Religion

VATICAN CITY (CNS)–During this “bitter time” of war, hunger, injustice and poverty, Our Lady of Guadalupe invites everyone to open their lives to her son, Jesus, and to learn to love others like he does, Pope Francis said.

“The Lord, through the Virgin Mother, continues to give us his son, who calls us to fraternity, to set aside selfishness, indifference and enmity, inviting us to get involved with each other ‘without delay,’ to go out to meet our brothers and sisters who have been forgotten and discarded by our consumerist and indifferent societies,” he said.

Today, just like five centuries ago when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego, she “came to accompany the American people on this hard road of poverty, exploitation, socioeconomic and cultural colonialism,” the pope said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“She is in the midst of the caravans that walk northward in search of freedom and well-being. She is in the midst of the American people, whose identity is threatened by a savage and exploitative paganism, wounded by the active preaching of a practical and pragmatic atheism,” the pope said, in handwritten remarks that were not part of his previously prepared text.

Last weekend, over 400 Methodist churches in Texas voted to leave their parent denomination, the United Methodist Church (UMC). Their decision followed the mass exodus of Methodist congregations in other Southern states, including North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas and Florida.

The departing congregations joined the more conservative Global Methodist Church over concerns that the UMC has grown too liberal on key cultural issues — most importantly, LGBTQ rights. They are part of a larger schism within other mainline Protestant denominations (namely, Episcopalians and Baptists), ostensibly over the propriety of same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy, though in reality, over a broader array of cultural touchpoints involving sexuality, gender and religious pluralism.

At first blush, this might seem like an issue that’s peripheral to American politics — a purely religious matter. But it’s actually an indicator of just how fractured our politics have become. And if history is any indication, it’s about to get even worse.

When The New York Times respectfully touts a man’s faith, he must be a leftist. Strange respect for religion reigned over the front page of Thursday’s paper for Sen. Raphael Warnock, the reverend who recently won reelection in Georgia runoff. The complimentary headline was “Warnock’s Rise Fueled by Pain, Faith and Flair.“

The Times has found its latest left-wing “rising star,” as revealed in the fawning profile by Katie Glueck, “Raphael Warnock Is a Pastor and Politician Who Sees Voting as Prayer — Raphael Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, secured a full six-year term and a spot among Democrats’ rising stars.”

Religion is fine and good if it can be compared to progressive political action and Democrat election victories:

He likened voting to a “prayer for the world we desire,” and called democracy the “political enactment of a spiritual idea,” that everyone has a divine spark.

He invoked the legacies of civil rights heroes and “martyrs” who fought and sometimes died for the right to vote, even as he promised to pursue bipartisanship in pressing his policy ambitions.

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Ruwa Romman remembers the sadness she felt as an 8-year-old girl sitting in the back of a school bus watching classmates point to her house and erupt in vicious laughter.

“There’s the bomb lab,” they jeered in yet another attempt to brand her family as terrorists.

On Tuesday, the same girl – now a 29-year-old community organizer – made history as the first known Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, and the first Palestinian American elected to any office in the state.

After 10 months of relentless campaigning, the Democrat said she is eager to begin representing the people of District 97, which includes Berkeley Lake, and parts of Duluth, Norcross, and Peachtree Corners in Gwinnett County.

(Civil.Ge) — Metropolitan Bishop of Vani and Baghdati Eparchy (diocese) of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Anton Bulukhia, voiced a number of strong-worded anti-Western messages at his Sunday sermon on May 24 – suggesting, among others, to hold a repeat plebiscite about Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration.