Posted on 11/11/2004 7:16:53 AM PST by SJackson
What was your screen name before you changed it to Pitiricus?
The only one carring a bedpan and an agenda and covering for islamics is you TapTheSource/FearGodNotMan/GIJoel.
No. I meant Eastern Catholics as differentiated from Roman Catholics. An example of the Eastern Catholics in the Holy Land are the Melkite Catholics who are Palestinians.
The Eastern Orthodox Palestinians face similar dangers, but they do not look to the Pope as their Sovereign Pontiff as the Eastern Catholics do.
Post 100 contains an aricle from the Catholic News Service regarding the Vatican's relationship with Arafat. I'll post another from them below which contains essentially the same quotes as ABC.
Pope expresses closeness to Arafat's family, Palestinian people
Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II expressed his closeness to the family of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and to the Palestinian people and prayed "that the star of harmony soon shine on the Holy Land."
The pope's message followed the Nov. 11 announcement of Arafat's death in a Paris military hospital.
The pope prayed that Israelis and Palestinians soon "may live reconciled among themselves as two independent and sovereign states."
The message was written by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, and authorized by the pope, a Vatican statement said. It was addressed to Rawhi Fattuh, president of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Cardinal Sodano wrote, "to the condolences of His Holiness, I cordially adjoin my own."
Earlier, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement that Arafat "was a leader of great charisma, who loved his people and who sought to guide them toward national independence."
"May God, in his mercy, receive the soul of the illustrious deceased," the statement read, "and bring peace to the Holy Land, with two independent and sovereign states, fully reconciled between themselves."
The Vatican was expected to name an envoy to attend Arafat's Nov. 12 funeral in Cairo, Egypt.
Afif Safieh, the Palestine Liberation Organization's representative to the Holy See, said the good diplomatic relations that Arafat established with the Vatican would not change.
"President Arafat valued his relations with the Holy See and with the Holy Father," Safieh said in a telephone interview from London. "He always considered himself to be the representative of all the Palestinians," including Christians.
Arafat met with Pope John Paul 12 times between 1982 and his confinement by Israel to his headquarters in Ramallah, West Bank, in 2001. In 2000, the Vatican and the Palestinian National Authority signed an agreement that guaranteed the rights of Christian and their churches in Palestinian territories.
"This will continue. We as Palestinians are the custodians of all the spiritual messages that were born in Palestine," Safieh said.
Arafat, he said, had put relations between Palestinian authorities and the Vatican "on the right track."
Now, he added "it is our duty to continue this privileged relationship with the Holy See. We will honor our agreement."
Arafat "valued very much his personal encounters with the pope," Safieh said, and even after his confinement Arafat "continued to consult with him (the pope) in decisive moments for the Middle East."
Father Justo Lacunza Balda, director of Rome's Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, said the restrictions Israel put on Arafat "did not help the prospect of peace."
The death of the Palestinian leader "marks a U-turn in history," he said, because it may give a chance for the emergence of a new generation that "wants to live in a better world. The new generation in Israel as well is fed up with violence."
He said Christians in the Palestinian territories were feeling insecure following the bombings of churches in Iraq. Five churches were bombed in August, five in October, and car bombs in Baghdad Nov. 8 damaged two Orthodox churches and one Catholic church.
Father Lacunza said the bombings in Baghdad show "that there is a grander project to rid the whole area of any minorities, no matter if it is Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian. There is a message that minorities are not wanted."
"We have to put the problem of Christian minorities in the context of the whole Middle East," he said.
The guarantee of freedom of religion for minorities in any country "is the responsibility and the duty of the state, not the church," Father Lacunza said.
Please read the 2nd book of Maccabees.
SD
Honestly, the Irish Republican Army never got the support from the Church that this mass-murdering monster received over the years. And this from a Church that wouldn't lift a finger to help the embattled Maronites of southern Lebanon because it "opposed violence."
Freaking hypocrites. Thank G-d for getting me out of that church. I could smell the brimstone even then.
Sorry, I don't attach weight to doctrine that only comes from "uninspired" books.
Gotcha.
#1, no one said the doctrine "only" comes from a book.
#2, you argue "inspiration" only at the peril of your own illogical foundations.
SD
Arafat is not distinguished... It's like speaking of a murdere as the "distinguished"...
Why am I not surprised?
Why not try reading the thread, the actual official statement from the Vatican, and the intrepid FReepers who have dissected the statement, including the meaning of key components in the original Italian?
Then see if the Vatican is "praising" anyone. Why do you trust ABC to tell the truth here?
SD
Well, the history of the Church has never been too distinguished... Another Pope blinded by prejudice? What else is new?
Actually not at all... Josephus was an historian... The Gospel writers? Fiction writers...
Quite a difference!
Because you know the history of the church's antisemitism probably... Like I do...
Some are... Some aren't... Like any other group...
Why do you trust ABC Catholic News Service to tell the truth here?
As a Catholic who has loved this Pope and followed his tenure in the Vatican, I cannot believe he wrote this tripe. I think our Pope is very ill and perhaps is not responsible for the communications coming out of the communist wing of the Vatican. This Pope knows what is evil and would not hesitate to call it such. This Pope would not praise a murderer. My message to those in the Vatican who think Catholics benignly swallow their crap is "KNOCK IT OFF". The majority of Catholics I personally know would not agree with the Vatican view re: Arafat.
I'm not. I'm reading the Vatican statement, the same one ABC had to read. The same one you yourself can read.
I'm merely pointing out that the statement does not correlate to the news story ABC wrote. They either misunderstood or spun it. This is plain to see.
So why can't you accept that ABC is not accurate?
SD
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