Saturday, February 06, 2016 7:50:17 AM
How the Satanic Temple forced Phoenix lawmakers to ban public prayer
In this 2015 file photo, a Satanic Temple of Seattle member wears horns outside a football game in Bremerton, Wash.
(Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun file via AP)
By Peter Holley
February 5, 2016
For weeks now, Phoenix lawmakers have wrestled with the idea of allowing members of a Satanic group to give the invocation before an upcoming city meeting.
Phoenix City Council members arrived Wednesday at a controversial solution: Banning prayer altogether.
From now on, lawmakers decided in a 5-4 vote, council meetings will no longer begin with a traditional prayer, but instead open with a moment of silence.
Although the decision may block the Satanic Temple’s Feb. 17 invocation, it prompted outcries from some Phoenix residents and city officials who believe the prayer ban is a de facto victory for the Satanists.
“This is what that Satanist group wants,” Councilman Sal DiCiccio told the Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2016/02/03/phoenix-city-council-vote-satanists-sheraton-buyer/79758268/ ]. “A moment of silence is basically a banning of prayer. It’s to agree to the Satanic goal to ban prayer.”
In a tweet [ https://twitter.com/Sal_DiCiccio/status/695074325993402369 ], DiCiccio called it a “sad day for Phoenix.”
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and four members of the council voted in favor of the change and argued that an effort to silence particular groups could land the city in an expensive legal battle.
“The First Amendment to the Constitution is not ambiguous on this issue,” Stanton said, according to the Republic. “Discriminating against faiths would violate the oath that all of us on this dais took. I personally take that very, very seriously.”
Gregory Lipper, a senior attorney at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the mayor’s prediction is sound.
Derek Staahl
@DerekStaahl
Prayer circle forms outside council meeting following vote to switch to moment of silence.
8:49 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/DerekStaahl/status/695076628569784320 (with comment)]
Lipper, who has represented the Satanic Temple in previous legal battles, said that two years ago, the Supreme Court held in Town of Greece v. Galloway [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/town-of-greece-v-galloway/ ] that a community’s practice of beginning legislative sessions with prayers does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
However, Lipper said, while local governments can open meetings with prayers, those governments cannot control the content of those prayers unless they denigrate other faiths or include proselytizing. Much of the resistance to the Satanic Temple, he said, comes from people who believe the group is made up of devil worshipers, and they tend to unleash fierce opposition that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.
“This is an issue that will come up in homogeneous communities when a member of a minority religion takes advantage of the invocation and it tends to generate a backlash,” Lipper told The Post. “Most local governments are used to a steady drumbeat of Christian clergy delivering Christian prayers. We’ve seen this same issue with Muslim prayer-givers and Wiccan prayer-givers around the country.
“When they show up, all the sudden the practice generated a bunch of objections.”
Lipper said the Phoenix City Council made the right decision, but for “disturbing reasons.”
“They’re saying, ‘we don’t like their prayers, so we’re going to shut the whole thing down,'” he said. “It leaves a bad taste in the Satanist’s mouth.”
Contrary to the name, Satanic Temple members are non-theists who do not believe in the existence of the devil and promote the idea that religion can be divorced from superstition. On its Web site, the Satanic Temple describes its mission as encouraging “benevolence and empathy among all people.” Among the group’s seven tenets [ http://thesatanictemple.com/faq/ ]: “The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend.”
“Our tenets are rational and we emphasize compassion,” Satanic Temple founder Lucien Greaves told The Washington Post. “Satan to us is metaphorical and represents a universal fight against tyranny and autocracy.”
The group has set off numerous headline-making free-speech debates in recent years by using provocative imagery. In 2014, it unveiled a proposal to place a seven-foot Satanic statue in front of the Oklahoma state capitol, next to a statue of the Ten Commandments.
Later that year, after threatening a lawsuit, the Satanic Temple — in conjunction with Americans United — convinced Florida officials to allow the temple to move forward with a holiday display in the state capitol in Tallahassee that showed an angel dropping from the sky into a pit of flames. The week-long display, which Florida officials had previously labeled “grossly offensive,” was placed in an area designated as an open forum for private speech.
Greaves said Thursday that the dispute with the Phoenix City Council began in December, when a local member of the Satanic organization applied via email to give the invocation before the governing body. Temple members, he said, assumed they’d walk in, give the invocation and leave, with their entire effort going mostly unnoticed.
Domenica Fuller
@dfullerkvoa
Member of Satanic Temple leading invocation at Phoenix City Council meeting. Full report is at 5:30. @satanicpsalms [ https://twitter.com/satanicpsalms ]
3:03 PM - 31 Jan 2016 · Tucson, AZ, United States
[ https://twitter.com/dfullerkvoa/status/693902486877241344 (with embedded video clip, and comment)]
That changed, the Republic reported, when news of the invocation spread and council members were “inundated” with comments from constituents.
“We’re an assertion of plurality,” Greaves told The Post. “The only way these type of open forums work is if multiple voices get involved. You need to allow for expression you might not agree with or want and we’re a hard and fast test of those principles.”
A proposal from four councilmen to let lawmakers take turns inviting different religious groups to give the prayer — indirectly blocking the satanists — was scrapped last week after city attorney Brad Holm noted it would constitute a First Amendment violation, according to the Republic.
Derek Staahl
@DerekStaahl
It's standing room only inside Phoenix City Council chambers. Council to weigh in on satanist prayer.
4:38 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/DerekStaahl/status/695013642165616640 (with comments)]
The contentious issue came to a head Wednesday when more than a hundred people gathered in the council chambers to offer testimony on the issue that lasted for more than two hours, according to the Republic.
“I am not for the silent prayer,” Pastor Darlene Vasquez told council members, according to the Republic, which reported that Vasquez broke down in tears. “I want those who believe in the one true God to pray. It breaks my heart to hear what is going on.”
No Satanic Temple members addressed the council at the meeting, but Greaves — who watched a livestream of the gathering on the other side of the country —said he was shocked by what he saw. He noted that speakers referred to the Satanic Temple as a “cult” and a “hate group” and said council members accused the group of trying only to ban prayer entirely.
Lucien Greaves
@LucienGreaves
Things are absolutely medieval in the Council Chambers in Phoenix today.
6:39 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/LucienGreaves/status/695043894896152577 (with comments)]
Lucien Greaves
@LucienGreaves
The fact that they keep citing the Pledge of Alliance underscores the need to take "under God" out.
7:23 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/LucienGreaves/status/695055013048098816 (with
comments)]
“It was kind of horrifying,” he told The Post. “I noted that it seemed outright medieval in there and really took on the atmosphere of an old school tent revival. There were people weeping and calling out the name of the one true god. It was really strange, a really strange thing to see.”
After the lawmakers voted to replace prayer with a moment of silence, DiCiccio, the council member, called the ruling a “big win” for the Satanic Temple, according to the Republic. He added that the city’s religious community plans to collect signatures to force another vote and overturn the council’s decision.
Greaves called DiCiccio’s willingness to reduce a substantive debate to competitive terms “an infantile way to approach matters of public policy.”
Unsure about whether the new council ruling retroactively eliminates the invocation schedule, Greaves said there remains a chance his group will still wind up giving the invocation later this month. The Satanic Temple, he said, never intended to have a moment of silence implemented by the city council — but he considers it a welcome improvement.
“The moment of silence is the most tenable option of any in the public chambers,” he said. “Anything else is a bit difficult to manage and really not the business of a government body anyway. Ultimately, it turns out for the good, but to whether people allow this debate to educate them about Constitutional rights is an open question.
“But the lesson is there,” he added.
MORE READING:
Christian college softball coach pleads guilty to sexually abusing students
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/03/christian-college-softball-coach-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-abusing-students/
Seminary student arrested on suspicion that he sought to rape infant girls
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/01/seminary-student-arrested-on-suspicion-that-he-sought-to-rape-infant-girls/
Donald Trump almost put money in the Communion plate at a church in Iowa
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/01/donald-trump-accidentally-put-money-in-the-communion-plate-at-a-church-in-iowa/
The Satanic Temple’s giant statue of a goat-headed god is looking for a home
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/07/01/the-satanic-temples-giant-statue-of-a-goat-headed-god-is-looking-for-a-home/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/05/how-the-satanic-temple-forced-phoenix-lawmakers-to-ban-public-prayer/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
If God Answered Prayers
Published on Jan 18, 2016 by DarkMatter2525 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLhtZqdkjshgq8TqwIjMdCQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525 , http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525/videos ]
If God has a plan, then why would you pray for anything/anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhIvqWyrPM [with comments]
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Here's Why The Preserved Body Of This Catholic Saint Is Hitting The Road
The body of Padre Pio is exposed in a glass case so that all the faithful can admire the saint.
Pacific Press via Getty Images
A woman prays in front of the exhumed body of mystic saint Padre Pio in a Catholic church in Rome on February 4, 2016.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE via Getty Images
Padre Pio is one of the most popular Roman Catholic saints.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE via Getty Images
Padre Pio died in 1968 and is said to have experienced the stigmata, or the wounds of Jesus.
By GABRIELE PILERI
02/05/2016 12:09 pm ET
The body of one of the most popular Roman Catholic saints, the mystic monk Padre Pio, began an overland journey in a crystal coffin on Wednesday to go on display at the Vatican.
The Capuchin
His body[, which does not display stigmata in death ( http://nypost.com/2014/03/22/making-of-a-saint-the-vaticans-quest-to-preserve-its-leaders/ ),] was partially reconstructed with a life-like silicone mask and preserved in a large, temperature-controlled glass reliquary so the faithful could view it.
Pope Francis wanted the body of man who spent most of his life hearing confessions and who was declared a saint in 2002, to be displayed in St. Peter's Basilica during the Catholic Church's current Holy Year on the theme of mercy.
But not all of the locals in this small town whose economy revolves around the pilgrim trade were happy that the saint was going on the road.
"Personally for me it is a sad day," said Auro Mizza, one of the hundreds of people who turned out to see the coffin off, many of them with tears in their eyes. "A saint doesn't go on pilgrimage, it is the others who go on pilgrimage to the saint."
The shrine draws close to a million people yearly.
The body, along with that of another, less famous saint that is being transported to Rome from northern Italy, will be displayed in a Rome church before both are moved in procession to St. Peter's on Friday. They will return to their regular locations later this month.
Many people said the brown-robed Padre Pio was able to predict events in their lives and knew what they were about to confess. There are thousands of "Padre Pio Prayer Groups" around the world.
Padre Pio was dogged during his life and even after his death by allegations that he was a fake but Church investigators cleared him each time.
© 2016 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/heres-why-the-preserved-body-of-this-catholic-saint-is-hitting-the-road_us_56b4caefe4b08069c7a6f07f [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXi2j6WfTlI [with comments], http://fineartamerica.com/featured/concentrating-capuchin-margaret-saheed.html [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCqGSi856ag [with comments]
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Spared by the hitmen with principles
By Richard Hooper
5 February 2016
One year ago a group of gunmen in Burundi was hired to kill a woman visiting from Australia. But the hit did not go as planned, leaving her with a chance to turn the tables on the man who wanted her dead.
"I felt like somebody who had risen again," says Noela Rukundo.
She was supposed to be dead. The hired killers had been paid. They had even explained how they would dispose of the body.
But now, waiting outside her house for the last of the mourners to leave, she was ready to face down the man who had put out a contract for her murder.
"When I get out of the car, he saw me straight away. He put his hands on his head and said, 'Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?'"
[...]
"It was around 7.30pm," Noela says. "He was in front of the house. People had been inside mourning with him and he was escorting a group of them into a car."
It was as they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise.
"I was stood just looking at him. He was scared, he didn't believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking on broken glass.
"He kept talking to himself and when he reached me, he touched me on the shoulder. He jumped.
"He did it again. He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for everything.'"
Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off the premises and later obtained a court order against him. Days later, the police instructed Noela to call Kalala. Kalala made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness and revealing why he had ordered the murder.
"He say he wanted to kill me because he was jealous," says Noela. "He think that I wanted to leave him for another man."
She rejects the accusation.
In a police interview, Kalala denied any involvement in the plot. "The pretence," wrote the judge at his trial in December, "lasted for hours." But when confronted with the recording of his telephone conversation with Noela and the evidence she brought back from Burundi he started to cry.
Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes [the] devil can come into someone to do something but after they do it, they start thinking, 'Why I did that thing?'"
On 11 December last year, in court in Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement to murder, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison.
"His voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her, kill her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that now plague her. "Every night, I see what was happening in those two days with the kidnappers."
Ostracised by many in Melbourne's African community, some of whom blame her for Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future for her and her eight children.
"But I will stand up like a strong woman," she says.
"My situation, my past life? That is gone. I'm starting a new life now."
Copyright © 2016 BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35496480 [via "Please Read This Insane Story About a Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral After Her Husband Tried to Have Her Killed", http://gawker.com/please-read-this-insane-story-about-a-woman-who-crashed-1757311944 (with comments)]
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Terri Schiavo's Husband: New Jeb Bush Ad 'Disgusting'
Demonstrator Donna Kuntz of Lutz, Florida, prays for Terri Schiavo outside the Woodside Hospice in Florida that housed Terri on March 26, 2005.
"Shame on Jeb Bush."
01/27/2016 | Updated 01/28/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeb-bush-terri-schiavo-ad-south-carolina_us_56a94592e4b0016489224843 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-f9-wfs6c [embedded; with comments]
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In this 2015 file photo, a Satanic Temple of Seattle member wears horns outside a football game in Bremerton, Wash.
(Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun file via AP)
By Peter Holley
February 5, 2016
For weeks now, Phoenix lawmakers have wrestled with the idea of allowing members of a Satanic group to give the invocation before an upcoming city meeting.
Phoenix City Council members arrived Wednesday at a controversial solution: Banning prayer altogether.
From now on, lawmakers decided in a 5-4 vote, council meetings will no longer begin with a traditional prayer, but instead open with a moment of silence.
Although the decision may block the Satanic Temple’s Feb. 17 invocation, it prompted outcries from some Phoenix residents and city officials who believe the prayer ban is a de facto victory for the Satanists.
“This is what that Satanist group wants,” Councilman Sal DiCiccio told the Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2016/02/03/phoenix-city-council-vote-satanists-sheraton-buyer/79758268/ ]. “A moment of silence is basically a banning of prayer. It’s to agree to the Satanic goal to ban prayer.”
In a tweet [ https://twitter.com/Sal_DiCiccio/status/695074325993402369 ], DiCiccio called it a “sad day for Phoenix.”
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and four members of the council voted in favor of the change and argued that an effort to silence particular groups could land the city in an expensive legal battle.
“The First Amendment to the Constitution is not ambiguous on this issue,” Stanton said, according to the Republic. “Discriminating against faiths would violate the oath that all of us on this dais took. I personally take that very, very seriously.”
Gregory Lipper, a senior attorney at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the mayor’s prediction is sound.
Derek Staahl
@DerekStaahl
Prayer circle forms outside council meeting following vote to switch to moment of silence.
8:49 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/DerekStaahl/status/695076628569784320 (with comment)]
Lipper, who has represented the Satanic Temple in previous legal battles, said that two years ago, the Supreme Court held in Town of Greece v. Galloway [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/town-of-greece-v-galloway/ ] that a community’s practice of beginning legislative sessions with prayers does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
However, Lipper said, while local governments can open meetings with prayers, those governments cannot control the content of those prayers unless they denigrate other faiths or include proselytizing. Much of the resistance to the Satanic Temple, he said, comes from people who believe the group is made up of devil worshipers, and they tend to unleash fierce opposition that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.
“This is an issue that will come up in homogeneous communities when a member of a minority religion takes advantage of the invocation and it tends to generate a backlash,” Lipper told The Post. “Most local governments are used to a steady drumbeat of Christian clergy delivering Christian prayers. We’ve seen this same issue with Muslim prayer-givers and Wiccan prayer-givers around the country.
“When they show up, all the sudden the practice generated a bunch of objections.”
Lipper said the Phoenix City Council made the right decision, but for “disturbing reasons.”
“They’re saying, ‘we don’t like their prayers, so we’re going to shut the whole thing down,'” he said. “It leaves a bad taste in the Satanist’s mouth.”
Contrary to the name, Satanic Temple members are non-theists who do not believe in the existence of the devil and promote the idea that religion can be divorced from superstition. On its Web site, the Satanic Temple describes its mission as encouraging “benevolence and empathy among all people.” Among the group’s seven tenets [ http://thesatanictemple.com/faq/ ]: “The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend.”
“Our tenets are rational and we emphasize compassion,” Satanic Temple founder Lucien Greaves told The Washington Post. “Satan to us is metaphorical and represents a universal fight against tyranny and autocracy.”
The group has set off numerous headline-making free-speech debates in recent years by using provocative imagery. In 2014, it unveiled a proposal to place a seven-foot Satanic statue in front of the Oklahoma state capitol, next to a statue of the Ten Commandments.
Later that year, after threatening a lawsuit, the Satanic Temple — in conjunction with Americans United — convinced Florida officials to allow the temple to move forward with a holiday display in the state capitol in Tallahassee that showed an angel dropping from the sky into a pit of flames. The week-long display, which Florida officials had previously labeled “grossly offensive,” was placed in an area designated as an open forum for private speech.
Greaves said Thursday that the dispute with the Phoenix City Council began in December, when a local member of the Satanic organization applied via email to give the invocation before the governing body. Temple members, he said, assumed they’d walk in, give the invocation and leave, with their entire effort going mostly unnoticed.
Domenica Fuller
@dfullerkvoa
Member of Satanic Temple leading invocation at Phoenix City Council meeting. Full report is at 5:30. @satanicpsalms [ https://twitter.com/satanicpsalms ]
3:03 PM - 31 Jan 2016 · Tucson, AZ, United States
[ https://twitter.com/dfullerkvoa/status/693902486877241344 (with embedded video clip, and comment)]
That changed, the Republic reported, when news of the invocation spread and council members were “inundated” with comments from constituents.
“We’re an assertion of plurality,” Greaves told The Post. “The only way these type of open forums work is if multiple voices get involved. You need to allow for expression you might not agree with or want and we’re a hard and fast test of those principles.”
A proposal from four councilmen to let lawmakers take turns inviting different religious groups to give the prayer — indirectly blocking the satanists — was scrapped last week after city attorney Brad Holm noted it would constitute a First Amendment violation, according to the Republic.
Derek Staahl
@DerekStaahl
It's standing room only inside Phoenix City Council chambers. Council to weigh in on satanist prayer.
4:38 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/DerekStaahl/status/695013642165616640 (with comments)]
The contentious issue came to a head Wednesday when more than a hundred people gathered in the council chambers to offer testimony on the issue that lasted for more than two hours, according to the Republic.
“I am not for the silent prayer,” Pastor Darlene Vasquez told council members, according to the Republic, which reported that Vasquez broke down in tears. “I want those who believe in the one true God to pray. It breaks my heart to hear what is going on.”
No Satanic Temple members addressed the council at the meeting, but Greaves — who watched a livestream of the gathering on the other side of the country —said he was shocked by what he saw. He noted that speakers referred to the Satanic Temple as a “cult” and a “hate group” and said council members accused the group of trying only to ban prayer entirely.
Lucien Greaves
@LucienGreaves
Things are absolutely medieval in the Council Chambers in Phoenix today.
6:39 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/LucienGreaves/status/695043894896152577 (with comments)]
Lucien Greaves
@LucienGreaves
The fact that they keep citing the Pledge of Alliance underscores the need to take "under God" out.
7:23 PM - 3 Feb 2016
[ https://twitter.com/LucienGreaves/status/695055013048098816 (with
comments)]
“It was kind of horrifying,” he told The Post. “I noted that it seemed outright medieval in there and really took on the atmosphere of an old school tent revival. There were people weeping and calling out the name of the one true god. It was really strange, a really strange thing to see.”
After the lawmakers voted to replace prayer with a moment of silence, DiCiccio, the council member, called the ruling a “big win” for the Satanic Temple, according to the Republic. He added that the city’s religious community plans to collect signatures to force another vote and overturn the council’s decision.
Greaves called DiCiccio’s willingness to reduce a substantive debate to competitive terms “an infantile way to approach matters of public policy.”
Unsure about whether the new council ruling retroactively eliminates the invocation schedule, Greaves said there remains a chance his group will still wind up giving the invocation later this month. The Satanic Temple, he said, never intended to have a moment of silence implemented by the city council — but he considers it a welcome improvement.
“The moment of silence is the most tenable option of any in the public chambers,” he said. “Anything else is a bit difficult to manage and really not the business of a government body anyway. Ultimately, it turns out for the good, but to whether people allow this debate to educate them about Constitutional rights is an open question.
“But the lesson is there,” he added.
MORE READING:
Christian college softball coach pleads guilty to sexually abusing students
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/03/christian-college-softball-coach-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-abusing-students/
Seminary student arrested on suspicion that he sought to rape infant girls
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/01/seminary-student-arrested-on-suspicion-that-he-sought-to-rape-infant-girls/
Donald Trump almost put money in the Communion plate at a church in Iowa
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/01/donald-trump-accidentally-put-money-in-the-communion-plate-at-a-church-in-iowa/
The Satanic Temple’s giant statue of a goat-headed god is looking for a home
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/07/01/the-satanic-temples-giant-statue-of-a-goat-headed-god-is-looking-for-a-home/
© 2016 The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/05/how-the-satanic-temple-forced-phoenix-lawmakers-to-ban-public-prayer/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
If God Answered Prayers
Published on Jan 18, 2016 by DarkMatter2525 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLhtZqdkjshgq8TqwIjMdCQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525 , http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkMatter2525/videos ]
If God has a plan, then why would you pray for anything/anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhIvqWyrPM [with comments]
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Here's Why The Preserved Body Of This Catholic Saint Is Hitting The Road
The body of Padre Pio is exposed in a glass case so that all the faithful can admire the saint.
Pacific Press via Getty Images
A woman prays in front of the exhumed body of mystic saint Padre Pio in a Catholic church in Rome on February 4, 2016.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE via Getty Images
Padre Pio is one of the most popular Roman Catholic saints.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE via Getty Images
Padre Pio died in 1968 and is said to have experienced the stigmata, or the wounds of Jesus.
By GABRIELE PILERI
02/05/2016 12:09 pm ET
The body of one of the most popular Roman Catholic saints, the mystic monk Padre Pio, began an overland journey in a crystal coffin on Wednesday to go on display at the Vatican.
The Capuchin
monk who died in 1968 and is said by the Catholic Church to have had the "stigmata" - the bleeding wounds of Jesus on his hands and feet - was exhumed in 2008 in San Giovanni Rotondo, the small, southeastern Italian town where he spent most of his life.
His body[, which does not display stigmata in death ( http://nypost.com/2014/03/22/making-of-a-saint-the-vaticans-quest-to-preserve-its-leaders/ ),] was partially reconstructed with a life-like silicone mask and preserved in a large, temperature-controlled glass reliquary so the faithful could view it.
Pope Francis wanted the body of man who spent most of his life hearing confessions and who was declared a saint in 2002, to be displayed in St. Peter's Basilica during the Catholic Church's current Holy Year on the theme of mercy.
But not all of the locals in this small town whose economy revolves around the pilgrim trade were happy that the saint was going on the road.
"Personally for me it is a sad day," said Auro Mizza, one of the hundreds of people who turned out to see the coffin off, many of them with tears in their eyes. "A saint doesn't go on pilgrimage, it is the others who go on pilgrimage to the saint."
The shrine draws close to a million people yearly.
The body, along with that of another, less famous saint that is being transported to Rome from northern Italy, will be displayed in a Rome church before both are moved in procession to St. Peter's on Friday. They will return to their regular locations later this month.
Many people said the brown-robed Padre Pio was able to predict events in their lives and knew what they were about to confess. There are thousands of "Padre Pio Prayer Groups" around the world.
Padre Pio was dogged during his life and even after his death by allegations that he was a fake but Church investigators cleared him each time.
© 2016 Thomson Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/heres-why-the-preserved-body-of-this-catholic-saint-is-hitting-the-road_us_56b4caefe4b08069c7a6f07f [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXi2j6WfTlI [with comments], http://fineartamerica.com/featured/concentrating-capuchin-margaret-saheed.html [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCqGSi856ag [with comments]
--
Spared by the hitmen with principles
By Richard Hooper
5 February 2016
One year ago a group of gunmen in Burundi was hired to kill a woman visiting from Australia. But the hit did not go as planned, leaving her with a chance to turn the tables on the man who wanted her dead.
"I felt like somebody who had risen again," says Noela Rukundo.
She was supposed to be dead. The hired killers had been paid. They had even explained how they would dispose of the body.
But now, waiting outside her house for the last of the mourners to leave, she was ready to face down the man who had put out a contract for her murder.
"When I get out of the car, he saw me straight away. He put his hands on his head and said, 'Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?'"
[...]
"It was around 7.30pm," Noela says. "He was in front of the house. People had been inside mourning with him and he was escorting a group of them into a car."
It was as they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise.
"I was stood just looking at him. He was scared, he didn't believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking on broken glass.
"He kept talking to himself and when he reached me, he touched me on the shoulder. He jumped.
"He did it again. He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for everything.'"
Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off the premises and later obtained a court order against him. Days later, the police instructed Noela to call Kalala. Kalala made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness and revealing why he had ordered the murder.
"He say he wanted to kill me because he was jealous," says Noela. "He think that I wanted to leave him for another man."
She rejects the accusation.
In a police interview, Kalala denied any involvement in the plot. "The pretence," wrote the judge at his trial in December, "lasted for hours." But when confronted with the recording of his telephone conversation with Noela and the evidence she brought back from Burundi he started to cry.
Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes [the] devil can come into someone to do something but after they do it, they start thinking, 'Why I did that thing?'"
On 11 December last year, in court in Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement to murder, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison.
"His voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her, kill her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that now plague her. "Every night, I see what was happening in those two days with the kidnappers."
Ostracised by many in Melbourne's African community, some of whom blame her for Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future for her and her eight children.
"But I will stand up like a strong woman," she says.
"My situation, my past life? That is gone. I'm starting a new life now."
Copyright © 2016 BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35496480 [via "Please Read This Insane Story About a Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral After Her Husband Tried to Have Her Killed", http://gawker.com/please-read-this-insane-story-about-a-woman-who-crashed-1757311944 (with comments)]
--
Terri Schiavo's Husband: New Jeb Bush Ad 'Disgusting'
Demonstrator Donna Kuntz of Lutz, Florida, prays for Terri Schiavo outside the Woodside Hospice in Florida that housed Terri on March 26, 2005.
"Shame on Jeb Bush."
01/27/2016 | Updated 01/28/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeb-bush-terri-schiavo-ad-south-carolina_us_56a94592e4b0016489224843 [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-f9-wfs6c [embedded; with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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