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Jeremiah 8 English Standard Version (ESV) 4 "You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? 5 Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return. 6 I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly; no man relents of his evil, saying, "What have I done?" Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle. 7 Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and...

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For many American Christians, the Paris attacks have revealed a conflict between two priorities: The cause of persecuted Middle Eastern Christians and a hard line on security. Following reports that one of the Paris attackers had a Syrian passport and had allegedly registered as a refugee, multiple GOP presidential candidates called for bans on Syrian refugees. On Monday, multiple GOP governors joined in. Considering the United States has absorbed fewer than 2,000 Syrians, this may seem like political posturing, but Congress is set later this year to debate funding for another 10,000 who President Obama has said he wants to...

“The field of education reinforces racism, white supremacy, white privilege and exceptionalism upon which western civilization is built” Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Barack Obama’s former pastor, came into the spotlight during the 2008 presidential election when he drew harsh criticism for his comments damning America and using anti-semitic language. Wright spoke on the evening of Nov. 17 at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. In his talk titled “Prophetic Faith for Social Justice”, Wright spoke to a crowd of 100 about the need for a new theology that can lift African Americans from the despair of exploitation, war and racism. “The...

The Secretary of the Vatican State, reaffirms that there will be no step back: We are launching a campaign of mercy. The events in Paris don't change anything in the Pope's agenda. VATICAN CITY - Respond with mercy and hospitality to violence. The Secretary of the Vatican State, Pietro Parolin, has confirmed that the Jubilee (from December 8th 2015 to November 20th 2016) is on schedule, as the spokesman for the Holy See, Padre Lombardi had already said, and that, in fact, will be open also to Muslims. "In a world torn by violence, it is the right time to...

Russia is a bulwark for good, resisting an evil which has worked its way deep into the fabric of western societyWinston Churchill, in describing Russia, suggested it was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. As the world is increasingly forced to pay closer attention to Russia, many may look on with a mixture of curiosity, admiration and mystification, wondering what makes Russia tick. In trying to explain Russian culture, Russians may direct the enquiring foreigner to their literature. And in this literature one will soon be met with the recurring theme of the Russian soul, an idea...

The first thing we should know is that nearly one in four people in the world today is a Muslim. 1.7 billion people in the world pray to Allah as their god. To be technical, this works out to be 23% of the world’s population are Muslims. At the end of WWI, that is about 100 years ago, the estimated Muslim population in the world was 300 million. In this relatively short time they have grown from 300 million to 1.7 billion. This is phenomenal growth. This growth does not come from evangelism, it is from having lots and lots...

Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney has decried as "astonishing and truly alarming" a move to bring another Australian archbishop before an anti-discrimination commission because of a pamphlet defending marriage. Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart is the target of a discrimination complaint filed with a government commission in the state of Tasmania. The complaint is based on the archbishop's distribution of a pamphlet prepared by the Australian bishops to encourage support for marriage.

Le Point reports that the American rock group Eagles of Death Metal, traumatized by the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, have now returned home to California. They were reportedly in the middle of a song aptly entitled Kiss the Devil when the killers stormed the concert hall and starting killing people. How about some lyrics from that song by this "fun-loving" American band: Who'll love the devil?... Who'll song his song?... Who will love the devil and his song?... I'll love the devil!... I'll sing his song!... I will love the devil and his song!... Who'll love the...

The Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq, who lost his diocese to the Islamic State last year and is now in exile in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan), warned that the suffering in Iraq was only a prelude of what European and Western Christians will "suffer in the near future," and stressed that the West is endangering itself by welcoming "an ever-growing number of Muslims." He also emphasized that while the West says "all men are equal," Islam "does not say that all men are equal," and "their values" are not our values. "Our sufferings today are the prelude of those that you,...

The trials and tribulations of the Crawley family have enthralled Downton Abbey viewers for six series. But some have questioned why Christianity, which would have formed a central part of the lives of the aristocracy in the early 20th century, is largely absent from the show. Now the man tasked with ensuring the historical accuracy of the series has revealed why Downton does not do God. Alastair Bruce, who serves as the show’s historical advisor, said that executives in charge of the series had ordered producers to “leave religion out of it”, for fear of alienating an increasingly atheistic public....

Kaliningrad, November 16, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia called terrorism a new form of obsession and called for it to be fought not only using military methods, but also through education and culture. "The world is now faced with a different obsession, a different madness, which we call terrorism," the patriarch said after a liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Kaliningrad on Sunday. He said the tragedy that has occurred in Paris indicates "people's obsession to achieve political goals using any methods, even by destroying innocent people." "The fight against terrorism should not...

Sergiyev Posad, November 16, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church has called on people to learn the right lessons from the terrorist attacks in Paris and mobilize to fight terrorism. "I am deeply grieved for people, and those are right who sympathize and pray for victims killed in the French capital. Eternal memory to these people. May the Lord be merciful to them in His judgement. What has happened is not only a reason for grief, it's also a reason to ask yourself: is it not a lesson to us all, can Europe continue living like it lived before? And...

On 9/9/12 I got to teach my first class on Islam on the exact day I started studying Islam two years ago and in memory of the victims of 911. This first class is MY DREAM COME TRUE I started the class out with why they chose 911 to attack, showed the best presentation of the history of Jihad on 15 minutes by Bill Federer, played some of my appearance on the radio where I shared my HOW I BECAME AN ISLAMOPHOBE testimony and fielded questions from Jim Green, then I opened up for questions from the class attenders and...

Prayers offered at Christ the Savior Cathedral for the victims of terrorism

In the United States and in Italy the changes are most spectacular. With new “Bergoglio-style" bishops and cardinals. In Belgium, Danneels’s revenge against Ratzinger. The triumph of the St. Gallen club. Much more than reforming the Vatican curia and finances (to which he is applying himself more out of obligation than out of passion, with no comprehensive plan and too often relying on the wrong men and women), it is clear by now that Pope Francis wants to revolutionize the college of bishops. And he is doing so in a systematic way. The two talks that he gave this autumn...

A commenter writes: As an Irishman, Papism is in my blood. Irish Ultramontanism was pretty legendary and for good reason, but not for the reason most people think…The English had driven out our native aristocracy and over the ages of persecution and disenfranchisement, the priesthood was our only recourse of social leadership, the Pope was the only one who we could find succour and call our king. Was it in error? Perhaps, but you try being a Catholic in Ireland for the past few centuries and not be the same way, maybe you could find your path to Sainthood by...

To the Catholics who babble ecumenical nonsense, saying that the Koran is "a book of peace," here is what a great Saint has to say about it. If you feel you know better than he, God help you: "It would take too long to tell you all the stories about this famous impostor...Mohamed's religion consists of a monstrous mixture of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity. Mohamed propagated his religion, not through miracles or persuasive words, but through the force of arms. [It is] a religion that favors every sort of licentiousness and which, in a short time, allowed Mohamed to become...

From the world wide web and the government, the refugee matter has moved to the spiritual plane as well. The pope has asked believers to help refugees and to give them sanctuary. The Russian-language program of Latvian Television 7, Segodnya Vecherom, reavealed on Wednesday that not all Latvian Christians are ready to help people with a religion different from their own. The Pontifex Maximus was heard around here, but not everyone is keen on opening their doors and hearts. Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church admit that even though asylum seekers shouldn't be sorted by their religious affiliation, it's not...

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis on Saturday called the Paris terror attacks "a piece" of a "piecemeal Third World War," and said he is praying for the families of the victims and the entire French people.In a telephone interview at noon Rome-time with the Italian Bishops Conference official television network TV2000, the pope said he is "moved and saddened" by the carnage of Friday’s attacks in Paris."I am moved and saddened. And I don’t understand, but these things are difficult to understand; they are carried out by human beings," he said. "I am moved, saddened, and I am praying. I am very close...