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Original post by spirituality - Google News and software by Elliott Back
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Can you imagine how chaotic the Christian life would be like if we believed on Christ to save us, but we had to keep ourselves saved by our own sinless life?
Because of false teachings most non-believers have the misunderstanding that Christians are to be “perfect” once they believe on Christ as their Savior. They are led to think that all Christians are hypocrites because they are not “perfect” in their daily life and practice. The truth is Christians are “saved sinners” who by the grace of God are striving to live a life that is pleasing to their Savior. Our goal is perfection, but it will not be reached in this life. We will be presented “complete,” “mature,” “perfect” before our heavenly Father in heaven at the end of this life on earth. Only then will we experience sinless perfection.
I thank God that the same grace that saved me, also keeps me saved.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:56 pm (GMT -5)
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UK Government Education Guidelines: Don’t use terms "Mom" and "Dad"
Wednesday January 30, 2008
By Hilary White
link to original
LONDON, January 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Government guidelines for training school officials to be more sensitive to homosexuality, instruct teachers not to use the terms "mum and dad" when referring to students’ parents, and to treat "even casual" use of terms like "gay" as equal to racism.
The guidedance was commissioned by the Labour government directly from the homosexual lobby group Stonewall. The document was launched today at a Stonewall conference by Schools Secretary Ed Balls.
Ed Balls said, "Homophobic insults should be viewed as seriously as racism."
"Even casual use of homophobic language in schools can create an atmosphere that isolates young people and can be the forerunner of more serious forms of bullying."
The guidelines say that the word "parents" must replace "mum and dad", and that teachers should educate pupils about civil partnerships and gay adoption rights.
In Britain’s current political climate, even young children have been subject to police interventions on accusations of making "racist" or "homophobic" comments. In October 2006, a 14-year-old school girl was arrested by police and detained in a cell for three hours after she asked to be moved into a group of students who spoke English in class. Stott was denounced to police for "racism" by her teachers. In April 2007, a ten-year-old boy was questioned after the boy sent an email calling another boy "gay".
In the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the guidelines, in answer to the question, "We have to respect cultural and religious differences. Does this mean pupils can be homophobic?" the guidelines specifically state that those with religious views regarded by the homosexual movement as "intolerant" must be silent. "A person can hold whatever views they want but expressing views that denigrate others is unacceptable."
For Stonewall, youth and sexual innocence is no reason for an exemption. To the objection that primary school students are too young to understand issues of homosexuality, the guidelines respond, "Primary-school pupils may be too young to understand their own sexual orientation but it is likely that some primary-school pupils will know someone who is gay."
"Homophobic language is used in primary schools without the pupils necessarily realising what it is that they are saying. Primary schools should respond to homophobic bullying in an age-appropriate way whilst demonstrating that it is not acceptable in school."
For parents who object to their children being exposed to instruction on homosexuality, the guidelines say, "Regardless of their views on gay people or sexual orientation, parents and carers have to understand that schools have a responsibility to keep pupils safe."
Stonewall, perhaps the most successful homosexual activist organization in the world, has been accepted by the Labour government, first under Tony Blair and now by Gordon Brown’s leadership, as the leading voice on all issues regarding homosexuality. The guidelines take this a step further in actually allowing the lobby group to author a government document.
Under Tony Blair’s "New Labour" government, Section 28 - the law which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools, was repealed. Since then, homosexual activists have used their influence in Parliament to implement a full roster of training for both teachers and students in normalizing homosexuality.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Through intermarriage, the U.S. Jewish population is rapidly shrinking.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:16 pm (GMT -5)
Polish Catholic university bars discrimination on sexual orientation
Catholic World New
January 31, 2008
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=56317
Krakow, Jan. 31, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Catholic University of Lublin– where Pope John Paul II (bio - news) once taught theology– has banned employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the Polish newspaper Nasz Dziennik reports.
While the newspaper article says that in the future, PolandÂ’s only Catholic university will hire active homosexuals, university spokeswoman Beata Gorka says the new labor regulation seeks to ensure only that homosexuals are treated with respect. Gorka said that the policy mirrors the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in calling for compassionate treatment of homosexuals.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:21 pm (GMT -5)
‘Theology of Progress,’ not liberation theology, key to new Jesuit General
By John L Allen Jr
National Catholic Reporter
January 30, 2008
http://ncrcafe.org/node/1571
In 1971, Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez coined the phrase “Liberation Theology” with his groundbreaking work A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. Liberation theology, partly because it carries a direct political payoff, went on to become perhaps the most consequential and controversial movement in Roman Catholic theology in the second half of the 20th century.
In the same year, another young Spanish-speaking theologian was also pondering the question of how to credibly preach salvation in the modern world. Unlike Gutierrez, however, the cultural point of reference for Adolfo Nicolás was not Latin America but Asia, and the answer he came up with was not the theology of liberation but rather The Theology of Progress – the title of the doctoral dissertation of the future Father General of the Jesuit order, completed at Rome’s Gregorian University in 1971.
Therein lies a key to understanding the mind and the perspective of the new leader of the flagship religious order in the Catholic church, according to a Jesuit who knows both Nicolás and the development of Catholic theology in the 20th century well: Fr. Josep M. Benitez i Riera, a historian and long-time faculty member at the Gregorian.
Benitez offered an informal briefing today for journalists about the new Jesuit general at the invitation of RomeÂ’s Foreign Press Club.
Nicolás was never opposed to liberation theology, Benitez stressed, pointing out that he and Jon Sobrino, the famous Spanish Jesuit liberation theologian who has spent most of his career in Latin America, are friends and Jesuits of the same generation.
“Yet Sobrino chose the path of El Salvador, and Nicolás that of Asia,” Benitez said.
In brief, Benitez said the central difference between liberation theology and the “theology of progress” worked out by the young Nicolás is that the former is more pastoral and more political, while the starting point for Nicolás is more academic and existential – raising the question of the meaning of individual human lives in a rapidly changing world, rather than focusing directly on sociology and questions of structural injustice.
The theology of Nicolás, Benitez said, was informed more by Kant than by Mark, and drew above all on the pioneering theological work of the late German Jesuit theologian Fr. Karl Rahner. His dissertation, Benitez said, was written under the direction of Jesuit Fr. Juan Alfaro of the Gregorian University, a onetime member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission known for his writings on theological anthropology.
“This was the era of social realism, of Marx, and so on, in which progress was the watchword,” Benitez said. “Nicolás asked the question, ‘Progress towards what?’ In other words, is the modern concept of progress truly adequate for the human person? What is the finality of the human being and of creation?”
In turn, Benitez suggested, this contrast between Nicolás and the liberation theologians was shaped by differing cultural experiences: by the time he arrived at the Gregorian for doctoral studies, Nicolás had already spent four years teaching and working in Japan, and it was clear that Asia was his intellectual and spiritual horizon.
It is partly for this reason, Benitez argued, that Nicolás was correct when he insisted in a meeting with the press last Friday that he is not the second coming of the late Jesuit Fr. Pedro Arrupe, associated in the popular mind with the Jesuit commitment to social justice. While Nicolás supports and admires the social apostolate, Benitez suggested, his own interests cut deeper, towards the personal foundations of faith amid great social and cultural transformations.
While few Jesuits probably voted for Nicolás directly on the basis of this relatively obscure piece of academic work from almost 30 years ago, nonetheless, Benitez suggested, it reveals something about the man that many still find attractive: a deep intellect combined with a keen pastoral awareness of “today’s realities.”
In general, Benitez said that among Jesuits Nicolás is seen as “very balanced, very intelligent, and very calm.”
“He’s never created scandals in the past, and he knows how to manage very difficult problems,” Benitez said. He summarized the style of the new Jesuit general as “wanting to understand the reality of situations, with enormous respect for dialogue and the experience of the other,” combined with a “touch” of what Nicolás himself described last Friday as sort of Italian mentality by way of the Philippines – meaning a healthy capacity to adapt law to particular circumstances, thus avoiding what Benitez described as “fanaticism or fundamentalism.”
One further quality recommended him to the Jesuit electors, Benitez argued: the deep optimism of Nicolás about the future of religious life.
On that front, Benitez pointed to another book by Nicolás: The Horizon of Hope: Religious Life Today, published in 1978.
“There was a great debate in that era,” Benitez said. “The numbers were going down, and some actually wrote that religious life does not have a future.” In that context, he argued, Nicolás “opened a new path of hope” with his book, “putting the accent in religious life on discipleship of Christ and the importance of personal witness,” as opposed to great corporate works.
“That was the future, and Nicolás saw it,” Benitz said.
In a sense, Benitez argued, the 1978 title by Nicolás anticipated some elements of Pope Benedict XVI’s later encyclical on hope.
Finally, Benitez revealed one other intriguing aspect of the new Jesuit leader’s intellectual biography: Nicolás has a great capacity, Benitez said, for etymology, with the ability to explain the roots of terms in a variety of languages.
This is one of the reasons, Benitez suggested, that Nicolás is likely to get on well with Pope Benedict XVI: not only are they men of roughly the same age, but they are both intellectuals who can speak the same academic language.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Original post by spirituality - Google News and software by Elliott Back
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Original post by spirituality - Google News and software by Elliott Back
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Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:37 pm (GMT -5)
Michigan group plans new Catholic college
Grand Rapids, Jan 28, 2008 / 07:03 pm (CNA).- Organizers with the Cardinal Newman Liberal Arts Project believe they have found a good location for a new Catholic college in the town of Otsego, Michigan, the Grand Rapids Press reports.
According to the Cardinal Newman Liberal Arts Project website, the organization is “a lay initiative seeking to establish a baccalaureate curriculum” as envisioned in the work of John Henry Cardinal Newman’s “The Idea of a University” and Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Fides et Ratio.” It hopes to name the proposed school Newman College.
Project leader Ronald Muller says the St. Margaret Catholic Church building and campus, which will be left vacant after the parish moves to a new location, will be ideal for a liberal arts school.
“The site would just really lend itself to a liberal arts college," Muller told the Grand Rapids Press.
The 60-year-old church building, which seats 300, could be used for dramatic performances, musical events, and lectures. The adjacent rectory could be used for classrooms and the extra land on the property could one day accommodate a dormitory.
"Both we and the parish would like very much to see the building used or have a new life [as] a college," Muller said to the Grand Rapids Press. "A church building like that isn’t something you can easily renovate and use for a business or another purpose."
The church was originally listed at $750,000, but has not sold for two years. St. MargaretÂ’s pastor Fr. Don Klingler was optimistic about a possible agreement.
"If this goes through, I think most people will see it as a win-win situation for the town, for the college, for St. Margaret’s, for the diocese," Father Klingler said to the Grand Rapids Press.
The purchase of the St. Margaret campus will require the blessing of James Murray, Bishop of Kalamazoo. City zoning will also need to be altered to accommodate the college project.
_________________
nemo se tradere tenetur
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Original post by spirituality - Google News and software by Elliott Back
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