Vatican News
So, according to the liberal media and various left-wing and Catholic-hostile punditry, if the Pope is supposed to excommunicate (or keep excommunicated) public figures who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith (i.e. anti-Semitism), would those same journalists and pundits be consistent with others who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith?
Like pro-abortion politicians?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
This coming Tuesday, August 26, will mark the 30th anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul I, who brief reign lasted only one month before his untimely death. Yet for all the brevity of his papacy, the controversy surrounding his death has lived on in the intervening decades. Conspiracy theorists have claimed that the pope either murdered or even committed suicide, all of which is nonsense. Nevertheless, that has not prevented hucksters from advancing their claims. The most prominent book on the subject is by David Yallop, called In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, first published in 1984 and released in a new edition in 2007. The infamous John Cornwall, author of the execrable Hitler’s Pope, has also weighed in with his tome.
Meanwhile, Lori Pieper, who blogs at “Lori’s Pilgrimage”, has been investigating John Paul I’s death for almost as long, even writing an as-yet unpublished manuscript. So now she is publishing her refutations of the conspiracy theories on her blog in time for the anniversary. The first part is online at Was Pope John Paul I Murdered? (Part I)
Many of the people who were close to Pope John Paul I have always been reluctant to talk about the controversy surrounding his death. This is not because they want to conceal anything, but rather because they are weary of being questioned on the subject. They wonder why there is so much interest in the theory that the Pope was murdered and so little in his life. They feel betrayed by those who have distorted the facts they have provided in order to write scandalous books, and angry because those who read these books seem to be more interested in sensationalism than they are in the truth. When I spoke with the Pope’s brother and sister-in-law and his secretaries, Father Lorenzi and Father Senigaglia, about his death back in 1985, they told me that they were afraid that attempting to refute these lies would only add to the furor, and that no one cared about the truth anyway.
It’s time to reclaim the truth about Pope John Paul I, né Albano Luciano, Servant of God who cause for beatification is ongoing. The life of holiness of the Pope should be what we remember, not this other silliness.
Photo is in the public domain. Via Wikimedia.
The Archdiocese of Sydney has launched its new World Youth Day social networking site called Xt3. Also, check out the cool 30-second spot on that page produced by Grassroots Films, creators of such fare as “The Human Experience”, “God in the Streets of New York”, and “Fishers of Men”.
As usual, it’s very cool. Those of you in the younger demographic will have to tell us old fogeys whether you like the site.
Flickr.com user Christus Vincit has collected what he describes as the Best Pictures of Pope Benedict, a series of what look like mainly news photos of the Holy Father. (Sadly, these are unattributed to the photographers and probably reproduced without permission, so it may not be long before they are taken down.) There are some very nice shots among these 125 photos of Pope Benedict.
When Pope Benedict visited the US, he called on Americans to continue our great tradition of welcoming immigrants to our shores: “to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials and to help them flourish in their new home.”
Unfortunately, some Republicans have let their zeal for enforcement of the rule of law, including in the area of immigration with which I agree, become an unjust, un-Christian, and downright un-American animus against immigrants. Period. To wit, one Rep, Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, who took the occasion of the Pope’s remarks on hospitality to attack the Church.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, quotes Tancredo’s foolish remark:
Mr. Tancredo’s response was to accuse the pontiff of “faith-based marketing” and claim that “the pope’s immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church.”
Tancredo is no doubt referring to the Pew Forum study that found that the Catholic Church in the US is growing only because Catholic immigrants are flooding our shores. CNN anchor Lou Dobb’s shares Tancredo’s impulses and also attacked the Pope for “insulting” Americans: “I really don’t appreciate the bad manners of a guest telling me in this country and my fellow citizens what to do.”
The Pope simply lives up to the Gospel message that we are to be welcoming to the stranger in our midst and extols our American credo and history of welcoming the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and that’s bad manners and an insult? No, the bad manners comes from those who let themselves be blinded by ideology, insult a welcomed and honored guest, and twist an American value into something it is not.
To repeat: I agree we need to enforce the immigrations laws to secure our borders, to elevate the rule of law, and to end the exploitation of illegal aliens by criminals and unscrupulous employers that results. But a blanket anti-immigrant ideology harboring a deep well of anti-Catholicism is just unacceptable.
