Papal Craziness:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Peres-the-pope-and-a-plan-for-world-peace-374893
Peres, the pope and a plan for world peace
Peres proposes ‘UN for religions’ to pope at Vatican
Shimon Peres, a patriarch of today’s Israel, wants to leave a legacy. Most in this mode aim for things like monuments, memoirs and money. Peres’s aim is world peace. And in his opinion, Pope Francis, a man he calls “Holy Father,” is the one to make it happen. Vatican spokesmen concur, as does Italy’s representative for Islam, who “fully agrees.”
Two months after completing his term as Israel’s ninth president, 91-year-old
Shimon Peres was pounding stony pavement at the Vatican.
On September 4, 2014, he was granted an impressive 45-minute meeting with Catholicism’s popular pontiff, a man Peres asserts is more powerful than the United Nations for advocating peace.
The problem, as Peres sees it, is that “in the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationality. Today, however, they are being waged primarily in the name of religion.”
In an exclusive interview with the Catholic periodical, Famiglia Cristiana (The Christian Family), Peres divulged his plans: “Perhaps for the first time in history, the Holy Father is a leader not only respected by many people, but also by different religions and their leaders.”
“In fact,” Peres clarified, “he is perhaps the only truly respected leader” in the world today.
While Francis has refrained from commenting on Peres’s assessment, that same silence permits it. It also permits the framework of Peres’s idea to be tested in the crucible of world opinion.
“The United Nations has had its day,” Peres opined. “What we need is an organization of United Religions, a United Nations of religions.”
“This will be the best way,” he continued, “to fight terrorists who kill in the name of faith.”
Accordingly, “there should be a Charter of United Religions, just as there is a UN Charter. This is what I have proposed to the pope.”
Fulvio Scaglione, deputy managing editor of Famiglia Cristiana, asked, “Would you see the pope as the leader of United Religions?” “Yes,” Peres replied. And not only because Francis is a globally respected leader. He is also the best choice because the world needs “an indisputable moral authority that says out loud, “No, God does not want this and will not allow it. We must fight against exploitation in the name of God.”
Scaglione did not challenge Peres with the question begging to be asked: If abuse of God’s name is condemned in God’s name, could this not also be, or become, abusive? There is not a public transcript of the meeting between Peres and the pope. But a significant few who are close to Francis had a lot to say about it. All of them were cautious about an institutionalized United Religions organization.
They did not reject it, but they were careful not to endorse it.
The Vatican spokesman for the encounter is Frederico Lombardi, a Jesuit priest. The pope listened to Peres, he said, but “made no personal commitment.” He also reminded Peres that the Vatican already has two “suitable” offices for interreligious initiatives.
Andrea Riccardi is founder of Sant’Egidio, an international Catholic lay community committed to ecumenism. He praised Peres for “giving so much weight to the spiritual dimension” in an “encounter with all religions.” At the same time, however, Riccardi cautioned against a United Religions organization, calling it “difficult to see an institutionalization of meetings” between religions.
While Catholic spokesmen were cautious about Peres’s organizational proposal, they were unambiguous in support of his assessment of their pope. Riccardi agreed that Francis “has very strong moral leadership” that “should continue in service to the unity of the human family.”
The Vatican’s representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, was effusive about Peres’s “perception of Pope Francis, not only as leader of the Catholic Church, but also as a symbol of all religion in the modern world. This is,” he said, “a significant turning point in history.”
Italy’s spokesman for Islam liked everything that Peres said. Handsome, articulate and Western in his manner, Yahya Pallavicini is imam of the al-Wahid Mosque in Milan and vice president of the Islamic Religious Community of Italy, a.k.a. Coreis, a community solicitous toward Christians and Jews.
Pallavicini praised Peres as “a man particularly inspired, combining Jewish faith with political experience. I fully agree” with his proposal to the pope, he said.
In fact, he continued, “Pope Francis may be the most authoritative representative” of “spiritually sensitive” religious leaders in the world today. “I, a Muslim, have much to learn from him,” he said.
If one of the Vatican’s objectives was to test worldwide reaction to Peres’s proposal, response to date indicates mild interest. Outside Italy, mainstream media has barely acknowledged the encounter. Those that have reported it treat it more as a human interest story than hard news.
Here and there voices in pulpits and cyberspace cry danger, but Internet statistics indicate that very few are listening.
If Peres’s proposal to the pope gains traction, it will create a global religious union initiated by representatives of the world’s three monotheistic religions, a United Religions organization that blends its expression from one-third Judaism, one-third Christianity and one-third Islam. And
apparently led from the seven hills of Rome.
The author is the Middle East correspondent and Jerusalem Bureau Chief for IRN-USA Network News. Follow him on Twitter @BrianSchrauger. Originally published at BridgesForPeace.com.
THE BAD NEWS arrived two days later, in the form of the following news item from The Jerusalem Post, which reports on a meeting between Shimon Peres, Pope Francis and Shayhk Pallavicini on the advisability of uniting Judaism, Christianity and Islam in a United Religions organization, which could actually result at one point in a new syncretistic religion, headed by (no matter how outlandish this may seem) Pope Francis himself. The former Prime Minister of Israel proposed it; Shaykh Pallavicini said he was all for it; the Pope remained non-committal. Here is the article, followed by our response:
Russ jones 662-638-3233 rjones @ usaradionetwork.com
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-santa-marta-what-we-dare-not-hope-for
Pope at Santa Marta: What we dare not hope for
2014-10-10 Vatican Radio
(Vatican Radio) We ask for a lot of things when we pray, but the greatest gift that God can give us is the Holy Spirit. This was Pope Francis’ reflection Thursday morning at Mass in Santa Marta, commenting on the Gospel of the day, which presents the parable of the man who gets what he needs because of his persistence.
Pope Francis began his homily by noting that “God has so much mercy” and observing that in the Collect we begin by asking God for forgiveness and to “obtain what prayer does not dare to hope for”:
“This got me thinking: it is precisely the mercy of God not only to forgive – we all know that – but to be generous and give more and more … We asked: ‘And obtain what prayer does not dare to hope for’. When we pray we might ask for this [intention] or that [intention] and He always gives us more, much more!”.
The Pope underlined three key words in the Gospel: “Friend, the Father and gift”. Jesus shows the disciples what prayer is. It is like a man who goes to a friend at midnight asking
for something. In life – he observes – “There are truest friends” who really give their all. “There are others who are good friends more or less”, but the Bible tells us, ‘one, two, or three … no more!’. Then, others who are friends, but not like these”. And even if we are demanding and intrusive “the bond of friendship means that we are given what we ask”.
“Jesus goes a step further and speaks of the Father: What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?'”.
The Pope continued – “not only the friend who accompanies us on our journey of life helps us and gives us what we ask, but Our Father in heaven” who “loves us so much and of whom Jesus said that He cares about feeding the birds in the field. Jesus wants to awaken faith in prayer” and says: “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened “. “This – says Pope Francis – is the prayer: ask, seek and knock at the heart of God.” And the Father “gifts the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”.
“This is the gift, this is God’s added extra. God never gives you a gift, something that you ask for, without wrapping it up well, without adding something extra to make it even more beautiful. And that little bit more that the Lord, the Father gives us, is the Spirit. The true gift of the Father is the one that prayer does not dare to hope for. ‘I ask for this grace; I ask for this, I knock and pray so much… I only hope that you will give me this’. And He who is Father, will give me that and more: He will give me the gift of the Holy Spirit”.
“You pray – said the Pope – with a friend, who is your companion on life’s journey, you pray with the Father and you pray in the Holy Spirit. The friend is Jesus”:
“He accompanies us and teaches us to pray. And our prayer should be Trinitarian. So often [people ask]: ‘But do you believe?’: ‘Yes! Yes! ‘; ‘What do you believe in?’; ‘In God!’; ‘But what is God for you?’; ‘God, God’. But God does not exist: Do not be shocked! So God does not exist! There is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they are persons, they are not some vague idea in the clouds … This God spray does not exist! The three persons exist! Jesus is our companion on the journey who gives us what we ask; the Father who cares for us and loves us; and the Holy Spirit is the gift, the extra gift from the Father, that our consciousness does not dare to hope for”.