Thursday, April 17, 2008

Another Preacher Heard From



"God bless America!"
Pope Benedict XVI to the United States Wednesday on the south lawn of the White House.


Could this be an example of what St. Paul said about overcoming evil with good?

Hearing Pope Benedict's heartfelt blessing on America made me realize just how easily a man of God can repair and undo the endlessly looped curses we've all had called down us by a false prophet.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes! You are right as usual.

The Pope is a true man of God.

Now speaking of curses, how exactly did Qazwini get into the interreligious gathering?

CD

Anonymous said...

Amen!!!

I'm not catholic (but not anti-catholic!), and just seeing the picture of the pope with his outstretched arms, gesture of blessing, the beautiful smile on his face... what a striking difference from that OTHER preacher in the news lately!

T.R. Clancy said...

Didn't Someone say we'd know them by their fruits?

Thanks for commenting.

Anonymous said...

Clancy, since you look up to the pope so much, you might want to here what he has said about war in iraq.

T.R. Clancy said...

Anonymous:

I do like the Pope, and I liked his predecessor. I’m familiar with their general positions on war (against), and that they regret the loss of life in Iraq in particular. So do I. The overwhelming majority of innocent lives lost in Iraq are lost at the hands of al Qaeda, Mahdi army, and Iranian fighters. I regret that we have to stay there and keep fighting them, but there it is. It would be murder to leave them to be slaughtered.

In 2003, JPII repeated the Church’s doctrine that the gravity of a decision to go to war makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. Anti-war people heard this and assumed it meant that JPII was declaring war to be out of the question, just because they can’t imagine war having any moral legitimacy. But that’s not what the Church teaches, and it isn’t what the Pope said. He said it was a grave decision, that deserved serious thought. George W Bush knew that, and he handled it as a grave decision and he gave it serious though. So did I. Which is why I’ve never lost any sleep over my support for the war putting me at odds with the Church. It doesn’t.

On the other hand, in the five years that I’ve had to listen to antiwar comments about Iraq, none of them has ever reflected the same quality of serious thought, and that goes especially for Democrat leaders like Kerry, Kennedy, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Murtha.

The Church also teaches that the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good., i.e., to government authorities entrusted with war-making powers. Which also means it’s not up to the Pope or any other religious leader to say that X or Y war is prohibited. Christian citizens in a free republic have to make up their own minds as part of that decision. As a Catholic who admires the Pope, I feel I have had the freedom to do so.