Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
The difference between how the Pope is treated in Europe compared to the cheering crowds and affection he finds in the USA has been on full display this week.
Only a few weeks ago, a university in Rome that was founded by a past pope effectively protested his impending visit there. Pope Benedict XVI cancelled and stayed home. And while there have been a few protesters along the route or outside the different venues this week, they have been few and largely marginalized.
In a particularly decent gesture, the Pope met with five people who had been caught up in clergy sexual abuse in Boston. He did so out of the spotlight and as a pastor and shepherd. It was no media event and was not announced ahead of time.
His meeting with Catholic college presidents likewise was much anticipated, especially by moretraditional catholics who have lamented for some time that the Catholic colleges had drifted too far from orthodoxy and actually were stunting the growth of religious faith. Details on that can be found at our sister site Ivory Tower Heretics and at The Cardinal Newman Society web page.
Everywhere the Pope went, you could hear affection from the crowds, from the thousands at the White House singing Happy Birthday, to the huge crowd at Mass at National's Stadium.
Contrast that with the reception he receives in Europe. When the Pope speaks there it is met with a yawn, indifference or scorn. Europe has lost its soul. The most striking rebuke was when the European Union Constitution was written and credited Greek and Roman civilizations for their contributions but omitted all mention of the Catholic Church and her 2,000 year imprint on Europe.
In the book Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, by Steven Paul, the author describes how the Book of Revelation speaks of a time when the forces of Antichrist will close in on the Vatican in Rome forcing the hierarchy to flee. She is the "Woman Clothed With The Sun." The "Woman" flees with the aid of the "Two Wings of the Eagle, The Great One" to the "Wilderness."
Paul explains that wilderness is a term for a non-Catholic country. Why would the "Woman" flee to a non-Catholic country? Perhaps because the Catholic countries have either apostatized or are under the control or influence of Antichrist.
This week's events make it seem more plausible that the USA would and will perform such an act of mercy as the rescue of the Woman. That team helped end Soviet communist domination over a billion people and will work again to keep the world free.
Note: The book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation", by Steven Paul essentially makes the same claim as this wacko from Hamas, that Rome will eventually be overrun by the kingdom of Antichrist and the Church will have to flee for safety. Isn't it ironic that this member of the Palestinian Parliament, an sort of oxymoron, sends this message while the pope is in the US?
Hamas Cleric Predicts 'Rome Will Be Conquered by Islam' Monday , April 14, 2008
A sermon last Friday by a prominent Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament openly declared that "the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital," would soon be conquered by Islam.
The fiery sermon, delivered by Yunis al-Astal and aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."
"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal preached, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world. "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad," he added.
Al-Astal last June preached how it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.
"The most exalted form of jihad is fighting for the sake of Allah, which means sacrificing one's soul by fighting the enemies head-on, even if it leads to martyrdom," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview.
"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said, calling Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death."
Friday's rant repeated that theme: "Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.
"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them.
"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."
Note: It would be easy to dismiss the Bin Laden statement as hubris from a reclusive, dying man and a reclusive, dying ideology if not for the knee-jerk reaction to burn things and chant in mindless protest in much of the backwards Muslim world. Photos like the one below could be taken in any of a dozen or so countries anytime one of the jihadi leaders points out a new grievance or whips up an old one. It would be better for the media to ignore them if not for the real and present danger they present for unsuspecting westerners caught in the cross-fire.
Vatican Blasts Bin Laden's Claim of Pope's Anti-Islam 'Crusade'; CIA Is 'Confident' Voice Is Terror Leader's
Thursday , March 20, 2008
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Thursday that Usama bin Laden's accusation that Pope Benedict XVI had played a role in a worldwide campaign against Islam is "baseless," as the CIA said it was "confident" that the voice on the tape is in fact the terror leader's.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was not surprising that bin Laden had mentioned the pope in a new audiotape posted late Wednesday on a militant Web site -- which the CIA believes is authentic, a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters.
"He was already named in previous messages," Lombardi said in a telephone interview. "It is absolutely baseless (to accuse) the pope of contributing to a lack of respect toward Islam" and its prophet, Muhammad, Lombardi said.
In the tape, bin Laden warned of a "severe" reaction for Europe's publication of cartoons of the prophet and said they were part of a "new Crusade" against Islam in which Benedict had played a "large and lengthy role."
Lombardi noted that the pope and the Vatican have criticized the cartoons on several occasions. In 2006, after the caricatures were first published in a Danish newspaper, the Vatican said the cartoons represented an "unacceptable provocation," and that the right to freedom of expression "cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
The pope later said religious symbols must be respected, but he also condemned as unjustified the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed the publication of the cartoons. Benedict has recently taken steps to improve relations with moderate Islam.
In November he will meet Muslim religious leaders for a seminar that was organized after 138 Muslim scholars and intellectuals wrote to Benedict and other Christian leaders to encourage Christians and Muslims to develop their common ground of belief in one God.
In a 2006 speech in Germany that angered many in the Muslim world, Benedict cited a medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."
The pope later said he was "deeply sorry" about the reactions his remarks sparked and stressed that they did not reflect his own opinions.
1 And a great sign was seen [ophthe] in the heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown [stephanos] of twelve stars, 2 and holding in womb, and she cried out having birth pangs and being put to the test to bring forth. 3 and there was seen another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fire-colored dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems, 4 and its tail dragged by force [syrei] the third of the stars of the heaven and cast out them unto the earth, and the dragon took his stand in the presence of the woman the one about to bear, so that when she bore it might devour the thing born of her [to teknon autës]. 5 and she bore a son virile [yion arsen], who was about to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. and snatched away was the thing born of her to the God and to his throne. 6 and the woman fled unto the wilderness, where she has therein a place prepared by the God, so that therein they may nourish her [trephosin auten] for days one thousand two hundred sixty.
A long time ago, in a mind far, far away, there sprang an opinion. Since then, many hundreds of millions of people have propagated that opinion and perpetuated it into an inveterate tradition throughout the Church, to wit, that the "woman clothed with the sun" is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I would gladly agree with the many hundreds of millions who assert that 12:1 describes Mary, if I could with impunity take that verse out of its context. But, John warned rue not to add one word to the prophecy and not to subtract one word from it, as stated in 22:18-19; and, surely, what applies to one word in the prophecy must apply to a whole verse.
Let the reader please note the little comma after the noun "stars" at the end of verse 1; that comma is followed by the connective kai at the beginning of verse 2; and the "period," which ends the sentence composed of verses 1 & 2, comes after the infinitive "to bear" or "to bring forth" [tekein]. This all means that the contents of verse 2 are connected to and simultaneous with the contents of verse 1. Hence, according to the many hundreds of millions, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has already died and been assumed, body and soul, into the glorified state and has been crowned Queen of Heaven, is again pregnant--in heaven above, no less!--where, according to Christ, there is no marriage.
Perhaps, the many millions are tacitly asserting that Mary became Queen of Heaven before Jesus was born, and that, therefore, either Mary or Saint Dominic confused the order of the glorious mysteries in the Rosary, so that the Coronation should precede the Assumption. Frankly, I find it a mystery that such an opinion about 12:1 has become the first reading in the Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption. In Apocalypse 1:19, Christ told John,
"Now write the things that you saw and the things that are and the things about to come into existence after these things."
In 4:1, John is told,
"Come up hither, and I will show you the things that must come into existence after these things."
In 1:19, the term, "after these things" [meta tauta], refers to "the things that you saw and the things that are..." in 4:1; the term, "after these things," refers to the seven letters, i.e., 'the things that are." Hence, the term, 'the things that are about to come into existence," or, 'the things that must come into existence,' unmistakably refers to future things, things that would happen after the Apocalypse was copied and circulated by the year, say, 100 AD. Chapter 12 belongs to those future things, and, therefore, it has absolutely nothing to do with describing the birth and death and ascension of Jesus, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, etc. So, the argument up to this point, alone, suffices to refute the opinion that the woman is Mary.
Now I will reason from the given information in the text to the woman's real identity, keeping alert to John's practice of using physical things as symbols of spiritual things, and paying attention to context, the context that does not extend merely to the whole Apocalypse, but to the whole Bible. After all, the Apocalypse is the culmination of Biblical prophecy. John could have begun Chapter 12, typically, thus,
"And I saw a woman clothed with the sun, ..."
Instead, he wrote,
"And a great sign was seen in the heaven, ..."
With this introduction, John immediately gave the reader general instruction concerning the particulars that would follow. To call the reader's attention to this instruction, he repeated it in verse 3,
"and another sign was seen in the heaven, ..." [I trust the reader has learned that John did not employ idle repetition.]
Now, the prophetic term "sign" was mentioned often in the New Testament:
(1) The Apostles asked Jesus about the "sign" of his coming. [Mt. 24:3] (2) The Pharisees demanded that Christ prove his divinity by a 'sign from heaven." [Mt. 16:1] (3) Saint Paul warned about 'signs and false wonders" worked by evil powers. [2 Thes. 2:9] (4) Saint John mentioned signs performed by the False Prophet. [Apoc. 13:13, 16:14] (5) Simeon in the Temple prophesied of the infant Jesus: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." [Lk. 2:34-35]
From the aforegiven instances may be drawn the idea that "a sign is someone or something VISIBLE to the naked human eye." Therefore, according to John's instruction, the woman in Chapter 12 will be an entity that people CAN SEE; thus, the phrase, "in the heaven," must signify 'in the Church as VISIBLE organization."
Many a "sign" is prophetic. In Chapter 12, the woman, as 'sign," is also prophetic, for she is herself and points to something else: she is the 'GREAT sign" that alludes forward to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD. But this 'great sign" is not just the woman. Understand that this "sign" includes the son she will bring forth, and, thus, also the activity he will initiate in the Church.
Note: This plea reminds me of the cry from the martyrs under the altar in the Apocalypse. Patience is wearing thin for sure. But according to Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, Satan is in the Church, even the highest levels, and will not be cast out until the time of the "Great Sign." Until then, much suffering will continue.
MEMO TO THE POPE: PLEASE YOUR HOLINESS, ADDRESS CRISIS OF FAITH WITH THE BISHOPS
Holy Father, as everyone knows, you'll soon be among us! In April -- just a couple months away -- you will be visiting the U.S. Thank God for that! No doubt you'll handle this with your characteristic insight, prayerfulness, courage, and aplomb. We look forward to it. Thank you for being prayerful. Thank you for being faithful to the legacy of John Paul. Thank you so much for nudging our Church back to the right kind of music. Thank you for the call for protection of God's Creation. Thank you for not folding in to pressure when it came to the Good Friday prayer for Jews (in the Latin Rite). Thank you for both loving and communicating with but also standing up to Muslims. Thank you so much, Your Holiness, for gradually bringing back old Latin-style mysticism.
These are times of purification (and spiritual warfare) and of course your name is Benedict! You told us just the other day to confront evil. Our Church is going through a purification, and perhaps the beginning of recovering its lost treasures (or at least some of them). It is this, Your Holiness, that we would like to address.
May we be so bold, when it comes to your trip, as to offer a few recommendations? Please, Holy Father, speak even more on music during your trip. In some churches, it all but obscures the liturgy. There is that drumbeat. There is the sugar-sweet modernistic music -- as we try to pray. Surely there are no clashing cymbals in Heaven!
Meanwhile, homilies are often too intellectual, focused almost exclusively on the past. How about the present? How about the future? It is the dryness of religion that creates the desert. Please tell our good shepherds to speak about the miraculous! Please tell them to relate personally to us. There are miracles in our chapels. There are healings. These are largely ignored. Remember the miraculous Christian origin?
Holy Father, there is a real crisis of belief among our good bishops. You must speak to them as you never have -- with both love and urgency. There is a fear among U.S. clerics to believe in the supernatural because of what you so rightly have called the distortions of science. Please reorient our priests, our dioceses, away from scientism and back toward toward the deliverance of Jesus. Let them come into our midst in their miters and cast out spirits! Please speak on Adoration, Holy Father. Urge bishops on the importance. This alone will bring vocations and inspiration and exorcism.
There are many good, holy priests left. They live almost a white martyrdom. Often, they are cast away into the outlying parishes. But they are there. They are the backbone. They must be defended. Our Church will survive. No doubt -- even despite the crushing reality of church closings. But please tell our dear priests, Holy Father -- Our Lady's special sons -- to return to the mystical roots of the Faith. Please tell the nuns and priests and brothers and everyone else to stay clear of alternate beliefs. Holy Father, there is an epidemic here of the New Age. It has infiltrated dozens of Catholic retreat centers. Almost a majority. Many convents are less centers of prayer than ashrams. We're not sure you have been informed of the extent. Crystals, psychobabble, labyrinths. The same ones who allow all that disdain the devout and dismiss blessed salt as a superstition.
So it is, Holy Father, that naked we stand, as the enemy advances. Many clerics don't even seem to believe in the existence of the devil as he runs rampant around them (and especially in our seminaries). There is a planned "exorcism center" for Poland. How about North America? It is very serious. It must be approached as a mystical crisis, not one that can be addressed at an annual meeting. They must be pushed into a sense of battle. They must see your trip as the thunderous approach of reinforcements, of the larger battalion.
Perhaps it is time to ask the bishops and cardinals to put the tabernacle back in the center and the chairs that priests use off to the side. Perhaps this will start to humble us. Perhaps this will bring the right thing at the center. Please urge bishops who are closing churches to turn them into oratories (instead of selling them to realtors). Please address the Catholic colleges that not only ignore Catholicism but negate it. (They have a play called the Vagina Monologues at Notre Dame!)
Please, please, Holy Father: address the crisis of Catholic schools. Scold this nation for not allowing vouchers -- for not even allowing the deduction of tuition from taxes! Desperately, we need you to speak, as you have the ear of the nation, of Congress, about the incredible unfairness. Our Catholic schools can not be allowed to die. We hope we are not being pretentious but in many ways our society and our Church (at least in the West) are at a tipping point. Often, the only orthodox priests are foreign ones. As much as it hurts to say, Holy Father, many faithful have lost faith in their bishops. There are the majority who are so good and have fought the odds to be where they are -- despite the culture around them. Dear bishops indeed!
But in far too many instances -- Holy Father -- the spirit of bureaucracy has overcome the Holy Spirit. We have many good men who are not allowed into seminaries -- who are turned away because they are devout -- and priests who were never even taught how to bless a house (or Holy Water)!
Please tell your bishops to go out among the people. Please tell them to forget the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner. Please urge them to forgo the opulence. Please urge far more prayer (than administration). John Paul II prayed seven hours a day!
This we hate to discuss, but there is the abuse crisis. Holy Father, much has been purged (many abusers have been exposed), but there is still the niggling feeling that the general issue of homosexuality in the priesthood has not been fully confronted. There are churches in the U.S. that rent out to blasphemous transvestite groups but won't allow a talk on Fatima.
Holy Father, it may be a bit too critical and suspicious and ardent but it has gotten to the point where one Catholic writer in the beleaguered archdiocese of Boston has hinted (in a new book) that the slow response and at times cover-up in abuse cases was due to homosexual blackmail -- that certain bishops themselves have been compromised and thus neutralized. Is this true? Notes one reviewer: "The account offered is devastating and the blame is clearly laid at the door of the American bishops. 'The thesis of this book,' writes [author Phil] Lawler, 'is that the sex abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential; to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the Divine mandate.' Bishops again and again responded to the crisis as institutional managers, employing public relations stratagems to evade, deceive, and distract attention from their own responsibility.
"Lawler adds: 'Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of the sex abuse crisis. The corruption wrought by that influence was a more important factor.' He very gingerly addresses a theory proposed by a number of commentators on the crisis, namely, that bishops engaged in cover-ups and other deceptions because they were threatened with homosexual blackmail. He cites a number of instances in which this appears to be the case and bishops were permitted to resign when their misdeeds could no longer be denied. 'The blackmail hypothesis,' he writes, 'provides a logical explanation for behavior that is otherwise inexplicable: the bishops’ willingness to risk the welfare of the faithful and their own reputations in order to protect abusive priests.'"
These are not our words. But you see our point; you see the bitterness. You see the suspicions. We need to purge any homosexuals who have positions of any sort of prominence. There was a real and serious infiltration.
Three years ago, during the first Holy Week of your papacy, you spoke of the "filth" in the priesthood. Perhaps, when you are in New York, that language needs to be repeated. We don't like to stray so far into such territory, but you can see the mindset of many dedicated Catholics. A priest or bishop will in some cases bless a Mardi Gras or even a "gay-pride" event and do so with pleasure at the same time that he turns down Adoration.
Why, for example, would a priest wear a vestment like that to the right? How are we to react? Please call on our bishops to evangelize. Please call on them to be holy. Please call on them to evoke the Holy Spirit. He will cleanse! He will resurrect! Perhaps the best way of urging evangelization is to do so yourself during your trip -- laying on hands, exercising charisms, letting our great Church leaders know the way to evoke the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit Who will fill the pews again -- not intellectual language. We do not so much need terms like "Mulieris Dignitatem" or "humanum" as simply, "Praise God!" (or "Get thee hence, Satan!"). A Benedict you are! Like your namesake, you fight evil. And now, you will be stepping on the devil's turf. Do you not always step on the devil's turf?
And in your courage, do you not always confront evil and win?
Note: To me, the prayer for the Jews, no matter how worded, is a sign of deep love. It fits within similar prayers for atheists and non-Catholic Christians. It simply reflects an acknowledgement that we believe our religion is the sole basis for salvation. All religions have similar teachings. In the case of the Jews, we have specific affinity and common heritage. It is an article of our faith that the conversion of the Jews precedes the final judgment. The Latin form of the prayer doesn't really depart much from the form we've been using since Vatican II in terms of intent and meaning. In Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation, this is made even more clear. It is spelled out in the Bible.
Jews and the Vatican: A New Clash
Bringing back an ancient rite risked reopening ancient wounds. And so after Pope Benedict XVI introduced wider use of the old Latin rite last year, top Vatican officials promised to adjust a Good Friday prayer from the ancient liturgy that had called for the conversion of the Jews. The text of the updated version - released this week in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano - deletes offensive language referring to Jews' "blindness" and the need to "remove the veil from their hearts." But the substance is left in place: "Let us pray for the Jews," the prayer says, according to an unofficial translation from Latin. "May the Lord our God illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ savior of all men."
The wounds, according to top Jewish leaders and rabbis, have been reopened. They say the prayer, which in reality had never been scrapped completely, recalls past centuries of forced conversions and a lingering incomprehension of their faith. And while several well-known Jewish voices in New York and Jerusalem spoke of their "disappointment," the loudest - and indeed angriest - response to the revised text came from those closest to home. Late Wednesday, having had 24 hours to absorb the news and study the text, the Italian Rabbinical Assembly announced they were suspending the decades-long Jewish-Catholic dialogue for a "pause of reflection" in light of the Good Friday prayer.
Rome's chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni told reporters that the prayer brings Catholic-Jewish relations "back 43 years," noting that the 1960s Second Vatican Council had spoken of an "alliance" between the two faiths. Di Segni spoke indignantly about reassurances he said he'd received from Church leaders that his concerns about the conversion language would have been addressed. It raises questions about just what is the "image of the Jewish people for the Church," said Di Segni. "It's an old question: What are the Jews doing here on earth? If this [prayer] is the requirement for dialogue, it is intolerable. Evidently, the Church is having problems rediscovering the foundations of its orthodoxy." Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's pointman on Catholic-Jewish relations, responded to the criticism in a Thursday morning interview on Vatican radio. He said great progress has been made in interfaith dialogue with Jews, but it requires that "we respect each other's diversity." "We have much in common, but there's a specific difference. Jesus is the Christ, that means the Messiah, the son of God, and you cannot hide this difference. The Holy Father wanted to say: Yes, Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men, including the Jews. This is said in the prayer," Kasper said. "But this does not mean we have the intention of evangelizing [Jews]. We must give witness to our faith. But in the past the language was with disrespect. Now there is respect." Huge steps forward have in fact been made since the days that Catholics blamed Jews for Jesus' death, and when the original Good Friday conversion prayer spoke of the "perfidious Jews." Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI began to rewrite Catholic teachings, paving the way for John Paul II's historic outreach to Jews, including visits to the central synagogue in Rome and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and his characterization of the People of Israel as "older brothers" to Christians.
Reached in his office in Jerusalem, Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee, a veteran of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, said that he too had his "hopes raised" that an explicit reference to conversion would have been excised. Rosen noted that the expansion of the Latin rite "had nothing to do with this prayer, and nothing to do with the Jews," but was rather an attempt by the Pope to mend fences with Catholic arch-traditionalists. Still, the language of the Good Friday prayer sounds to Jews to be "exclusivist and triumphalist," said the rabbi.
Rosen, who has worked with Benedict since he was a Vatican cardinal, said he worries that the Pope seems to "insulate" himself from top advisers who might alert him to potential fallout. Still, Rosen called his Italian rabbinical colleagues' break in dialogue with Catholics a "rash" decision. "There's so much at stake for Jews and Catholics and Benedict himself that we must ensure that this difficulty will not torpedo the commitment to advancing Jewish-Catholic relations," Rosen said. "Yes, we must speak up. But there is nothing to be gained from making this a casus belli."
Note: It seems strange to me that the way we show our love for our brothers, the Jews, is to remove the language we use to indicate our prayers that they reach the fullfilment of faith in Jesus Christ that our religion says is the path to salvation. Stranger still is that we did it due to objections by Abe Foxman, who neither speaks for the entire Jewish people nor respects Roman Catholicism as can be easily seen from his previous public statements. It seems dangerous to me to revise a liturgical formula at the insistence of someone outside our faith. It is a precedent not likely to be repeated by other faiths. Pope Benedict to reformulate Good Friday prayers for Tridentine Mass
Rabbi David Rosen
London, Feb 3, 2008 / 08:26 pm (CNA).- Pope Benedict XVI will modify the Good Friday prayers used in the Tridentine Mass that generated protests from Jewish leaders who found the prayers offensive, the Jerusalem Post reports.
In July Pope Benedict widened the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal in a "Motu Proprio" edict. This missal included Latin prayers for Good Friday that asked Catholics to "pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ," asking God not to "refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."
After the Pope permitted the wide use of the Tridentine Missal, Abraham H. Foxman, United States director of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized the prayers. In July he said he was "extremely disappointed and deeply offended" by the use of what he called "insulting anti-Jewish language" that would "now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words." According to the Jerusalem Post, Foxman said the reintroduction of the Latin prayers was a "theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations."
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel also wrote the Pope expressing concern.
In a July interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, Archbishop Angelo Amato denied the Good Friday prayers were anti-Jewish. The archbishop said Catholics pray first for their own conversion "And then we pray for the conversion of all Christians and of all non-Christians. The Gospel is for all."
On January 18 the Milan newspaper Il Giornale reported that the new text of the prayers would drop all references to the "blindness" of the Jews. The Pope has reportedly drafted a new prayer that will be released in time for Holy Week in March.
Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, told the Jerusalem Post that the removal of references to the "darkness" and the "blindness" of the Jews for refusing to recognize Jesus as the messiah was a sign Pope Benedict was "deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community."
Rabbi Rosen said the July Motu Proprio had nothing to do with Jews, saying there was confusion about the concept of conversion. "Used in the sense that Archbishop Amato uses it, it does not mean the acceptance of the Christian Faith by a non-Christian," he said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Rosen said that his Vatican sources indicated that the new text does not call for Jews to accept the Christian faith. Like a common 1970 prayer used by the Church, he said it "prays for the physical and spiritual well being of the Jews."
The Vatican would not confirm the Il Giornale report.
Note: The hostility shown the Pope right in Rome itself portends bigger things to come. This may be a small group of radicals and academics now but their numbers will grow as a sterilized Italy rails against God. In the book, 'Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation', the author describes a time when the Church is forced to flee Rome.Watch the signs of the times... Vatican calls for rally backing pope in science row
Agence France-Presse Posted date: January 16, 2008
ROME -- The Catholic diocese of Rome called on the city's faithful Wednesday to back Pope Benedict XVI against academics who fault the Church leader for positions seen as anti-science. A burgeoning protest against a planned appearance by the pope, who is also the bishop of Rome, at the secular La Sapienza university here prompted Benedict to cancel the engagement, which had been set for Thursday.
Lamenting the "sad events" that led to the cancellation, Rome's vicar Camillo Ruini urged "all believers, but also all Romans," to stage a show of support during the pope's Angelus prayer on Sunday in St Peter's Square.
Already on Wednesday some 5,000 pilgrims attended the pope's weekly general audience, many chanting "freedom."
"The Church of Rome expresses its solidarity with its bishop, the pope, and bears witness to the love, confidence, admiration and gratitude of the people of Rome towards Benedict XVI," Ruini said.
Many scientists criticize the intellectual, conservative pope, a respected theologian, for a series of positions he has taken that they say subordinate science and reason to faith.
The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of La Sapienza, who wrote to rector Renato Guarini complaining of an "incredible violation" of the university's autonomy.
Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the sprawling university's physics department, as well as radical students, joined in the call for the pope to stay away on Thursday, the start of the university's academic year.
Students opposed to the visit kicked off "an anti-clergy week" on Monday by showing a film on Galileo, the 17th-century physicist who ran afoul of Church doctrine by insisting that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi led unanimous denunciations of the protest by Italy's political class, echoed widely Wednesday by the country's main dailies.
Radical students launched a series of protest events, showing a film on Monday about Galileo, the 17th-century physicist convicted by the Inquisition -- the predecessor of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog that the pope formerly headed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
It was the first cancellation in the pope's diary since his election in April 2005.
The daily La Repubblica devoted its front page to the issue, bemoaning the fact the pope "can no longer speak to his home-town university in this mediocre Italy of 2008."
Benedict's predecessor John Paul II was loudly heckled when he spoke at La Sapienza in 1991.
From THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH:
Second Question: What is the meaning of the affirmation that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church?
Response: Christ "established here on earth" only one Church and instituted it as a "visible and spiritual community"5, that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted.6 "This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]. This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him"7.
In number 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium "subsistence" means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church8, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.
It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.9 Nevertheless, the word "subsists" can only be attributed to the Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that we profess in the symbols of the faith (I believe... in the "one" Church); and this "one" Church subsists in the Catholic Church.10
From Apocalypse - Letter by Letter:
The bride is clothed in "bright, clean linen," and the "linen" is the righteous deeds of the saints; ergo, the saints, collectively, are the bride of the Little Lamb, Jesus Christ. Clearly, the saints are the Church, the mystical body of Christ, the bride, as St. Paul repeats what Christ said,
"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and his Church. [Eph. 5:31-32]
Again, St. Paul indicated that the bride of Christ is the members of the Church, For I am jealous with God's jealousy toward you, for I promised you to one husband, to be presented as a chaste virgin to Christ. [2 Cor. 11:2]
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, even to the end of the world, Christ cannot have more than one bride, lest he commit the sin of adultery; and yet, in this last year of the twentieth century, some 2500 denominations individually aver, "I am the bride of Christ!"
Judge for yourselves, ye Friends, the signs of these times, when hundreds and hundreds of millions testify, "You, Jesus Christ, are a fornicator, like us!" Contemplate earnestly, therefore,what is coming, and make ready.
Consider 19:14, which reads,
And the armies the ones in the heaven follow him [the Word of the God] upon white horses [,] wearing white, clean linen.
The armies mentioned here are "wearing white, clean linen"; this unmistakably alludes to the "bright, clean linen" of the saints in 19:8. Obviously, not every individual member of the whole Church will be in those armies. Hence, to indicate the whole of the Church, the term "the heaven" is used; and to indicate a part of the Church, the phrase, "in the heaven," is used.
