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[Catholic Caucus] Report: Cardinal Maradiaga Evacuated From Honduran Plane Due to Protesters & Threat of “Lynching” Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the head of the pope’s council of cardinal advisers, has, according to a tweet from National Catholic Register Rome correspondent Edward Pentin, been evacuated from a plane bound for Panama today due to political protests at Honduras airport. Image via Twitter According to Pentin’s sources, Maradiaga was secreted away out the back of the airport because of a belief that the crowd posed a “danger of lynching.”“His support for govt’s bad policies means he’s seen as paid govt official,” Pentin said.In a...

One of Francis’ first acts as Pope was to create a Council of Cardinal Advisors, commonly known as “C9”, to advise him on ecclesial affairs. The “advice,” however, appears to constitute little more than an echo chamber for whatever Francis wishes to say. To recall, the members of the Council are: Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa; Italian Bishop Marcello Semeraro, secretary to the Council; Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias; German Cardinal Reinhard Marx; Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga; Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello; U.S. Cardinal Sean O'Malley; Australian Cardinal George Pell; and Congolese Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya. All of the nine,...

Recently Pope Francis's "C9" council of cardinal advisers issued a statement supporting the pope in light of recent attacks, and the intent was clearly noble. It's worth pondering, however, if it could have unintended consequences, including pressuring other bishops to follow suit. Generally speaking, you know a manager is in trouble when somebody has to put out a statement expressing “full confidence” in his or her leadership. If a corporate board does that for the CEO, it’s usually a sure sign of either scandal or a drop in profits; if a sports franchise owner does it for the coach, it...

Space impact 'saved Christianity' By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Did a meteor over central Italy in AD 312 change the course of Roman and Christian history? About the size of a football field: The impact crater left behind A team of geologists believes it has found the incoming space rock's impact crater, and dating suggests its formation coincided with the celestial vision said to have converted a future Roman emperor to Christianity. It was just before a decisive battle for control of Rome and the empire that Constantine saw a blazing light cross the sky and...

A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says Duncan Steel Thursday February 6, 2003 The Guardian In the early fifth century, rampaging Goths swept through Italy. Inviolate for 1,100 years, Rome was sacked by the hordes in 410 AD. St Augustine's apologia, the City of God, set the tone for Christians for the next 16 centuries. But the Rome of that era came close to suffering a far worse calamity. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump...

'Asteroid impact could have prompted Constantine's conversion' An asteroid which exploded like a nuclear bomb may have converted the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity it is now being claimed. Scientists have discovered an impact crater dating from the fourth of fifth century in the Italian Apennine mountains. They believe the crater in the Sirente mountains, which is larger than a football field, could explain the legend of Constantine's conversion. Accounts from the 4th century describe how barbarians stood at the gates of the Roman empire while a Christian movement threatened its stability from within. It is said the emperor saw...

Speranza points out another difficulty with the impact-origins theory. Large blocks of limestone sit within the boundaries of the Sirente "crater." Such limestone would not have survived an impact. So if Ormö's theory is correct, one must surmise that somebody set these giant chunks of rock in place since the crater formed. To Speranza, that just didn't make sense. Speranza and colleagues further argue that Ormö's radiocarbon dating gave one age for the main feature (placing it in the 4th or 5th century a.d.) and a completely different age for a nearby "crater" called C9, a date in the 3rd...

Associated Press ITHACA, N.Y. -- The nine-spotted ladybug was considered so common, charismatic and crop-friendly that it was adopted in 1989 as New York's official state insect. As it turns out, the species may have disappeared from the state nearly two decades before that. Recent surveys in New York and the Northeast have found none of the once-ubiquitous beetles entomologists call Coccinella novemnotata-- or C-9, for short. The decline of C-9 and other native ladybugs happened so quickly and precipitously that scientists have launched a nationwide project to try to understand why some species have all but vanished while others...