1.
“(Qaraqosh) lives in our blood because it is our rock. And all of Iraq lives in our blood, b/c it is our original land. We were forcibly displaced from it because of ISIS, who wanted to kill us…so we had to migrate from the country to a safe place,” said one Iraqi interviewee. https://t.co/0Yg4prvhAa
— Kelsey Wicks (@justforkwicks) April 12, 2022
2. Elizabeth Lev: Easter through her eyes: Art that exalts the women of the Resurrection
3.
The Christians of Egypt are suffering. In a matter of a week, a Coptic priest was stabbed to death, a Coptic mother & child were kidnapped, beaten, & forcibly converted to Islam, & a Coptic child was forced to stop eating during fasting hours. More people should know about this.
— Mariam Wahba (@themariamwahba) April 13, 2022
4. Crux: Aid group labels persecution of Christians in Nigeria a ‘genocide’
YAOUNDÈ, Cameroon – After another attack on a Christian community in Nigeria, a major human rights organization is claiming the killing of Christians in the country amounts to a genocide.
“Christians are killed daily in Nigeria,” said Addison Parker of the U.S.-based International Christian Concern (ICC) after an April 4 attack by Fulani herdsmen that left three Christians dead.
The April attack came just two weeks after a March 23 attack that left at least 34 people dead.
5. Christian Entity Urges International Community to Pressure Nigeria after Kaduna Attacks
6. The Jerusalem Post: Why persecution of Christians is a Jewish concern
In today’s world, an attack on Christians is an attack on Jews. Is there any doubt that those who have murdered Christians for their faith in Afghanistan, Nigeria, or Pakistan would kill any Jew they could get their hands on? Do we really believe that countries that crack down on public expressions of Christian faith are fine with Judaism? In the 21st century, are there any enemies of Christianity who are not at least as passionately enemies of the Jews and for the same reasons?
7. Elderly Ukrainian woman says she was raped after Russians took her village: “I wish he had killed me instead of what he did”
8. Inés San Martín: At least 7 Caritas workers killed by Russian tank attack in Mariupol
9.
“The wily devil, when he loses, what can he do? Only destroy.”
— Father Ruslan Mikhalkiv on the strange pattern of destruction at his seminary in formerly Russian-occupied territory outside Kyiv. 🇺🇦https://t.co/3UkrhYpqBZ
— Luke Coppen (@LukeCoppen) April 11, 2022
10.
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has prayed at the site of a mass grave in the recently liberated city of Bucha. https://t.co/DvsEUd9Uc1
— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) April 8, 2022
11. Elise Italiano Ureneck: The things they carry in Ukraine
I had to turn the television off one afternoon after watching a young man say goodbye to his wife and children, only later to turn it on again to see someone else’s children being treated for life-altering injuries in a hospital.
“I watched my mother die,” a battered girl said to the camera.
It is hard to know what to say in the face of such devastation. When I asked my uncle, a Vietnam War veteran, how he was doing with the news, he quietly but firmly said to me, “All war is senseless.”
His remarks prompted me to revisit “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien’s 1990 fictional masterpiece on the Vietnam War.
The first chapter is to my mind one of the greatest openings to a book ever written. O’Brien introduces his servicemen by detailing the things that they carry — what they brought with them overseas, what weapons and supplies they were required to have based on their rank and mission, what good luck charms they placed in their pockets for their own safekeeping.
With each long, detailed list, the absurdity of war becomes clearer.
Interwoven with these material items O’Brien chronicles are immaterial things the men carried with them:
“For the most part, they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity.”
“They carried the land itself — Vietnam, the place, the soil — a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces.”
“They carried all of the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing — these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”
As the war in Ukraine presses on, I have been thinking about this last line in particular.
12. This Catholic parish is helping to bring fresh water to a poor Nigerian village
13. Naomi Schaefer Riley: Attacks on Faith-Based Foster Care Continue
Aside from violating religious freedom, restrictions on faith-based foster care make it harder for children to get the help they need. Earlier this year, Alaska was reported to have such a severe shortage of foster homes that children were sleeping in state offices. There are 3,000 children in the state system but only 650 homes licensed to host a child. Under such circumstances, shouldn’t the foster care system take an all-hands-on-deck approach?
14. More from Naomi: Trivializing drug use is hurting the working class
When we say that drug use is not a big deal, that it can be easily managed to not interfere with a productive life, we are not telling the truth about what it takes to live a middle-class life in America. Though it is out of fashion to suggest that working hard can lead to upward mobility, the truth is that drug use will make that journey even less likely.
15.
"Today many of our positions have been amply vindicated. Yet the soul searching this episode should have caused among public health officials has largely failed to occur. Instead, the lesson seems to be: Dissent at your own risk." https://t.co/5sMVUoJ3HB
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) April 12, 2022
16. Washington Post columnist arrested in Moscow after criticizing Putin
17.
"Children easily grew frustrated with one another in group settings. They struggled with the concept of taking turns, pushing each other out of the way to see a caterpillar she was holding in her palm…" https://t.co/bibKP7BZbA
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) April 12, 2022
18. Institute for Family Studies: How Much Is Social Media to Blame for Teens’ Declining Mental Health?
19. Randall Smith: Ukraine’s Challenge – to Us
Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country because they believe the country is something worth fighting and sacrificing for. They would not do that if they believed that their country’s only value was in the individual benefits it could provide for them.
That willingness to fight and sacrifice should challenge us to ask what we think the state is for. Does it exist to serve our personal self-interests? Or is it meant to be an ordered unity serving the common good? The way most politicians run for office and the way many people vote suggests the second option rarely occurs to them.
I fear the new motto is: “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.”
20. Jonathan Culbreath: Mysticism Is a Social Priority
“A life of prayer is an absolutely universal human vocation,” said Cardinal Daniélou, which makes it a “political problem” as well.
21. 11 Quotes from ‘Father Stu’ that will empower you to face life’s struggles
“My suffering is a gift from God. In this life, no matter how long it lasts, it’s a momentary affliction preparing us for eternal glory.”
….
“We shouldn’t pray for an easy life, but the strength to endure a difficult one.”
22. Benedict XVI was ‘a prophet’ of Church’s future, Pope Francis tells Malta’s Jesuits
Pope Francis has described Benedict XVI as “a prophet” for predicting that the Catholic Church would become a smaller but more faithful institution in the future.
Speaking during a private meeting with Jesuit priests and seminarians earlier this month, the pope said he believed that this was one of the pope emeritus’ most “profound intuitions.”
“Pope Benedict was a prophet of this Church of the future, a Church that will become smaller, lose many privileges, be more humble and authentic and find energy for the essential,” Pope Francis said during the meeting with Jesuits at the apostolic nunciature in Malta on April 3.
“It will be a Church that is more spiritual, poorer, and less political: a Church of the little ones.”
23. Bishop Robert Barron: Providence and Vocation in “Father Stu”
A theme deeply related to providence is that of vocation or calling. Our culture highly privileges the rights, freedom, and prerogative of the individual. We celebrate, accordingly, those people who stand against the expectations of their families, friends, or traditions and make their own decisions, following their own chosen path. But this is repugnant to the Bible. The scriptural authors are interested, not in self-determination, but in the process by which a person awakens to God’s call. They celebrate those who enact, not the ego-drama, but the theo-drama, who abide, not by their own voice, but by God’s. They furthermore know that God’s call, once discerned, is practically irresistible. Once someone knows what God wants for him, he will do anything, overcome any obstacle, face down any opposition, in order to follow that divine directive. For biblical examples of this principle, think of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Jeremiah, or Paul. Stuart Long belongs, in his own way, in that great tradition, for having discerned that God wanted him to be a priest, he faced down the opposition of his mother, his father, his girlfriend, many of the people in his parish, the seminary rector, and even some of his seminary classmates. Moreover, he remained faithful to his calling when he was afflicted with the degenerative muscle disease that would eventually kill him. “Here I am; send me” (Isa. 6:8), said the prophet Isaiah, and Fr. Stu said the same thing.
I wonder, again, how many devout Christians understand that the discernment of their vocation is the most important psychological and spiritual move that they will ever make, that every other decision they make in their lives is secondary. And I wonder how many have experienced the real joy and excitement of surrendering to God’s call? What I sensed, especially in the second half of Father Stu, is how this man, despite everything, retained the joy of knowing he was cooperating with a divine purpose. That is the joy that, as the Bible says, no one can take from you (John 16:22).
If you want to see a concrete and contemporary enactment of these two great biblical principles, you could do a lot worse than to watch Father Stu.
24: Francis X. Maier: The Simplicity of Father Stu
25. Michelle La Rosa: Meet Fr. Stu – the real priest, and true story, behind Mark Wahlberg’s new movie
26.
Maggie Garnett’s latest and last Irish Rover article. Fitting because (big news), she will enter formation with the Sisters of Life this fall. Prayers for her (and her parents) appreciated. @RickGarnett https://t.co/TMHZbjf7yl
— Nicole Garnett (@nsgarnett) April 14, 2022