Judge Jocelyn Matta ordered them to memorise verses from the holy Qur'an's Surat Al-Omran. This chapter glorifies Our Lady and Jesus.

One of the verses featured hails the Virgin Mary as one of the most esteemed women in the world.

The Virgin is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur'an and she is among only eight people to have a Quranic chapter named after them.

Mary is honoured in several Islamic texts, including the Al-Omran surah, which reads: "And [mention] when the angels said, 'O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds'".

Although Islam does not consider Jesus a deity nor the son of God, it holds Christ in high esteem. He is regarded as Prophet Muhammad's precursor and one of God's most prominent messengers.

Islam considers Jesus a Messiah. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad came to complete Jesus' message, rather than to refute it.

Judge Matta said her sentence aimed to educate the young men on Islam's reverence for the Virgin Mary. She said she wanted them to learn about Islam's reverence for the mother of Christ, calling the law 'a school and not just a prison'.

The sentence was so unexpected it has "gone viral" on social media.

This is because Lebanon has strict religious contempt laws: anyone accused of offending a religion or belief can face up to three years in jail.

Lebanon's prime minister Saad Hariri said the sentence was the "epitome of justice" and promotes co-existence between Muslims and Christians together through the "teaching of common ideas".

Source

• Christian Today
• Variety
• Step Feed
• Image: Walsingham

And now you can visit it — virtually, anyway — in the nation's capital at the interactive "Tomb of Christ" exhibit of the National Geographic Museum that unifies cutting-edge science and technology with faith.

The science has been deployed to conserve and shed new light on the ancient building.

The faith stirs the feelings of every Christian who approaches those places where Our Savior suffered, died and rose again, according to a tradition that goes back until at least the fourth century.

The latest scientific tests confirmed the presence of rock-cut Jewish tombs dating back to the first century, when Jesus lived.

The sediment in samples from the mortar was measured for its most recent exposure to light using Optically Simulated Luminescence (OSL).

Contrary to many researchers who claimed that the shrine was built only 1,000 years ago at the time of the Crusades, the mortar and marble slab covering the original burial bed have now been found to date back to 345 B.C., when Roman Emperor Constantine built the shrine around the tomb, according to National Geographic.

The exhibit celebrates the recent preservation of the Edicule of the Holy Sepulcher built by Franciscan friars in 1555.

Led by an interdisciplinary group of engineers, researchers, stonemasons and professors from the National Technical University of Athens, the work began in 2016 and was completed in time for Easter 2017.

This precious complex has undergone many cycles of destruction and rebuilding since Constantine, the first Christian emperor, first visited in 325.

Constantine tore down a Roman temple that had been erected to counteract growing Christian fervor and built the first church on the site.

It was wrecked under Arab rule in the seventh century. In 1009, Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the church to be burned down. Earthquakes and fires wreaked further havoc. Each time, it was rebuilt.

The constant traffic of visitors and the destructive impact of water, humidity and soot from gas lamps and candles have undermined the stability of the building.

The stone walls of the Edicule were "starting to buckle outward," according to National Geographic Society chief archeologist Fredrik Hiebert. Intervention was urgent. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• National Catholic Register article by Nora Hamerman, who writes from Virginia.

We were lost. The road signs were all in Arabic, and no one spoke English. The sun was setting in an orange sky and it would soon be dark. How would we get back to Amman?

Our situation seemed hopeless.

Out of the twilight, appeared a small building, the size of a phone booth, at the edge of the road. In it stood a policeman. We stopped. He came over to the car, and thanks be to God,

he spoke some English. He told us we were 48 miles from Amman and would never get there on our own. "Move over," he said to Terry.

The journey on those winding roads took nearly an hour. We chatted with the man but under that talk we did wonder if we were indeed going to Amman, and if so, how much would he charge us for his service.

In the soft darkness, he pulled up in front of our street address, got out of the car and wished us a happy time in Jordan. We tried to offer him money but he refused it.

Terry asked, "How will you get back?"

He said he'd go to the Police Station and get someone to drive him. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

That was our introduction to the Muslim principle of hospitality to the stranger.

Since that day, there has been increased awareness of this principle in all the Abrahamic religions, including our own, and the realization that hospitality to the stranger is at the heart of Jesus' teaching. If we journey with him through the gospels, we see how "hospitality to the stranger" extended Jesus' original concern for the lost tribes of Israel, and made his ministry global.

Think of some of the "strangers" Jesus befriended: tax collectors, lepers, people despised by society, various Samaritans including a woman in whom he first confided that he was the Messiah, a Roman soldier, the Syro-Phoenician woman in the pagan territories. It seems that the stranger was always bringing Jesus' ministry to a larger place.

Jesus lived and preached love for the stranger, and that brings me to the questions: who are the

strangers in my life? Who are the people I judge? From whom do I withhold forgiveness?

Every year these questions are a part of Lenten stocktaking, and every year I have to do something about a lack of hospitality.

We see Jesus' love of the stranger as compassion, and that is true; but I think he was also at that level of consciousness where he saw God manifest in everyone and everything, regardless of labels.

We pray that Jesus will help us to the spaciousness of that unitive vision.

It's interesting how we can become used to the old and soiled. I suspect there is a parable somewhere in that.

If we visit the Sistine chapel today, we'll see a ceiling of vivid scripture as Michelangelo painted it. With hundreds of other visitors, we'll walk with heads upturned in awe.

There is one place where everyone stops. It's under the picture of The Creation of Adam.

God is leaning towards Adam who appears to have fallen backwards, his arm extended as though he's trying to return to God. His finger is almost touching God's, but we get the feeling this won't happen. We notice that both Adam and God are strongly muscled, a reminder that Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor.

We stand still, gazing at the painting. There is much in the detail that is alive with expression. It claims our eyes and our hearts.

Why does this particular picture hold our attention? What did Michelangelo intend us to see?

Over the centuries there have been many theories about The Creation of Adam, people interpreting body language and background as they saw it. The cloak-like shape behind God, for example: does it represent an unfolding universe? Is it formed like a uterus to suggest the birthing of creation? Or does that shape resemble a brain and wisdom? All of these have been historical interpretations.

For some of us, though, the potent image is the gap between God's finger and Adam's finger. God is leaning forward as a father reaches for his child, but Adam is helpless and falling away.

We can see much pathos in that gap between the fingers. It is a space of loss and yearning, and we feel it deeply. It belongs to us, and no effort on our part is going to close it.

What then, fills the gap?

I believe Michelangelo tells us in another part of the painting. The answer is beneath God's left arm and hand. There is a young woman there, secure in the crook of God's elbow. Tradition says this is Eve waiting to evolve from Adam's side, but if we look closely, we see the woman has the same face as that of Michelangelo's sculpture of The Pieta. The woman is Mary.

Further along, God's left hand rests on a baby. Both the woman and the baby are in subdued colour, suggesting they have not yet come into incarnation.

The artist is telling us who closes the gap between us and our Creator.

It is the Beloved. It is Christ Jesus.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

These men of science, accompanied by a group of selected priests and monks, were surprised by what they saw. Despite centuries of damp, wars and more than a dozen earthquakes, everything in the rock-cut cave chamber is still intact.

It has been central to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or, as it is called by Orthodox Christians, the Church of the Anastasis (the Resurrection), since it was commissioned 1,670 years ago by Emperor Constantine a year after the Council of Nicaea.

Not only is the rough burial shelf hewn from rock in one piece, but an additional feature was noted which verifies that the holy tomb conforms to standard burial chambers of the era.

Remnants of the original 6ft-high walls which had been cut into the ancient limestone quarry still stand on the bedrock. There was also a broken slab of marble protecting the burial slab on which a small cross is carved.

Equally important is how the features seen and photographed by the scientists tie in with the descriptions of Jesus's burial and tomb in the New Testament. Fr Athanasius Macora, who looks after the Catholic interest in the church, explained: "Nothing contradicted what is described in the Gospels."

Fr David Neuhaus, patriarchal vicar for Hebrew-speaking Catholics, described the emotion of witnessing the moment of the uncovering of the tomb by the National Technical University of Athens, using physical strength and metal ropes: "It was very moving for all of us; a real moment of reason strengthening faith. Our eyes beheld that which is written in the New Testament." Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald article by Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, who is an author, conservationist, journalist and historian
• Image: The Jerusalem Post

It is listed as one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" and has become one of Brazil's most famous landmarks. Measuring 124 feet tall with an arm span of 92 feet wide, it is almost as big as the Statue of Liberty.

According to the BBC, in the early 20th century a local group in Rio called the Catholic Circle saw a need to reclaim the city for Christ.

"In the wake of World War One, [Catholic Circle] feared an advancing tide of godlessness. Church and state had been separated when Brazil became a republic at the end of the previous century, and they saw the statue as a way of reclaiming Rio - then Brazil's capital city - for Christianity."

The project was then taken up by the Archdiocese of Rio, which proposed it, and a petition was created to convince the president to allow it to take shape.

After it was approved, the group brainstormed various ideas and locations, finally deciding on the summit of Corcovado. Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa had a grandiose plan for the statue and wanted it to be a worthy monument to Jesus Christ.

"The statue of the divine savior shall be the first image to emerge from the obscurity in which the earth is plunged and to receive the salute of the star of the day which, after surrounding it with its radiant luminosity, shall build at sunset around its head a halo fit for the Man-God."

In order for the statue to be visible, da Silva Costa knew it had to be big and he needed help to realize his idea. He teamed up with Polish-French sculptor Paul Landowski, who created a clay statue that was shipped and reproduced in Rio using concrete.

At first da Silva Costa did not like the use of concrete to create the Art Deco statue, but eventually agreed to it, using soapstone for the exterior layers. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Philip Kosloski, staff writer at Aleteia.
• Image: The Guardian

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph...

Arguments about the virgin birth have no place in spiritual journey. We all have a virgin space in our lives. It is a restless space, a hunger in the heart that only God can fill. Men and women alike, we are made to become pregnant with God. That is our destiny.

And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you!"

First there comes the nudge of a greeting, a tug of love at the heart, so gentle that we wonder if we are imagining it. We may feel vulnerable and confused. What does this mean?

The angel said, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus…"

The movement in the heart is stronger. It is a call of some kind and we are expected to respond. Our feeling of vulnerability increases. Our head is saying, "No! This is a lot of nonsense!" But our heart has tasted sweetness, and it clamours, "Yes, yes, yes!"

Mary said to the angel, "How can this be since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you…"

Our yes has turned into a presence that is beyond our limited sensate system. It is both within us and outside us, filling and guiding, and always it is love. But our celebration is tinged with timidity. "How can I? I'm not qualified to do this? People will laugh or criticise."

Love, always patient, says, "Trust me and see," and we find ourselves growing into that trust.

Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.

This is not to say the path will be easy. We may still object. "This is too difficult." But the call will keep coming back, each time stronger, until we say, "Okay, let it be done to me."

… Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

Faith nurtures faith. We do not walk alone. When we meet another pregnant with God, the love within us leaps in recognition, light sensing light, truth acknowledging truth.

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The call is about being real, knowing who we are.

The birthing of Christ is not in an inn but a stable. It's not about silken robes but bands of cloth. Not a royal cradle but a manger. While we have honoured the birthing story with cathedrals, jewels and fine vestments, the reality of it in our lives is always very simple.

It is in this utter simplicity, that we know God.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Noun. A person who believes that all knowledge originates in divine revelation and is perpetuated by tradition.

Definition of fundamentalist:

Noun. A person who believes in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture in a religion. A person who adheres strictly to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.

Christ said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Christ started only one Church and with only one set of instructions to His Apostles.

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

Christ also said that Peter was to be the head of His Church and that whatsoever he held to be a truth on earth would be honoured in Heaven. These are traditional principles of the Catholic Church fundamental to the Faith.

Christ did offer salvation to non-Jews, the woman at Jacob's well and her fellow townspeople, and in doing so altered what had previously been taught in the Jewish faith, that salvation was only for God's people, the Jews.

Christ did teach a new Commandment, to love one's enemy, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well."

Whilst He did introduce a new understanding to the Jews of what God had revealed to the prophets and instruct them in the ways in which over time they had come into error He did not change in any way the Commandments which God had given to Moses.

The Holy Spirit through Peter told us, "There are some things in them (the Scriptures) hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures".

Catholic fundamentalists believe what Peter said "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation."

While both Fundamentalists and Modernists understand that the Church is the sole interpreter of the Gospels, Modernists hold the view that everything that the Church has held historically is changeable and may be re-interpreted according to the current thinking.

Accordingly changes in society over time should be used as a guide in adjusting the teachings of Christ.

Why else would some Bishops be calling for changes to the teaching of Christ on marriage and sodomy, in other words just a copy of any Protestant Church?

The Church teaches us that where historically a law or teaching has been defined by the Catholic Church it must be preserved as defined and never altered in its truth or meaning.

Our Lord was a fundamentalist and I am happy to be included as one but please Your Holiness, when speaking about Moslems please do not include Catholic fundamentalists with Moslem fundamentalists who practice the teachings of the Quran.

That comparison is a leap too far.

• Joe Hannah

Then I learned that even saints had massive doubts about God.

How reassuring.

If even the holiest of the holy had second thoughts, why not me?

Maybe we Catholics should talk more about doubt.

It actually is an intrinsic part of the pilgrimage, a Jesuit friend priest told me, common at the beginning and throughout the spiritual journey.

Then he told me to read none other than former Pope Benedict XVI on doubt.

Indeed, the first chapter of Joseph Ratzinger's "Introduction to Christianity" is all about doubt vs. belief.

"The believer is always threatened with an uncertainty that in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole," he writes.

Suddenly the believer is not just questioning the literalness of biblical stories — whether, say, Christ really walked on water — but facing "the bottomless abyss of nothingness."

And the abyss is lurking everywhere, it turns out.

Saint Therese of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite nun, wrote about her own terrible crisis of faith at the end of her life, at a mere 24.

The nuns she lived with were so horrified they edited her writings to remove mentions of the "temptations of atheism."

Spiritual genius Thomas Merton, the famed Catholic monk, said in "New Seeds of Contemplation," "Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt . . . for every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial doubt."

Some of the best-known Catholics novelists of the 20th century — Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Mary Gordon — created characters that swing wildly between faith and doubt.

A recurring theme: Faith is so hard to maintain in a brutal, unjust world; doubt comes easily.

Most famously and recently, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose letters were released in 2007, expressed doubt and despair about God.

Her "dark night" lasted almost 50 years, with rare reprieves, up until her death in 1997. Continue reading

Source

• Margery Eagen in Crux

Margery Eagan is a writer and commentator on current affairs.

Frequently this quotation from Christ is misapplied.

When applied to gossiping or to a statement that is purely used to denigrate another it is most certainly correct.

It should not however be seen as Christ saying we should not judge something sinful.

In fact rather the opposite is true we should always raise with a transgressor of God's law their transgression with a view to helping them cease that behaviour.

We have it explicitly: When Christ spoke to the Jews in the Temple He did not say do not judge rather He said; "Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly." John 7:24

God speaking to Moses: "You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. Though you may have to reprove your fellow man, do not incur sin because of him." Lev 19:17

Proverbs 10: 10, 17: "He who winks at a fault causes trouble, but he who frankly reproves promotes peace.…. A path to life is his who heeds admonition, but he who disregards reproof goes astray. "

Mathew 18: 15-20: "If your brother sins (against you), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that 'every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector."

Galatians 6: 1-2: "Brothers, even if a person is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual should correct that one in a gentle spirit, looking to yourself, so that you also may not be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ."

1 Thess 5: 14-15: "We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, cheer the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient with all. See that no one returns evil for evil; rather, always seek what is good (both) for each other and for all."

2 Thess 3: 6: "We instruct you, brothers, in the name of (our) Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who conducts himself in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us."

2 Thess 3: 14-15: "If anyone does not obey our word as expressed in this letter, take note of this person not to associate with him, that he may be put to shame. Do not regard him as an enemy but admonish him as a brother."

Col 3: 16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom."

James 5: 19-20: "My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back, he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. "

The following quotation is taken from the 2012 Lenten message of then Pope Benedict XVI.

"Here I would like to mention an aspect of the Christian life, which I believe has been quite forgotten: fraternal correction in view of eternal salvation.

"Today, in general, we are very sensitive to the idea of charity and caring about the physical and material well-being of others, but almost completely silent about our spiritual responsibility towards our brothers and sisters

"The Church's tradition has included "admonishing sinners" among the spiritual works of mercy. It is important to recover this dimension of Christian charity.

"We must not remain silent before evil. I am thinking of all those Christians who, out of human regard or purely personal convenience, adapt to the prevailing mentality, rather than warning their brothers and sisters against ways of thinking and acting that are contrary to the truth and that do not follow the path of goodness.

"Christian admonishment, for its part, is never motivated by a spirit of accusation or recrimination. It is always moved by love and mercy, and springs from genuine concern for the good of the other.

"‘Judge not lest you be judged' is not a warning against judging an action. It is a warning against self-deception and hypocrisy".

Joe Hannah

276. Christ's resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.

277. At the same time, new difficulties are constantly surfacing: experiences of failure and the human weaknesses which bring so much pain. We all know from experience that sometimes a task does not bring the satisfaction we seek, results are few and changes are slow, and we are tempted to grow weary. Yet lowering our arms momentarily out of weariness is not the same as lowering them for good, overcome by chronic discontent and by a listlessness that parches the soul. It also happens that our hearts can tire of the struggle because in the end we are caught up in ourselves, in a careerism which thirsts for recognition, applause, rewards and status. In this case we do not lower our arms, but we no longer grasp what we seek, the resurrection is not there. In cases like these, the Gospel, the most beautiful message that this world can offer, is buried under a pile of excuses.

278. Faith also means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity. It means believing that he marches triumphantly in history with those who "are called and chosen and faithful" (Rev 17:14). Let us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is already present in this world and is growing, here and there, and in different ways: like the small seed which grows into a great tree (cf. Mt 13:31-32), like the measure of leaven that makes the dough rise (cf. Mt 13:33) and like the good seed that grows amid the weeds (cf. Mt 13, 24-30) and can always pleasantly surprise us. The kingdom is here, it returns, it struggles to flourish anew. Christ's resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain. May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!

279. Because we do not always see these seeds growing, we need an interior certainty, a conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid apparent setbacks: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Cor 4:7). This certainty is often called "a sense of mystery". It involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit (cf. Jn 15:5). This fruitfulness is often invisible, elusive and unquantifiable. We can know quite well that our lives will be fruitful, without claiming to know how, or where, or when. We may be sure that none of our acts of love will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others. No single act of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful endurance is wasted. All of these encircle our world like a vital force. Sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity. It is not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement. It may be that the Lord uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit. The Holy Spirit works as he wills, when he wills and where he wills; we entrust ourselves without pretending to see striking results. We know only that our commitment is necessary. Let us learn to rest in the tenderness of the arms of the Father amid our creative and generous commitment. Let us keep marching forward; let us give him everything, allowing him to make our efforts bear fruit in his good time.

280. Keeping our missionary fervour alive calls for firm trust in the Holy Spirit, for it is he who "helps us in our weakness" (Rom8:26). But this generous trust has to be nourished, and so we need to invoke the Spirit constantly. He can heal whatever causes us to flag in the missionary endeavour. It is true that this trust in the unseen can cause us to feel disoriented: it is like being plunged into the deep and not knowing what we will find. I myself have frequently experienced this. Yet there is no greater freedom than that of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, renouncing the attempt to plan and control everything to the last detail, and instead letting him enlighten, guide and direct us, leading us wherever he wills. The Holy Spirit knows well what is needed in every time and place. This is what it means to be mysteriously fruitful!

The Rural Financial Counselling Service reported recently that the number of rural people within Western Australia succumbing to internet pornography addiction, drug use and depression, is growing. Research shows internet pornography addiction to be a rapidly growing problem across Australia and overseas.

In the United States, internet pornography addiction is a factor cited in 50% of divorces. Increasingly too, young people are needing psychological therapy to help with relating and sexuality problems.

This is an important issue for parishes and for individual Catholics, for we exist as a Church to continue the mission of Jesus. Those in need were Jesus' priority, and internet pornography addicts certainly are people in need. We need to help them if we can - especially by inviting them to seek Christ's help.

I have written elsewhere about pornography actors as victims. The focus of this Pastoral Letter is on:

 How Christ can help
 The effects of pornography on an addicted person's brain
 Deepening in personal relationship with Christ
 How Christ seeks to help through his Church
 How Christ seeks to help through the Christian.

1. How can Christ help?
Many today would think that Catholic faith has nothing to offer the internet pornography addict. Yet, as for other Christians, Jesus Christ for Catholics is the Son of God and Saviour (the word ‘salvation' deriving from the Latin word for ‘healing').

He offers salvation from all in us that is not of God. This includes internet pornography addiction.

The human need for salvation

The general human need for salvation becomes clear when we remember that God originally created human beings in relationship with their Creator. Empowered by this relationship, our first parents experienced harmony within, harmony with each other and harmony with the rest of creation. 1
This situation changed when our first parents succumbed to Satan's temptation to reject their relationship with God. Instead of accepting their dependence on the Creator who created them to love, they desired to be equal - wanting to be ‘like gods'.

They rejected the God who gave them even life itself.
Now their original relationship with God was destroyed. Their original experiences of harmony were replaced by inner division, social division and division between themselves and the rest of creation.

These are the experiences of ‘original sin'.
The root of the divided human nature with which we are born. As a result, the ‘control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered'.

Ever since, people have experienced inner conflicts.
For example, our experience today is of selfishness conflicting with love; judgementalness with compassion; and confusion with truth. At times emotions weaken the will and cause intellectual confusion. Relationships between men and women can be damaged by lust.

Internet pornography addiction is one of the symptoms of this inner division.
The will is weakened by lust, desires and increasing neurological dysfunction (as we will see). This addiction is a consequence of efforts to escape life problems through fantasy.

There is no other way of restoring genuine and long term inner harmony than by the healing of the human relationship with God. People need Christ's salvation.

Christ as Saviour

The whole Christian message is about Christ as Saviour. In the context of this Letter, we can only recall key points relevant to the topic of internet pornography addiction.

First, Jesus began revealing himself as saviour by miracles. For example, he cured the sick, freed cripples to walk, restored sight to the blind. These examples were visible signs to show his power to the healing, liberating and giving new sight. His power showed Jesus to be establishing the kingdom of God in the world. By his miracles, Jesus was showing his power to be greater than the kingdom of Satan. Everything in creation not of God was a symptom of Satan's influence.
This included all forms of sin, human suffering, disharmony and death. In revealing that his power could conquer Satan, Jesus described Satan as the great deceiver, the ‘father of lies'. Satan's greatest successes today are those people who have been deceived into imagining that Satan does not exist - as is common in modern Australian society.
Jesus taught that he had come to redeem all people from the power of Satan. All who commit sin are ‘slaves' to the sin. Jesus would redeem them by dying on a cross, giving his life ‘as a ransom for many'.

Second, Jesus revealed that he had come to share ‘eternal life' - the life of God - with all who believed in him. He, with God the Father and the Spirit, would ‘make a home' in them.

Jesus fulfilled these promises by his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

By his resurrection, Jesus empowers believers today to live as he taught. Through Baptism, we ‘share the divine nature'.

We share the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
Third, Jesus left a number of means for members of the community of his followers, whom he referred to as his ‘church', to draw on his power for their lives.

These means include the seven sacraments, the Eucharist being the most important. As we do so today, the influence of the divine grows within us. The influence of Satan, including the power of internet pornography addiction, weakens.

We accept Christian salvation by entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He taught us how to pray, to worship and to live to do this. As we relate personally with Jesus as Saviour, our relationship with God is healed. Jesus' power also strengthens our souls' spiritual faculties so that inner harmony and harmony with others is restored. Continue reading

Sources

• Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference Media Blog
• Image: Novus

Connelly's conclusion is poignant and tragic. How many kings and prophets, Christ remarks to His disciples, have longed to see and hear the truth as you have seen and heard it, without ever doing so. And how many wise men and philosophers of the ancient world struggled heroically, and with equal poignancy, through no fault of the virtue and of the intellect that were in them but rather by temporal accident of birth, to make sense of a world without possessing the Key which alone could allow them to do so.

One is struck, reading Clive Fisher's excellent biography of Connelly, by the pagan character of English literary society (reflecting English society as a whole) in the first half of the twentieth century (Yeats, Orwell, Woolf, Huxley, Greene), relieved by a small though distinguished minority of literary Christians (Chesterton, Belloc, Eliot, Waugh). Despite two cataclysmic wars that nearly destroyed Europe in the short run, and may well have been fatal to European civilization in the long one—wars that represented, as Waugh memorably said of the second World War, the modern scientific-materialist world in arms—for most Western writers and artists of the period the Faith, core and lodestone of the western intellect and sensibility for centuries, seemed to have exhausted itself through its belligerence, its persecutions, cupidity, reaction, and hypocrisy. To them, Christianity was an integral organ of the same bourgeois materialist-scientific world whose center, after two millennia, could no longer hold and was visibly collapsing all around them.

In with the Old, out with the New—even if nobody, Cyril Connelly included, had the vaguest notion of what the New might be. Continue reading

Sources

• Chilton Williamson Jr in The Catholic World Report
• Image: miriadna.com

Chilton Williamson, Jr. is the author, most recently, of After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy. He is Senior Editor for Books at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

As the press centre fills, the first reports filter out of the Pope's remarks to journalists accompanying him on the plane. The familiar Alitalia A330 touches down on the airport tarmac flying the Vatican and local flags from its cockpit; state officials and bishops form a welcoming committee; the Pope emerges, is greeted, is whisked away in a limousine to the city centre, where he climbs into the "popemobile" for a tour of streets lined with well-wishers. Then comes the welcoming ceremony in which the president or prime minister addresses him, and he gives a speech in response.

Soon after the press centre fills with Italian voices and veteran journalists as the dozens of VAMPS - journalists working for the major agencies, permanently accredited to the Holy See Press Office, who sit at the back of the papal plane - arrive. Father Frederico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, breaks away from the papal entourage to give a briefing to the press corps that helps shape the first stories.

True to form, all of this happened yesterday. Yet Pope Francis's arrival in Rio de Janeiro - just before that of the royal baby - managed to be strikingly different from what we have been used to in papal trips. Once he was in the air - after carrying his own bag onto the plane - he rejected the usual interview with pre-prepared questions in order to meet the reporters one by one, asking them about their families, getting to know them and telling them, jokingly, that journalists are not the saints he is most devoted to. In a flight in which he remained permanently active - "this pope has an extraordinary energy," Father Lombardi remarked - he also visited the cockpit for 15 minutes to chat with the pilots shortly before landing.

But he still gave journalists their story, making some important criticisms of a throwaway culture in which the jobless young are set aside. "The world crisis is not treating young people well," the Pope said. "We are running the risk of having a generation that does not work. From work comes a person's dignity." Continue reading

Sources

• Austen Ivereigh in ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: BBC

Austen Ivereigh is a Catholic journalist and the co-ordinator of Catholic Voices.

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone. Even the atheists. Everyone," he insisted.

"We are created children in the likeness of God and the blood of Christ has redeemed us all," he said. And the potential to do good is inscribed on the human heart and does not derive from creeds.

Continue reading

The Catholic News Agency said Chavez received spiritual direction and the sacraments in his last days, and Vice President Nicolas Maduro said he died "clinging to Christ".

Chavez's 14-year rule was marked by increasingly hostile relations with the Venezuelan Catholic bishops, who frequently warned of the risks and excesses of his socialist agenda, including violations of religious freedom.

In 2002 he accused the bishops of being a "tumour" for his revolutionary goals and demanded that the Vatican not intervene in the internal affairs of the country.

Venezuela has been on the "Watch List" of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom since 2009.

In its 2012 report, the commission said violations of religious freedom included "the government's failure to investigate and hold accountable perpetrators of attacks on religious leaders and houses of worship, and virulent rhetoric from President Hugo Chavez, government officials, state media, and pro-Chavez media directed at the Venezuelan Jewish and Catholic communities".

The commission also reported that the government had begun wire-tapping the telephones of some Catholic leaders, expropriated some Catholic churches, schools and community centres and prohibiting Church representatives from visiting prisoners for humanitarian or spiritual reasons.

On Holy Thursday last year, shortly before his third surgery for cancer, Chavez attended a Mass and pleaded for his life. "I ask God to give me life, however painful. I can carry 100 crosses, your crown of thorns, but don't take me yet. I still have things to do," he said.

On several occasions the bishops of Venezuela had called on their people to pray for the health of the president.

Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, the Catholic archbishop of Caracas, has said he will celebrate a funeral Mass for Chavez in Rome, where he is to attend the conclave to elect a new pope.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Catholic News Service

Aleteia

Image: El Universal

"May your soul burn in hell" wrote a furious Facebook user, one of many who have denounced the work of Mideo Cruz as offensive art.

Cruz intended the work to be a commentary on icon worship, however it has been labelled as "demonic" and he has reportedly been bombarded with death threats.

Official of the state-run Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP) closed the exhibit on Tuesday after former first lady and art patron Imelda Marcos along with politicians and leaders of the Catholic Church denounced the exhibit.

ucanews.com reports that Catholic Jo Imbong, executive director of the St Thomas More Society, said they considered filing charges against the CCP for violating the Penal Code.

The works that fanned the controversy in the exhibit called "Kulo" are images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary which were adorned with objects not related to Christianity - among others, a crucifix with a wooden penis and a Christ the King figurine with rabbit ears.

CCP chairperson Emily Abera stood by the legitimacy of the artistic expression and said the CCP saw nothing wrong with the exhibition.

"I don't know if they've viewed the entire exhibit. Mr Medeo Cruz's installation is one of the 32 artists and I think we should take it as part of the exhibit. This is part of the dialogue of the discourse, part of social community. Not all art is for aesthetic purposes...and that is the context from which the exhibit must be taken."

Cruz is a 37-year-old visual and performance artist who has exhibited in such international art centres as New York, Paris and Tokyo, and said he had wanted to provoke a reaction but was surprised by the violence of the response.

"You can't force people. But I just hope that when we look at something, the process doesn't stop at the surface," he said.

According to Cruz his work is about the worship of relics and how idolatry evolves through history and modern culture.

Posters of Christ and the Virgin Mary, crucifixes and religious curios recall the 300 years of Spanish rule that implanted Catholicism in the Philippines, while images of Mickey Mouse, the Statue of Liberty and U.S. President Barack Obama point to the lasting influence of U.S. imperialism.

"This speaks about objects that we worship, how we create these gods and idols, and how we in turn are created by our gods and idols," Cruz said.

One part of the installation is a giant wooden crucifix with a bright red penis that can be moved up and down, a symbol of a patriarchal society where men are "worshipped," he said.

Sources

• ucanews.com
• Reuters
• Associated Press

The explanation, Mr. Steinberg argued, was to be found in Renaissance theology, wherein a major question concerned the humanity of the son of God. Here the possession of reproductive organs proved that Jesus, whatever his metaphysical status, was indeed fully human and subject to human suffering.

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