Pope says St. Francis is model of dialogue, respect for creation

From www.catholicnews.com

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Calling St. Francis of Assisi "an authentic giant of holiness," Pope Benedict XVI said the 13th-century saint continues to be a model for living simply, respecting God's creation and entering into dialogue with people of other religions.
Continuing a series of talks about theologians and saints of the Middle Ages at his weekly general audience Jan. 27, the pope said St. Francis offers a clear demonstration that "the saints are the best interpreters of the Gospel" for people of every age.
Early in his process of conversion, the pope said, Francis was praying in the crumbling church of St. Damian in Assisi and heard Jesus speaking from the cross, telling him to repair the church. He carried out the work with his own hands.
"But the ruinous state of that church was a symbol of the dramatic, disturbing situation of the entire church of that age with its superficial faith that did not form and transform people's lives and with a clergy that was not zealous," the pope said.
The church "was decomposing from within," he said.
St. Francis dedicated himself to living the Gospel in a radical way, preaching its message far and wide and renewing the whole church, the pope said.
However, as a true saint and member of the church, Francis did not attempt to do anything "without or against the pope, but only with the pope," he said. Francis "knew that every charism given by the Holy Spirit must be placed at the service of the body of Christ, which is the church, therefore he acted in full communion with the ecclesiastical authorities."
In 1219, St. Francis went to Egypt and met with the Muslim leader, Sultan Malik al-Kamil.
"I want to underline this episode in the life of St. Francis because of its great relevance. At a time when there was a conflict between Christianity and Islam, Francis -- armed only with his faith and his personal meekness -- successfully followed the path of dialogue," the pope said.
St. Francis' desire to speak to the sultan and the sultan's cordial welcome is "a model that must inspire relations between Christians and Muslims today as well, promoting a dialogue in truth, mutual respect and understanding," he said.
Among the participants at the audience was a delegation of 79 Jewish, Muslim and Christian students and teachers from the cross-border towns of Eliat, Israel, and Aqabat, Jordan, who were in Rome for a performance of dance and theater about dialogue.
Another lesson St. Francis can teach Christians today, the pope said, is a proper attitude toward money and material comforts.
Although born into a wealthy family, Francis' conversion led him to understand how living the Gospel meant having "a sober lifestyle and a detachment from material goods," the pope said.
St. Francis' continuing popularity also is due to his sensitivity to the work of God through creation, he said.
"Love for other people and for all God's creatures is born from love of Christ," the pope said.
St. Francis' message is "very relevant today," the pope said, because human interventions are sustainable "only if they respect creation and do not damage the environment."
"Francis reminds us that God's wisdom and benevolence is displayed in creation; nature is a language which speaks to us of God and through which God speaks to us," Pope Benedict said.

Some Humour

A father was approached by his small son who told him proudly, "I know what the Bible means!"
His father smiled and replied, "What do you mean, you 'know' what the Bible means?
The son replied, "I do know!"
"Okay," said his father. "What does the Bible mean?"
"That's easy, Daddy..." the young boy replied excitedly," It stands for

'Basic Information Before Leaving Earth.'

_______________________________________________


There was a very gracious lady who was mailing an old family Bible to her brother in another part of the country.
"Is there anything breakable in here?" asked the postal clerk.
"Only the Ten Commandments!! "Answered the lady.

_______________________________________________

"Somebody has said there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord ," and there are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning."

_______________________________________________

A minister parked his car in a no-parking zone in a large city because he was short of time and couldn't find a space with a meter.
Then he put a note under the windshield wiper that read: "I have circled the block 10 times. If I don't park here, I'll miss my appointment. Forgive us our trespasses."
When he returned, he found a citation from a police officer along with this note "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket I'll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation."

______________________________________________

There is the story of a pastor who got up one Sunday and announced to his congregation: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is, we have enough money to pay for our new building program. The bad news is, it's still out there in your pockets."

______________________________________________

A teacher began her lesson with a question, "Boys and girls, what do we know about God?"
A hand shot up in the air. "He is an artist!" said the kindergarten boy.
"Really? How do you know?" the teacher asked.
"You know - Our Father, who does art in Heaven... "

______________________________________________

A minister waited in line to have his car filled with gas just before a long holiday weekend. The attendant worked quickly, but there were many cars ahead of him. Finally, the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump.
"Reverend," said the young man, "I'm so sorry about the delay. It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip."
The minister chuckled, "I know what you mean. It's the same in my business."

_____________________________________________

People want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the centre of attention.

____________________________________________

The parish priest was preoccupied with thoughts of how he was going to ask the congregation to come up with more money than they were expecting for repairs to the church building. Therefore, he was annoyed to find that the regular organist was sick and a substitute had been brought in at the last minute. The substitute wanted to know what to play.
"Here's a copy of the service," he said impatiently. "But, you'll have to think of something to play after I make the announcement about the finances."
During the service, the parish priest paused and said, "Brothers and Sisters, we are in great difficulty; the roof repairs cost twice as much as we expected and we need $4,000 more. Any of you who can pledge $100 or more, Please stand up!"
At that moment, the substitute organist played "The National Anthem"
And that is how the substitute became the regular organist!

____________________________________________

Give me a sense of humour, Lord,
Give me the grace to see a joke,
To get some humour out of life,
And pass it on to other folk…………….

'Conduit of Evil' unleashes a torrent when a person or country bears negative emotions

From http://www.spiritdaily.com/haitivoodoo2.htm

Perhaps we need to talk a little spiritual warfare here.
From time to time, that always seem wise -- and now with Haiti again in the news, more so.
Two points.
The first:
Evil comes through family lines or a person or a home (especially a place of sin) like a funnel. We can envision it as a pipe or conduit, sort of like the passage they see in near-death experiences, but coming from beneath instead of heading upward.
It is like the top of a tornado.
Evil pours out of that conduit when we open the hatch, and that can occur through participation in occultism, sexual immorality, materialism, and other transgressions. It also can be unleashed if we have pride, anger, jealousy, greed, or are negative.
And when it is unleashed, it allows for a torrent.
When there is evil around a person, or a place, a simple emotion can trigger the flow of grit from the netherworld. This is why evil assaults will wax and wane around certain folks.
If the conduit is already there -- perhaps due to a past family circumstance, personal sin, or generational spirits -- it is unleashed until we close it with prayer, love, and humility. Otherwise, it will cause a series of unfortunate events. Bad "luck." Injury. The innocent and arrogant alike can be hurt.
The second point is (as mentioned): Haiti.
The media has stirred or tried to stir an intense brouhaha over the statement by evangelist Pat Robertson that the earthquake in Haiti is tied to a "pact with the devil" made by Haitian ancestors -- slaves -- who sought freedom from France. The recent natural disaster is due to that curse, he feels (or felt).
Whether or not Reverend Robertson used prudent language, and whether or not one can authoritatively attach any single alleged evil deed to any particular disaster, here are the reported facts:
On August 14, 1791, a slave leader named Boukman called a meeting in a forested area called Bois-Caiman near Cap Haitien, where many slaves congregated.
On that date, those who attended sacrificed a pig and drank the blood (or at least many of them did) and then dedicated Haiti to the devil. The ceremony was conducted by voodoo priests or "houngans," whose rituals were passed down from African voodoo.
At the time, Haiti was a prosperous place -- France's richest colony.
It went downhill afterward.
Soon, it would be one of the world's poorest nations.
Was there a link? Hard to say. One could argue that those who took over from the French simply lacked diligence. At any rate: for the next two hundred and six years, only voodooists went to that revered spot in the forest -- until, in 1997, a group of Christians "exorcised" it.
"Our church members started their march in front of the President's palace and marched for six hours to the place where the satanic ceremony took place 206 years ago," said one Christian leader. "We had informed the government and media of our intentions weeks before the event, and were told that the witch doctors would be there, as they were every year. When we arrived, they had hidden themselves, unable to directly confront the Christians. It was a significant spiritual battle to reach the tree under which the pig was sacrificed in the original ceremony. We formed a Jericho march, circling the magic tree seven times. On the seventh time around, God gave many people a vision of the Devil fleeing from the area. The Christians were overjoyed. We cancelled the satanic contract and broke the curse."
Or did they?
You discern. What we know is that occultism continued elsewhere on that island.
On April 8, 2003, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- a former Salesian priest (and formally defrocked) -- approved voodoo as an official religion in the country, such that now Haitians can be married in voodoo ceremonies. While former Secretary of State called Aristide "psychotic," others saw him as a channel of pure evil. Voodoo priests reportedly sacrifice a human child in celebration.
"My biggest problem," noted another minister, Tom Barrett, who provides much of this information, "is the fact that, not only did he make voodoo an official religion, he used every device available to him to promote it. On the day that his government officially recognized voodoo, he paid all the radio stations to play nothing but voodoo music all day long. He flew in four hundred voodoo priests from West Africa, the birthplace of the evil religion, to promote it."
Aristide, who was politically supported by President Clinton and Jesse Jackson, eventually lost power (he was deposed on September 29, 1991, feast of St. Michael). And there was that exorcism. But voodoo still remained. It is the identifying characteristic of this country -- if a country it still is.
"Haiti is the only country in the entire world that has dedicated its government to Satan," said a minister named Doug Anderson, who grew up in Haiti with missionary parents. "Demonic spirits have been consulted for political decisions, and have shaped the country's history."
"Voodoo is a practice based on a mixture of African spiritism and witchcraft," adds Reverend Barrett. "Depending on the source of one's research, between 75 and 90 percent of Haitians practice voodoo. This seems to fly in the face of the fact that the country is predominantly Catholic. But, like their African ancestors, voodoo practitioners have no problem embracing multiple religions. In fact, most who practice voodoo believe they must be Catholic first. Until recently, voodoo was practiced in secret. Practitioners would go to the Catholic Church on Sunday, and attend voodoo ceremonies deep in the woods at other times."
It is another "fact" for us to weigh.
As we ourselves reported years ago: a priest named Father John Hampsch points out that "the age-old practice of voodoo has left that nation impoverished (and, we might add, prone to disasters)."
Quakes happen. Things happen. It rains on the good and evil alike. We have long donated to Haiti's poor. But as we warned five years ago, "look at the trials of Cuba and voodoo-laden Haiti. In the Caymans, Hurricane Ivan caused postponement of a major fashion show, while the most damage, a true catastrophe, occurred in Haiti -- home to many good poor people (who suffered as victim souls) but also the place, the incredible place, where voodoo -- where demon worship -- is the official religion."
Yesterday, a tremor rumbled under the Cayman islands.
There was another aftershock in Haiti.
We recall the quake when Jesus broke the evil curse as He died on the Cross.
It is no time to cast stones. But those who say that one shouldn't mention evil do no service to Haiti or themselves. It is the truth that sets us free, not pushing dirt under the rug. And while you can decide for yourself on Haiti, let us remark that we all need to clear darkness from our families and our homes and our lives -- from our own countries -- or darkness in one form or another will funnel and rattle us all.

Vatican investigates claims of Pope Pius XII miracle

From www.telegraph.co.uk

By Simon Caldwell
19 Jan 2010

An unnamed man in Castellammare di Stabia in the south of Italy has claimed he was inexplicably healed from incurable prostate cancer after he prayed to the wartime pope. After examining the patient's medical records the Vatican has asked the Archbishop of Sorrento, Felice Cece, to set up a diocesan tribunal to investigate the claims further. If the Vatican ultimately approves a miracle the way will be clear for the beatification of Pius, after which he will be declared "Blessed". A further miracle will be needed to canonise the Pope as a saint. Such a move, ahead of the opening of the Vatican's wartime archives in 2013, will be hugely controversial, however, because historians remain divided about whether Pius did enough to save European Jews from the Holocaust. On Sunday, Riccardo Pacifici, the president of Rome's Jewish community, told Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Rome's synagogue that "the silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done". However other Jews, such as Sir Martin Gilbert, the British historian and the world's leading expert on the Holocaust, claim that Pius should be considered "a Righteous Gentile" because he quietly saved thousands of lives by hiding Jews in the monasteries and convents of Rome.

The "Hail Mary" of a Protestant is Powerful! (A True Story)

A little six-year-old Protestant boy had often heard his Catholic companion reciting the prayer 'Hail Mary.' He liked it so much that he copied it, memorized it and would recite it every day. 'Look, Mummy, what a beautiful prayer,' he said to his mother one day.
'Never again say it,' answered the mother.' it is a superstitious prayer of Catholics who adore idols and think Mary a goddess. After all, she is a woman like any other. Come on, take this Bible and read it. It contains everything that we are bound to do and have to do.' From that day on the little boy discontinued his daily 'Hail Mary' and gave himself more time to reading the Bible instead.
One day, while reading the Gospel, he came across the passage about the Annunciation of the Angel to Our Lady. Full of joy, the little boy ran to his mother and said: 'Mummy, I have found the 'Hail Mary' in the Bible which says: 'Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women. ' Why do you call it a superstitious prayer?'
On another occasion he found that beautiful Salutation of St. Elizabeth to The Virgin Mary and the wonderful canticle. MAGNIFICAT in which Mary foretold that 'the generations would call her blessed.'
He said no more about it to his mother but started to recite the 'Hail Mary' every day as before. He felt pleasure in addressing those charming words to the Mother of Jesus, our Savior.
When he was fourteen, he one day heard a discussion on Our Lady among the members of his family. Every one said that Mary was a common woman like any other woman. The boy, after listening to their erroneous reasoning, could not bear it any longer, and full of indignation, he interrupted them, saying: 'Mary is not like any other children of Adam, stained with sin. No! The Angel called her FULL OF GRACE AND BLESSED AMONGST WOMEN. Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ and consequently Mother of God. There is no higher dignity to which a creature can be raised. The Gospel says that the generations will proclaim her blessed and you are trying to despise her and look down on her. Your spirit is not the Spirit Of the Gospel or of the Bible which you proclaim to be the foundation of the Christian religion.'
So deep was the impression which the boy's talk had made that his mother many times cried out sorrowfully: 'Oh my God! I fear that this son of mine will one day join the Catholic religion, the religion of Popes!' And indeed, not very long afterwards, having made a serious study of both Protestantism and Catholicism, the boy found the latter to be the only true religion and embraced it and became one of its most ardent apostles.
Some time after his conversion, he met his married sister who rebuked his and said indignantly: 'You little know how much I love my children. Should any one of them desire to become a Catholic, I would sooner pierce his heart with a dagger than allow him to embrace the religion of the Popes!'
Her anger and temper were as furious as those of St. Paul before his conversion. However, she would change her ways, just as St. Paul did on his way to Damascus. It so happened that one of her sons fell dangerously ill and the doctors gave up hope of recovery. Her brother then approached, her and spoke to her affectionately, saying:
'My dear sister, you naturally wish to have your child cured. Very well, then, do what I ask you to do. Follow me, let us pray one 'Hail Mary' and promise God that, if your son recovers his health, you would seriously study the Catholic doctrine, and should you come to the conclusion that Catholicism is the only true religion, you would embrace it no matter what the sacrifices may be.'
His sister was somewhat reluctant at the beginning but as she wished for her son's recovery. She accepted her brother's proposal and recited the 'Hail Mary' together with him. The next day her son was completely cured! The mother fulfilled her promise and she studied the Catholic doctrine. After long preparation she received Baptism together with her family, thanking her brother for being an apostle to her.
The story was related during a sermon given by the Rev. Father Tuckwell. 'Brethren, he went on and said, 'The boy who became a Catholic and converted his sister to Catholicism dedicated his whole life to the service of God. He is the priest who is speaking to you now! What I am I owe to Our Lady. You, too, my dear brethren, be entirely dedicated also to Our Lady and never let a day pass without saying the beautiful prayer, 'Hail Mary', and your Rosary. Ask her to enlighten the minds of Protestants who are separated from the true Church of Christ founded on the Rock (Peter) and 'against whom the gates of hell shall never prevail.'

Irish clerical abuse not typical of church

Fromhttp://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0114/1224262301695.html
The Irish Times - Thursday, January 14, 2010
PADDY AGNEW in Rome

THE CLERICAL sex abuse scandals in Ireland are not representative of the behaviour of the vast majority of priests in the Catholic Church, a senior Vatican figure has said.
Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, said the abuse by priests in Ireland constituted “painful” and “criminal” behaviour.
However, in an interview yesterday in the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano, he said it would be wrong to “make generalisations” as a result of the Irish experience.
The cardinal was asked if events “in certain parts of the world” did not suggest that something had “gone wrong” in relations between bishops and their priests.
“The painful Irish happenings – which by the way have seen some bishops assume their responsibilities and resign – simply do not relate to the entire episcopal ministry.
“The bishops are good fathers for their priests,” he said.
“Certainly, there are some unbecoming situations but they are very limited in number. Unfortunately, we are talking about situations linked to the human condition. And that’s what happened in Ireland.
“This is a very painful business which, it is true, hurts above all the victims but it also profoundly wounds the heart of the church. Once responsibility for so much evil has been objectively established, then we need to go all the way, handing the matter over to the state judicial authorities.”
L’Osservatore asked Cardinal Hummes if, in his view, the credibility of priests worldwide has been undermined by such scandals: “Unfortunately, in a society that has little inclination to dig deep in its search for the truth, [such scandals] damage the image of the priest. Above all because the media concentrate on these events rather than on all the good that is done by the vast majority of priests.
“It is undeniable that painful episodes have happened but we are talking about a limited number of cases which, according to the numbers, are proportionately modest.
“These are of course very serious, criminal happenings which the church can in no way tolerate. But let me repeat it, the vast majority of priests worldwide are decent people, committed to their ministry, ready to give their entire lives, often lose their lives, for the Gospel.”
Appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, Cardinal Hummes is a Franciscan who himself was often considered a possible candidate for pope at the 2005 conclave which elected Benedict. He is known as a moderate on social justice issues.
Cardinal Hummes’s reference to Irish church scandals is further proof that, while the Vatican may well have kept a very low initial profile with regard to the fallout from the Murphy report, the matter of the Irish church, its scandals and its reorganisation is currently weighing heavily on Holy See minds.
Pope Benedict is to deal with all these matters in his forthcoming pastoral letter to the Irish faithful, expected on or before Ash Wednesday, February 17th.

Diaster- ridden Haiti is drenched in occult practices.

From http://www.spiritdaily.com/haiti.htm

As soon as we hear of Haiti we think of voodoo and we also think of disaster. It's not just the recent massive quake. That will stand out in all of its history, of course -- with a staggering loss, and collapse even of the national palace (please pray). But it is not alone. Haiti is constantly a victim, a nation with some of the very poorest of the poor, unable to provide for itself, with residents often resorting to feeding their malnourished children mud. We have long donated to their food program. It is also disaster-prone. Consider that in 2008, four separate tropical storms or hurricanes -- Gustav, Fay, Hanna, and Ike -- hit in the space of thirty days, killing 8,000 and destroying sixty percent of the nation's harvest; entire cities were rendered desolate. Meanwhile, in 2004, it was Tropical Storm Jeane (2,500 dead); in 1998, Hurricane George (eighty percent of the crops); in 1994, Hurricane Gordon (1,000 killed) and so forth.
Haiti is not very blessed, and occult practices as well as corruption do not help. While Catholicism is supposed to be the national religion, the official religion -- as even sanctioned by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2003 -- is voodoo, which means spirits. While seventy percent of Haitians are Catholic, and thirty percent are Protestant, goes the saying, a hundred percent are voodooists, whereby spirits of deceased family members are contacted and revered and even allowed to enter the body during dancing trances.
They are called loua, and there are two general types: rada, which are "sweet" spirits, and petro, which are bitter.
The problem of course is that a bitter ghost or any spirit can be a deceptive one, a demon, in disguise, and the problem is also that the Church condemns necromancy (initiating contact with the dead through mediumship, fortunetelling, or sorcery, the essence of voodoo).
Meanwhile, many voodooists go beyond ancestor worship into spells, pagan nature rituals, and black magic, as even was believed to have been employed by former president François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier to keep power. Notes a travelogue: "Beliefs include zombies and witchcraft. Zombies are either spirits or people whose souls have been partially withdrawn from their bodies. Some Haitians resort to bokŭ, who are specialists in sorcery and magic." Notes National Geographic in a depiction: "One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit."
Is it any wonder then that Haiti is disaster and poverty-prone? We have seen what has occurred in other voodoo hotspots such as New Orleans. Our prayers are with these people who need to rediscover their Catholic roots and also with the archbishop, who reportedly was killed in the disaster.
There is a presence of the Blessed Mother, but it is minimal. She is said to have appeared in Port-a-Prince in 1987. We are wondering what her message was, and whether it contained a warning.

Musings on Vampires, Twilight and Harry Potter: Their Origins and Consequences

From http://www.studiobrien.com/writings_on_fantasy/twilight.html

Written by Michael D. O'Brien
Friday, 18 December 2009
The astonishing success of the Twilight series of vampire novels written by Stephenie Meyer ranks second only to the Harry Potter series in publishing history, and the two films released to date also repeat this pattern. [1] Meyer’s series builds upon the foundation of older novels and cult films, themselves based on the European legends of vampires. The legends predate even these, for there is a long tradition in ancient religions of supernatural beings who are predators on humans, consuming the blood or flesh of the living, tales that can be found in Babylonian, Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Hebrew lore, as well as throughout Africa and the pre-colonial Americas.
The European legends appear to have been in wide circulation during the Middle Ages in the oral folk culture of numerous Christian peoples, sometimes in the writings of ecclesiastics (though this was rare), and began to be collected only in the 1700’s. This branch of vampire legends thrived mainly in South-eastern Europe, where the tendency to superstition was greater than in more developed urban societies, but also appeared elsewhere, for example in Russia and Germany. The verbal lore of several ethnic groups commonly depicts the vampire as an “un-dead” being possessed by an evil spirit, sometimes a suicide or a witch but often a corpse that had been bitten by a vampire. It is conjectured that the word “vampire” derives from a chain of linguistic adaptations that can be traced back through French and German (vampyre and vampir) to the Serbian vampir, Polish wapierz and numerous Slavic variants in other countries, such as upir, upyr, and upior. According to some etymological theorists the term originates in the Turkic term for “witch”—for example the Tatar ubyr.
The legend was popularized in Western literature through highly successful novels, beginning with John Polidari’s The Vampyre, published in 1819, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897. It was the latter that provided the basis for most subsequent vampire fiction. Other novels of varying degrees of literary merit have appeared since then, but few, if any of them, depart from the basic “type.” In addition, there are literally hundreds of films dealing with the theme. Notable among these are the 1922 German film Nosferatu, and Universal Pictures’ Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, followed by a series of eight Dracula films in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, starring Christopher Lee. Significant among later films are Francis Ford Coppola’s rendition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), starring Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, and Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994), based on Anne Rice’s novel of the same name, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
There are also numerous media off-shoots such as the British television series Young Dracula, which was first aired in 2006, the American television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which aired from 1997 to 2003, and the animated Japanese series Vampire Knight, first aired in 2008, as well as other series such as Blood Ties, Moonlight, Being Human, and True Blood. In a 2009 issue of the SCP Journal, Tal Brooke reflected on the possible causes of this cultural phenomenon:
Vampires as embodied darkness, are a perfect foil for boundary pushing as we get to know and accept them. The desensitized audience are the frogs sitting in the slowly heating kettle. The envelope of moral boundaries is constantly being pushed, with hardly a pause, and that has been happening since the early days of black and white TVs with their rabbit-ear antennas. Whether we like it or not, media is a change agent, earning vast sums and influencing populations. If a twenty second advertisement can be opinion-shaping, an hour-long program more so.
It has become clear that twenty-first century producers are neither respecters of morals nor vampire lore as they change the rules to fit the times. They clone, mix and match. The crucifix is becoming inconsequential along with holy water, removing the power of Christianity from the equation [2]
The theme of vampirism seems never to grow stale. In 2009 alone, seven films have been released, including New Moon, based on the second book of the Twilight series, with the third and fourth films soon to follow.
Vampire themes also figure in landmark end-of-the-world films such as The Last Man on Earth (1964), starring Vincent Price, Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (2007), starring Will Smith. Common to these later films is the deletion of any supernatural content and attributing the evils portrayed in them to purely physical causes. The zombie-vampires in I Am Legend, for example, are humans turned into monsters due to a plague unleashed accidentally by scientists seeking a cure for cancer. The evil is entirely natural in origins. In this film, as in most other grotesque manifestations of the horror genre, the monster has superhuman strength and eerie cognitive powers, is vicious, murderous, and hideously ugly.
But the monstrous is not always portrayed as this kind of tragic aberration. With increasing frequency the monster is presented as a new and advanced breed of human who evokes our sympathy—and even our identification with him. In the most alluring manifestations, he possesses superhuman strength and intelligence, he is more moral than his predecessors, and he is physically beautiful. In the earlier stages of vampire fantasy, the reader or viewer was shaken by terror and rewarded with the thrill of escape. In the present stage, we are stimulated by a combination of fascination with the mysterious paranormal and rewarded with the thrill of sensual desire.
A number of authors have pointed out in their studies of this genre that the thirst for the life-blood of others is a metaphor of lust. It is important to note in this regard that the vampire of legend only sometimes kills his victim; just as often, he infects the victim, turning him or her into a vampire. E. Michael Jones has written that at the root of the phenomenal rise of horror culture is suppressed conscience. Tracing the pattern from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (first published in 1818) through to Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) and its sequels, Jones argues that the denial of moral law produces metaphorical monsters that arise from the subconscious of creative people and spread into society through their cultural works. The monster in the Alien films, for example, is a ghastly abomination of the feminine, and salvation is possible only through expulsion of the offspring it implants and incubates in humans—a subconscious eruption of internal conflicts (and guilt) over abortion.
As Jones points out:
By following our illicit desires to their logical endpoint in death, we have created a nightmare culture, a horror-movie culture, one in which we are led back again and again to the source of our mysterious fears by forces over which we have no control. [3]
Even though modern man denies the authority of moral conscience, he cannot escape it. He is created in the image and likeness of God, and deep within the natural law of his being the truth continues to speak to him, even as he adamantly denies the existence of God (in the case of atheists) or minimizes divine authority (in the case of nominally religious people, the practical atheists). In order to live with the inner fragmentation, which is the inevitable effect of violated conscience, he is driven to relieve his pain through three diverse ways:
a) He makes open war against conscience and all its moral restraints, and pursues with radical willfulness an aggressive consumption of sensual rewards—generally a plunge into various kinds of addictions and a life of sexual promiscuity;
b) More passively, he simply ignores the inner voice of conscience and distracts himself from it by sensual and emotional rewards—generally the search for love without responsibility and a restless striving for worldly success;
c) He tries to rationalize a self-made form of conscience for himself, based in values such as “tolerance” and “non-dogmatism.” Generally this produces a new kind of perverse moralism, a self-righteousness which is, paradoxically, quite intolerant of genuine righteousness. Its anti-dogmatism is its dogma. Here there is no absolute rejection of morality, but rather a rewriting of it according to subjective feelings.
None of the foregoing coping mechanisms need be conscious. Indeed they tend to be largely subconscious processes through which a person feels that he is finding his personal identity, is living out the principle of freedom, discovering his path in life, and getting from it a portion of happiness. Though he is afflicted from time to time by a sense of the inner void, he presumes that the remedy for these dark moments will be found by increasing the dose of the very drug that is killing him.
The Twilight series, it would appear, follows the third coping mechanism mentioned above in c), the one which appeals to the broadest possible audience. The books have won numerous awards, notably the British Book Award for “Children’s Book of the Year” and the 2009 “Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite Book,” and to date have sold more than 85 million copies and been translated into 38 languages. This, despite the fact they are poorly written teen romances, pulp fiction with a twist of supernatural horror combined with racing hormones and high school boy-girl relationships. As with the Harry Potter series, blood is a crucial theme, connected with life itself and inextricably bound to the theme of immortality. But where the Potter series is only secondarily romantic, in the Twilight series romance is primary, with vampirism as the thrill that gives it spice.
In the first volume, Twilight, a young high school student named Isabella (Bella) Swan, the daughter of divorced parents, moves to the small town of Forks on the coast of Washington State in order to live with her father, the town’s police chief. [4] She has not seen him since her childhood and finds that he is a kindly but uncommunicative man—the quintessential absent father. Enrolling in the local high school, Bella is drawn to a mysterious, handsome boy in one of her classes, Edward Cullen. Burdened with a poor self-image, Bella wonders if Edward is attracted to her, or hates her, since his behavior toward her is erratic and full of confused signals. Then comes a day when he rescues her from an impending car accident, using what appears to be superhuman strength to deflect an oncoming vehicle that would have killed her. She probes for an explanation, and as their relationship develops little by little he reveals that he is “not like other people.” Gradually she realizes that he is a vampire, and Edward confirms her suspicions when he tells her:
“I’m the world’s most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in. My voice, my face, even my smell… I’m designed to kill… I’ve wanted to kill you. I’ve never wanted a human’s blood so much in my life… Your scent, it’s like a drug to me. You’re like my own personal brand of heroin.”
This is delivered in the low, breathless voice of an impassioned lover. This is sensual desire, this is barely restrained lust. This is definitely a new kind of vampire. There are no fangs dripping blood, no black capes, no ritual commerce with the dead, no terror of daylight, just an aversion to direct sunlight because under its rays his skin glitters like diamonds. “You’re beautiful!” exclaims Bella when Edward opens his shirt and reveals his sparkling flesh.
Bella is then introduced to the members of the Cullen family, whom we learn do not eat normal food or sleep at all. They appear to be intelligent, cultured people, sensitive and “caring.” They also have astounding physical strength, can run faster than horses and run up the trunks of trees at top speed. Most of the Cullens also have paranormal psychic gifts of various sorts. Edward can read minds, his adoptive sister Alice has the ability to see the future. We learn that the head of the family, a local physician named Dr. Carlisle Cullen, infected Edward with vampirism after the First World War, when the boy lay dying of influenza, both his parents already dead from the epidemic. In order to save his life, Dr. Cullen had taken his blood by the traditional bite on the neck, thus infecting Edward, turning him into a vampire. Now the boy is perpetually seventeen years old, and immortal. But Dr. Cullen is no Dracula. The family he has collected around him, his wife Esme and the five young people of the household, have all been “adopted” in similar fashion—for humanitarian reasons.
Edward and Bella fall in love, but soon the family encounters another coven of vampires nearby in the forest. Among them is a sadistic vampire named James who sees in Bella nothing more than food, and is excited by the prospect of a challenging hunt, because he realizes the Cullens are protecting this human prey. Edward and the other Cullens defend Bella, helping her to escape to her old hometown of Phoenix Arizona. But James tracks her down there and tortures her in preparation for killing her. She is seriously wounded, but Edward and the family arrive just in time to rescue her. They kill James (by ripping him to pieces and burning his body parts), and then they all return to Forks. The story ends at the high school prom where Edward and Bella dance together and realize they are hopelessly in love with each other. Bella whispers that she wants them always to be together, and Edward refuses to do what would make this happen. As they cling to each other with the vampire question unresolved between them, they are secretly observed by the deadly vampiress Victoria, a member of James’s coven. Victoria is now intent on revenge, setting the stage for the next book and film.
In the second novel, New Moon, Edward and the Cullen family throw a birthday party for Bella. Unwrapping a gift, she loses a drop of blood from a paper cut, and Edward’s adoptive brother, Jasper, frenzied by the scent, instinctively attacks her in order to kill her. Edwards stops him in time, but he now concludes that it is too dangerous for Bella to associate with the family. He and the Cullens leave Forks in order to protect her from themselves. Because of his absence, Bella falls into a deep depression, until she develops a strong friendship with a native-American youth named Jacob Black. Jacob is in love with Bella, and we later discover that he is a werewolf. He and the other werewolves in his tribe try to protect her from Victoria.
Through a misunderstood vision, Edward comes to believe that Bella is dead, and he travels to Italy where he decides to commit suicide from grief over losing her. But he is stopped at the last moment by the arrival of Bella, accompanied by his sister, Alice. In a meeting with the Volturi, a powerful coven of vampire “royalty,” Edward is told that according to vampire law Bella must either be killed or changed into a vampire, because she has discovered the great secret that vampires exist. The Volturi govern the world of vampires with self-protective rules, much as does the Ministry of Magic in the Potter series, and they must be obeyed. The Cullens return to Forks and vote in favor of Bella being transformed into a vampire. Edward is not happy about this, for he loves her as she is. But he offers her a choice: either she lets Carlisle transform her into a vampire after her graduation from high school, or, if Bella agrees to marry him, Edward will change her himself.
In the third novel, Eclipse, the story opens with a series of unsolved murders in Seattle, Washington. Edward suspects these are being committed by an unidentified vampire who is unable to control his thirst for human blood. As Edward and Bella apply to colleges, Bella explains to Edward her desire to see her friend Jacob Black again. Although Edward fears for her safety, Bella insists that neither Jacob nor his werewolf pack would ever harm her, and she begins visiting him occasionally. Meanwhile, Alice Cullen has a vision that Victoria has returned to Forks. A few days later, Edward proposes marriage to Bella and she accepts.
Bella and the Cullens learn that the murders in Seattle are being committed by an “army” of newborn vampires, controlled by Victoria. The Cullens join forces with the werewolf pack and prepare to combat Victoria’s forces while Edward, Bella, and Jacob camp in the mountains, in order to remain hidden during the battle. There, Jacob becomes upset when he overhears Edward and Bella discussing their engagement and he threatens to join the fight and let himself be killed. To stop him, Bella kisses Jacob and realizes that she is in love with him too. During the battle, Victoria tracks Edward’s scent to Bella’s hiding place in the woods, but Edward successfully defends her. After Victoria and her army are destroyed, Bella explains to Jacob that while she loves him, her love for Edward is greater. Receiving a wedding invitation from Edward, Jacob runs away in his wolf form, angry and heartbroken at Bella’s decision to become a vampire.
In the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward are married, but their honeymoon is disrupted when Bella discovers that she is pregnant. Her pregnancy progresses more rapidly than normal and severely weakens her. Edward, fearing that a monster is growing in her womb, wants Bella to have an abortion, but she refuses. She nearly dies giving birth and Edward injects Bella with his venom to save her life, transforming her into a vampire. The newborn baby is a daughter, half-vampire-half-human. Edward and Bella name her Renesmee. The Volturi heard about the baby, who has been reported to them as an “immortal child” (a child who has been bitten by a vampire and survived). Such children are not allowed to live because their continued existence would violate vampire law. The Volturi tribunal travels to Forks in order to decide on the case, but the Cullens gather vampire witnesses who testify that Renesmee is not an immortal child. They succeed in convincing the Volturi that Renesmee is no danger to vampires or their secret, and the family is left in peace to continue their new life together. All is well.
One might ask how such a thinly plotted bloody mess has managed to obtain such an enormous worldwide following. Part of the answer lies in the power of romantic fantasy at any stage in history. In the modern age, however, romantic fantasy in both text form and visual form is charged with powerful stimulation of the senses. In the Twilight series the main characters are highly attractive young people. For example, Bella describes Edward as “excruciatingly lovely and forever seventeen.” In the two films released to date, Edward is acted by the “narcotically beautiful” Robert Pattinson, as one feminine commentator put it. Jacob Black’s handsome face is matched by shirtless exposure of his muscled torso, as is the case with others in his werewolf pack. Bella, acted by Kristen Stewart, is very pretty (though not quite as much as her vampire friends). The Volturi look like exotic, exceedingly pale fashion models.
Physical beauty is the glue that holds the whole banal tale together. If one were to dim down the prettiness and subtract the horror from these four novels and their films, there would be little left. They would become no more than mind-numbing Harlequin Romances for very immature teenage girls. The sexual attraction and the appeal to romantic feelings, combined with the allure of mystery, all obscure the real horror of the tale, which is the degradation of the image and likeness of God in man, and the false proposal that consuming the lifeblood of another human being bestows life all around. As E. Michael Jones writes:
Both Christ and Dracula deal with blood and eternal life. Vampirism is, as Renfield makes clear, the antithesis of Christianity. Whereas Christ shed his blood so that his followers could have eternal life, Dracula shed his followers’ blood so that he could have eternal life; Dracula is a reworking of Christianity according to the canons of Social Darwinism. The monster is simply the inversion of Christianity that was taking place throughout Europe as once again the Enlightenment was implemented through one of its pseudo-scientific ideologies. … In a satanic way typical of the reversal of Christian order that the vampire creates, man achieves immortality through immorality and by infecting others—that is, through lust. Christianity exalts love; vampirism—Darwin’s survival of the fittest pushed to its extreme—exalts the hunger of desire. [5]
In the Twilight series we have a cultural work that converts a traditional archetype of evil into a morally neutral one. Vampires are no longer the “un-dead,” no longer possessed by demons. There are “good” vampires and “bad” vampires, and because the good vampire is incredibly handsome and possesses all the other qualities of an adolescent girl’s idealized dreamboat, everything is forgivable. Recall at this point that Edward has told Bella that he has killed people. Recall that he has struggled with himself not to kill her. Recall, as well, that when the “good” vampires catch a bad vampire, they rip off his head and tear his body into pieces with their hands and then burn the remains.
But this does not matter to Bella, because Edward and his family are apparently dedicated to reform—though a very selective kind of reform. They do not want to be monsters. They are what might be called vampire vegetarians—they hunt in the forest and drink only the blood of wild animals. Throughout the four novels, Edward has trained himself to resist his desire for Bella’s blood, even as she increasingly desires that he bite her and infect her. Edward, we are led to believe, is outstandingly “moral,” his self-denial resembling heroic chastity. It is all so tender and touching until one recalls that this is a story about savage killers who have infected normal humans and brought them into their “family.” But readers and film audience are conditioned to forgive this too, because they have been shown throughout the series that infecting others can be a saving act.
Referring to the vampire television series, True Blood, Tal Brooke notes that vampires are presented as a misunderstood persecuted minority who must fight for their rights against the intolerant churches.
The church service in True Blood is about as unsympathetic a portrait of Christians as any Hollywood director could hope for. It fits the carefully developed caricature of hooting ignoramuses—simple minded idiots calling out for more blood, fire and brimstone than their vampire counterparts. The public does not miss it, storing away the image.
In a double-minded gambit, the audience knows vampires are evil and yet is compelled to support vampire “rights” as the latest underclass. Killing vampires is seen as a hate crime driven by bigoted intolerance. Yet they [the audience] have seen the dark side of vampires in which mortals are despised, slaughtered and drained at whim. Like a co-dependent mother constantly making up excuses for her serial-killer son and immune to reality, the audience has been enlisted to see them in a permissive and apologetic manner—a backdoor covenant with evil and Orwell’s Double-Think in action.
Brooke states that the evils which horrified earlier generations are now embraced by “open minded” audiences as new avenues of liberation. This, he says, is part of a larger “retinal circus” in contemporary culture, one that implants images of depravity into the minds of millions through sensual lures that bypass normal human instincts of fear and disgust.
Corruption takes place when images of depravity enter the mind—the younger the mind [and] the more depraved the images, the more powerful is the impact. In the case of a young child, an innocent mind can be corrupted readily. A range of common laws are based on this truth. That’s why we have “adult” movie channels and “adult” bookstores—at least for now. …
The power of seduction takes place when an outside influence penetrates down to the inner layers of the soul and spirit to bring about corruption—for which there is already an inner component. Potential depravity becomes realized and emerges out into the open. Evil spreads and infects, causing irreversible damage. Like a cancer, it can spread through individuals into communities. At some point a culture can become corrupt. Those cultures that imploded were in the throes of moral depravity; consider ancient Rome or Sodom. Consider what was happening to bring on Noah’s flood. [6]
E. Michael Jones argues that novels about vampire infection appeared precisely at the time in history (the 1800s) when the dreaded disease syphilis was spreading in the wake of the initial post-Enlightenment stage of the sexual revolution. Now in the age of antibiotics, the most horrifying, disfiguring symptoms of the infection can be controlled, if caught early enough, thus “liberating” the promiscuous from the immediate consequences of their immoral acts. In little over a century, untrammeled serial sex has become pandemic, without the grave consequences that once would have inhibited its progress. Similarly, in little more than a century, the universal archetypes of evil have been defused. No longer considered to be demonic, they have retained only their mystique of exotically attractive danger. Corruption of the creative imagination always has its roots in the corruption of the moral order—the order within the individual and within his surrounding culture. But corruption of creative imagination can also have its origins in forces beyond the purely social. In this regard, there is a disturbing inference in Meyer’s account of the original inspiration for Twilight:
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. ... Though I had a million things to do (i.e. making breakfast for hungry children, dressing and changing the diapers of said children, finding the swimsuits that no one ever puts away in the right place, etc.), I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. I was so intrigued by the nameless couple’s story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description. (Also, the vampire was just so darned good-looking, that I didn’t want to lose the mental image.)
Meyer goes on to describe what happened during the writing of the book:
All this time, Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head. They simply wouldn’t shut up. I’d stay up as late as I could stand trying to get all the stuff in my mind typed out, and then crawl, exhausted, into bed (my baby still wasn’t sleeping through the night, yet) only to have another conversation start in my head. I hated to lose anything by forgetting, so I’d get up and head back down to the computer. Eventually, I got a pen and notebook for beside my bed to jot notes down so I could get some freakin’ sleep. It was always an exciting challenge in the morning to try to decipher the stuff I’d scrawled across the page in the dark. [7]
Of course, one might attribute the foregoing to the inflamed imagination of a sleep-deprived mother, following up on a powerful dream that had no source other than the natural subconscious. However, Steve Wohlberg, in his 2009 article in the SPC Journal, raises another possibility, describing what later occurred in the realm of Meyer’s imagination after the publication of Twilight. He begins with a reflection on the similarities in the original inspirations of the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series:
… [The] Twilight saga received its initial spark when Stephenie Meyer had an unusual dream on June 1, 2003. Eerily, the Harry Potter phenomenon began with a similar “revelation” given to Joanne Kathleen Rowling in 1990 while she was traveling by train outside London. “The character of Harry Potter just popped into my head, fully formed,” Rowling reflected in 2001. “Looking back, it was all quite spooky!” She also stated to inquiring media that the Potter books “almost wrote themselves.” “My best ideas often come at midnight,” Rowling declared.
As with Rowling, so with Meyer. When those mesmerizing tales first burst into the brains of these two women, neither was an established writer. Both were novices. They weren’t rich either. Now they are millionaires many times over. Their experiences are similar, with common threads. Both of their novels are permeated with occultism. Based on this, it’s appropriate to wonder, is there a supernatural source behind these revelations? If so, what is it?
Stephenie Meyer herself provides an amazing clue to the answer. After her unexpected rise to stardom, she later confessed,
“I actually did have a dream after Twilight was finished of Edward coming to visit me—only I had gotten it wrong and he did drink blood like every other vampire and you couldn’t live on animals the way I’d written it. We had this conversation and he was terrifying.” [8]
Who was this “Edward”? Was it the author’s subconscious telling her that she was attempting to tame what cannot be tamed? Or was it an evil spirit manifesting through the image, urging her to give her readers less moralism and more blood? However one interprets it, the question remains: Why did she not realize that the second dream was warning her about something? In her interviews she merely reported it without offering an assessment of what it might mean, then continued to write more of the same. Why did she respond to the first dream and not to the second? Was it because the first was extremely pleasurable and the second disturbing to the point of terror? Was it because pleasure had become her good and unhappy feelings a thing to be dismissed as bad? Conscience cannot be entirely eradicated in human nature, and when it raises its painful, unwelcome truths, the individual (or the culture in which he lives) must either pay attention to it or counteract it with a strategy of denial. Attention is redirected away from the truth about his condition, focusing on overcoming symptoms and ignoring the root cause of the symptoms.
In the Twilight series, vampirism is not identified as the root cause of all the carnage; instead the evil is attributed to the way a person lives out his vampirism. Though Bella is at first shocked by the truth about the family’s old ways (murder, dismemberment, sucking the blood from victims), she is nevertheless overwhelmed by her “feelings” for Edward, and her yearning to believe that he is truly capable of noble self-sacrifice. So much so that her natural feminine instinct for submission to the masculine suitor increases to the degree that she desires to offer her life to her conqueror. She trusts that he will not kill her; she wants him to drink her essence and infect her. This will give her a magnificent unending romance and an historical role in creating with her lover a new kind of human being. They will have superhuman powers. They will be moral vampires—and they will be immortal.
Here, then, is the embedded spiritual narrative (probably invisible to the author and her audience alike): You shall be as gods. You will overcome death on your own terms. You will be master over death. Good and evil are not necessarily what Western civilization has, until now, called good and evil. You will define the meaning of symbols and morals and human identity. And all of this is subsumed in the ultimate message: The image and likeness of God in you can be the image and likeness of a god whose characteristics are satanic, as long as you are a “basically good person.”
In this way, coasting on a tsunami of intoxicating visuals and emotions, the image of supernatural evil is transformed into an image of supernatural good.

[1] Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn, Little, Brown and Co, New York, Boston, 2005-2008.

[2] Tal Brooke, “Vampires Rising,” SPC Journal, Volume 33:2—33-3, 2009, published by the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, Berkeley, CA. Web address: http://www.scp-inc.org

[3] E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Film and Fiction, Spence Publishing, Dallas, Texas, 2000.

[4] For the sake of brevity in this overview, I have combined the original story with details that were adaptations in the film version, but nothing that alters the plot or characters.

[5] E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Film and Fiction, Spence Publishing, Dallas, Texas, 2000. Renfield is a fictional character in Stoker’s Dracula, under the control of the Count but burdened with a conscience. Dracula offers him an unending supply of food, if Renfield will worship him. Renfield refuses and is killed by Dracula.

[6] Tal Brook, “Vampires Rising,” SPC Journal, Volume 33:2-33:3.

[7] Stephenie Meyer, "The Story Behind Twilight." www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html

[8] Steve Wohlberg, “The Menace Behind Twilight,” SPC Journal, Volume 33:2—33-3, 2009, published by the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, Berkeley, CA. Web address: www.scp-inc.org. The quote from Meyer about this second dream is from EW.com (Entertainment Weekly).

Evidence of Purgatory

From http://www.spiritdaily.com/purgchurch.htm

Does purgatory exist? (Of course).
Is it really painful? (For some).
Is there actually fire?
There is -- according to a new, powerful, and fascinating book that takes us across the spectrum of that "middle territory" known as "Gehinnom," with a special section on precisely that: the indications that in the afterlife is a place of purgation where something is felt akin to earthly blaze, leaving even burnt marks as testimony.
Put that in the category of "phenomena":
According to the book, Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory, by Gerard J. M. Van Den Aardweg, there are numerous cases in which the deceased have appeared in flames that wrap around them and have left scorched objects -- as evidenced at the famed Marian shrine of Czestochowa in Poland and at a mysterious small museum in Rome dedicated to purgatory.
There is skepticism until one reads detailed cases with a consistency that has spanned several centuries. For example, there was the fiery imprint of a forefinger on the pillow of a nun, Sister Margherita of the Sacred Heart, at the monastery of St. Clare in Bastia, Italy. "This print," writes Van Den Aardweg, a psychotherapist, "was left on the night of June 5, 1894, when the deceased Sister Maria of St. Luigi Gonzaga appeared to Sister Margherita. According to the account of the event, the deceased, who had been a pious nun, appeared dressed as a Poor Clare sister, surrounded by shadows but recognizable. To the surprise of Sister Margherita, she explained that she was in purgatory to expiate for her bouts of impatience, her not accepting God's Will [during a long illness]."
There was a woman named Marguérite in Metz, France whose mother-in-law is said to have appeared to her and imprinted scorched fingerprints on a page in Imitation of Christ where it says, "Truly I labor in the sweat of my face, my heart is tormented by grief, I am laden with sin... and no one can liberate and save me, but You, my Savior."
There was Louise Sénèchal, who died on May 7, 1873 and allegedly left a burn mark on a night cap [below, left] in order to substantiate her need for Masses. The Mass is often a request from those on the other side! For your consideration!
Before we go much further, it's important to know that souls from purgatory long have said despite the sufferings, they would never return to the blindness of earth.
"The thought of purgatory is productive rather of consolation than of terror," said St. Francis of Sales, a doctor of the Church and an expert on the subject. "Great as the torments of purgatory are, the interior consolations granted there are nevertheless so ineffable that no earthly bliss and enjoyment can equal them."
Moreover, the flames may be symbolic in some cases or at the lowest levels of purgatory, which also has places that are more misty than ablaze. Nearest Heaven, purgatory begins to resemble paradise. But suffering -- burning ones, apparently -- there are. Is it really a "burning" in the physical sense, or a way of transmitting an idea of expiation?
For besides forgiveness, there must be penance for every sin (the stain of sin must be "burned" away), and as John Paul II once said, "every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected."
The nightcap, scorched pages, and other pieces of evidence are on display at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage along the Tiber near the Vatican. Indeed, the Sacred Heart is especially invoked for purgatorial souls, we learn -- as is Mary's Immaculate one.
In the church, reports Dr. Van Den Aardweg, is the collection known as the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio (Little Museum of Purgatory). "These physical objects with evident burn marks are carefully examined, and humanly speaking it must be excluded that they are fakes, first because they are attested to by honest and reliable witnesses and authenticated by various diocesan authorities after critical examination, and second, due to the nature of the evidence itself," says the researcher. "It is virtually impossible in most cases artificially to produce burn traces or marks such as those we encounter here in prayer books or tissues."
Interestingly enough, reports Dr. Van Den Aardweg (who is from Holland and active in the pro-life movement), in November of 1897 the altar in a chapel where the church was later erected there was a fire. "Many people who were present thought they discerned through the flames, on the left side of the altar, the face of an anguished person," he writes. "Whether it was truly an apparition of a soul from purgatory, one can still see the distorted features of this face on the wall, which was conserved when the chapel was demolished and the present church completed in 1917."
This starts to make images claimed in other objects take on a bit more meaning. Most startling of all may be the Czestochowa phenomenon. This occurred when a deceased priest reputedly burned his fiery hand print into an altar corporale (the fine linen used in the Mass to cover the chalice) during the 19th century. "Two clerics of the monastery (Pauline Order) had promised one another many years ago that the one who would die first would give the other one a sign from the beyond," says the author. "This was what the other one was thinking about, when one day he just had finished Holy Mass and, as usual, was folding together the corporale before him, in nine folds. The evil doubt went through his head that perhaps there would be no survival after death at all. "At that moment, a hand appears, lays itself on the corporale, and immediately disappears again." What will the modern Pharisees and Sadducees say about all this -- documented by a scientists?
The point: there seems to be a fire in purgatory, as in hell, but in purgatory the soul is headed to Heaven; fire as with gold purifies. A mystery this is: why suffering is so effective at expiation. Van Den Aardweg marshals the facts in what may be the most compelling book on purgatory since the famed Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory (revelations from a deceased nun, who also spoke of fire). This book is not just about fire. But it is an intriguing aspect. There was the woman in 1922 in the Saarland (Germany) who saw a priest surrounded by fire. There was the daughter near Luxembourg whose father left a burn mark of his hand (in a prayer book and on a handkerchief). As we will see, souls often show themselves in a way that represents their sins (and their purification). "Do you then suffer much?" a mystic once asked a soul who appeared to her (this was the princess, Eugenie von der Leyen). "Look at me!" was the soul's reply. Then she was as if flooded with flames.
[resources: Hungry Souls: Supernatural Visits, Messages, and Warnings from Purgatory, The Amazing Secrets of Purgatory, After Life, and Unpublished Manuscript on Purgatory]

January 6th: The Epiphany of Our Lord

Taken from Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints:
The word Epiphany means “manifestation,” and it has passed into general acceptance throughout the universal Church, from the fact that Jesus Christ manifested to the eyes of men His divine mission on this day first of all, when a miraculous star revealed His birth to the kings of the East, who, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of a long and tedious journey through deserts and mountains almost impassable, hastened at once to Bethlehem to adore Him and to offer Him mystical presents, as to the King of kings, to the God and heaven and earth, and to a Man withal feeble and mortal. The second manifestation was when, going out from the waters of the Jordan after having received Baptism from the hands of St. John, the Holy Ghost descended on Him in the visible form of a dove, and a voice from heaven was heard, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.” The third manifestation was that of His divine power, when at the marriage-feast of Cana he changed the water into wine, at the sight whereof His disciples believed in Him. The remembrance of these three great events, concurring to the same end, the Church has wished to celebrate in one and the same festival.
Reflection.—Admire the almighty power of this little Child, Whom from His cradle makes known His coming to the shepherd’s and magi—to the shepherds by means of His angel, to the magi by a star in the East. Admire the docility of these kings. Jesus is born; behold them at His feet! Let us be little, let us hide ourselves, and the divine strength will be granted to us. Let us be docile and quick in following divine inspirations, and we shall then become wise of the wisdom of God, powerful of His almighty power.

Vatican reveals Some Secret Archives

From www.telegraph.co.uk

By Nick Squires in Rome
01 Jan 2010
In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk, to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan's grandson demands that the Pontiff travel to central Asia in person Although scholars have had access to the secret archives since 1881, they remain closed to the general public
The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.
High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.
The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire and Mozart. It also reveals the Church’s relations with princes and potentates in countries far beyond its dominion.
In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan’s grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person – with all of his “kings” in tow – to “pay service and homage to us” as an act of “submission”, threatening that otherwise “you shall be our enemy”.
Another formal letter in the archive highlights the papacy’s political role. In 1863 Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, wrote to Pope Pius IX claiming that the civil war raging across America was entirely due to “Northern aggression”.
“We desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people.”
Other letters in the archive are more personal. In a 1550 note, Michelangelo demands payment from the papacy which was three months late, and complains that a papal conclave had interrupted his work on the dome of St Peter’s Basilica.
A yellowed parchment covered in neat black script reveals details of the 14th century trials of the Knights Templar on suspicion of heresy, after which members of the warrior-monk order were pardoned by Pope Clement V.
Some of the documents are already well-known, including a parchment letter written by English peers to Pope Clement VII in 1530, calling for Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled.
An entreaty written to Rome by another British monarch, but in very different circumstances, is also reproduced in exquisite detail. In 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote from Fotheringay in Northants to Pope Sixtus V, a few months before she was beheaded for plotting against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, pledging her eternal allegiance to Rome.
The document includes letters written to Hitler by Pope Pius XI in 1934 and one received by his controversial successor, Pius XII, from Japan’s Emperor Hirohito.
“An aura of mystery has always surrounded this important cultural institution of the Holy See due to the allusions to inaccessible secrets thanks to its very name, as well as to the publicity it has always enjoyed in literature and in the media,” Cardinal Raffaele Farina, a Vatican archivist, writes in the preface to the book, which was produced by a Belgian publisher, VdH Books.
One of the most unusual documents is a letter written on birch bark in 1887 by the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada, to Pope Leo XIII. The letter, written in May but datelined “where there is much grass, in the month of the flowers”, addresses the pontiff as “the Great Master of Prayer” and offers thanks to the Vatican for having sent a “custodian of prayer” (a bishop) to preach to them.
Although scholars have had access to the secret archives since 1881, they remain closed to the general public.

Cardinal Daly dies at the age of 92

From www.rte.ie/news

1 January 2010
Cardinal Cahal Daly will lie in state tomorrow in St Peter's Cathedral in west Belfast where he was based for much of his career. The 92-year-old retired Cardinal died last night in Belfast City Hospital where he was being treated after falling seriously ill with a heart condition five days ago. Politicians and church leaders paid tribute to Cardinal Daly who was Archbishop of Armagh and Catholic Primate of all Ireland from 1990 until 1996. Leading politicians have praised Cardinal Daly for helping to nurture the peace process and improve community relations in Northern Ireland.
The current Catholic Primate, Cardinal Sean Brady said 'at a critical and troubled time in Irish history, he was prophetic in his conviction that lasting peace can only be built on justice, mutual understanding and respect for the traditions and aspirations of others.' He continued 'he was firm and courageous in his absolute rejection of violence as a means of achieving political ends.' Taoiseach Brian Cowen, said Cardinal Daly had made a huge contribution to both the Catholic Church and civic society in Ireland. The Cardinal's body will arrive at St Peter's Cathedral in the west of the city at noon tomorrow where Mass will be celebrated and he will lie in state until 9pm. On Sunday the current Bishop of Down and Connor, Noel Treanor, will lead a prayer service at 3pm before the Cardinal's body is taken to St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Ireland's ecclesiastical capital, where his funeral Mass will take place at noon on Tuesday. Cardinal Daly was born in Co Antrim, was an outspoken critic of violence, and particularly of the IRA. Dr Daly took on the post of Catholic Primate at the age of 73 and was a surprise choice for the position, but became a prominent figure. He retired in October 1996, when Cardinal Brady took over the role, and returned to his study of philosophy. Cardinal Daly was renowned as a prolific author and has had many philosophical papers and books published.