Thursday, January 24, 2013

I wanted to share a viewpoint from a fellow blogger today. Tony Perkins writes, "Abortion may have taken 55 million lives since Roe v. Wade, but it's created at least 110 million victims. Every one of those children had a mother--and not one of them was ever the same again. Some doctors would like us to believe that taking the life of an unborn child is just a simple, outpatient procedure. But lost somewhere in the pro-choice picket lines and political debates are the deeply personal stories of women trying to cope. And what was the Left doing to celebrate 40 years of legalized abortions? Releasing sick ads like the one described below. It was the brainchild of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a group that based on the video, the word "radical" doesn't begin to describe. The commercial features True Blood actor Mehcad Brooks holding roses and drinks in front of a roaring fire. At the end of a two-minute come-on, Mehcad looks at the camera and says, "Happy anniversary, baby. Lookin' good for 40. Mmm, mmm, mmmmm." Maybe the folks at CRR think it's funny to sexualize Roe's legacy with all the class of an SNL Ladies' Man skit, but in the end, all they did was prove pro-lifers' point: that the abortion industry is not only intrinsically evil but fundamentally uncaring. The Left may be seduced by abortion's appeal, but, as Live Action's Cassy Fiano points out, it's not exactly sexy to have an ad featuring a man who looks like he wants to take you to bed and then drop you off at the nearest Planned Parenthood. This smooth, but ultimately predatory tone, is what abortion is all about: Giving men what they want (with no consequences for them) while women are left to suffer and die. Even more repulsive, the Center intentionally uses an African American man to romanticize a procedure that happens to be the number one killer of the black community." Well said Mr. Perkins.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Catholic Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, close companions of the Apostle Paul and bishops of the Catholic Church in its earliest days on January 26. Both men received letters from St. Paul, which are included in the New Testament. Pope Benedict XVI discussed these early bishops during a general audience recently, noting “their readiness to take on various offices” in “far from easy” circumstances. Both saints, the Pope said, “teach us to serve the Gospel with generosity, realizing that this also entails a service to the Church herself.” The son of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father, Timothy came from Lystra in present-day Turkey. His mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, are known to have joined the Church, and Timothy himself is described as a student of Sacred Scripture from his youth. After St. Paul’s visit to Timothy’s home region of Lycaonia, around the year 51, the young man joined the apostle and accompanied him in his travels. After religious strife forced Paul to leave the city of Berea, Timothy remained to help the local church. Paul later sent him to Thessalonica to help the Church during a period of persecution. The two met up again in Corinth, and Timothy eventually journeyed to Macedonia on Paul’s behalf. Problems in the Corinthian Church brought Timothy back for a time, after which he joined Paul and accompanied the apostle in subsequent travels. Like Paul, Timothy endured a period of imprisonment in the course of his missionary work. His release is mentioned in the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews. Around the year 64, Timothy became the first bishop of the Church of Ephesus. During that same year, he received the first of two surviving letters from St. Paul. The second, written the next year, urges Timothy to visit St. Paul in Rome, where he was imprisoned before his martyrdom. Ancient sources state that St. Timothy followed his mentor in dying as a martyr for the faith. In the year 93, during his leadership of the Church in Ephesus, he took a stand against the worship of idols and was consequently killed by a mob. The pagan festival he was protesting was held January 22, and this date was preserved as St. Timothy’s memorial in the Christian East. In contrast with Timothy’s partial Jewish descent and early Biblical studies, St. Titus – who was born into a pagan family – is said to have studied Greek philosophy and poetry in his early years. But he pursued a life of virtue, and purportedly had a prophetic dream that caused him to begin reading the Hebrew Scriptures. According to tradition, Titus journeyed to Jerusalem and witnessed the preaching of Christ during the Lord’s ministry on earth. Only later, however – after the conversion of St. Paul and the beginning of his ministry – did Titus receive baptism from the apostle, who called the pagan convert his “true child in our common faith.” St. Paul was not only Titus’ spiritual father, but also depended on his convert as an assistant and interpreter. Titus accompanied Paul to the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem during the year 51, and was later sent to the Corinthian Church on two occasions. After the end of Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, the apostle ordained Titus as the Bishop of Crete. Paul sent his only surviving letter to Titus around the year 64, giving instructions in pastoral ministry to his disciple as he prepared to meet up with him in the Greek city of Nicopolis. Titus evangelized the region of Dalmatia in modern Croatia before returning to Crete. Titus is credited with leading the Church of Crete well into his 90s, overturning paganism and promoting the faith through his prayers and preaching. Unlike St. Timothy, St. Titus was not martyred, but died peacefully in old age.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

There was a recent question on the Catholic Answers radio show about the idea of God having a body. Here is the response. Certain groups, notably the Mormons, have committed the error of saying that God the Father has a body, and have thus become anthropomorphites, people who say that God has a human form. In recent years, this form of doctrinal decay has also set in among certain segments of American Evangelicalism, most notably in the Pentecostal Word Faith movement. Evangelicals such as Finnis Dake, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland, and Benny Hinn have all (temporarily or permanently) bought into the idea that the Father has a body. Anthropomorphites argue that man is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27) and point to verses that refer to the strong right arm of God, the eyes of God, and so forth. In doing this, they profoundly misunderstand Scripture. First, the image of God we bear involves our rational soul that separates us from animals (the function that the image plays in Genesis 1 is to separate humans from the animals God has just created). Second, talk in the Bible about God’s strong right arm, his eyes, and such is metaphorical language concerning God’s power and knowledge. This can be seen by the fact that the Bible also speaks of God as having feathers and wings; yet even the anthropomorphites would not go this far (cf. Ps. 91:4—"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge"). Anthropomorphites maintain their doctrine in defiance of verses, such as John 4:24, where Jesus teaches us: "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." This means God has no body, because a spirit is, by nature, an incorporeal being. As Jesus tells us elsewhere, "a spirit has not flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39). There is a big difference between being a spirit and having a spirit. Jesus says that the Father is a spirit, not that the Father has a spirit; this means that he lacks a body entirely. The Church Fathers, of course, agreed, and loudly declared the fact that God is an unchangeable, immaterial spirit who has an entirely simple ("incomposite") nature—that is, a nature containing no parts. Since all bodies extend through space and thus can be divided into parts, it is clear that God cannot have a body. "What of Christ’s body?" you may ask. It is true that Jesus, who is God, assumed an earthly body when he was born of the Blessed Virgin, and that this body, now glorified, continues to exist. But since the Lord only took on human flesh in these "last days," and since God has always existed, without beginning or end, we must still conclude that having a body is not part of God’s unchangeable nature: he exists in eternity as pure spirit, even though he chose for the Son to also take on a human nature in addition to his bodiless, timeless, divine nature.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

The birth of Jesus causes joy because it gives us the certainty that God “works wonders in weakness,” Pope Benedict XVI said recently. “The Nativity of the Lord once again illuminates the darkness that often surrounds our world and our hearts with his light, bringing hope and joy,” he said during his weekly general audience. The pontiff opened and closed his remarks with Pilate's question to Christ at his trial: “Where do you come from?” Pope Benedict answered that the Gospels show Christ's “true origin” is from God the Father, and that he “comes entirely from him.” That Christ “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,” is a mystery “central to our profession of faith,” he stated. “At this phrase we kneel because the veil which hid God is, so to speak, lifted and his unfathomable and inaccessible mystery touches us directly,” the Pope reflected. He said that sacred music composed by the “great masters … lingers especially on this phrase, as if to try to express in the universal language of music what words cannot: the great mystery of God who becomes Incarnate, becomes man.” The Pope mentioned in particular Mozart's Coronation Mass as an example of the beautiful expression of the Incarnation in sacred music. He also reflected on how the Creed gives particular importance to Mary, the Mother of God. “Without her, the entry of God into human history would not have come to its end.” Mary's acceptance of God into her life is an example for us when we are discouraged, he told his listeners. When we feel inadequate, we can look to the humble maid of Nazareth and take heart. “God chose a humble woman, in an unknown village, in one of the most distant provinces of the great Roman Empire. Always, even in the midst of the most difficult problems to face, we must trust in God, renewing faith in His presence and action in our history, like in that of Mary.” With God, the Pope affirmed, our lives are built on solid ground and we can be “open to a future of firm hope.” He said that the Holy Spirit “overshadowing” Mary as she conceived Christ is an image of the creation of the world and of the cloud which led the Israelites through the exodus from Egypt. The gift of faith given in baptism, Pope Benedict recalled, allows believers to share in Christ's relationship with God the Father. “Only if we open ourselves to God … our life takes on a new meaning and a new face: that of the children of a Father who loves us and never abandons us.”