InsideCatholic.com - Five Myths About the Rapture

From Carl E Olson writing at Inside Catholic.

About ten years ago, I mentioned to a Catholic friend that I was starting to work on a book critiquing the Left Behind novels. I explained that it would thoroughly examine premillennial dispensationalism, the unique apocalyptic belief system presented, in fictional format, within those books. Premillennial dispensationalism teaches that the "Rapture" and the Second Coming are two events separated by a time of tribulation and that there will be a future millennial reign of Christ on earth. "Why?" she asked, obviously bewildered. "No one really takes that stuff seriously."
That revealing remark merely reinforced my desire to write Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? (Ignatius, 2003). Other conversations brought home the same point. Far too many people -- including a significant number of Catholics -- don’t recognize the attraction and power of this Fundamentalist phenomenon. Nor do they appear to appreciate how much curiosity exists about the "end times," the book of Revelation, and the "pretribulation Rapture" -- the belief that Christians will be taken up from earth prior to a time of tribulation and the Second Coming.
In the course of writing articles, giving talks, and writing the book, I’ve encountered a number of questions and comments -- almost all from Catholics -- that indicate how much confusion exists about matters of eschatology (theology of the end times), not to mention ecclesiology, historical theology, and the interpretation of Scripture. The five myths I present here summarize many of those questions.
Continue reading "Five Myths About the Rapture" at InsideCatholic.com

Our Lady Help of Christians - Just because I like it.

I don’t know who produced this image.

Empire State Building Honours a Mass Murderer but Stiffs Mother Teresa.

Last year the Empire State Building shone in red and yellow lights to honor the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Yet under its founder, Mao Zedong, the Communists killed 77 million people. In other words, the greatest mass murderer in history merited the same tribute being denied to Mother Teresa.

Continue reading at the Catholic League or see video of Bill Donohue.

UPDATE
"Progressive" Catholics want Catholic League defeated.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

'Renew wounded Church' say pope - News in English - ANSA.it

(ANSA) - Vatican City, May 27 - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday made his most explicit plea yet for the Catholic Church to heal the wounds caused by child sex abuse scandals.
A "humble and painful admission" of "the wounds caused by the weakness and sins of some of the Church's members" must lead to "interior renewal", Benedict told Italian bishops.
"What is cause for scandal must translate itself for us into the urge to re-learn penance, accept purification, learn forgiveness on the one hand and on the other the need for justice," the pope told the 61st annual assembly of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI).
Continue reading at  News in English - ANSA.it

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

American lawsuit against Vatican misconstrues nature of the Church, canonists say :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

CNA STAFF, May 27, 2010 / 12:40 am (CNA).- Two canon lawyers have weighed in on an attempt to sue the Vatican for sexual abuse by a priest, saying it misconstrues the nature of the Catholic Church and the relationship between the Pope and other Catholic bishops. It is based on the misperception of the Church as a “monolithic” structure, one said

Continue reading at Catholic News Agency (CNA)

The Righteous Gentile – Pope Pius XII

Thanks to Gerard Charles Wilson.

Is the Black Legend at last dissolving?

Many Catholics, clerical and lay, have worked tirelessly for years to defeat the Black Legend. The Black Legend is the story that Pope Pius XII, regarded as a living saint in the 1950s, did little or nothing to save the Jews from Nazi murder. The legend grew from The Deputy a play by a German author in 1963 and thereafter propagated enthusiastically through the decades in all manner of books, newspaper and magazine articles and television programs. One of the most reprehensible books that developed the Pius XII anti-Semite and Nazi complicity theme was Hitler's Pope, by a self-proclaimed Catholic, John Cornwell.

Despite the work done to clear Pius XII's name, it seemed to many of us that little headway was being made to defeat what we knew to be the greatest calumny of the twentieth century. We knew that not only was Pius XII innocent of the charges, but that he was the very opposite both in deed and belief. Anti-Semitism and Nazism were abhorrent to him, and he did all that was in his power to save as many Jews from Hitler's extermination plans as he could.

But there has been a change, a change so great that it now looks like the Black Legend is dissolving. If it is, it is happening in no small part due to the efforts of an American Jew, Gary Krupp, of the Path the Way Foundation (http://www.ptwf.org/index.htm).

In a number of interviews and written pieces, Gary Krupp says that he 'grew up hating Pius XII, believing him to be an anti-Semite and a Nazi collaborator.' Through a 'providential' set of circumstances, related in an article in Galus Australis (Jewish Knight defends Pope XII), he became exposed to documents and oral histories that told a very different story. He said, 'my eyes were opened to a reality that was literally shocking. My emotions went from shock to anger. We discovered that we have been deceived by those whom we trusted for historical accuracy – that is, the scholars and historians.'

It was the beginning of a tenacious and feverish search for supporting evidence and documentation. In the four years since, he has uncovered literally thousands of documents demonstrating the calumny of the Black Legend, for which there is increasing evidence that the Soviet KGB was its originator.

I want to sincerely thank and pay tribute to Gary Krupp and the Pave the Way Foundation for the work they have done and are doing in undoing a terrible injustice. Immediately below are links to an interview with Gary Krupp and an eye-opening power point display which I strongly urge the reader to follow.

Gary Krupp interview on EWTN on the research of Pope Pius XII

Is Pope Pius XII a Righteous Gentile or Hitler's Pope? Watch this 56 minute narrated Power Point then you decide

More at GerardCharlesWilson.com

Pius XII image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Catholic League: Media ignore New York Times hit on Archbishop Dolan

From the Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights

New York Times HQ

May 18, 2010
Catholic League president Bill Donohue released the following comment today:
The front-page article in yesterday's New York Times on New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was summarily ignored by the mainstream media. As I said yesterday in my release on the story, "No other newspaper in the nation would post a front-page story on a religious leader that led to nowhere, save for the Times." Evidently, the media agreed. And to think that the Times spent a year looking for dirt, and all they got was dust.
We searched for news stories, and for television transcripts, accessing Google, Bing, Lexis-Nexis and Critical Mention, and found that aside from a few blogs, the media ignored the story. Even though the evening broadcast news uses the New York Times as a feeder, neither CBS, NBC or ABC picked up the Dolan story. Neither did the cable giants: the Fox News Network, CNN and MSNBC failed to report on it. That's because they know a non-story when they see it.
There were two exceptions: KMOX radio in St. Louis, Archbishop Dolan's home town, did an interview on the story, and so did Steve Malzberg on WOR in New York City. You can guess what was said—about Dolan and the Times—since I did them both.

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Maybe there is a growing realisation of the New York Times' anti-Catholic bigotry.
Image of New York Times Tower courtesy of Wikipedia Media.