Mar 08 2009

Prayer

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 7:07 pm

Learning how to pray? Relearning how to pray?

Sometimes we just don’t know how, or where to start, especially if we feel ourselves to be in a “spiritual dry spell.” You might try Praying Through The Psalms.  They are sometimes brutally honest cries of the heart, from one of God’s favorite very-imperfect people.

Or you might try this.

The evangelical tradition of “improvisatory prayer” has much to recommend it.  But it’s also a box that can capture the spirit by limiting it to one’s own ability to think in words, spontaneously.  God hears our prayers, verbal and non-verbal…  and I think that praying beautifully written and inspired prayers from others has the ability, oddly, to liberate our own non-verbal prayers, as we give our assent and emotional force to the words of someone else.  Sometimes, when the mind has something worthwhile to chew on, the heart is freed.

Jesus seems to have thought this was a pretty good idea, too.


Mar 08 2009

Why don’t university “justice weeks” include anti-Semitism as an issue?

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 7:03 pm

Pajamas Media » Jew-Hatred Is All Too Real in the West   Much more at the link.

On February 21, 130 delegates from 40 countries took part in a British government-backed conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA). On February 22 this coalition, also known as the London Conference on Combating Antisemitism, convened by a group whose majority was non-Jewish, issued a statement acknowledging that the scourge was at its highest level in recent memory.

And in answer to the question posed in the title of this post: because “justice week” everywhere is an exercise of the Left, and the Left can’t be bothered to say much about anti-Semitism, because then someone might think they support Israel.

Here’s a simple little experiment.  Do a google search for these terms: “social justice” (put it in quotes like this), university, and anti-Semitism. Your search entry should look like this:

     “social justice” university anti-Semitism

Compare the kinds of hits you get with this search string:

     “social justice” university racism

or just

     “social justice” university

I think the message is pretty clear that, to university planners of “justice” programs, anti-Semitism isn’t even an afterthought.


Mar 08 2009

Catholics under attack in NY

Category: Catholic,churchharmonicminer @ 9:27 am

Newsmax.com – N.Y. Catholics: Dems Trying to Bankrupt Church

Democrats have declared war on the Catholic Church, with new laws that threaten to bankrupt Catholic schools, hospitals, charities and parishes. Thus far, the worst attacks have come in New York.

“We’ve taken a lot of hits this year,” Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, the policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, tells Newsmax. “Outside the government, the Catholic Church is the largest provider of health, human services and education in [New York]. But some legislators are so driven by malice that they’re willing to see our charities and schools go under.”

The Empire State’s Democrats are attacking on three fronts.

# A proposal to require all hospitals to perform abortions, or lose their state license would put Catholic hospitals out of business.

# Major funding cuts for Catholic schools by Gov. David Paterson, who continues to force the parochial schools to run state-mandated programs at their own expense.

# An effort by Democratic lawmakers to abolish the statute of limitations on sex abuse lawsuits against the Church, allowing people to sue over decades-old cases in which the alleged perpetrators are dead.

The proposed sex-abuse law applies only to private institutions such as the Church and the Boy Scouts. Public schools are exempt. Yet sex abuse is more common in public schools than in private institutions.

Read the whole thing.

But consider:

1) The Freedom of Choice Act, if passed by Congress and signed by Obama (who has already promised to do so), would institute even greater assaults on the freedom of Catholic and other religiously founded hospitals not to do abortion, nationwide, not just in New York. And it would create a situation where no medical personnel would have a “freedom of conscience” protection so they would not be forced to participate in abortions of convenience.

2) The current budget proposal in Congress, favored by Obama, removes the charitable giving deduction from the tax code, which would surely significant reduce giving to all kinds of charitable organizations, hospitals, churches, relief organizations, orphanages, schools, you name it.

So New York State is just a little bit ahead of federal policy… but only a little bit.

The all out assault on the church, which has been gaining steam for awhile now, is on with a vengeance. And make no mistake, vengeance is the intent of the perpetrators.

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