Pope Francis hosts Israeli-Palestinian peace prayer

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Sunday hosts an unprecedented joint peace prayer in the Vatican with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in a symbolic gesture aimed at fostering dialogue.

Abbas said he hoped the event in the Vatican Gardens at 1700 GMT, which will include Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers and the planting of an olive tree by all three leaders, would "help Israel decide".

"The pope's invitation was courageous," Abbas said in an interview with the La Repubblica daily.

"With this prayer we are sending a message to all believers of the three major religions and the others: the dream of peace must not die," he said.

Peres, who is 90 years old and will be stepping down as president next month, was quoted by his office as saying on Sunday: "The spiritual call (for peace) is very important and affects reality.

"I hope the event will contribute to promoting peace between the two sides and throughout the world," he said, adding that the conflict is "both political and religious" and "religious leaders resonate".

He defined it "an unusual call for peace"...

Speaking to thousands of followers in St Peter's Square, Francis pointed to the two colonnades around the plaza and said they were like "two arms which open to welcome but do not close again to imprison".

Francis earlier admitted it would be "crazy" to expect any Vatican mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but said prayer might help.

In a tweet from the pope's @pontifex account on Saturday, Francis said: "Prayer is all-powerful. Let us use it to bring peace to the Middle East and peace to the world."

The Vatican has defined the meeting as an "invocation for peace" but has stressed it will not be an "inter-religious prayer", which would have posed problems for the three faiths...

The choice of the Vatican Gardens as a location is also significant since it was considered the most neutral territory within the Vatican City, with none of the Christian iconography that might be seen as offensive to the other two faiths.

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• Pope Francis hosts Israeli-Palestinian peace prayer

Israel vandals hit mosque, church as Christians threatened

Jerusalem (AFP) - Vandals suspected of being Jewish extremists hit a mosque and a church in Israel, police said Tuesday, in the latest of a string of racist and religious attacks.

In a separate development, police arrested an Israeli man after he threatened the Roman Catholic bishop of Nazareth and demanded that Catholics leave the country or face God's wrath.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP vandals had scrawled "Close mosques and not yeshivas" (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall of a mosque in the small Arab town of Fureidis, near the northern port city of Haifa.

The tyres of several nearby cars had been slashed.

Police were also investigating vandalism at Tabgha church on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which was built on the site where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

Church officials said a group of religious Jews in their early teens had damaged crosses there and attacked clergy. 

Elsewhere in northern Israel, police arrested a Jewish man in his 40s for threatening Roman Catholic Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo of Nazareth, and members of his faith.

- Letter from the 'Messiah' -

In the letter, the suspect said all Christians, "except Protestants and Anglicans," should leave Israel by May 5 that if Marcuzzo and his community did not comply, they would all be "killed by the heavens".

There are also other Christian communities in Israel, such as the Eastern Orthodox, Armenians and Copts.

The letter, which was signed by "the Messiah, Son of David," quoted Jewish sources who hold that Christianity is a form of idolatry and should be banned. 

The suspect said the message must be distributed to the community through the media by 1700 GMT Tuesday, saying every hour of delay would "cost the lives of 100 Christian souls."

Reacting to the vandalism, police spokesman Rosenfeld said "crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious."

President Shimon Peres apologised to the mayor of Fureidis in the name of Israel's citizens, and said in remarks relayed by his office "we will do our utmost to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice."

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni also condemned the incidents.

"Whoever did these deeds is not part of my people," she wrote on her Facebook page, pledging to "catch and punish" those responsible. 

The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land said there was "a grave and increasing frequency of what are called 'price tag' attacks, which, in the absence of any real response, are becoming a dangerous phenomenon, threatening one and all."

Denouncing the attacks in Tabgha, the letter to the bishop and the Fureidis attack, it demanded "a thorough and serious investigation of those who incite, on an almost daily basis, against those who differ from them in opinion or belief.

"We pray that the events of yesterday and today might be the last of these criminal events, witnessed by our holy places and religious symbols in this Holy Land," its statement added.

Politically motivated acts of vandalism with their trademark Hebrew graffiti are euphemistically known as "price tag" attacks.

Carried out by suspected Jewish extremists, thought to be predominantly teenagers, the attacks initially targeted Palestinians and their property. They have since grown in scope to include Christian sites and anyone opposed to the settlements.

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• Israel vandals hit mosque, church as Christians threatened

What Dreams May Come: Azazel and the Pursuit of Justice

By Father Gordon J. MacRae

(These Stone Walls) In “Nightmares and Dreamscapes from the Desert,” a TSW post during Lent last year, I wrote of a recurring dream I’ve had throughout 18 years of imprisonment. The dream had multiple variations and outcomes, all of them anxiety producing, but one version in particular seemed to be an archetype for the dream’s central plot.

You might remember its details. In the dream, I was lost at night in a city vaguely familiar, pursued by a mob hunting me through the dark city streets. I climbed the steps of a Catholic church for refuge. That particular scene came right out of my childhood, and I wrote of it in “A Glorious Mystery for When the Dark Night Rises.” In my dream, however, the church doors were locked and its sanctuary inaccessible.

Left on the stairs of the church with the pursuing mob closing in, I turned from them to face the huge bronze doors. There I saw an immense, finely detailed bas relief of the Crucified Christ cast into the bronze of the huge door. Someone in the mob let loose a stone aimed at me, but it missed me and struck the Crucifix. I awoke muttering something I’ll always remember: “The stone that was meant for me struck Thee.”

I have very vivid dreams in prison, sometimes with plots that seem to run all night long, though I know they don’t. That dream and many others very much like it have been both the cause and effect of anxiety, a problem that every prisoner seems to have in abundance. What’s central to the plot in every variation of the dream is the fact that I am a priest being pursued by a lynch mob.

A lot of people don’t know that “lynch mob” is a term that originated just after America’s Revolutionary War. In 1780, after America gained its independence from Great Britain, Colonial Army Captain William Lynch of Virginia organized his own private army. It was a band of former soldiers intent on seeking and punishing Loyalists, Colonists who remained loyal to Britain during the war. Too often, Captain Lynch’s only evidence came from anonymous informants, and with that spectral evidence he and his mob descended upon farms to summarily convict and hang their occupants. Hence the term, “Lynch mob” which used to be capitalized in the English lexicon.

My lynch mob dream is interesting because from it you can easily pinpoint some of the reality that has befallen many accused priests. With policies that left accused priests standing alone and exposed outside Church doors, the mob – aka, SNAP, VOTF, and much of the secular and Catholic press – closed in for trials without evidence and condemnations without defense. I happen to know first hand that once a priest is so condemned to wear the scarlet letter of accusation, there is great resistance in some Chancery offices to hearing any defense.

Some might think it’s risky to write of such dreams on These Stone Walls. Some think I shouldn’t let people into my psyche so openly, but there’s really not that much going on in here. Besides, I found that writing about the troublesome lynch mob dream robbed it of its power, and I haven’t had it since. Others have come to take its place, however, and I had one recently.

In this new emanation of the dream, I was brought in chains to a court hearing on our new appeal that has been ever so slowly evolving in fits and start since it was filed one year ago. In the new dream, I stood before a judge who in the end ordered all my chains removed and declared me to be free. The lawyers all congratulated each other and shook my hand in the dream, and then they got into their cars and left me standing on the courthouse steps alone. With my bonds of 18 years suddenly removed, I was free. I was also tired and hungry and I realized with anxiety in the dream that for over 18 years I had been a non-person. I had no money, no identity – at least no identity that anyone in my diocese dared acknowledge – and no place to go.

Then it was night in the dream, and I was on the city streets again. I knew I had been there many times before, but there was no mob. 1 walked to the only place 1 knew, the parish where I once served 30 years ago. A priest I once knew opened the door and declared, “I cannot help you,” then slammed the door leaving me in the cold. I went into the church through a back door found open, and I fell asleep in a pew, the Blessed Sacrament’s vigil candle burning brightly just a few feet away.

I don’t think I had ever had a dream about falling asleep before. Anyway while it was still dark, I was awakened in the pew by my brother priest who had called the police to have me charged me with trespassing. The chains removed just hours earlier were put back on me, and I was taken back to prison, full circle, to where the dream about freedom began.

The priest at the rectory door, and his “I cannot help you” comment, was also a real experience that Ryan MacDonald wrote of in an article entitled “To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy.” It wounded me deeply when it happened a few years ago. It troubled me again when I read it in Ryan’s article, and yet again when it entered my midwinter night’s bad dream. Obviously, my psyche and soul are telling me that it needs some attention.

WHAT THE JEWS KNOW OF JUSTICE

Ryan MacDonald’s use of the term, “To Azazel” in his title was very clever. It’s a mysterious term, used in Scripture on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) when the high priest placed his hands on a goat upon which was imposed all the sins and transgressions of the people. This Scripture passage in the Book of Leviticus (16: 8-10; 20-28) was the origin of the term “scapegoat.” The scapegoat was then sent into the desert, “To Azazel.”

The actual meaning of “Azazel” is uncertain. It appears to be both a name and a place, or even a social standing. According to the Jewish Apocryphal book, 1 Enoch (8:1; 10: 4-6), Azazel is the name of a fallen angel, a demon of the desert. The name also denotes the region to which the scapegoat is sent bearing the sins of others. Its place in the desert is the land of the lost, a place from which the scapegoat is never allowed to return... (continued)

Click Here to Read More at These Stone Walls

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• What Dreams May Come: Azazel and the Pursuit of Justice

Related:

• Father MacRae’s opening judicial “hearing” in his bid for justice TODAY 
• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Florida Democrat Resigns After Anti-Christian Comment Goes Viral

A Florida Democrat has resigned from his county chairmanship after anti-Christian comments he made at the Democratic National Convention spread through an online video.

By Breitbart News

Mark Siegel resigned Friday from his post in the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, according to the communications director of the state's Democratic Party, Brannon Jordan.

Siegel, speaking to a conservative journalist in Charlotte, NC, said he wasn't a fan of Christianity because "the Christians just want [Jews] to be there so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ."



Terrie Rizzo, the county's vice chairman, has replaced Siegel as chairman. Siegel's resignation reverses his actions on Thursday, one day after the comments first went public -- where he publicly apologized but stated he would hold on to his job.

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• Fla. Pol Resigns After Anti-Christian Comment Goes Viral

Pope: Angelus / Rome Synagogue Visit / Christian Unity / Haiti

Judge Bars Father From Taking His Jewish Baby To Catholic Church

Joseph Reyes is barred from taking his baby daughter to any church that is not Jewish, under a court order approved Friday.

Wife Says Taking Daughter To Christian Service Will Confuse Child

CHICAGO (CBS) ― A father has been hit with an unusual restraining order: Keep his daughter away from any religion that is not Jewish. After the girl's parents split up, the father went to a Catholic church and had the girl baptized, CBS station WBBM-TV reports.

Joseph Reyes, 35, had his daughter baptized and sent his ex-wife a picture of the ceremony.

Rebecca Reyes says she only learned of her daughter's Baptism when Joseph sent her the picture, and that he sent it out of malice. Joseph Reyes denies this.

"I sent it because Rebecca asked me for pictures," he said.

Rebecca Reyes says dhe wants her daughter raised Jewish, and that her husband pledged to do so, even going so far as to convert to Judaism himself.

"That's not accurate," he responded. "I'm not going to call her a liar, but … at the very least she's mistaken regarding that conversation."

But Rebecca Reyes says it's her estranged husband who made the mistake when he had their daughter baptized. In her petition, she argues that if he's allowed to raise the child in any faith other than Judaism, he will cause their daughter irreparable harm.

"I wouldn't harm my daughter simply to somehow spite my soon (soon)to-be ex-wife," Joseph Reyes said. "That's silly and ridiculous."

Reyes' divorce attorney, Joel Brodsky, said when he first saw the petition for a temporary restraining order against his client, he couldn't believe what he was reading.

"I almost fell off my chair," he said. "I thought maybe we were in Afghanistan and this was the Taliban. This is America. We have a First Amendment right of freedom of religion."

The restraining order asks the judge to bar Joseph from taking his daughter to church. According to the petition, failure to restrain him will "continue to the emotional detriment of the child."

Rebecca and her attorneys declined to go on camera but they did release the following statement: "We stand by our petition. We feel the judge will do whatever is best for the child."

The attorney for Joseph Reyes says he will appeal Friday's order.

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Egyptian Cleric Mahmoud Al-Masri Recommends Tricking Jews into Becoming Muslims

Following are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Al-Masri, which aired on Al-Nas TV on August 10, 2009:

...I'd like to tell you a very nice story. Once there was a Muslim who lived next to a Jew. The Muslim saw in the Jew a measure of goodheartedness - however small - and he wanted to find any way to make him convert to Islam. So he went to him and asked: "Don't you feel the need for Islam? Why don't you become a Muslim?" The Jew said: "The only thing preventing me from becoming a Muslim is that I love drinking alcohol. I would have become a Muslim ages ago, but the only thing stopping me is that I am an alcoholic."

The Muslim devised a plan. He said: "No problem - become a Muslim, and continue to drink." The Muslim didn't meant this, of course, but he said to him: "Become a Muslim, and continue to drink." The Jews said: "Fine." He said: "I proclaim that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." The Muslim said to him: "Now you have become a Muslim. If you drink alcohol, we will carry out the punishment for drinking alcohol on you, and if you renounce Islam, we will kill you." So the man remained a Muslim and never drank alcohol again. This was a nice trick by this good Muslim...

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Israeli ambassador confirms Pope Benedict may wear cross at Western Wall

Rome, Italy, Mar 18, 2009 / 02:13 am (CNA).- Contrary to comments attributed to an Israeli rabbi, Pope Benedict XVI will not be barred from entering the holy area of Jerusalem’s Western Wall while wearing a cross.

On Tuesday the Jerusalem Post quoted Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees worship matters at the Western Wall, as saying that the Pope should not wear a cross during his visit to the area.

“It is not fitting to enter the Western Wall area with religious symbols, including a cross,” the rabbi reportedly said, according to SIR.

Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See, issued a clarifying statement saying that the Jerusalem Post’s quotation was “misleading.”

Ambassador Lewy said that Israel will “respect, as a matter of course, the religious symbols of the Holy Father and of his entourage, as expected in accordance with rules of hospitality and dignity,” following the same procedure applied in Pope John Paul II’s papal visit to Israel in 2000.

“This was confirmed to a high Official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Jerusalem personally by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch,” the ambassador’s statement continued.

Pope Benedict is scheduled to visit the Western Wall on May 12 as part of his journey to the Holy Land.

• Israeli ambassador confirms Pope Benedict may wear cross at Western Wall
• Western Wall rabbi says pope should not wear cross at site

Benedict XVI Expresses Solidarity With Jews

Vatican Spokesman Hopes Statement Clarifies Church Position

By Mirko Testa

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 28, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI expressed solidarity with Jews and strongly condemned the use of concentration camps during World War II in his response to the uproar caused by lifting the excommunication of a holocaust-denying bishop.

Speaking today after delivering his weekly general audience address, the Pope addressed for the first time a rift that began Saturday when the Vatican lifted the excommunication of Lefebvrite Bishop Richard Williamson.

The bishop had appeared days earlier on Swedish television claiming that historical evidence denies the gassing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. He also alleged that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II.

Bishop Williamson was one of four prelates of the Society of St. Pius X who were illicitly ordained to the episcopate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. The excommunication was also lifted for the other three bishops, and was meant to be a step toward healing the division caused by the ordinations some 20 years ago.

Today the Pontiff acknowledged the horror of the Holocaust, and especially the death camps such as Auschwitz, which he said "carried out the brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of a blind racial and religious hate."

The Pope expressed his "hope that the memory of the Shoah moves humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human heart," and that the Holocaust "be for everyone a warning against forgetting, against negating or reductionism, because violence committed against even one human being is violence against all."

"No man is an island," Benedict XVI continued, referring to the English Poet John Donne (1571-1631).

"May the Shoah teach especially, as much the old generations as the new ones, that only the tiring path of listening and dialogue, of love and pardon, leads peoples, cultures and religions of the world to the desired encounter of fraternity and peace in the world," he said. "May violence never again humiliate the dignity of man!"

Sufficient

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said immediately following the audience that the Pope's statements on the Holocaust "should be more than sufficient to respond to the questions of those who doubt the position of the Pope and the Catholic Church."

Since the weekend, reports had been circulating that the Rabbinate of Israel would indefinitely sever ties with the Vatican, which were established in 2000 when Pope John Paul II visited Israel, and cancel a meeting of the Commission for Religious Relations of the Holy See set for March.

The Vatican and the state of Israel have had their own, separate relationship since establishing diplomatic ties in 1993, and the current situation does not affect state relations.

Father Lombardi said today he hoped that "the difficulties presented by the Rabbinate of Israel can be the object of a subsequent and more profound reflection," and that Vatican-Jewish relations "can go forward fruitfully and serenely."

In an interview that aired today on Italian television, Oded Wiener, the director-general of the Rabbinate of Israel, affirmed the importance of relations with the Vatican: "I think that it is fundamental as much for us as for the Vatican itself."

Regarding Benedict XVI's comments after the general audience, Wiener underlined: "In the first place I believe that the declaration of the Pope this morning have been extremely important, for us and for the entire world. There is no place for people such as Williamson that deny the existence of the Holocaust."

"I think it has been a big step forward," he added.

The Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, said he was "very happy for a declaration from such a high level by the Holy See that clarifies and helps to overcome these misunderstanding."

"I think that it is erroneous, now, to personalize the question concentrating on a single bishop," he added.

With regard to the intention of Benedict XVI to travel to the Holy Land in May, the Israeli ambassador said "the Pope is welcome in Israel today, as he was welcomed yesterday and the day before."

[Adapted by Karna Swanson]

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Related:

• Video: Benedict XVI: Remission of excommunication an act of mercy
• Video: Benedict XVI: Never again the violence, never again the Shoah

Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms

NEW YORK - Holocaust survivors said Monday they were abandoning negotiations with the Mormon church over its posthumous baptisms of Jews who were killed in Nazi death camps.

Survivors claim elders of the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have refused to systemically search for and remove the names of Holocaust victims from their master genealogical database and have failed to prevent "zealots" from adding thousands of new Jewish names to the list in recent years - including thousands lifted from Yizkor books of Jews massacred at Berdichev in Ukraine.

"We are not going to continue meeting with the Mormon Church," said Auschwitz survivor Ernest Michel, head of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, who has spearheaded efforts to scrub the Mormon lists since discovering in the 1990s that his parents were among 380,000 Holocaust victims having been baptized into the Christian faith.

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Joint Orthodox Jewish-Catholic statement voices ‘shared commitment’ to marriage

New York, Sep 4, 2008 / 09:44 pm (CNA).- A joint statement on marriage has been issued by a group of Orthodox Jewish and Catholic leaders, affirming their faiths’ “shared commitment” to God’s design of marriage between one man and one woman. Challenging efforts to create a “new definition” of marriage, the statement reaffirms the duty of the state to safeguard the traditional place of marriage.

Representing Catholics, the Bishop of Rockville Centre William Murphy signed the statement. He was joined by consulting members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

On the Orthodox Jewish side, Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, the rabbi of the Young Israel Synagogue in New York, signed the statement with consulting members of the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America.

The statement says that, at a time when many U.S. communities are discussing the meaning of marriage, leaders of both faiths affirm their commitment to “the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image (Gen. 1:26-27), so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals (Gen. 2:21-24), in the procreation of children (Gen. 1:28) and the building up of society.”

Noting the rise in demand for the legal establishment of same-sex marriage, the statement authors acknowledge the equal human dignity of all people but insist that this dignity “does not justify the creation of a new definition for a term whose traditional meaning is of critical importance to the furtherance of a fundamental societal interest.”

Saying that God’s design for marriage “clearly revolves around the union of male and female, first as husband and wife, and then as parents,” the statement explains that the goal of reproduction and the raising of families constitute the “unique goal” and “essential function” of unions between a man and a woman.

Laws describing same-sex unions as marriage, the statement argues, “Dilutes the special standing of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Noting that every society’s future depends on its ability to reproduce and to raise young people in a stable environment, the statement asserts “it is the duty of the state to protect the traditional place of marriage and the family for the good of society.”

While granting that others are free to disagree with them, the signatories conclude: “we hope that even those outside of our common religious traditions will recognize that we speak from the truth of human nature itself which is consistent with both reason and the moral life.”

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