Forty-Plus Years of Legal Mass Murder

Today we Americans observe with great sorrow the forty-first anniversary of the unconstitutional, unjust, and tragic Roe v. Wade decision.

On January 22, 1973, seven men on the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily decided that a woman has a right to kill her innocent unborn child for any reason whatsoever. In producing this ruling, the Court misinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which states, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his freedom or land without first being properly tried and convicted of a crime. But the irresponsible activist Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger chose to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons—something the Founders would never have approved of in their wildest dreams. Roe v. Wade represented nothing less than an attack on the integrity and meaning of the Constitution of the United States by the very institution that is supposed to protect it, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not only was Roe v. Wade an unconstitutional decision, it was also an unjust decision. In the Declaration of Independence, we the people of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights with which God the Creator has endowed all human beings. This right to life is an “unalienable” right, meaning that it cannot be taken away. Human life is sacred because it is a gift from God the Creator. To deprive an innocent human being of life is a violation of that person’s unalienable right to life. It is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our nation’s devout Christian Founders took these principles of the natural law for granted. They could scarcely have imagined that, two hundred years later, the judicial branch of government would somehow justify allowing innocent human beings to be killed in their mothers’ wombs right here in the United States of America. They did warn, however, that the United States would not long endure without what George Washington referred to as the “indispensable supports” of religion and morality. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the right to life—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life, then human life will not be respected.

Finally, Roe v. Wade was an immensely tragic decision. During the past forty-plus years, some 56.5 million innocent unborn human beings—an average of 1.38 million a year—have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs through legalized abortion. That is an alarming and staggering figure. That’s more than nine times the number of innocent Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It’s also more than the fifty million people killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in modern human history. It is difficult to comprehend the full magnitude of this loss of life or to calculate the full impact of this massacre of the unborn on our nation over the past forty years. Excluding miscarriages, accidents, disease, and other causes of death outside the womb, our country is currently missing some 56 million inhabitants; in addition, many of those aborted in the 1970s and 80s would now be married and raising children of their own, so our country is really missing somewhere around 70 million people, and our nation’s population should be around 388 million instead of the 318 million it is now. Think of how much different—and better—things would be in our country if we had all these missing people contributing to our economy and using their God-given talents to serve our nation in a variety of professions and fields. We will never know how different the United States would be in 2014 if nearly all the innocent unborn had been born and were alive today. The absence of 70 million citizens is an incalculable loss to our nation.

Blessed John Paul II once said, “The condition for the survival of America is to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.” The appalling legal mass murder of the unborn in our nation must be brought to an end. Roe v. Wade must be overturned so that the unalienable, God-given right to life of every innocent unborn human being in the United States is once again protected by our Constitution and guaranteed by our laws. We must not rest until we achieve that goal.

Quote of the Day

"All of us through Baptism have been elected by the Lord. We are all elected. He has chosen us one by one. He has given us a name and looks at us. There is a dialogue, because that is how the Lord loves. Even David later becomes king and made a mistake. He maybe made many, but the Bible tells us of two big mistakes, two mistakes that really fall heavy. What did David do? He humiliated himself. He returned to his smallness and said: ‘I am a sinner’. And he asked for forgiveness and did penance. David guarded his smallness, with repentance, with prayer, with weeping...

“Christian faithfulness, our faithfulness, is to simply guard our smallness, so that we can dialogue with the Lord... For this reason humility, meekness, and gentleness are so important in the life of the Christian, because it is a container of smallness which the Lord likes to see. And there will always be a dialogue between our smallness and the greatness of the Lord.”

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

“It is in the Gospel that Christians find inspiration for their daily lives and their involvement in worldly affairs—-be it in the houses of Parliament or the stock exchange. Christians should not shun the world; they should engage with it. But their involvement in politics and economics should transcend every form of ideology.”

--Benedict XVI, “A Time for Christians to Engage with the World,” Financial Times, Dec. 20, 2012

Quote of the Day

"Peace is also threatened by every denial of human dignity, firstly the lack of access to adequate nutrition. We cannot be indifferent to those suffering from hunger, especially children, when we think of how much food is wasted every day in many parts of the world immersed in what I have often termed "the throwaway culture". Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as "unnecessary". For example, it is frightful even to think there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day; children being used as soldiers, abused and killed in armed conflicts; and children being bought and sold in that terrible form of modern slavery which is human trafficking, which is a crime against humanity."

--Pope Francis

Reflection for the Baptism of the Lord

"Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, 'Take me and throw me into the sea' (Jon. 1:12). The whole significance of Jesus' Baptism, the fact that he bears 'all righteousness,' first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out 'This is my beloved Son' over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to refer to his death (cf. Mk. 10:38; Lk. 12:50)."

--Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part One: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 18

Culture of Corruption

Four years ago, I celebrated his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. This morning, I signed a petition calling for his removal from office.

Four years ago, U.S. Representative John Boehner, a good Catholic family man from Ohio, was elected to replace Representative Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. As a leader of the Tea Party Republican movement, he was elected on a platform that included protection of the innocent unborn, smaller government, lower taxes, spending cuts, reduction of the national debt, and the repeal of ObamaCare. For several years, Speaker Boehner fulfilled his campaign promises, leading the U.S. House opposition to President Barack Obama's immoral and irresponsible policies. Unfortunately, during the past few months, Boehner's leadership has proved disappointing. In October of 2013, he led the House in approving federal funding for ObamaCare, shamefully betraying his own professed values of respect for unborn life, marriage, religious liberty, moral conscience rights, the moral law, and the right of the American people to make their own healthcare decisions.

Speaker Boehner typifies the culture of corruption that has been affecting our federal government for a number of years now. New candidates for the House, Senate and presidency run promising to bring real change to Washington, but once they get to Washington and into their work, they simply assimilate into the corrupt establishment and end up representing the big abortion, agricultural, biotechnology, financial, insurance, junk food, pharmaceutical, and other interests that generally control how Washington operates instead of representing the true interests and common good of all Americans. New candidates with impeccable moral and religious credentials who are determined to deliver exactly what they promise are forced to contend with mass media smear campaigns and voter fraud, and those who do make it into the U.S. House or Senate find themselves a tiny minority, unable to accomplish most of their agenda for our nation. Such candidates cannot even win their party's nomination for the U.S. presidency these days because both the party establishment are so corrupt.

All of this is very frustrating for us, the American people. However, as good Catholics and good citizens, we cannot simply give up and surrender our nation to its enemies in high places. There are still things we can and should do to change our federal government. The first is to pray daily for our elected representatives and for our country. The second is to take action. Sign this petition calling for Representative Boehner's removal from office. Register to vote, if you aren't already registered, and don't miss the upcoming elections this November. Vote only for candidates who affirm traditional values and who are determined to challenge and defeat the Obama administration's unjust and unconstitutional laws, including ObamaCare. Real change is possible, but we must demand it and work hard to achieve it. And above all, we must trust in God, who guides the affairs of nations.

Quote of the Day

"The new star that appeared to the Magi was the sign of the birth of Christ. If they had not seen the star, those men would not have set out. Light precedes us, truth precedes us, beauty precedes us. God precedes us. The prophet Isaiah said that God is like the flower of the almond tree. Why? Because the almond tree is the first to flower in that land. And God always precedes, He always seeks us first. He takes the first step. God precedes us always. His grace precedes us and this grace appeared in Jesus. He is the epiphany. He, Jesus Christ, is the manifestation of the love of God. He is with us."

--Pope Francis

Thought & Prayer for the Day

"In the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God there is also an aspect connected to human freedom, to the freedom of each one of us. In fact, the Word of God pitched his tent among us, sinners and needful of mercy. And we must all make haste to receive the grace that he offers us. But, St. John’s Gospel continues, “his own did not welcome him” (1:11). We too often reject him, we prefer to remain closed up in our errors and the anxiety of our sins. But Jesus does not desist and does not cease to offer himself and his grace that save us! Jesus is patient, Jesus knows how to wait, he always waits for us. This is a message of hope, a message of salvation, ancient and ever new. And we are called to bear witness with joy to this message of the Gospel of life, the Gospel of light, of hope and love, because this is Jesus’ message: life, light, hope, love.

"May Mary, the Mother of God and our tender Mother, sustain us always so that we remain faithful to the Christian vocation and make the justice and peace that we desire at beginning of this new year a reality."

--Pope Francis

Reflection for the Epiphany of the Lord

"The new King, to whom they [the Magi] now paid homage, was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to be. This was where their inner journey began. It started at the very moment when they knelt down before this child and recognized him as the promised King. But they still had to assimilate these joyful gestures internally.

"They had to change their ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing, they also had to change themselves. Now they were able to see that God's power is not like that of the powerful of this world. God's ways are not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be.

"God does not enter into competition with earthly powers in this world. He does not marshal his divisions alongside other divisions. God did not send 12 legions of angels to assist Jesus in the Garden of Olives (cf. Mt 26: 53). He contrasts the noisy and ostentatious power of this world with the defenseless power of love, which succumbs to death on the Cross and dies ever anew throughout history; yet it is this same love which constitutes the new divine intervention that opposes injustice and ushers in the Kingdom of God.

"God is different - this is what they now come to realize. And it means that they themselves must now become different, they must learn God's ways.

"They had come to place themselves at the service of this King, to model their own kingship on his. That was the meaning of their act of homage, their adoration. Included in this were their gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh - gifts offered to a King held to be divine. Adoration has a content and it involves giving. Through this act of adoration, these men from the East wished to recognize the child as their King and to place their own power and potential at his disposal, and in this they were certainly on the right path.

"By serving and following him, they wanted, together with him, to serve the cause of good and the cause of justice in the world. In this they were right.

"Now, though, they have to learn that this cannot be achieved simply through issuing commands from a throne on high. Now they have to learn to give themselves - no lesser gift would be sufficient for this King. Now they have to learn that their lives must be conformed to this divine way of exercising power, to God's own way of being.

"They must become men of truth, of justice, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy. They will no longer ask: how can this serve me? Instead, they will have to ask: How can I serve God's presence in the world? They must learn to lose their life and in this way to find it. Having left Jerusalem behind, they must not deviate from the path marked out by the true King, as they follow Jesus."

--Benedict XVI, Address to Young People at Marienfeld, Cologne, Germany, August 20, 2005

Quote of the Day

“Christmas is a state of mind. It is found throughout the year whenever faith overcomes doubt, hope conquers despair, and love triumphs over hate...Let us resolve to honor this spirit of Christmas and strive to keep it throughout the year.”

--U. S. President Ronald Reagan, 1981

Happy New Year...and Happy Feast Day!

A Happy New Year to everyone, and a Happy Feast Day of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God (Theotokos).

For us Catholics, today is also the World Day of Peace, when we are called to reflect on how God's peace can reign more fully in our hearts, in our families, in our country and in the world. The relatively young tradition of this annual observance and of a papal message for the occasion dates back to 1967, when the World Day of Peace was instituted by Pope Paul VI. Pope Francis has written a beautiful Message for this World Day of Peace, the full text of which is well worth reading. The theme of Francis' Message for 2014 is "Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace." Here are a few excerpts:

"In this, my first Message for the World Day of Peace, I wish to offer to everyone, individuals and peoples, my best wishes for a life filled with joy and hope. In the heart of every man and woman is the desire for a full life, including that irrepressible longing for fraternity which draws us to fellowship with others and enables us to see them not as enemies or rivals, but as brothers and sisters to be accepted and embraced....

"Globalization, as Benedict XVI pointed out, makes us neighbours, but does not make us brothers. [Cf. Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009), 19: AAS 101 (2009), 654-655.] The many situations of inequality, poverty and injustice, are signs not only of a profound lack of fraternity, but also of the absence of a culture of solidarity. New ideologies, characterized by rampant individualism, egocentrism and materialistic consumerism, weaken social bonds, fuelling that “throw away” mentality which leads to contempt for, and the abandonment of, the weakest and those considered “useless”. In this way human coexistence increasingly tends to resemble a mere do ut des which is both pragmatic and selfish....

"The story of Cain and Abel teaches that we have an inherent calling to fraternity, but also the tragic capacity to betray that calling. This is witnessed by our daily acts of selfishness, which are at the root of so many wars and so much injustice: many men and women die at the hands of their brothers and sisters who are incapable of seeing themselves as such, that is, as beings made for reciprocity, for communion and self-giving....

"The basis of fraternity is found in God’s fatherhood. We are not speaking of a generic fatherhood, indistinct and historically ineffectual, but rather of the specific and extraordinarily concrete personal love of God for each man and woman (cf. Mt 6:25-30). It is a fatherhood, then, which effectively generates fraternity, because the love of God, once welcomed, becomes the most formidable means of transforming our lives and relationships with others, opening us to solidarity and to genuine sharing...

"Fraternity generates social peace because it creates a balance between freedom and justice, between personal responsibility and solidarity, between the good of individuals and the common good. And so a political community must act in a transparent and responsible way to favour all this. Citizens must feel themselves represented by the public authorities in respect for their freedom. Yet frequently a wedge is driven between citizens and institutions by partisan interests which disfigure that relationship, fostering the creation of an enduring climate of conflict.

"An authentic spirit of fraternity overcomes the individual selfishness which conflicts with people’s ability to live in freedom and in harmony among themselves....

"May Mary, the Mother of Jesus, help us to understand and live every day the fraternity that springs up from the heart of her Son, so as to bring peace to each person on this our beloved earth."

And may Pope Francis' noble words inspire and motivate all of us Catholics, Christians, and all people of good will to renew our commitment to work together more earnestly in this new year for true and lasting peace in the world.

God Is With Us

by Justin Soutar

December 31, 2013

The end of 2013 is now upon us. Two thousand nine years have elapsed since our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born of the Virgin Mary in a stable cave in Bethlehem, in the land of Israel. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (John 3:16). The entrance of the eternal and all-powerful Son of God into our sinful world in the form of a tiny little baby was such a profoundly transformative historical event that it split in two the way we reckon time: All the years leading up to Christ’s birth are denominated B. C. (Before Christ), while the years following His birth are designated A. D. (Anno Domini, the Year of our Lord). From the time of the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the people of Israel waited four thousand years for the coming of the Messiah who would save them from their sins and reconcile them with God. All the righteous people who lived and died in those millennia preceding Christ couldn’t go to Heaven but had to wait in Sheol, “the abode of the dead,” until Christ by His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension liberated the captives and opened the gates of Heaven. Christ’s coming to earth some two thousand years ago changed the world forever, bringing light to those in darkness and hope to those in despair. Through His Church, Christ offers all men and women forgiveness of their sins and restoration of the greatest gift any human being could ever possess: the gift of sanctifying grace, the gift Adam and Eve lost by sin, which gives us a share in God’s own Trinitarian life, makes us His sons and daughters, and entitles us to share in the unimaginable happiness of Heaven for all eternity after our death. Wow! That is something to rejoice about. That is the Good News of the Gospel that we as Christians are called to share with everyone on this earth. God indeed loves us more than we can ever imagine in our little finite human minds. We believe in His love, and we hope in His love. Faith, hope and love go together. But “the greatest of these is love.”

Now, the fact that we acknowledge and believe all this to be true does not allow us to ignore or gloss over the realities of sin, suffering, evil, and death that continue to afflict our world. Christ’s descent to earth two thousand years ago did not magically dispel these tragic realities that have marked and continue to mark human history. Rather, his Incarnation was just the beginning of God’s definitive triumph over sin and death that will be completed at the end of the world, when Christ will return in glory to judge all mankind and when God will create new heavens and a new earth. The continuing and even worsening presence of sin and evil, suffering and death in our world is a mysterious part of God’s master plan for human history. Not that God originally willed or made any of these negative realities, but in the unfathomable designs of his Providence, God is allowing them for His own reasons that we human beings, constrained by our finite minds and short lifetimes, cannot fully understand or appreciate. Our faith tells us that God holds all of His creation in His hands at every moment and that He governs it through His Providence, so we have to trust that He knows what He is about. Our faith also tells us that God brings good out of evil, and that this is the reason why He allows evil in the first place. The worst evil He ever permitted—the murder of His own Son on a cross—led to the greatest good possible, our salvation from sin and reconciliation with God. If God allowed his own perfectly holy and innocent Son to suffer such a cruel fate, can we sinners who follow Him reasonably expect to have a carefree and easy life? No. On the contrary, Jesus said that if anyone wishes to come after Him, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him. Being a Christian is not easy; it’s not a joyride. Not as long as we live on this earth. But as Saint Paul reminds us, the sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come. Even a life full of pain and suffering for more than 100 years would be a small price to pay for the eternal happiness of Heaven. Christ the Son of God did not come to earth to free us from suffering; rather, he came to share in our humanity, in our human experiences and sufferings and miseries, to show us how to suffer well, and to illuminate our sufferings with the comfort of His loving presence in our lives. Through his heroic self-sacrifice for our sins out of love for us, Christ has given us the opportunity to freely and spiritually unite our own sufferings with his, thus giving them a redemptive value and Christian meaning for our own greater good and that of our fellow brothers and sisters. In some mysterious way, it is precisely when God seems to be at His weakest by permitting terrible evils that His almighty power is most gloriously manifest. So while sin and all its accompanying dark realities remain present in our world, God is with us. He has entered into our history and profoundly and irrevocably altered its course. Troubled and threatened as it is, our world today is a brighter and happier place than it would otherwise have been because the quiet and peaceful light of the Son of God made Man has entered it and continued to illuminate it ever since that first Christmas more than twenty centuries ago.

Through the joys and surprises, successes and failures, sorrows and vicissitudes of this past year, God’s mysterious wisdom and Providence were remarkably evident. The historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the unforeseen election of Pope Francis were two of the most surprising and joyful events of the year, respectively. I was sad to see Pope Benedict go and unsure at first about Pope Francis, but now I see God’s hand in these events. God inspired Pope Benedict, who served His Church humbly and well, to resign a very demanding position because of his ailing health, in order to allow for the election of a new and different kind of Pope from Latin America who would reacquaint a Church in need of reform and a world in need of God with the joy and simplicity of the Gospel message. If Benedict had not resigned, Pope Francis could not have brought together three million young people for World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero. Nor could he have inspired Pope Francis to summon the whole Church and the world to pray and fast for peace, thus averting what could have been a disastrous U.S. war with Syria. Nor could God have used him to wake up the Church and the world to that terrible evil that has come to plague our modern globalized society, namely, the globalization of indifference, our callousness and lack of concern for our suffering brothers and sisters all around the world, symbolized by the repeated tragedy of impoverished African migrants shipwrecked and drowned at Lampedusa. Although it did not anticipate his election, the world has come to love Pope Francis. God is obviously using him in a big way, as we never could have expected back in February when Pope Benedict made his stunning announcement. And, to top it all off, Benedict XVI continues to serve the Church, including his successor Pope Francis, through his prayers, writings, and friendship. The ways of God are marvelous indeed!

Of course, we cannot overlook the fact that many bad things happened this year also. Several more states and additional foreign countries legalized homosexual “marriage,” which is against nature and nature’s God. Abortion, hunger, violence, and war claimed millions of innocent lives. Violence destroyed lives and valuable property in Egypt, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere, while millions of people in the Middle East and Africa are living in refugee camps, largely forgotten by most of us. The tiny Christian community in the Holy Land dwindled further as Christians continued their steady exodus, while continued injustice and terrorist violence driven by religious fundamentalism (both Jewish and Muslim) kept the Israeli-Palestinian conflict boiling hotter than ever. Droughts, floods, storms, mudslides and famines affected many parts of the globe. Poverty, disease, and corruption continued to affect most nations of Africa, while the global gap between rich and poor is wider than ever before.

And here in the United States, despite strong leadership from our Catholic bishops and the prayers and action of millions of Americans, our predominantly immoral and corrupt federal government has stubbornly refused to significantly amend or withdraw its immoral, unjust and unconstitutional anti-life mandate, which is set to begin being enforced tomorrow. I have a feeling that, once our government attempts to enforce this illegitimate law, our country may never be the same. But regardless of the terrible consequences such enforcement will bring, we must not give up the fight for the natural law, for our religious liberties, or for our moral conscience rights. We must continue fighting until this unconscionable law is repealed and our God-given human rights are once again officially recognized and respected in law.

As followers of Christ, we are a people of hope. However, Christian hope is not simply blind optimism in the face of difficult situations. Nor is Christian hope dependent upon changing circumstances and temporal realities. Rather, our hope is in God. God is with us. He, the same God who became man out of love for us, who accompanies us in our earthly lives, is the all-powerful and wise God who directs the course of history toward its ultimate end, which is His glory. God’s Kingdom will ultimately be triumphant over the powers of darkness, and we who serve Him faithfully on earth will reign with Him forever in Heaven.

In conclusion, the following lines from an old song ring even truer today than when they were first penned:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play, And mild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then in despair I bowed my head, “There is no peace on earth,” I said; For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. The wrong will fail, The right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Wishing you a blessed New Year.



Copyright © 2013 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Quote of the Day

"A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded."

--G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925 (Ignatius Press, 2008, p. 169)

Quote of the Day

"The message of Christ and the Church puts credible knowledge about God within our reach. God wanted to enter into this world. God didn't want us to have only a distant inkling of him through physics and mathematics. He wanted to show himself to us. And so he was able to do what the Gospels recount that he did, just as he was also able to create a new dimension of existence in the Resurrection. He was able to go beyond what Teilhard de Chardin called the biosphere and the noosphere and to institute precisely a new sphere, in which man and the world attain union with God."

--Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), p. 168

Quote of the Day

“Even today Jesus continues to dispel the darkness of error and sin, to bring humanity the joy of the blazing light of God, of which the Christmas tree is a sign and reminder. Let us be wrapped by the light of His truth, because ‘the joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and the lives of all who encounter Jesus’”.

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

"The family is the wellspring of all fraternity, and as such it is the foundation and the first pathway to peace, since, by its vocation, it is meant to spread its love to the world around it."

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

“We are not so used to thinking of Jesus smiling, joyful. Jesus was full of joy - full of joy. In that intimacy with his Father: ‘He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and praised the Father.’ It is the inner mystery of Jesus, that relationship with the Father in the Spirit. It is His inner joy, his interior joy that he gives to us...

“We cannot think of a Church without joy and the joy of the Church is this: announcing the name of Jesus. To say: ‘He is the Lord. My spouse is the Lord. It is God. He saves us, He walks with us.’ And that is the joy of the Church, who in this joy of a wife becomes a mother...

"May the Lord give us all this joy, this joy of Jesus, praising the Father in the Spirit. This joy of our mother Church in evangelizing, in announcing Her Spouse.”

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

"Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world."

--Benedict XVI

Quote of the Day

“If we live united to Jesus, faithful to Him, we will be able to confront with hope and serenity even the passage of death. If my life has been a path with the Lord, of trust in his immense mercy, I will be prepared to accept the last moments of my earthly existence as the definitive trustful abandonment in his receiving hands, in awaiting to contemplate Him face to face.”

--Pope Francis

Christmas with Mother Teresa: A True Story Never Before Told

A newly written book, Christmas with Mother Teresa tells an amazing true story that has never before been told. It is the story of how Catholic Relief Services and the Missionaries of Charity joined forces to being emergency humanitarian aid to millions of Bengali refugees from East Pakistan who flooded eastern India in 1971. It’s a dramatic, action-packed tale of political repression, natural disaster, guerilla warfare, ethnic cleansing, massive population shifts, Cold War politics, modern war, and the birth of a new nation. More than that, however, it’s a powerful drama of great human tragedy and suffering illuminated and uplifted by the gentle touch of Christ’s redeeming love.

Well-researched, compelling, and inspiring, Christmas with Mother Teresa gives readers the historical and cultural background of the events it describes. It explains that the innocent Bengali people of East Pakistan were massacred and forced onto India’s doorstep in such great numbers in 1971 because their determination to be free conflicted with West Pakistani commercial interests.

As related in the book, the Hindu natives of East Bengal had lived as second-class citizens in the apartheid-style nation of East Pakistan for decades, ruled by Islamic West Pakistani foreigners with whom they had little in common. Late in 1970, facing continued repression and racism, government mismanagement of a terrible natural disaster, and persistent violations of their rights, the Bengalis started a guerrilla uprising against the corrupt Pakistani regime.

Pakistan was governed by a brutal military dictator named General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, who was determined to crush the rebellion and restore full Pakistani control of East Bengal no matter what the cost. When mass arrests, torture, and random cold-blooded shootings of East Pakistani civilians failed to destroy the liberation movement, General Khan turned to mass murder. The Pakistani Army began ruthlessly massacring tens of thousands of innocent Bengali men, women and children and burning dozens of villages across its eastern colony.

This wholesale reign of terror precipitated a mass exodus of Bengalis from East Pakistan. Beginning in March of 1971 and continuing until December of that year, nearly ten million of them—mostly civilians, but with a few guerrillas mixed in—ran for their lives, pouring en masse across the Indian border, seeking refuge from their enemies in the nearest friendly country. A large number of them landed in the already densely populated and impoverished Indian state of West Bengal, whose capital was Calcutta. These millions of refugees arrived in India absolutely destitute, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, presenting their host nation with a humanitarian crisis of almost unimaginable proportions—and presenting Catholic Relief Services with one of the greatest relief challenges in the organization’s remarkable history.

Christmas with Mother Teresa tells how Catholic Relief Services (CRS)—the overseas charitable agency of the U.S. Catholic Church—brilliantly rose to the occasion, planning and executing a tremendous feat of emergency relief. From March to December of 1971, as the horrific Bengali genocide decimated East Pakistan, Cold War leaders played ruthless power games, and the threat of war hung over the Indian subcontinent, CRS staff and thousands of volunteers led by the Missionaries of Charity worked together around the clock building some two hundred refugee camps along the Indian border and supplying all the material needs of two million Bengali refugees: sanitation, medical services, food, water, clothing, soap, and shelter. In collaboration with CRS, the Missionaries of Charity also provided for the refugees’ critical spiritual and emotional needs of love, friendship, recreation, comfort, support, and encouragement.

Based on eyewitness testimony, Christmas with Mother Teresa tells how this extraordinary work of charity was organized and carried out under the principal direction of two individuals: the CRS Program Director for India and Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The climax of this profoundly moving and unforgettable true story is a totally unexpected and unique Christmas experience shared with the “saint of Calcutta”, the refugees, and a special visitor from the United States whose cause for sainthood is also underway.

The book will also relate in detail:

• How Catholic Relief Services helped Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity perform their daily works of mercy in Calcutta • How CRS and the Missionaries of Charity brought aid to desperate Bengalis after a crippling natural disaster struck East Pakistan in 1970 • How India and the world responded to the massive refugee crisis • The role played by Cold War superpowers in the conflict between India and Pakistan • How Mother Teresa’s example and leadership contributed to the success of the CRS refugee relief program • Why Mother Teresa became known as “a great symbol of peace” • How the Bengali genocide and refugee crisis were ultimately stopped • What happened to the refugees after the crisis • Everyday examples of Mother Teresa’s heroic virtues such as humility, charity, patience, abandonment to the Divine Will, and trust in Divine Providence as witnessed by the CRS Program Director • What the Program Director learned from Mother Teresa’s example of holiness

Why has this gem of a story remained buried for so many years? One reason is that the events took place in a relatively obscure developing country during polarized and chaotic times for the world in general. The Cold War was raging, and many nations fell into one of two camps, either pro-Communist (led by the Soviet Union) or anti-Communist (led by the United States). India, however, refused to take part in this conflict, so it was generally marginalized by the two Cold War superpowers who dominated the world stage. Also, despite their magnitude, the Bengali genocide and refugee crisis were overshadowed in the international media and in people’s minds by other, “bigger” events and issues such as the Vietnam War, radical social and cultural changes, environmental concerns, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, the Apollo moon landings, and the sweeping liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Another reason why this novel-like tale has remained untold has to do with a disturbing and lesser-known aspect of the Cold War politics of the time. For political reasons, as the book candidly points out, in the early 1970s the U.S. government was allied with and even secretly arming the Pakistani military dictatorship responsible for the massacre of up to three million innocent Bengalis and the forced displacement of ten million others into India. The Nixon administration downplayed the ethnic cleansing and refugee crisis, thus keeping its shameful and illegal involvement in these humanitarian tragedies largely hidden from American public view. The horrible details of the Bengali genocide and the U.S. role in it were not fully revealed to the Western world until after the Cold War had ended, beginning in the late 1990s with the research of R. J. Rummel and other historians and continuing since 2002 with the declassification of relevant U.S. State Department documents.

A third reason why this account is generally unknown is that no one has written and published an in-depth account of it, firsthand or otherwise. Nearly all of the eyewitnesses to these events have passed away, taking their memories to their graves. Even Eileen Egan (1911-2001), the great contemporary journalist, biographer and co-worker of Mother Teresa and a prominent figure in Catholic Relief Services, only gives a thumbnail sketch of the enormous refugee crisis and relief effort or mentions them in passing in her published writings because she was not directly involved in them firsthand (cf. Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa—The Spirit and the Work [New York: Doubleday, 1985], pp. 196-99, 204, 212; also cf. Catholic Relief Services: The Beginning Years [New York: Catholic Relief Services, 1988], pp. 292-93).

Indeed, this amazing story might have been lost for all time—except for the fact that at least one eyewitness to it is still alive today and willing to share it with others. Moreover, this eyewitness was not a casual bystander or passive victim of the historic events he witnessed, but rather a key figure who was intimately involved in them. As the CRS Program Director for India from 1969 to 1977, this man spent nine years working closely with Mother Teresa and was in charge of the tremendous relief effort for East Pakistani refugees. This humble and cheerful man, now retired and in his late seventies, is a good storyteller and a good friend of mine. Over the past few years, he has kindly granted me a series of private interviews in which he told the untold story; he also shared with me his personal photo collection of his unique Christmas with Mother Teresa (some of these photos will be included in the published book). I have written the narrative based on my interviews with him as well as on my own additional research, and the book is now being marketed to various Catholic publishers in the U.S. The identity of the CRS Program Director will be revealed in the published book.

Christmas with Mother Teresa will acquaint readers with a major unrecognized achievement in the history of Catholic Relief Services and will fill an important gap in the biographies of Mother Teresa published to date. Information about the book’s publisher, release date, availability, and pricing will be provided on my Twitter page at twitter.com/justinsoutar as well as here on my blog as it becomes available, so please stay tuned.

Quote of the Day

"Jesus is the center of creation; and so the attitude demanded of us as true believers is that of recognizing and accepting in our lives the centrality of Jesus Christ, in our thoughts, in our words and in our works. And so our thoughts will be Christian thoughts, thoughts of Christ. Our works will be Christian works, works of Christ; and our words will be Christian words, words of Christ. But when this center is lost, when it is replaced by something else, only harm can result for everything around us and for ourselves."

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would have us believe. Contemplating it, we are invited to read in it something profound: the wisdom of the Creator, the inexhaustible imagination of God, his infinite love for us. We must not let our minds be limited by theories which come only to a certain point and that -- if we look well -- are not in fact in concurrence with the faith, but do not succeed in explaining the ultimate meaning of reality. In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its grandeur and its rationality we cannot but read the eternal rationality, and we cannot but let ourselves be guided by it to the one God, creator of heaven and earth. If we have this look, we will see that He who has created the world is he who is born in a cave in Bethlehem and continues to dwell in our midst in the Eucharist, it is the same living God who interpellates us, loves us, and wishes to lead us to eternal life."

--Pope Benedict XVI

Quote of the Day

"There are no two ways of looking at either the world or God. There is no distinction between concern for human welfare and concern for ecological preservation. The way we relate to nature as creation directly reflects the way we believe in God as Creator of all things. The sensitivity with which we handle the natural environment clearly mirrors the sacredness that we reserve for the divine.

"Moreover, scientists estimate that those most hurt by global warming in the years to come, are those who can least afford it. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the questions that will be asked of us all at the final moment of accountability will not be about our religious observance but on whether we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, comforted the sick, and cared for captives.

"Our reckless consumption of the earth’s resources – energy, water, and forests – threatens us with irreversible climate change. Burning more fuel than we need in an overpopulated city, we may contribute to droughts or floods thousands of miles away.

"To restore the planet we need a spiritual worldview, which brings frugality and simplicity, humility and respect. We must constantly be aware of the impact of our actions on all of creation. We must direct our focus away from what we want to what the planet needs. We must choose to care for creation; otherwise, we do not really care about anything at all.

"In our efforts, to contain global warming, we are ultimately admitting just how prepared we are to sacrifice some of our selfish and greedy lifestyles. When will we learn to say: “Enough!”? When will we understand how important it is to leave as light a footprint as possible on this planet for the sake of future generations?...

"We can no longer afford to wait; we can no longer afford to be idle. The world has clearly expressed its opinion; our political leaders must accordingly act with urgency. Deadlines can no longer be postponed; indecision and inaction are not options. We have a choice to make. The time to choose is now."

--Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

Quote of the Day

“The Kingdom of God is in our midst: do not look for strange things, don’t look for new things with this worldly curiosity. Let the Holy Spirit take us forward, with that wisdom that is a soft breeze. This is the Spirit of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus speaks of.”

--Pope Francis