Pope Bashing: Lies of the Belfast Telegraph

Suppose for a moment that I were to write something of a condemnation of the cultural nuances that foster horrible crimes wrought against the youth of the world. Now suppose in doing so, I name a sort of complacency, a perceived normality to the abhorrent deeds. I'm in effect, calling evil by name.

Fast forward a bit. An Irish newspaper writes a lengthy article about how my comments "outraged" victims of sex abuse. Confusing? No, not at all. You see, the newspaper is actually only taking snippets from my full speech and trying to represent the complacency as belonging to me, and the organization I head.

Welcome to reality, because this is exactly the sort of tactic that the Belfast Telegraph has perpetuated against the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Here's the lying article.

Notice the oddly worded title of the article. It starts with the blatant attempt at catching your eye with "Pope's child porn...". Simply amazing.

Here's what the Pope actually said.

Hawking, Discover Magazine, Lemaitre and Epic Failure

During my normal rounds on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and various websites, the subject of Hawking's recent comments regarding the "lack of need for God" in so many words inevitably came up.

Now in discussing the prevalent theories regarding the Universe (6 or so string theories, infinite regression, first cause, multiverse &c), I happened upon Fr. Lemaitre's Wiki page. I was looking for a citation regarding his development of Hubble's Law. Now this of course in itself is a typical treatment of Catholic contributors to science, as the law is named for Hubble, based on Einstein's equations of general relativity and postulated by Lemaitre. The man get's no credit. At best, seldom credit.

At any rate, I stumbled across this story on the infamous Discover Magazine website, which is actually a retraction of a previous article essentially claiming that Lemaitre didn't look at the data for Hubble's law (they retract this), which I understand as an insinuation that Edwin Hubble, who finally "confirmed the data" ten years later, deserves the credit. This notion was admirably retracted by Discover. However, the opening of the story completely robs Lemaitre AGAIN. Here's the quote from sentence ONE:

"We’ve previously celebrated Father Georges-Henri Lemaitre on this very blog, for taking seriously the idea of the Big Bang."

Excuse me? Taking seriously? Who's theory was The Primeval Atom Hypothesis (AKA The "Big Bang")? This was his theory.

This is very typical treatment and ignorance due to the fact, as anyone who watches documentaries (even on Edwin Hubble) knows, people like Lemaitre get very little spotlight. If you happen to be someone that contradicts the false dichotomy of science versus religion, you get swept under the rug.

Now this might not seem like a big deal, but I can't stress enough how prevalent this sort of thing is. For those of you who know what the Big Bang is, and for those of you who watch shows like the History Channel's "Universe", Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" or any such shows.... How many of you know that it was a Catholic Priest that came up with "The Big Bang"? Yeah I didn't either some years ago.

No airtime. Outright lies, and inexcusable ignorance. This is the direction anti-religious education is necessarily headed (cf. sine qua non).

Now to address the basic gist of Hawking, what we have are some options.

1. The Universe is "infinite" in one manner or another, thus making the empirical case for infinity as a real phenomena (sounds pro-God to me). Unfortunately you cannot traverse infinity to get to the present thus making this untenable.

2. The universe is finite, though perhaps one of many. This of course doesn't address the logical requirement of an un-caused first cause. Thus calling into question what sort of "god" Hawking is talking about in the first place.

Neither of these, or any other I have heard for that matter address the response to these two. Food for thought.

A final note, if not the most important of course is that contrary to the Big Bang, which all observation points to, making it the best theory we have for the origin of the Universe; we have no evidence for String Theory (of any kind in any of it's manifestations) or of Multiverse theories. There's zero, I repeat zero physical evidence that there exist any other universes than our own.

Multiverse theory, in my opinion is intended quite purposely to function as God rejecting or agendad Heliocentrist opportunists attempted to function. As an argument against the centrality of our existence in the Universe. Heliocentrism failed to kill God. In the same vein, proving we're "not the only universe" will have the same fizzling effect ultimately.

Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/index.html

A little balance, please! 04-14

Updates!

Ok yeah, so I haven't been quite as diligent lately in making posts, essentially making my blog unread. I've been planning on updating with more frequency, so here's the start of that. First, my latest is a brief encounter with the underwhleming Calvinist Sect known as A&O ministries, regarding their absurd claims of Orthodoxy. Click here for that.

The Heresy of OSAS (Once Saved Always Saved)

This heresy is the belief that once you become "Saved" you cannot lose your salvation, regardless of how many sins you commit or their seriousness. This heresy originated with John Calvin (founder of Calvinism) in the mid-sixteenth century. Even Martin Luther did not agree with John Calvin's "theory". Prior to Calvin, the unanimous consent of the early Christians was that a person is capable of losing his salvation by committing mortal sin, as John spoke about in 1 John 5:16–17. Justification of this heretical doctrine is often attempted by way of John 10:28.

John 10:28
And I give them life everlasting: and they shall not perish for ever. And no man shall pluck them out of my hand.

This verse does not say God cannot take away your salvation.

"In the case of John 10:28, Jesus says that no one will be able to take us away from God. The language is similar to Paul’s in Romans 8:39 when he says that nothing in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Both of these passages address the same fact that no one is capable of removing you from the grace of God. No one is capable of nullifying your salvation. It would be like saying that no one is capable of pulling you out of a car driving at eighty miles per hour. This does not mean that you are incapable of opening the door and jumping out. In the same way, John 10:28 does not mean that we are incapable of severing our relationship with God. Read on in John, and you’ll see why."

(Catholic Answers: Once Saved Always Saved).

Revelation 22:19
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book.

• Once your name is "the book of life" it can be stricken by God if you commit this sin.
  
• The punishment is clear.

Matthew 12:31
Therefore I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven.

This verse tells of another sin that will not be forgiven men. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. "Saved" or not, you will not be forgiven this.

1 John 5:16
If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that.

1 John 5:17
All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.

Luke 6:46
And why call you me, Lord, Lord; and do not the things which I say?

Matthew 7:21
Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

See also:
Apostolic Apologetics: Mortal Sin
Catholic Answers: Once Saved Always Saved?

Presented by Apostolic Apologetics

Bishop Murdered in N.J.

(CNN) -- Residents of the New Jersey town where a priest was found dead in the kitchen of his church's rectory Friday morning should exercise caution, Morris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi said.

Due to the nature of the wounds, the death of the Rev. Ed Hinds, 61, of St. Patrick's Church "in all likelihood was in fact a homicide," Bianchi told reporters at a news conference Friday afternoon.

He said investigators believe Hinds was killed sometime between 11 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, when his death was discovered after he failed to show up for morning Mass. He was fully dressed in a black clerical robe when police arrived on the scene, Bianchi said.

Chatham Borough police were interviewing witnesses and had 50 to 100 police and detectives investigating the case, according to Bianchi.

Though he urged residents to go about their daily lives, he warned they "should be extra vigilant during these next couple of days."

Parents of children at the church Friday morning were called to come pick up their kids, though they were not believed to be in any immediate danger, Bianchi said.

The death was baffling, a church official said.

"It makes absolutely no sense. He was a very well-loved pastor and very well respected," said Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of the Paterson Diocese.

"We are praying for the happy repose of his soul," he said.

Police had no suspects, Bianchi had said at an earlier news conference.

Chatham Borough, a community of just over 10,000 people, lies approximately 25 miles west of New York.

Video Coverage

Atheist groups continue advertising campaign

By Paul Swonger

As CNN reports, a coalition of Atheist organizations are continuing their advertising campaign, aimed at "raising awareness about people who don't believe in a god" in Manhattan. New York's Manhattan subway system, the target of the ads is one of the busiest in the world with over 5 million riders per day. The month long ad campaign will be spread throughout a dozen stations with posters that read "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?".

This is the second time this sort of advertising has not only been carried out, but covered by the major news outlets. So if the goal is raising awareness of atheists, are the News Agencies cooperating in being instruments of this?

Back in January of 2009, there was a similar campaign in Britain that plastered atheist beliefs on the sides of buses. Read about that here.

So what's the flip side?

While some religious faithful may be dismayed at the news, the ads may have an unintended affect. That is, those casual religious, of whom I am a former member, may decide to actually research premeditated, that which they hold to be the truth of their convictions, creating perhaps, more Apologists like myself who came from precisely this background. Indeed, I would say that aggressive anti-theistic absurdity is largely responsible for the strengthening of my faith, and indeed my move from a casual believer to a 'hardcore apologist'. This was dismaying news to a friend of mine who decided to educate me on the ways of atheist (or lack thereof *ahem*) only to find he had fostered the tempering of a religious zealot.

Medal of Honor for Hero Priest?

According to The Associated Press, outgoing Army Secretary Pete Geren has endorsed awarding a posthumous Medal of Honor to Korean War chaplain Father Emil Kapaun.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also endorsed awarding the nation’s highest military honor to Father Kapaun, who died in a Chinese prisoner of war camp after being captured seven months earlier while serving as an Army captain and chaplain.

Go here to read The Associated Press article. And go here to access the website that has been set up to promote the cause for Father Kapaun’s canonization.

'Called out of darkness' and into light of Christ

Anne Rice tells how her evolution of writing about vampires to angels reflected her spiritual journey from atheism to the Catholic faith

For years, Anne Rice, author of "The Vampire Chronicles" series and creator of the infamous vampire Lestat, was identified by the dark world of her own imagination. In 1998, however, she returned to the Catholic Church of her birth and in 2002 consecrated all her writing to Jesus Christ. Since then she has gone on to write two books in the "Christ the Lord" series, her spiritual confessions in "Called Out of Darkness" and the first book in her new "Song of Seraphim" series. "Angel Time," a story of redemption wound around a metaphysical thriller, will be released Oct. 27.

Rice spoke with Our Sunday Visitor about the current pop-culture obsession with vampires, the spiritual dimensions of vampire literature and her own journey from atheism to faith.

Our Sunday Visitor: Why do people find vampires so fascinating, and what was it that drew you to them when you first started writing "The Vampire Chronicles"?

Anne Rice: I always found them fascinating because they were supernatural monsters that had been human beings and were still human to a large extent. I always perceived them to be powerful metaphors for the lonely one in each of us, or the alienated one, or the one who feels like a monster. I think that's how vampire literature functions. It's really about us, about our consciousness, our ability to contemplate our own death, and we use the vampire as a mythic figure to talk about our own selves. That has always been the case, and that is probably true of all supernatural fiction that pertains to monsters. Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is really about us and what we do with our creative power and whether we misuse it or use it correctly.

I think the vampire myth is particularly flexible and potentially profound, so it's going to keep exciting people each time a new author comes along and uses it in a different way. Bram Stoker obviously being the first, and Sheridan le Fanu, one of the others of the 19th century. ... I brought something new to it in the minds of the public, and now at the present time we have new writers like Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer bringing their new wrinkle to it all. I'm not surprised that people are interested. I think it's built into the story itself of the vampire, the human being who becomes a monster who feeds off fellow human beings and who is doomed really to live in both worlds -- the world of the living and the world of the dead. I think a lot of us feel that's what we're doing, and so we identify with the vampire; we respond to him with sympathy.

OSV: Today's vampire seems transformed, less monsterlike and more sensitive friend. What is the significance of that shift?

Rice: Certainly these new books are embracing the vampire and dealing in a very direct way with our fascination with him. It's people trying to get very close to the vampire, very close to his allure and his charm and human fascination with him. It's just various degrees of intimacy in a way. That's what's happening.

OSV: There seems to be a younger audience for the new books and movies -- preteens and teens. Do parents need to be concerned with their children's vampire obsessions?

Rice: I don't think parents need to be worried at all. I think kids are very aware of what's a fantasy and what's not a fantasy. I don't think there's anything inherently evil in vampire fiction. We know that vampires don't exist, and the kids that write to me certainly know that. Their e-mails indicate that they're responding to the romance in my books, to the glamour, to the beauty of the vampire, but they know perfectly well this is a mythic figure. I see it as a relatively harmless thing. In fact, I think there might be something good about children reading a lot and in understanding symbolic literature and speculative literature.

OSV: In an essay on your website, you talk about your work -- from "The Vampire Chronicles" through the "Christ the Lord" series -- as reflecting your journey through atheism back to God. How is your earlier work part of that spiritual journey?

Rice: As I was writing "Interview with the Vampire," I knew that I identified with Louis the vampire and that I felt like a creature of the night and a creature who was separated from God and a creature who was lost and pretty miserable. The book is really a meditation on misery, on the misery of being separated from God. I felt very comfortable writing it because it allowed me to express my sorrow. It's only years later that I realized the book is about the loss of my Catholic faith. It's about a fall from grace, about leaving the Church, about roaming in the darkness of atheism for many years and feeling as obsessed with God as ever.

OSV: You have said that you cannot write any more vampire books but that you could never renounce your earlier works because they were so much a part of you. Can you talk about that?

Rice: I really don't have any more stories to tell from the point of view of the vampires, because faith did come back to me and I felt that I found what those characters were always searching for. When faith came back, I wanted to write a new kind of fiction, a different kind of fiction, a fiction that I could dedicate directly to God. I would not go back to writing from the point of view of the vampires because the metaphors don't work for me anymore. I feel I live now in a universe in which salvation is a possibility for everyone. The promise is there for everyone. So the dark fictional world of the vampire doesn't have any validity for me now. But I certainly don't want to renounce my earlier work, because I think it's a perfect reflection of the struggle I was engaged in. I was searching for God and not willing to make the leap. To turn on those books, to decide they weren't important now, would be completely dishonest because I think those books do mirror the search for God. I have no more stories to tell about Lestat. I love him. He is still part of me. He was my hero throughout the writing of the "Chronicles." I still think of him all the time and picture him all the time, but I have no more stories to tell. I'd like to think wherever he is, he's finding what I found.

OSV: In "Called Out of Darkness," you write powerfully about Eucharist and Incarnation. What is the significance of your renewed faith in your life now and your decision to consecrate your writing to Christ?

Rice: One of the first things that happened to me after I made the commitment to go back to my Church and when I consecrated my work to Christ -- told him that I would write only for him -- was that there was this huge upsurge of energy in my writing. I don't think I had ever expected life to be so interesting and so challenging at this point. It was like a renaissance for me. I was able to envision all kinds of new stories. "Angel Time" is an example. And writing the life of Christ, getting the two books done -- "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" and "Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana" -- was a great adventure. It was very difficult, it was very challenging, and it was very thrilling. I felt suddenly that I was driving on all eight cylinders. I'm a little surprised when readers turn away and say, 'We won't read those books because they're about Jesus.' But what I've come to realize is that this is the same kind of prejudice I've confronted all my life. For years people said, 'We won't read her books because they're about vampires.' They would just dismiss them out of hand. It was the ultimate judging a book by its cover.

OSV: In "The Vampire Chronicles," you were exploring life in a godless world. Now in your newest book, "Angel Time," that spiritual quest has shifted. What was it like to write a book that is still a metaphysical thriller but this time with a focus on redemption?

Rice: The possibilities of Toby O'Dare [a contract killer who is the protagonist of "Angel Time"] are unlimited. He's really on the side of the angels, and it's tremendous fun to write about somebody on the side of the angels. I was certainly able to explore a lot of darkness, because darkness has been a part of my life and it's going to come out in any book I write. I was able to explore that in Toby's past -- how he became an assassin, what happened to him, his suffering and his childhood. But then to have that hero turn around and get a possibility to do good instead of evil was tremendously exciting.

OSV: Is your work, your writing, part of your prayer life in a sense?

Rice: Definitely. Writing the "Christ the Lord" books was very much part of my prayer life, because it was so important to me that they be biblically and theologically accurate, that I began writing about Our Lord as I perceived him through faith as a Catholic, as a Christian. So a great deal of prayer was always involved as well as a close study of Scripture. I love reading Scripture. It's been one of the great delights of the last few years for me, sitting down and having no distraction from just reading the Gospels. Very much my prayer life was involved. With "Angel Time" I have to think a lot about what Toby's life is now and how a person does good and what is good as opposed to evil. He can't just go out into the world and just do stuff to help people. He has to maintain his own commitment to God and his commitment to the angels who have recruited him. And so, yes, it's part of my prayer life, definitely.

OSV: What has been the reaction among fans and colleagues to your transition from atheism to Catholicism?

Rice: I think people are pretty accepting. One thing is that my writing of the last few years has brought me much closer to my fellow Catholics and to many, many non-Catholics too. I feel a communion with everybody that shares my values. When I was writing "The Vampire Chronicles," I was pretty much a loner. Certainly, there were a lot of people who shared my views then too, but we were all loners. That was our definition of ourselves. We were alienated. We weren't members of anything. Now I feel like I'm a member of something, and it's a very good feeling.

Another black legend, down the chute

By George Weigel

The Thirty Years War looms large in the contemporary secularist imagination. There, it’s simply taken for granted that religious fanaticism laid waste to Europe between 1618 and 1648, and that the carnage only stopped when the exhausted powers of the day agreed to the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the wars of religion by adopting the principle of cuius regio eius religio—the prince’s religion would determine the religion of the principality. More subtle secularists find in cuius regio eius religio one root of modern statecraft, from which religious ideas and religiously informed moral judgments are to be rigorously excluded.

That’s the way it was, and that’s the lesson to be learned, right? Well, no, actually.
Or so writes Peter Wilson in “The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy” (Belknap/Harvard). As Professor Wilson’s subtitle suggests, the Thirty Years War was indeed a horrible business. When it was finally over, the Holy Roman Empire of the Hapsburgs had lost 20 percent of its population—some 8 million people—which is truly dreadful, even by 20th century European standards of mass slaughter. True, Wilson writes, the Thirty Years War began as a religiously-inspired civil war within the Hapsburg lands. But it became an international affair and a historic disaster when Sweden’s Gustavus Adophus, waging war behind a facade of Lutheran piety, saw his geopolitical chances and took ‘em. (That Richelieu and the Catholic French sided with the Lutheran Swedes in order to cut their Catholic Hapsburg rivals down to size nicely illustrates Lord Birkenhead’s comment in “Chariots of Fire:” “The Frogs aren’t a terribly principled lot...”).

Wilson’s challenge to conventional secularist wisdom lies in his summary judgment: this grisly business had far less to do with theological arguments over justification by faith than it did with dynastic ambition, greed, political incompetence, and a ruthless lack of morals among early practitioners of that foreign policy “realism” on which certain parties in Washington, D.C., pride themselves today. In short, the Thirty Years War was about politics detached from ethics, not about religion detached from reason.

If that’s true—and Professor Wilson makes a strong case—adjustments ought to be made in the Standard Version of the modern history of church-and-state.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that Stalin, master of a hyper-secularist regime in Soviet Russia, killed more people on a slow afternoon than the dread Inquisition consigned to death in a decade. Now Peter Wilson demonstrates that the Thirty Years War (proportionally, a slaughter three times greater than World War II) was primarily a matter of unbridled politics, not maniacal religion. These two readjustments in historical understanding demonstrate, across a span of three and a half centuries, that the modern nation-state has been more deadly than the Church by orders of magnitude. That, in turn, ought to be an arrow in the rhetorical quiver of those Europeans and Americans who continue to argue, against secularist bigotry, that religiously informed moral argument has a legitimate place in the public square of 21st century democracies.

Then there’s cuius regio eius religio, which the Standard Version typically posits as a step toward the institutional separation of church and state and the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. Poles taught me years ago that precisely the opposite was the case: for Poles, whose lands did not experience the European wars of religion, regard the Westphalian imposition of religious faith by state edict as the world’s first systematic experiment in totalitarianism—the coercion of consciences by a public authority that claimed control over the innermost sanctuaries of the human spirit.

Thus if we are looking for deeper and sturdier roots of religious freedom in Europe, we might look elsewhere: to the Polish theologian and canonist Pawel Wlodkowic, who argued at the 15th century Council of Constance against the forced conversion of pagans; or to the 17th century Polish king, Zygmunt August, who declined the invitation of his countrymen to resolve their religious squabbles by stating that he was not “the king of your consciences.”
In the light of Peter Wilson’s book, perhaps some intrepid soul will raise these points in the Christophobic European Parliament. The reaction would be instructive.