eChurch Blog

By Ken Blackwell

Some Muslims are organizing a Capitol Hill Prayer Meeting for this Friday, September 25th. They are claiming that 50,000 American Muslims will peaceably assemble to offer prayers on the grounds of one of the nation’s most cherished sites. Their theme is “Our Time Has Come.” They quote President Obama’s victory statement from last fall.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks in 2001, Adrian College professor Muqtedar Khan, a Muslim immigrant, spoke to his fellow Muslims. He said America was the best country on earth for freedom to practice Islam. He noted that in every country where Islam predominates, Shias oppress Sunis, or Sunis oppress Shia, or everyone suppresses Sufi Muslims. To underscore his point, Prof. Khan offered any American Muslim who disagreed with him a one-way ticket “to the Muslim country of your choice.” I haven’t read if the offer got any takers.

Prof. Khan was then teaching political science at a small Michigan Catholic college. That fact alone should have alerted us to the extraordinary religious liberty Americans enjoy. But that liberty is not a sure thing. It must be defended daily.

Shari’ah law is in many of its manifestations radically inconsistent with American liberty and constitutional guarantees. Any attempt to bring Shari’ah to our shores must cause the most serious of social, political, and legal conflicts.

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights dates from 1948. It was an attempt, spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt, to prevent a repetition of the horrors of World War II — including but not limited to the Holocaust, the Japanese brutality against POWs and occupied peoples, and religious persecution throughout the world. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration asserts the right of all humans to profess their faith publicly and to change their religion if they believe God is calling them to do so.

Virtually all those nations in which Islam predominates have seats in the UN. Some of them are even on the misnamed Human Rights Council. Yet, in none of these states can a person freely and openly change his religion without fear of death. In none of these states is Article 18 of the Universal Declaration respected.

When Afghan Abdul Rahman in 2005 converted to Christianity, leaders of that government which U.S. arms and sacrifice had installed called for his murder. We are not talking about the Taliban, but about the “democratic” government the U.S. was backing.

Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council, took up a vigorous defense of Abdul Rahman.

Only after then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hastened to Kabul for a summit meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the threat to Abdul Rahman’s life averted. I doubt you could call that a “come to Jesus” meeting, but I do not doubt that Secretary Rice explained to Karzai that if Abdul Rahman was murdered that millions of American Christians would be outraged by the savagery his government permitted. American blood and American treasure were then-and now-being poured out to keep Karzai’s shaky government in place. Abdul Rahman was quietly freed. But he was freed only on condition that he leave Afghanistan forever.

That is not religious liberty. That is not democracy. If 99% of Afghan women vote and 99% of Afghan men vote, and together they all vote to murder their neighbor who practices a different religion, the result is no democracy. And it will not matter how many purple fingers they raise.

We will be watching this Friday’s Muslim prayer meeting on Capitol Hill with great interest. We respect the constitutional rights to peaceable assembly and religious free exercise of all Americans. But we continue to view with alarm the spread of any ideology that countenances slavery and murder. Let us all pray that we hear strong and convincing condemnations of terrorism coming from this Friday’s gathering.

Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law.

ByAlex Grobman

For more than 20 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism was a regional phenomenon – a conflict between Arab and Jewish national movements in the Middle East. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the Soviets exploited antisemitism for political purposes, but it was seldom part of international debate until after the Six-Day War in 1967.

By the end of the 1960s, and since 1975, anti-Zionism became international in scope. It first appeared in the universities in the West where the New Left, in cooperation with Arab student associations, attacked Israeli policy. 1

When the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975, and declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” it significantly expanded anti-Zionism into the sphere of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and therefore into Third World countries. This was accomplished in collaboration between the Arabs and the Soviet Union that endowed anti-Zionism with legitimacy and official recognition.2

After the First World War, the Arabs expected Greater Syria – which included Palestine and Lebanon – to become a vast, united, and sovereign Arab empire. Instead, the French and the British divided the area into what the Arabs considered “irrationally carved out” entities that became the present-day states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Trans-Jordan (later Jordan), Iraq, and Israel. The Arabs were outraged that a “non-Arab embryo state in Palestine” had been inserted into an area where it would never be accepted. They claimed that this shattered their dreams of unification and impeded their search for a common identity. 3

The fight against a Jewish homeland became an integral part of their struggle “for dignity and independence.” Israel’s existence, they claimed, “implied that not only a part of the Arab patrimony, but also parts of Islam, had been stolen. For a Moslem, there was no greater shame than for that to happen.” The only way to eliminate this deeply felt affront – this “symbol of everything that had dominated them in the past” – was to rid the area of “imperialist domination.” 4

Zionism has been branded as the official enemy of the Arab national movement, but Arab governments have long been accused of using the Arab-Israeli confrontation to divert attention from their own critical domestic social and economic problems. When confronted, they respond that if this were not a real concern, it would not resonate so strongly among the Arab masses. 5

Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton University, the dean of Middle Eastern scholars in the West, says Arab fixation with Israel “is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live – the poverty, unemployment, oppression – having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage.” 6

The Israeli-Arab conflict is the only local political grievance that can be openly discussed. If the population were permitted freedom of speech, Lewis believes that the obsession with Israel would become far less important. Like most people, Arabs are concerned about their own priorities. For the Palestinian Arabs, who view themselves as the permanent victims, the main issue is their struggle with Israel. If Arabs in other countries were permitted to focus on their own problems, they would do so.  7

For Arabs, the attempt to blame Western imperialism is nothing more than an excuse to attack Israel, as another Hebrew University professor Jacob Talmon asserted: “For decades the Arabs have been obsessed by memories of past glories and prophecies of future greatness, mocked by the injury and shame of having an alien and despised race injected into the nerve center of their promised pan-Arab empire, between its Asian and African halves, just at a time when the colonial powers had started their great retreat from their colonial possessions in Asia and Africa.” 8

To lessen their feelings of shame for losing every war against Israel, the Arabs attributed the success of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the Israeli military triumphs of 1948 and 1956 to Western imperialism. As the representative of the Great Powers, Israel became the Arabs’ scapegoat whenever they became frustrated in their attempt to transcend “centuries of social, economic, and cultural development, and catch up” with the West.

This anti-Israel fixation precipitated a methodical “Manichean metaphysic, the focus of an entire philosophy of history, with the Jew as the devil incarnate from the days of patriarch Abraham himself till his assumption of the role of the linchpin of an American-Imperialist-Zionist world-plot against the Arab world, the Socialist Commonwealth and all colonial peoples.” 9

The crushing defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 Six-Day War shattered this fantasy and accentuated Arab humiliation, since the Israelis won without the backing of any imperialist nations. Arab rage was exacerbated by the casualty rates in Israel’s favor — about 25 to 1 — and by the number of prisoners of war Israel captured. At least 5,000 Egyptian soldiers, including 21 generals, 365 Syrians (30 of whom were officers), and 550 Jordanians were taken. Only 15 Israelis were held as POWs. Arab military hardware losses were in the billions of dollars — most of it coming from Soviet Bloc countries.10

Civilian casualties were minimal: Israelis estimate that 175,000 Arab noncombatants fled the West Bank to Jordan; Jordanians claim that number is 250,000. Though the Israelis did not initiate the Arab exodus, they did not attempt to stop it. The refugees were not encouraged to return, but Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Minister of Defense, stopped the practice of preventing them from crossing back to the West Bank a week after the war, after observing ambushes and concluding that they were inhumane.11

Israelis wanted to resolve the 1948 and 1967 refugee problem — to be determined when a comprehensive peace agreement would be negotiated. The Arabs rejected the offer and insisted that the refugees be allowed to return, unconditionally, and receive compensation. Yet, in the summer of 1967, when Israel agreed to allow Arabs to come back to the West Bank, only a handful returned.12

At the same time, the Arabs persecuted and tormented their own Jewish residents. Jews were attacked in Yemen, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco. Synagogues were burned and Jews were arrested and detained. In Damascus and Baghdad, Jewish leaders were fined and imprisoned, and 7,000 Jews were expelled after their property and most of their belongings were confiscated. Eight hundred of Egypt’s 4,000 Jews were arrested, including the chief rabbis of Cairo and Alexandria. The UN and the Red Cross did nothing to intervene on their behalf.13

Despite this treatment of Jews in Arab lands, the 1.2 million Arabs under Israeli governance did not experience any systematic mistreatment. Looting and vandalism were reported in some areas, but the Israelis repaired whatever damage they found. Though Jordanians had destroyed synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem and used the tombstones from the Jewish cemeteries on the Mount of Olives to pave roads and use in latrines, Moshe Dayan participated in the Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Perhaps the greatest trauma for the Arabs was that Israel had conquered 42,000 square miles – and was now three-and-a-half times larger in size than before the war. 14

Anti-Zionism entered the international scene when Israel and Egypt reached political rapprochement after the Yom Kippur War by signing an interim agreement on September 1, 1975. That agreement emphasized, “The conflict between them and in the Middle East shall not be resolved by military force but by peaceful means.”15

Concerned that this might lead to peace, the Soviets, Syria, and the PLO tried to exclude Israel from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), like UNESCO, “for having transgressed the United Nations Charter, and having failed to adopt its resolutions.” When this strategy failed, they began to question Israel’s legitimacy and discredit and condemn Zionism in the UN, and to internationalize their propaganda against her.16

1. Yohanan Manor, “Anti-Zionism,” (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1984):  8.
2. Ibid.
3. Saul Friedlander and Mahmoud Hussein, Arabs and Israelis: A Dialogue (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), 6, 18, 21.
4. Ibid., 9, 34.
5. Ibid.
6. “Islam’s Interpreter,” The Atlantic Online (April 4, 2004), Online.
7. Ibid; Friedlander and Hussein, Arabs and Israelis: A Dialogue, 32-33, 36.
8. Jacob L. Talmon, Israel Among the Nations (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 169-170.
9. Ibid.170.
10. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 305-306.
11. Ibid., 306.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 306-307.
14. Ibid.
15. Manor, “Anti-Zionism,” 9-10.
16. Ibid.10.

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. He is a former director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the author of a number of books, including Nations United: How The U.N. Undermines Israel and The West, Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? and a forthcoming book on Israel’s moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State.

By Will Morris – Compass Direct News

ISTANBUL, Sept. 23 (Compass Direct News) – A funeral for a Coptic Christian gruesomely killed on a village street north of Cairo by a Muslim assailant last week turned into a protest by hundreds of demonstrators in Egypt.

Galal Nasr el-Dardiri, 35, attacked 63-year-old Abdu Georgy in front of the victim’s shop in Behnay village the afternoon of Sept. 16, according to research by a local journalist. Other Copts watched in horror as El-Dardiri stabbed Georgy five times in the back, according to interviews by Gamal Gerges, a reporter for newspaper Al-Youm al-Sabeh.

As Georgy fell to the ground, El-Dardiri took his knife and stabbed him four times in the stomach. He then disemboweled him, slit his throat and began sawing off his head, according to Gerges. The Rev. Stephanos Aazer, a Coptic priest who knew Georgy and saw photographs of his mutilated body, said the victim’s head was attached to the body by a small piece of flesh.

After killing Georgy, El-Dardiri got on a motorcycle and rode 30 minutes to another town, where he found Coptic shopkeeper Boils Eid Messiha, 40, and stabbed him twice in the stomach, according to Gerges. El-Dardiri immediately left the scene, went to nearby Mit Afif and allegedly attacked Hany Barsom Soliman. Soliman, a Copt in his mid-20s, managed to fight him off.

Messiha was taken to a hospital where he has been operated on at least five times. He remained in intensive care at press time. Soliman suffered lacerations to his arms but was otherwise unharmed.

On Thursday afternoon (Sept. 17), about 1,000 people gathered at Georgy’s funeral to protest the killing and assaults on Coptic Christians. Protestors chanted that Georgy’s “blood was not [spilled] in vain” as they carried signs that read, “Where are you, government? The terrorists are going to kill us.”

Aazer and several other priests participated in the demonstration. Aazer, of the Behnay area, confirmed that police had been monitoring local Copts and even tracking telephone conversations of clergy.

El-Dardiri was arrested on Thursday (Sept. 17) in Cairo and has been charged with murder. It was unclear when he would appear in court.

Ibrahim Habib, chairman of United Copts Great Britain, said Egypt has encouraged the type of “radicalization” that has led to such attacks.

“It is the Egyptian government’s responsibility now to stop the persecution and victimization of its Coptic minority by Islamic fundamentalists,” he said. “The persecution and victimization of the Christians in Egypt has been persistent for three decades and recently escalated to a worrying tempo.”

Habib added that Egypt needs to root out Islamic extremists from government agencies, “including the Egyptian police, which frequently show complacency or collusion with the Islamists against the peaceful Christians.”

Hat-tip Stand Firm

Article from fresnobee.com

CHICAGO — The presiding bishop of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination warned Wednesday that withholding financial support to protest a recent gay clergy vote would be “devastating” to the church.

Bishop Mark Hanson laid out his concerns in a letter to leaders of the 4.7 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is based in Chicago. The ELCA churchwide assembly voted last month to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, dropping a requirement that gay clergy remain celibate.

Hanson’s letter comes on the eve of a meeting in suburban Indianapolis of conservative ELCA group Lutheran CORE, which has urged supporters to “direct funding away from the national church” because of the vote.

Withholding funding would hurt the mission of the Chicago-based denomination, Hanson wrote.

“Although these actions are promoted as a way to signal opposition to churchwide assembly actions or even to punish the voting members who made them, the result will be wounds that we inflict on ourselves, our shared life, and our mission in Christ,” he wrote.

Fascinating stuff from Pew Research:-

About half (48%) of white mainline Protestants believe the earth is warming as the result of human activity — roughly the same proportion as among all Americans (47%) — but only a third of white evangelical Protestants (34%) share that belief. In fact, white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to say there is no solid evidence that global warming is occurring (31%). While only 39% of black Protestants say global warming is a result of human activity, they are, however, the least likely of the religions studied to deny global warming (15%). The unaffiliated (58%) are the most likely to say there is solid evidence the earth is warming because of human activity. Read more

By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Citizens for a Pro-Life Society (CPLS) say that their video depicting the Catholic funeral and burial ceremonies of abortion victims has been censored by the video-sharing site YouTube – which now has an established reputation for removing pro-life videos and issuing “warning strikes” against their owners’ accounts.

CPLS reports that YouTube pulled the original five-minute film “Requiem for the Disappeared” on August 29.  The film shows the remains of 23 unborn children whose bodies were buried after being salvaged last year from trash dumpsters behind abortionist Alberto Hodari’s Womancare abortion clinic in Lathrup Village, MI., and abortionist Reginald Sharpe’s Women’s Advisory abortion clinic in Livonia, MI.  The video is accompanied by the song “Tell Me Who I Am,” which was crafted for the video and produced by Mediatrix Records.

(The video can be viewed through Yahoo! Video here)

“Requiem for the Disappeared” is the third CPLS video removed by YouTube, who also issued a warning strike against the group’s account. YouTube indicated that the video was removed for violating the site’s prohibition against images “intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful.”

According to the site’s guidelines: “if a video is particularly graphic or disturbing, it should be balanced with additional educational or documentary context and information.”

CPLS argues that the images of the children’s’ remains were given appropriate and respectful context, and were not intended to shock, saying the video was “obviously crafted to teach, to provoke thought, to provide a moral lesson.”

The group said it was considering legal action against YouTube.

“I feel strongly that we must call You Tube to responsibility,” said CPLS director Monica Migliorino Miller. “It’s obvious that pro-lifers are consistently discriminated against on this website.”

In August, YouTube removed a video (available here) published by Operation Rescue showing the abusive behavior of a man working for Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart against a pro-lifer.  YouTube indicated that the video inappropriately used the site as a “venue for things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts.”

“I completely resent the outrageous and false notion that the video was in anyway abusive on our part,” said Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger. “The threats and intimidation shown in this video were made by the Carhart employee against the pro-life photographer, Larry Donlan.  I posted the video with his permission so that the world could see the truth about the abuse and threats that pro-lifers are forced to endure.”

Earlier that month, Live Action Films launched a petition against YouTube’s attack against pro-life videos. Live Action has had several of its videos exposing controversial and illegal practices by Planned Parenthood pulled from the site.

“Youtube claims to be free of ideological censorship,” said Live Action Films president Lila Rose.  “But they are clearly censoring an opinion they dislike, an opinion that goes against Planned Parenthood – which, as many are open about, has a good deal of influence in a lot of mainstream media, and now sadly in the new media, in YouTube.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Live Action Launches Petition Against YouTube for Censoring Videos
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09080302.html

YouTube Yanks another Pro-Life ExposÚ Video
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072109.html

YouTube Bans New Video of Planned Parenthood Telling Customer Abortion Photos “Not Real”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09062503.html

YouTube Blocks Videos Exposing Planned Parenthood’s Support for Race-Selective Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08090409.html

(CNA).- In reaction to the news that a woman was implanted with an embryo from another couple, Father Thomas Berg, Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, spoke to CNA about the tragedies that can happen in “the unregulated world of IVF.”

Sean and Carolyn Savage shared their story with the Today Show on September 21.  The Ohio couple had been having trouble conceiving a child so had resorted to in vitro fertilization to have their fourth baby.

After going through the procedure to become pregnant, Carolyn was later given the news that the child growing inside of her was not hers.  The fertility clinic had inadvertently implanted another couple’s baby into her womb.

Fr. Berg told CNA that the Savage’s story is “in many ways just the latest absurd chapter in the wild west that is the unregulated world of IVF.”

“It is tragic that this multi-billion dollar industry has been able to play on the emotions of thousands of vulnerable couples to make the very prospect of regulating this industry not only a cultural taboo but a potentially fatal political third rail for anyone in congress who would dare to take it on,” he said.

Sizing up the current state of the IVF industry, Fr. Berg stated, “it not only perpetuates the emersion of thousands of embryonic human beings into the absurd fate of deep frozen suspension until their eventual destruction (only a fraction of embryos created ever make it to live birth), but it sets the stage for on-going and tragic ‘mistakes’ like the one made with the Savages.”

Carolyn Savage is now 35 weeks pregnant and will give the baby to his biological parents following delivery.

According to the Today Show, the Savages have hired attorneys to make sure the fertility clinic they used accepts “full responsibility for the consequences of their misconduct.”

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Pope Benedict XVI is to make an official visit to Britain next year – the first by a Pope in almost 30 years.

LONDON (Catholic Online) – The London Times has reported that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Britain next year. If this wonderful news is confirmed it will mark the first official visit by a Pope. Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982. The Times reports that this historic visit will soon be confirmed by the Vatican. It will take place next September. Further, that “…during his time in the country, expected to take place in September next year, Pope Benedict will have a meeting with the Queen, Supreme Governor of the Church of England and will be accorded the full panoply of a state visit. It is possible the Pope will also stay with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Gordon Brown extended a formal invitation during a private audience in February and preparations have been under way for some time”

Having an apparent access to the itinerary, the Times indicated it will include visits to London, Birmingham, Oxford and Edinburgh. The report has led to rumors that the Holy Father’s visit may indicate that the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman might take place in Birmingham, at the site of the Oratory which was founded by the beloved convert to the Catholic faith. Newman is one of the highest profile converts from Anglican Christianity to the Roman Catholic Church. He is still beloved by the Anglican Christians who maintain their ties to Christian orthodoxy against the decline within their own church. Other details of the itinerary: “The visit is expected to include an invitation to the Pope to address both houses of parliament at Westminster, in the same Westminster Hall where St Thomas More was tried and condemned in 1535 for opposing the Act of Supremacy. This was the act that made King Henry VIII “supreme head” of the emerging new Protestant body, the Church of England, signaling the formal breach with Rome”.

A visit by Pope Benedict to Britain may have implications for those within the Church of England who have witnessed their Church being torn from within over the last few decades. The decline of orthodoxy in that community has reached a critical stage where some observers think it is irreparable. There has been speculation over the plight of some within the broader Anglican community who openly discuss entry into full communion with the Catholic Church. The “Traditional Anglican Communion”, one of many “splinter groups” which have arisen as a direct result of the Church of England’s movement away from classical Christian orthodoxy, has formally requested to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. They have done so with a refreshing humility, agreeing to do whatever it would take. They still await a formal response from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith in Rome.

In an age which has witnessed a decline in Christianity on the European continent, Pope Benedict XVI is an ardent evangelizer, calling for a rebirth of Christianity in Europe. Some interpret the choice of his Papal name as a signal of his commitment to lead such a rebirth. I am numbered among them. We will closely follow the plans for this apostolic visit and invite our readers to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the successor of the Apostle Peter. St. Augustine of Canterbury was sent to what became England by another great Pope St. Gregory, in 669, to bring freedom to the inhabitants of that beautiful land through the proclamation of the full Gospel of Jesus Christ as found within the Church. Now, in the Third Millennium, the successor of Gregory is soon to do the same.

Pope Benedict XVI participated in the Second Vatican Council. He not only understands the authentic teaching of that Council but has led the way in its proper implementation in many areas of life, both within the Church and in her mission to the contemporary age. He also understands the way that the Council was hijacked in some circles, disregarded in others and absolutely misinterpreted in still others. He is a voice for dynamically orthodox and faithful Catholic Christian faith, practice, worship and life. In his homily prior to the convening of the conclave where he would be chosen to fill the Chair of Peter, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger gave a prophetic insight into the challenges of the age:

“How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching,” looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”

Some attempted to misuse this prophetic insight to paint him as rejecting the modern world. That is nonsense. What he rejects, and rightly so, is the emptiness of modernity and post modernity. What he proposes is a different path, not to the past, but to a future of hope and authentic freedom. It is the truth that paves that path to authentic human flourishing and freedom. It is found in Jesus Christ, the “Way, the Truth and the Life.” Jesus reminds every person in every age, that we can “know the truth” and that “the truth will set you free.” Benedict is his mouthpiece and Vicar. Those who watch the early days of Popes tell us to watch for two things, the name they choose and the content of their first homily. He chose the name Benedict. One of the young priests who commentated during his assumption of the Papal office noted that then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger visited Subiaco before all the events began. He prayed and rededicated himself to the work of the Church for the future. Interestingly, a short while later he took the name Benedict.

Saint Benedict was born around the year 480 in Umbria, Italy. He is the father of Western Monasticism and co-patron of Europe (along with Saints Cyril and Methodius).As a young man he fled a decadent and declining Rome for studies in order to give his life entirely to God. He went to Subiaco. The cave that became his dwelling is now a shrine called “Sacro Speco” (The Holy Cave), which is a sanctuary for pilgrims. Pope Benedict XVI is a re-builder, working in continuity with the 2,000 year teaching of the Catholic Church by helping to ensure that the proper understanding of the Second Vatican Council becomes a reality. He has surprised many in the area of authentic ecumenism. He is leading the Church into a truly “Catholic” Millennium. His overtures toward our Orthodox brethren are bearing fruit.

I believe we are witnessing the beginnings of the coming full communion of the Church, East and West, as the “two lungs” on the One Body of Christ begin to breathe together again in order to animate this new missionary age. Pope Benedict, like his namesake, is helping to bring a Christian influence back to Europe. This mission has not been easy. And, it will probably get more difficult. The old adage is true; it always seems darkest before the dawn. Those who hoped to change the teaching and doctrine of the Catholic Church are deeply disappointed. However, for all who hunger for a vibrant, faithful, dynamically orthodox Catholic Church, the source of all truth, the God who is Truth, has been true to his promise to Peter, “upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her”. Pope Benedict XVI is a gift.

May this visit to England hasten the recovery a dynamically orthodox Christian witness in that Nation; one which opens up the path to the recovery of a genuinely Christian Europe and the continued unfolding of a new missionary age.

Previous Posts

Assisted suicide (Euthanasia) guidelines laid out by Keir Starmer Director of Public Prosecutions

DPP could cause ‘constitutional crisis’ on assisted suicide

The Christian Legal Centre is deeply concerned at the publication by the DPP today, 23rd September, of interim guidelines relating to assisted suicide and factors which will weigh against prosecution.

Although the guidelines will be subject to consultation before becoming fully established policy, the Centre’s Executive Director, Barrister Andrea Williams has serious misgivings.

‘Our hearts of course go out to elderly and unwell people who are suffering from horrible medical conditions and to their loved ones. But we believe that all life should be protected in law and that the guidelines published today will cause great harm to individuals and society.

We should learn from other jurisdictions where assisted suicide has been legalised. Very soon, elderly and vulnerable people surveyed by researchers report a shift in perception towards seeing themselves as a burden on their families and being under a ‘duty to die’.

Additionally, we are concerned that the system will be open to abuse and to a creeping, ever-widening application, which has been observed in previous cases in our own legal history where laws have been injudiciously liberalised.

We shall do all we can to raise awareness of these underestimated factors in the run up to the consultation. In other jurisdictions similar laws have soon been abandoned when the damage becomes evident, but only after that damage has been done. We would rather we turn back from this profoundly mistaken policy before that is allowed to happen’

To read full coverage on this breaking story please click on the link below to be taken to our website:

http://www.christianlegalcentre.com/view.php?id=858

Some excellent points made from Henry Porter at the Guardian:-

The Right to Offend

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” says the Human Rights Act. This freedom includes “the right to manifest his (or her) religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

That’s a fine aspiration but of course the Human Rights Act (HRA) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be by its supporters. Take the recent case of a 54-year-old nurse facing disciplinary action for wearing her confirmation cross, she was forced to accept an offer of redeployment to a non-nursing role at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.

Although she had worn the cross throughout her 30 year service and no problems had been recorded, it was deemed to be a breach of uniform policy and – absurdly – a risk to health and safety, which of course trumps anything as elementary as the right to express your religious belief.

The trust made use of the second part of section nine of the HRA.

“Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Shirley Chaplin had an impeccable record of service as a nurse. It is astonishing that the Devon and Exeter Trust would think of using their power in this way. But it seems the Human Rights Act is incapable of protecting the Shirley Chaplin’s of the world from the martinets and busybodies that infest public services and local authorities.

In Camden, London, a Christian group has been banned from displaying a notice in libraries and community centres advertising a talk on climate change because it mentioned Christianity and God. One poster said “Climate Change is a Christian Issue” . The ban puzzled the people at Roman Catholic Our Lady of Help of Christians parish church because they were told that they could display climate change posters that did not refer to God.

Naturally, the church is unlikely to take this to the law in order to test a policy that forbids the promotion of religious ideas, it almost certainly has neither the money nor the time for such frivolity. And so the injustice stands. But if Britain had a bill of rights that entrenched religious freedom and expression and made their suppression illegal then things would be rather different.

One of the problems with the law as it stands is that it is not applied equally. And there seems also to be some kind of agenda at work, laws are used to enforce a sterile secularity in ordinary behaviour and expression. One of the most disturbing cases I have heard of is the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to bring a prosecution against a Christian couple that own hotel in Aintree, Liverpool.

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were arrested after a Muslim woman staying at their hotel complained to police about comments they made during a religious argument over breakfast. They have been charged under public order laws with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words… that were religiously aggravated”. Reports suggest that the couple said that prophet Muhammad , the founder of Islam, was a warlord and that the traditional Muslim dress for women was form of bondage.

You may, or may not agree, with these sentiments but surely they don’t merit a prosecution in a society where a good deal of latitude shown to the racism and homophobia preached by some imams. I can’t comment on the exact details of what the couple may have said, or their manner, or the offence taken by the customer but I can say that free speech – even about religion – is the freedom to be offended, and that the decision to prosecute is about as daft as it gets.

I hope that every organisation now happily ensconced in London’s spanking new Free Word centre understands that this case is critical to the freedom of all expression and that they send representatives en masse to support the couple when they appear in court in December.