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DEFENDING
HUMAN ECOLOGY
VATICAN CITY, 9 MAR 2011 (VIS) - The
Holy Father sent a Message to Archbishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha
of Mariana, president of the National Conference of Bishops
of Brazil, for the Fraternity Campaign traditionally
promoted by the Brazilian Church during Lent.
The theme of the 2011 campaign is: "Fraternity and life on
the planet", and its motto is: "the creation groans with
labor pains. This, the Pope writes, "is an echo of the words
used by St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans. One of the
reasons for these groans is the damage caused to creation by
human selfishness", he says.
Benedict XVI affirms that "the first step towards a
correct relationship with the world around us is the
recognition by humans of their status as created beings. Man
is not God; he is His image. For this reason he must seek to
be more sensitive to the presence of God in his
surroundings. In all creatures, and especially in human
beings, there is an epiphany, or manifestation, of God".
"The human being will be capable of respecting other
creatures only if he keeps the full meaning of life in his
own heart. Otherwise he will come to despise himself and his
surroundings, and to disrespect the environment, the
creation, in which he lives. For this reason, the first
ecology to be defended is 'human ecology'. This is to say
that, without a clear defense of human life from conception
until natural death; without a defense of the family founded
on marriage between a man and a woman; without an authentic
defense of those excluded and marginalized by society, not
overlooking, in this context, those who have lost everything
in natural calamities, we will never be able to speak of
authentic protection of the environment".
Published by
VIS - Holy See Press Office
-
Wednesday, March 09,
2011
Blessed John Henry
Newman
Christ's suffering in
cruelty to animals and children
Excerpts from Sermon 10. The Crucifixion
...You will ask, how are we to learn to feel pain
and anguish at the thought of Christ's sufferings? I answer, by thinking of
them, that is, by dwelling on the thought. This, through God's mercy, is in
the power of every one. No one who will but solemnly think over the history
of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually
gain, through God's grace, a sense of them, will in a measure realize them,
will in a measure be as if he saw them, will feel towards them as being not
merely a tale written in a book, but as a true history, as a series of
events which took place. It is indeed a great mercy that this duty which I
speak of; though so high, is notwithstanding so level with the powers of all
classes of persons, learned and unlearned, if they wish to perform it. Any
one can think of Christ's sufferings, if he will; and knows well what to
think about. "It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up
for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither
is it beyond the sea that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for
us? ... but the word is very nigh unto thee;" very nigh, for it is in the
four Gospels, which, at this day at least, are open to all men. All men may
read or hear the Gospels, and in knowing them, they will know all that is
necessary to be known in order to feel aright; they will know all that any
one knows, all that has been told us, all that the greatest saints have ever
had to make them full of love and sacred fear.
Now, then, let me make one or two reflections by way of stirring up your
hearts and making you mourn over Christ's sufferings, as you are called to
do at this season.
1. First, as to these sufferings you will observe that our Lord is called a
lamb in the text; that is, He was as defenseless, and as innocent, as a lamb
is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected
animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means
of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord's sufferings should
excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts
which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on brute animals. Does it not
sometimes make us shudder to hear tell of them, or to read them in some
chance publication which we take up? At one time it is the wanton deed of
barbarous and angry owners who ill-treat their cattle, or beasts of burden;
and at another, it is the cold-blooded and calculating act of men of
science, who make experiments on brute animals, perhaps merely from a sort
of curiosity. I do not like to go into particulars, for many reasons; but
one of those instances which we read of as happening in this day, and which
seems more shocking than the rest, is, when the poor dumb victim is fastened
against a wall, pierced, gashed, and so left to linger out its life. Now do
you not see that I have a reason for saying this, and am not using these
distressing words for nothing? For what was this but the very cruelty
inflicted upon our Lord? He was gashed with the scourge, pierced through
hands and feet, and so fastened to the Cross, and there left, and that as a
spectacle. Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at
cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no
harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the
cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their
sufferings so especially touching. For instance, if they were dangerous
animals, take the case of wild beasts at large, able not only to defend
themselves, but even to attack us; much as we might dislike to hear of their
wounds and agony, yet our feelings would be of a very different kind; but
there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who
never have harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in
our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defense, that none but
very hardened persons can endure the thought of it. Now this was just our
Savior's case: He had laid aside His glory, He had (as it were) disbanded
His legions of Angels, He came on earth without arms, except the arms of
truth, meekness, and righteousness, and committed Himself to the world in
perfect innocence and sinlessness, and in utter helplessness, as the Lamb of
God. In the words of St. Peter, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in
His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He
threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." [1
Pet. ii. 22, 23.] Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty
practiced upon brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which
the history of Christ's Cross and Passion ought to excite within you. And
let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any
accounts you read of wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the inferior
animals; let them remind you, as a picture, of Christ's sufferings. He who
is higher than the Angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of
the brute creation, as the Psalm says, "I am a worm, and no man; a very
scorn of men, and the outcast of the people." [Ps. xxii. 6.]
2. Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more
strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only, but at
the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the
same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable
to defend itself. I do not like to go into the details of such cruelty, they
would be so heart-rending. What if wicked men took and crucified a young
child? What if they deliberately seized its poor little frame, and stretched
out its arms, nailed them to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its
two feet, and fastened them to a beam, and so left it to die? It is almost
too shocking to say perhaps, you will actually say it is too shocking, and
ought not to be said. O, my brethren, you feel the horror of this, and yet
you can bear to read of Christ's sufferings without horror; for what is that
little child's agony to His? and which deserved it more? which is the more
innocent? which the holier? was He not gentler, sweeter, meeker, more
tender, more loving, than any little child? Why are you shocked at the one,
why are you not shocked at the other?...
...fancy you see Jesus Christ on the cross, and say
to Him with the penitent thief, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy
kingdom;" that is, "Remember me, Lord, in mercy, remember not my sins, but
Thine own cross; remember Thine own sufferings, remember that Thou
sufferedst for me, a sinner; remember in the last day that I, during my
lifetime, felt Thy sufferings, that I suffered on my cross by Thy side.
Remember me then, and make me remember Thee now."
Newman Reader — Works of John
Henry Newman
Copyright © 2007 by The National Institute for Newman Studies. All rights
reserved.
God was behind Big Bang,
universe no accident: Pope
Thu Jan 6, 2011 10:05am EST
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY
(Reuters) - God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big
Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by
accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would
want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany,
the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by
following a star.
"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read
something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible
creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St Peter's
Basilica on the feast day.....
Some atheists say science can prove that God does not
exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were "mind limiting"
because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain
the ultimate sense of reality ..."
He said scientific theories on the origin and
development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left
many questions unanswered.
"In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its
greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward
God, creator of heaven and earth," he said....
© Thomson Reuters 2011. All
rights reserved.
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