on the only secular government in the Middle East capable of resisting Iran? These are questions that only George W. Bush or Alden Pyle could answer. The rest of us remain baffled.

Bush quoted a character in The Quiet American who said of Pyle that he had never known a man “who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.” Like Pyle, Bush is well-intentioned. Like Pyle, he is dangerously naïve. Like Pyle, his noble motives have caused a lot of trouble. And, like Pyle, he needs reminding of the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_10_22/article3.html

Quote of the Day:

By the time that Greene wrote his play “The Potting Shed” in 1957, even old friends and allies, such as Evelyn Waugh, were losing patience with his heterodox dabblings. The play was “great nonsense theologically,” Waugh complained, “and will puzzle people needlessly.” Three years later, after Greene wrote to Waugh of how his latest novel, A Burnt Out Case, was intended “to give expression to various states or moods of belief or unbelief” and that the characterization of the doctor had represented “a settled and easy atheism,” Waugh replied impatiently that many would see the novel “as a recantation of faith”: “To my mind the expression ‘settled and easy atheism’ is meaningless, for an atheist denies his whole purpose as a man—to love and serve God. Only in the most superficial way can atheists appear ‘settled and easy.’”

—Joseph Pearce in the article Unquiet Graham Greene  

 

The disappearing Christian presence in the Middle East

Posted in Our Christian Brethren in the Middle East at 3:40 pm by Brian Schuettler

 

There was a time when American Catholics understood that their Faith was not like the faith of modern evangelicals—a mere matter of “believing on the Lord Jesus” and being saved.  They understood that receiving the Eucharist is not simply an act that brings us grace but one that unites us to the Body of Christ, of which the Church here on earth is the corporate manifestation.  Yes, we’re called to pray for our enemies, but we’re also called, as Saint Paul reminds us, to build up the Body of Christ.  And we are bound to our fellow believers not simply by “values,” or even by bonds of kinship, but spiritually.

Our failure today to understand and defend the Crusades shows how fully we’ve lost this corporate sense.  European Christians sacrificed their lives for the liberation of the Holy Places in the Middle East and the survival of the Christian communities there.  They undoubtedly prayed for the souls of the enemies they fought, but they never fell into a moral equivalence between their fellow Christians and those who had attacked and subjugated them.

It all comes back, once again, to Vladimir Solovyov, and his prediction that “Days will come in Christianity in which they will try to reduce the salvific event to a mere series of values.” Too many American Catholics have placed their political values, which they have elevated to the level of “moral values,” above the corporate Body of Christ.  Like the worst of Christian Zionists, they have come to value the military might of a secular Israel above both the survival of the Christian communities of the Middle East and a sane, considered view of the American interest in the region.

What is astounding is that so few of these “conservative” American Catholics realize that the ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East is not, in the long run, in the national interest of either the United States or Israel.  Blinded by American nationalism or partisan politics or maybe just bloodlust, they are supporting policies that will likely cost more American and Israeli blood in the decades to come.  Once the conflict in the Middle East is completely reduced to Judaism/Israel versus Islam/Arabs, the only way for Israel and the United States to win politically will be to lose spiritually.

“The Antichrist,” Solovyov wrote, “is the reduction of Christianity to an ideology, instead of a personal encounter with the Savior.” In those words, we find both the diagnosis of our current state and the solution to it—but knowing what that personal encounter entails, are “conservative” American Catholics and other Christians willing to put down their swords, take up their cross, and follow Him?

Scott Richert at Taki”s Top Drawer - Thoughts On The Antichrist Part III>

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/thoughts_on_the_antichrist_part_iii_breaking_the_body_of_christ

Ten Commandments for atheists

Posted in Dogmatic Atheism, Culture Wars at 2:12 pm by Brian Schuettler

In City Journal >  http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html the superb essayist Theodore Dalrymple, who is  a professed atheist himself, discusses and critiques the current wave of books written by a very dogmatic group of “new atheists”.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes with approval a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists, which he obtained from an atheist website, without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them; nor does their metaphysical status seem to worry him. The last of the atheist’s Ten Commandments ends with the following: “Question everything.” Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?

Not to belabor the point, but if I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove. Metaphysics is like nature: though you throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it always returns. What is confounded here is surely the abstract right to question everything with the actual exercise of that right on all possible occasions. Anyone who did exercise his right on all possible occasions would wind up a short-lived fool.

This sloppiness and lack of intellectual scruple, with the assumption of certainty where there is none, combined with adolescent shrillness and intolerance, reach an apogee in Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. It is not easy to do justice to the book’s nastiness; it makes Dawkins’s claim that religious education constitutes child abuse look sane and moderate.

Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.

It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”

Contue reading at http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html

What is the Kingdom of God like?

Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 6:47 am by Brian Schuettler

Reading 1
Rom 8:18-25

Brothers and sisters:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing
compared with the glory to be revealed for us.
For creation awaits with eager expectation
the revelation of the children of God;
for creation was made subject to futility,
not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it,
in hope that creation itself
would be set free from slavery to corruption
and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now;
and not only that, but we ourselves,
who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,
we also groan within ourselves
as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
For in hope we were saved.
Now hope that sees for itself is not hope.
For who hopes for what one sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 126:1b-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6

R. (3a) The Lord has done marvels for us.
 When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with rejoicing.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
 Then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us;
we are glad indeed.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
 Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
Those that sow in tears
shall reap rejoicing.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
 Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
They shall come back rejoicing,
carrying their sheaves.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.

Gospel
Lk 13:18-21

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like?
To what can I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.
When it was fully grown, it became a large bush
and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?
It is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

10.29.07

I beseech you, brethren, that there be no schisms among you

Posted in One Church, One Truth at 4:58 pm by Brian Schuettler

St Paul is warning the Church at Corinth against the danger of divisions, or literally, of schisms. Of course not all ‘divisions’ in the Church are bad. The various religious orders, for example, like the many colours of Joseph’s robe, serve to increase the beauty of the Church. Likewise it’s only natural that Catholics should have different opinions about matters outside the realm of saving truth, such as who was this country’s greatest Prime Minister, or who (if anyone) to vote for at a general election…

But what cannot be is that Catholics should disagree about the way that leads to Heaven; that they should be divided over faith and morals. There can never be any need for such a schism as this, since Christ has promised to be with His Church always, maintaining her in the truth. For a Catholic to say ‘There are no easy answers’ about what to do or believe in order to reach Heaven is tantamount to saying that Christ is no longer teaching mankind through His Church. But, as Isaiah says, ‘the arm of the Lord is not made short.’ Christ’s promise has not failed.

How sad, then, that there should for so long have been such a schism in the Catholic Church. I mean the division between those who accept and those who do not accept that marriage is made for children and that contraception is simply wrong. It was in 1968 that Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ. He repeated there what the Church has always said on this subject: that it is contrary to the God-given nature of the marriage act to render it sterile. From St Peter onwards, no Pope or saint has ever said anything else. Yet such was the revolutionary temper of the time that some priests and ‘theologians’ thought to challenge the Tradition. In effect they caused a schism, none the less real for being largely invisible. Thirty-seven years on we see the results: empty pews in our churches, and empty pages in our baptismal registers, since babies who are never born can never be baptized.

Silent Schism > http://torch.op.org/preaching/sermon/1007

fr. Thomas Crean is a member of the Priory of St Michael, Archangel in Cambridge.

From people who claim to be driven solely by reason

Posted in Dogmatic Atheism at 2:06 pm by Brian Schuettler

For Christians who take their faith seriously, there is both a downside and an upside to this new wave of atheistic proselytising, with the latter probably outweighing the former. The downside is that it will reinforce already widespread liberal prejudices according to which there is no point in trying to know God. Instead of encouraging people to maintain an open mind about religion (the least to be expected from true liberals), these books will further encourage a closing of the mind to any possibility of the supernatural, which they gratuitously equate with superstition.

The upside is that these books help draw more clearly than ever before the battle lines in the ongoing culture wars. Until recently, most Christians were inclined to assume that modern culture was at least neutral with respect to the basic tenets of Christianity, and that it was possible to adhere to the creed while at the same time accepting the philosophical heritage of the “modern” age. In short, it was more or less taken for granted that one could view oneself as being both a child of God and a child of the Enlightenment.

Thanks in part to these books and others of the same ilk, it is now becoming increasingly clear that Nietzsche was right: the only true alternative to Christianity is nihilism and atheism. Nietzsche inferred from this that morality can only be based on the human will. Anyone familiar with European history of the 20th century will know the disastrous outcome of that alternative. It is in this sense that the new atheists help us to understand why the 150-year old attempt by “progressive” Christians to find some accommodation between the Christian creed and the basic tenets of the Enlightenment have led to a gradual erosion of the faith. This perhaps explains why, at the outset of the 21st century, many Christians are coming to realise that the only meaningful choice is between traditional Christianity and atheism. As the intellectual dust and confusion caused by the collapse of the numerous variations of liberal Protestantism and “progressive” Catholicism settles, we find there is no way around this choice.

All this does not mean, however, that Christians and atheists are soon to find themselves locked into some kind of unrelenting battle. Whether the more zealous atheists who have adopted the missionary posture of these books like it or not, there are other atheists who do not subscribe to their views and who even seek a dialogue with Christianity. Jürgen Habermas, considered by many as a most “methodical atheist” and an icon of postmodernism, wrote in a 2004 essay titled A time of transition that “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilisation. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.” A similar view is held by atheist Marcello Pera, professor of philosophy and President of the Italian Senate in a book published jointly with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) and titled Without Roots.

Atheism becomes Fashionable at MercatorNet>

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/atheism_becomes_fashionable/

When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated

Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 7:14 am by Brian Schuettler

Gospel
Lk 13:10-17

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

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