Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Pope Francis urges world religions to fight extremism, fundamentalism

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent October 28, 2015



ROME — Pope Francis on Wednesday called on the world’s religions to join forces in the fight against fundamentalism and extremism, arguing instead for a focus on “positive values” such as the promotion of peace, care for the poor, and environmental protection.
The pontiff was speaking to a delegation of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists on hand for an event marking the 50th anniversary of a landmark document from the Second Vatican Council on interfaith relations.
“An attitude of suspicion or condemnation of religion has spread due to violence and terrorism,” Pope Francis told the religious leaders.
Given that, he said, it’s necessary to focus on the positive values that religions espouse.
“The world looks at us believers, exhorting us to cooperate with each other and with men and women of good will who don’t profess any religion,” he said, “asking us to provide an answer on many issues.”
Francis’ appeal came during his weekly audience as he celebrated the anniversary of Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), a 1,600-word declaration from Vatican II that represented a turning point in relations between the Catholic Church and other religions, particularly Judaism.
“The real and proper transformation that took place in the last 50 years regarding the relations between Christians and Hebrews deserves a special thanks to God,” Francis said.
“Indifference and opposition have changed into collaboration and benevolence,” he said. “From enemies and strangers, we’ve become friends and brothers.”
According to the pontiff, whose two closest friends from Argentina are Jewish Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic leader Omar Abboud, the declaration marked the path of rediscovering the Hebrew roots Christianity has, saying “no” to every form of anti-Semitism, and “condemning every insult, discrimination, and persecution.”
Francis also said the declaration was “an expression of the Church’s esteem for followers of other religious traditions, and [of] her openness to dialogue in the service of understanding and friendship.”
The pope concluded by saying that the future of interreligious dialogue rests in prayer.
“Without the Lord, nothing is possible,” he said. “With him, all becomes possible.”


“May our prayer adhere fully to the will of God,” Francis added, “who desired that all men and women recognize themselves as brothers and sisters, and live as such, forming a human family that lives in the harmony of diversity.”
After the audience, leaders from the main religions present held a press conference, hailing Nostra Aetate as a historic document.
Abdellah Redouane, director of the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy, said it had opened the doors of dialogue and cooperation.
Rabbi David Rosen, Director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department of Interreligious Affairs said Nostra Aetate brought an “amazing transformation” of Jewish/Catholic relations, which he argued was a success because it also addressed relations with other religions.
“A relation with Judaism is intrinsic to the very nature of the Church,” Rosen said. “In God’s mysterious wisdom, this revolution could only succeed with the Church addressing relations with all other religions.”
The message of Nostra Aetate, Rosen said, is that “there’s no relationship, no matter how bad and how poisonous, that cannot be transformed and made into a blessed one.”
The leaders also had words of praise for the Argentine pontiff.
“Pope Francis is a leader for all believers,” Muslim leader Rasoul Rasoulipour told journalists on Wednesday.
“His leadership is a revolution for all religious leaders,” Rasoulipour said. “How much is he a humble leader is a key point.”

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Pope Francis’ Latest Convert: Kirsten Powers

Pope Francis’ Latest Convert: Kirsten PowersPhoto by Scott Suchman



Fox News commentator announces that she’s becoming Catholic.


Fox News’ highly reluctant Jesus follower has found a new church.
Kirsten Powers, USA Today columnist and contributor to Fox News, announced her decision on a live broadcast of “The Five.”
“Tomorrow night at 7 o’clock, I'm becoming Catholic!” she told viewers.
Powers, who grew up in the Episcopal Church, became an evangelical about 9 years ago, after attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Listening to Tim Keller preach opened the door for her to believe in God.
“I came to realize that even if Christianity wasn't the real thing, neither was atheism,” she wrote in a 2013 testimony for CT. “I began to read the Bible. My boyfriend would pray with me for God to reveal himself to me.”
For a while, Powers felt no connection to God. That changed during an overseas trip, where Powers said Jesus spoke to her. Eventually she joined a Bible study, an experience that changed her life.
“I'll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, ‘It’s true. It's completely true,’” she wrote it 2013. “The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy.”
Powers gave few details about her decision to become Catholic. She did thank Father Jonathan Morris, pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx, on Twitter.
More than 100,000 adults a year join the Catholic Church, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. Seven percent of Catholics and 11 percent of mass attenders are converts, according to CARA, and those converts are among the most active Catholics.
Overall, about half of Americans say they have a “close connection” to the Catholic Church, according to a September 2015 Pew Research Report. One in 10 (9%) are former Catholics.

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Thursday, October 8, 2015

Pope Francis: why do good things happen to bad people?



2015-10-08 Vatican Radio
 
(Vatican Radio) God does not abandon the righteous, while those who sow evil are like strangers, whose names heaven remembers not. This is the lesson Pope Francis drew from the readings of the day at Mass Thursday morning in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican.
Click below to hear our report

A courageous young mother with a husband and three children – and a tumor – “one of the ugly ones” – that keeps her nailed to her bed. “Why?” An elderly woman, prayerfully pious in her heart, whose son was murdered by the Mafia.

Why do good things happen to bad people?

Pope Francis on Thursday used this perennial query of the heart that loves good and desires to know God’s plan, as the way into the mystery of iniquity and its relation to God’s providence, justice and mercy. Drawing on the reading from the prophet, Malachi, in which the Lord rebukes the people, saying, “You have defied me in word, says the LORD, yet you ask, ‘What have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God, and what do we profit by keeping his command, and going about in penitential dress in awe of the LORD of hosts? Rather must we call the proud blessed; for indeed evildoers prosper, and even tempt God with impunity,’” Pope Francis said:
“How many times do we see this reality in bad people, in people who do evil, and seem to do well in life: they are happy, they have everything they want, they want for nothing. Why Lord? This is one of the many questions we have. Why does this brazen evildoer who cares nothing for God nor for neighbor, who is an unjust person – even mean – and things go well in his whole life, he has everything he wants, while we, who want to do good, have so many problems?”

The Lord watches over the righteous

Pope Francis discovered the answer in the responsorial Psalm – Psalm 1 – which proclaims, “Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked Nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, But delights in the law of the LORD.” Pope Francis went on to say:
“Now we do not see the fruits of this suffering people, this people carrying the cross, as on that  Good Friday and Holy Saturday the fruits of the crucified Son of God, the fruits of His sufferings were yet to be seen: and whatever He does, turns out well; and what does the Psalm say of the wicked, of those for whom we think everything is going fine? ‘Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. For the LORD watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.’”

Only an adjective

This ruin, this scattering and oblivion, which is the end of the wicked, is one Pope Francis found dramatically and emphatically stressed in the Gospel parable of Lazarus – the symbol of misery with no escape, to whom the rich reveler refused even the scraps from his table:
“It is curious: that [rich] man’s name is never spoken. He is just an adjective: he is a rich man (It. ricco, Gr. πλούσιος). Of the wicked, in God’s record book, there is no name: he is an evil one, a con man, a pimp ... They have no name. They only have adjectives. All those, who try to go on the way of the Lord, will rather be with His Son, who has the name: Jesus Saviour. It is a name that is difficult to understand, inexplicable for the trial of the Cross and for all that He suffered for us.”

 
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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Pope Francis: God wants his ministers to be merciful

mercy

 
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has warned against having a hard heart that is closed to God’s mercy.
Speaking on Tuesday morning during Mass at the Casa Santa Marta before joining the Synod Fathers gathered in the Vatican Synod Hall, the Pope urged the faithful not to put one’s own convictions or a list of commandments before the Lord’s mercy.
Drawing inspiration from the first reading of the Book of Jonah, the Pope pointed out that Jonah is initially resistant to God’s will, but eventually learns that he must obey the Lord.
Remarking on the fact that the city of Nineveh converts thanks to Jonah’s preaching, Pope Francis said “it really was a miracle, because in this case he abandons his stubbornness, his rigidity,  to obey the will of God, and he did what the Lord commanded him.”
And afterwards, the Pope said, after the conversion of Nineveh, Jonah “who was not a man who was docile to the Spirit of God, was angry”. The Pope said he even rebuked the Lord.
So, Pope Francis observed, the story of Jonah and Nineveh unfolds in three chapters:  the first “is Jonah’s resistance to the mission the Lord entrusts him with”; the second “is his obedience” and the ensuing miracle; in the third chapter, “there is resistance to God’s mercy”.
The Pope went on to say that Jesus too was misunderstood because of his mercy.
He recalled that Jesus lived with the Doctors of the Law who did not understand why he did not let the adulteress be stoned, they did not understand why he dined with publicans and sinners, “they did not understand. They did not understand mercy”.
Pope Francis said that the Psalm that we prayed today tells us to “wait for the Lord because with the Lord there is mercy, and redemption.”
“Where the Lord is – Francis concluded – there is mercy”. And, he added, as Ambrose said: “Where his ministers are there is rigidity. The rigidity that defies mission, which challenges mercy “:
“As we approach the Year of Mercy, let us pray the Lord to help us understand his heart, to understand what ‘mercy’ means, what it means when He says: ‘I want mercy, not sacrifice!’” he said.
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Taken from: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-god-wants-his-ministers-to-be-mercifu