Pope Renews Pleas for Peace

During the weekly audience, from Asia News Italy:

With “a heart full of sorrow” and the “chilling images of mangled bodies of so many people, especially children,” before his eyes, Benedict XVI appealed once again for prayers “for the dear, martyred region of the Middle East”, for more effective commitment from the international community for an “immediate cessation of all hostilities” and for “conditions for a definitive political solution to the crisis”.

Recalling in particular the massacre in Qana in Lebanon, the pope said: “I wish to repeat that nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood, no matter from which part it comes!”

Benedict XVI emphasized that only a “definitive political solution to the crisis” will be capable of “delivering a more serene and safe future for generations to come”.

Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori

From the Office of Readings:

All holiness and perfection of soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our
God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. It is part of the love of God to
acquire and to nurture all the virtues which make a man perfect.Has not God in
fact won for himself a claim on all our love?

From all eternity he has loved us. And it is in this vein that he speaks to
us: “O man, consider carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared
in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From
all eternity I have loved you”.

Women "ordained" on the Three Rivers

What are there names?

(Found) Here are the names:

Eileen McCafferty DiFranco
Olivia Doko
Joan Clark Houk
Bridget Mary Meehan (Sister for Christian Community) (author)
Rebecca McGuyver
Dana Reynolds
Kathleen Strack
Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg

Cheryl Bristol (who identifies herself as a lesbian by birth, Catholic by choice)
Juanita Cordero
Mary Ellen Robertson (author of two books)
Janice Sevre-Duszynska

Where do they work?

Can anyone find this info, it seems absent from every news story I've read. Time for them to come out of the closet.

Tropical Storm Chris Forms in the Atlantic

From the Sun Sentinel:

Tropical Storm Chris, the third named storm of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane
season, developed early Tuesday near the Leeward Islands, forecasters said.

Chris
had sustained winds near 40 miles per hour, just above the threshold for a
tropical storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Why "When 'Ratzinger' was a Swear Word"?

A few commentor's have asked me why I would want to write a book about the divisiveness of the Church so I figured I'd answer here for others who may not have written.

This is one of those issues that there are endless examples of because "Ratzinger" became the lightning rod for both the left and the right (he's considered a liberal and heretic by the tridentine crowd) and there is great irony in him being chosen as pope.

I had hardly read anything he wrote before his election, but had to read as much as I could when he was elected because the publishing company I work for was doing a "quick book" on the election. It was during this time, reading his works that I came to see why he was such a threat to both sides--he has to be the most brilliant person I've read about the place of the faith in the world today! Benedict has answers for all sides.

Reflecting on this I grew rather angry that he had not been featured in my theological training. Studying him would have been invaluable for engaging the world that we live in and bringing the Gospel message to our time.

That the environment of the church is so incredibly hostile to him is a sure sign of demonic activity, I'd say. Yet the "gates of Hell" shall not prevail and the Holy Spirit has won the day!

I've written about the Vision of St. John Bosco on this blog before and I think my first chapter would lay out some of what I wrote there.

In an ironic twist I read just this morning that Pope Benedict is highlighting his papacy as one focused on unity. The Holy Spirit seems to have a great sense of humor.

Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola

He says it all right here...

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this
means to save his soul.
And the other things on the face of the earth are
created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he
is created.
From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help
him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as
to it.
For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created
things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not
prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness,
riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short
life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive
for us to the end for which we are created.

Cardinal George on the Mend

Faithful come to the hospital to offer prayers, from Chicago Sun Times:

George sat up for two hours in a chair Sunday. "He's getting a little tired doing it, but it was good for him,'' Dolan said.

Even though he was in bed, George celebrated Sunday mass in his room with Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Dolan said. His vital signs were stable and he had no fever.

The next step will be for George to start walking, she said. He walks with a limp and leg brace because of complications from childhood polio, so "he may have to use a walker or crutches."