Christian Unity and Pro-Life

Last month was the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark abortion legislation here in the United States. In response to this, there were various pro-life events such as the March for Life in Washington DC and the Walk for Life in San Francisco.

prolife

I was over the moon to find out that there was a special event being organized here in San Diego‘s Balboa Park. The turnout was quite good, approximately 3,000 people attended and many organizations were represented.

I remember thinking how nice it was to be back around non-Catholic Christians again. In England I had a lot of contact with Christians of other denominations, both from attending non-Catholic services and from various ecumenical activities. But what with one thing and another, this hasn’t happened so much since I moved to the United States, my religious social circle being made up almost exclusively of Catholics. It was therefore really wonderful to see Christians of different denominations coming together on a Saturday morning to bear witness to the sanctity of human life.

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“They did not kill him”

One of the major points of divergence between Islam and Christianity is that, in addition to denying Jesus’ divinity, Islam asserts that Jesus did not die on the cross. We find this assertion in Surah 4 of the Qur’an:

Just in case you don’t read Arabic(!), here is the English translation:

[They said] “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah”… [But] they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them… Rather, Allah raised him to Himself – Surah 4:157-158, Sahih International

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The iMissal

Yesterday morning I came across the following video:

That’s right…an iPad lectern! And, I checked, this thing is a real product available for purchase!

At lunch, as I walked to a nearby sandwich store, I got to thinking about whether or not I thought an iPad-based parish would be a good move or not. There would be some clear advantages to having an electronic Missal and an electronic Lectionary:

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Wise words for newlyweds

Last month I wrote a post talking about the large number of my friends who got engaged or married in December. In the article I asked my married friends to write in the Comments, giving their advice for my newly-engaged and newly-married friends.

flowers

Many thanks to all of you who responded to my request and shared with us lessons learned. Here are some my favourite quotations…

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Pope Posting

One of the reasons I began this blog was in response to repeated Papal exhortations for Catholics to engage the digital world. There were other reasons why I started which I have mentioned before, but that was definitely one of them.

At the end of last month, Pope Benedict issued a document for World Communications Day. I have posted the document in its entirety below, underlining the parts which I thought were really important.

I think it should be required reading for all Catholics who have a Facebook account…

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Contraception and Abortion

I have rather mixed feelings about Michael Voris. Many times he’s often spot on with his criticism, but I often find him unhelpfully aggressive and combative. Since we’ve just had the 40th Anniversary of Roe v Wade, I thought I’d post this video of his where he talks about the relationship between contraception and abortion:

Here’s the document that Mr. Voris quotes:

“In some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail
– 1992 Casey vs. Planned Parenthood

The link between contraception and abortion is undeniable.

Let’s talk about love

clementThe Second Reading at Mass today is one of those better known Scripture passages, St. Paul’s praise of the virtue of love, found in his First Letter to the Corinthians.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, . I’m pretty sure I don’t need to quote the rest of this passage as you will have certainly heard it at…every…single…wedding…you have ever attended 😉

It is my guess that St. Paul’s great hymn of love was the inspiration for a section of an epistle written by St. Clement of Rome at the end of the First Century. A few decades after St. Paul’s death, St. Clement wrote a letter to that same troublesome Corinthian congregation to address that community’s latest round of problems. Some young whipper-snappers had usurped control of the church and deposed their clergy. The Bishop of Rome wrote to them, urging the members of the church to obedience and to brotherly love.

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