Friday Thoughts

Prayer Breakfasts. Our president, the nation's self-proclaimed leading aficionado of religious freedom, decided to address the issue at Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. And let me tell you, it was an uplifting, hopeful address and was doubtless equally well received by the politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, justices, and other holy folk who came together to ask God to advance their respective ideologies.

President and Mrs. Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast

Okay, let me give the president his due. I was very pleased to hear him mention Pastor Saeed Abedini, an American who has been imprisoned in Iran simply because he is a Christian. I may be wrong, but I believe this is the first time the president has mentioned Pastor Abedini publicly. He also referred to another American, Christian missionary Kenneth Bae, who has been imprisoned by the even more barbaric regime in North Korea. The president stated that “The United States will continue to do everything in our power to secure his release because Kenneth Bae deserves to be free.” Later, speaking of Pastor Abedini, he said, "Today, we call on the Iranian government to release Pastor Abedini.” It was good to hear these comments and promises, regardless of their efficacy. [Note: As I write this I just heard a news report that North Korea has transferred Kenneth Bae from a hospital to a labor camp, where he will serve out his 15-year sentence. Sad news indeed. We await the president's response.]

Pastor Abedini and his family

The president also referred to the blasphemy laws used by Muslim nations to persecute non-Muslims, especially Christians. As one might expect, Mr. Obama's reference was somewhat circumspect and avoided mentioning Islam: "Going forward, we will keep standing for religious freedom around the world.  And that includes, by the way, opposing blasphemy and defamation of religion measures, which are promoted sometimes as an expression of religion, but, in fact, all too often can be used to suppress religious minorities." 

The president drifted off into political correctness a few times, as when he said, "We sometimes see religion twisted in an attempt to justify hatred and persecution against other people just because of who they are, or how they pray or who they love" [my italics]. With this comment, of course, the president accuses those who believe homosexual acts to be sinful of twisting religion and justifying hatred. I guess that makes me and the Catholic Church and most orthodox Christians twisted haters. I've been called worse things.

Kenneth Bae

Political correctness was also obvious in what the president didn't address. His administration's attack on the Catholic Church and others who object to being forced to use health insurance that funds contraception, abortion, and sex-change procedures was conspicuously omitted, as was the fact that our nation has slaughtered 55 million unborn human beings since 1973. 

My problem with prayer breakfasts is that they center less on on prayer and more on poorly veiled political speeches. The president's comments [you can read his entire address here] are not addressed to God but rather to the gathered Washington insiders, and their purpose is less worshipful than political. But I suppose we should be happy they actually get together once a year to talk about God...a far better subject than what they usually talk about.

Persecution of Christians. The Pew Research Center has released its latest findings on global religious persecution, and not surprisingly Christians are the most persecuted of all believers. The persecution of Christians has been reported in a mind-boggling 110 countries. Jews, who make up a tiny percentage of the world's population, experienced persecution in 95 countries. Interestingly, the harassment and persecution of believers increased in every region of the world, except the Americas. Furthermore, the number of nations experiencing religious terrorism and sectarian violence also increased significantly, doubling over the past five years. These trends are less than encouraging.

The Internet as Teacher. There's a lot of trash on the web, actually more than a lot, but there's also some very interesting stuff. You can read virtually all of the world's great literature. You can access the minds of experts in every field. You can work your way through courses offered by some of the world's great universities. You can even read this blog. And you can do much of this absolutely free! It's truly remarkable. Another fascinating online resource is Youtube. Yes, I admit that there are a lot of strange and ridiculous videos on Youtube, but there are also some very useful things. YouTube is eminently practical. For example, if you want to learn how best to re-grout the ceramic tile in your shower, there's a video showing you how. If you want to clean your Mossberg shotgun...yep, there's a video. Even more remarkable, however, Youtube can teach you how to open a bottle of wine using only your shoe! This is something I've been aching to learn for decades, and now, here it is, wonderfully encapsulated into a 49-second video, thanks to Mirabeau Vineyards.



One can also learn how to open a bottle of beer without a bottle opener, but for some reason it requires over six minutes of instructional video. Perhaps beer drinkers are slower learners.

The Internet, the World, the Church

The internet is truly a remarkable resource. Yes, I know full well that much of its content is pure garbage of the sort that any civilized, moral society would ban. That's the problem with our progressive Western culture's absolutist approach to free speech, a relatively recent innovation that would have shocked our founding fathers. They were men who believed that natural law and the moral sense of the people imposed boundaries, even on such rights as freedom of speech. Fortunately we can usually block most of this garbage from entering our homes and upsetting our peace of mind. But I digress...

I have actually watched the internet develop since before it was the internet, long before Al Gore had even heard of it. Indeed, back in the early seventies, when I was teaching computer science at the Naval Academy, I would often log into the internet's predecessor, what was then called the ARPAnet, a Department of Defense project meaning Advanced Research Project Agency Network. Once logged in I would browse the network, seeing what useful or interesting things were available on the university, government and corporate computer systems that were tied together via the ARPAnet. It was all very exciting back then, and by today's standards very limited and very slow.


Now we can communicate with family and friends via online video phone calls, basically for free. We have direct and immediate access to millions, perhaps billions, of books and articles and documents. We can learn languages. We can study everything from basic reading skills to small particle physics. We can witness world events as they happen and sample a thousand different viewpoints on what it all means, and do it all almost instantaneously. And to think that all of this, and much more, has become possible in such a short time. It truly is remarkable.

Actually, I was very ready for the internet's arrival. I had been an amateur radio operator since the age of 15 and my involvement in the hobby allowed me to communicate with other "hams" throughout the world. We'd talk about a whole range of subjects, although we would usually avoided politics and religion. Everything else, though, was fair game. As the internet began to mature I simply viewed it as a better way to do what I had already been doing since 1959.

Vintage Ham Radio Equipment of the 1950s

And now, thank God, the Church has embraced the internet as a prime medium to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, to extend its reach to places where its voice might never otherwise have been heard. How many people, who would never think of approaching a Catholic priest in person to ask about Jesus Christ, might readily visit a Catholic website to get answers to their questions? How many conversions have been precipitated by a visit to a Church website? Who knows? Maybe we bloggers even have a positive impact.

Almost daily I stumble upon some wonderful website that brings another essential element of the faith to the world. Today, for example, as I was researching information on the number of Catholic worldwide, I was led to the Vatican website of the Pontifical Mission Societies, a site I never knew existed. It's really a wonderful website, filled with information on the status of Catholic missions throughout the world. Here's the link to the English-language homepage: Agenzia Fides

It's easy to keep the garbage at bay, and just as easy to enjoy and take advantage of all the good that the internet offers. Perhaps we should develop a strong devotion to St. Isidore of Seville (left) whom the Church has declared the patron saint of the internet. A bishop and doctor of the Church who lived from 560 to 636 A.D., St. Isadore spent much of his life documenting all "universal knowledge" in anticipation of the aim of today's internet. Let's ask him to help us eliminate the garbage and strengthen the Church's growing presence on the worldwide web.

St. Isidore, pray for us.

xt3 -- Social Network for Catholics

Here's something that's been around on the web for three years, but I just found out about it. It's a social network (like Facebook) but for Catholics. Encouraged by the archbishop of Sydney, Australia, Cardinal George Pell, a team of young folks designed the site in 2008 as a result of the World Youth Day that year in Australia. The site's name -- xt3 -- stands for "Christ in the Third Millennium."

The site, which now has 50,000 regular users, allows Catholics, particularly young people, to connect and share their faith. xt3 also contains a large library of videos and podcasts as well as an online application called, "Ask a Priest", through which Father John Flynn answers questions about life, religion and the Church.

I've only just browsed quickly through the site, but it looks like something I will certainly recommend to young people. Here's the link: http://www.xt3.com/

And here's a brief video discussing the site:

Some WWW Favorites

I've been playing around with the Internet since before it was the Internet. I had my first exposure back in 1973 when I was teaching computer science at the Naval Academy and was introduced to the Internet's predecessor, the ARPANet, a Department of Defense project designed to interconnect computer installations around the globe using the telecommunications infrastructure. The network used packet switching, as opposed to circuit switching, which enabled a communications link among multiple computers and did not require a dedicated circuit. In those days, we used teletype-like terminals with paper printouts and I still have copies of some of those early adventures on the ARPANet. (ARPANet, by the way, was an acronym for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.) 

I even got involved with email fairly early when I signed up for an MCI Mail account back in 1984 using my trusty IBM PC-XT. Of course in those days everything was done with dial-up modems and slow baud rates, but that didn't bother me. The very fact that I could communicate with clients and colleagues was wonderful. All of this, of course, was long before Al Gore's 1991 "information superhighway" bill. 

This early involvement with global computer-based telecommunications was fascinating. And I believe it gave those of us who took part an early glimpse into the future, which probably prevented us from being too surprised by the remarkable advances that followed one on top of the other during the succeeding years. Today the World Wide Web has redefined virtually every aspect of our lives. I do almost as much shopping on the web as I do in stores, perhaps more. I do our banking via the Internet, and plan and book all our travel and vacations on the web. I rarely write letters, but communicate with friends and family largely via email. I get most of my news from the web, which has also become a major source of research material for the courses I teach. This blog, and countless others like it, is a perfect example of how the Internet spawned the development of something totally new, something for which there was no real pre-Internet equivalent.

Given the breadth of the Internet it's easy today to get lost, and to waste an awful lot of time, browsing among the millions of websites in cyberspace. And so I tend to focus on a few favorite sites. Some I check daily because they are updated frequently and always seem to have something interesting to pass along. Others I look in on less frequently but turn to them as the need arises. Anyway, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you...

The Catholic Thing (http://www.thecatholicthing.org). A relatively new website, produced by Brad Miner, that offers an always interesting daily commentary on a timely subject by many of today's best Catholic writers. The "In the News" page is also worth a daily glance.

Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org). A wonderful, comprehensive site about all things Catholic. I especially enjoy the commentaries of Deacon Keith A. Fournier.

Intercollegiate Studies Institute (http://www.isi.org). If you're not a conservative, you will probably dislike this site -- although if you spend much time on it, you just might change your political and philosophical stripes. ISI was founded back in the 1950s "to further in successive generations of American college students a better understanding of the economic, political, and moral principles that sustain a free and humane society." They have published some very important books on a wide range of subjects, and I recommend joining their "readers' club" so you can receive a substantial discount on all book purchases. I have also downloaded many of their audio and video lectures which I play back while driving the car or at other opportune times. As a good introduction to ISI and its worldview, you might try some of Russell Kirk's lectures and books.

First Things (http://www.firstthings.com). This is the website of First Things, an interreligious journal published by the Institute on Religious and Public Life. The journal and the institute were both founded by the late Father Richard Neuhaus, who was a major influence on much of the true ecumenical progress that has been achieved in recent years. Be sure to check out their blogs, always a source of good information. If I had to give up all my magazines but one, First Things is the one I'd keep. If you are a First Things subscriber, you get enhanced access on the website -- another good reason to subscribe.

Vatican Radio (http://www.radiovaticana.org/en1/index.asp). This link will take you to the English language site for Vatican Radio where you will be able to listen to all recent programming, including news shows and any English language talks by the Holy Father. Another related site is the Vatican's YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/vatican) which includes lots of current videos from the Vatican.

The above include the sites I visit most frequently, but I'd be happy to hear suggestions about some of your favorite websites. I have intentionally omitted blogs because I stop by so many during any given week just to see if something interesting has been posted. The list would be far too long.

And let's not forget the patron saint of the Internet, St. Isadore of Seville
(d. 636; feast day: April 4). 

God's peace...