Vatican Scientist Says Belief In God And Aliens Is OK

I was just reading this story at Yahoo News, and I am not sure if it is impressive that this astronomer for the Church has decided to enter the 20th century, or if we should hope that he'll make the big leap, and join the rest of us in the 21st!

The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of "extraterrestrial brothers" perhaps more evolved than humans.

"In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.


LINK TO FULL STORY

Vatican Rejects bin Laden's New Crusade Accusation!

I was just reading a story out of the Vatican that even takes the time to respond to the Moronic al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, assertion that the Vatican is involved in a "new crusade" against Islam!!

The Vatican rejected on Thursday accusations by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the publication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad was part of a "new crusade" involving Pope Benedict.

"These accusations are totally unfounded," chief Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in response to an audio recording by bin Laden which was posted on the Internet to coincide with the birthday of the founder of Islam.

Italian security officials are examining the bin Laden message and its impact on the Pope. The Vatican said the Pontiff's heavy schedule of Easter celebrations this weekend would not be changed.

The Saudi-born militant leader said Europe would be punished for the cartoons, which were first published by a Danish paper in September 2005. The images ignited bloody unrest among Muslims when other newspapers around the world reprinted them the following year.

Last month several Danish newspapers republished one of the cartoons in solidarity with the cartoonist, after three men were arrested on suspicion of plans to kill him. This sparked fresh protests by Muslims.

"Your publications of these drawings -- part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican has a significant role -- is a confirmation from you that the war continues," said bin Laden, addressing "those who are wise at the European Union". U.S. officials said the CIA was confident the voice was that of the fugitive leader of al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Lombardi said: "It is natural to think that he would lump the Vatican and the Pope together with all his perceived enemies. But this is not correct."

VATICAN CONDEMNED CARTOONS
The Pope had been quick to condemn the Danish cartoons, Lombardi said, and launched a wider criticism of depictions of religious figures that offend members of different faiths. Lombardi said Pope Benedict recently launched a permanent official dialogue with Muslim leaders. Last month the Vatican's top official for relations with Islam, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, condemned the cartoons. Al Qaeda has criticised the Pope before. Many Muslims were offended by a speech he made in 2006 which they believed depicted Islam as a violent faith.

Responding to the bin Laden statement, a spokeswoman for the EU presidency told Reuters: "The European Union and its member states apply the principle of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, these are parts of our values and traditions. "The EU and its member states respect Islam." Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Karel De Gucht told Reuters Television he was concerned by the Bin Laden statement. "It's a statement which is worrying and the substance disturbs me...it's worrying from a security point of view as we attach particular importance to the security of the European institutions on our territory."

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said there was "a heightened threat from militant extremists abroad against Denmark and Danes and Danish interests abroad", and that the bin Laden comments did not change that assessment. The Dutch government has said it fears a Muslim backlash when a right-wing lawmaker releases a film critical of the Koran, which he says he will do online this month because cinemas refuse to show it.

Can we please get our priorities right again, and put "Capping" Osama bin Laden, back at the Top of the "Important Things To Do To Terrorists"~~To Do List!! Thank You!!

Muslims And Vatican To Dialogue

The Vatican and Muslim leaders agreed on Wednesday to establish a permanent official dialogue to improve often difficult relations and heal wounds still open from a controversial papal lecture in 2006.

Here is information about the lecture and the offending paragraphs from it:
The lecture on "faith and reason", with references ranging from ancient Jewsih and Greek thinking to Protestant theology and modern Secularity, focused mainly on Christianity and what Pope Benedict called the tendency to "exclude the question of God" from reason. Islam features in a part of the lecture: the Pope quoted strong criticism of Islam, which he described as being of a "startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded".

In three paragraphs at the beginning of the speech, Pope Benedict quoted from and discussed an argument made by the Byzantine Emporer Manuel II Palaiologos in a 1391 dialog with an "educated Persian" (who remained unnamed in the Pope's lecture), as well as observations on this argument made by Theodore Khoury, the scholar whose edition of Manuel II's dialogues the Pontiff was referencing. Pope Benedict used Manuel II's argument in order to draw a distinction between the Christian view, as expressed by Manuel II, that "not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature", and an Islamic view, as explained by Khoury, that God transcends concepts such as rationality, and his will, as Ibn Hazm stated, is not constrained by any principle, including rationality.

In part of his explication of this distinction, Pope Benedict referred to a specific aspect of Islam that Manuel II considered irrational, namely the practice of forced conversion. Specifically, the Pope (making clear that they were the Emperor's words, not his own) quoted Manuel II Palaiologos as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The Pontiff was comparing the Islamic teaching that "There is no compulsion in religion" with what Pope Benedict described as the newer teaching that allowed "spreading the faith through violence"; the latter teaching being offered by Pope Benedict as an unreasonable one, on the belief that religious conversion should take place through the use of reason. His larger point here was that, generally speaking, in Christianity, God is understood to act in accordance with reason, while in Islam, God's absolute transcendence means that "God is not bound even by his own word", and can act in ways contrary to reason, including self-contradiction. At the end of his lecture, the Pope said, "It is to the great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures."

Quoted below are the three paragraphs (of sixteen total) which discuss Islam in Pope Benedict's lecture:
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on — perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara — by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologo and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between — as they were called — three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point — itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole — which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that sura 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…


The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Muslim R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry

So that was the offending passages, and for awhile there was a world wide firestorm of anger, and some still exists, hence the need for a dialogue.

A joint statement said the first meeting of "The Catholic-Muslim Forum" will take place on November 4-6 in Rome with 24 religious leaders and scholars from each side.

Pope Benedict will address the group, the statement said. The announcement came after a two-day meeting at the Vatican with five representatives of Muslims who had signed an unprecedented appeal to the Pope to begin a dialogue.
And here is the continuation of today's story:
"We emerged with a permanent structure that will ensure that the Catholic-Muslim engagement and dialogue continues into the future," said Professor Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan.
He told a news conference the forum would be able "to work out issues and an exchange of opinions about important matters."
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.
Muslims around the world protested and the pope sought to make amends when he visited Turkey's Blue Mosque and prayed towards Mecca with its Imam.
"For some Muslims the wounds of the (pope's) German lecture are not completely healed and there are some Muslims who are boycotting the Vatican ... and still feel offended by that quite deeply," Nayed said in answer to a question.
PAPAL SPEECH STILL HURTS
"Just because we are part of this initiative does not mean that we are not hurt by this, however we must not only dwell on the negative but also dwell on the positive. There have been some recent positive moves by the Vatican," he said.
After the fallout from the Regensburg speech, 138 Muslim scholars and leaders wrote to the German-born pontiff and other Christian leaders last year, saying "the very survival of the world itself" may depend on dialogue between the two faiths.
"Muslims and Christians make up about 55 percent of the world and there will be no peace in the world unless there is peace between these two communities," Ibrahim Kalin of the Seta Foundation in Turkey told the news conference.
The signatories of the Muslim appeal for dialogue, called the "Common Word," has grown to nearly 240 since.
"This whole initiative is about healing, it is about healing the wounds of a very pained and in many ways destroyed world. We have cruelty all over the place, we have wars, we have famines we have massacres, we have terrorist acts, we have torture, we have people who are kidnapped," Nayed said.
Although Benedict repeatedly expressed regret for the reaction to his speech in Regensburg, he stopped short of a clear apology sought by Muslims.
The Muslim delegation said the forum would meet every two years and alternate between Rome and a Muslim country but would establish structures for regular contacts and links to deal with one member called "an emergency situation."

We wish these religious leaders the best of luck in dealing with this and other crises, to turn the heat down on hatred, and tensions between these two great religions!!

Vatican Publishing Knights Templar Book

There is an interesting story at Yahoo News, concerning the order of the Knights Templar. About seven centuries ago, the Knight’s Templar was the most powerful military force in England. They protected Christian Pilgrims, from the Muslims, as they traveled to the Holy Land. This period is called the Crusades, and lasted hundreds of years. After years of Templar existence, the Pope ordered the group to disband. He arrested all the Templar members, decimating the Templar forever. However, there are still many Templars that still exist.


It's not the Holy Grail, but for fans of "The Da Vinci Code" and its tantalizing story line about the Knights Templar, it could be the next best thing. Ignored for centuries, documents about the heresy trial of the ancient Christian order discovered in the Vatican's secret archives are being published in a limited edition — with an $8,377 price tag.

I went to several sites as well as my handy encyclopedia Brittanica, and put this story together, to give a fuller view of who the Knight's Templars were, and how they ended up being destroyed by the very Church that they protected.

Following the victory of the First Crusade, a group of knights, led by Hugues de Payens, offered themselves to the Patriarch of Jerusalem as a military force. This proposed military force had the mandate of protecting Christian pilgrims who were en route to the Holy Land In the year 1118 AD King Baldwin II, granted the Templars, quarters on the Temple Mount.

For the first nine years of their existence, the order consisted of nine knights. Speculations of treasure hunting aside, one of the reasons for the limited number of members may have been the reluctance to take Templar vows. Chastity, poverty and obedience were hardly a lifestyle greatly sought after.

In the year 1127 the Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvoux, wrote a rule of order for the Templars, that was based on his own Cistercian order's rule of conduct. Additionally, Bernard did a great deal to promote the Templars. Perhaps Bernard's greatest contribution to the order was a letter that he wrote to Hugues de Payens, entitled De laude novae militae. In Praise of the New Knighthood. This letter swept throughout Christendom with the result being that many men, of noble birth, joined the ranks of the Templar Order. Those who were unable to join often gifted the Templars, with land and other valuables.

While it is true that the Templars were not permitted, by their rule, to own much of anything personally, there was no such restriction on the order as a whole. As such the gifts of land were accepted and put to immediate use by the order. From humble beginnings of poverty in 1118, when the order relied on alms from traveling pilgrims, the Order quickly grew to have the backing of the Holy See and the collective European monarchies. In the process, the order became wealthy. Aside form the gifts showered upon them, they were experts in commerce and free from the taxation and tithes imposed on other orders.

However, in less than two centuries, the Templars, would meet their demise perhaps because of their wealth or fear of their seemingly limitless powers. It is generally agreed that Philip IV, was envious of the Templar's wealth and sought to secure it for himself. Regardless of the motivation, the order was taken down at the hands of Pope Clement V, and the King of France in 1307. On October 13, 1307 Philip had the Templars, arrested on grounds of heresy; since this was the only charge that would allow the seizing of their money and assets. The Templars were tortured and confessions were given. These confessions included:
Trampling and spitting on the cross
Homosexuality and Sodomy
Worshipping of an idol named Baphomet
Philip was successful in ridding the Templars, of their power and wealth and urged all fellow Christian leaders to do the same thing.

On March 19th, 1314 the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. De Molay is said to have cursed King Philip and Pope Clement as he burned, asking both men to join him in death within a year. Whether the story is an apocryphal legend or a matter of historical fact depends largely on one's point of view. However, Pope Clement V died only one month later and Philip IV seven months after that.

There is a website for a current Knight's Templars USA, which shows their Most Eminent Grand Master, Sir Knight William H. Koon II from 2007-2009, and looks to be an arm of the Masonic Lodge, and it shows that do charitable works. The full title of their current organization is the Grand Encampement Of Knights Templar of the United States of America, and if you type that in it will take you to their website.

Have a Great Weekend!!








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