Blogs

Catholic Church Begins Ghoulish Tour of JPII Remains

Written by Stuart Bechman | 25 August 2011

The Associated Press has reported that the "relics" of Pope John Paul II have arrived in Mexico to begin a four-month tour through 100 Mexican cities.

For non-Catholics, this sounds almost quaint. Many of us think of "relics" as family heirlooms and trinkets kept by our grandmother in an old chest with mothballs. But that's not what "relics" means to the Catholic Church. For the Church, "relics" are the REMAINS of the actual dead relative!

Per the AP report: "Worshippers applauded, cried and prayed Thursday morning as a vial of the ex-pontiff's blood and a wax figure of the pope donning a papal robe arrived at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe."

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God Gives Mixed Signals in US Presidential Race

Written by Stuart Bechman | 11 August 2011

Today in the US, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that he is running to be the Republican candidate for US president in 2012.

Rick Perry, an ultra-conservative who regularly boasts of his religious piety and who recently hosted a “National Day to Prayer” conference that included some of the most conservative Christian Reconstructionists in the country, joins a field of other pietistic candidates who have already announced: Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann, and ex-Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

In all three cases, each of the candidates claim a ‘personal relationship’ with God; and each claimed that they were told by God that they needed to run for president in 2012.

Perry told the Des Moines Register in July that he’s “more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.”

This echoed sentiments made only a few weeks earlier by Rep. Michelle Bachmann in June, who shared in several media interviews that she prayed to God about whether or not to run for president and that those prayers provided her with a "sense from God" of "assurance about the direction" she was taking.

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World Evangelicals See Secularism as Biggest Threat

Written by Stuart Bechman | 25 June 2011

Ranked a Bigger Threat to Christianity Than Islam

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a new survey this month of over 4,000 evangelical Christian leaders who had attended an annual evangelical Christian world Congress in South Africa in late 2010.

The survey, intended to identify and rank the biggest perceived threats to Christianity and the world at large by the group, showed that over 70% of attendees believed that secularism was the biggest threat; with over 90% of those from North America (and 92% from the United States) believing so.

In comparison, Islam ranked much lower, with only 47% of attendees ranking it as a major threat. After the influence of secularism, participants ranked too much emphasis on consumerism and material goods, and sex and violence in popular culture as larger threats to Christianity and the world than Islam.

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Time Overdue for the Catholic Church to Get Serious About Predatory Priests

Written by Stuart Bechman | 12 June 2011

This week, June 14-18, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is holding its annual summer meeting in Seattle. Among other issues they will be considering, I imagine and hope, will be an issue that has been dogging them since the mid-1980s: sexually abusive priests and the bishops who enabled them.

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Pakistani Christian Sentenced to Death for Blasphemy

Written by Stuart Bechman | 09 November 2010

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/28345/

LAHORE, Pakistan, November 13 (CDN) — A Christian mother of five was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court this week for allegedly speaking ill of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

Bowing to pressure from Muslim extremists in Pakistan, according to the Christian woman’s husband and rights groups, a district court judge handed down the stunning sentence to Asia Noreen on Monday (Nov. 8). Additional District and Sessions Judge Naveed Ahmed Chaudhary of Nankana Sahib district delivered the verdict under Pakistan’s controversial “blasphemy” statute, the kind of law that a resolution before the United Nations condemning “defamation of religions” would make legitimate internationally.
 
Although Pakistan has long prosecuted men under its strict blasphemy laws, arresting an average of one person per week, Noreen is the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan’s widely condemned law against defaming Islam.

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