LONG BEFORE MEXICAN APPARITION WAS ONE IN SPAIN NEAR RIVER KNOWN AS ‘GUADALUPE’

Wooden carving-1326 A.D.-Spain/Tilma- 1531 A.D.-Mexico

[adapted from Michael H. Brown’s  The Last  Secret]

In the hilly terrain southwest of Madrid, near that river  called Guadalupe, a humble cowherd named Gil Cordero of Cáceres was searching for a lost cow when something very strange happened.

It was 1326. He’d been  searching three days.

Thirsty and fatigued, Cordero headed for the sound of a mountain stream when he spotted the cow motionless on a mound of stones. Figuring the animal dead, Cordero pulled out his knife and  prepared to take the animal’s hide, which he then could sell. As was the custom, he positioned himself, pressed in the knife, and made an incision in the form of  a cross on the cow’s breast. That was when the cow suddenly moved. Not just moved but sprang up on its hooves as if restored to  life. Cordero must have backed away. He was astonished and terrified.

The “dead” animal abruptly standing there!

At the same time Cordero spotted something –someone — coming from the woods. His astonishment was ready to surge to a higher magnitude.

It was no normal woman. There were no normal women out here. It was a female “of marvelous beauty” who spoke in a kind supernal voice. “Have no fear, for I am the Mother of God, by Whom the human race achieved redemption,” she told the speechless herdsman. “Go to your
home and tell the clergy and other people to come to this place where I appear to you and dig here, where they will find a statue.”

As was her custom she also asked that a chapel be built. Cordero had to have stood there staring. Whether the Virgin left in a flash of light or faded into the backdrop is not in the records.

Once he got hold of himself Cordero turned his attention back to the cow and as instructed headed into Cáceres. There he informed the clergy and anyone else within earshot that the Virgin had appeared out near the Guadalupe and she wanted them to dig for a lost relic. She wanted a chapel.

Looked upon as an uneducated and ignorant peasant, Cordero’s account was immediately mocked and the ridicule left him in a state between depression and desperation.

“Friends, do not dismiss these things!” protested the lonely cowherd. “If you will not believe me, then believe the mark the cow bears on her breast!”

Cordero insisted that the Virgin had promised to work many miracles and that people would come from many regions because of her wonders.

Seeing Cordero’s despair and knowing that many images had been hidden during the Arab occupation, which was about to end with a final expulsion, officials in Cáceres relented and paraded with the entire village to the precise spot where the animal had been found. There were knights, noblemen, and priests.

Pushing small boulders and removing stones, they dug into the  earth until the ground collapsed into a small cave. Inside was just what Cordero  promised, a statue along with an ancient bell. There was a document explaining its origin and also the relics of Saint Fulgentius and Saint Florentina.

The statue is what drew the attention. As the document explained, it was the long-lost image of Mary (believed to have been carved by St. Luke) that Pope Gregory the Great had given the bishop of Seville, the one that may have been paraded around Rome in  390, during an outbreak of plague. Moreover, the unstained, oriental wood seemed in perfect condition despite six centuries in the earth. Buried when the Moslems had first attacked, it was now coming out of seclusion at a time when the last Moslem holdouts were being expelled!

A hut was hastily built and a humble altar of stone was mounded. Soon that was replaced by a chapel, the bell melted and mixed with
other metal to form two bells which called the faithful to prayer and were rung during severe storms to preserve the crops. A subsequent
and enlarged shrine was attended by dignitaries from many parts and visited a century later by a devout explorer named Christopher Columbus, who would carry a replica of the statue with him on his voyages and would name an island in the West Indes “Guadalupe,” a name that would also spread to Mexico.

Submitted by Nancy W.

Give President Obama His 1-Year Report Card Grade

President Obama:

The 1-Year Report Card

FOXNews.com

President Obama told Oprah Winfrey that he deserves “a good, solid B-plus” for his work as the nation’s chief executive during his first year in office.

How would you grade his performance?

Click here to grade the President (and see how others graded him)

Submitted by Bob Stanley

What We Have Lost: 5-Part Video Series On the Post-Vatican II Catholic Church

Five Part Video Series that’s well worth watching:

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 1/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 2/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 3/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 4/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 5/5

Three rational proofs for the existence of God

THE THREE PROOFS OF CARDINAL RUINI

The first speakers, on Thursday, December 10, were Cardinal Ruini and Robert Spaemann of Germany. Both spoke as philosophers.

Ruini outlined three ways of access to God, three proofs of his existence, not theological but rational, and therefore able to be presented to all, not only to believers.

The first way departs from the evident fact “that there is something rather than nothing.” The second moves from the observation that the universe can be known by man. The third is based on man’s experience of a moral law within himself.

The three ways therefore make reference to the “transcendentals” of classical philosophy: to being, truth, and goodness. In making his arguments, Ruini intended to overcome the radical objections that these have faced over the past two centuries, beginning with Kant. But he acknowledged that not even these ways have the power of an apodictic demonstration, one that does not raise new doubts. And so? The cardinal’s final proposal is that the existence of God be accepted as “the best hypothesis,” with a formula taken from Joseph Ratzinger.

Here are the final two paragraphs from Ruini’s address:

“The difficulties of the metaphysical approach in the contemporary cultural context, together with the dilemma arising from the existence of evil in the world, are the essential reasons for that ‘strange shadow that looms over the question of the eternal realities’. Thus the existence of a personal God, as solidly arguable as we have sought to make it, is not the object of an apodictic demonstration, but remains ‘the best hypothesis, which demands that we renounce a position of domination and take the risk of a stance of humble listening’. The implications of such an acknowledgment are great, both for relations between believers and nonbelievers – which, already for this essential reason, should be marked by sincere and firmly held mutual respect – and  for the personal attitude of each believer, and in particular for the fundamental role that prayer must occupy in our relationship with God, so as to be able implore from him the gift of faith, which gives us that unconditional and at the same time free certainty about God which, as Saint Thomas explains, does not in any way exclude the possibility of further inquiry, but supports our fidelity to him, extending to the gift of ourselves.

“I will finish with an observation that seems to me fairly emblematic of the condition in which we are living. There is a profound parallel between the approach to God and the approach to ourselves, as intelligent and free subjects. In both cases, we are currently subjected to the pressure of a strong and pervasive epistemological scientism and naturalism, often unconsciously metaphysical, which would like to declare that God does not exist, or at least cannot be known by reason, and to reduce man to an object of nature among the others. Today, as perhaps never before, it therefore seems clear that the affirmation of man as a subject and the affirmation of God ‘simul stant et simul cadunt’, they stand or fall together. This is deeply logical, because on the one hand it is very difficult to establish a true and irreducible emergence of man with respect to the rest of nature if nature itself is the whole of reality, and on the other it is equally difficult to keep the mind open to a personal, intelligent, and free God – in a way that is true, even if it is ineffable to us – if this irreducible specificity of the human subject is not acknowledged. Bearing witness to the true God and at the same time to the truth of man is therefore perhaps the most exhilarating task that has been entrusted to us.”

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Infinite questions about a universe created by God, from nothing at all

We speak of a ‘Big Bang’ but don’t mean a ‘bang’ like an explosion, which has a centre and a shock wave that moves spherically out into air from the explosion.

Instead, the ‘Big Bang’ happened everywhere in the Universe at once, with no centre. Shortly after the ‘Big Bang’, density and pressure of the Entire Universe were the same everywhere. So, pressure difference could not possibly create an explosion. The ‘Big Bang’ wasn’t a bang at all.

About 13.7 billion years ago, the Entire Universe increased by 10^30 (a million trillion trillion) times, in less than a second. We call this remarkable phenomenon, the ‘Big Bang.’

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Read what the Early Church Fathers said about this

Rumor: Tiger Woods plans to change his name

Rumor has it that he will officially change his name from “Tiger” to “Cheetah”.

The Apostles probably had days like this too

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Revival in Northern Algeria: Muslims turn to Christ

In 2008, Algeria put into full effect a new anti-conversion law that prohibited efforts to convert Muslims to another religion and gave the government the right to regulate every aspect of Christian practice. This law was a direct attack against Christians since almost all Algerian Christians are converts from Islam. The new law could make nearly all Christian churches in the country illegal.

Despite this new law, 2009 has been an incredible year for evangelical church growth, says Pastor Youssef Jacob with Operation Mobilization. “We have churches that have grown 802%. Many converts have come from Islam with no Christian heritage, no Christian background, no resources whatsoever, no training. But they just believe in God and His Word.”

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Sobering words from the past: John Henry Cardinal Newman writes about the end.

“How shall we feel when the end comes, if we be found mere children of this world and of its great cities; with tastes, opinions, habits, such as are found in its cities; with a heart dependent on human society, and a reason moulded by it! What a miserable lot will be ours at the last day, to find ourselves before our Judge, with all the low feelings, principles, and aims which the world encourages; with our thoughts wandering (if that be possible then), wandering after vanities; with thoughts which rise no higher than the consideration of our own comforts, or our gains; with a haughty contempt for the Church, her ministers, her lowly people; a love of rank and station, an admiration of the splendour and the fashions of the world, an affectation of refinement, a dependence upon our powers of reason, an habitual self-esteem, and an utter ignorance of the number and the heinousness of the sins which lie against us!”

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Headquarters of Turkish campaign for EU membership is confiscated Christian building

Unbelievable but true: the headquarters of the Secretariat for the entry of Turkey into the European Union is a building confiscated from the Orthodox Christian community in the 90s. The building is located in Istanbul, in the well-known area of Ortakoy, under the first bridge over the Bosphorus.

Before the seizure, the building was used as a primary school for children of the minority Orthodox in Ortakoy. Here once lived a thriving Orthodox community, now non-existent because of past purges against minorities, executed by the “secular” Turkish State.

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Italian Prime Minister injured. Metal statue of Milan Cathedral hurled at face.

Reuters- Berlusconi was hospitalised on Sunday with several broken teeth, a fractured nose and a scarred face after a man with a history of mental problems hurled a statuette at him as he was signing autographs at the end of a political rally.

A medical bulletin was due at midday and it was not clear how long he would need to recover. Some reports said he would stay in hospital for at least another 24 hours.

Images of his bloodied and bruised face were show on television networks around the world and splashed on the front pages of all Italian newspapers but the headlines and comments went well beyond the injuries, which were not life threatening.

Read the article. See the video.

International Vatican Exhibit: Eucharistic Miracles of the World

Visit the site

MOST REVEREND J. PETER SARTAIN ANNOUNCES CATHOLICS COME HOME INITIATIVE

Dear Brothers and Sisters

Welcome to “Catholics Come Home Joliet!” You may be aware that the Diocese of Joliet shares this important project with the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Rockford, and I am pleased that you have found your way to our website. Perhaps you have seen one of the many television spots we are sponsoring during December and January in English, Spanish and Polish. If not, you can view them on this website! In a sense, the Lord Jesus is constantly calling all of us to “Come Home.” I like to reflect on the number of times he issued similar invitations: “Come, and you will see!” “Come, follow me!” “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men!” “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” And to St. Peter, when he saw Jesus walking on the water and asked if he could do the same, Jesus answered confidently, “Come!”

As your bishop, with Jesus I say to you, “Come! Come see with the eyes of faith. Come follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Come help gather more disciples for the Lord. Come find rest and peace. Come learn of the Lord’s compassion and forgiveness of sin. Come find how God’s grace helps us do even what seems impossible!”

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Coming soon? German fathers jailed for refusing to send their kids to sex education classes

Amazing: Fathers Jailed for Refusing Forced Sex Ed Classes to Their Children

See Story here.
At least eight Russo-German families in Salzkotten, Germany, have suffered heavy fines and now their fathers have been sentenced to prison, because they have refused to send their elementary school-age children to mandatory sexual education classes.

The International Human Rights Group, a Christian legal defense organization that defends religious liberty and the right to homeschool in Europe, reports that in addition to refusing to allow their children to attend sex-ed classes, the families also resisted having their children enlisted in a theatre production of “Mein Körper gehört mir” or “My Body Belongs to Me,” which informs young children in how to engage in sexual intercourse.

With fines having failed to force the families into compliance, government officials have now sentenced each of the families’ respective fathers to spend a brief time in prison. One father has already spent seven days in jail and was released Friday.

Instead of inflicting ordinary punitive fines on the families, the state has opted to impose a special fine called “Bussgeld,” which IHRG European Director Richard Guenther explains literally means “repentance money” and is “designed to show contrition for a wrong behavior on the part of the person being fined.”

The “Bussgeld” fines are significant, perhaps especially because they put the eight German families in an impossible situation: payment of the fines would imply an admission of guilt, but they believe that they have done nothing wrong.

“This type of persecution from German government officials against the Salzkotten 8 shows how committed the German system is to punishing home school families and others who do not comply with the compulsory education laws,” said IHRG President Joel Thornton, “even when they are only removing their children from a single clearly objectionable class.”

Thornton states that unlike much of the American education system, German officials “view the children as belonging to the State, particularly during the time they are in school” and for that reason parents’ beliefs and authority over their children takes second place to the interests and mandates of the State.

Attorneys Gabriele and Armin Eckermann of the German homeschooling advocacy group SchuzH have intervened with IHRG to represent the Salzkotten 8….

The Youth Welfare Office or Jugendamt – an institution similar to Child Protective Services – acts as the government’s chief intervening instrument, and when prison and fines do not bend Christian families into compliance, they recommend that these Christians lose parental custody of their children.

In one case, the Jugendamt, accompanied by 15 heavily armed police, forcibly seized 15 year-old Melissa Busekros in the dead of night from her family in 2007 against her will. However, legal intervention ensured that Busekros was legally permitted to return to her family upon turning 16.

IHRG is currently representing Hans and Petra Schmidt, who are faced with a similar situation. They are fighting the state to retain custody of their 14-year-old son Aaron, who is homeschooled. The Schmidts so far have been fined 13,000 Euros (US $19,000) in home-schooling fines and have had a lien placed on their home by the government.

Some homeschooling families have fled the country, either into neighboring Austria or abroad. German homeschooling parents Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their family fled into the United States last November demanding asylum, a move that finally brought the attention of Germany’s media to the extreme situation faced by its estimated 300-500 homeschooling families.

German Embassy Contacts:

In the United States:

German Embassy

In Canada:

German Embassy
1 Waverley Street
Ottawa, ON, K2P 0T8
Tel.: 613-232-1101 Fax: 613-594-9330
Email: germanembassyottawa@on.aibn.com

In the United Kingdom:

Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany
23 Belgrave Square
London
SW1X 8PZ
Phone: 020 7824 1300
Fax: 020 7824 1449

Thanks to De Cura Animarum Weblog

Church to celebrate feast of saint who wrote about the ‘long dark night of the soul’

www.catholicnewsagency.com

On December 14, the church  will commemorate the life of St. John of the Cross, the doctor of the Church who first wrote about the “long dark night of the soul.”

John of the Cross was born in the 16th century into a family which had fallen out of wealth. His father, a silk trader, had been disowned by his own family for marrying a woman of a lower social class. The family survived as silk weavers, but John’s father died while John was very young. The boy began to work in a hospital while attending school part time. It is said that he seemed incapable of learning any trade.

He entered the Carmelite Order, but became disillusioned and thought of leaving. Then he met St. Teresa of Avila. Together with the saint, he reformed the Carmelite order by founding the Discalced (literally“shoe-less”) Carmelites.  At the time, many Carmelites had moved  from a life of fasting, prayer and penance. They resented the reforms.

John was kidnapped by members of his own order and imprisoned in a small, cold and dark cell. He was beaten regularly. Yet in this time, he wrote some of his most profound poetry. Eventually, he escaped and was able to share some of his mystical writings with the world. He is famous for having written “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel,” “The Dark Night of the Soul,” and “The Spiritual Canticle.”

He died at the age of 49, and was canonized in 1726. In 1926, he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI.

Today he is considered one of the first, and greatest mystics.

Read his timeless and classic work “The Dark Night of the Soul”

Read “The Life of St. John of the Cross”

Hanukkah and Jesus Christ, the Light of the World: “I and the Father are one”

“When the day came for them to be purified as laid down by the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the lord.”- Luke 2:22

Simeon holds Jesus aloft and proclaims the Child is the promised Light of the World. Now Jesus will replace the Menorah, the seven-branched lamp stand which to the Jews was the symbol of the presence of God’s light. Jesus is dressed in green priestly vestments: green is the symbol of hope. To complete the ritual of purification, forty days after the birth, Mary and Joseph offer two turtle doves as the sacrificial gift of the poor.

***

The feast of Hanukkah lasts eight days because Judas Maccabaeus wanted to imitate King Solomon. After all, Solomon had dedicated the original temple during the eight-day feast of Tabernacles. However, the feast of Tabernacles falls in the month of Tishri, not Kislev. Instead of waiting another ten months, Judas Maccabaeus decreed that a new eight-day festival be created in imitation of the festival of Tabernacles, beginning on the twenty-fifth day of the Jewish month of Kislev. The book of 2 Maccabees records that Judas Maccabaeus instituted the eight-day festival because, “Solomon also kept the eight days,” when the original Temple was dedicated (2 Macc 2:12).

The Jewish Talmud offers another tradition to explain the eight days of Hanukkah. When the Jews recaptured Jerusalem from the tyrannous Greeks, the Jewish priests did not have enough oil to keep the Temple’s menorah lit. There was only enough sacred oil to burn for one day and it would take at least a week to mix a fresh supply of holy oil. Yet, the one-day supply of holy oil lasted for eight days by a divine miracle. For this reason, faithful Jews light the menorah during the eight days of the festival.

Many Christians are unaware of these connections. As a result, they miss the important “Hanukkah message” of Christ in John’s Gospel. The presence of Christ at the Temple during Hanukkah is important because Hanukkah recalled how the Maccabees dedicated the Temple after the Greeks had defiled it. However, the presence of God’s glory did not manifest itself at the re-dedication of the Maccabees and fill the Temple as it did in the days of King Solomon. Since the time of the Maccabees, God had not inhabited the Temple as He had before the Jews’ Babylonian exile. The presence of Christ in the Temple at Hanukkah shows that God’s presence had once again entered to the Temple.

It was the feast of the Dedication [i.e. Hanukkah] at Jerusalem. It was winter and Jesus was walking in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered round him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly” (Jn 10:22-24).

It was during Hanukkah that Christ answered them by boldly proclaiming: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10: 30). Christ entered into the Temple at the feast of Hanukkah and presented himself as the God of Israel. His enemies immediately understood His claim in light of Hanukkah’s significance. We know this because they took up stones to stone him and said “we stone you for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself to be God” (Jn 10:31-33). Hence, the festival of Hanukkah serves as a sign of Christ’s fulfillment of the Temple and the entire Old Covenant. Jesus was not only a gifted rabbi from Nazareth—He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As it turns out, Jesus’ relationship with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the righteous of the Old Testament sheds light on why Catholic Christians honor and revere the saints.

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Stained Glass Window: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church
Carrallton,Georgia
Presented in Loving Memory of Lou and Mary Benchina

Seen on the web: Another couple with no credentials who snuck into the White House

“Deep Background” on the Salahi debacle, from TomRoeser.com

Illustrated Christmas Bible Study: Christmas is A Catholic Tradition

2Thessalonians 2:13-14

But we ought to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved of God, for that God hath chosen you firstfruits unto salvation, in sanctification of the spirit and faith of the truth: Whereunto also he hath called you by our gospel, unto the purchasing of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast: and hold the traditions, which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle.

View the presentation

Hard Evidence: Proof that abortion hurts women

Women who have had abortions suffer an increased risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide. A study published in a 2005 edition of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found that women who aborted their unintended pregnancies were 30 percent more likely to subsequently report all the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder than those women who had carried their unintended pregnancies to term. A study of a state-funded medical insurance program in California published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in 2002 showed that the rate of mental health claims for women who aborted was 17 percent higher than those who had carried their children to term. And, according to a 1996 article in the British Medical Journal and a 2002 article in the Southern Medical Journal, the risk of death from suicide is two to six times higher for women who have had abortions when compared, again, with women who have given birth.

Several studies analyzed in a landmark 2003 article in the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey show that induced abortion also increases the risk of placenta previa by 50 percent and doubles the risk of pre-term birth in later pregnancies. Placenta previa — where the placenta implants at the bottom of the uterus and covers the cervix — places the lives of both mother and child at risk in that later pregnancy. Pre-term birth is associated with low birth-weight babies, and very low birth-weight babies (those born between 20 and 27 weeks) have 38 times the risk of having cerebral palsy — not to mention medical costs 28 times greater — than full-term babies. According to Dr. Byron Calhoun, director of the Antenatal Diagnostic Center at Rockford Memorial Hospital in Illinois, approximately 30 percent of pre-term births — which now account for 6 percent of all births — are attributable to prior abortions.

But that’s just the beginning. The link between abortion and breast cancer has attracted much media attention. It is important to understand that there are two different mechanisms by which abortion can increase the risk of breast cancer — one is beyond dispute, the other hotly contested. It is now common medical knowledge that a full-term pregnancy, especially before the age of 32, acts as a protective mechanism against breast cancer. Thus, research shows that teenagers with a family history of breast cancer who have abortions before their 18th birthday have an incalculably high risk of developing breast cancer. Indeed, an abortion clinic in Portland, Oregon, recently settled a lawsuit with a 19-year-old woman who claimed the clinic had failed to inform her of this link between abortion and breast cancer — especially since she’d indicated a family history of breast cancer on her intake form.

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Real Catholic TV tells it like it is: Must-see video explains a lot!

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Submitted by Doria2