Bruce's Byline . . .: More Thoughts On Optimism

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

More Thoughts On Optimism

The greatest optimists in the world should be New Testament Christians. While we can allow the negative things in the world to drag us down, we should choose to emphasize the positive things. Regrettably, it can be easy for us to succumb to negative attitudes.

Here are some practical suggestions for attaining an optimistic attitude:

1. Make up your mind that you are going to be optimistic. As you begin each day, renew this dedication.

2. Remember to daily express your thanksgiving to God for His gracious outpouring of blessings in your life.

3. Daily read and reflect on the precious promises of God

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American Minute with Bill Federer
The Pope that stood up to Socialism -- John Paul II
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Pope John Paul II visited Poland in 1979.

His arrival was met by hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens who had suffered under socialism since the 1945 Yalta Conference, when Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill surrendered Poland to Stalin at the end of World War II.

The Pope's visit sparked an unprecedented spiritual revival in Poland.

The next year, labor leader Lech Walesa, rallied Polish citizens to reject socialism and establish a free representative government.

This sparked uprisings in other communist countries, and by 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

Pope John Paul II stated:

“The fundamental error of socialism is ... (it) considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism.”

He continued:

“Socialism ... maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice ... The concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears ...

From this mistaken conception of the person there arise(s) ... an opposition to private property.

A person who is deprived of something he can call ‘his own,’ and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it.

This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.”

Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, 1991:

“In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of state, the so-called ‘Welfare State' ...

The principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order ...

An inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic thinking ... are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending ..."

He continued:

"Needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them who act as neighbors to those in need.

It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need.”

Pope John Paul II, whose given name was Karol Wojtyla, was born in a small town in Poland, MAY 18, 1920.

He was a chemical worker during World War II and risked punishment from Communists for being ordained a priest.

In 1967, he became Archbishop of Krakow and, in 1978, he became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope since 1522.

Leader of one billion Catholics worldwide, Pope John Paul spoke eight languages and traveled over a million miles to 170 countries -- more than any other pope.

He made history by visiting Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Israel on March 2000.

He then visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and placed a prayer in the Wall for forgiveness for past actions against Jews. He stated:

"I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church … is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place ...

No words (are) strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust."

In 1993, President Clinton greeted Pope John Paul II in Denver, after which he addressed Regis University.

He stated:

"The inalienable dignity of every human being ... in the first place the right to life and the defense of life ... are at the heart of the church's message and action in the world ...

No country, not even the most powerful, can endure if it deprives its own children of this essential good."

During the Saturday night prayer vigil, August 14, 1993, at Cherry Creek State Park, the Pope addressed nearly a quarter of a million people:

"The family especially is under attack. And the sacred character of human life denied. Naturally, the weakest members of society are the most at risk: the unborn, children ...

There is spreading an anti-life mentality -- an attitude of hostility to life in the womb and life in its last stages.

Precisely when science and medicine are achieving a greater capacity to safeguard health and life, the threats against life are becoming more insidious.

Abortion and euthanasia -- the actual killing of another human being -- are hailed as 'rights' and solutions to 'problems.'"

On August 15, 1993, the Pope addressed over 375,000 people from 70 different countries at Cherry Creek State Park as a part of "World Youth Day," with Vice-President Al Gore in attendance:

"A 'culture of death' seeks to impose itself on our desire to live ...

As at no other time in history, the 'culture of death' has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, 'final solutions,' 'ethnic cleansings' and massive taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death ...

In much of contemporary thinking, any reference to a 'law' guaranteed by the Creator is absent. There remains only each individual's choice ...

Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong and are at the mercy of those with the power to 'create' opinion and impose it on others ..."

Pope John Paul II continued:

"The weakest members of society are the most at risk. The unborn, children, the sick, the handicapped, the old, the poor and unemployed, the immigrant and refugee ...

Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places ... This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is a time to preach it from the rooftops ...

You must feel the full urgency of the task. Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life ..."

Concluding his Youth Day address, he challenged:

"The church needs your energies, your enthusiasm, your youthful ideas, in order to make the Gospel of Life penetrate the fabric of society, transforming people's hearts and the structures of society in order to create a civilization of true justice and love."

Evangelist Billy Graham lauded Pope John Paul II's 11th papal encyclical, titled "Evangelium Vitae" (Gospel of Life), issued April of 1995, as:

"A forceful and thoughtful defense of the sacredness of human life in the face of the modern world's reckless march toward violence and needless death."

On October 8, 1995, at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport with Vice-President Al Gore, Pope John Paul admonished America again:

"At the center of the moral vision of your founding documents is the recognition of the rights of the human person and especially respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life in all conditions and at all stages of development.

I say to you again, America, in the light of your own tradition: love life, cherish life, defend life, from conception to natural death."

In 1981, he survived an assassination attempt by a fundamental Islamist, Mehmet Ali Ağca, whom he forgave during a prison visit.

In comparing religions, Pope John Paul wrote in Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1995):

"Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection ... The tragedy of redemption is completely absent ...

In Islam, all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside ..."

He continued:

"The god of the Koran is a god outside of the world, a god who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us ...

Not only the theology, but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity."

Having the third longest papal term in history, Pope John Paul II was the most recognized person in the world.

He met with Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush, as well as many other world leaders.

When he died, April 2, 2005, President Bush ordered flags flown half staff. In 2014, he was canonized a Saint in the Catholic Church.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II had appointed the Most Reverend Robert Sarah of Guinea, West Africa, as Archbishop. He was elevated to Cardinal in 2010.

Cardinal Sarah, September 1, 2010, rejected Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi's call for Europe to become Muslim as being disrespectful of all of Catholic Italy and the Pope:

"To speak of the European continent converting to Islam makes no sense because it is the people alone who decide consciously to be Christian, Muslim or to follow other religions."

Cardinal Robert Sarah stated in his synod on the family, October 12, 2015:

"Like two 'apocalyptic beasts' located on opposite poles: on the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism.

To use a slogan, we find ourselves between 'gender ideology and ISIS.' Islamic massacres and libertarian demands regularly contend for the front page of the newspapers.

From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West through quick and easy divorce, abortion, homosexual unions, euthanasia etc. (cf. Gender theory, the 'Femen', the LGBT lobby, IPPF ...)

On the other hand, the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy, female subservience, sexual slavery, child marriage etc. (cf. Al Qaeda, Isis, Boko Haram ...)"

Cardinal Sarah continued:

"Several clues enable us to intuit the same demonic origin of these two movements.

Unlike the Spirit of Truth that promotes communion in the distinction (perichoresis), these encourage confusion (homo-gamy) or subordination (poly-gamy).

Furthermore, they demand a universal and totalitarian rule, are violently intolerant, destroyers of families, society and the Church, and are openly Christianophobic.

'We are not contending against creatures of flesh and blood ....' We need to be inclusive and welcoming to all that is human; but what comes from the Enemy cannot and must not be assimilated. You can not join Christ and Belial! ..."

Sarah conluded:

"What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today."

Cardinal Robert Sarah stated at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., May 18, 2016:

"Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of sexual primal instincts, and truths are all relative ...

The legalization of same-sex marriage, the obligation to accept contraception within healthcare programs, and even 'bathroom bills' that allow men to use the women's restrooms and locker rooms.

Should not a biological man use the men's restroom? How simpler can that concept be? ..."

Cardinal Robert Sarah concluded his comments on the radical sexual agenda which:

"... cause damage to the little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love ... They are a scandal - a stumbling block - that prevent the most vulnerable from believing in such love ...

(Same-sex marriage) can never be a truthful solution ...

The result is hostility to Christians, and, increasingly, religious persecution ... I encourage you to truly make use of the freedom willed by your founding fathers, lest you lose it."

This sentiment was echoed by Italian Archbishop Carlo Liberati stated (Breitbart, January 14, 2017):

"We have a weak Christian faith ... Seminaries are empty ...

Italy and Europe live in a pagan and atheist way, they make laws that go against God and they have traditions that are proper of paganism....

All this paves the way to Islam ... Europe will soon be Muslim."

In Denver, Colorado, 1993, Pope John Paul stated:

"In spite of divisions among Christians, all those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ ... brothers and sisters in the Lord.'"

He addressed the Youth Day event, August 15, 1993:

"Young pilgrims, Christ needs you to enlighten the world ... The struggle will be long, and it needs each one of you."
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(Get William J. Federer's DVD series Miracles in American History: Episodes 1-40 www.AmericanMinute.com)

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Bruce's Byline . . .

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

More Thoughts On Optimism

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