Posted on 01/09/2008 1:58:08 PM PST by NYer
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- A Catholic archbishop scheduled to accompany U.S. President George W. Bush on a tour of the Mount of Beatitudes said he would talk to him about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour of Akko, Israel, said since the holy sites do not speak the importance of the sites must be conveyed by the person introducing them to Bush.
Bush, who arrived in the Holy Land Jan. 9 to discuss peace with Palestinian and Israeli political leaders, was scheduled to visit the ruins at Capernaum, Israel, and the Mount of Beatitudes Jan. 11, the last day of his trip. Both sites were to be closed the entire day.
At the Mount of Beatitudes, one of the Franciscan sisters who run the site and Auxiliary Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo of Nazareth will accompany Bush. Archbishop Chacour was to address the president.
Archbishop Chacour, known for his outspokenness, said he felt Bush was trying "to find a way out" of the failures in his Mideast policy and that his visit was a little too late to accomplish anything given his past history and the short time left of his term.
"The sermon was calling for action in a certain direction," the archbishop said in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service. "This is where Christ was calling on all his followers to get up and do something to get their hands dirty, protect the poor, heal the sick, release the prisoners -- including those in Guantanamo Bay, and I will tell him that."
Depending on the conditions, Archbishop Chacour said he may also speak to Bush about the "blood on his hands."
"I think that if he knew how may people have been killed because of his policies (here, in Iraq and in Afghanistan) he would be very sad," the archbishop said, adding that he "would not hurt his feelings."
"That would not be polite to do," he added.
He said the main message he wanted to convey to the president was the almost 150,000 Christians living in Israel who were "expecting to see some action from him."
Franciscan Father Athanasius Macora of the Christian Information Center and a spokesman for the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, which cares for the holy sites, said the Franciscans were trying to facilitate Bush's visits as much as possible, "but there are no real preparations on our part."
"All the preparations have to do with security -- even a fly won't be able to get through," he said.
He said American and Israeli security officials were choreographing Bush's visit, including who will approach the president and where he will walk.
The status of Bush's rumored visits to the West Bank cities of Jericho and Bethlehem were still unknown Jan. 9. Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh and Franciscan Father Marwan Dides, the parish priest at St. Catherine Church, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said they had not been contacted about final plans for the visit, rumored to occur Jan. 10.
"We will only know at the last moment," said Batarseh. "He is coming just for the Church of the Nativity."
Ping!
A cleric’s political positions, as C.S. Lewis said, tell one only which newspapers are taken at the rectory.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Don’t let the shortcomings of men get in the way of your participation in the sacraments.
You are letting idiots take your faith away from you. This happened to me for a time as well. I finally figured out that Satan smiles every time one of us gets so frustrated with the Church that we don’t attend.
The archbishop later added that he hopes Hillary maintains her lead through Super Tuesday.
"The sermon was calling for action in a certain direction," the archbishop said in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service. "This is where Christ was calling on all his followers to get up and do something to get their hands dirty, protect the poor, heal the sick, release the prisoners -- including those in Guantanamo Bay, and I will tell him that."
Archbishop Chacour Another Marxist ArchBishop !
Sounds like someone on the advance team needs to be fired, and the invite rescinded.
If you don't feel like practicing your faith, you don't need more than one reason.
and against other left causes,
The Church isn't a political project. She doesn't exist to validate your views, either good or bad.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that our Creator and Savior was there. Could you possibly overlook, in that instance, a politically-correct numbskull's prattle?
Yuk.
Ans he will be very polite and respectful to the Abp.
Let’s see, the Melkite-Rite Church in Jerusalem . . . now why does THAT ring a bell?
Oh yes! Wasn’t this present mitred braintrust’s predecessor one Archbishop Hilarion Cappucci . . . one time gun-runner for the PLO, banished to a monastery by Paul VI (who under that condition had negotiated his release from Israeli custody), and didn’t we last see him accompanying that outstanding Chaldean Rite Catholic, Tariq Azziz, to Assisi, after an audience with John Paul II just before the Iraq War began?
Glorious history, apparently, of Archbishops whose kamalavkas aren’t pinned on too tight.
As they say, “When a deacon loses his voice, they make him a priest. And when a priest loses his mind, they make him a bishop.”
Someone should cue Bush into the history of the Melkites in Jerusalem so he can ask, “And how is Archbishop Cappucci’s study of the Beatitudes and International Law coming along?”
So I've heard. But someone should let +Chacour in on this little secret because, quite frankly, sometimes it's hard to tell.
Bush would never say this (he’s too respectful), but it would be great if he did:
“You know, you’re right bishop. After all, who are these Iraqis and Afghans to us? Why should we care that they are oppressed, brutalized and starved. Most Americans couldn’t even find those countries on a map. It was ridiculous for us to spend so much money and risk the lives of so many of our young men and women to liberate from oppression a bunch of nameless and faceless peasants on the other side of the world. Thanks to you I now understand that Jesus would prefer that we had just cut a deal with Hussein so that he would officially oppose al-qaeda, and we would ignore the atrocities he commits against his own people and his neighbors. How could I, as a born-again Christian who spends a lot of time in prayer and reading the Scriptures, and who regularly consults with clergy, possibly have missed the obvious Christ-centered policy of collude and ignore. From now on, America, blessed to be the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, will no longer lift a finger to stop oppression anywhere in the world. Instead, we will just play games with despots and pontificate at the UN, because those approaches work so much better.”
But what legitimacy do the sacraments have when administed by the likes of this and the Archbishop in SF? How can they even be called Christian?
The legitimacy of the sacraments DOES NOT CHANGE due to the priest/bishop/cardinal offering it. If you think it does, then you are abiding by one of the oldest heresies, Donatism. As long as they do what the Church does, then the sacrament is valid.
Again, don’t you think they should actually be Christian?
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