Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Catholicism Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholicism Today. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Father Stu - Videos, Soundtrack, Clips, Interviews


 

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack from the drama film Father Stu (2022). The score music by Dickon Hinchliffe (The Lost Daughter, At Any Price, Misbehaviour).
Source: Father Stu Movie
Genre: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Music by Dickon Hinchliffe & Various Artists
Label: Sony Music
Format: Digital
Release Date: April 13, 2022
Father Stu (also known as simply Stu) is a 2022 American drama film written and directed by Rosalind Ross, produced by Columbia Pictures, distributed by Sony Pictures. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Jacki Weaver, Mel Gibson, Teresa Ruiz, Niko Nicotera, Cody Fern, Chiquita Fuller, and Carlos Leal.
Father Stu is set to premiere in the US on 13th April 2022.

The soundtrack album will be available for listening/purchasing on Amazon and Apple Music stores.


Father Stu: Montana Priest and Knight of Columbus




Tracklisting

1. Father Stu (2:24)
2. Wildest Dreams (0:53)
3. Remember Me (1:20)
4. Carmen (0:57)
5. Bill’s Truck (1:33)
6. Come and Get It (2:26)
7. Father and Son (1:11)
8. Mary (1:45)
9. Resisting Arrest (1:07)
10. You Ain’t That Lucky (1:39)
11. You’re Wrapped (1:22)
12. I’m Doing This (0:48)
13. The Return (1:47)
14. Roommates (1:27)
15. Bill’s Trailer (0:58)
16. Ordained (1:19)
17. Big Sky (1:31)
18. Ain’t the Hill to Die On (1:45)
19. Leaving (1:21)
20. My Support (1:05)
21. Late Bloomers (3:18)


I never read film reviews or watch trailers before watching a flick. With Father Stu it would have totally destroyed the story and its many surprises. Below is a compilation of Wahlberg's newest role including select interviews. Hence, bookmark this page but go first to see the film before looking at the site.
Secondly, two scenes to pay especial attention to: the bar scene and the dining scene at the apartment. They are central foci to all the before-and-after of Father Stu's life. Enjoy.
- re slater


Father Stu - Official Trailer



Brett Young - Long Way Home (From The Motion Picture “Father Stu” / Lyric Video)



FATHER STU – You Don’t Know Stu | Path to Priesthood



Mark Wahlberg and Bishop Barron Discuss "Father Stu"



Friends remember Father Stu ahead of film release



Mark Wahlberg on Conversation with Cardinal Dolan





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Soundtrack Site



Dear Readers. I did not have the time to review every video here but if there are any video duplicates please mention them to me so I may strike them out. 


 

Friday, February 15, 2013

The State of the Catholic Church, circa 2013

 
 
February 12, 2013
 
The Disastrous Influence of Pope Benedict XVI
 
Posted by
 
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Spare me any more reverential coverage about Pope Benedict XVI and his decision to give up his office. On a personal level, I wish him well. At the age of eighty-five and increasingly infirm, he surely deserves a rest. But as far as his record goes, he can’t leave office a moment too soon. His lengthy tenure at the Vatican, which included more than twenty years as the Catholic Church’s chief theological enforcer before he became Pope, in 2005, has been little short of disastrous. By setting its face against the modern world in general, and by dragging its feet in response to one of the worst scandals since the Reformation, Benedict’s Vatican has called the Church’s future into question, needlessly alienating countless people around the world who were brought up in its teachings.
 
Not that it matters much, but you can count me among them. When I was a boy, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the nuns at Sacred Heart Primary School taught my classmates and me the New Testament from slim paperbacks with embossed navy-blue covers. We each got four of them: “The Good News According to Luke,” The Good News According to Matthew,” “The Good News According to Mark,” and “The Good News According to John.” Of the four gospels, the most thumbed, by far, were those of Luke, which contains many of Jesus’s parables, and Matthew, which features the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…”
 
It was the early seventies, an era of hope and optimism for many Catholics. Following the lengthy Second Vatican Council, called by Pope John XXIII in 1959, the Church had made a determined effort to modernize some of its doctrines and practices. Masses, which for many centuries had been confined to Latin, were now celebrated in other languages. Priests, who traditionally faced the altar during services, had been instructed to face their congregations and invite them to participate. In place of a stultifying focus on ancient dogmas and ceremonies, there was a return to the actual teachings of Jesus, which were being interpreted in increasingly liberal and egalitarian ways, as evidenced by the words of a popular folk hymn we used to sing, a few lines of which I recount from memory:
He sent me to give the Good News to the poor.
Tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more.
Tell blind people that they can see,
And set the downtrodden free.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the church’s concern with bread-and-butter issues had been expressed from the top. In 1967, Pope Paul VI, John XXIII’s successor, issued “Populorum Progressio,” an encyclical on “the development of peoples,” which asserted that the global economy should serve the many, not just the few. Updating the Church’s teachings to take account of widespread poverty and inequality, the Pontiff recognized the right to a just wage, security of employment, and decent working conditions. He even recognized the right to join a union.
 
Not everybody shared the vision of Catholicism as an urgent and uplifting force for social justice, though many people in South America and other developing areas of the world did. (In some places, it became known as “liberation theology,” a phrase coined by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez.) Many older priests, including the venerable Canon Flynn, who oversaw my local church, Our Lady of Lourdes, had little time for innovations. They were content to celebrate the sacraments as they always had, saying Mass every day, issuing the last rites to stricken parishioners, and doling out “three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys” to penitents, such as my young self, who came to confess their sins. But the energy and the future of the church appeared to rest with the modernizers.
 
This was despite the fact that Paul VI also reaffirmed many of the Vatican’s traditional teachings on social issues, such as extramarital sex, birth control, homosexuality, and enforced celibacy for priests and nuns. Paul was hardly a revolutionary. He wasn’t willing to challenge the harsh, self-denying ordinances that a series of Roman popes had foisted on Christianity during the Middle Ages. But in calling for peace and social justice, in reaching out to other faiths, in traveling extensively—he was known as “the Pilgrim Pope”—and in making some reforms at the Vatican, such as surrendering his tiara (the papal crown) and barring cardinals over the age of eighty from voting in papal elections, he seemed interested in reconciling the Church to modern reality.
 
With the arrival of Pope John Paul II, in 1979, all that started to change. In many ways, Karol Wojtyla was an admirable man: a part of the Polish resistance against the Nazis; a vocal opponent of wars and militarism (in 2003, he criticized the invasion of Iraq); a supporter of canceling debts in the developing world; and a massively charismatic leader. In theological and practical terms, though, he was a dreadful throwback. With the Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, at his side, as the Vatican’s chief theologian, he set about unmaking much of the modernization project of the previous twenty years. He issued lengthy and emphatic rulings condemning abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. He dismissed calls for the relaxation of the celibacy rules for priests, and for the ordination of women. He criticized liberation theology and surrounded himself with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Ratzinger. Within the hierarchy of the Church, questioning traditional teachings, even gently, became a potential career-ender.
 
After John Paul died, in 2005, and Ratzinger took over, the conservative counter-offensive continued. Indeed, it intensified. The Vatican eased restrictions on the Latin Mass and invited back into the Church some excommunicated members of the Society of Saint Pius X, an ultra-conservative group dedicated to reversing the Second Vatican Council. (One member of the group, an English bishop called Richard Williamson, turned out to be a Holocaust denier. Last year, belatedly, the Society expelled him.) In criticizing the “culture of relativism” in modern societies, and “the anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom,” Benedict made clear that he saw his primary mission not as extending and enlarging the Catholic Church but as purifying it, by which he didn’t just mean dealing with the child-abuse scandal. He meant casting off extraneous growths and getting the Church back to what he saw as its proper roots. If this process alienated some current and former members of the faith, so be it. Benedict said numerous times that the Church might well be healthier if it was smaller.
 
In a 2011 interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Hans Küng, a dissident Swiss theologian who knew Pope Benedict when they were both young priests in Germany, made a telling comparison between him and Vladimir Putin, pointing out that the two leaders had inherited a series of democratic reforms they set out to reverse. Putin and Benedict both “placed their former associates in key positions and sidelined those they didn’t like,” Küng said. He added:
One could draw other parallels: the disempowerment of the Russian parliament and the Vatican Synod of Bishops, the degradation of Russian provincial governors and of Catholic bishops to make them nothing but recipients of orders; a conformist ‘nomenclature’; and a resistance to real reforms.… Under the German pope, a small, primarily Italian clique of yes-men, people with no sympathy for the calls to reform, were allowed to come into power. They are partly responsible for the stagnation that stifles every attempt at modernization of the church system.
The strategy of circling the wagons and seeking to defy the world was displayed, to terrible effect, in the Church’s reaction to the child-abuse scandal. As the Vatican official that John Paul II asked to deal with the crisis when it broke, Benedict was presented with extensive evidence that sexual abuse was widespread and tolerated by church authorities. But it wasn’t until many years later, when tremendous damage had already been done and many further crimes had been committed, that Benedict, as Pope, apologized for the acts of pedophiles in cassocks, adopted a zero-tolerance policy for the Church, and met with some of the victims. Even then, though, say some critics, he and his colleagues in the Vatican resisted efforts to find and punish the perpetrators.
 
“His record was terrible,” David Clohessy, executive director of the twelve-thousand-strong Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, told The Guardian. “He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the Church, yet he has done precious little to protect children.” From Ireland, where investigations are continuing into extensive abuse at church-run orphanages and schools, John Kelly, one of the founders of the country’s Survivors of Child Abuse group, said, “I’m afraid to say Pope Benedict won’t be missed, as the Vatican continued to block proper investigations into the abuse scandals during his term in office.… For us, he broke his word.”
 
As a result of the sex scandals and the Vatican’s futile attempt to turn back the clock, Pope Benedict’s Church is in increasingly perilous shape. Throughout much of the developed world, the number of people attending services is declining steadily, and yet there is a tremendous shortage of priests. In places like Ireland and Benedict’s own Germany, young people are deserting the Church in droves. Even in developing countries like Brazil, the Church is facing challenges from other creeds.
 
Of course, in a religion of more than a billion, there are some bright spots and some inspiring individuals. When I went home to Leeds not so long ago, I found that an enthusiastic young Polish priest had taken over my childhood church and was trying to save it from closure. To do some good, and raise some money, he was planning to turn the rectory into a halfway house for young offenders. Listening to him celebrating Mass like a man possessed, I was reminded of the Catholicism of the Sermon on the Mount and of St. Francis of Assisi—the Catholicism that the nuns had tried to drill into me decades before.
 
In Rome, however, the conservative theologians and placeholders are still running the show. Sadly, that is likely to continue. “During [Benedict’s] time in office,” Küng noted, “he has ordained so many conservative cardinals, that amongst them is hardly a single person to be found who could lead the Church out of its multifaceted crisis.”
 
Photograph: Stefano Dal Pozzolo/Getty.
 
 
 
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Addendum
 
 
 
Victims' complaint to the international criminal court accuses Pope Benedict and three others of failing to prevent abusers
 
Pope accused of crimes against humanity by victims of sex abuse
 
guardian.co.uk,
 
Pope Benedict XVI
 
Pope Benedict XVI, who has been cited in a complaint to the international criminal court.
Photograph: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images
 
 
Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have accused the pope, the Vatican secretary of state and two other high-ranking Holy See officials of crimes against humanity, in a formal complaint to the international criminal court (ICC).
 
The submission, lodged at The Hague on Tuesday, accuses the four men not only of failing to prevent or punish perpetrators of rape and sexual violence but also of engaging in the "systematic and widespread" practice of concealing sexual crimes around the world.
 
It includes individual cases of abuse where letters and documents between Vatican officials and others show a refusal to co-operate with law enforcement agencies seeking to pursue suspects, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based organisation that represents the claimants.
 
Pam Spees, human rights attorney with CCR, said: "The point of this is to look at it from a higher altitude. You zoom out and the practices are identical: whistleblowers are punished, the refusal of the Vatican to co-operate with law enforcement agencies. You see the protection of priests and leaving them in the ministry and because of these decisions other children are raped and sexually assaulted."
She said: "It's not only the facts of the abuse but the way that the church deepened the harm in sometimes irreparable ways."
 
According to the document filed by CCR, the pope, as head of the Catholic church, is ultimately responsible for the sexual abuse of children by priests and for the cover-ups of that abuse. The group argues that he and others have "direct and superior responsibility" for the crimes of those ranked below them, similar to a military chain of command.
 
The others named in the complaint are Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and former Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Tarcissio Bertone, now secretary of state, who previously served at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the organisation tasked with handling sexual abuse cases under the pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger; and Cardinal William Lavada, head of the CDF, whose handling of previous sexual abuse cases has been criticised in the past.
 
Megan Petersen, from Minnesota, is one of two named US victims whose cases have been included in the complaint to the ICC. Petersen was awarded $750,000 (£500,000) last week in a civil claim against Crookston diocese, in which she alleged that a priest, Joseph Jeyapaul, had raped her repeatedly as a child.
 
Speaking at The Hague, where the complaint was being launched, Petersen said of Jeyapaul: "He was a man of God and I was very devout. I wanted to be a nun. I trusted him.
 
"Part of why I'm here is to protect kids. My perpetrator is still serving among kids and vulnerable adults, despite there being criminal charges against him. Ratzinger is the head of this organisation and these are his sheep, his flock. I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen to another child." Jeyapaul has denied the abuse from India, where he is serving as a priest.
 
Amnesty International's latest annual human rights report, which cited the Holy See for the first time, concluded there was widespread evidence of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy over past decades, and an "enduring failure" of the Catholic church to seek redress.