Statue At National Shrine Of Saint Rita Vandalized

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
The statue of Saint Rita at the national shrine of Saint Rita of Cascia in Philadelphia was vandalized and the damages left behind are painful for parishioners to look at and difficult to comprehend.

"It's sad, really sad for someone to take their anger out on a holy person like her." said Eileen Alia, a local parishioner.

Father Joseph Genito of St. Rita of Cascia describes the beloved figure as" the saint of impossible cases and a healer."

According to Father Genito, the statue of Saint Rita stood inside this grotto for about 60 years. It was a gift from a family for a favor granted. But, sometime Friday night someone defaced the statue and got away.

"We found the statue outside the grotto and it had been put back up half way," said Genito.

Unable to imagine Saint Rita of Cascia parish without the statue, Christine Doran offered a temporary replacement stature for now. It is unknown how or if the statue can be repaired.

"Shocking that somebody would spend the time and effort and energy to do something so horrible," said Doran.

Police have been notified, but officials say as far as they know investigators have no leads and are relying on assistance from the public to crack this case.

"No one saw it happen, there is no indication. Nothing was written here so we have no idea why it happened," officials said.

Church officials say, whether it is repaired or replaced, the statue of Saint Rita will be back up again. In the meantime, they are urging anyone who may know anything about what happened to please come forward or contact police.

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President Obama speaks of the ‘call to love’ at Notre Dame commencement

U.S. President Barack Obama greets graduates after addressing commencement ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, May 17, 2009.

South Bend, Ind., May 17, 2009 / 03:43 pm (CNA).- President Barack Obama addressed graduates of the University of Notre Dame this afternoon. As he spoke about the importance of diversity and the "call to love," hundreds of protesters gathered in a prayer vigil for the conversion of the President on his stances on life issues such as abortion.

As the President began his speech, according to Fox News, protesters in the crowd began to shout before they were drowned out by others in the audience.

President Obama told the graduates that they must find a way to "reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity - diversity of thought, of culture, and of belief..."

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Father Z: "Was that Neville Chamberlain who intro'd the President?"

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McCorvey among those arrested at Notre Dame today

Graduates, families await presidential visit

By SANTIAGO FLORES
and MARGARET FOSMOE
Tribune Staff Writers

SOUTH BEND — Norma McCorvey, a primary figure in the controversial court case Roe v. Wade, and at least 36 others have been arrested today on the campus of the University of Notre Dame.

McCorvey, 61, threw her support Friday behind those protesting President Barack Obama’s invitation to speak here today.

A crowd of protesters is descending on South Bend for Obama’s commencement visit...

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Pope Reflects on Message of Christ's Empty Tomb

Leaves Holy Land With Words of Hope

JERUSALEM, MAY 15, 2009 (Zenit.org).- As Benedict XVI ended his eight-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he offered the region a reflection on the message of Christ's empty tomb: a message of hope and of the victory of good over evil.

The Pope delivered this message today during a visit to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, hours before he left the region to return to Rome.

Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land, along with delegates of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Armenian Apostolic Church, accompanied the Pope through the doors of the basilica, representing the three principle Churches responsible for organizing the worship in the basilica.

The Holy Father knelt on the floor to kiss and pray for a few moments Stone of Anointing, where tradition says Christ's body was washed and prepared for burial after being taken down from the cross.

Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the custos of the Holy Land, then invoked the Te Deum as the Pontiff entered the chapel containing the Holy Sepulcher, where Christ is believed to have been buried before rising on Easter Sunday.

"Standing in this holy place, and pondering that wondrous event," Benedict XVI asked afterward during a short meditation, "how can we not be 'cut to the heart?'

"Here Christ died and rose, never to die again. Here the history of humanity was decisively changed.

"The long reign of sin and death was shattered by the triumph of obedience and life; the wood of the cross lay bare the truth about good and evil; God's judgment was passed on this world and the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon humanity.

"Here Christ, the new Adam, taught us that evil never has the last word, that love is stronger than death, that our future, and the future of all humanity, lies in the hands of a faithful and provident God."

A gift of the Spirit

"The empty tomb speaks to us of hope," the Pontiff affirmed. "The hope that does not disappoint because it is the gift of the Spirit of life.

"May hope rise up ever anew, by God's grace, in the hearts of all the people dwelling in these lands! May it take root in your hearts, abide in your families and communities, and inspire in each of you an ever more faithful witness to the Prince of Peace!

"The Church in the Holy Land, which has so often experienced the dark mystery of Golgotha, must never cease to be an intrepid herald of the luminous message of hope which this empty tomb proclaims."

The Pope recalled the message of the Gospel, which "reassures us that God can make all things new, that history need not be repeated, that memories can be healed, that the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility can be overcome, and that a future of justice, peace, prosperity and cooperation can arise for every man and woman, for the whole human family, and in a special way for the people who dwell in this land so dear to the heart of the Savior."

"May our contemplation of this mystery spur our efforts, both as individuals and as members of the ecclesial community, to grow in the life of the Spirit through conversion, penance and prayer," he continued. "May it help us to overcome, by the power of that same Spirit, every conflict and tension born of the flesh, and to remove every obstacle, both within and without, standing in the way of our common witness to Christ and the reconciling power of his love."

The Holy Father urged those in the Holy Land to contemplate the empty tomb of the Savior: "In that tomb it is called to bury all its anxieties and fears, in order to rise again each day and continue its journey through the streets of Jerusalem, Galilee and beyond, proclaiming the triumph of Christ's forgiveness and the promise of new life."

"The peace for which this strife-torn land yearns has a name," he added, revealing it to be Jesus Christ.

"He is our peace," the Pontiff said, "who reconciled us to God in one body through the Cross, bringing an end to hostility. Into his hands, then, let us entrust all our hope for the future, just as in the hour of darkness he entrusted his spirit into the Father's hands."

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White House Panics Hiroshima With Enola Gay Photo-Op Flyover

TOKYO - Just days after the White House apologized about an Air Force One photo-op flight around the Statue of Liberty that panicked New Yorkers still skittish about 9/11, the White House apologized to the people of Japan for sending the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, for a photo-op flyover above the once-devastated city.

Early yesterday morning, on the White House’s instructions, the infamous bomber was secretly removed from display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and recommissioned for deployment.

Without alerting Hiroshima, an unnamed pilot, filmmaker Michael Moore and Vice President Joe Biden then flew the bomber over the city to film a recreation of the August 6, 1945 bombing that destroyed much of the city for Mr. Moore’s upcoming film Tōjō & Me, a film about Mr. Moore’s fictional efforts to speak with Hideki Tōjō, Japan’s prime minister in World War II.

Mr. Biden reportedly believed that the men were actually on a mission to drop an atomic bomb over Hiroshima.

After it became known that the mission terrified residents of Hiroshima, President Obama said he welcomed the opportunity to apologize to Japan.

“I was hoping to find some reason to apologize to Japan on behalf of the United States anyway, and this is the perfect opportunity.”

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How Notre Dame Drifted Away from the Catholic Church

By Paul Shlichta

Today, to the disgust and apparent surprise of many Catholic bishops and laity, the University of Notre Dame, once the pride of Catholic intellectual life in America, will behave in a very un-Catholic way by honoring, as commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient, POTUS Barack Obama, one of America's most extreme advocates of abortion.

This surprise is hard to understand. The old Latin proverb nemo repente turpissimus can be translated as "nobody becomes very evil overnight." Even Judas served a lengthy apprenticeship as an embezzler before moving on to greater betrayals. In a similar manner, I contend that the invitation to Obama was merely a milestone of a drift away from the Catholic Church that Notre Dame started decades ago.

How it Happened

One might imagine such a process taking place by external erosion, by a determinedly Catholic faculty being gradually forced to yield to the secular pressures of a materialistic world. On the contrary, I suspect that Notre Dame's decline and fall were caused by internal decay, rather like what Fr. Daniel A. Lord (a famous Catholic pamphleteer of the last century) called "spiritual termites". There is even evidence that the source of this decay was Notre Dame's own Department of Theology.

The process started a century ago, when the Catholic Church was attacked by a group of internal heresies that Pope Pius X collectively defined as "modernism"....

*snip*

Simultaneously, liberal seminary officials began discouraging "rigid" conservative aspirants to the priesthood and favoring more "flexible" liberally minded candidates. This weeding out process, described in detail in Michael Rose's Goodbye Good Men produced an overall shortage of priests and tended to bias the crop of future priests toward liberalism [3]. Thus, in imitation of the replication mechanism of viruses, liberal theologians used traditional Catholic institutions to reproduce their own kind and disseminate them throughout the Church...

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University wrong to place prestige above principle

“My favorite grandpa, Clem James Sheeran, was Catholic. Irish to the core, his favorite place (other than church) was Notre Dame. I can’t imagine what he would think as the university recognizes someone who contradicts the core values of the Catholic faith by promoting an anti-life agenda. As we learned today, our nation is more pro-life than ever before; it is a very important time to strengthen the message that every baby is created for good purpose and has the potential to make this world a better place.” - Sarah Palin

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Israel may be ready to back two-state solution

Pope Benedict XVI (R) shakes hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres (L) during his departure ceremony at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. The pope on Friday called for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict and slammed the Holocaust as "brutal extermination" as he wound up a Holy Land tour. (AFP/Jonathan Nackstrand)

May 16 01:50 PM US/Eastern
By AMY TEIBEL
Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - On the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's crucial visit to Washington, his defense minister suggested Saturday the Israeli leader might be ready to endorse a Palestinian state when he meets President Barack Obama.

That would be a significant shift for Netanyahu, who has made clear in the past that he does not think the Palestinians are ready to rule themselves. But that position has put him at odds with long-standing U.S. policy that supports Palestinian statehood as the cornerstone of Mideast peace efforts.

"I think and believe that Netanyahu will tell Obama this government is prepared to go for a political process that will result in two peoples living side by side in peace and mutual respect," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Channel 2 TV on Saturday.

Barak said he thought an agreement with the Palestinians could be achieved within three years. However, he did not explicitly use the word state in his remark, leaving open other options for Netanyahu...

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80 Year Old Priest Arrested at Notre Dame

Pope Benedict XVI prays in front of the traditional site where Jesus was crucified in the Golgotha, or Calvary, inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, May 15, 2009...

Ex-Archbishop Speaks About Catholic Church and Homosexuality

"In spring 2002, as the scandal over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests was escalating, the long career of Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, one of the church’s most venerable voices for change, went up in flames one May morning.

On the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the archbishop watched a man he had fallen in love with 23 years earlier say in an interview that the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid him $450,000 years before to keep quiet about his affair with the archbishop — an affair the man was now calling date rape.

The next day, the Vatican accepted Archbishop Weakland’s retirement.

Archbishop Weakland, who had been the intellectual touchstone for church reformers, has said little publicly since then..."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2251635/posts

Keyes, priest arrested at Notre Dame protest

"Notre Dame is arresting a priest," the Rev. Norman Weslin, founder of the Lambs of Christ abortion protest group, said as Notre Dame security personnel put plastic restraints on his wrists Friday. "Why are you arresting a priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby? You've got it all backward..."

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Ecumenical Meeting with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem

Pope Benedict XVI

Friday morning, 15 May 2009, after celebrating Mass in private in the chapel of the Apostolic Delegation, the Holy Father was transported by car to meet with His Beatitude the Patriarch Teofilo III in the Throne Hall of the Patriarchate. The Pope's discourse on the occasion was as follows.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is with profound gratitude and joy that I make this visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem; a moment to which I have much looked forward. I thank His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilus III for his kind words of fraternal greeting, which I warmly reciprocate. I also express to all of you my heartfelt gratitude for providing me with this opportunity to meet once again the many leaders of Churches and ecclesial communities present.

This morning I am mindful of the historic meetings that have taken place here in Jerusalem between my predecessor Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, and also between Pope John Paul II and His Beatitude Patriarch Diodoros. These encounters, including my visit today, are of great symbolic significance. They recall that the light of the East (cf. Is 60:1; Rev 21:10) has illumined the entire world from the very moment when a "rising sun" came to visit us (Lk 1:78) and they remind us too that from here the Gospel was preached to all nations.

Standing in this hallowed place, alongside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which marks the site where our crucified Lord rose from the dead for all humanity, and near the cenacle, where on the day of Pentecost "they were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1), who could not feel impelled to bring the fullness of goodwill, sound scholarship and spiritual desire to our ecumenical endeavors? I pray that our gathering today will give new impetus to the work of theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, adding to the recent fruits of study documents and other joint initiatives.

Of particular joy for our Churches has been the participation of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His Holiness Bartholomew I, at the recent Synod of Bishops in Rome dedicated to the theme: The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. The warm welcome he received and his moving intervention were sincere expressions of the deep spiritual joy that arises from the extent to which communion is already present between our Churches. Such ecumenical experience bears clear witness to the link between the unity of the Church and her mission. Extending his arms on the Cross, Jesus revealed the fullness of his desire to draw all people to himself, uniting them together as one (cf. Jn 12:32). Breathing his Spirit upon us he revealed his power to enable us to participate in his mission of reconciliation (cf. Jn 19:30; 20:22-23). In that breath, through the redemption that unites, stands our mission! Little wonder, then, that it is precisely in our burning desire to bring Christ to others, to make known his message of reconciliation (cf. 2 Cor 5:19), that we experience the shame of our division. Yet, sent out into the world (cf. Jn 20:21), empowered by the unifying force of the Holy Spirit (ibid. v. 22), proclaiming the reconciliation that draws all to believe that Jesus is the Son of God (ibid. v. 31), we shall find the strength to redouble our efforts to perfect our communion, to make it complete, to bear united witness to the love of the Father who sends the Son so that the world may know his love for us (cf. Jn 17:23).

Some two thousand years ago, along these same streets, a group of Greeks put this request to Philip: "Sir, we should like to see Jesus" (Jn 12:21). It is a request made again of us today, here in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land, in the region and throughout the world. How do we respond? Is our response heard? Saint Paul alerts us to the gravity of our response: our mission to teach and preach. He says: "faith comes from hearing, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ" (Rm 10:17). It is imperative therefore that Christian leaders and their communities bear vibrant testimony to what our faith proclaims: the eternal Word, who entered space and time in this land, Jesus of Nazareth, who walked these streets, through his words and actions calls people of every age to his life of truth and love.

Dear friends, while encouraging you to proclaim joyfully the Risen Lord, I wish also to recognize the work to this end of the Heads of Christian communities, who meet together regularly in this city. It seems to me that the greatest service the Christians of Jerusalem can offer their fellow citizens is the upbringing and education of a further generation of well-formed and committed Christians, earnest in their desire to contribute generously to the religious and civic life of this unique and holy city. The fundamental priority of every Christian leader is the nurturing of the faith of the individuals and families entrusted to his pastoral care. This common pastoral concern will ensure that your regular meetings are marked by the wisdom and fraternal charity necessary to support one another and to engage with both the joys and the particular difficulties which mark the lives of your people. I pray that the aspirations of the Christians of Jerusalem will be understood as being concordant with the aspirations of all its inhabitants, whatever their religion: a life of religious freedom and peaceful coexistence and - for young people in particular - unimpeded access to education and employment, the prospect of suitable housing and family residency, and the chance to benefit from and contribute to economic stability.

Your Beatitude, I thank you again for your kindness in inviting me here, together with the other guests. Upon each of you and the communities you represent, I invoke an abundance of God’s blessings of fortitude and wisdom! May you all be strengthened by the hope of Christ which does not disappoint!

---

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Atlantis silhouetted against the sun

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To Bear Witness To the Truth: An Unequivocal Moral Obligation for All Christians

by Rev. John Corapi, SOLT, STD

Every Catholic and, indeed, every Christian faithful to the Gospel, has the moral obligation to bear witness to the truth, “in season and out of season, convenient or inconvenient,” accepted or rejected. This mandate is nothing new, of course. It’s as old as the Old Testament, and as new as the New Testament. Nonetheless, I’m afraid that it has become more necessary than ever to remind ourselves of it.
The Magisterium formally teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2471, quoting Sacred Scripture, “Before [Pontius] Pilate, Christ proclaimed the He has ‘come into the world to bear witness to the truth’ (Jn 18:37). The Christian is not to be ‘ashamed then of testifying to our Lord’ (2 Tm 1:8). In situations that require witness to the faith, the Christian must profess it without equivocation, after the example of St. Paul before his judges. We must keep ‘a clear conscience toward God and toward men’” (Acts 24:16).
Let me give you one definition of equivocation: “A statement that is not literally false but that cleverly avoids an unpleasant truth; intentionally vague or ambiguous.” How about this for an example: “A woman has the right to choose.” Choose what? A less vague, ambiguous, and equivocal statement would be, “A woman (or man) has the right to choose to perpetrate homicide. Or, “A nation has the right to facilitate, enable, or legislate genocide.”
Oh, excuse me, that would be an unpleasant truth, or maybe an “inconvenient truth,” as the inventor of the internet, Al Gore, might say.

The Catholic Church unambiguously and formally teaches:
The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them [IMPELS THEM] to act as witnesses of the Gospel and the obligations that flow from it. This witness is a transmission of the faith in words and deeds. WITNESS IS AN ACT OF JUSTICE THAT ESTABLISHES THE TRUTH OR MAKES IT KNOWN (see Matthew 18:16).

The recent travesty involving the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to the President of the United States to give the commencement address and receive an honorary doctor of laws degree is the antithesis of Catholic and Christian witness to the truth. A lawyer who vigorously, publicly, and consistently support an anti-life and anti-family litany of evils will now receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from what is arguably the most prestigious Catholic University in America.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Indeed, what thousand words will be conveyed by the picture(s) of Mr. Obama receiving his honorary doctorate and sending off the graduating class at Notre Dame University?
This will be a dark day indeed for the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic Church that permitted it to happen. In the end, the bishops have the right and the duty to decide if the University of Notre Dame can any longer claim “Catholic” credentials.
Meanwhile, the obligation to bear witness to the truth weighs more heavily than ever on each one of us. We have rapidly entered into a new era of persecution of the Church and the truth that she professes and teaches, reminding us again,

"The disciple of Christ must not only keep faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.” (Lumen gentius 42; Dignitatis Humanae 14).
Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32-33).

God Bless You,
Fr. John Corapi

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