Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened the European Union with grave punishment on Wednesday over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
In an audio recording posted on the Internet, Bin Laden said the cartoons were part of a "crusade" in which he said the Catholic Pope Benedict was involved.
The message was released on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Bin Laden Threatens the Pope
Pope to Reduce Good Friday Activity
Pope Benedict will reduce his activity at this week's Good Friday procession by watching most of the service from a vantage point instead of walking around Rome's ancient Colosseum, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Rev. Federico Lombardi confirmed the change, reported earlier on Tuesday by the French religious news agency I-Media.
Lombardi said there were no worries about the health of the pope, who will turn 81 during his trip to the United States in April.
"It is reasonable that he would want to conserve his energy," Lombardi said in response to a question.
Instead of walking around the Colosseum for all 14 of the "stations of the cross" as he did in previous years, the pope will watch most of the event from Rome's nearby Palatine hill.
Benedict is expected to walk the procession only for the last three "stations". The 14 stations commemorate the events between Christ being condemned to death and his burial.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Problem at Notre Dame
This is not a discussion of censoring works of art like VM. They are easily available to any who wish to view them. It is the failure of Notre Dame to become a place where such sin is not celebrated. Can’t there be one “last homely home,” one last Rivendell, where an alternative culture can exist?
Must one allow sin, blasphemy and the celebration of the unholy, to live the examined life? Aquinas did not think so. Socrates did not either. What does the President of Notre Dame know that they did not?
Once a mind has been debased, Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Fathers make it clear that purity is difficult to regain. What academic merit would justify such a thing?
The notion that having one token Catholic to respond on a “panel” to a forceful dramatic presentation is so weak and impotent as to merit pity or laughter more than anger. It is as if the owner of a home felt honored that he was allowed one seat at his own dinner table, dominated by barbarians.
The sheep have invited the wolves to dinner, but a shepherd will comment after the meal.
Where Owning a Rosary Might Put You in Prison
The Vatican is believed to be holding talks with Saudi authorities over opening the first Roman Catholic church in the Islamic kingdom, where Christian worship is banned and even to possess a Bible, rosary or crucifix is an offence.
The disclosure came the day after the first Catholic church in Qatar was inaugurated in a service attended by 15,000 people and conducted by a senior Vatican official.
The Vatican and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations. However, Archbishop Paul-Mounged El-Hachem, the Papal Nuncio to Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen and Bahrain, who attended the Doha inauguration, said that moves towards diplomatic ties were under way after an unprecedented visit to the Vatican last November by King Abdullah. This would involve negotiations for the “authorisation of the building of Catholic churches” in Saudi Arabia, he said.
The move would amount to a potential revolution in Christian-Muslim relations, since Saudi Arabia adheres to a hardline Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam and is home to Mecca and Medina, the most holy sites of the religion. No faith other than Islam may be practised.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
New (Old) Papal Cross

during his pontificate.
From the Roman Catholic:

Saturday, March 15, 2008
The Passion of the Lord
Beginning with Hosanna, literally "save us!" to invoking the Blood of the New Covenant upon us and our children:
- what might seem to be a shift in the crowd is ironically in a twist a consistent plea to be saved, albeit in a way that the human actors are unaware--much as we who voice their words as ours on Palm Sunday
- there is a consistent theme of God's plan coming to fruition in spite of human sinfulness
- even the thirty pieces of silver are used to purchase a field of "blood" in which to bury foreigners--that precious blood makes available the possibility of eternal life, not only for the people of the Covenant of Moses, but alas for all people--the "many"
Yet here is the one passage that struck me as new and gave me pause to reflect--and something to go and study now (I italicize and put in bold the parts of the passage that I had never quite heard before in this way):
The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened,and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection,they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
A New Cuban Saint
From the Vatican:
- un miracolo, attribuito all’intercessione del Venerabile Servo di Dio GIUSEPPE OLALLO VALDÉS, Religioso professo dell’Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Dio; nato a L’Avana (Cuba) il 12 febbraio 1820 e morto a Camagüey (Cuba) il 7 marzo 1889;
Friday, March 14, 2008
Solemnity of Saint Joseph

“Go to Joseph; what he says to you, do.”
Genesis 41:55
Friday, August 10, 2007
Kaddish Read at Lustiger's Funeral
From Jewish World:
France bade farewell to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger on Friday in a ceremony that mixed prayers from his Jewish roots with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, a faith to which he converted during World War Two.
A cousin of the late archbishop of Paris, Arno Lustiger, read the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead said in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, at the start of the ceremony outside Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Tutorial on the Tridentine Mass
Your resource for the Latin Mass according to the Missale Romanum of 1962
Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
Sixty-five years ago today, on August 9, 1942, the Carmelite Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Dr. Edith Stein, met death in the infernal concentration camp of Auschwitz. Edith Stein was a Jew, born into an Orthodox family on October 12th October 1891. It was the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. For a time, suffering from depression, and determined nonetheless to seek her own truth, she abandoned all outward religious practice. Edith asked for Baptism after reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. "This," she said, "is the truth."
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy
This is an extremely well written book! I was a big fan of Coach Dungy from his Tampa Bay Buc days (I am a Buc and Jaguar fan) and because like him I ended up in Indiana about the same time that he moved up here, I've followed his career up here--but this book unveals so much about the man and how his faith helps him to interpret the events of his life--both the good and the bad.
What many people would consider insignificant events, Coach Dungy helps the reader to reevaluate and to see in their correct light. I think anyone who reads this book will come away a better person than they were before they read the book--truly a mark of a great book, but also a mark of the quiet strength that motivate Tony Dungy!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Gravediggers Strike in Montreal
Bury the dead, Cardinal says
Saying, "Enough is enough," Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte yesterday urged both sides in the 3-month-old strike at Notre Dame des Neiges cemetery to set aside their differences and bury the dead.
Turcotte, head of the Roman Catholic diocese of Montreal, wants the corporation that runs the cemetery on Mount Royal to lift its lockout of 129 unionized gravediggers and maintenance workers. At the same time, he asked the union to suspend its strike.
An impromptu news conference was called yesterday after Turcotte met privately with Debora De Thomasis, head of a group calling itself Rights for the Families of the Dead in Notre Dame des Neiges cemetery.
The Rosary with the Fathers of the Church

Monday, August 06, 2007
Cardinal Lustiger Dies
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism and became archbishop of Paris, has died of cancer aged 80, the Paris archdiocese said on Sunday.
The son of Polish refugees, he was close to the late Pope John Paul II. His appointment as archbishop in 1981 gave him one of the highest ever positions for a convert to the French Catholic church.
"He had a notable role in our society and in the intellectual debates of our time," the diocese said.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Quote of the Day
"Only a starved spiritual beggar truly awaits the holy Mass; only a beggar desires to participate in the Banquet during which he knows he will be fed."
Prophetic Merle Haggard Song?

Why don't we liberate these United States
We're the ones who need it the worst
Let the rest of the world help us for a change
And let's rebuild America first
Our highways and bridges are falling apart
Who's blessed and who has been cursed
There's things to be done all over the world
But let's rebuild America first
The attention (very little) that the song received initially was all on this line:
Let's get out of Iraq
and get back on the track
And let's rebuild America first...