Infanticide at Abortion Clinic in Florida

From LifeSite:

“We were able to locate the mother of this child, who is an 18-year-old female. We located her. She, in fact, reiterated that she did come to this clinic to have an abortion, and she gave birth to the baby while waiting for the doctor to arrive. The doctor was not here,” Lt. Ralph Garcia of the Hialeah Police Department told NBC6 News.

According to the anonymous caller who reported the incident, after the woman gave birth to her child in the waiting room, "Employees cut the umbilical cord, put the baby in a bag and walked away with it," Garcia said.

Pope's Student Circle Studies Evolution This Year

From Magister:

This year’s Ratzinger-Schülerkreis seminar will focus on "Schöpfung und
Evolution", creation and evolution. The private meeting is set for Saturday,
September 2, and Sunday, September 3, at the Pontifical Villa in the pope's
summer residence of Castel Gandolfo. The Ratzinger-Schülerkreis, that is the
‘Ratzinger Students’ Circle’, brings together once a year the old theology
professor, now pope Benedict XVI, and his former students to discuss a new topic
every year.

The first such meeting was held when Joseph Ratzinger was still a professor
in Regensburg. Once he became archbishop of Munich, his students asked him to
continue and he accepted.

When he moved to Rome to take up the post of prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith the annual event continued. Typically, meetings
were held at a monastery over a weekend. When the 2004 meeting ended,
participants left already knowing the following year’s subject: the concept of
God in Islam.

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.