Knights Templar Absolved

The Knights Templar, who have been the subject of many legends may finally be absolved of the "Heretic tag" by none other than a paper based on a secret document discovered at the Vatican.

The mysteries surrounding the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be exposed after the Vatican announced the release of a key document which has not been seen for almost 700 years.

The Vatican is planning publication of ‘Processus contra Templarios’, a book on the suppression of the Knights Templar, based on material from the Vatican Secret Archives.

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The Vatican office of the Secret Archives will unveil the book, containing "a previously unpublished and exclusive edition of the complete acts of the original hearing against the Knights Templar," on Oct 25.

The new book is based on a scrap of parchment discovered in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale.

"This is proof that the Templars were not heretics. The Pope was obliged to ask pardon from the knights. For 700 years we have believed that the Templars died as cursed men, and this absolves them,” the Telegraph quoted Prof Frale, as saying.

‘Processus contra Templarios’ will be a special collector's edition, with only 799 copies produced. (ANI)

The Knights Templar had quite a colorful history without the embellishment brought forth by the various legends (one example is the "Da Vinci Code"). WikiPedia states

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), popularly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers), were among the most famous of the Christian military orders.

The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages. It was created in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096, to ensure the safety of the large numbers of European pilgrims who flowed toward Jerusalem after its conquest.

Officially endorsed by the Church in 1129, the Order became a favored charity across Europe, and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, easily recognizable in their white mantle with a distinct red cross, made some of the best equipped, trained, and disciplined fighting units of the Crusades. Non-warrior members of the Order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating many financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building numerous fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.

Justice may have been long delayed, but justice will always have her day. I thank God for allowing this to come forth.

Church Kills Gays?

Elton John is at it again. This time he is accusing the Catholic church of being responsible for the death of 60 of his friends who have died from aids. Lifesitenews is reporting a story where by Elton believes that the best way to prevent aids is sex education.

Speaking at a business awards ceremony, he said, "We don't have a medical vaccine but we have a social vaccine and it's called education." He failed to include in his so-called education platform that condoms may be a leading reason for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Even leading health experts at the United Nations have acknowledged that condoms have an estimated 10% failure rate.

It is sad but true, that some people are so blinded by there prejudice that they cannot see the truth for the lies. The catholic position is that homosexuality is a disorder. The church teaches that someone who suffers with homosexual tendencies should abstain from those activities (remain celebite) from sexual contact outside of a traditional marriage. This same advice applies to heterosexuals as well. This advice, if followed, will save millions of people from aids and other sexually transmitted diseases. The advice that he would have you follow, which is the position of almost all countries, has not slowed down the spread of these STD's and in fact has helped spread them. This happens as many adopt a sexually permisive lifestyle which leads to either a failure of the condom, or a failure of the individual to be 100% consistant. This is a sure recipe for failure.

My prayers are with any and all sufferers of this dreadful disease. I pray that the Lord will give them comfort and peace in this world and in the next. And that Sir Elton John will find the love of our Lord. Amen.

Litergical Reform: Arinze to the Rescue

As Reported by Catholic World News:

Cardinal Arinze has come down hard on the United States Council of Bishops on an issue that many of the laity have been complaining about for many a year. The faithfulness of the the english translation of the mass from the latin. The U.S. Council of bishops it seems made the arguement that

we faithful are so besottedly in love with the 1974 ICEL Sacramentary that it would be cruel for the Holy See to make us change it for a translation closer to the Latin

It Seems that the Cardinal held strong in this and reminded the bishops of why Liturgiam authenticam was issued to begin with. Here is the letter from Cardinal Arinze to the U.S. Council of Bishops (also courtesy of Catholic World News)

2 May 2006

The Most Reverend William Skylstad
Bishop of Spokane
President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Prot. n. 499/06/L

Your Excellency,

With reference to the conversation between yourself, the Vice President and General Secretary of the Conference of Bishops of which you are President, together with me and other Superiors and Officials when you kindly visited our Congregation on 27 April 2006, I wish to recall the following:

The Instruction Liturgiam authenticam is the latest document of the Holy See which guides translations from the original-language liturgical texts into the various modern languages in the Latin Church. Both this Congregation and the Bishops’ Conferences are bound to follow its directives. This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is therefore not competent to grant the recognitio for translations that do not conform to the directives of Liturgiam authenticam. If, however, there are difficulties regarding the translation of a particular part of a text, then this Congregation is always open to dialogue in view of some mutually agreeable solution, still keeping in mind, however, that Liturgiam authenticam remains the guiding norm.

The attention of your Bishops’ Conference was also recalled to the fact that Liturgiam authenticam was issued at the directive of the Holy Father at the time, Pope John Paul II, to guide new translations as well as the revision of all translations done in the last forty years, to bring them into greater fidelity to the original-language official liturgical texts. For this reason it is not acceptable to maintain that people have become accustomed to a certain translation for the past thirty or forty years, and therefore that it is pastorally advisable to make no changes. Where there are good and strong reasons for a change, as has been determined by this Dicastery in regard to the entire translation of the Missale Romanum as well as other important texts, then the revised text should make the needed changes. The attitudes of Bishops and Priests will certainly influence the acceptance of the texts by the lay faithful as well.

Requesting Your Excellency to share these reflections with the Bishops of your Conference I assure you of the continued collaboration of this Congregation and express my religious esteem,

Devotedly yours in Christ,

+Francis Card. Arinze

Prefect, Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

I think this letter says it all.

Medjugorje Apparition

As reported by Spirit Daily.

The visionary Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo had daily apparitions from June 24th 1981 to December 25th 1982. During the last daily apparition, Our Lady gave her
the 10th secret, and told her that she would appear to her once a year, on the 18th of March. It has been this way through the years. This year several thousand pilgrims gathered to pray the Rosary at the Cenacolo Community in Medjugorje.
The apparition lasted from 13:59 to 14:04 and Our Lady gave the following message:

“Dear children!
In this Lenten time, I call you to interior renunciation. The way to this leads you through love, fasting, prayer and good works. Only with total interior renunciation will you recognize God’s love and the signs of the time in which you live. You will
be witnesses of these signs and will begin to speak about them. I desire to bring you to this.
Thank you for having responded to me.“

We are called to an inner conversion, and to speak to these events, such as the distruction in New Orleans, not as God's rightful punishment, but as God's loving warning to us.

St John of God

The story of today's saint, "St. John of God" is quite an interesting one. John was searching for God, and found Him in the preaching of blessed John of Avila. In fact he was so moved with love of God, and guilt for his sins that he took to publically mortifying himself, with the expected consequences.

While in Spain, John was profoundly moved by the preaching of Blessed John of Avila and in response spent a day publicly beating himself in repentance for his sins. John was thereupon committed to a lunatic asylum, where Blessed John visited him and advised him to be more active in caring for the needs of others, instead of enduring personal hardships.

This is in contrast to today when many confessionals are empty. Priests practically beg for people to show up.

The other interesting thing about this story that strikes home for me, is that it reminds us that St John of God lived in times not too different than we do. If any one of us had publically mortified ourselves as He did, we too would be thown into the local mental hospital, or put under "protective custody". Luckily for St John, blessed John of Avila directed him into a more productive direction.

his advice had a calming effect, and John went on to establish a house where he cared for the poor and the sick. His love and devotion touched many people, and benefactors aided his efforts with money and provisions.

And lest we think that the church in the United States is alone in being riddled with bad clergy, St John also had his issues as well.

On one occasion the Archbishop of Granada summoned John because of a complaint that his hospital was open to prostitutes and tramps. John fell on his knees and said, "The Son of Man came for sinners, and we are bound to seek their conversion. I am unfaithful to my vocation because I neglect this, but I confess that I know of no bad person in my hospital except myself alone, who am indeed unworthy to eat the bread of the poor." Profoundly moved by this, the Archbishop became one of John's strongest supporters.

I think we forget that the saints also lived in this world and were not immune from the everyday hardships that we all face. Sometimes it's important to look at these individuals, who also struggled with the very same issues we do, and to see how they overcame them

Pax Christi

God is Love

The text of Pope Benedict XVI first encyclical is really a commentary on a much bigger story, God's love for His people. What he wrote about so beautifly was missed by the press, but bears mentioning here. George Weigle wrote an interesting piece on this very subject carried by Catholic Exchange. In his piece George makes an interesting arguement that most of the press had missed the ball on this, pope Benedict's first encyclical. That most people looked at what was said concerning how good works can actually be an obstical to a closer relationship with God, and ignored the first part. Mr Weigle said it best.

The theological meat of the encyclical is in its first part, however, and here, four ideas seemed particularly striking.

First, Pope Benedict teaches that God’s relationship to the world is best understood as a love story, not as a relationship of power that expresses itself in a contest of wills. The God who comes into history in search of man does so precisely to draw men and women into a communion of love — with each other and with the Triune God. As God’s love enters ever more deeply into our lives, the pope writes, “self-abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy.”

Second, the pope suggests that the image of God in a culture will have a profound effect on that culture’s image of man. The fundamental orientation of a culture is not derived from its family patterns, its way of doing politics, or its method of allocating goods and services. Rather, cultures take their basic direction from what they worship: from the way in which a culture imagines the divine, thinks of the divine (if it imagines that the divine can be “thought”), and relates to the divine. To believe in and worship a God who is love “all the way through” (as Thomas More puts it in A Man for All Seasons) gives Christian cultures a distinctive view of the human enterprise in all its dimensions.

Which brings us to a third point Benedict makes, if briefly: warped ideas of God lead to warped ideas of the human, warped understandings of human relationships, and, ultimately, warped politics. When Pope Benedict speaks of “a world in which the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence,” it is not difficult to imagine at least one of the primary reference points. That the pope has jihadist Islam in mind here is also suggested by his address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican on January 9, when he spoke of a danger that had been “rightly” described as a “clash of civilizations.”

Finally, the pope neatly links the two great commandments, reminding us that we can love our neighbor because we have been first loved by God. Love of neighbor is thus a response to the experience of love by which God has first graced us, rather than rote obedience to an order from an external authority.

A great teacher and an acute cultural analyst sits in the Chair of Peter.

Soviets Ordered John Paul II's Death

An Italian government report released on March 2 shows that the Soviet Union played an active role in planning the assasination attempt on John Paul the Greats life. The report was gathered from former soviet bloc intelligence agencies archives. The report
concludes (as reported by the Catholic Exchange that Soviet, Bulgarian, and East German agents were involved in plotting the attempt on the Pope's life.

A report prepared for the Italian parliament, due for presentation later in March, was released in Rome on March 2 by Paolo Guzzanti, the president of the investigating committee. The report concludes that Soviet leaders were "beyond any reasonable doubt" the force behind the assassination attempt.

Immediately after the shooting on May 13, 1981, Vatican officials privately voiced their suspicions of Soviet involvement. After the arrest of Mehmet Ali Agca, Italian prosecutors attempted to link the Turkish gunman to Bulgarian state officials, who were believed to be acting on orders from Moscow. But prosecutors were unable to provide sufficient evidence to prove their case.

The new Italian parliamentary report reinforces the prosecutor's original case against Sergei Antonov, who was working in the Rome office of Bulgaria's state-owned airline at the time of the assassination attempt. Antonov, who denied any involvement, had testified that he was in his office on the day of the shooting. The new Italian investigation reportedly discovered a photo taken of Antonov in the crowd in St. Peter's Square at the time of the fateful papal audience.

This information confirms what was widely believed, that the Soviets used the Bulgarians as proxies to hire a Turk (Agca in this case), to eliminate a threat to there empire. Thank God for His intervention.