Patheos: If The Bible Is Infallible Then So Is The Church

February 6, 2017 by K. Albert Little
Source: Patheos

Photo Credit: Dwight Stone.

A paradigm shift occurs when the number of compelling facts and figures from a competing world view other than your own forces you to concede your position—and adopt another.

It happens like this.

Facts and information enter your radar which you perhaps hadn’t considered before. They challenge your perspective, opinions, and ultimately, your view of the world. As more and more of these new arguments and ideas pile up the lens through which you’ve previously understood much of reality begins to look a bit foggy—the edges aren’t as crisply in focus as they used to be.

And on and on.

Eventually—and this may take a lifetime—the enormous pile of facts in the other, competing worldview appear to be more compelling. They make more sense; offer a more robust explanation of what you understand to be the world and you make a radical leap.

A paradigm shift.

This is what happens when an Evangelical Christian becomes a Catholic.

For me, one of those crucial pieces of information, which began as a question, orbited around the idea of an infallible Bible. Where did we get the Bible? And how did it get put together?

And what made us so sure it was the infallible Word of God?

This began, for me, the fateful journey towards a paradigm shift in my own life.

A journey into the Catholic Church.

In my early twenties, having been “saved” in the Evangelical church at the age of fifteen, I was embarrassed to not have an answer to that first question: Where did we get the Bible?

Sadly, up to that point in my life, it wasn’t even a question I’d considered. But, to be fair, it’d never been put to me either.

In my large Pentecostal church—where I clocked a good amount of Sunday mornings and Friday nights—the historical understanding of the timeline of the Bible ended with the final punctuation mark in the Book of Revelation and began again somewhere in the 1960’s (which was about when the oldest book in our church library would’ve been written).

There was, as there often is in Evangelical circles, a giant gaping hole in the middle of Church history.

As if nothing happened between the last book of the Bible being written and the preacher grasping it in his sweaty palms on a Sunday morning.

So it never occurred to me to ask either where we got it or how it was put together and when it was, finally, asked of me I had not discernable answer.

And that was worrying.

Digging around in familiar Protestant sources failed to make it any more clear.

The Bible, from a Protestant perspective, was hard to square.

Where exactly these books came from was fairly clear. In many cases the author identifies himself and their identity can be linked directly to the apostles and Jesus’s ministry. But why these particular books were included and others, as I learned, were intentionally left out was a complete mystery.

How do we, as Evangelicals, affirm these books to be infallible while declaring others to be not.

How do we know?

I was no closer to an answer, so I kept digging.

I learned that the biblical canon became relatively stable around about 400AD. The Protestant sources I read argued that these books, clearly, were collected together and considered canonical because they were the most read in and, thus, the most respected.

But why were they the most read while others weren’t?

As I dug deeper no satisfying answers emerged and even the best Protestant scholars admitted that the thesis of these particular books standing out of their own merit was weak.

Instead, it was the Church which affirmed these books as worthy to read, copy, and pass around amongst congregations. Congregations under the unequivocal authority of bishops who drew in a successive line tracing back to the apostles.

In other words, it was bishops like Augustine (who affirms a canon in his early writings) who authoritatively declared which books and letters, out of those being circulated, should carry weight.

And, finally, when these same bishops got together to make early pronouncements on the biblical canon in the 400’s it was through the authoritative mechanism of a Church Council. The same mechanism that Peter, Paul, et. al. used to sort out the earliest theological scramblings in Jerusalem (see Acts 15).

As I dug deep into the formation of the biblical canon I was flabbergasted because even the most robust of the Protestant theologians, R.J. Sproul, admits that the unless we afford some authority to the Catholic Church (we he doesn’t) we must admit that the Bible is, ultimately, “an fallible collection of infallible books.”

You can see my difficulties.

Unless we are to admit that the Catholic Church, with its hierarchy of bishops et cetera, held some kind of God-given authority and infallibility to collect up the Bible into its current form then we must be comfortable in admitting that maybe we got it wrong.

How can we trust that?

Because there is no infallible Table of Contents and nothing in the New or Old Testaments gives us a clue as to what should be in there.

Martin Luther, first-leg runner of the Reformation, actually wanted to remove certain pieces (like Hebrews and James) because they didn’t fit with what his interpretation of the salvation looked like. We know from history that these same sorts of disagreements happened in the first 400 years of the Church when there was no fixed canon.

Who’s to say that some letters and books weren’t removed then?

No one.

Unless we trust the Church.

I want to end with this,

In the first 400 years of Christian history, without a fixed canon, it had to have been the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, which maintained unity and helped its people to discern right, wrong, and understand its theology and teachings. Nevermind that most couldn’t read and even with a Bible it wouldn’t be much good; the Holy Spirit guided the authoritative teachers of the Church, first the apostles, and then their successors, in helping to discern important pieces of theology and identity.

It was in the first 400 years, before the serious concretization of the biblical canon, that important pieces of the Christian worldview like our understanding of the Trinity and the Person of Jesus were developed. These were developed and defended passionately by the Church at the time—before the Bible was canonized.

These developments happened within the context of a Church with an authority structure which also made decisions on how we can, and do, pray for the dead, the important place of the Blessed Virgin, the power and necessity of Baptism so save, and the unequivocal Real Presence of Christ in the Communion elements.

If we trust the Bible we have, how can we avoid trusting the Church?

In other words, if the Bible is infallible it can only be because it was put together by an infallible authority which is the Catholic Church.

The same Church which exists today, authoritatively governed by bishops who succeeded the men who collected the Bible, because Christ Himself said nothing would overcome it.

And, truly, if we trust the Bible but throw out everything else that the Church affirmed and taught prior to canonization than we’re doing nothing more than snacking as we please at a theological buffet. Established doctrinal norms like the Trinity and the Personhood of Jesus are not any more “evident in Scripture” than the Eucharist as Real Presence, the necessity of Baptism, and a Catholic understanding of the Communion of the Saints.

Like the canon of the Bible, these doctrines were affirmed by authority and rely, ultimately, on an extra-biblical source.

It was these struggles, as an Evangelical, which amounted merely to more information heaped onto an ever-growing pile of other compelling evidence. Answers without satisfactory questions; and the most I asked and received answers the more another way began to become more appealing.

These questions did have incredibly satisfying answers, I learned, found in the historic Church. A Church which claims continuity and historical pedigree stretching back to Jesus laying hands on a fisherman named Peter. And I’ve found, much to my delight, a spirituality, a historical grounding, and depth of faith and grace in this historic Church beyond anything I could’ve imagined before.

THE CONFUSION CAUSED BY RAMIL PARBA USING HEBREW TEXT OF GENESIS 23:6 TO SHOW THE GREEK WORD, THEOS IN THE THIRD CLAUSE OF JOHN 1:1 IS NOT A NOUN BUT AN ADJECTIVE

Ni Kapatid na Duane

We can see in this video that Parba found it very difficult to distort the Bible verses using his questionable knowledge of biblical languages.

Since his explanation of John 1:1 is wrong, no New Testament scholar will agree with him that the Greek word "Theos" in John 1:1 is an adjective. He used the verse from the Old Testament where the Hebrew word, "נְשִׂיא אֱלֹהִים" or "mighty prince" in English was compared to the 3rd clause of John 1:1 "and the Word was God".

IF UNDERSTANDING OF HEBREW TEXT IS WRONG, WHAT MORE IF IT IS ABOUT SYNTAX?

When Ramil Parba read Genesis 23:6, we noticed he read the word, אֲדֹנִי (Adoni) as Adonay so he referred to Abraham as God. He was wrong from the start.

Is it right to use the Hebrew Word "נְשִׂיא אֱלֹהִים" or "n'si Elohim" from Genesis 23:6 to show that the Greek word Theos in the 3rd clause of John 1:1 is an adjective?

He used the Hebrew syntax since he wanted to rectify his wrong understanding about the Greek syntax?

שְׁמָעֵנוּ אֲדֹנִי, נְשִׂיא אֱלֹהִים אַתָּה בְּתוֹכֵנוּ--בְּמִבְחַר קְבָרֵינוּ, קְבֹר אֶת-מֵתֶךָ; אִישׁ מִמֶּנּוּ, אֶת-קִבְרוֹ לֹא-יִכְלֶה מִמְּךָ מִקְּבֹר מֵתֶךָ.

(Genesis 23:6, Hebrew Bible)

First of all, Elohim is not an adjective in Genesis 23:6. As usual, think context. Genesis is an ancient narrative, in Hebrew, written in the sixth or fifth century BCE, in formal courtly language: “a prince of God.” As opposed to ancient narrative, John (half a millennium later) is making a solemn claim, in Greek, that Jesus is God and co-eternal with God. The Hebrew and the Greek cannot be compared on equal terms. The Hittites (polytheists!) are not thinking John's "God."

John specifically and dramatically is claiming that Jesus IS GOD.

John 1:1 is Greek, while Genesis 23:6 is Hebrew; so the rules of syntax are somewhat different.

Greek syntax works different than Hebrew syntax.

Ramil Parba is trying to confuse the issue by appealing to Hebrew syntax as a way to refute a point of Greek syntax.

That would be like suggesting a point in Spanish syntax could illumine an issue in French syntax—mixing apples and oranges.

The question about the syntax in John 1:1 is Greek, so the only kind of syntactical parallels that will count must be in Greek.

On the Issue of Banning (Muslim) "Refugees" on Possibility of Bringing in "Terrorism Ideology"

WHO IS MS. BRIGITTE GABRIEL?

Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjeyoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage. She recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.

According to Gabriel, at one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She says of the experience:

I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.

REFUTING RAMIL PARBA ON JOHN 1:1 by Bro. Duane

By Bro. Duane

Let us analyze in detail. This will only show that his assessment is very inappropriate.

Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: Kaya nang suriin ito ng mga nagsipagsuri ito ang sinasabi nila about the function of the term theos or God in the third clause of John 1:1, ito ang ating mababasa sa, The Fourth Gospel: Its Significance & Environment sa page 99:

"The closing words of v.1 should be translated, 'the Logos was divine.' Here the word theos has no article, thus giving it the significance of an adjective."

My Response: We saw Ramil Parba quote the book, “The Fourth Gospel: Its Significance & Environment” which is on page 99.

Is that really written on page 99 of said book?

This is page 99 of the book mentioned by Ramil Parba.

"about the purifiying is connected with baptism, and we do know exactly what form it would take. It is introduced only to to give the Baptist the opportunity of declaring again his subordination to Jesus. The disciples of John endeavour to rouse in their master jealousy of Jesus. Probably the dispute was as to whethere Jesus baptism or John's was the more effective. vv. 31-36 are a comment and reflection of the Evangelist. All the ideas are most with elsewhere, in the other parts of the Gospel. They are suggested by the Baptist's wods in Ἐν, 27-30. "(The Fourth Gospel: Its Significance & Environment”, page 99.)

It is clear that it is not written in page 99!

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Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: The term "GOD" or "Theos" in John 1:1 doesn't function as NOUN but it does function as Adjective. That is a predicative adjective and it is not a predicative nominative. the Word Was GOD. "The" is an Article. "WORD" is the subject of the clause "was" is a linking verb. "GOD" this is predicative adjective. So the "GOD" is predicative adjective because of the absence of the article."

Is it correct? No! It was very, very WRONG!

Let us answer what he said one-by-one.

Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: The term "GOD" or "Theos" in John 1:1 doesn't function as NOUN but it does function as Adjective."

My Response: This is incorrect. Theos is a noun. While adjectives (like “good,” “bad,” etc) can function in a number of ways, nouns always function as nouns (substantives). Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, present no evidence of the use of θεὸς as an adjective, as follows: ὁ θεὸς, “God, in a general sense, θεὸς δώσει “God will give,” and in a particular sense, θεὸς τις “a god.” The noun, θεὸς, thus does not require a definite article to function as a noun, as follows: πρὸς θεῶν “by the gods.”

Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: That is a predicative adjective and it is not a predicative nominative. the Word Was God.

My Response: This is a misunderstanding of what a “predicate adjective” is. A predicate adjective is an adjective acting substantially (like a noun) in the predicate position. This happens when nouns or adjectives are working with equative verbs (like “was” here).

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Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: Kaya nga naninindigan tayo at sinasang-ayunan yan ng ibang mga bible scholars, in fact even in the Greek Grammar talagang yung sabihin na logos dyan without the article sabi nila it functions as adjective at hindi po a noun or hindi po nominative in form.

Ramil Parba used the book of Professor Daniel B. Wallace, the Greek Grammar beyond the basics and quoted Page 269 which states.

“Such an option does not at all impugn the deity of Christ. Rather, it stresses that, although the person of Christ is not the person of the Father, their essence is identical. Possible translations are as follows:"What God was, the Word was (NEB), or "the Word was divine" (a modified Moffatt). In this second translation, "divine" is acceptable only if it is a term that can be applied only to true deity. However, in modern English, we use it with reference to angels, theologians, even meal. Thus "divine could be misleading in an English Translation. (Page 269, Greek Grammar beyond the basics, Daniel B. Wallace)”

My Response: What is the comment of a renowned New Testament scholar about this?

"I was shocked to learn that InC ministers had used my Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics in support of their heterodox beliefs."(Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, Author of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics)

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Ramil Parba (INC Minister) said: Pero maliwanag dito sa sinasabi nila na the word was divine, ang sabi nila e yun ang mas angkop na pagkakasalin tulad ng binanggit nya na salin ni James Moffatt.

"The Logos existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was divine."(John 1:1, James Moffatt Version)

My Response: What does the New Testament Scholar, Dr. Daniel Wallace said in his comment?

"Consequently, I have no problem translating it as ‘divine’ as long as we understand that only true deity is divine. "(Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, Author of Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics)

Now, here is my question: Is James Moffatt against Christ being God?

This is the information about James Moffatt.

James Moffatt was an orthodox Trinitarian who supported the Nicene Creed and Chalcedon Confession:

"The Word was God...And the Word became flesh,' simply means "The word was divine...And the Word became human.' The Nicene faith, in the Chalcedon definition, was intended to conserve both of these truths against theories that failed to present Jesus as truly God and truly man..." Moffatt, Jesus Christ the Same, (Abingdon-Cokesbury), 1945, p.61.

Moffatt apparently did believe that "divine" signified that Jesus was "one and the same God" with ho theos.

WACOM - 4TH WORLD APOSTOLIC CONGRESS ON MERCY

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Jose Ventilacion: Iglesia Ni Cristo Apologist Expert on Textual Criticism?

WHO IS DR. EUGENE ULRICH?
By Bro. Duane

Dr. Eugene Ulrich teaches and writes in the areas of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint. A member of the translation teams for both the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and the New American Bible: Revised Edition, he also co-authored The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. He is one of the three General Editors of the Scrolls International Publication Project and Chief Editor of the Biblical Scrolls.

He was twice elected as President of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies and was invited as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Recently, he was elected as President of the Catholic Biblical Association and as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Here is my question to Iglesia ni Cristo:

Why is it that up to now, the iglesia ni Cristo of felix manalo does not have its own bible translated by an Iglesia ni Cristo minister specially Mr. Joe Ventilacion who claim to be someone who studied textual criticism?

A Challenge of Bro. Duane to INC's Top Defender Mr. Jose Ventilacion!

My Message for Joe Ventilacion (INC™) Regarding His Education At Harvard University

Source: The Splendor of the Church Blog

When Kuya Adviser posted his article on his FB page, Ventilacion posted comments on his FB page about me. He said I was challenging him and asking questions about textual criticism and that I have to study more about this topic.

He is simply boasting that he studied at Harvard University. He posted this on his FB Page conspicuously.

I am just wondering who among bible and textual scholars from Harvard University favor the interpretation made by Jose Ventilacion.

I asked Dr. Eugene Ulrich, a former professor at Harvard University who among his colleagues do not agree with King Cyrus referring to “Bird of Prey” in Isaiah 46:11. It is clear that Ventilacion does not concur with this and instead, he makes it appear that Felix Manalo is the one just like what his Church is doing.

Here is the email response of Dr. Eugene Ulrich:

By the way, Dr. Eugene Ulrich is one of my mentors in Biblical Languages.

Now, you studied at Harvard but you did not follow your professors and mentors in textual criticism who said explicitly that Cyrus is really being referred to as the Bird of Prey in Isaiah 46:11 and yet, it is Manalo whom you are pointing at.

It is clear you studied at Harvard University not to learn from the experts and it is not for you to boast about it. So, you do not follow what you learned.

You attended the SBL Annual Meeting and you were given the go-signal by your Executive Minister, Eduardo V. Manalo.

If it was Dr. James Richard Saley who delivered the lecture and you attended that, participated and listened; is it not a slap on your face as a result of what is written in your Pasugo Magazine?

I asked Dr. Eugene Ulrich if he knows Dr. James Richard Saley. Dr. Eugene Ulrich told me they are good friends and he presumes Dr. Saley is a Protestant.

Does Dr. James Richard Saley know that you taught your listeners that Felix Manalo is the Bird of Prey in Isaiah 46:11? Can you ask him if he agrees with your interpretation? 🙂

So, Joe Ventilacion listened to a Protestant whom you addressed as Devil. And, you studied at Harvard University wherein some professors are Protestants.

I give you 2 weeks to answer my post at splendor that INC members can read. I pray that you will be enlightened as well as them someday or they will soon realize your false teachings.

Answer the following because you studied textual criticism at Harvard University:

1. Who are the Bible Professors and Textual Scholars from Harvard University favor your interpretation that Felix Manalo is the Bird of Prey in Isaiah 46:11?
2. Who are the textual scholars from Harvard University who taught you that you translated Mizrach in Isaiah 43:5 of Aleppo Codex as “Far East”? Give me the names of at least 3 textual scholars.
3. Who are the textual scholars from Harvard University whom you can prove translated the Greek word (Logos) in John 1:1 to “idea” as you did?
4. Who are the textual scholars (at least three) from Harvard University who can give testimonies that your LAMSA Translation is Accurate?

I will wait for your reply, Joe Ventilacion.

And, if you are boasting that we need to square off in a debate, do not give me any conditions that I should pay for the venue rental since there are many public venues which are free.

Just tell me when and I will submit my proposal to the nearest INC Local.

Prove that the LAMSA is accurate using Greek text and testimonies of Aramaic scholars if you are really intelligent in textual criticism and that I still need to study.

Sincerely,

Bro. Duane

One Peter Five: The Modern Church: A Synthesis of Martin Luther and Henry VIII

King Henry VIII / Martin Luther

Source: One Peter 5

I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism, and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life.

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I find it on any showing quite ludicrous to suppose that, for nineteen of Christendom’s twenty centuries, Christians were credulous idiots ready to believe any tomfoolery the Bible fostered. . . For one thing, it would seem to me that our twentieth century, far from being notable for scientific scepticism, is one of the most credulous eras in all history. It is not that people believe in nothing – which would be bad enough – but that they believe in anything – which is really terrible.

– Malcolm Muggeridge

While Amoris Laetitia is turning hot the ecclesial cold war between novelty and tradition that erupted in the wake of Vatican II, there is still a tendency to be myopic about our times. Ross Douthat has pronounced that the battle over Amoris Laetitia has reached the level of “genuinely historic theological controversy (Jesuit-Jansenist level, at least, if not quite Arian-Athanasian).” We see the speck, but we do not see the beam. Worse than Jansenism, worse than Arian heresy, for the past 500 years, the Church has been torn apart – certainly by Modernism, that heresy of “synthesis,” but also by Modernism’s close cousin, modernity.

Modernity is the admixture of two different heresies: Martin Luther’s attack on Catholic theology, which rent the individual Christian from the Church, and Henry VIII’s attack on the Church’s teaching concerning the jurisdictional boundaries between Church and State. Though contemporaries, Luther and Henry were enemies. Henry penned his famous attack on Luther in 1521, “In Defense of the Seven Sacraments (Assertio septem Sacramentorum adversus Martin Lutherum),” which won the English king the title “Defender of the Faith” (Fidei defensor) from Pope Leo X. Luther responded by showing his mettle: a world-class foul mouth and penchant for ad hominem attacks, responding to Henry’s reasoned arguments simply by calling him “a pig, dolt, and liar who deserved, among other things, to be covered in excrement.” Yet despite the personal dislike these two men had for each other, they unleashed the tandem of forces destined to destroy Christendom: Luther’s isolated individualism and Henry’s monolithic state were amalgamated into the twin pillars of modern secularism.

In the early 16th century, few could understand what was happening. Not surprisingly, one was St. Thomas More.

More additionally expressed concern to his son-in-law William Roper that because of complacent Catholic attitudes, the war against Luther would not be won: “I pray God … that some of us, as high as we seem to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day, that we gladly would wish to be at league and composition with them, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves; so that they would be content to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.”1

More was not a theologian, but a lawyer. For him, law was not an end in itself, but an indispensable aid in assisting individuals and societies to attain their proper temporal and spiritual ends. He believed – consistent with the Gelasian theory of the two swords – that the Church and the State had different roles and different jurisdictions. More understood that harmony between the two was essential and that if the balance were disturbed, man would suffer evils to body and soul.

While Thomas More is best known for his defense of the papacy, which led to his execution, More had an earlier disagreement with Henry VIII wherein he, ironically, claimed that Henry had given the papacy an unduly large role in temporal affairs. Though an enemy of Tudor totalitarianism, the great saint and scholar was no ultramontanist.

In recent years, we seemingly have seen the Roman pontiff ambiguously; indirectly; unofficially; and, by way of proxy, all but officially approve the attempted Kasperite transvaluation of adultery from mortal sin into a mulligan-worthy bad break. The mechanism of this “mercy” is a counterfeit version of “conscience,” warped to look more Lutheran than Catholic. The meme of Pope Francis as Luther is no joke; rather, it captures the hopes of some (the Kasperites) and the fears of others (serious Catholics) within the Church.

While Kasperism’s deformed theology has been well documented, what has received less attention is Cardinal Kasper’s completely misguided approach to Church-State relations. Formerly, the Church understood that the proper realm of the Church was the administration of the divine law, while the State administered the natural law. In other words, the Church preserved and promulgated the Good News for the salvation of souls; the State took care for the temporal common good of its citizenry (which oftentimes could contain non-Christians). While the framework of the Church’s thought was theological, the common good was rooted in natural law – rational precepts that Christians, Jews, and pagans were bound to acknowledge.

In a journal article from 1990, Cardinal Kasper praises the post-Vatican II practice of addressing the secular world in theological language rather than in terms of the Natural law:

[W]e Christians cannot counter the threat to humanity merely by an appeal to a minimal consensus founded in natural law. We must respond with all the concrete fullness and the concentrated strength of our Christian faith, and mobilize all its forces against the powers of injustice, violence, and death.2

In typical Kasperspeak, the cardinal criticized the “abstract foundation” of former practice in favor of “concrete realization.” The idea that it is more effective to address “the world” in theological language is idiotic, naïve, and disingenuous. Why? Because the “concrete realization” is that if I am an avowed Jew or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or agnostic or atheist, chances are, I don’t give a flying fig about what Jesus said or did, nor about the theological position His Church may take on issues. On the other hand, an appeal to natural reason demands respect from the rational non-Christian (and if your interlocutor isn’t reasonable, should you really be dialoguing in the first place?). What Kasper’s theory of Church-State dialogue does is sideline the Church as an intellectual and cultural force.

For the muddled modern mind, not knowing how to talk about a subject belies not knowing how to act, either. While Pope Francis’s actions (and inactions) have led to his earning crypto-Lutheran credentials in some quarters, his foray into launching an investigation into the internal affairs of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta might earn him another meme as Pope Henry VIII, destroyer of the Gelasian two-swords theory.

Rather than lament what seems to be a clash between the Knights of Malta and the Vatican, we should view current developments as a blessing. The theological errors of Luther have become inextricably intertwined with the jurisdictional errors of Henry, and both need to be addressed before salvation history can move on. When the new Christian springtime does come, it will be rooted in the soil of the perennial teachings of the Church, both theological and social.

1 Roper’s Life of More

2 “The Theological Foundations Of Human Rights,” The Jurist 50 (1990), 148-166

Christian Post: Scores of Muslims Turning to Christ in Middle East; Churches Expecting 'Millions' of Converts

BY STOYAN ZAIMOV , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
Jan 9, 2017 | 8:36 AM

Thousands of Muslims are turning to Jesus Christ and what they view as the "religion of freedom" amid ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East, reports indicate. Some churches hope that millions of people will accept Christ amid a "spiritual hunger" that is forming in the wake of persecution.

(REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani)Iraqi Christians attend a mass on Christmas at St. Joseph Chaldean church in Baghdad, Iraq December 25, 2016.

Voice Of the Martyrs Canada, which supports Christian radio broadcasts in the region, told BosNewsLife that despite the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq and Syria due to terrorism, persecution, and war, scores of Muslims are making the decision to embrace Christianity.

"There are thousands upon thousands coming to Christ," VOMC revealed. "We are in regular contact with our FM stations in Iraq and have talked with many people who have family in the Middle East."

"Some of our Middle Eastern broadcasters have shared testimonies [about many turning to Christ] with us, which they hear directly from listeners when visiting there ..."

In Iran, Christian house churches are regularly targeted and shut down by the nation's Islamic government. Despite this persecution, mission group Elam Ministries revealed that Christians have been growing in terms of numbers, and today estimates suggest there are 360,000 believers in Iran – up from only 500 in 1979.

"Church leaders believe that millions can be added to the church in the next few years -- such is the spiritual hunger that exists and the disillusionment with the Islamic regime," Elam Ministries stated.

"If we remain faithful to our calling, our conviction is that it is possible to see the nation transformed within our lifetime. Because Iran is a strategic gateway nation, the growing church in Iran will impact Muslim nations across the Islamic world."

Muslim refugees in Europe have also reportedly been undergoing mass conversions of faith. A June 2016 article from The Guardian noted anecdotal data of rising Christian church attendance in Europe by Muslims.

Trinity church in the Berlin suburb of Steglitz, for instance, saw its congregation rise from 150 to 700 due to new Muslim converts, while the Austrian Catholic Church saw its applications for adult baptism swell by nearly 70 percent in the first three months of 2016.

"I found that the history of Islam was completely different from what we were taught at school. Maybe, I thought, it was a religion that began with violence," an Iranian convert, 32-year-old Johannes, said.

"A religion that began with violence cannot lead people to freedom and love. Jesus Christ said 'those who use the sword will die by the sword.' This really changed my mind," he added.

More churches in Germany reported this growing phenomena in December 2016, with The Independent noting that Muslims, especially Iranians, are seeing Christianity as a new chance at freedom.

"A lot of them come to Germany and think, here I can choose my religion and I want to choose a religion of freedom," said Matthias Linke, a priest from the Evangelical-Freikirchlichen Gemeinde in Berlin.

"For many Iranians that I've baptized, Christianity is the religion of freedom."

Bp. Robert Barron: "Friends, last night a young man who was raised atheist left this comment ... Praise God for his conversion, and please pray for him!"

This is the real meaning of WITNESSING TO CHRIST! There is REAL CONVERSION!

Bishop Robert Barron shares his wonderful story.

Friends, last night a young man who was raised atheist left this comment on one of my YouTube videos. Praise God for his conversion, and please pray for him!

Also, pay attention to his final line, which offers an important insight. Our structures and institutions are wonderful, but to reach people like this young man who would otherwise never darken the doors of a church, we need to become missionary disciples, actively heralding the Gospel to the culture instead of waiting for people to approach us.

Aleteia: Meet the Only Nun Sentenced to Death by a Nazi Court

Defiant Sister Maria Restituta hung crucifixes on the walls of her hospital, and wouldn't take them down

LARRY PETERSON APRIL 12, 2016

Source: Aleteia

Sister Maria Restituta began Lent of 1942 under arrest. She was taken on Ash Wednesday. Her crime: “hanging crucifixes.” She was sentenced to death. The following year, on Tuesday of Holy Week, she was executed.

May 1, 1894, was a happy day for Anton and Marie Kafka. Marie had just given birth to her sixth child and mom and daughter were both doing fine. The proud parents named their new baby girl Helena. Devout Catholics, Anton and Marie had Helena baptized into the faith only 13 days after her birth.

The ceremony took place in the Church of the Assumption, in the town of Husovice, located in Austria. Before Helena reached her second birthday, the family had settled in the city of Vienna.

Helena was a good student and worked hard. She received her First Holy Communion in St. Brigitta Church during May of 1905 and was confirmed in the same church a year later. After eight years of school she spent another year in housekeeping school and, by the age of 15, was working as a servant, a cook, and being trained as a nurse.

At age 19, she became an assistant nurse at Lainz City Hospital. This was Helena’s first contact with the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and she was immediately moved to become a sister herself, and on October 23, 1915, became Sister Maria Restituta. She made her final vows a year later and began working as a nurse.

By the end of World War I, Sister Restituta was the lead surgical nurse at Modling Hospital in Vienna. She had never heard of Adolf Hitler and could never have imagined that one day, because of this man, her beloved nation would be annexed into the German Republic.

On March 12, 1938, the Austrian Nazi Party pulled off a successful coup d’etat taking control of the government. The unforeseen and unimagined had come to pass, and Hitler now controlled the once proud Austrian nation.

Sister Restituta was very outspoken in her opposition to the Nazi regime. When a new wing to the hospital was built she hung a crucifix in each of the new rooms. The Nazis demanded that they be removed. Sister Restituta was told she would be dismissed if she did not comply.

She refused. The crucifixes remained on the walls.

One of the doctors on staff, a fanatical Nazi, would have none of it. He denounced her to the Party and on Ash Wednesday, 1942, she was arrested by the Gestapo as she came out of the operating room. The charges against her included, “hanging crucifixes, and writing a poem that mocked Hitler.”

The Nazis promptly sentenced her to death by the guillotine for “favouring the enemy and conspiracy to commit high treason.” They offered her freedom if she would abandon the Franciscans she loved so much. She adamantly refused. Although many nuns lost their lives in the extermination camps, Sister Restituta would be the only Catholic nun ever charged, tried, and sentenced to death by a Nazi court.

An appeal for clemency went as far as the desk of Hitler’s personal secretary and Nazi Party Chancellor, Martin Bormann. His response was that her execution “would provide effective intimidation for others who might want to resist the Nazis.” Sister Maria Restituta spent her final days in prison caring for the sick. Because of her love for the crucifix — or rather, the One who was died upon it — she was beheaded on March 30, 1943.

The day she died happened to be Tuesday of Holy Week. She was 48 years old.

Pope John Paul II visited Vienna in 1998 and there beatified Helena Kafka, the girl whose destiny was service. She was declared Blessed Maria Restituta. She had learned how to serve others extremely well. But the One she served best of all was her Savior. She gave Him her life.

Blessed Marie Restituta, please pray for us.

Larry Peterson is a Christian author, writer and blogger who has written hundreds of columns on various topics. His books include the novel The Priest and the Peaches and the children’s book Slippery Willie’s Stupid, Ugly Shoes. His latest book, The Demons of Abadon, will become available during the spring of 2016. He has three kids and six grandchildren, and they all live within three miles of each other in Florida.

This Agnostic Scientist Converted After Witnessing a Miracle at Lourdes

Source: ChurchPop

Alexis Carrel was born into a Catholic family in a small town in France in 1873. He attended Mass regularly and went to Catholic schools run by Jesuits. Unfortunately, by the time he went to college he was an agnostic. He completely rejected the Catholic faith and wasn’t even sure if there was a God.

However, he wouldn’t stay that way. And an extraordinary miracle from Lourdes helped lead him back.

As an agnostic, Carrel studied biology and medicine and went on to become a world famous scientist. He developed a way to allow organs to live outside the body, a huge step toward organ transplants, and he developed new techniques for cleaning wounds. Most importantly, though, he invented techniques for suturing large blood vessels, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1912.

This is why his opinion about alleged miracles at Lourdes mattered so much.

Although the original apparitions at Lourdes had occurred in 1858, people in the early 20th century (as they are today) were still claiming to be cured by the water there. Despite the large number of alleged cures, the French medical establishment was firmly against the possibility that anything supernatural was happening.

Carrel himself was also a strong skeptic. That is, until he met a girl named Marie Bailly.

He was on a train to Lourdes with a doctor friend to see the hysteria for himself in 1902 when he came across Bailly, who apparently had something called tuberculous peritonitis. It was a fatal disease. She was only half-conscious and had a swelled belly. Trying to help, Carrel gave her morphine, but said he didn’t think she’d even survive the rest of the trip to Lourdes. Other doctors on the train came to the same conclusion.

When they arrived, her friends carried her to the grotto, and three pitchers of water from Lourdes was poured on her. With each pour, she said felt a searing pain throughout her body. To the amazement of the doctors present, her belly started to flatten back to a normal size almost immediately and her pulse returned to a normal rate.

By that evening, she was well enough to eat a normal dinner.

The scientist in Carrel didn’t know what to make of it all. He had to admit that everything he knew about medicine made it seem like her cure was indeed miraculous. But he knew that publicly claiming to have witnessed a miracle would ruin his career. So he just stayed quiet about it all. He didn’t even want people to know he had gone to Lourdes.

However, Bailly’s cure quickly became national news. News outlets reported that Carrel had been present, but that he didn’t think there was anything miraculous about what happened. This wasn’t exactly accurate, so he was forced to publish a public reply. In it, he scolded religious believers for generally being too quick to claim something unusual was miraculous, but he also criticized the medical establishment for ruling out the possibility of miracles, saying that Bailly may indeed have been cured miraculously.

This was a public scandal! How could someone so steeped in science and so accomplished in medicine say that Bailly’s cure might have been miraculous? His career in France was over. Unable to work in hospitals any longer, he moved to Canada, and eventually the United States. He joined the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York and spent the rest of his career there. (Marie Bailly, for her part, joined a convent.)

So he had been convinced the woman’s cure could have been miraculous – what did that mean for him spiritually?

He didn’t know what to do with it exactly, since fully admitting to himself that he had witnessed a true miracle at Lourdes would require him to rethink his religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

It took him 25 years of working it out in his heart and mind, but finally, in 1939, he decided to meet with a Catholic priest in order to seriously consider returning to the Church. They became friends, and three years later he announced, “I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all the Catholic Church teaches.”

And just two years after that, he died. But not without receiving Last Rites on his deathbed.

God had brought him back just in time.

Pray for Alexis Carrel, may he rest in peace!

YES! JESUS WAS BORN IN DECEMBER 25! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

In one his articles in a local broadsheet, Rev. Fr. Ben San Luis, SVD, in my opinion publicly conceded to one or two lists of objections raised by Protestant anti-Catholics on the issue of Jesus' birth date.

My source HERE

Since December 25 as the birth date of our Lord Jesus IS NOT a doctrine, it is always open to friendly and intelligent discussion (by experts only). Therefore no ordinary Catholic should accuse Fr. Ben of schism or declare his opinion 'anathema'. 

Below is Dr. Taylor Marshall's brilliant defense on WHY ALL CATHOLIC MUST not succumb to historically unfounded Protestant objections on Jesus' birthdate (DECEMBER 25). His argument is more plausible compared to Fr. Ben's opinion. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Yes, Christ Was Really Born on December 25: Here’s a Defense of the Traditional Date for Christmas
by Dr Taylor Marshall

The following is adapted from Taylor Marshall’s new book: The Eternal City: Rome & and Origins of Catholic Christianity.

The Catholic Church, from at least the second century, has claimed that Christ was born on December 25. However, it is commonly alleged that our Lord Jesus Christ was not born on December 25. For the sake of simplicity, let us set out the usual objections to the date of December 25 and counter each of them.

Objection 1: December 25 was chosen in order to replace the pagan Roman festival of Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a popular winter festival and so the Catholic Church prudently substituted Christmas in its place.

Reply to Objection 1: Saturnalia commemorated the winter solstice. Yet the winter solstice falls on December 22. It is true that Saturnalia celebrations began as early as December 17 and extended till December 23. Still, the dates don’t match up.

Objection 2: December 25 was chosen to replace the pagan Roman holiday Natalis Solis Invicti which means “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.”

Reply to Objection 2: Let us examine first the cult of the Unconquered Sun. The Emperor Aurelian introduced the cult of the Sol Invictus or Unconquered Sun to Rome in A.D. 274. Aurelian found political traction with this cult, because his own name Aurelian derives from the Latin word aurora denoting “sunrise.” Coins reveal that Emperor Aurelian called himself the Pontifex Solis or Pontiff of the Sun. Thus, Aurelian simply accommodated a generic solar cult and identified his name with it at the end of the third century.

Most importantly, there is no historical record for a celebration Natalis Sol Invictus on December 25 prior to A.D. 354. Within an illuminated manuscript for the year A.D. 354, there is an entry for December 25 reading “N INVICTI CM XXX.” Here N means “nativity.” INVICTI means “of the Unconquered.” CM signifies “circenses missus” or “games ordered.” The Roman numeral XXX equals thirty. Thus, the inscription means that thirty games were order for the nativity of the Unconquered for December 25th. Note that the word “sun” is not present. Moreover, the very same codex also lists “natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae” for the day of December 25. The phrase is translated as “birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea.”[i]

The date of December 25th only became the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” under the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate had been a Christian but who had apostatized and returned to Roman paganism. History reveals that it was the hateful former Christian Emperor that erected a pagan holiday on December 25. Think about that for a moment. What was he trying to replace?

These historical facts reveal that the Unconquered Sun was not likely a popular deity in the Roman Empire. The Roman people did not need to be weaned off of a so-called ancient holiday. Moreover, the tradition of a December 25th celebration does not find a place on the Roman calendar until after the Christianization of Rome. The “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” holiday was scarcely traditional and hardly popular. Saturnalia (mentioned above) was much more popular, traditional, and fun. It seems, rather, that Julian the Apostate had attempted to introduce a pagan holiday in order to replace the Christian one!

Objection 3: Christ could not have been born in December since Saint Luke describes shepherds herding in the neighboring fields of Bethlehem. Shepherds do not herd during the winter. Thus, Christ was not born in winter.

Reply to Objection 3: Recall that Palestine is not England, Russia, or Alaska. Bethlehem is situated at the latitude of 31.7. My city of Dallas, Texas has the latitude of 32.8, and it’s still rather comfortable outside in December. As the great Cornelius a Lapide remarks during his lifetime, one could still see shepherds and sheep in the fields of Italy during late December, and Italy is at higher latitude than Bethlehem.

Now we move on to establishing the birthday of Christ from Sacred Scripture in two steps. The first step is to use Scripture to determine the birthday of Saint John the Baptist. The next step is using Saint John the Baptist’s birthday as the key for finding Christ’s birthday. We can discover that Christ was born in late December by observing first the time of year in which Saint Luke describes Saint Zacharias in the temple. This provides us with the approximate conception date of Saint John the Baptist. From there we can follow the chronology that Saint Luke gives, and that lands us at the end of December.

Saint Luke reports that Zacharias served in the “course of Abias” (Lk 1:5) which Scripture records as the eighth course among the twenty-four priestly courses (Neh 12:17). Each shift of priests served one week in the temple for two times each year. The course of Abias served during the eighth week and the thirty-second week in the annual cycle.[ii]However, when did the cycle of courses begin?

Josef Heinrich Friedlieb has convincingly established that the first priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the destruction of Jerusalem on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av.[iii]Thus the priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the second week of Av. Consequently, the priestly course of Abias (the course of Saint Zacharias) was undoubtedly serving during the second week of the Jewish month of Tishri—the very week of the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of Tishri. In our calendar, the Day of Atonement would land anywhere from September 22 to October 8.

Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist immediately after Zacharias served his course. This entails that Saint John the Baptist would have been conceived somewhere around the end of September, placing John’s birth at the end of June, confirming the Catholic Church’s celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24.

The second-century Protoevangelium of Saint James also confirms a late September conception of the Baptist since the work depicts Saint Zacharias as High Priest and as entering the Holy of Holies—not merely the holy place with the altar of incense. This is a factual mistake because Zacharias was not the high priest, but one of the chief priests.[iv]Still, the Protoevangelium regards Zacharias as a high priest and this associates him with the Day of Atonement, which lands on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri (roughly the end of our September). Immediately after this entry into the temple and message of the Archangel Gabriel, Zacharias and Elizabeth conceive John the Baptist. Allowing for forty weeks of gestation, this places the birth of John the Baptist at the end of June—once again confirming the Catholic date for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24.

The rest of the dating is rather simple. We read that just after the Immaculate Virgin Mary conceived Christ, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. This means that John the Baptist was six months older that our Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 1:24-27, 36). If you add six months to June 24 you get December 24-25 as the birthday of Christ. Then, if you subtract nine months from December 25 you get that the Annunciation was March 25. All the dates match up perfectly. So then, if John the Baptist was conceived shortly after the Jewish Day of the Atonement, then the traditional Catholic dates are essentially correct. The birth of Christ would be about or on December 25.

Sacred Tradition also confirms December 25 as the birthday of the Son of God. The source of this ancient tradition is the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. Ask any mother about the birth of her children. She will not only give you the date of the birth, but she will be able to rattle off the time, the location, the weather, the weight of the baby, the length of the baby, and a number of other details. I’m the father of six blessed children, and while I sometimes forget these details—mea maxima culpa—my wife never does. You see, mothers never forget the details surrounding the births of their babies.

Now ask yourself: Would the Blessed Virgin Mary ever forget the birth of her Son Jesus Christ who was conceived without human seed, proclaimed by angels, born in a miraculous way, and visited by Magi? She knew from the moment of His incarnation in her stainless womb that He was the Son of God and Messiah. Would she ever forget that day?[v]

Next, ask yourself: Would the Apostles be interested in hearing Mary tell the story? Of course they would. Do you think the holy Apostle who wrote, “And the Word was made flesh,” was not interested in the minute details of His birth? Even when I walk around with our seven-month-old son, people always ask “How old is he?” or “When was he born?” Don’t you think people asked this question of Mary?

So the exact birth date (December 25) and the time (midnight) would have been known in the first century. Moreover, the Apostles would have asked about it and would have, no doubt, commemorated the blessed event that both Saint Matthew and Saint Luke chronicle for us. In summary, it is completely reasonable to state that the early Christians both knew and commemorated the birth of Christ. Their source would have been His Immaculate Mother.

Further testimony reveals that the Church Fathers claimed December 25 as the Birthday of Christ prior to the conversion of Constantine and the Roman Empire. The earliest record of this is that Pope Saint Telesphorus (reigned A.D. 126-137) instituted the tradition of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Although the Liber Pontificalis does not give us the date of Christmas, it assumes that the Pope was already celebrating Christmas and that a Mass at midnight was added. During this time, we also read the following words of Theophilus (A.D. 115-181), Catholic bishop of Caesarea in Palestine: “We ought to celebrate the birthday of Our Lord on what day soever the 25th of December shall happen.”[vi]

Shortly thereafter in the second century, Saint Hippolytus (A.D. 170-240) wrote in passing that the birth of Christ occurred on December 25:

The First Advent of our Lord in the flesh occurred when He was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, which is five thousand and five hundred years from Adam. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.[vii]

Also note in the quote above the special significance of March 25, which marks the death of Christ (March 25 was assumed to corresponded to the Hebrew month Nisan 14 – the traditional date of crucifixion).[viii] Christ, as the perfect man, was believed to have been conceived and died on the same day—March 25. In his Chronicon, Saint Hippolytus states that the earth was created on March 25, 5500 B.C. Thus, March 25 was identified by the Church Fathers as the Creation date of the universe, as the date of the Annunciation and Incarnation of Christ, and also as the date of the Death of Christ our Savior.

In the Syrian Church, March 25 or the Feast of the Annunciation was seen as one of the most important feasts of the entire year. It denoted the day that God took up his abode in the womb of the Virgin. In fact, if the Annunciation and Good Friday came into conflict on the calendar, the Annunciation trumped it, so important was the day in Syrian tradition. It goes without saying that the Syrian Church preserved some of the most ancient Christian traditions and had a sweet and profound devotion for Mary and the Incarnation of Christ.

Now then, March 25 was enshrined in the early Christian tradition, and from this date it is easy to discern the date of Christ’s birth. March 25 (Christ conceived by the Holy Ghost) plus nine months brings us to December 25 (the birth of Christ at Bethlehem).

Saint Augustine confirms this tradition of March 25 as the Messianic conception and December 25 as His birth:

For Christ is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.[ix]

In about A.D. 400, Saint Augustine also noted how the schismatic Donatists celebrated December 25 as the birth of Christ, but that the schismatics refused to celebrate Epiphany on January 6, since they regarded Epiphany as a new feast without a basis in Apostolic Tradition. The Donatist schism originated in A.D. 311 which may indicate that the Latin Church was celebrating a December 25 Christmas (but not a January 6 Epiphany) before A.D. 311. Whichever is the case, the liturgical celebration of Christ’s birth was commemorated in Rome on December 25 long before Christianity became legalized and long before our earliest record of a pagan feast for the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. For these reasons, it is reasonable and right to hold that Christ was born on December 25 in 1 B.C. and that he died and rose again in March of A.D. 33.

Taylor’s new book The Eternal City also makes an argument in defense of the traditional BC/AD dating as being 100% accurate.

______________________________________________

[i] The Chronography of AD 354. Part 12: Commemorations of the Martyrs. MGH Chronica Minora I (1892), pp. 71-2.

[ii] I realize that there are two courses of Abias. This theory only works if Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist after Zacharias’ second course – the course in September. If Saint Luke refers to the first course, this then would place the birth of John the Baptist in late Fall and the birth of Christ in late Spring. However, I think tradition and the Protoevangelium substantiate that the Baptist was conceived in late September.

[iii] Josef Heinrich Friedlieb’s Leben J. Christi des Erlösers. Münster, 1887, p. 312.

[iv] The Greek tradition especially celebrates Saint Zacharias as “high priest.” Nevertheless, Acts 5:24 reveals that there were several “chief priests” (ἀρχιερεῖς), and thus the claim that Zacharias was a “high priest” may not indicate a contradiction. The Greek tradition identifies Zacharias as an archpriest and martyr based on the narrative of the Protoevangelium of James and Matthew 23:35: “That upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.” (Matthew 23:35)

[v] A special thanks to the Reverend Father Phil Wolfe, FSSP for bringing the “memory of Mary” argument to my attention.

[vi] Magdeburgenses, Cent. 2. c. 6. Hospinian, De origine Festorum Chirstianorum.

[vii] Saint Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel.

[viii] There is some discrepancy in the Fathers as to whether Nisan 14/March 25 marked the death of Christ or his resurrection.

[ix] Saint Augustine, De trinitate, 4, 5.

Do you enjoy reading Canterbury Tales by Taylor Marshall? Make it easier to receive daily posts. It’s free. Please click here to sign up by Feed or here to sign up by Email. Please also explore Taylor’s books about Catholicism at amazon.com.

Christmas in Our Hearts

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPE FRANCIS

Catholic Missionaries RISK persecution and death by proclaiming Jesus among those who haven't received the 'Good News"

And how about your Ministers? Your Pastors? Had they took the risk yet? #ProudCatholics

CNS News: Acclaimed Atheist Poet Becomes Catholic: 'My Tears Just Stopped'

By Mark Judge | November 30, 2016
For CNS News

Poet Sally Read (Ignatius Press/
Used with permission)

“If you’re there, you have to help me.”

Those are the words that poet Sally Read said to an icon of Jesus in 2010. Read, a British poet and atheist, had stopped into a church in Santa Marinella, Italy. She felt burdened. Her young daughter was having health issues. Her husband Fabio was enduring some stress at work.

“There was this incredible experience where this presence almost came down, and my tears just stopped, just dried,” Read tells CNSNews.com. “I felt almost physically carried up. It was as if someone walked into the room. I knew this person. I knew that I was a Christian.”

Up to that point Read, now 46, had been an atheist. “I was brought up an atheist,” Read notes in her just-published memoir, “Night’s Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story.” “At ten I could tell you that religion was the opiate of the masses; it was [driven] into me to never kneel before anyone or anything…As a young woman I could quote Christopher Hitchens and enough of the Bible to scoff at.”

Read was born in 1971 and raised in Suffolk, England. As a young woman she worked as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital and became a critically acclaimed poet, winning the Eric Gregory Award in 2001. A few years later Read married an Italian man, Fabio, and the couple, along with new daughter Florenzia, moved to Santa Marinella, a town 30 miles from Rome.

In her 30s and raising her daughter, Read began working on a book on women’s health and sexuality. Wanting to interview a wide swath of women for the book, Read contacted orthodox Catholic women. When the women declined to be interviewed, largely due to the graphic nature of Read’s subject matter, Read approached a Byzantine-Catholic priest, Fr. Gregory Hrynkiw, for advice. Fr. Gregory and Read became friends, with the priest answering questions the author had about faith.

Miss Universe Donated to Caritas Manila

Photo Source: Inquirer Online

STAR POWER Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle thanks Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach for her donation of cash and goods for Caritas Manila's Bazaar. Story on http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/852814/pia-wurtzbach-pays-courtesy-call-on-cardinal-tagle

Catholic Herald: BBC admits it underestimated the Church’s opposition to Hitler

By Dan Hitchens for Catholic Herald
posted Friday, 9 Dec 2016

BBC Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London (PA)

The BBC conceded it was false to describe the Church as being 'silent' in the face of Nazism

The BBC’s internal watchdog has found that a programme wrongly accused the Catholic Church of “silence” about the Holocaust.

After Pope Francis’s visit to Auschwitz in July, BBC One’s 6pm news bulletin carried a report which stated: “Silence was the response of the Catholic Church when Nazi Germany demonised Jewish people and then attempted to eradicate Jews from Europe.”

In response, the cross-bench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and Fr Leo Chamberlain, the former headmaster of Ampleforth, made an official complaint.

Nearly six months later, the BBC’s editorial complaints unit has now concluded that the item was unfair. According to the unit, the BBC reporter “did not give due weight to public statements by successive popes or the efforts made on the instructions of Pius XII to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution, and perpetuated a view which is at odds with the balance of evidence.”

Pope Pius XII, who was the pontiff during World War II, has been accused of silent acquiescence to the Holocaust, most famously by a 1999 book, Hitler’s Pope, which sparked a major controversy among historians. Its author, John Cornwell, has since backed down on some of his claims.

In a blog post criticising the BBC report, Lord Alton pointed out that several historians had praised Pius’s achievements in the fight against Nazism. The peer quoted Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish historian and Israeli diplomat, as saying that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”

Through its diplomatic network, the Holy See under Pius XII helped Jews to travel safely out of Eastern Europe. It also issued baptismal certificates to Hungarian Jews to help them escape. Thousands of Jews were also sheltered in the Vatican itself.

Lord Alton quoted the Jewish Chronicle’s praise of Pius (“Such actions will always be remembered”) and Albert Einstein’s remark in 1940 that “only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth … I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”