Sad Happenings...and Odd

The slaughter of Christians in the Middle East and Africa continues, but at least our president openly addressed this ongoing tragedy when he spoke to the gathering of the leaders of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia. He didn't parrot the foolish political correctness of the previous administration, but identified the enemy as Islamist terrorists.

President Trump in Saudi Arabia

It was also refreshing to hear him scold those leaders for their halfhearted, at best, efforts to rid Islam of this cancer. Now we'll see if they actually do anything. I'm not holding my breath because in far too many of these nations a sizable percentage of the population actually support some of the terrorists' goals, specifically the universal imposition of sharia law. (See Pew Research Center's polling results.)

I also applaud President Trump's strong support for our ally, Israel, perhaps the only nation in that part of the world that doesn't hope for our destruction.

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Yesterday's slaughter of Coptic Christians in Egypt provided an interesting juxtaposition alongside the recent terrorist attack in the UK. While the UK attack has almost monopolized the news for several days,  I suspect we'll hear much less about the wholesale murder of a larger number of Egyptian Christians, many of whom were also children. I'm not belittling the tragedy in Manchester, far from it, but what happened in Egypt is no less tragic.

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In a related story Thomas Mair, the mayor of Greater Manchester, speaking about the horrific terrorist bombing in his city, stated: “This is an extremist act and the person who did it no more represents the Muslim community than the person who killed Jo Cox represents the white Christian community.” Jo Cox, you might recall, was the Labour MP who was stabbed to death a week before the "Brexit" referendum. The problem with the mayor's statement is that I'm pretty certain the vast majority of the UK's white Christian community doesn't support the indiscriminate killing of Muslims and would report such plots to the authorities. Sadly, a recent poll indicated that a majority of the UK's Mulims would not report suspected Jihadist activity to the police.
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I found it interesting that Nancy Pelosi, now perhaps the most irrelevant of left-coast politicians, for some unknown reason chided the president for visiting Saudi Arabia on his first international trip. She seems to think he instead should have visited Canada, or perhaps one of those needy foreign people's republics like San Francisco. I expect some in her party are urging her to retire before she does even more damage to their collective credibility.
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Greg Gianforte, Body-Slammer

And speaking of the credibility of the Democrat Party...Things must be very bad indeed when a Montana Republican, Greg Gianforte, wins a special election for a U.S. Congressional seat the day after he's charged with misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a pesky reporter. The Democrats had expected the election to result in an anti-Trump win for their party, an expectation considered a certainty after the Wednesday assault. Last-minute radio and tv ads by the Democrats focused almost exclusively on the assault, and three Montana newspapers pulled their endorsements of Gianforte. But the Repblican still won, and by a decent margin. I certainly don't support assualting reporters, even those who are purveyors of fake news, but the incident certainly says something about the mood of the country. Mr. Gianforte has since publicly apologized for his ill-considered aggression toward the media.
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Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's Finance Minister, another of Europe's brighter lights, suggests that Germany's Christians can learn from its growing Muslim population. What can they learn? In the minister's words, “Many human values are very strongly realised in Islam. Think of hospitality, and other things like, what is there… And also tolerance, I believe, for example.” Hospitality and tolerance were certainly in evidence in Manchester and Nice and Paris and San Bernardino and Egypt and...the list goes on. Of course many, perhaps most, Muslims are hospitable and tolerant, but to deny the religious basis of Islamist terrorism is not just foolish in the short term, but suicidal in the long term. 
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I have to admit, I've pretty much written off all career politicians, a class of people epitomized primarily by their inability to tell the truth. It's no wonder people are rejecting the liars and increasingly voting for politically inexperienced men and women. It's a trend I suspect (and hope) will continue. 

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One of my heroes, the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, believed strongly that the Islamic world would eventually convert to Christianity through the intercession of the Blessed Mother. He expected that Mary, because she occupies an especially exalted position in Islamic theology, would draw the Islamic world to her Son and Christianity. She will bring this about as Our Lady of Fatima, a title that has some fascinating Islamic roots.

I've always thought that Archbishop Sheen was likely correct about all this and that our politicians, as usual, will follow a much less productive course. This, of course, is just another good reason for all Catholics to pray the Rosary daily, not just for the conversion of Russia, but for the conversion of the entire world. After all, as St. Paul reminds us: 

"This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" [1 Tim 2:3-4].

"All men to be saved..." Why not? With God all things are possible.

And how fitting that we should turn to Our Lady of Fatima this year, the 100th anniversary of her apparition to the three children of Fatima. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Fulton Sheen's Cause for Sainthood & Louis Budenz

A few days ago I read an article by CNA (Catholic News Agency) on the prospects of the canonization of Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979). If you're over 60 you probably remember the archbishop's TV show, Life is Worth Living, which was quit the hit -- it actually won an Emmy -- during the 1950s, first on the old DuMont Network and later on ABC. A lot of folks, not just Catholics, watched his show. I certainly remember watching it every week with my family and being almost mesmerized by the Archbishop's words which were delivered in a powerful voice and in dramatic style. As I recall, a later syndicated version of the show aired during the 1960s in color. And for those of you who long ago passed your sixtieth birthday, you might remember listening to the archbishop's radio show, The Catholic Hour, from 1928 to 1952. (DVDs of many of his shows and talks are available online; for example, on Amazon.)

Anyway, according to the CNA article, Pope Benedict was presented with a Positio on the archbishop's cause. The Positio, which can be quite extensive, is an outline of the cause of canonization and includes a summary of the life and holiness of the person being proposed for sainthood. Along with the Positio the pope was given many letters from bishops across the globe who support the cause. And Pope Benedict himself stated that he had fond memories of Archbishop Sheen since they had worked together on various commissions and in support of missionary work. The Positio is an initial but major step in Archbishop Sheen's cause which now moves to a group of theologians and cardinals who will further examine his life for "heroic virtue" and this is just the beginning. The Church's approach to canonization is no simple process, but is carried out with great deliberation and care.

Here's a short (2-minute) video addressing Archbishop Sheen and the cause for canonization.

On the website devoted to Archbishop Sheen's cause, Father Andrew Apostoli, a Franciscan and the vice postulator for the cause, stated that “America is in need of a Saint like Archbishop Sheen. He brought so many people closer to Christ during his life here on earth and continues to do so even today through his many writings, television and radio shows.” I know this certainly applies to me. I have hours and hours of tapes and videos of the archbishop's shows and other talks and still enjoy listening to and watching them. And I must have a half-dozen of his books, all filled with good, common-sense Christian teaching. If you never watched his show, here's a brief (about 8 minutes long) video excerpt from one of his shows from the 1950s. The subject was "The Three Greatest Confessions of History":

If you would like to view parts two and three of the show, go to these links:


Confessions Part 2

Confessions Part 3

 

I actually met Archbishop Sheen back in the mid-1970s, just a few years before he died. At the time I was teaching at the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Diane and I read in our church bulletin that the archbishop was coming to preach at the Naval Academy Chapel. He would preach first at the Sunday Catholic Mass and then at the later non-denominational Protestant service. He was absolutely wonderful. A friend who attended the Protestant service told me that an elderly woman, a retired admiral's wife seated neat to him, remarked, "My! One certainly doesn't hear preaching like that anymore!"

After the two services we had the chance to meet the archbishop at a reception hosted by the Naval Academy's Catholic Chaplain, a Navy Captain named Father John O'Connor, who later became Cardinal John O'Connor, Archbishop of New York. (That's a whole other story.) Upon meeting Archbishop Sheen I must admit I was surprised that he was so short. I suppose TV distorts and I had just assumed he was taller. Meeting him, one could not help but be drawn to his eyes, probably the most intense I had ever encountered. We shook hands, he asked about my Navy career and where I was from, we chatted about New York for a minute or two and shared thoughts about a couple of mutual acquaintances. He then gave me his blessing. It was a brief meeting, maybe five or six minutes.

Louis Budenz testifying before a Senate Sub-committee

One of those mutual acquaintances, someone I met many years earlier, was a gentleman named Louis Budenz (1891-1972). I actually met him in our living room in Larchmont, NY in the late 1950s when I was still in my early teens. Budenz was an acquaintance of my father who had invited him to dine with our family. He was a rather remarkable man. Born in Indiana and radicalized early in life, he became a communist, and eventually rose to membership on the National Committee of the Communist Party USA and editorship of the party's newspaper, The Daily Worker. But that wasn't all. Budenz also became a spy, an agent of the Soviet Union. Indeed, he was the head of the notorious Buben group of spies.

But in 1945 Budenz came to reject communism, had a conversion experience, and returned to his Catholic roots, re-entering the Church under the tutelage of, you guessed it, Bishop Fulton Sheen. Louis Budenz then became a strong anti-communist and prolific author, eventually taking a position as a professor at the Jesuit's Fordham University.

I still remember his visit to our home, largely because my father allowed me to stay up late and listen in and even take part in the conversation. I was captivated by Budenz' life story and how he came to reject communism and accept Jesus Christ and His Church. His autobiography, This Is My Story, is out of print now but well worth reading, if you can find a copy. (The link I've included is to a rather expensive used copy.) My evening with Louis Budenz was another of those memorable experiences that influenced my own thinking and continues to do so.

Blessings...