Pope Begins Visit to Lebanon with Message of Peace

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Lebanon on Friday to urge peace at a time of great turmoil in the Middle East, saying the import of weapons to Syria during the country's civil war is a "grave sin."

The three-day visit comes at a time of turmoil in the region -- the civil war in neighboring Syria and in the aftermath of a mob attack that killed several Americans in Libya, including the U.S. ambassador.

The pontiff was welcomed by top leaders including the Lebanese president, prime minister and parliament speaker as well as Christian and Muslim religious leaders. Cannons fired a 21-shots salute for the pope.

The pope told reporters on the plane that imports of weapons to Syria is a "grave sin."

Syria's rebels have appealed for weapons shipments to help them fight the regime.

The visit brings the pope to the nation with the largest percentage of Christians in the Mideast -- nearly 40 percent of Lebanon's 4 million people, with Maronite Catholics the largest sect. Lebanon is the only Arab country with a Christian head of state.

Lebanese authorities are enacting stringent security measures, suspending weapons permits except for politicians' bodyguards and confining the visit to central Lebanon and the northern Christian areas.

Army and police patrols were stationed along the airport road, which was decorated with Lebanese and Vatican flags as well as posters of the pope and "welcome" signs in different languages.

Benedict told reporters on the plane that he was not afraid to visit Lebanon. He also described the Arab Spring that has already removed four long-serving dictators as "positive."

"It is the desire for more democracy, for more freedom, for more cooperation and for a renewed Arab identity," the pope said. "He warned against the risk that the push for more freedom could end intolerance for other religions.

The pope said he never considered canceling the trip for security reasons, adding that "no one ever advised (me) to renounce this trip and personally, I have never considered this."

The pope denounced religious fundamentalism calling it "a falsification of religion"

Benedict, the third pope to visit Lebanon after Paul VI in 1964 and John Paul II in 1997, will be addressing concerns by the region's bishops over the plight of Christians in the Middle East. War, political instability and economic hardships have driven thousands from their traditional communities, dating to early Christianity in the Holy Land, Iraq and elsewhere.

"Let me assure you that I pray especially for the many people who suffer in this region," he said upon arrival.

The Vatican initially stressed Benedict's push for inter-faith dialogue in the wake of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens' death in a mob attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, earlier this week. But on Thursday the Holy See toughened its response, firmly condemning the attack and saying nothing can justify such acts of terrorism or violence.

The papal visit comes amid fears that Syria's conflict might spill over to Lebanon. Clashes in Lebanon between Syrian groups over the past months have claimed the lives of more than two dozen people and left scores wounded.

 The Christian community in Lebanon is divided between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Among Assad's supporters is former Lebanese prime minister and army commander Michel Aoun, a strong ally of the militant Hezbollah group. Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah welcomed the pontiff's visit, describing it as "extraordinary and historic."

Is It Time to Come Home?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Is it not long past time to do a cost-benefit analysis of our involvement in the Middle and Near East?

In this brief century alone, we have fought the two longest wars in our history there, put our full moral authority behind an "Arab Spring" that brought down allies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and provided the air power that saved Benghazi and brought down Moammar Gadhafi.

Yet this week U.S. embassies were under siege in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and U.S. diplomats were massacred in Benghazi.

The cost of our two wars is 6,500 dead, 40,000 wounded and $2 trillion piled onto a national debt that is $16 trillion, larger than the entire U.S. economy. And what in heaven's name do we have to show for it?

The Pure Michigan Statewide Singalong

I had the pleasure of living in Michigan in 1998, on Sanford Lake, and this is a fun reminder of what a very beautiful state it is.  You may be surprised to learn that Michigan has a coastline longer than that of California.

Hillsdale College Launches Major Educational Outreach to 50 Million Americans

Pat Caddell: Romney Campaign Worst in My Lifetime

"... this is Romney's election to lose and by God he's losing,"

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is running a poor campaign against a weak incumbent and is losing, longtime Democratic political operative and pollster Pat Caddell said in an appearance on the Fox News web show “Campaign Insiders.”

Caddell, who was a pollster for President Jimmy Carter and is now a Fox News contributor, laid into the Romney campaign during the appearance.

"I swear to God, everything we have been saying for months, and I know a lot of the audience doesn't want to hear this, this is the worst campaign in my lifetime," he said, adding, "Obama's fighting for his life, his party is fighting for their life, and they're winning. This is, I've said all along, this is Romney's election to lose and by God he's losing," reports Real Clear Politics.

Read the rest of this entry at Newsmax >>

The Second Vatican Council: A Revolution and Its Wreckage

The article below from The Sydney Morning Herald is an interesting overview of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath.  

Those of us just old enough to remember the Church before "the tornado," can recall our local parish church offering hourly Masses on Sunday mornings, with one of the four or five priests assigned to the parish saying Mass for the overflow crowds in the parish school gymnasium, while latecomers stood outside the church's front entrance because there was no room inside.  We remember schools fully staffed by religious sisters and brothers.  We remember the beauty of May devotions around a lovely grotto at our Xaverian Brothers' school, where every evening, during the month of May, we prayed the Litany of Loretto, recited the Holy Rosary and sang Marian hymns.  We remember the long lines for Confession on Saturday afternoon and the awesome solemnity of Benediction on Sunday afternoon.  We remember too, that within a few years of "the tornado," the number of Xaverian Brothers was halved and their numbers have declined ever since.  The school campus, a military school patterned on Annapolis, with 100 year old traditions, was sold to the county government.  In high school where the word "Catholic" was never mentioned but replaced by "Christian," we dedicated ourselves not to learning doctrine, the Church Fathers, theology, Sacred Tradition and Scripture, but to the work of collage making.  The professed religious we loved and admired left the religious life in huge numbers after the end of each school year.  

Every Catholic family has been affected by it, every funeral and wedding is a reminder of loved ones who no longer practice the Faith.  The calamity, whose fiftieth anniversary the Church will celebrate next month, was like an Emperor's triumphal procession; many cheered and celebrated, but others felt for decades like the defeated army being marched in review.

Thanks be to God for our present Pope and his predecessor for beginning the work of restoration, for restoring the beauty, joy and confidence we knew before the cold winds blew.  While much wreckage remains, the Church is beginning to look outward again.  There is desperate need for Her salvific mission in our families, our country and around the world.

The Vatican's very own revolution

 The Vatican II council, which began 50 years ago next month, was the most momentous religious event in 450 years.

From The Sydney Morning Herald

By Barney Zwartz

ON JANUARY 25, 1959, the newly elected Pope John XXIII invited 18 cardinals from the Vatican bureaucracy to attend a service at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He told them he planned to summon a global church council. The horrified cardinals were speechless, which the Pope mischievously chose to interpret as devout assent.

But, in reality, the Vatican bureaucrats, known as the Curia, were aghast. The Pope, 77, had been elected purely as a caretaker, but here he was indulging a novel, unpredictable, dangerous and, above all, they believed, unnecessary notion.

In their view it would create ungovernable expectations and might even lead to changes. And if there were to be changes - always undesirable - then the Curia would manage them without any outside intervention, as they had for centuries.

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them, O Lord, and Let Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them