Pierce Brosnan Talks About His Deep Catholic Faith

From Free Republic

Pierce Brosnan admits that he might not have learned all he needed to know about math from the Christian Brothers in Ireland, but the teachers imparted one thing that has stayed with him to this day – his Catholic faith.

In an interesting new interview with RTE.ie to promote his patronage of the new Irish dramatic art academy The Lir, which will debut this fall at Trinity College in Dublin, Brosnan credits the power of prayer with guiding him through life’s ups and downs.

"(Prayer) helped me with the loss of my wife to cancer and with a child who had fallen on tough times. Now prayer helps me to be a father, to be an actor and to be a man,” Brosnan told the Irish website.

“It always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith.”

Pierce’s first wife, Cassandra Harris, died of ovarian cancer 20 years ago. The son they had together, Sean, was in a serious car crash a few years back in California, but luckily he survived and is thriving again.

Brosnan and his mother left his hometown of Navan, Co. Meath in 1964, when he was 12 years old, for greener pastures in London. His father left the family when he was only two, so times were tough.

"In a way (my life) all leads back to a little boy in Navan, my home town on the banks of the Boyne.

Sometimes, it has been painted in melodramatic tones but it was a fantastic way to be brought up. The Catholicism and the Christian brothers, those are deep-rooted images and the foundation for a person of some acting skill,” he says.

"God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer … I might not have got my sums right from the Christian Brothers or might not have got the greatest learning of literature from them but I certainly got a strapping amount of faith."

Brosnan also feels that faith will help the Irish people escape the gloom and doom of recession.

"But there is one thing that the people of Ireland know how to do and that is to survive. You have to keep your faith and stay optimistic,” he feels.Brosnan spent a good chunk of time in New York in January filming his co-starring part in I Don’t Know How She Does It with Sarah Jessica Parker. It’s due for a September 16 release, courtesy of the Weinstein Company.

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Libyan Bishop Claims ‘Dozens’ of Civilians Killed in Air Strikes

 It must be a great solace to the families of the civilian dead that their loved ones died in Obama's 'humanitarian kinetic military action" and not some indiscriminate and pointless war.

From Catholic Herald (UK)

By John Thavis

Rebel fighters cover the body of a Libyan killed in a coalition air strike (CNS photo/Youssef Boudlal, Reuters)

At least 40 Libyan civilians have been killed as a consequence of airstrikes carried out by the United States and other western powers, the leading Church official in Libya said.

Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, the apostolic vicar of Tripoli, told the Vatican’s missionary news agency Fides: “The so-called humanitarian raids have caused dozens of victims among civilians in some areas of Tripoli.

“I gathered testimony from trustworthy people. In particular, in the neighbourhood of Buslim, the bombardments caused the collapse of a civilian residence building, resulting in the deaths of 40 people,” Bishop Martinelli said.

The bishop said that while the bombing raids aim at precise targets, they have an impact on nearby buildings. Two hospitals have been damaged, he said, including one in Mizda, a city about 90 miles from Tripoli. News reports said 13 people were injured when a hospital at Mizda was damaged in an air raid on a nearby arms depot.

Bishop Martinelli, who has called for mediation by the African Union in the conflict, has been critical of the military intervention by the United States, France and Britain in support of rebels seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

“For all one knows, the military action may be causing victims among the very civilians that they say are being protected by these military operations,” the bishop.

He said the situation in Tripoli was getting worse every day, with severe petrol shortages.

“On a military level, there seems to be an impasse, because the rebels do not seem to have enough strength to advance. For this reason I am saying that a diplomatic solution is the best way to end the bloodshed between Libyans, offering Gaddafi a dignified way out,” he said.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI appealed for a suspension of fighting in Libya and the immediate start of a serious dialogue aimed at restoring peace to the North African country. He said he especially feared the consequences of the fighting on the civilian population.

A 'Remarkable' Healing in Lourdes: Man with Paralyzed Leg Walks 1000 Miles

From the Catholic Herald (UK)

By Ed West

Handicapped pilgrims pictured in front of the Basilica of the Rosary in Lourdes (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

A man with a paralysed left leg has completed a 1,000-mile hike to Santiago de Compostela after being cured at Lourdes, it has been reported.

Television repair man Serge François, 40, said he felt a warm glow spread down his herniated leg during a visit to Lourdes in 2002.

He said he had been praying at the grotto where Bernadette Soubirous first had visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858, and all of his suffering suddenly disappeared.

After regaining the use of his leg, Mr François walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (the Way of St James), the pilgrimage route spanning France and Spain.

Mr François, from La Salle-et-Chapelle-Aubry in Maine, western France, reported what happened to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes and 20 doctors have now concluded that it was indeed “remarkable”.

Bishop Emmanuel Delmas of Angers said: “In the name of the Church, I publicly recognise the ‘remarkable’ character of the healing from which Serge François benefited at Lourdes on April 12, 2002. This healing can be considered a personal gift from God to man, as an event of grace, as a sign of Christ the Saviour.”

Bishop Delmas said the bureau of medical experts at Lourdes had concluded that the recovery was “sudden, complete, unrelated to any particular therapy and durable”.

The healing could be considered “as a personal gift of God for this man, as an event of grace, as a sign of Christ the Saviour”, he said, avoiding the word “miracle”.

More than 7,000 cases of unexplained healings have been recorded in Lourdes, but only 67 have been recognised as miraculous by the Church. The healing of Mr François may be the 68th.

 

 

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Humpty in Toytown and the Arab Boomerang

From The Spectator

By Melanie Phillips

One can only gape in stunned amazement at the extent of the idiocy being displayed by the leaders of America, Britain and Europe over the ‘Arab Spring’ – which should surely be renamed ‘the Arab Boomerang’.

First of all, their declared policy is utterly incoherent. They claim that their aim in Libya is not regime change. Yet bombing Gaddafy’s compound hardly signals their desire that he should stay alive, let alone in power. Yesterday Obama said Gaddafy should leave power. Today he said overthrowing Gaddafy by force would be a mistake. In similar vein, Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague says the UK wants Gaddafy to leave power -- but that’s not regime change, because apparently it’s up to him to decide to do so. Presumably, for both Hague and Obama, if Gaddafy did decide to give up power this would have nothing whatever to do with the fact that they are bombing Libyan forces fighting for him to retain power. And they would also have us believe that the fact that the western air strikes are enabling the Libyan rebels to advance does not mean that the west intends its air strikes to enable the rebels to advance.

One is reminded of Humpty Dumpty, who told Alice in Through the Looking Glass: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less’. Especially where the restrictive wording of a UN resolution is involved.

Priest Accused of ‘Anti-Gay Indoctrination’ for Teaching Catholic View of Homosexuality in Class

From LifeSiteNews
By Rebecca Millette

 A Catholic priest has come under fire from homosexual activists for “anti-gay indoctrination” after he taught his students what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality in his high school course on gay “marriage.”

Equality Matters, a media and communications group for homosexual rights, on their website accused the chaplain of Indianapolis’ Cardinal Ritter High School of “spouting a stream of homophobic and offensive falsehoods about same-sex marriage and gay people in general to a classroom full of students.”

Fr. John Hollowell, chaplain and teacher at the private Catholic high school, had posted the videos of the lectures on YouTube and his personal blog last week.

In the lectures he explains Catholic teaching on homosexuality. However, his presentation was denounced as “anti-gay lecturing” by the media watchdog group, who said that the priest “calls homosexual acts ‘an abomination’, advocates for ex-gay therapy, and rails against same-sex adoption and marriage by comparing homosexuality to alcoholism and prostitution.”

The priest is currently in Rome and says he won’t be able to respond to the accusations until his return.

In the videos, however, Fr. Hollowell is seen challenging his students to think about and discuss the “difficult” issues of homosexuality and homosexual “marriage.”

He points out that the Bible, in Leviticus 20:13 and other places in the New Testament, calls “homosexual acts” an “abomination.” “You have two options,” he says, “God is cool with homosexuality, homosexual acts, I should say … or what the Bible and the Church say about it is correct … There’s no middle ground on that issue.”

The priest refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official book of the teachings of the Church, which states that homosexuals “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” and condemns any form of “unjust discrimination” against them.

However, the Catechism also states that homosexual inclinations are “objectively disordered” and homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity.” “Under no circumstances can they be approved,” it says, explaining that people with the homosexual inclination are called to chastity.

Fr. Hollowell points out that human beings are able to choose either to act or not to act on given inclinations. Those who experience homosexual attraction, he said, are called upon to refrain from acting on their inclination. Just because someone has an “inclination to something” (for example, drinking alcohol, homosexual acts, etc.) does not make them “less culpable for acting on it,” he said.

Equality Matters claims that 70 percent of Catholics and the majority of Americans now believe that messages such as Fr. Hollowell’s lead to higher rates of homosexual teen suicide.

Hollowell, however, argues that the position he advocates is one of compassion. “If you’re struggling with homosexual attraction, the Church’s first message is compassion,” he told his students, “helping them overcome it is not the first inclination.”

Programs such as Courage are in place to help people “who want it,” he said, “we’re not out there telling people they need to change.”

Fr. Hollowell also described the “key Catholic social teaching” on homosexuality and its relation to the “common good.” By common good is meant “what every human person does affects me and affects everyone else,” said Fr. Hollowell, explaining why students should be concerned about homosexual “marriage” legislation in other states. “The Church sees society as one body, therefore all are affected,” whether we realize it or not.