Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Updates On Earlier Posts.

In an earlier post [The Red Envelope Project] I described a grassroots plan to send President Obama empty red envelopes with the following message written on the back;

"This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception."

It wasn't easy finding red envelopes. Although I wasn't able to find any locally, I was able to order a package of 50 from Office Depot.
50 envelopes...$4.49....no shipping.

Of course, it took a few days for the envelopes to arrive but, arrive they did.
Mailing 50 envelopes at 42 cents each comes to $21 postage.....a good Lenten penance.

In the post written the Friday before St. Valentine's Day, I mentioned receiving two books I'd ordered from Amazon.com . Namely:
No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers.
by Michael Novak.
and
Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam.
by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera.

Honestly, I haven't had time to read "Without Roots" but I have started reading "No One Sees God."
I doubt that any review I'd write of that book would do it justice. Suffice to say, after starting the book, I ordered another copy to give as a birthday gift. I'd like a couple of atheist/agnostic acquaintances to read the book too, but I seriously doubt they would appreciate the gesture.

In January, I wrote a piece entitled Am I being Intolerant? in which I described my disdain for a "pro-choice, Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion" and asked if I was being intolerant in my attitude towards her.
I was expecting comments from my regular readers, but none did.

I only just recently received an anonymous comment from someone telling me that I was being intolerant towards the person in question. The rather lengthy comment was written by someone who is, obviously, not Catholic and clueless as to what I was really writing about.

Concerning tolerance, in a recent address delivered at the University of Toronto, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver said it better than I ever could;

"We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty -- these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it's never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners."

1 comment:

Larry Denninger said...

Fr Corapi said that we are to be tolerant of those things that are good, but we are not to tolerate anything evil, under any circumstances.

Come to think about it, that's probably why Christians were martyred. They refused to tolerate the demands to recant their faith.

Which makes their murderers...intolerant. Funny that.