Christianity in Canada!

Yesterday was the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord. This is a major celebration because the Divinity is shown present in the Humanity of Christ. St. Athanasius the Great called it the divinization of man. Fr. Georges Farah spoke on the Transfiguration of our Lord (See it here:
http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2008/08/georges-farah-on-transfiguration.html )

Yesterday my family and I were in Niagara Falls since Sunday evening. On the way back, we visited Niagara on the Lake. We were again amazed by the natural phenomenon that connects Canada and the United States. Above all, at the Falls we saw the rainbow, the colors of life. And at both the Falls and Niagara on the Lake, we experienced the astonishing way of cultured service & human treatment that reflect a respect of the person regardless of his/her age.  

When I attempt to compare the above Western civilization to other civilizations and culture, I cannot fail to love Canada; a place of welcome to all who came. I simply cannot deny the advantages of Western civilization over cultures of the Middle East, from where we immigrated some 30 years ago. Western civilization is rooted in Christianity and is based on the Christian learning of many long centuries of dynamic work, exploration, development of theology, science and philosophy. A partial answer to questions about Christianity's impact upon the development of civilization can be found here:
http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2008/06/christianitys-impact-upon-civilization.html

This question is particularly of interest to Eastern Arab individuals or communities who live in Canada or other Western nations, yet fail to recognize their indebtedness to the Christian-human values that have shaped these societies in spite of materialism and individualism...
Where is the hub of information systems that spread global connectivity today? Is it in Egypt or Syria? Is it in Saudi Arabia?
Where is the most open learning facilities and universities? In Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia?

I am not talking about monasteries that exist for training of monks. My point is for lay persons who make up 99.9% of people. Lay organizations such as Focolare, Communion & Liberation, The NeoCatechumenal Way, or the Knights of Columbus are open to those who need God and wish to serve him in charity to others. And who does not need God?

 Let's thank God for Canada!

The Hominization Project

This past week I had a number of surprises: First I met on Thursday July 25 with Professor Dr. Michael Jewett , Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto as he informed me that I am free of cancer according to the results of medical check tests that I recently underwent. He continues his medical clinical research assisted by researchers, physicians and staff. 

The second surprise was a sad one as I learned of the death of Georges Mahfouz, a most prominent engineer in France who was also a humble and committed Christian who participated in charitable work and attended Mass every day. But his heart was always the open encouraging and creative spirit. I knew Georges Mahfouz since 1978 in Egypt. He and his learned wife visited us in Toronto some 17 years ago when he had just retired. He suffered physically from cancer and other illnesses in the past 10 years. May God bless his soul.

The third surprise: On Friday I sought confession before attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist in thanksgiving to God who continues to give me the gift of life. At that point, I learned of the death of the charismatic Fr. Peter Mosteller who passed away about a year ago. It was a shock for me as he was my confessor and spiritual director for over 15 years. He served at St. Basil Roman Catholic Church where he gave electrifying homilies. He was a strong and humble person who, in spite of his age and illness continued to see me when I requested his advice. May God bless him in his eternal kingdom.

Having received the Eucharist another great surprise took place when I went on my way home to the barber. There I encountered Fr. Jim, the great pastor and preacher at St. Alphonse's Roman Catholic Church. My wife and I frequently attend Mass at St. Alphonse's Church only to hear him speak. 

The work of God continues in humanizing us and our civilizations. This is the "Hominization Project" of which Karl Rahner, S.J. and René Girard spoke.

Love is the means by which we become a true civilization and loving in the likeness of God. On a personal basis, the attainment of the Divine or the Divinization of Man is expounded by St. Athanasius in his writings on the Incarnation of the Son of God (You may wish to see this original translation  http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm). St Bernard's famous homily on the 4 loves is a deep reflection because in it love moves from the self to God. See it here:

http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2008/07/st-bernard-on-four-loves.html

I thank the Triune God for his continuing gifts of love, the Virgin Mary, and everyone who prays for me.

Thoughts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

“Lord Christ, you who are divine energy and living irresistible might: since of the two of us it is you who are infinitely the stronger, it is you who must set me ablaze and transmute me into fire that we may be welded together and made one. Grant me, then, something even more precious than that grace for which all your faithful followers pray: to receive communion as I die is not sufficient: teach me to make a communion of death itself.” (Hymn of the Universe by Teilhard de Chardin, NY: Harper and Row 1965.)

I first learned about Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.  and his work in a retreat given by Henri Boulad, S.J. in 1972 in Cairo, Egypt.

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) holds a special legacy in the Catholic Church. With his research as a paleontologist in China and his theological insight he sought to unify the scientific Theory of Evolution with the spiritual development of humans that in his view will culminate and be held together in the eschatological Cosmic Christ, The "Omega Point" of history (Cf. Revelation 22, 13). The Cosmic Christ is Jesus now in glory after his resurrection in which he brings humanity to the Father by the power of His Spirit. Teilhard's thought with regard to creation and the cosmos can be summarized in his two popular books "The Phenomenon of Man" and "Le Milieu Divin" in which he attempts to recapture and develop the interpretation of Genesis in allegorical and theological methods in the footsteps of St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Augustine of Hippo. But his mystical approach to creation can be summarized in his "Cosmic Liturgy of Creation." Because of suspicions by his superiors about a certain pantheistic thought in his ideas, Teilhard was forbidden to publish books until his death in 1955. In the Second Vatican Council, however, Michel Hakim observed that the spirit  of Teilhard seemed to "hover" over the optimistic deliberations and declarations that made an impact in the reform ushered by the Council.  The most distinct point of his thought is the complexification of matter into the biosphere which would be encompassed in the leap from the animal realm to the noosphere or human mind which, while still biologically animal, can ask himself about himself and raise questions about his origin and future. This is the step where Man starts to worship a divinity that, in his research, Marcea Eliade categorizes as the "Sky God." Revelation in the Judaic-Christian Tradition is a response by God to man's fearful questions that progressively reveal the merciful and faithful God. In Jesus Christ, God is fully revealed as eternal Love.

In his book "Introduction to Christianity" the young Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 1968 about Teilhard de Chardin as part of his excellent exposition on the Resurrection of Christ:
"We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one." The full exposition can be found here:
http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2012/04/joseph-ratzinger-truth-of-resurrection.html


In  "La Priere du Père Teilhard de Chardin" published in 1964, and translated to English under the title "The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin" in 1965,  Henri de Lubac, S.J. (major contributor to Vatican II, made cardinal in 1983) made the case for the authentic Christian thought of his friend Teilhard. "Omnia in ipso constant - 'in him all subsists' - This sentence from the Epistle to the Colossians had long fired Teilhard's enthusiasm...he said that ' Christ is the term supernaturally, but also physically, assigned to the consummation of humanity', nor again in saying that for St. Paul, 'all energies hold together, are welded deep down into a single whole, and what the humanity of our Lord does is to take them up again and re-weld them in a transcendent and personal unity.'"

Sweetest Jesus - The Prayer of Pope Francis at the World Youth Day

Today Pope Francis the Great has ended his journey to Brazil where for almost a week he attracted 3 million participants from the world, the largest crowd of youth ever in any World Youth Day event. Francis did not shy away from warning the youth against materialism that has invaded the world, but he said to them that the Church needs them for her future as missionaries of Christ. Last night we followed the vigil prayer live on EWTN in which he blessed the participants with the Blessed Sacrament lifting it in a rare moment of utter joy and calling the Lord: Sweetest Jesus, most lovable and the splendor of all....He asked the Lord to make Christians missionaries of his love and bless his Church with an ever-renewed faith.

This was a fleeting experience of joy for many people young and old. The question remains whether the People of God will indeed respond in committed lasting lives of love towards God and their fellow human beings who continue to suffer in many places as martyrs of injustice and violence; a phenomenon in the more materialist and individualist societies of advanced Western countries, and in current attempts of islamization by fundamentalist groups of whole regions especially in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and certain countries in Europe. The temptation is, as always, strong to fall into idolatry of the self, of possessive false pleasure (that the youth call luv), or of slavery to money and other creatures meant to open to us to the deep love of God for his creation but never worshiped in themselves. Prophets of the Old Covenant as well as saints of the Church have always warned us of the consequences we bring upon ourselves if we fall.

Catholic Bishops in Latin America made a point of reclaiming Catholics from excessive attractions by Pentecostal Christians and other Christian sects that infiltrated the hearts and minds of young Catholics through their methods of worship and promises of salvation. While the Catholic Church does not deny the salvific value in such Christian communities, she must remind the faithful that in her bosom alone exists the fullness of truth and grace as communicated through Apostolic succession in union with the Successor of St. Peter.

In a violent and fleeting temporal world, the Church must always be for the poor as Francis the Great reminded his listeners. Sweetest Jesus, save the world from the powers of hell.

The Clash of Civilizations

"The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" is Samuel Huntington's 1996 best-seller book that provoked much debates among political analysts, economists, and anthropologists since the lecture he gave in 1992 at the American Enterprise Institute, followed by a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "Clash of Civilizations?" in which he responded to Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man."
Huntington's thesis in the book is that future conflicts will be driven by cultural and religious motives rather than ideologies. He identifies 8 civilizations (shown in the world map) that may well clash and thus increase the probability of wars in order to remake the world order after the Cold War which had just ended.
1.  Western:
2. Orthodox Christianity:
3. Islamic Countries:
4. African Countries:
5. Latin Americas:
6. Sinic (China, Japan):
7. Hindu (India)
8: Buddhist:

Huntington identified Islam as the most dangerous threat to Western civilization. Most historians of the late 20th century wrote about the revival of Islamic militants including the Ayatollahs of Iran since 1979, terrorist groups in Lebanon and Syria known as Hizbullah, the increasing destabilization of the Philippines by the independence mind of Abu Sayyaf and his Islamic militant group in the Philippines, the creation of the terrorist group Hamas in the Palestinian "Intifada" by 1989, the islamisation of the Sudan by such radical Islamists as Omar Al-Bashir from 1989 and more. However Huntington outlines the historic rivalry of Islam with Christianity since the Islamic conquests in the 7th century.   "Globally nineteen of twenty-eight fault line conflicts in the mid-1990s between Muslims and non-Muslims were between Muslims and Christians." Huntington says (P. 212). He quotes Bernard Lewis, a leading Western scholar of Islam, who in his 1990 book "The Root of Muslim Rage" concluded: "It should now be clear that we are facing a mood and movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations - that perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival."

In 2001, Huntington's fears materialized in the 9/11 Islamist terrorist attack at the heart of America.  
Seventeen years later, the fears of Huntington seem to be growing and materializing. First China is a vast economic power that still maintains a Communist central governing body although it borrowed technological power from America and allowed capital free market to grow. China has a vast industry and the highest growing economy in the world. Chinese cheap products allow its industries to export to the entire world and to be  present in Africa more than other world powers. Militarily China threatens Japan and India, but above all corruption reigns in government-controlled dictatorship and its record of human rights is dismal. Second, Putin's Russia is becoming an empire as one of the fastest growth economies in the globe. Its arsenal of armies and nuclear weapons is huge but most importantly Russia is playing a vital role in the politics of current regional conflicts especially in its extensive military support of Syria against militant Islamists, and its challenge to the United States on the U.S. National Security Agency massive surveillance spying scandals revealed by Edward Snowden, who had access to NSA secret files and escaped to Russia a few months ago. The global most revealing events are related to the "Arab Spring" - a political movement in the Arab world that, according to the political analyst Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, was planned by the U.S. and its allies in NATO with the Muslim Brotherhood and implemented in 2011 and beyond to secure the ultimate solution for the Palestinian Question by replacing semi-secular governments with Islamic governments. When the revolutions started in January 2011 in Tunisia followed by Egypt and Yemen and later attempted in isolated spots in Syria, the popular will was about freedom from dictatorship, enhanced services to alleviate poverty, help the middle and poor classes cope with increased cost of living, and usher a democratic atmosphere where people can live and earn their living with justice and dignity. The elected Islamic governments have been failing to garner enduring popular support in spite of  America's Barack Obama's support. According to Heikal, the Islamist government in Egypt failed on all accounts within one year since the election of the president: dictatorial decrees by Islamist President Mohammed Morsi against the independence of courts; excluding Christians and women from participation in open dialogue; forcing a constitution down the throat of Egyptians; and allying Egypt with terrorist organizations that threatened its division. On  June 30, 2013, millions of Egyptians marched in Cairo and other cities demanding the resignation of Morsi and early presidential elections. When Morsi refused to resign, the Egyptian army, in support of the will of the people, removed Morsi from power on July 3.