Posted on 07/15/2006 6:34:34 PM PDT by freedom44
VATICAN CITY, July 14 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday strongly deplored Israel's strikes on Lebanon, saying they were "an attack" on a sovereign and free nation.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Pope Benedict and his aides were very worried that the developments in the Middle East risked degenerating into "a conflict with international repercussions."
We Catholics like him because he's so thoroughly Catholic ... if you guys like him, too, that's bonus. A good run of three or four (or more) like him would be just fine.
Take a deep breath, clam down, attempt to get back to where you once was and then read, again, ALL of the posts I made to this thread. If you still see it the same way....GET HELP!
I'm not following this thread; but rather, I am now just answering those who reply to me. Got that? If not, then there is no hope for you at all.
And since you brought up the Masons, I suggest that you now keep mum about them and anything else that we have ever disagreed about, since dragging things from thread to thread is PROHIBITED, by Jim and you know it.
And as I told YOU before...go find a post of mine, on this thread, that even mentions WW II and the Catholic church; I double dog dare you! And if you can't ( which I know you can't ), then you owe me a public apology, on this thread!
Let's just drop this. It is clear you want to fight and I do not.
If you want the last word...have it; however, baiting me isn't serving you well.
You're flying off the handle here for no reason. There has been no baiting. I've been replying to your posts to me.
Now, you paint me as unhinged when you can't even remember what happened two hours ago.
Drop it.
Oh for crying out loud, sinky! Just get over yourself; you have now delved into the depths of tinfoil delusion.
Drop it.
Will you? If so, WHEN? :-)
Drop it.
ROTFLOL........you really have to have the last word, sinky? If so, do it with something else. :-)
Showing our ignorance, are we?
Say what? There were no 'atrocities committed by the ruling Pope'. In fact, Pius XII was lauded by Jewish leaders after the war for not only speaking out against the Holocaust, but also by helping to save tens of thousands of Jews in Italy and throughout Europe through support, both physical and spiritual of nuns, priests, and lay people who sheltered Jews from the Nazis.
Too bad you've let your animus toward the Church blind you and make you believe anything negative said about her. This Pope isn't a friend to Islam, and he's concerned not only about the Israelis but also the Christians in Lebanon.
Of course he's going to decry violence, that's what he does, no matter where it comes from.
Cardinal Sodano do not represent Pope Benedict's understanding of world... That is one of reasons he vas fired as Secretary of State of the Holy See.
Pope Benedict XVI: Enemy of Jihad
No Kissing the Qur'an This Pontificate
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 20, 2005
In choosing Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to succeed Pope John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church has cast a vote for the survival of Europe and the West. “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century,” historian Bernard Lewis predicted not long ago; however, judging from the writings of the new Pope, he is not likely to be sanguine about this transition. For one thing, the new Pope seems to be aware of the grave danger Europeans face: he has called upon Europe to recover its Christian roots “if it truly wants to survive.”
For while his predecessor kissed the Qur’an and pursued a consistent line of conciliation toward the Islamic world, despite numerous provocations and attacks against Catholics in Muslim countries, the new Pope Benedict XVI, while no less charitable, has been a bit more forthcoming about the reality of how Islam challenges the Catholic Church, Christianity, and even the post-Christian West. He has spoken up for the rights of converts from Islam to Christianity, who live under a death sentence in Islamic countries and increasingly live in fear even in the West. He has even spoken approvingly of Christians proselytizing Muslims — a practice that enrages Muslims and is against the law in many Islamic countries.
The new Pope has criticized Europe’s reluctance to acknowledge its Christian roots for fear of offending Islam’s rapidly growing and increasingly influential presence in European countries — a presence which, as historian Bat Ye’or demonstrates in her book Eurabia, has been actively encouraged and facilitated by European leaders for over three decades. “What offends Islam,” said Cardinal Ratzinger, “is the lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes fundamentalism.” He has criticized multiculturalism, “which is so constantly and passionately encouraged and supported,” because it “sometimes amounts to an abandonment and disavowal of what is our own.”
He contrasts the modern-day resurgence of Islam with the enervation of Europe. In old Europe, he has said, “we are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one's own desires.” Islam, on the other hand, is anything but relativistic: “The rebirth of Islam is due in part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the hands of old Europe.”
In line with his call to Europeans to recover their own spiritual heritage, the new Pope opposes Turkey’s proposed entrance into the European Union: “Turkey,” he has declared, “has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe.” But his objection is not simply geographical — in fact, he opposes the geographical oversimplifications that underlie Turkey’s EU bid: “Europe,” he has explained, “was founded not on a geography, but on a common faith.
We have to redefine what Europe is, and we cannot stop at positivism.” A Europe newly defined as in some sense a Christian entity may outrage secularists, but a secular and relativist Europe has so far proved powerless against the Islamization of Europe — despite the fact that that Islamization threatens cherished Western notions of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.
Europe, the new Pope has written, “appears to be at the start of its decline and fall.”
It may be too late, as Bat Ye’or believes, to arrest that decline and fall. However, the first thing a physician does when he treats a disease is identify the problem. No healing can proceed from a misdiagnosis. It is heartening to see that Pope Benedict XVI has already, in various speeches and writings before his accession to the papacy, dared to speak more clearly about the threat that Islam poses to Western civilization than his predecessor — for all his many and remarkable gifts — ever quite managed to do.
Late in 2003 the semi-official Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica departed from John Paul II’s policy toward Islam and published a scathing criticism of the mistreatment that Christians suffer in Islamic societies. It represented the first indication that any Catholic officials recognized the dimensions of the religious conflict that jihadists are waging against Christians and others around the world. La Civiltà Cattolica pointed out that “for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant threat from Islam, which twice put its survival in serious danger.” Now, through jihad terrorism and demographics Islam is threatening Europe’s survival yet again — and it looks as if now there is a Pope who has noticed. Maybe in Europe the resistance is just beginning.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch; author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims (Prometheus). He is working on a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades (forthcoming from Regnery).
Condemning Israel? What a surprise. Refresh my memory, wasn't the current Pope a Nazi soldier previously? I know he was drafted, but still, some of the indoctrinations may have stuck around a little longer than he or anyone else thought they had.
The wheat is fairly jumping off the chaff, isn't it?
OK, wanna hear a little Bush bashing to balance it out? I think Bush is being a little two faced, telling Israel it's responses must be proportionate. A proportionate response is not always what is called for. If it were, we would not have sent troops into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush needs to tell that story to someone who believes it, like say, the average man on the street in Baghdad.
I hate to quote a liberal, except when mocking them or proving them wrong, but when it comes to toppling certain foreign governments, like Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."
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