Twenty-Five Things that Caught My Eye Today: China, Catholic Schools, Prayer & More (July 20, 2020)

1.  China tells Christians to renounce faith in Jesus & worship President Xi Jinping instead

2. Daily Mail: Horrifying moment kindergarten pupils are savagely beaten by their teachers for “failing to nap” in China

3. Michael Pompeo: 21st Anniversary of the PRC Government’s Persecution of Falun Gong

We call on the PRC government to immediately end its depraved abuse and mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, release those imprisoned due to their beliefs, such as Ma Zhenyu, and address the whereabouts of missing practitioners.  Twenty-one years of persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is far too long, and it must end.

4. Newsweek: Catholic Churches Are Being Desecrated Across France

5. The Gift of Blackness to the Church: An Interview with EWTN’s Gloria Purvis

if you’re conditioned from an early age, sometimes you don’t see it because it is the water in which we swim, the air which we breathe, but when you have that awakening it’s a liberating thing to say “I am a child of God and I’m a gift.” And what he’s given me is a gift that I will freely share within the Church.

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7. Daily Mail: Nazi concentration camp guard apologizes to Holocaust victims who “went through the hell of this madness” as he awaits verdict in the trial of 5,230 prisoners

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https://twitter.com/dandarling/status/1285280760098967552

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12. Christopher F. Rufo: The Harm in “Harm Reduction”

Though harm reduction has brought some benefits, such as reducing the transmission of HIV, it has also compounded the problems of addiction, homelessness, and public disorder. Vancouver’s concentration of services in its own opioid district, the Downtown Eastside, has created a veritable death trap for addicts around British Columbia, who travel there to obtain drugs, overdose, and then perish in the streets.

13. Nathaniel Peters: The Beautiful Uselessness of Learning

14. Judith Miller: The Illiberal Liberal Media

15. Heather King: The Ultimate Scapegoat

Culturally we have no sense of our own sin, or at least no outlet for it, so we’re reduced to blaming — and eventually tearing apart — one another. We have no altar before which to kneel, so we kneel before a flag or, equally if not more weirdly, one another.

16. On J.I. Packer:

His leadership sprang from deeply rooted convictions about God, the Bible, doctrine, and the church, and his determination to defend orthodoxy and tackle key theological issues in public debate, often entering into controversy that cost him personally. Yet these adverse reactions and deep wounds did not deter him from steering a straight and steady course, providing resources to fellow evangelicals who saw in Packer the champion of their movement.

17. Covid-19: Intensive care mortality has fallen by a third since pandemic began, researchers find

18.  At least 9 Catholic bishops have died from the coronavirus

19. Nicole Stella Garnett: Why We Still Need Catholic Schools

the culture and practices of Catholic schools incorporate distinctively Catholic elements. These include the belief in objective truth and an understanding that faith and reason are not incompatible; the conviction that all children—regardless of life circumstances—are formed in the image and likeness of a loving God and that Catholic educators have a duty to help them reach their God-given potential; an understanding that personal success and good character flow not only from obeying rules but also from cultivating good habits and virtue; and a conviction that God calls us to serve the common good, rather than simply maximize our individual achievement

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21. Ellen Koneck: Almost Absent: Prayer in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

I suppose I knew that God was in the dark room with me, or was the dark room, surrounding me. I knew that God sat, quiet, still, almost absent, almost dead, inaudible breath but yet alongside me. God who died and teeters near death with us. God who mourned and continues to mourn with us. My only God, the only God I could bear or bother with. I beckon her, my former, faithful self, to join me here, to trade in language and ritual and everything we’ve known for this beatific blackness.

21. The Sweet Value of Literature

22. The Book Review in Quarantine

Despite the adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” there’s actually a lot that editors can pick up from a printed book. It often arrives with press materials that provide context, and its cover — whether finished or temporary — can convey a strong message from the publishers. Blurbs from other authors and notable people situate the book in a larger cultural conversation.

23. Brad Miner: The Veil

24. Aid to the Church in Need: Gravely damaged in war, Cathedral of St. Elijah in Aleppo rises from the ashes

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