Video: President addressing nation - Osama Bin Laden is dead

This post may be updated tomorrow with more links. Big crowds are gathering in Washington DC and in New York City at Ground Zero and in Times Square. You can see both live on Fox News and CNN.

The AP video cuts to the chase, cutting off the introductory part.

UPDATE 1

Massive Crowds Gathering in Washington DC and in New York
I can't embed this, so follow this link to CNN of the crowds gathering at the White House - yelling, U-S-A! U-S-A! There are far more there now than seen in the video clip taken soon after Obama addressed the nation.

People are out in the streets of New York City at Ground Zero. Reporters are saying fire engines out honking too. CNN has live video footage of both crowds on a split screen. Fox News aslo has cameras on the crowd outside the White House, and in Times Square.

UPDATE 2:

From a Catholic perspective, Father Z offers this thought:

So, Usama bin Laden is dead. He has now gone before the Just Judge and has received whatever eternal reward he merited.


I may say a prayer that he repented and God is merciful. I wonder if I will really be saying it for his sake or for my own.


I am bit concerned at the cameras on the young people jumping around like IDIOTS whooping and hollering because someone was killed....


I can understand the urge to celebrate that a paragraph of a chapter of US history has been brought to an end. I would rather see Americans welcome this news with a quiet nod of the head than with squealing in the streets. It seems to me that his death isn’t something to strut about as if it were a gold medal win at the Olympics.


I am also grateful to the military and intelligence personnel who were involved. Hard, dangerous, quite, anonymous work for the sake of the safety of others.

Point well taken.  I don't feel I'm rejoicing in his death.  It's not just that a chapter was closed. Rather, for me, it is that a man who has shown himself to be a mastermind behind mass murder, will no longer be at the game. It's not just death of Christians and Jews; this man has been victimizing Muslims, as well.  I would have been just as happy had he been captured and brought to justice.

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Pope Benedict's gripping Christmas address to the Roman Curia

Pope Benedict released a powerful message to the Roman Curia.  It was sobering to read, yet he said, what needed to be said.  While he talked a great deal about the clerical sex abuse crisis, he also talked about the culture we live in today and how we are descending into moral decay.  This is something well worth reading.  It seems long, but in reality it is only about a 10 minute read. This is powerful.  It covers far more than just the clerical sex abuse crisis. 
Rather glancing at selective quotes from it, just go read it! I will start you out with the first few paragraphs:

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
ON THE OCCASION OF CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
TO THE ROMAN CURIA


Sala Regia
Monday, 20 December 2010


Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,


It gives me great pleasure to be here with you, dear Members of the College of Cardinals and Representatives of the Roman Curia and the Governatorato, for this traditional gathering. I extend a cordial greeting to each one of you, beginning with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, whom I thank for his sentiments of devotion and communion and for the warm good wishes that he expressed to me on behalf of all of you. Prope est jam Dominus, venite, adoremus! As one family let us contemplate the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us, as the Cardinal Dean has said. I gladly reciprocate his good wishes and I would like to thank all of you most sincerely, including the Papal Representatives all over the world, for the able and generous contribution that each of you makes to the Vicar of Christ and to the Church.


Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Repeatedly during the season of Advent the Church’s liturgy prays in these or similar words. They are invocations that were probably formulated as the Roman Empire was in decline. The disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them burst open the dams which until that time had protected peaceful coexistence among peoples. The sun was setting over an entire world. Frequent natural disasters further increased this sense of insecurity. There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent, then, was the invocation of the power of God: the plea that he might come and protect his people from all these threats.


Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Today too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure.


Excita – the prayer recalls the cry addressed to the Lord who was sleeping in the disciples’ storm-tossed boat as it was close to sinking. When his powerful word had calmed the storm, he rebuked the disciples for their little faith (cf. Mt 8:26 et par.). He wanted to say: it was your faith that was sleeping. He will say the same thing to us. Our faith too is often asleep. Let us ask him, then, to wake us from the sleep of a faith grown tired, and to restore to that faith the power to move mountains – that is, to order justly the affairs of the world.


[Continue reading Pope Benedict's 2010 Christmas address to the Roman Curia at the Vatican website...]

Pray for our bishops and priests.  May God give them the holy boldness they need to step up to the plate.

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Persecution of Christians around the world

Yesterday we recalled the martyrdom of Sts. Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang, and Companions who were killed for the faith in Korea during persecutions of the early 1800's. The day before we celebrated the feast day of St. Januarius, a bishop martyred by beheading around 300 A.D. during the Diocletion persecutions. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

In the Breviary a longer account is given. There we are told that "Timotheus, President of Campania," was the official who condemned the martyrs, that Januarius was thrown into a fiery furnace, but that the flames would not touch him, and that the saint and his companions were afterwards exposed in the amphitheatre to wild beasts without any effect. Timotheus declaring that this was due to magic, and ordering the martyrs to be beheaded, the persecutor was smitten with blindness, but Januarius cured him, and five thousand persons were converted to Christ before the martyrs were decapitated.

I bring up these martyrs because news from around the world reminds us that persecution is not something that belonged alone to yesteryear. It is alive and well today in many forms. But, nothing should draw our attention more than when people are being killed for the faith and suffering physical torment. Here are just a few headlines:

• Vietnamese police beat AP reporter, begin to bulldoze former nunciature (CNA)


• Catholic bishops of India warn anti-Christian violence could spread (CNA)


• India: Hindu fanatics set fire to Catholic Cathedrals (AGI)


• Carmelite convent attacked in Madya Pradesh (Asia News)


• Saudi Arabia: Secret Priest’s Life of Danger (National Catholic Register)
• Italy's Church Asks EU to Aid 'Hunted' Indian Christians (Reuters Africa)

Please keep our brothers and sisters in distant lands in your prayers.

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The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Pray for an end to violence in India

In August, a Carmelite priest was tortured and killed in India after leaving a convent where he had just celebrated Holy Mass.

There has been an increase in violence against Catholics in that country. Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, head of the bishops conference there, has called for a day of prayer and fasting in India - not just for Catholics, but for people of all faiths there. We ought to contribute as well.

Recent headlines tell the story:

• Bishop Dabre: stop fundamentalism with dialogue, following example of Mother Teresa (AsiaNews)
• Faithful killed, homes and churches burned, thousands flee: pogrom of Indian Christians (OVERVIEW) (Asia News)
• Orissa: Hindu extremists burn one nun alive, rape another (AsiaNews)
• Pontiff Asks for End to Violence in India (Zenit)
• Injured Priest Tells of Hindu-Extremist Attack (Zenit)
• Orissa: terror on Christmas Day as fundamentalists kill three people, set 13 Churches on fire (Asia News)
• Orissa: Christians hunted at Christmas, police fail to intervene (AsiaNews)
• Mother Teresa Successor: Disciples Needed in India (Zenit)

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The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Zenit: Food Crisis Forces Nigerian Seminary Closure

When you think we have problems....

KOENIGSTEIN, Germany, JUNE 5, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Catholic seminary in Makurdi in central Nigeria is facing closure this month as a result of the worldwide food crisis, reported Aid to the Church in Need.

Monsignor Kenneth Enang, rector of the seminary, told the aid agency Wednesday that the major seminary, in which some 520 seminarians from 15 dioceses are preparing for the priesthood, has already been forced to ration the food on account of the "astronomical prices."

An additional problem is the price of diesel, which is used to provide electricity. Within just one week, the price of diesel has risen by a third.

The article from Zenit goes on to say that seminaries in other third world countries could close for the same reason.

Here in the US where the young are surrounded by every imaginable kind of noise, poor catechesis, secularism, relativism, and many other kinds of 'isms', it is hard for them to hear the call to the priesthood and our seminaries are not nearly as full as they should be.

Abroad, men in impoverished countries are hearing the call, and the seminaries cannot sustain them.

We need to give money where we can, and where we can't, we need to spend time in adoration, asking Our Lord to assist these places in ways beyond our means. At the same time, we need to pray for more priests here.

When we do get a priest from Nigeria or other third world country, we should be grateful. In some parishes, they face persecution. Sometimes it is because they are orthodox and speak frankly about the faith. Other times it is because people don't want to deal with their accent or they just don't like foreigners. Folks need to grow up and accept priests from whatever distant land they are sent....and be grateful.

Incidentally, ask a priest or sister of Opus Angelorum at Grotto about the monetary needs of the seminary in Brazil where young men do not necessarily get three squares a day.


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Cardinal Bertone to Cuban Youth: Pray the Rosary

The Vatican's number 2 man, Cardinal Bertone, is visiting Cuba - the first time anyone from the Vatican has been there since Pope John Paul II's historic visit 10 years ago.

From Zenit:

Speaking with the youth at the Marian shrine, the cardinal reflected on the rosary: "With the recitation of the rosary we learn from Mary how to contemplate the beauty of her Son's face and we experience the depth of his love. It is a recalling, a remembering, a salutary contemplation, a meditation and a supplication. It is a retracing of Jesus' life."

"The rosary, the best tradition of the art of prayer, is deeply rooted in life itself, in which it illuminates the mystery of the heart of man," said Cardinal Bertone. "In the recitation of the rosary there is a profound contemplative attitude of the mysteries of the life of the Lord, a slow meditation, while one says the prayers to Mary according to the best tradition of the art of prayer.

"It is particularly beneficial in a world sometimes dominated by hustle and bustle and by the proliferation of voices that distract us."

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