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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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« Reply #390 on: December 27, 2013, 07:04:49 am »

Atheists, Work With Us for Peace, Pope Says on Christmas

Pope Francis, celebrating his first Christmas as Roman Catholic leader, on Wednesday called on atheists to unite with believers of all religions and work for "a homemade peace" that can spread across the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/12/25/world/europe/25reuters-pope-christmas.html?_r=0


1Th 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
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« Reply #391 on: December 27, 2013, 08:58:02 am »

Not that I endorse the other Popes, but I don't recall Benedict nor John Paul II being THIS blatant and open.
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« Reply #392 on: December 28, 2013, 02:13:05 pm »

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/28/22083921-syrias-assad-sends-private-message-to-pope-francis-vatican-says?lite
12/28/13
Syria's Assad sends private message to Pope Francis, Vatican says

VATICAN CITY — Syrian President Bashar Assad has sent Pope Francis a private message, the Vatican said on Saturday, without disclosing its contents.

It was the first known time Assad has sent a direct message to the pontiff since the start of Syria's civil war in 2011. Pope Francis has made numerous appeals for an end to the conflict, the latest on Christmas Day.

Vatican sources said the message likely included the Syrian government's position ahead of peace talks due to start on January 22 under U.N. auspices in Geneva.

The Vatican, which has permanent observer status at the United Nations, also has a representative to U.N. organizations in Geneva.

The Vatican said a delegation headed by Joseph Sweid, a Syrian minister of state, held talks in the Vatican with the pope's secretary of state, Archbishop Pietro Parolin and his foreign minister, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.

"The delegation brought a message from President Assad for the Holy Father and illustrated the position of the Syrian government," a statement said.

Syria's civil war between forces loyal to Assad and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to topple him has killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011.

The Vatican is also keen to have information on the fate of Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, a Jesuit priest who supported the rebels and disappeared in July in eastern Syria.

Francis has taken a personal interest in the Syrian conflict.

In September he led a worldwide day of prayer for peace in the country and sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was hosting the G20 summit, telling world powers that any military solution in Syria would be a "futile pursuit."

Putin was opposed to U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to use air strikes to punish Assad for a chemical weapons attack which the West blamed on the Syrian government.

Assad's government denied it was responsible and the air strikes never took place following Syria's agreement to dismantle it chemical weapons.
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« Reply #393 on: December 29, 2013, 08:29:01 am »

Could Pope Francis Be a Modern-Day Jesus? [video]

Could Pope Francis be a modern-day Jesus? Francis delivered the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” speech, which in Latin is interpreted as “to the city and to the world,” offering a message of hope and love for a better world. His Christmas wish included a prayer for Christians under attack, trafficked children, battered women, peace in Africa and the Middle East and more.
 
The pope’s speech was delivered from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Francis spoke a message of love, hope and peace to a cheering crowd of at least 70,000 Romans, pilgrims and tourists. In this speech, which was the pope’s first Christmas message since being elected pontiff, he said he was joining all who are hoping for a better world and cares for others.
 
The 77-year-old pope is seeking to connect the world in a place of peace and non-violence. Jesus also preached a message of hope to a dying world but it often seems that Christians would rather focus on areas of division instead of celebrating the things which push for unity. People who are mature and secure often conclude it’s better to agree to disagree rather than fall out.
 
The pope has often been criticized for his message of inclusion which seeks to offer love instead of judgment and peace instead of a sword. Jesus suffered much of the same persecution; he sought to unify as oppose to the harsh division that existed before his arrival.
 
The Argentine pope solicited a moment of silent prayer for Christians who are subjected to any type of violence and have been accused unjustly. Francis said that Christians are being persecuted, not only in countries that don’t allow full religious freedom, but also in places where religious freedom and human rights are “supposedly” protected.
 
Even though the pope didn’t go into details outlining the countries he referenced it has become common knowledge that the Vatican has made multiple attempts to persuade Saudi Arabia, one of Islam’s holiest places, to release the ban that forbids Christians to worship in public.
 
This year alone there have been multiple incidents of attacks and intolerance against minority Christians in places such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq and Sudan; along with other countries where the law guarantees their rights of religious freedom.
 
Pope Francis, in the spirit of Jesus Christ, said in a world that is civilized, injustice must be eliminated and denounced. He prayed that this Christmas season would allow an experience of faith and love that shines worldwide.
 
This is a day where those who state that Christmas is about Jesus shoot down anyone that says Happy Holidays, claiming that they are trying to erase Jesus from his observed birthday. Wouldn’t the message of Jesus include a wish for a happy holiday season? Pope Francis seeks to bring a world divided by religion together by the practice of love and relationship.
 
Francis prayed, “Lord of life, protect all who are persecuted in your name.” He asked God to bless the land where he chose to enter into the world and grant an outcome to the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis that is favorable.
 
To eliminate any confusion the pope took time to explain what peace means to him. He said:
 

“…True peace is not focused on the balance of opposing forces. It’s not a lovely front which seeks to cover division or conflicts. True peace calls for daily commitment.”
 
The pope prayed for people everywhere who are struggling for a better life. He asked that refugees receive assistance, hope and consolation. In the spirit of Christ, Pope Francis praying for children who are too often the most vulnerable victims of war and for battered women as well as the elderly.
 
In a world where many of today’s clergy seek to tear down anyone or religion that doesn’t line up completely with what they believe, the Pope is sweeping through the world like a breath of fresh air. Francis has chosen not to waste time with different persuasions of belief or religions; instead he focuses on what’s most important in the world: a message of love, hope and peace.
 
Religion is one of the biggest hindrances to a relationship with God. Religion is celebrated by works where relationship is honored by love. No ceremony, sacrament, liturgy creed or amount of money can cause anyone to be reconciled into relationship with God.
 
Giving up drugs, smoking, alcohol or premarital sex are all healthy choices to make but these things alone won’t restore a broken relationship with God nor do they convince God that one individual is better than another. These things support religion but they don’t make anyone a better candidate for the love of God.
 
While the fallen nature of mankind loves religion, since it bolsters the ego and boots one’s self esteem, Jesus came to bring the gift of relationship which includes a message of love, hope and peace; much like Pope Francis.
 
Pope Francis may not be a modern-day Jesus but many believe he is the embodiment of the true message of Christ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsFh_zTsNWw&feature=player_embedded

http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/could-pope-francis-be-a-modern-day-jesus-video/
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« Reply #394 on: December 29, 2013, 09:25:21 am »

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/12/this-week-game-changer-pope-francis-is-the-worlds-parish-priest/
‘This Week’ Game Changer Pope Francis is the ‘World’s Parish Priest’
12/29/13

Pope Francis became the leader of the Catholic Church in March, bringing to the Vatican a series of firsts: the first pope to choose St. Francis as a namesake, the first Latin American pope, and the first Jesuit pope.

His conversational first words from St. Peter’s balcony asked the people to pray for him ­­ a humble greeting that captured many hearts. The messages he has spread since then — those of tolerance, equality, and humanitarianism — make him a “This Week” game changer for 2013.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York explained “The Francis effect” in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“This pope has successfully, finally shattered the caricature of the church that his predecessors have tried hard to do. What’s that caricature? That the church is kind of mean and dour and always saying no and always telling us what we can’t do and always telling us why we should be excluded,” Cardinal Dolan said. “He’s saying ‘Oh no, come on in, the church is about warmth and tenderness.’”

**The Emergent Church put out this same propaganda, FYI.

Pope Francis’ efforts are clearly working. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 92 percent of American Catholics have a favorable opinion of the new pope, and 85 percent think he is moving the church in the right direction.

Cardinal Dolan said he knew Pope Francis would make positive change, but said the extent of his impact has been a pleasant surprise.

“What we were after was a good pastor with a track record of solid administration, fatherly warmth, tender care for his sheep, for his people, and boy, we got that on steroids with Pope Francis. He’s the world’s parish priest,” Dolan said.

Pope Francis is a star among both the young and the old, speaking out in new ways that excite believers and nonbelievers alike. Though he holds to the church doctrine, he strives to downplay what he calls the church’s obsession with social issues. Pope Francis has made headlines for saying that atheists can go to heaven and when asked about homosexuality, responded, “Who am I to judge?”

“The teaching of the church is a timeless gift, you can’t change it, it’s ours, we inherit it, we’re given it, but the way we gift wrap it, the way we make it more attractive, and more compelling to the world, that can always change, and that’s what Francis is saying,” Dolan said.

In Pope Francis’ first exhortation outlining his vision for the church, he took a critical stance against capitalism, denouncing society’s “idolatry of money” and an economy that kills.

“There’s only one God and money ain’t it,” Dolan agreed.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, the new head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reinforced that Pope Francis is serious about Catholicism’s sacred tradition.

“He is giving us a new zeal, he’s giving us new expressions and a new method,” Kurtz said. “He is saying the same time-honored, beautiful message of Christ, but in a way that’s really touching hearts.”

But not everyone is touched. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said the pope’s recent criticisms of capitalism sound like “pure Marxism.”

Time Magazine, however, is not in the camp of pope criticizers, with the magazine recognizing Pope Francis’ widespread impact by naming him 2013′s Person of the Year. And the pope’s understated reaction? Most would say it was fitting.

“He doesn’t want to be the center of attention. He wants others to be the center,” Archbishop Kurtz said. “Gosh, that’s a great Francis effect, isn’t it?”
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« Reply #395 on: January 01, 2014, 10:36:27 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/stop-wars-pope-says-appeal-125415104.html
Stop the wars, pope says in New Year appeal
1/1/14

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis made an impassioned New Year's peace address on Wednesday, saying the heart of humanity seemed to have gone astray and too many people were still indifferent to war, violence and injustice.

The pontiff, who took his papal name from St Francis of Assisi, the saint most associated with peace, urged the world to listen to the "cry for peace" from suffering peoples.

"What on earth is happening in the hearts of men? What on earth is happening in the heart of humanity?" he said to tens of thousands of people in St Peter's Square on the day the Roman Catholic Church celebrates its World Day of Peace.

"It's time to stop!" he said, departing from his prepared text.

Francis was speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter's Square that popes traditionally use for their addresses.

Unlike his predecessors, Francis has not used the spacious apartment behind the window since his election in March, shunning pomp and preferring instead to live in small quarters in a Vatican guest house.

"Everyone must be committed to building a society that is truly just and caring," he told the crowd on Wednesday, acknowledging the many peace banners and blue balloons held aloft.

In a message for the World Day of Peace sent to world leaders last month, Francis said that huge salaries and bonuses were symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality

In that letter, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina again urged nations to narrow the gap between rich and poor, more and more of whom were getting only "crumbs".

Francis, named Person of the Year by Time magazine and a number of other publications, has urged his own Church to set an example by being more fair and frugal and less pompous, and to get closer to the poor and afflicted.

The new year is expected to bring concrete changes to the Vatican, plagued by a series of mishaps and scandals under Pope Benedict XVI, who in February became the first pontiff to resign in 600 years.

Francis has appointed a committee of eight cardinals from around the world to advise him on how to reform the central Vatican administration.

He has also named commissions to advise him on what to do with the scandal-plagued Vatican bank, on transparency in other parts of Vatican finance and on how to deal with the Church's many sexual abuse scandals.

Vatican officials expect changes to start taking shape in late February, when his council of advisors has a pivotal meeting in the Vatican.

On February 22, Francis will name his first batch of cardinals to join the exclusive group that will one day choose his successor.

The names of the new cardinals are expected to be disclosed sometime in late January, and will offer another indication of the type of humbler Church that Francis wants.
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« Reply #396 on: January 01, 2014, 10:43:26 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/stop-wars-pope-says-appeal-125415104.html
Stop the wars, pope says in New Year appeal
1/1/14

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis made an impassioned New Year's peace address on Wednesday, saying the heart of humanity seemed to have gone astray and too many people were still indifferent to war, violence and injustice.

The pontiff, who took his papal name from St Francis of Assisi, the saint most associated with peace, urged the world to listen to the "cry for peace" from suffering peoples.

"What on earth is happening in the hearts of men? What on earth is happening in the heart of humanity?" he said to tens of thousands of people in St Peter's Square on the day the Roman Catholic Church celebrates its World Day of Peace.

"It's time to stop!" he said, departing from his prepared text.



Rev 6:4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
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« Reply #397 on: January 01, 2014, 11:11:23 am »

Was listening to the first 3 parts of Scott's latest audio - he quoted some Illuminati figure who said we're "10 years behind schedule"(para).

I'm no prophet, but dunno about that - if this "Illuminati figure" had stepped into any of these Babel church buildings nowdays, he'll likely change his mind in a heartbeat. Yeah, even he'll be shocked over all of the demonic "Christian" Rock music that has been accepted by Churchianity, and not to mention too the latest false bible versions are nothing but New Age mumbo jumbo(ie-New Century Version, TNIV, The Message are just that - no, not saying the NIV is any better, but just saying how worse badly watered down they are now compared to before).
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« Reply #398 on: January 02, 2014, 04:39:14 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/francis-drew-6-6-million-vatican-2013-three-141317582.html
Francis drew 6.6 million to Vatican in 2013, three times Benedict
1/2/14

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - More than 6.6 million people attended events with Pope Francis at the Vatican from his election in March to the end of 2013, figures released on Thursday showed, compared to 2.3 million for former Pope Benedict in all of 2012.

The Vatican said the figures were based on the number of tickets issued for papal events where they are needed, such as general audiences, Masses and private audiences.

They were also based on estimates of the number of people at events where tickets are not needed, such as his weekly appearance from a window overlooking St. Peter's Square.

The Vatican did not issue comparative figures on Thursday but figures released on January 4, 2013 showed that some 2.3 million people attended all events presided by Benedict in 2012.

Benedict, citing health reasons, resigned on February 28, 2013, becoming the first pope in 600 years to do so rather than ruling for life. He is now known as Pope Emeritus.

Figures released last month which were limited to the number of people who attended weekly general audiences showed that Francis had drawn around four times as many people in about 9 and a half months of 2013 than Benedict had in all of 2012. Francis was elected on March 13, 2013.

Francis, who last month was named Person of the Year by Time Magazine, has drawn people to the Vatican because of his outgoing, simple and friendly style. Benedict was more reserved and far less spontaneous.

The first non-European pope in 1,300 years, he took over an institution rocked by sex abuse and other scandals, and losing faithful to other religions.

Reinvigorating the church, he has forsaken many of the trappings used by his predecessors. He gave up the spacious papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace for a small apartment in a guest house and is driven in a regular car instead of the papal limousine.

Francis has also proven to be popular because of his statements urging the Church to be closer to the poor and to be more merciful and less condemning.

The Vatican said the figures released on Thursday did not include the crowds that turned out to see the pope during his trips to Brazil, and to Assisi and Lampedusa in Italy.

More than 3 million people attended the pope's final event of the Brazil trip on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on July 28
.

The crowds at Francis' general audiences and Sunday addresses have often topped 100,000, forcing police to close off the boulevard leading to the Vatican to accommodate more people.

Tickets to audiences and Masses are issued for free by the Vatican's Prefecture of the Pontifical Household and usually distributed through parishes and Church institutions.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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« Reply #399 on: January 05, 2014, 12:28:28 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-celebrates-sainthood-pierre-favre-inspirational-jesuit-174136297.html
Pope celebrates sainthood of Pierre Favre, inspirational Jesuit
1/3/14

Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis held a mass on Friday to celebrate the sainthood of Pierre Favre, an early Jesuit priest the pontiff has said particularly inspired him.

Favre, also known as Peter Faber, was declared a saint by Francis on December 17, the pope's 77th birthday, in an accelerated procedure which bypassed Vatican tradition and the canonisation ceremony, and without the confirmation of a performed miracle.

In his homily, the pontiff called on Jesuits to follow Favre in his "desire to change the world".

"Favre was utterly centred in God, and because of that he could go -- obediently, and often on foot -- all over Europe, to speak to all with sweetness, and announce the gospel," he said.

Favre, who lived from 1506 to 1546, was the first recruit of Jesuit founder St Ignatius Loyola.

A shepherd during his boyhood years, he later travelled to Paris to study, where he met Ignatius and another future Jesuit, Francis Xavier, both of whom had a huge influence on him spiritually.

He was ordained as a priest in 1534, and served across Europe, walking huge distances between religious postings in Germany, Spain and Portugal.

He was reportedly welcomed by his enemies as much as his friends.

His remains are buried at the Church of the Gesu, the principle Jesuit church in Rome, where Friday's ceremony was held.

In an interview with the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica last year, Francis praised the priest's ability to "dialogue with all, even the most remote and even with his opponents".

He said he admired Favre's "simple piety, a certain naivety perhaps. His being available straightaway, his careful interior discernment, the fact that he was a man capable of great and strong decisions but also capable of being so gentle and loving."

The pontiff entered Favre into the "catalogue of saints" through the rarely used "equivalent canonisation" process, whereby popes can declare universal veneration for someone who has enjoyed widespread reverence over a long period of time.
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« Reply #400 on: January 05, 2014, 07:38:16 am »

Pope to Travel to Holy Land This May

Pope Francis announced Sunday that he would travel to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan on May 24-26, his first visit to the Holy Land and one that comes amid a new U.S.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pope-travel-holy-land-24-26-21425167
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« Reply #401 on: January 05, 2014, 07:47:39 am »

New pope goes ‘old school’

So, Pope Francis is making some wealthy Catholics uncomfortable?
 
Excellent.
 
I don’t know how this guy got past a college of cardinals stacked by his two reactionary predecessors. Maybe they thought he was different from the man he’s revealed himself to be. Maybe they finally saw a church in crisis, and a dire need for radical change.

Either way, Francis feels like a bit of a miracle from where this lapsed Catholic sits. In focusing almost solely on our obligations to the poor and powerless, and actually living what he preaches, he conjures the church of my childhood. Its doors flung open by Vatican II, that Catholic church — and those of us who belonged to it — existed to make the world more just.

What joy it was to read his November comments calling trickle-down economics the illusion it is, and speaking of a “deified market” which devours all that stands in the way of profits, including the environment. It’s just the kind of thing that ultimate revolutionary Jesus — remember that camels and needles thing?— might have said if he walked the earth today. The fact that the rising tide has lifted a few boats and capsized most others isn’t exactly news. But hearing the pope say it — in such pointed terms — is a very big deal.

Of course, not everybody is thrilled. From Home Depot founder Ken Langone comes the news that rich Catholic donors like him are balking at the pope’s call for economic justice.
 
Boo hoo. More whining from poor, persecuted, richer-than-actual-God job-creators. What Francis is preaching is the guts of the faith. The church hierarchy — and most of the rest of us, Catholic or not — lost sight of those values over the last generation. If Francis is making some people uncomfortable about that, then bless him. That’s his job.

And plenty of prominent Catholics of means around here get that.
 
“He’s not making me uncomfortable,” says Jack Connors, the advertising and health care magnate. “He’s making me proud.” Like so many of us, Connors is amazed at the Argentinian Jesuit’s ascension.
 
“What he is really saying is, ‘Come on, let’s play fair here,’ ” Connors says, “that maybe we’re not as concerned and as charitable a world or a nation as we pretend to be. That’s leadership.” Francis’s jarring humility, his willingness to embrace those who might repulse others, is “old school,” Connors says. “That is why we signed up for this religion. That is why I go to Mass three or four times a week.”
 
Construction titan John Fish, vice chairman of the board at Boston College, believes Francis’s installment is “the most important event in the Catholic Church of the past 100 years, and maybe beyond.”
 
“His message is sorely needed,” Fish continues. “He’s saying we need to talk less about the pelvis, and more about the kindness of people . . . That is a breath of fresh air . . . This isn’t about rich or poor, it’s about how we instill a sense of kindness.”
 
Developer Thomas N. O’Brien says nobody should be surprised at Francis’s rhetoric. “It may sound revolutionary to people, but to me it sounds very logical and pretty appropriate for our pope to say that.” He hears a challenge in Francis’s words: “Here are the specific things Jesus said, and you should reflect on whether you’re living up to those ideas.” O’Brien says he and his wife ask themselves every day if they’ve done enough, and many times, they come up short.
 
“It’s pretty powerful and humbling — and scary, frankly,” O’Brien says.
 
We could use more of that kind of fear. There are so many other things I want to see from this pope: A real reckoning for clergy sexual abuse, an embrace of women at every level of the church, a further acceptance of gays and lesbians. But what a start, making men like Langone and his friends uncomfortable. To those of us who have longed for the church of our remembering, their whiny chorus is like a heavenly choir.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/01/05/new-pope-goes-old-school/5AWpDiMubDIO75v8O5w3JJ/story.html

The Catholic church is itself a wealthy institution. More richer than virtually EVERY country on the planet. Just saying...  Shocked

Quote
What joy it was to read his November comments calling trickle-down economics the illusion it is, and speaking of a “deified market” which devours all that stands in the way of profits, including the environment. It’s just the kind of thing that ultimate revolutionary Jesus — remember that camels and needles thing?

Luk 18:22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
Luk 18:23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.
Luk 18:24 And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!


I think the Lord still says that... Mal 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
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« Reply #402 on: January 06, 2014, 09:03:32 am »

Look how craftily Frankie uses his words...

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-calls-fresh-church-approach-children-gay-parents-192102096.html
Pope calls for fresh Church approach to children of gay parents
1/4/14

Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis has called for a rethink in the way the Catholic Church deals with the children of gay couples and divorced parents, warning against "administering a vaccine against faith".

"On an educational level, gay unions raise challenges for us today which for us are sometimes difficult to understand," Francis said in a speech to the Catholic Union of Superiors General in November, extracts of which were published on Italian media websites on Saturday.

"The number of children in schools whose parents have separated is very high," he said, adding that family make-ups were also changing.

"I remember a case in which a sad little girl confessed to her teacher: 'my mother's girlfriend doesn't love me'," he was quoted as saying.

The pontiff said educational leaders should ask themselves "how can we proclaim Christ to a generation that is changing?"

"We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them," the 77-year-old added.

Though the Church has often been in conflict with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community over its opposition to same-sex marriage and to homosexuality, Francis has drawn praise for attempts to be inclusive.

In July he reached out to gays, declaring that "if someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

And in December, the Advocate magazine -- dedicated to the gay and lesbian community -- chose the head of the Catholic Church as the "single most influential person of 2013 on the lives of LGBT people."

The reform-minded pontiff has also called an extraordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops next year to discuss the Church's position with regard to the family, which is expected to address among other issues the problem of divorcees remarrying and children of divorced parents.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uhm...Frankie forgot about this...

Matthew 5:32  But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Proverbs_20:11  Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.
 
Pro_22:6  Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Pro_22:15  Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Pro_23:13  Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.
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« Reply #403 on: January 07, 2014, 11:18:30 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-set-name-cardinals-reflect-vision-church-134436594--finance.html
Pope set to name cardinals to reflect his vision of the Church
1/7/14

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis is set to make the most important decisions of his young papacy in the next few weeks by naming new cardinals - the "princes of the Church" who will help him set its future course and one day elect his successor from their number.

A pope's choice of cardinals is one of the clearest signals of the direction in which he wants the 1.2 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church to go, and what type of man he wants to succeed him.

Francis immediately set about changing the Vatican's image with his simple style after his election last March, so his choice of clerics to elevate on February 22 is more eagerly awaited than usual.

He is expected to reveal his choices before the end of January so that preparations for the ceremonial "consistory" can be made, but so far there have been few if any whispers of likely names.

In the past, it was a fairly safe bet that archbishops of big dioceses or those heading Vatican departments traditionally headed by cardinals would get the three-peaked "biretta", the red ceremonial hat that cardinals wear.

But Francis, who renounced the spacious papal suite for a modest apartment in a Vatican guest house, and is driven around in a simple Ford Focus instead of a bulletproof Mercedes limousine, has shown little regard for precedent or tradition.

"He will feel very free to choose the people he thinks should be in those positions, regardless of what was done before," said Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica who interviewed the pope last summer.

"Certainly it will help us further understand where he wants the Church to go."

BENDING THE RULES

There are currently 14 vacancies in the College of Cardinals for "cardinal electors": those who would be allowed to enter a conclave to elect a pope.

Church rules in theory limit the number of "cardinal electors" to 120. But Francis can decide to bend or even abolish the rule.

In any case, 10 cardinals who are now electors will turn 80 during 2014, so Francis could appoint as many as 24 new cardinal electors and still have their number back to 120 by the end of the year.

Apart from potentially shifting the liberal-conservative balance of the College, and elevating men whose personal abilities he values, Francis could also alter its geographical distribution.

In the conclave that elected Francis last March, 60 cardinals were from Europe, even though the Church on the continent has been hardest hit by falling membership. Italy alone had 28.

By comparison, there were only 19 cardinals from all of Latin America, a region with the largest Catholic populations, and 11 and 10 respectively from Africa and Asia, where the Church is growing fast.

Francis, previously archbishop of Buenos Aires, is the first Latin American pope in history and the first non-European in 1,600 years.

Apart from naming new cardinal electors under 80, Francis is also expected to give the honorific title to a number of elderly churchmen in gratitude for decades of service. They are usually theologians or academics, and would not be eligible to enter a conclave.
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« Reply #404 on: January 07, 2014, 06:36:40 pm »

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/06/what-pope-francis-can-teach-the-gop.html

What Pope Francis Can Teach the GOP
1/6/14

With his softer message on gay and divorced families, the pope has figured out what the Republicans haven’t grasped—you’ve got to tone it down if you want to keep a modern flock.

When the Catholic Church eclipses the Republican Party on social policy, it’s time to start looking skyward for frogs.  Yesterday, when the Vatican released the pope's latest statement offering a softer tone toward the gay community than pontiffs in the past, it suggested that the Catholic Church may have figured out what the Republican Party hasn’t yet grasped—that the fading of the institution’s flock can only truly be addressed by reversing some of the fading norms driving the flock from the fold. 

And so you have, just to pick one example, failed Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli saying about gay rights, “I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul.” Versus Pope Francis saying, “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

Now Pope Francis has gone a step further, expressing compassion for gay families as well as families of divorce, both of which are perennial Republican targets in their puritanical and antiquated push for conservative morality.  “How can we proclaim Christ to a generation that is changing?” the pope reportedly said.  “We must be careful not to administer a vaccine against faith to them.”  Or voting!  Step aside, Reince Priebus.  The pope’s words offer some wisdom for the sagging and outdated GOP.

It’s not as if I’m comparing the rhetoric of Republican Party to a liberal, feminist knitting circle.  This is the Catholic Church, which still expressly believes that having gay sex is as sinful as contraception and abortion.  And yet in recent years, the Catholic Church has been more forward-thinking than the Republican Party (and at times, even the Democratic Party) on issues of economic justice, immigration and the death penalty.  Plus, while it wasn’t until losing the 2012 elections that the Republican Party proclaimed it was time for an “autopsy” to improve the party’s appeal to women, young people and voters of color, the Catholic Church has been actively outreaching to Latino communities since the Spanish colonization of the Americas!

To be clear, I’m not exactly praising the Catholic Church nor Pope Francis for social liberalism.  The pope has said, “The teaching of the church” on issues of abortion, gay marriage and contraception “is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”  And indeed the Church remains dangerously out of touch with the modern lives and needs of its flock, whether the upwards of 90 percent of Catholic women in the United States who use birth control or the 62 percent of American Catholics who support marriage equality.  Still, what’s fascinating is that the Republican Party and social conservatives in general continue to wave the banner of backwards social norms despite all the self-marginalizing and self-destructive pragmatic reasons not to, while here the very arbiter of those social norms—who obviously has more reason to proselytize that morality than any political party—is recognizing the need to, at the very least, tone it down.

Certainly not all Republican political leaders fall into the offensive and out-of-date category with respect to social issues.  Despite the massive rightward shift of the party in the last few years, there remain some social moderates who believe that women should make decisions about their own bodies based on consultations with their doctors, not tyrannical laws.  And more Republican figures are coming out in support of marriage equality every day.  Yet when conservative leaders flock to defend the ugly racist and homophobic remarks of Phil Richardson or try and dismantle Obamacare based on contraception mandates, they reveal how woefully disconnected conservative leadership is from not only the majority of Americans but the majority of Republican voters.  The pope seems to realize that being so woefully out of touch, or at least foregrounding such out-of-touch stances, will only lead to emptier pews.  In the political realm, it only leads to more Democrats.   

As a secular Jew, I don’t know much about Catholic doctrine but I do know a ton about irony.  Whether out of institutional self-preservation or a true moral searching, Pope Francis appears to be trying to project a warm and welcoming rhetoric that is often undermined by the Church’s judgmental and exclusionary beliefs.  But the irony is that the centuries-old Catholic Church is even trying, which is more than can be said for the supposedly modern GOP.
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« Reply #405 on: January 07, 2014, 06:45:36 pm »

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/lawmakers-enlist-powerful-new-wage-and-wealth-gap-warrior---the-pope-181146316.html
Lawmakers enlist powerful new wage and wealth gap warrior - the Pope
1/7/14

"Let us leave a spare place at our table: a place for those who lack the basics, who are alone.”  - Pope Francis via Twitter January 7, 2014   

In three short phrases, Pope Francis has once again taken the lead in advocating for economic justice and fairness. Where not long ago a battle raged over the growing and disproportionate wealth of the so-called “one percent,” the new 77-year old leader of the Catholic church has gained more support in nine months than the Occupy Wall Street movement or Fast Food Forward have in five years.

This new found papal popularity is not going unnoticed, especially in Washington, where  lawmakers - particularly Democrats - are eager to find fresh support for their core causes but also to counter their own lofty disapproval ratings. As my colleague Jeff Macke and I discuss in the attached video, the politicization of the Pope is real and cannot be ignored

“It is not a surprise that the left and the right are now seeking openly to affiliate with this Pope,” Macke says, fresh from his own eye-opening trip to the Vatican. 

In fact, a recent New York Times article quotes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as saying “We have a strong ally on our side,” in reference to a raft of policy efforts in the works that coincide with the writings and teachings Pope Francis espouses.

Of course, his Holiness has numerous advantages over his elected counterparts when it comes to addressing issues such as income inequality or raising the minimum wage.   Some would argue that as a foreign head of state representing a billion people (90% of which are not American), the Pope should not intercede in the U.S. political process. And yet, when the Pope includes the following four sub-titles in his most recent Exhortation, few dared to criticize his stance:

No to an economy of exclusion
No to the idolatry of money
No to a financial system that rules rather than serves
No to the inequality which spawns violence


Even mainstream theories have been addressed in his short Papacy where he blasts “trickle-down economics” as being a factually unconfirmed belief. “This opinion,” the Pope writes, “expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power,” adding that “the excluded are still waiting.”

It’s important to note that all of this is happening at the exact time that the country is being forced to reconcile the fact that the original “War on Poverty” declared by President Johnson in 1964, is turning fifty, but that there’s still a lot more work to do. The White House has already tagged job creation and better wages as key areas of focus for the mid-term, and will surely give both prominent play in the upcoming State of the Union address.

To be sure, Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” is clearly popular and politicians of all persuasions are as eager to side with him as they are reluctant to stand against him, but it has yet to be seen if his message results in any actual legislative action.
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« Reply #406 on: January 08, 2014, 07:54:59 am »

Pope Francis condemns fundamentalism, urges setting an example over proselytizing

Pope Francis recently urged the faithful to understand reality by looking at it “from the periphery” in order to avoid becoming fundamentalists.
 
Francis meet with 120 superiors general of men’s religious orders at the Vatican in November. His comments were published Friday by La Civiltà Cattolica, a Rome-based Jesuit weekly.
 
“I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery,” the pope said.

To look at something from the periphery, the pope explained, meant analyzing reality through a variety of viewpoints, rather than filtering all experience through a centralized ideology.
 
“It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere,” he said. “To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking.”

“I often refer to a letter of Father Pedro Arrupe, who had been General of the Society of Jesus,” the pope continued. “It was a letter directed to the Centros de Investigación y Acción Social (CIAS). In this letter Father Arrupe spoke of poverty and said that some time of real contact with the poor is necessary.”

“This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life – experiences of people. If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.”
 
La Civilità Cattolica noted that Francis expressed similar sentiments in his Evangelii guadium regarding globalization.

The world needs to move towards unity without embracing centralism and crushing individualism, he wrote in the document, which was published in November.

“Here our model is not the sphere, which is no greater than its parts, where every point is equidistant from the centre, and there are no differences between them. Instead, it is the polyhedron, which reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness.”
 
Francis also encouraged the leaders of men’s religious orders to “wake up the world.” He said the Church should grow through “attraction” rather than proselytization.

“Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world,” he said.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/03/pope-francis-condemns-fundamentalism-urges-setting-an-example-over-proselytizing/
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« Reply #407 on: January 08, 2014, 11:51:37 am »

Quote
To look at something from the periphery, the pope explained, meant analyzing reality through a variety of viewpoints, rather than filtering all experience through a centralized ideology.
 
“It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere,” he said. “To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking.”


And that's pretty much what I hear when the modern-day, organized "church" system justifies these false perverted bible versions - they say how we can't be narrow and should embrace other "viewpoints" by reading these other "bibles".

Hhhhmmm...scripture says otherwise...

Matthew 7:13  Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Mat 7:14  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.


Quote
Francis also encouraged the leaders of men’s religious orders to “wake up the world.” He said the Church should grow through “attraction” rather than proselytization.

And the modern-day, organized "church" system is doing just that now - bringing in entertainment like CCM, New Age theology, Orange Julius shops, etc into their buildings so they can grow through "attraction".
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« Reply #408 on: January 08, 2014, 10:12:39 pm »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10559802/Liberation-Theology-is-back-as-Pope-Francis-holds-capitalism-to-account.html
Liberation Theology is back as Pope Francis holds capitalism to account

Amid accusations of Marxism, Pope Francis has turned the Vatican into the spearhead of radical economic thinking

1/8/14

Unfettered global capitalism has met its match at last. Ever since Bishop Bergoglio picked St Francis of Assisi to be his guiding inspiration and lead a "church for the poor", all his actions have been in the same direction.

Liberation Theology is taking over the Vatican a quarter of a century after Jean-Paul II systematically sought to stamp out the "singular heresy" in the radical parishes and dioceses of Latin America, a task carried out with dutiful efficiency by Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The "preferential option for the poor" is back. The doctrine that so inflamed controversy in the 1970s and 1980, famously wedded to Nicaragua's Sandinista cause, now has a Papal imprimatur. It is close to becoming official doctrine for the world's 1.2bn Roman Catholics under "Evangilii Gaudium", the Pope's first apostolic exhortation. This will have consequences.

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by the happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation," Pope Francis says.

The conservative power of the Papal Curia is being broken. All of a sudden the Vatican is the spearhead of radical economic thinking. The best-known of the Pope's newly-minted Council of Cardinals is none other than Archbishop Reinhard Marx, the firebrand "Rote Kardinal" of Munich and author of Das Kapital: A Plea for Man.

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« Reply #409 on: January 12, 2014, 03:41:05 pm »

http://news.msn.com/world/pope-names-19-new-cardinals-focusing-on-the-poor
Pope names 19 new cardinals, focusing on the poor
1/12/14

Most of the appointees announced by Pope Francis on Sunday are younger than 80, meaning they are eligible to elect the next pope.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday named his first batch of cardinals, choosing 19 men from Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, including Haiti and Burkino Faso, to reflect his attention to the poor.

Francis made the announcement as he spoke from his studio window to a crowd in St. Peter's Square.

Sixteen of the appointees are younger than 80, meaning they are eligible to elect the next pope, which is a cardinal's most important task. The ceremony to formally install them as cardinals will be held Feb. 22 at the Vatican.

Some appointments were expected, including that of his new secretary of state, the Italian archbishop Pietro Parolin, and the German head of the Vatican's watchdog office for doctrinal orthodoxy, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller.

But some names were surprising.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's selection of churchmen from Haiti and Burkino Faso, which are among the world's poorest nations, reflects Francis' attention to the destitute as a core part of the church's mission.

Also chosen to become a "prince of the church," as the cardinals are known, was Mario Aurelio Poli, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, a post Francis left when he was elected as the first Latin American pope in March.

His selections also came from Managua, Nicaragua; Santiago, Chile; and Rio de Janeiro. The appointees included churchmen from Seoul, South Korea, and the archbishop of Westminster, in Britain, Vincent Nichols.

In a sentimental touch, the three men too old to vote for the next pope include 98-year-old Monsignor Loris Francesco Capovilla, who had served as personal secretary to Pope John XXIII. The late pontiff will be made a saint along with John Paul II at the Vatican in April.

The cardinals named are:

Pietro Parolin, Titular Archbishop of Acquapendente, Secretary of State.

Lorenzo Baldisseri, Titular Archbishop of Diocleziana, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops.

Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Regensburg, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Beniamino Stella, Titular Archbishop of Midila, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.

Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, United Kingdom.

Leopoldo Jose Brenes Solorzano, Archbishop of Managua, Nicaragua.

Gerald Cyprien Lacroix, Archbishop of Quebec, Canada.

Jean-Pierre Kutwa, Archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Orani Joao Tempesta, O.Cist., Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro.

Gualtiero Bassetti, Archbishop of Perugia-Citta della Pieve, Italy.

Mario Aurelio Poli, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Andrew Yeom Soo jung, Archbishop of Seoul, South Korea.

Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, S.D.B., Archbishop of Santiago del Cile, Chile.

Philippe Nakellentuba Ouedraogo, Archbishop of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Orlando B. Quevedo, O.M.I., Archbishop of Cotabato, Philippines.

Chibly Langlois, Bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti.

Loris Francesco Capovilla, Titular Archbishop of Mesembria.

Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, C.M.F., Archbishop emeritus of Pamplona.

Kelvin Edward Felix, Archbishop emeritus of Castries.
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« Reply #410 on: January 15, 2014, 08:38:15 pm »

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/14/obama-to-pay-visit-to-pope/
1/14/14

Obama to pay visit to Pope

CNN White House Producer Kevin Liptak   

(CNN) – President Barack Obama plans to soon meet with Pope Francis for the first time.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the President was “looking forward” to visiting the popular new leader of the Roman Catholic Church at the Vatican.

Kerry did not say when the trip would take place.

The White House said it had no specific travel announcements to make, but that Obama “very much looks forward to meeting Pope Francis at some point in the near future.”

Kerry, a Roman Catholic, met with Vatican leaders on Tuesday to discuss foreign policy and economic issues, including Francis’ outspoken stance on income inequality worldwide.

He did not meet with the Pope.

Obama has cited the Pope’s inequality stance himself in an economic address in December.

“Across the developed world, inequality has increased,” Obama said. “Some of you may have seen just last week, the Pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. ‘How can it be,’ he wrote, ‘that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?’”


Obama met Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, in 2009, six months after taking office. That meeting, which took place at the Vatican, was Obama’s only meeting with a Pope.

His presidency has been marked by some high-profile clashes with the Catholic Church, including over abortion and contraception.

But Francis’ approach to world economic issues is widely seen as more in line with Obama’s own approach than that of Benedict, who stepped down last year.

In an MSNBC interview last year, Obama called Francis an "extraordinarily thoughtful and soulful messenger of peace and justice."

"I haven't had a chance to meet him yet,” Obama said. “But everything that I've read, everything that I've seen from him, indicates the degree to, to which he is trying to remind us of those core obligations."
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« Reply #411 on: January 16, 2014, 02:20:38 am »

Quote
"I haven't had a chance to meet him yet,” Obama said. “But everything that I've read, everything that I've seen from him, indicates the degree to, to which he is trying to remind us of those core obligations."

Now that is a completely underwhelming statement.  Roll Eyes
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« Reply #412 on: January 21, 2014, 04:24:05 pm »

http://news.msn.com/us/obama-to-meet-with-pope-francis-in-march
Obama to meet with Pope Francis in March
1/21/14

President Obama also plans to meet in Rome with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of a European trip scheduled for March.

The White House says Obama "looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality" during their March 27 meeting. Obama also plans to meet in Rome with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Obama's trip begins March 24-25 in The Hague, Netherlands, where he will participate in a nuclear security summit hosted by the Dutch government and meet with Dutch leaders.

On March 26, Obama will travel to Brussels for an U.S.-European Union summit with the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, as well as meetings with Belgian leaders and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
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« Reply #413 on: January 23, 2014, 07:27:31 am »

This story is to funny  Grin  Cheesy

Pope Endorses March for Life
"May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable."


On Wednesday, the Pope tweeted his support for the nationwide March for Life taking place across the United States:

Quote
Pope Francis        ✔ @Pontifex
Follow

I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable
9:00 AM - 22 Jan 2014

Pope Francis has called abortion “horrific.” He said, “"It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day,” Pope Francis said. He called abortion part of a “throwaway culture,” stating, “Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as unnecessary.”

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/pope-endorses-march-life

And now the kicker from the Liberal NEWS   Cheesy

MSNBC Host Shocked That Pope Is Catholic
"Today’s tweet of the day is reflective in ways in which the Church has not changed"


Wednesday on Chris Jansing's MSNBC program, the host had a discussion with a panel about President Obama's upcoming European trip where he will meet with Pope Francis. The discussion centered on what seems to be a common theme of the two leaders: the wide income gap between the world's rich and poor. When the segment was over the program went to commercial and returned to a slide showing a tweet the Pope made in support of the March for Life, an annual rally in Washington DC by pro-life Americans.

    Today’s tweet of the day is reflective in ways in which the Church has not changed. It comes from Pope Francis, "I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable."

It would be interesting to understand what Ms. Jansing meant by her comment. Catholic theology is decidedly anti-abortion. The Pope is not only Catholic, but he is the head of the Catholic Church. What exactly would she expect him to say?

video: http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/msnbc-host-shocked-pope-catholic
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« Reply #414 on: January 23, 2014, 05:18:04 pm »

And that's how it's been since 1980 in particular - you have the "social conservatives" aka Catholics on one end, and the "Liberal" News on the other end, both end up "fighting amongst one another" over these "hot button" issues like abortion.

When all is said and done, the Catholic Church ends up being painted as *true conservatism*, and these "liberal media" watchdog groups like Hannity, FOX, and Brent Bozell do their part to add fuel to the fire(and end up painting Christianity in a bad light).
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« Reply #415 on: January 24, 2014, 10:36:49 am »

Pope: Internet Is a 'Gift From God' for Dialogue
VATICAN CITY January 23, 2014 (AP)
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pope-internet-gift-god-dialogue-21633850

The Internet is a "gift from God" that facilitates communication, Pope Francis said in a statement released Thursday, but he warns that the obsessive desire to stay connected can actually isolate people from their friends and family.

Francis made the observations in a message about Catholic Church communications, meditating on the marvels and perils of the digital era and what that means for the faithful going out into the world and interacting with people of different faiths and backgrounds.

In comments that will likely rile the more conservative wing of the church, Francis suggested that in engaging in that dialogue, Catholics shouldn't be arrogant in insisting that they alone possess the truth.

"To (have a) dialogue means to believe that the 'other' has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective," Francis wrote. "Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the pretense that they alone are valid and absolute."

According to church teaching distilled by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church holds the "fullness of the means of salvation" — a message that has long been taken to mean that only Catholics can find salvation. Church teaching also holds that those who don't know about Jesus but seek God can also attain eternal salvation.

Pope Benedict XVI was a strong proponent of engaging in interreligious dialogue, but Francis has offered a softer approach in his sermons and gestures. In one famous off-the-cuff homily, he suggested that even atheists can find salvation. He also riled some conservatives when he washed the feet of two Muslims during the Holy Thursday re-enactment of Christ washing the feet of his apostles.

Archbishop Claudio Mario Celli, the head of the Vatican's social communications office, said he didn't think Francis was making an official policy statement on interreligious dialogue, noting that the message was merely a reflection, "not a conciliar or dogmatic text."

But he acknowledged that Francis is shaking things up in much the same "providential" way Pope John XXIII shook up the church in launching the Second Vatican Council.

"We are realizing that there are sensations of, I wouldn't say difficulty, but of discomfort sometimes in certain circles," he said. "I think step by step we must rediscover a sense of the path, of what the pope wants to tell us."

In his message Thursday, Francis said the Internet offers "immense possibilities" to encounter people from different cultural and traditional backgrounds and show solidarity with them.

"This is something truly good, a gift from God," he wrote. But he warned: "The desire for digital connectivity can have the effect of isolating us from our neighbors, from those closest to us."

He called for communications in the digital era to be like "a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts" and for the church's message to not be one of bombarding others with Christian dogma.

"May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects, but rather of our being loving and merciful neighbors to those wounded and left on the side of the road," he said.
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« Reply #416 on: January 24, 2014, 12:15:04 pm »

Quote
According to church teaching distilled by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church holds the "fullness of the means of salvation" — a message that has long been taken to mean that only Catholics can find salvation. Church teaching also holds that those who don't know about Jesus but seek God can also attain eternal salvation.

There you go! Clear cut heresy.

The real truth is...

10  Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, [even] by him doth this man stand here before you whole.
11  This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.
12  Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Acts 4:10-12 (KJB)
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« Reply #417 on: January 25, 2014, 04:12:58 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-women-play-expanded-role-church-140955983.html
Pope: Women should play expanded role in Church
1/25/14

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday lauded women for their sensitivity toward the society's weak and "gifts" like intuition, insisting they take on greater responsibilities in the Catholic church, as well as in professional and public spheres.

Francis was full of praise about female talent and untapped potential in a speech at the Vatican to an Italian women's group. But the pope gave no sign that the Vatican glass ceiling against ordaining women for the priesthood might see some cracks during his papacy.

From day one of his papacy in March, Francis has been trying to make the Catholic church more welcoming, but it forbids women from becoming priests, arguing among other things, that Jesus and his apostles were men.

Francis made clear back in November, in an extensive document laying out his priorities as head of the 1.2-billion-member Catholic church, that the ban against women's ordination would stand. Then, and in his speech on Saturday, he did go out of his way to urge a greater role for women in making decisions and holding responsibilities in the church.

Referring to that document, Francis told his audience that he had stressed "the indispensable contribution of women in society, in particular with their sensitivity and intuition toward the other, the weak and the unprotected." He said he has been heartened that "many women share some pastoral responsibilities with priests in looking after persons, families and groups" and he said he had hoped that "the spaces for a more diffuse and incisive presence in the church be expanded."

In some parishes, women visit parishioners too frail to come to church, run prayer groups and outreach programs to the poor, as well as help distribute communion to the faithful at Masses, especially in churches with large congregations.

"These new spaces and responsibilities that have been opened, and I strongly hope that they can further be opened up to the presence and activity of women, both in the church environment as well that of the public and professional" spheres, Francis said, "cannot make us forget the irreplaceable role of the woman in a family."

His audience was made up of Italian women, who live in a country with one of the lowest rates of women in the workplace in the European Union, as many in Italy leave jobs to raise children and never return or never enter the workplace at all.

Keeping with the Vatican's stress on so-called traditional families, Francis said families benefit from women's "gifts of delicateness, special sensitivity and tenderness."

As the Vatican toils to shore up sometimes flagging faith among Catholics, Francis laid out how the church sees women as crucial for that.

"The presence of women in a domestic setting turns out to be so necessary" for the "transmission to future generations of solid moral principles and the very transmission of the faith," Francis said.

Shutting women out of the priesthood has also meant they have never climbed to the top ranks of the most crucial offices at the Vatican, since those jobs go to prelates. The pope's top advisers are drawn from cardinals, the elite group of men whose responsibilities include electing popes.

The Vatican has cracked down swiftly and severely on any women who defy the ban by being ordained priests, trying to discourage female ordination movements that have some support in the U.S. and western Europe.

Seven women who said they were ordained as priests in a ceremony on the Danube River were excommunicated by the Vatican a few weeks later during the papacy of John Paul II, who, like Francis, often praised women for their talents and what he called special "charisma." And during the papacy of Benedict XVI, the predecessor of Francis, the Vatican defrocked a priest who had supported women's ordination and had participated in a 2008 ceremony of female ordination.

Since Francis has stressed mercy as a dominant characteristic of his pontificate, any more female ordinations would present a highly-watched occasion to see how he would handle such a grave violation of church teaching.
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« Reply #418 on: January 28, 2014, 10:57:33 am »

Pope Francis makes cover of Rolling Stone
1/28/14
http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-rolling-stone-cover-144412378.html

Pope Francis — Bishop of Rome, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, His Holiness — has another title to add to his papal résumé: Rolling Stone cover subject.

The pope graces the cover of the iconic music magazine this week for a "The Times They Are A-Changin':
Inside the Pope's gentle revolution,"
a 7,700-word profile by contributing editor Mark Binelli, who went inside the Vatican to report on Francis' swift break from tradition.

"In less than a year since his papacy began, Pope Francis has done much to separate himself from past popes and establish himself as a people's pope," Binelli writes.

More from the profile:

Surprising desk clerks at the hotel where he'd been staying during the papal conclave by showing up to pay his own bill; panicking bodyguards by swigging from a cup of maté (the highly caffeinated tealike beverage popular throughout South America) handed to him by a stranger during a visit to Brazil; cracking up cardinals with jokes at his own expense hours after being elected (to those assembled at his first official dinner as pope, he deadpanned, "May God forgive you for what you've done").

After the disastrous papacy of Benedict, a staunch traditionalist who looked like he should be wearing a striped shirt with knife-fingered gloves and menacing teenagers in their nightmares, Francis' basic mastery of skills like smiling in public seemed a small miracle to the average Catholic. But he had far more radical changes in mind. By eschewing the papal palace for a modest two-room apartment, by publicly scolding church leaders for being "obsessed" with divisive social issues like gay marriage, birth control and abortion ("Who am I to judge?" Francis famously replied when asked his views on homosexual priests) and – perhaps most astonishingly of all – by devoting much of his first major written teaching to a scathing critique of unchecked free-market capitalism, the pope revealed his own obsessions to be more in line with the boss' son.

Francis has been on other major magazine covers, including Time magazine, which declared him its 2013 Person of the Year last month. (It was the second time in a year Time ran a pope cover.)

Francis is the first pope to make the cover of Rolling Stone, the so-called "music bible" founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner, something bands including the Velvet Underground, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine each failed to do.
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« Reply #419 on: January 29, 2014, 08:40:46 am »

Man of the Year not enough? Pope Francis now SuperPope



It wasn't enough that Pope Francis was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" or that he fronted this week's Rolling Stone magazine. Now there's SuperPope graffiti sprouting up around the Vatican.

The white caped crusader appeared on Tuesday on a wall just off Borgo Pio, a tiny cobble-stoned street near St. Peter's Square. In typical superhero fashion, Francis' right fist is thrust in the air, leading him in flight, while his left clutches his black satchel. "Valores," or values in Spanish, is written across it.

The artist is identified only as Maupal.

Francis has charmed the masses with his simplicity and message of helping the poor, even as he has cracked down on Vatican waste and corruption.

The Vatican communications office approved of the image, tweeting the photo on Tuesday.

    We share with you a graffiti found in a Roman street near the #Vatican / Les compartimos este graffiti que vimos hoy t.co/In76sMJE4v

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/man-of-the-year-not-enough-pope-francis-now-superpope/article1-1177851.aspx
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The Man from George Street
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