Happy New Year!
To you traditionalists!
This used to be new year's day. Makes sense since today's feast celebrates the conception of Christ and Christians believe that life begins at conception. So up until 1753 this was it.
This is from Catholic Nexus:
Roman Church historian Dionysius Exiguus, in calculating his history of the Christian Church, took this day as the supposed date of the Annunciation. March 25th afterward became the first day of the calendar year, until the Gregorian Calendar Reform of 1753 changed the day to January 1st.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Where Soldiers Pretend to Be Civilians and Civilians Pretend to Be Soldiers
Civilians are surrendering claiming to be soldiers so they can be fed as POW's.
From Reuters:
Who wants to be an Iraqi prisoner of war?
Plenty of people in southern Iraq it seems, as it is about the only way to get a square meal in this swathe of territory now controlled by U.S. and British forces.
With over 3,000 prisoners of war held in an enclosure on the outskirts of Umm Qasr, civilians in the battle-scarred port town are trying to "surrender" as a means of getting food and water.
"I am a deserter and I am trying to surrender," one Iraqi told Reuters on Monday at the gates of an ever-growing transit camp for genuine POWs.
But with no uniform or army identity tags or papers, the sentries guarding the facility turned him away.
Civilians are surrendering claiming to be soldiers so they can be fed as POW's.
From Reuters:
Who wants to be an Iraqi prisoner of war?
Plenty of people in southern Iraq it seems, as it is about the only way to get a square meal in this swathe of territory now controlled by U.S. and British forces.
With over 3,000 prisoners of war held in an enclosure on the outskirts of Umm Qasr, civilians in the battle-scarred port town are trying to "surrender" as a means of getting food and water.
"I am a deserter and I am trying to surrender," one Iraqi told Reuters on Monday at the gates of an ever-growing transit camp for genuine POWs.
But with no uniform or army identity tags or papers, the sentries guarding the facility turned him away.
Pope Lauds Peace Movement
From online.ie :
The anti-war movement around the world shows that a "large part of humanity" has rejected war as a means of solving conflicts between nations, Pope John Paul said today.
The Pope, a staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, sent the message to Roman Catholic military chaplains attending a Vatican-organised course on humanitarian law.
He said the course was being held "at a difficult moment in history, when the world once again is listening to the din of arms" and that thoughts about the victims, the destruction and the suffering produce "deep worry and pain".
By now, he said, "it should be clear" that except for self-defence against an aggressor, a "large part of humanity" has repudiated war as an instrument of resolving conflicts between nations.
He cited the "vast contemporary movement in favour of peace" around the world and said he took "comfort and hope" from the efforts for peace by various religions.
From online.ie :
The anti-war movement around the world shows that a "large part of humanity" has rejected war as a means of solving conflicts between nations, Pope John Paul said today.
The Pope, a staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, sent the message to Roman Catholic military chaplains attending a Vatican-organised course on humanitarian law.
He said the course was being held "at a difficult moment in history, when the world once again is listening to the din of arms" and that thoughts about the victims, the destruction and the suffering produce "deep worry and pain".
By now, he said, "it should be clear" that except for self-defence against an aggressor, a "large part of humanity" has repudiated war as an instrument of resolving conflicts between nations.
He cited the "vast contemporary movement in favour of peace" around the world and said he took "comfort and hope" from the efforts for peace by various religions.
Renovation of Detroit's Cathedral
I have been in this church before it was renovated and it had to be one of the darkest church's I've ever been in and coldest. There are pictures at the bottom of the page linked below and I would say that the architect has tried to bring some light into the building. Overall it looks nice.
I don't care much for the Blessed Sacrament chapel (it looks like the chairs are facing away from the tabernacle but maybe that is for the choir stall effect?).
I definitely do not understand why the pipes for the organ have been thrust up in front of the windows--this has to be some attempt by musicians to exert their superiority in the post Vatican II church. But other than that the Baptismal font seems nice (Easter Candle is too small for the size of the church).
Check it out at The Official Web Site for the Archdiocese of Detroit
I have been in this church before it was renovated and it had to be one of the darkest church's I've ever been in and coldest. There are pictures at the bottom of the page linked below and I would say that the architect has tried to bring some light into the building. Overall it looks nice.
I don't care much for the Blessed Sacrament chapel (it looks like the chairs are facing away from the tabernacle but maybe that is for the choir stall effect?).
I definitely do not understand why the pipes for the organ have been thrust up in front of the windows--this has to be some attempt by musicians to exert their superiority in the post Vatican II church. But other than that the Baptismal font seems nice (Easter Candle is too small for the size of the church).
Check it out at The Official Web Site for the Archdiocese of Detroit
Are U.S. Catholics, "more Catholic than the Pope"?
I include a snipet of this article reflecting the British Catholic view of Catholics in the U.S. I encourage you to go to the link and read the entire very well thought out piece that does a great job explaining Catholics in the U.S. Whether you are conservative or liberal there is a truth to grapple with here in the way we evangelize and catechize in this country.
From The Tablet
American Catholicism is ethnic, not dogmatic. The descendants of Irish and Italian and Polish immigrants, long bereft of the old country’s language, maintain their ancestors’ religious identification, which does for them what Catholic nationalism did for Ireland and Poland in the days of British and Soviet rule. It makes a people where there would otherwise not be a people. Yet in this land of voluntarist and intensely subjective Protestants, Catholics who are, in the sense of ethnic identity, “more Catholic than the Pope”, still share the radical Protestant “fundamental belief” that, to quote Pelosi, “God gave us all a free will and we are accountable for that”. Each believer stands alone with his God, and no Pope intervenes on that solitude.
And here is another facet of the paradox of America’s martial Catholicism. Bush is, like Clinton and Gore and Carter, and almost half of their compatriots, an evangelical Protestant. The Bush family being what it is, young George W. was naturally an altar boy in the Episcopalian Church, America’s only socially distinguished faith; he married into Methodism, as his brother, the governor of Florida, married into Hispanic Catholicism; but George W. was nonetheless brought to evangelical conversion in 1985, by Billy Graham himself. Bush’s evangelical faith is overt in his speeches; yet he seems perfectly congenial to America’s “more Catholic than the Pope” Catholics.
Bush returns thecompliment. He has successfully courted the traditionally Democratic Catholic vote, winning half of it in 2000; he has twice carefully visited the papal court; he sincerely abhors teenage sex and abortion; he visibly defers to the Catholic faith. Over the Iraq crisis,
Bush has paid Rome the compliment of strenuous contradiction. The President received Cardinal Laghi and argued with him, and the administration launched a remarkable theological offensive against the Vatican – with the 1994 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Michael Novak, carrying the debate to the enemy’s Roman citadel. By contrast, Bush has simply ignored all the Protestant Churches, including his own, which have denounced the war.
For America’s right-wing Protestants are in the same dilemma as America’s Catholics. And they too find it a non-dilemma. They are not ecclesial Christians: their faith is a private matter, founded on vivid and therapeutic experience of God. Their greatest religious loyalty beyond themselves is not to any denomination, but to what they conceive to be the Christian and democratic cause; and of that cause Bush, not Karol Wojtyla, is both sultan and caliph.
I include a snipet of this article reflecting the British Catholic view of Catholics in the U.S. I encourage you to go to the link and read the entire very well thought out piece that does a great job explaining Catholics in the U.S. Whether you are conservative or liberal there is a truth to grapple with here in the way we evangelize and catechize in this country.
From The Tablet
American Catholicism is ethnic, not dogmatic. The descendants of Irish and Italian and Polish immigrants, long bereft of the old country’s language, maintain their ancestors’ religious identification, which does for them what Catholic nationalism did for Ireland and Poland in the days of British and Soviet rule. It makes a people where there would otherwise not be a people. Yet in this land of voluntarist and intensely subjective Protestants, Catholics who are, in the sense of ethnic identity, “more Catholic than the Pope”, still share the radical Protestant “fundamental belief” that, to quote Pelosi, “God gave us all a free will and we are accountable for that”. Each believer stands alone with his God, and no Pope intervenes on that solitude.
And here is another facet of the paradox of America’s martial Catholicism. Bush is, like Clinton and Gore and Carter, and almost half of their compatriots, an evangelical Protestant. The Bush family being what it is, young George W. was naturally an altar boy in the Episcopalian Church, America’s only socially distinguished faith; he married into Methodism, as his brother, the governor of Florida, married into Hispanic Catholicism; but George W. was nonetheless brought to evangelical conversion in 1985, by Billy Graham himself. Bush’s evangelical faith is overt in his speeches; yet he seems perfectly congenial to America’s “more Catholic than the Pope” Catholics.
Bush returns thecompliment. He has successfully courted the traditionally Democratic Catholic vote, winning half of it in 2000; he has twice carefully visited the papal court; he sincerely abhors teenage sex and abortion; he visibly defers to the Catholic faith. Over the Iraq crisis,
Bush has paid Rome the compliment of strenuous contradiction. The President received Cardinal Laghi and argued with him, and the administration launched a remarkable theological offensive against the Vatican – with the 1994 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Michael Novak, carrying the debate to the enemy’s Roman citadel. By contrast, Bush has simply ignored all the Protestant Churches, including his own, which have denounced the war.
For America’s right-wing Protestants are in the same dilemma as America’s Catholics. And they too find it a non-dilemma. They are not ecclesial Christians: their faith is a private matter, founded on vivid and therapeutic experience of God. Their greatest religious loyalty beyond themselves is not to any denomination, but to what they conceive to be the Christian and democratic cause; and of that cause Bush, not Karol Wojtyla, is both sultan and caliph.
Let's Hope He's Wrong
From Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago, said the U.S.-led force faced "a very dicey two to three day battle" as it pushes north toward the Iraqi capital.
"We ought to be able to do it (take Baghdad)," he told the Newsnight Program on Britain's BBC Television late on Monday.
"In the process if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and that's one of the assumptions, clearly it's going to be brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties," said McCaffrey who became one of the most senior ranking members of the U.S. military following the 1991 war.
"So if they (the Americans and British) are unwilling to face up to that, we may have a difficult time of it taking down Baghdad and Tikrit up to the north west."
From Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago, said the U.S.-led force faced "a very dicey two to three day battle" as it pushes north toward the Iraqi capital.
"We ought to be able to do it (take Baghdad)," he told the Newsnight Program on Britain's BBC Television late on Monday.
"In the process if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and that's one of the assumptions, clearly it's going to be brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties," said McCaffrey who became one of the most senior ranking members of the U.S. military following the 1991 war.
"So if they (the Americans and British) are unwilling to face up to that, we may have a difficult time of it taking down Baghdad and Tikrit up to the north west."
Monday, March 24, 2003
Captured Chemical Plant Turns Out Not to Be
From datek/Dow Jones Newswires - Story:
U.S. officials said Monday that no chemical weapons were found at a suspected site at Najaf in central Iraq, U.S. television networks reported.
NBC News reported from the Pentagon that no chemicals at all were found at the site. CNN, also reporting from the Pentagon, said officials now believe the plant there was abandoned long ago by the Iraqis.
From datek/Dow Jones Newswires - Story:
U.S. officials said Monday that no chemical weapons were found at a suspected site at Najaf in central Iraq, U.S. television networks reported.
NBC News reported from the Pentagon that no chemicals at all were found at the site. CNN, also reporting from the Pentagon, said officials now believe the plant there was abandoned long ago by the Iraqis.
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