Why do you not understand what I (Jesus) say? It is because you cannot bear to hear My Word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I (Jesus) tell the Truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? If I tell the Truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear Them is that you are not of God."

--The Holy Gospel of St. John 8:43-47

And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.' Then He will say to those at His left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to Thee?' Then He will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to Me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

--Holy Gospel of St. Matthew 25:40-46

The magazine’s failure to check the court ruling was then compounded for me (Byron Calame) by the handling of reader complaints about the issue. The initial complaints triggered a public defense of the article by two assistant managing editors before the court ruling had even been translated into English or Mr. Hitt had finished checking various sources in El Salvador. After being queried by the office of the publisher about a possible error, Craig Whitney, who is also the paper’s standards editor, drafted a response that was approved by Gerald Marzorati, who is also the editor of the magazine. It was forwarded on Dec. 1 to the office of the publisher, which began sending it to complaining readers. The response said that while the “fair and dispassionate” story noted Ms. Climaco’s conviction of aggravated homicide, the article “concluded that it was more likely that she had had an illegal abortion.” The response ended by stating, “We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts as reported in our article, which was not part of any campaign to promote abortion.” After the English translation of the court ruling became available on Dec. 8, I asked Mr. Marzorati if he continued to have “no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts” in the article. His e-mail response seemed to ignore the ready availability of the court document containing the findings from the trial before the three-judge panel and its sentencing decision. He referred to it as the “third ruling,” since the trial is the third step in the judicial process. The article was “as accurate as it could have been at the time it was written,” Mr. Marzorati wrote to me. “I also think that if the author and we editors knew of the contents of that third ruling, we would have qualified what we said about Ms. Climaco. Which is NOT to say that I simply accept the third ruling as ‘true’; El Salvador’s judicial system is terribly politicized.” I asked Mr. Whitney if he intended to suggest that the office of the publisher bring the court’s findings to the attention of those readers who received the “no reason to doubt” response, or that a correction be published. The latest word from the standards editor: “No, I’m not ready to do that, nor to order up a correction or Editors’ Note at this point.”

CHRIST. . . . Some are sorely tempted about faith and the Sacraments, but this is due to the Devil rather than to themselves. Do not be anxious; do not fight your thoughts, or attempt to answer any doubts that the Devil suggest: trust in God's word, believe His Saints and Prophets, and the wicked enemy will flee from you (James 4:7). Often it is very profitable that the servant of God should experience such doubts, since the Devil does not tempt unbelievers and sinners who are already his own; but he tempts and vexes the faithful and devout in every way he can. CHRIST. My son, you will be able to enter into Me in so far as you are prepared to forsake yourself. And as the absence of craving for material things makes for inner peace, so does the forsaking of self unite man's heart to God. I wish you to learn perfect self-surrender, and to accept My will without argument or complaint. Follow me,(Matt.9:9) who am the Way, the Truth and the Life. (John 14:6) Without the Way, there is no progress ; without the Truth, there is no knowledge; without the Life, there is no living. I am the Way you must follow; the Truth you must believe; the Life for which you must hope. I am the imperishable Way, the infallible Truth, the eternal Life. I am the most noble Way, the ultimate Truth, the true Life, blessed and uncreated. If you remain in My Way, you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free, (John 8:32) and you shall lay hold on eternal Life.(John 8:12; I Tim. 6:12) If you wish to enter into Life, keep My Commandments.(Matt.19:17) If you wish to know the Truth, believe Me. If you wish to be perfect, sell everything.(Matt.19:21) If you wish to be My disciple, deny yourself.(Matt.16:24) If you wish to possess the blessed Life, despise this present life. If you wish to be exalted in Heaven, be humble in this world. If you wish to reign with Me, bear the cross with Me ; for none but the servants of the Cross discover the Way of blessedness and true light.

It shows that disaffected Catholics can pull together to find a path to God they believe is more community-oriented, inclusive and -- as the 13 parishioners interviewed for this story kept repeating -- more awash in joy than the official church. But the breakaway church's struggle to bring in fresh blood, and even retain its spiritual leader, also suggests that bucking the Vatican's hard line, discarding traditional teachings and generally going liberal is not a guaranteed way to fill pews. Although Christ the Servant has brought Mr. O'Dwyer (breakaway leader) and his fellow parishioners profound joy, the church has struggled to attract new members and has, in fact, lost members since its founding priest left in September to seek a reconciliation have been reared in the faith that even the disaffected are loath to switch to another church. The bottom line? A softening in the Vatican's stance on female ordination or other controversial issues would be unlikely to usher in a flood of converts to Roman Catholicism. "If there was a change there, the [women] who were already actively involved would probably feel more comfortable with where the church is relative to their particular views," Mr. Bibby says. "But I doubt very much we would suddenly see all kinds of people from the outside coming in."

"But is it fair to judge her so harshly for behavior that, when employed by far more famous celebrities, is often rewarded?"

'At 8.30 I (British) fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with "Merry Christmas" on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with "Thank you" on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.'

In his Christmas Day address at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI called for an end to conflicts across the globe and greater concern for the poor, the exploited and all who suffer. Speaking from a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, the pontiff called for peace in the Middle East, noting in particular the long war between Israel and the Palestinians. "I place in the hands of the divine Child of Bethlehem the indications of a resumption of dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which we have witnessed in recent days, and the hope of further encouraging developments," Benedict said in his annual address.

'We should not be rivals or enemies, as there is nothing we can divide in Russia. Mutual understanding of many global problems between our Churches we have at the official level should reach the level of simple clergymen,' the secretary for interchristian relations of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations Fr. Igor Vyzhanov told at the Christmas meeting of clergymen and monastics of the Moscow Catholic archdiocese of the Mother of God. He said that the Orthodox were open and ready for cooperation with the Russian Catholics, in particular in social and charity programs.

They may think they represent the alternative: a higher, productive rationality. But they are underestimating their own secular competition--the many, often confused cultures loose in the U.S. now. Hip-hop culture, acquisitive consumerism, fashion, hipsterism, street gangs, mystical evironmentalism, Web-centered "reality" cultures. Where's the higher-level thinking here? And by way, the hobgoblin fear of bioengineered food doesn't reside in the American South but in agnostic Europe.

Do virtues matter as ballast in a dynamic, complex society? If yes, where will they come from? Do secularists simply expropriate them from religion? Or do they create their own, such as "do not oppress"?

Atheists and the unchurched undervalue the extent to which they are getting a free ride on the social strength that religious-based virtue provides. It's one thing to write in a book that we don't need them. But I'd rather not run the real-world experiment of navigating without them. And this is why this weekend so many will spend an hour with virtue's originalists.

All those liberal strands of Christianity are paying the price for their devil's bargain with secularism in vastly diminished numbers, as members figure out that when a religion lets them do whatever they want, one of the things they don't want to do is go to church on Sunday. The mainline denominations, which once represented 40% of US Protestants, now represent only 12%: 17 million out of 135 million. To put it bluntly, liberal Christianity is in meltdown. The election of Jefferts Schori, a theological liberal who prayed to a female Jesus at last summer's bishops' convention, together with the bishops' vote not to endorse the bedrock Christian proposition that Jesus is Lord, proved to be the last straw for many Episcopalians who believe that the essence of their Anglican faith isn't "tension" but fidelity to the Bible and the Christian creeds.

In fact, those conservative Northern Virginia churches that split off on Sunday may be few in number, but they represent an island of vibrancy in an otherwise moribund denomination. They are large, prosperous, highly educated congregations in large, prosperous, highly-educated Washington, DC, suburbs: Fairfax, Falls Church, Sterling, Woodbridge. They join four other Northern Virginia churches that have similarly severed their ties with the Episcopal Church, and two more churches are likely to schedule similar votes in January. These 14 churches, together with a 15th that had been expected to announce a vote on Sunday but did not, constitute only 7% of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia's 197 parishes, but represent 11% of its baptised membership of about 90,000 and 18% of its average Sunday attendance of 32,000. Live people instead of dead people pay for their upkeep. What happened in Virginia is a sign of growing awareness among conservative Christians that they are not - contrary to the way they have been painted by the liberal denominations and their sympathetic friends in the liberal media - a theologically backward, inevitably diminishing minority of dissenters from the enlightened Christian mainstream. ...For years the wealth, historic prestige, and trendy theology of the Episcopal Church have secured it outsize press attention that has obscured its marginal status in worldwide Anglicanism and American Protestantism. The election of Jefferts Schori as presiding bishop and the pomp surrounding her installation at the National Cathedral in Washington seemed designed as displays of liberal triumphalism.

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." --Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is concerned, you're right." --Rush Limbaugh

Catholics cannot accept a vision of secularism "as an exclusion of religion from various society environments and as its exile in the framework of the individual conscience." Benedetto XVI wanted to clarify this in a speech addressed today to the Union of Italian Catholic Law Experts. According to a certain vision, he explained, "secularism would be expressed in the total separation between the Church and State, and the Church would not any role of intervening on topics relating to the life and behaviour of citizens." Plus, he added, "secularism would even bring the exclusion of religious symbols from public places for the carrying out of the political community's functions: from offices, schools, courts, hospitals, prisons." The Pontiff stated, "Today there is talk of secular thought, secular morality, secular science, secular politics." A concept that must be rejected because it is based on "an unreligious vision of life, thought and morality: in other words a vision in which there is no room for God, for a Mystery that transcends pure reason, for a moral law of absolute value that is in effect all the time and in every situation." According to Benedetto XVI, "it is the task of all believers, in particular followers of Christ, to contribute to elaborating a concept of secularism that, on one side, acknowledges to God and its moral law, to Christ and to his Church their place in human life, individual and community, and on the other side, affirms and respects the autonomous legitimacy of worldly situations" that represent "a legitimate need, that not only is postulated by the men of our times, but is also conforming to the wishes of the Creator. In fact, from their condition as creatures, everything receives their consistency, truth, goodness, their own laws and their own order: and everything that men is obligated to respect, by acknowledging the needs of the methods of every single science or art." Ratzinger underlined, "Only if we realize this, we can measure the weight of the problems coming from a term like secularism, which seems to have become almost the qualifying emblem of post-modernity, in particular for modern democracy." To distinguish between secularism and laicism is for Benedetto XVI particularly necessary in "a historic time that is exciting because of the progress that humanity has carried out in many fields of law, culture, communication, sciences and technology. Some people attempt to exclude God from every part of life, presenting him as an antagonist of man." And it is up to Christians "to demonstrate that instead God is love and wants the goodness and happiness of all men," in other words, "to make people understand that the moral law given by God, and that comes to us with the voice of conscience, has the goal of liberating us from evil and making us happy, not to oppress us." The Pope concluded, "We must demonstrate that without God man is lost and that the exclusion of religion from social life, in particular the marginalization of Christianity, ruins the foundations of human coexistence," that "before having a social and political nature it has a moral nature." (AGI)

The woman, who is understood to be a committed Christian, takes her bible everywhere she goes and is now set to take the airline to an industrial tribunal claiming discrimination on religious grounds. BMI, formerly British Midland Airways, said today it was merely following the Foreign Office advice that no non-Islamic materials or artefacts are allowed into the country. ..."She is saying she wants to carry her bible with her. We are saying we can't start designing rules around individuals when we've got several hundred members of staff. To take every personal preference into account would be impossible." On its web site the Foreign Office says of Saudi Arabia: "The importation and use of narcotics, alcohol, pork products and religious books, apart from the Koran, and artefacts are forbidden." BMI said it offered the stewardess the opportunity to transfer from long-haul duties to short-haul, but she refused.

1. The Lamb's Supper: The Mass As Heaven on Earth by Scott Hahn (Paperback - Oct 2007)

2. 101 Inspirational Stories of the Rosary by Sister Patricia Proctor (Paperback - April 1, 2003) 3. Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus (Paperback - Nov 1997) 4. Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen (Paperback - Mar 1, 1994) 5. Imitation of Christ by a Kempis Thomas (Paperback - Jul 1975)

I'm almost done reading this book and I would highly recommend this for anyone who wants to sanctify his or her life through the pursuit of holiness. The second most best selling book in the history of Man after the Bible.

In a book published recently in Italian, Verite o fede debole. Dialogo su cristianesimo e relativismo ("Truth or Weak Faith: Dialogue on Christianity and Relativism"), Professor Girard writes that "we will live in a world that will seem and be as Christian as today it seems scientific", Zenit reports. "I believe we are on the eve of a revolution in our culture that will go beyond any expectation, and that the world is heading toward a change in respect of which the Renaissance will seem like nothing," Girard says, who was elected in 2005 as one of the 40 "immortals" of the French Academy.

The book, which is the product of 10 years of discussion between the French thinker and Italian professor Gianni Vattimo, theorist of so-called weak thought, transcribes three debates between the authors on topics such as faith, secularism, Christian roots, the role of the Gospel message in the history of humanity, relativism, the problem of violence, and the challenge of reason. In the book, Girard argues that "religion conquers philosophy and surpasses it. Philosophies in fact are almost dead. Ideologies are virtually deceased; political theories are almost altogether spent. Confidence in the fact that science can replace religion has already been surmounted. There is in the world a new need for religion.

"In regard to moral relativism, which is defended by Vattimo, Professor Girard answers that "I cannot be a relativist" because "I think the relativism of our time is the product of the failure of modern anthropology, of the attempt to resolve problems linked to the diversity of human cultures." Anthropology has failed because it has not succeeded in explaining the different human cultures as a unitary phenomenon, and that is why we are bogged down in relativism. "In my opinion, Christianity proposes a solution to these problems precisely because it demonstrates that the obstacles, the limits that individuals put on one another serve to avoid a certain type of conflicts." The French academic continues: "If it was really understood that Jesus is the universal victim who came precisely to surmount these conflicts, the problem would be solved." According to the anthropologist, "Christianity is a revelation of love" but also "a revelation of truth" because "in Christianity, truth and love coincide and are one and the same." The "concept of love," which in Christianity is "the rehabilitation of the unjustly accused victim, is truth itself; it is the anthropological truth and the Christian truth," explains Girard.