11 Million Holocaust Victims

Left: St. Edith Stein.

We know that there were 6 Million Jews butchered by the Nazis during World War II but they were not alone.  Of the 6 Million Polish citizens killed, three million were Jews and 3 Million were Polish Christians and Catholics. Heinrich Himmler said, “All Poles will disappear from the world… It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.”

When they refused to sign documents of loyalty to Nazi ideology Jehovah Witnesses were forced to wear purple armbands.  Thousands were imprisoned as dangerous traitors because they refused to take a pledge of loyalty to the Third Reich.  But other Christians did not quite do as well.  Hitler sought to create a new religion and had no time for those whose faith was strong enough to resist the Nazi ideology.  Catholic Priests and Christian pastors as well as those who were influential community leaders were arrested and imprisoned in a special barracks for clergy set up at Dachau, near Munich, Germany.  Those who were not executed were allowed to die slowly of starvation and disease.

Contrary to common belief, under Pope Pius XI as Nuncio to Germany Eugenio Pacelli, the later Pope Pius XII spoke out strongly against Hitler and his murderous regime.  After assuming the Chair of Peter in 1939 he was Europe’s strongest moral voice against Nazism and he worked constantly to save the lives of millions.

1929 Pacelli was appointed Papal Secretary of State. In 1930 Cardinal Pacelli assumes new duties. L'Osservatore Romano, which speaks the mind of the Holy Father and Church, runs a series of articles from the office of Cardinal Secretary of State severely criticizing Nazism. The October 11, 1930 article declares: "Belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler is irreconcilable with the Catholic Conscience." These pieces are reprinted in diocesan newspapers around the world, especially in Germany, where bishops and priests emphasize that the teaching is official Church teaching.



Indeed, Catholics and Protestants joined the Jews in their march to death at the hands of the Nazis, despite the efforts of Pius XII and a host of senior clergy in occupied Europe who condemned anti-Semitism and resisted Nazi oppression.

A New Saint

Kateri Tekakwitha, pronounced ‘gaderi degagwitha’ in Mohawk, also known as Catherine Tekakwitha, was the first Native American to be beatified by blessed Pope John Paul II in 1980.  She will be canonised a saint by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21 2012.

Also known as ‘The Lilly of the Mohawks’ she was born in the Mohawk village of Gandaouague in northern New York around the year 1656, the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Tagaskouita, a Roman Catholic Algonquin.

On her death in 1680 scars from the smallpox she suffered as a child, vanished causing Pope Pius XII to declare this a miracle, but this was not the only reported miracle attributed to Blessed Tekakwitha. Among others was a miracle cure of Joseph Kellogg, a non Catholic who after being captured by natives suffered smallpox which could not be cured.  Joseph became a Catholic and after Jesuits exposed him to relics from Tekakwitha’s grave he was cured.  Other miracle cures included the hearing of a priest being recovered and a nun in Montreal another woman is said to have recovered from a kind of pneumonia.  In the case of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, there is no shortage of miracles.

A bronze statue of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha kneeling in prayer, created by the artist Cynthia Hitschler, is featured along the devotional walkway of Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine, La Crosse, Wisconsin.

The Sun’s evil twin.

No, I’m not referring to the British Newspaper “The Sun” but to the star that gives us all the light of day.  That big, bright, shiny yellow thing in the sky.  Does the Sun have an evil twin?  Well, there’s a scientific theory that seems to say so.

Nemesis, is a hypothetical, hard to detect red dwarf star, or possibly a white dwarf (unlikely) or brown dwarf (possible) that is orbiting the sun every 26 million years (yep that is million and not a typo).  Its distance from the sun is about one and a half light years beyond the Oort cloud (no this isn’t a typo either).  The Oort cloud is all the frozen rocky, dirty snowball stuff that makes up the core of a comet.

It is believed that as Nemesis heads in toward the sun it knocks bits of the Oort cloud out of place sending it in toward the sun – and us!  This is why it is thought that the earth faces mass extinctions every 26 million years or so (or whatever), the earth get’s a smack by a comet knocked out of its safe orbit by the Sun’s evil twin.

Nemesis is only a fraction the mass of the Sun (which is why it’s a dwarf) and no where near as bright (white, red or brown in color) and impossible to see from the earth by any telescope – but not in the infrared spectrum from space which is why there’s a satellite up there looking for the little bugger.

David Raup and Jack Sepkoski identified in a paper a statistical periodicity in extinction rates over the last 250 million years.  They found what they believed to be a pattern of extinctions on average of every 26 million years but they could not identify a cause.  This later drew the attention of several teams of Astronomers, leading to the hypothetical Nemesis.  Don’t hold your breath!  In 2010 Melott and Bambach re-examined the fossil data using improved dating and found evidence suggesting an extinction rate of 27 million years.  Given that there’s no sign of the little bugger causing all the problems and we’re still in the ‘safe zone’ I don’t think there’s any need to increase your insurance policy just yet.

New Blog Design

Fine.  So my blog has a new design with a photograph courtesy of NASA… the rather bleak landscape is Mars… yep the fourth rock from the sun that is actually smaller than the earth.  I’ve also had to change the text color of the title so that it stands out and the background color of course, but the overall layout remains the same.

I suppose at some time or another I’ll have to update our web site at: http://www.thecookcompanies.com/

That can be a little more demanding than the layout for a blog, even with a program that provides all kinds of tools to make the job easier, so lazy me will lay off that until it’s needed.  Well, to be honest, I do have other work and the web site is at the bottom of the list.

Why change the blog?  Well, Karin changed her blog and I liked what she did with it.  See for yourself: http://karinfickecook.blogspot.com/

Finally, let’s not forget Karin’s books. Click on our web site (above) for details (the tab ‘Karin’s Books’ provides additional details).

I was thinking of placing this picture on my Blog, or maybe the galaxy rather than the Black Hole.  But I settled for the bleak, but strangely colorful Mars landscape.

A Grip on Life

Some of the world’s most prominent scientists and physicians testified to a U. S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the question of when [human] life begins. Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated, “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception… I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence, from conception to adulthood, and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life…

I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being.  This is human life at every stage.”

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Downs syndrome.  Dr. LeJeune testified, “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He stated that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion,” and “not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.” He added, “Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic; Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School; Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School were among those testifying that life begins at conception.

Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the pro-life cause.  Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, “The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.”

Pro-abortionists were asked to provide people to testify before the subcommittee, but all they could provide was one person who insisted that no one knew when life began.  Even if this were the case, then logically it would still be probable that abortion was the termination of human life (If you don’t know when human life begins then you can be aborting a human life).  However, this point of view often preferred by pro-abortionists is NOT the view of medical science as the above shows.

There can be no question that it is the official view of medical science, as attested before a Judiciary Subcommittee that human life begins at conception.  This being the case, there is no question that abortion is a denial of the right to life.  It is this right to life that defines all other human rights and freedoms, for without the right to life other human rights and freedoms can have no meaning.  This is not just my point of view, so I recently discovered, it was originally stated by one Abraham Lincoln.  Now that took my quite by surprise!

Attempts to justify abortion are very often selfish in nature or depend heavily on excuses, such as what about a rape victim?  First of all, abortion has a dramatic impact on a woman and can be an even worse experience than rape.  Secondly, what about adoption?  Any unwanted child can have parents who do want it and will love and care for it.  Abortion cannot be reversed, but adoption gives a child a future (ask my wife).  Finally, in this matter and other specific examples of this nature, a particular principle cannot be used to justify the general nature of abortion – you cannot argue from the particular to the general.  Situation ethics doesn’t work.

We have seen the pro-abortion mentality before in Hitler’s Germany.  It’s a mentality that fails to value and respect human life, for whatever reason is chosen to justify a stance that cannot in reality be justified.  The solution is to stay firm in one’s conviction about the value of human life, to love life and even those who take it to the extent that one is prepared to take them before the creator of life and appeal to Him that such an evil will cease.  He is listening.

Karin's Books available through this link: http://www.thecookcompanies.com/

Blessed Virgin Mary

These are just a few thoughts about the mother of Jesus Christ.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is born free of original sin.  What does this mean?  First of all original sin is the sin of disobedience and this is the source of all sin.  That is, sin is disobedience to the Will of God.  Sacred Scripture reveals that Mary was born free of disobedience; it is her nature to be obedient.  The wedding at Cana appears to contradict this, but does it?

The wedding at Cana is described in chapter 2 of John’s Gospel.  When they ran short of wine she said to Jesus, “They have no wine.” Jesus replied to Mary, “Woman, how does your concern affect me?  My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus’ mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”

This is not showing disobedience to Jesus and through him disobedience to God.  She knows full well who he is, even if others do not.  What she is really saying is be obedient to him – do what he says.  She is actually promoting obedience to Jesus Christ – and to God.  Just as in response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement of the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:26-38) Mary’s response is, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”

Why do we call Mary ‘blessed’?  Because she is and it’s as simple as that.  The message of the angel Gabriel, that Mary was chosen by God, is a clear indication of this.  In addition, when Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, Mary responds to her by saying, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.  For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.”

Mary was there with Jesus at the beginning, she was there at the foot of the cross and she was with the Apostles in the upper room.  Mary suffered like any mother would, but she never lost faith and was with the infant Church to give it the support it needed.  She is still with us to this day, directing our attention as always to Jesus Christ.  The Son of the Living God and our Savior.

 

 

Books and ebooks by my wife Karin: http://www.thecookcompanies.com/

 

Religion is what?

How’s that again?

Religion is the cause of all wars.  Says who?  I suppose if you repeat a lie often enough people will indeed believe it.  The view that religion is the cause of all wars appears to be a popular view that reveals a rather poor grasp of history.

Was World War I caused by religion? No.  It was caused by the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand on 28^th June 1914. How about World War II?  Started by Adolf Hitler promising not to march into Poland and then doing just that.  What about the other wars during the twentieth century? Korea wasn’t started by religion, nor was Vietnam, nor the Falklands war or the Gulf wars.  Whatever the reason for the conflicts, not one was caused by religion.

Go back in history and what do we find.  The Napoleonic wars were the result of another little corporal trying to look bigger than his height would allow!  Wars are usually and almost always politically inspired while ‘religion’ has often been used as excuse for sticking the armored boot in. Religion as the cause of war may go back to the age of ignorance, but today’s new age of ignorance is the cause of a different kind of butchery.

So what is the real cause of war? Politics.

Is it that simple? Er…… Yep!

Religion builds large churches and does nothing to feed the poor. Yeah, right. Churches are built by the people attending them and it’s the people who attend the churches who give money to church-run charities that provide aid for the poor.  Charities like Cafod in England, Trochre in Ireland (who contributed more aid to the Balkans following the war there than the United Nations) and in the USA Catholic Charities – and those are just the Catholic contributors of aid. Protestants also contribute aid.

Yeah, I suppose knocking and mocking religion provides an individual with a good reason not to learn from it.  Principles like respect for life, love for one’s neighbor and the promotion of human dignity can all go by the board so that teenagers can play video games in which they learn that life has no value.

The real reason for not bothering with religion: selfhood.  But that's just my opinion - take it or leave it.