Let's Pray That India and Pakistan Don't Spin Out of Control

Memri is running this ominous story:

“Pakistani Nuclear Scientist: 'None Of India's Cities Can Remain Safe From Our Missiles'; 'Our Missile System . . . Can Be Fired in Only 10 Minutes — They Are On the Launchers.'

“Amid growing tensions between India and Pakistan following the 11/26 Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Samar Mubarakmand spoke of the readiness of Pakistani missiles and of their capability to target Indian cities . . .” (read more).

This information has been widely known all along, of course. But what makes this situation particularly eye-catching is the recent terrorist attack in Bombay, India, perpetrated (yet again) by trained Muslim killers.

India blames Pakistan for at least harboring the attackers within its borders, if not actually masterminding their attack, and the Indian government is under extreme pressure from many of its people to strike back militarily. Pakistan, on the other hand, denies involvement. So, if India does strike, and they very well may, I fear that the chaotic, jihad-ridden, anti-Indian elements in the Pakistani government (which is probably a significant percentage of it) may just say, “to hell with it,” and launch their own attack using nukes.

Yes, the two contries have been at each other's throats for decades, but the thing that's different this time is the Bombay terror attacks. That could be the match that lights a very big fire this time around. I hope and pray that that doesn't happen.      

Some Lunchtime Levity

As I break for a quickie repast, I cast my eyes across the blogosphere and they fell upon these comedic gems over at Ironic Catholic, under the heading of “Theological Trash Talk.” (I just know that some of my priest friends — you know who you are — will appreciate a few of these in particular.)

• You lovable gravely disordered noodlehead
• Yeah, you. This is your conscience. This is your conscience on drugs. Any questions?
  
• You've really got your transcendental Thomist freak goin' on
  
• You're such a cross between a Jansenist and a Cathar. Yeah, pun intended, pharisaic punk
  
• Your similitudo dei needed an elephantine spit shine when you were born
• Yo momma's like St. Monica without her faith
• When you got baptized, that chrism oil curdled on your forehead like rancid salad dressing
  
• Dude, you have free will. That Freebird song don't have nothin' to do with it. And Lynyrd Skynyrd ain't no theologians
  
• When you received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you asked for a receipt
  
• You so messed up, you thought "intrinsically disordered" was a self-canceling pizza delivery

Feel free to add some theological zingers of your own in the comments box. I'll start with these:

1) It's time for you to go a little heavier on the exitus and a lot lighter on the reditus. 

2) Hush your mouth. Your sitz im leben is starting to show. 

Abortion = Black Genocide

(Thanks, Thérèse.)

And Then There Were Pimps

“Bishop Don Magic Juan, the self-proclaimed king of the pimps, poses in one of his professional outfits in Los Angeles. Real pimps and former pimps, like Don Magic Juan, have become celebrities in the hip-hop culture.”

Say what? I thought this was a crime (and I'm not just talking about the costume). This pimp trend, which has been around awhile now, is another example of the depraved downward spiral so much of the music culture is locked into.

Let's Go Visit the Temple

These images from the UCLA website are fascinating. See how the Temple in Jerusalem might have looked based on research fed into a computer-generated graphics program. Nice! (Scroll down on the web page to see more.) These are a good teaching tool for your kids, if you'd like to give them a visual idea of what the Temple was all about. They read about it (or at least hear about it) in Scripture, but may not have any clear idea of what it was. And they really should. After all, aside from its central importance in the Old Testament, this is where so much of Christ's public ministry took place.

Here's another resource with plenty more fascinating information on the Temple, which was located somewhere atop what today is known as the Temple Mount.

I Get Letters, Lots of Letters

Barbara, a non-Catholic visitor to the Envoy Magazine website site (www.envoymagazine.com), sent me the following note. I post it here so you can get a flavor of the “other side” of Catholic apologetics; the side many people who like Catholic apologetics and apologists don't often see. There are plenty of folks out there, Barbara being one of them, who definitely do not like the Catholic Church.

(FYI, I'm posting Barbara's comments verbatim, including her no doubt inadvertent misquoting of Scripture.)

“Hello Mr Madrid, I have never heard of you. But recently I saw your name while surfing the web because I try my best to make catholics see the error of their beliefs.

“I hate the RCC because it destroys lives. Need I tell you how? I can. I am interested in why you apologize for the RCC. You could never apologize enough for your pagan system and your idolatrous daily consumption of your wafer god. I am a christian, but, of course not a catholic. You can serve God and mammon.

"I have also studied religion and ancient history and I can tell you that the RCC is not the church of the living God. It is a religious money making machine that manufactures 'priests' like a factory makes puppets. The pope is not holy, nuns aren't either, the wafer is not the Body of Christ, confession is unscriptural also.

“As a matter of fact, the RCC is the great whore that sits on seven hills and is mentioned specifically in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on Patmos. Jesus told his servant John to send seven letters to the seven churches in Asia. Rome was not one of them. That should tell you something.

“A sister in our church was a cloistered nun for 25 years until God had mercy and saved her. In Mexico one can go to see the old convents where dead bodies of babies were found buried behind walls.A guide will take you through.

"I marvel that you are so amazingly ignorant of the Bible, but that is typical of a catholic. South and Central America are steeped in poverty and ignorance. Why? because some of my ancestors, the Conquistadores brought with them only priests and soldiers, but they did not bring Jesus.

“America is the greatest nation on earth .Why? It is founded on Protestanism. Protestant children fare better than catholic children. and I could go on and on, but I think you get my message. I watch TBN and know many ministers personally and minister myself through prophesy, evangelism and teaching the Bible. I also am a Gospel singer. I see clearly that the faces of the preachers and christians are radiant with joy and EWTN makes me sad to see the dead faces of those poor "priests" and nuns and how the RCC is desperately trying to be like the Protestants.

“Yes, God is able to save catholics and he is doing it, praise his Name, but when he does, he removes them from their paganism and idolatry. I owe Martin Luther nothing and I owe the RCC nothing. I owe all to Christ who died for me.

“In closing, let me say that the RCC will be brought into judgement by God for all the lives that have been destroyed by it's pagan teachings and it's idolatrous behaviour.

“Sincerely, Barbara”

Women Tells of Stolen Babies

A 22 year-old Romanian woman is weeping - my visit, and request for an interview with Tatya, which is not her real name, brings back terrible memories. 

After she has recovered her composure she tells me how nearly two years ago she was stopped in the street and offered the chance to leave her small, impoverished village behind. 

A youth, who she knew quite well, told her he knew people who could find her well-paid work in Italy. 

It was, he said, the chance of a lifetime for her. He was lying. 

A month later, Tatya recalls, she was smuggled into Italy by sea and then forced to work in a brothel to make money to pay for the trip. 

She became pregnant a few months later, and was taken to be examined by a man claiming to be a doctor, she says. 

He confirmed she was five months pregnant. Three months later, she recalls, she was brought back to the same man who induced her to give birth. 

Tatya says her baby was born without any apparent problems and seemed well. 

But before she even had the chance to hold him or even look at him properly, they took him away. "I remember just seeing his body. He was alive though," Tatya said. 

She was never to see him again. 

Two weeks later, Tatya says, she was put back on the streets and told to continue selling herself for sex. 

Within two months she was pregnant once more and the same gruesome ordeal was replayed again, she says. 

After carrying the child for eight months the birth was induced and the baby taken away from her within seconds of being born. 

She pleaded with the men to tell her what they had done with this baby and the one before him. 

"They told me that the babies had died but they were not telling me the truth, I know," Tatya said. 

"I think that my babies were taken for their organs or to be sold. I don't know for sure, but one of these things." 

Within a fortnight of giving birth to the second baby, Tatya says she was again put back on the streets to work as a prostitute. . . . (read article)

Catholics, Come Home

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A Recent Interview on My Newish Book

We mainly talked about 150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know.

Wise Advice

Your Younger Kids Will Like These!

Holy Heroes . . . 

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California Dreamin'

Who wants to be a millionaire parish?

A few years ago, a Catholic parish in the Diocese of Orange (Southern California) received a $10 million contribution from an anonymous benefactor. And that got me to thinking: How would I spend the $10 million if I were the pastor?

Here's my own wish list, in no particular order of importance. I'd like to know what you think of this list and how you'd spend the money differently, if you were the pastor.

What a grand thing it would be if the parish used the $10 million to . . .

1) Open a large, well-equipped soup kitchen located in the inner city areas of Santa Ana or Anaheim (cost $500,000);

2) Open a free medical and dental clinic for the local community that would cater especially to illegal alien and migrant farmworkers, the homeless, and low-income families. Organize local physicians, dentists, and nurses from the community, Catholic and non-Catholic, to donate their time (say, one day a month) to staff and operate the facility (cost: $2,000,000);

3) Establish two low-power 24-hour local Catholic radio stations, broadcasting from the parish itself and possibly retransmitting the great programming at WEWN shortwave. One would broadcast in Spanish, the other in English. Add Vietnamese programming, too, if you can find some dynamic and orthodox Vietnamese priests and lay people who have the skills for radio. This kind of station would have a small footprint, say a 10-mile "bubble" around the parish and it would be an excellent, low-cost evangelization outreach to the local community (cost: $500,000);

4) Buy or build a spacious and comfortable building as a home for indigent or low-income unmarried pregnant women. Provide free room, board and medical care, the sacraments (for Catholic women, of course) catechism instruction, home-ec classes. This would be a proven brick-and-mortar pro-life solution for local women who are tempted by the blandishments of the vile abortion industry. (cost: $1,000,000)

5) Buy or build a modest convent for the Missionaries of Charity sisters (Mother Teresa's order) and for the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Alhambra; invite them to send sisters; also buy or build a modest monastery for the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal; invite them to send priests and brothers to work among the poor and evangelize (cost: $1,000,00). 

6) Open a large, parish-run MEGA Catholic bookstore. Make it BIG, well-stocked, reasonably priced, and loaded with excellent and orthodox Catholic books, CDs, DVDs, statuary, rosaries, candles, etc. (cost: $500,000);

7) Open a large, warehouse-style parish-run food and clothing bank for the poor and disadvantaged (cost: $1,000,000).

8) Buy or build a center that will house a school for Catholic lay-missionaries and trained apologists. Aim for graduating a well-trained cadre of 25 Catholic lay-missionaries and apologists each year who will go out into the wider community, visiting homes door-to-door in small groups, to spread the Good News and bring people home to the Church and the sacraments (cost: $1,000,000).

9) Adorn the interior of the parish with beautiful statues, votive candles, stained-glass windows, and traditional fixtures of all kinds. Do everything possible to enhance the sense of the sacred inside the church itself. Erect a large crucifix outside the parish buildings, close to the road. The bigger the better— 30' high would be awesome (cost: $500,000);

10) Provide each family in the parish with a free "Catholic Family Kit," including a sturdy copy of a Catholic Bible, 5 rosaries, one crucifix, one 12" statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a copy of the Catechism, a prayerbook, a bottle of holy water, five apologetics books and five apologetics CDs & DVDs on the basics of the Faith, and, of course, a one-year subscription to Envoy Magazine (cost: $100,000);

11) Build a large shrine to our Blessed Lady on the parish grounds. Make it big and beautiful. Encourage all the faithful to make a pilgrimage there at least once a year as a family (cost: $200,000);

12) Put $700,000 in the bank for a rainy day and so that the food bank, medical clinic, and home for unwed mothers can be maintained and replenished with supplies annually.

13) Send $100,000 to the diocese as a gift.

14) Send $400,000 to the Holy Father as a gift for his Peter's Pence collection and for the missions.

15) Give the remaining $500,000 to the poor, dividing it among area Catholic and Protestant soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

The Perpetual Duel Between Good and Evil

Nancy shared this with me me awhile back (the story, not the burger). True, it is a non-canonical, apocryphal account, but it does contain some useful insights:

God populated the earth with vegetables of all kinds, so that Man would live a long and healthy life.

And Satan created the 99-cent double cheeseburger. And Satan said to Man, “Want fries with that?”

And Man said, “Supersize them!” And Man gained pounds.

And God created healthful yogurt. And Satan froze the yogurt and brought forth refined sugar, chocolate, nuts, and brightly colored candy to put on top. And Man gained more pounds.

And behold, God brought forth running shoes. And Man, seeing what the Lord had wrought, repented of his folly and resolved to lose those extra pounds.

And lo, Satan then brought forth cable TV, remote control, and potato chips. And Man clutched his remote control and ate his chips. Satan saw this and said, “It is good.”

And verily it came to pass that Man went into cardiac arrest. And God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

And Satan created HMOs . . .

Wanna Caption This?

The Prophecies and Dreams of St. John Bosco

The great Italian priest, St. John Bosco (founder of the great Salesian order of priests an brothers), experienced many prophetic dreams and visions, some relating to his own era, others involving future events.

I recommend reading two in particular: his chilling dream of souls entering hell and his famous dream about the two pillars, the persecution of the Church, and the apparent assasination of a future pope. The former dream is perennially beneficial, I think, and the latter dream is a glimpse of dramatic future events.

Sometimes, I am inclined to wonder if are entering into or . . . gulp . . . already are in the dire times he foresaw.