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SIMPLY SHEEN:

Blessed are the humble

     They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the words of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen have been known to launch a thousand images in one's mind, one of the ways this late luminary did so much to evangelize the faith. Because of the urgency of the times and because few there are today who possess the wisdom, simplicity and insight than the late Archbishop who touched millions, we are bringing you daily gems from his writings. The good bishop makes it so simple that we have dubbed this daily series: "SIMPLY SHEEN".

"Praise will generally make the humble person uncomfortable, because he knows that whatever talents he has are gifts from God. He receives praise as the window receives light, not as the battery receives current."

     On this date in 1570, Pope Saint Pius V proclaimed the inevitable - excommunicating the eccentric and stubborn monarch of England Queen Elizabeth daughter of King Henry VIII who also had been excommunicated by Pope Clement VII thirty-seven years prior. It was the final break with England who would embrace the state-run Church of England or Anglican religion that remains the same today. For other pertinent events throughout the centuries that are memorable in Church history today, click on MILLENNIUM MILESTONES AND MEMORIES

Historical Events in Church Annals for February 25:

• 284 A.D.
  
• Death of the Corinthian Martyrs Saints Claudian, Dioscorus, Papias, Nicephorus, Serapion, Victor and Victorinus who were martyred at Diospolis in the Thebaid region of Egypt during the persecution of the Roman emperor Decius.

• 298 A.D.
  
• Death of Saint Ananias, a Phoenician priest who converted eight of his guards while he was imprisoned. They, along with Ananias, received the trophy of martyrdom at the hands of the cruel emperor Diocletian.

• 369 A.D.
  
• Death of Saint Caesarius, brother of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. Caesarius was a renowned physician who ministered to the emperors both spiritually and physically even though he remained a catechumen until one year before his death when he was baptized.

• 586 A.D.
  
• Death of Saint Prix, Archbishop of Rouen, France. He was badly maligned by the French court, so much so that besides conning the Council of Paris in 577 to have him exiled, he was stabbed to death on this date while praying the Daily Office with his peers in church. The culprit was a plant, masquerading as a priest and hired by Queen Fredegonda whom Prix constantly tried to convince to amend her life. Rather than choosing eternal life, she chose the path to hell by embracing sin over salvation.

• 779 A.D.
  
• Death of Saint Walburga, Benedictine Abbess who answered the call of Saint Boniface to help evangelize Germany. She founded monasteries there, both for men and women and became abbess over the nuns. Before the bishop of the diocese died, he appointed Walburga in charge of both the monks and the nuns. She was well known for her knowledge of medicine and this played a part in the people of Germany transferring the pagan feast of witches and superstitions into a Christian occasion by proclaiming May 1 as Walburga Night. For this she is considered the patron saint for fruitful harvests and those with coughs, plague or rabies are encouraged to pray to her for intercession.

• 1570 A.D.
  
• Pope Saint Pius V, 225th successor of Peter, excommunicates England's Queen Elizabeth for her persecution of Catholics. With this interdict the Pope absolves all English people from holding allegiance to the staunch, feminist and crazed queen.

      Through the rest of the week we continue with the Lenten Liturgy. For the readings, liturgies and meditations for today's and tomorrow's Mass in the First Week of Lent, click on DAILY LITURGY.

Thursday February 25:
Lenten Weekday

Purple or violet vestments

First Reading: Esther C: 12, 14-16, 23-25
Psalms: Psalm 138: 1-3, 7-8
Gospel Reading: Matthew 7: 7-12

Friday February 25:
Lenten Weekday

Purple or violet vestments

First Reading: Ezekiel 18: 21-28
Psalms: Psalm 130: 1-8
Gospel Reading: Matthew 5: 20-26

      We continue with Responsories during Lent adapted from the Byzantine Rite:

Your graces shine forth, O Lord:
It shines forth and gives light to our souls.

    Dear children! I again invite you to prayer. You have no excuse to work more because nature still lies in deep sleep. Open yourselves in prayer. Renew prayer in your families. Put Holy Scripture in a visible place in your families, read it, reflect on it and learn how God loves His people. His love shows itself also in present times because He sends me to call you upon the path of salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call.

For more on Medjugorje, click on MEDJUGORJE AND MORE

HEADLINES:

President of Franciscan University to step aside and become school's first chancellor in Steubenville

      After 25 years of service as President of Franciscan University in which he transformed a once worldly institution into one of the most orthodox, loyal Catholic institutions of higher learning in the nation, Father Michael Scanlan, TOR is retiring. But he won't be kicking his feet up and taking it easy. Rather he will become the school's first Chancellor as he continues to be the guiding light for this Catholic university in northeastern Ohio. For more, click on Father Scanlan.

      STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (CWNews.com) - The man who turned a small Catholic college in Ohio around from one of the nation's top 10 party schools to a university known worldwide for its orthodoxy announced his impending retirement this week.

      Father Michael Scanlan, TOR, will retire as president of Franciscan University of Steubenville in June and will become the school's first chancellor, according to a statement from the board of trustees. Father Scanlan became president of the then-College of Steubenville in 1974 and initiated a series of reforms that radically altered student life to become more Christ-centered, attracting students from all 50 states and around the world.

      "It has been my great privilege to serve Franciscan University as president for 25 years," he said in a statement. "I am very pleased that I can continue to support the mission of the University through my preaching, writing, and networking in the new position of chancellor." The trustees are expected to vote on a successor in April, and the current front-runner for position appears to be current executive vice president Father Thomas Bourque, TOR, who took the position in August 1997.

Lateran University follows up Pope's Encyclical Fides et ratio with special conference

     Hoping to bring others more into line with what the Holy Father is asking through his latest encyclical Fides et ratio, the Lateran University began a week-long conference in Rome chaired by the University's president Antonio Scola who is hoping to clarify for those who have not digested the full encyclical its meaning and ways to explore the importance of bringing reason, philosophy and science in concert with faith and God. For more, click on Lateran conference

      ROME, 24 (NE) A series of conferences on Pope John Paul II´s last encyclical Fides et ratio began yesterday in Rome. The event, organized by the Lateran University, started with an introduction to the Holy Father's thought in the encyclical by the rector of the university, Angelo Scola.

      In his conference "Faith and Reason: Reality, Knowledge, Truth," Scola stated that the encyclical marks a new stage in the path of thought. We find in it, "the concern to maintain the prerogative of human freedom, of the person as free subject in its search of a way to reach God, freedom, good." The necessary and urgent step from phenomenon to foundation pointed out by the Holy Father would be the fundamental element of this way.

      "This option," he added, "shows how the encyclical opens a new beginning to the reflection on the relationship between philosophy and revealed truth. Fides et ratio, far from putting limits or ends to investigation, has opened space for the genuine philosophical and theological investigation. In this sense it represents a milestone in the path of the great tradition of the Magisterium and it strongly and deeply promotes the freedom that human nature needs in order to answer the questions that always arise from experience."

      Scola also emphasized that, "the process of separation of faith and reason goes through the whole of modernity and reaches post-modernity, and characterizes the way of thinking of our present lives." These two realities are seen as separated, as two extrinsic realities when not in opposition. And all this due to a presupposition, "denounced by the Pope as a 'dogmatic' assumption, in the sense of uncritical, not rigorously thought." This would "consist in starting from a reason that is considered absolute, separated and universal, that pretends, as it is separated, to become the horizon that encloses everything."

Sudanese Catholic children subjected to sneaky proselytized "baptisms" by Seventh-Day Adventists

     As if Catholics in the Sudan are not having enough problems with Muslim persecution and civil war, not to mention famine, now they must face unscrupulous Protestant sects who are bribing some "Catholic" faculties to allow mass "baptisms" in an effort to "win" Catholics away. This direct assault on Catholicism will not be tolerated stated a diocesan official who equated it to stealing into your home and burning it down. The problems stem from so many unscrupulous agencies being allowed into the Sudan for purposes of giving aid. Instead of helping solve the problems through assistance, they have become part of the problem. For more, click on Unscrupulous unction.

      NAIROBI (CWNews.com) - Sudanese Catholic and government officials said on Wednesday that a US Seventh-Day Adventist aid agency baptized hundreds of Catholic school children without permission of their parents or school officials.

      The National Association for the Prevention of Starvation (NAPS) visited war-torn southern Sudan at Christmastime to deliver food and teach Bible stories, but witnesses said the group baptized about 275 Catholic school children in the village of Panlit without getting permission from parents or authorities.

      Peter Ring, spokesman for the Diocese of Elobeid, said the whole school had been baptized as Adventists in the local river. "It is un-Christian," said Ring. "It was like going to someone's house as a guest and while he is not looking burning his house down." A NAPS spokesman in the US said the children were only baptized at the headmaster's request and they had believed them to be orphans. Ring said the baptisms were performed in collusion with the Catholic teaching staff, which also consented to be baptized. The headmaster and the head catechist at the school were later arrested and charged with acting without county authority and without consulting the diocese, officials said.

      Dozens of foreign agencies are pouring aid into Sudan as part of a massive United Nations program to stem the effects of the country's ongoing civil war and resulting famine. Local Catholic officials said NAPS' actions contravened an agreement to limit itself to humanitarian work.

Planned Parenthood panders pitifully to puberty-crowd with prurient web site designed to advance immorality and abnormality

      If anyone had any doubts as to the non-profit organization Planned Parenthood's agenda to demoralize American youth by promoting immorality as the norm teens should follow, then their new website for teens dubbed "Teenwire" should convince you that this seedy organization is fully in satan's camp with no respect for God's laws or the Sanctity of Life. That's the summation not only of two pro-life groups geared to teens, but also of this publication and the NCCB who rail over the fact Planned Parenthood can get away with such atrocities and still maintain their non-profit status as well as totally pulling the wool over the eyes of so many with the false premise that they care about people, teens and parents. Folks, their agenda is pure garbage!!! For more, click on Pure PP Garbage.

      WASHINGTON, DC (CWNews.com) - Two youth-oriented pro-life groups on Wednesday blasted Planned Parenthood's new Teenwire web site as an immoral guide to sexual deviance and experimentation designed to increase business for their abortion clinics.

      Why Life? and Rock for Life said in a statement that the site benefits only "perverts and pedophiles." "As if the tragically hip, extreme sexual content isn't enough, Planned Parenthood, via Teenwire, does its best to portray parents as uncommunicative, old-fashioned, and ignorant in comparison to the 'young people' who purportedly write the nonsense on this page," said Andrew Daub of Why Life? "The page has nothing to do with education or talking to parents about sex. It's about soliciting approval for a life of immorality."

      The new site contains articles on the proper use of condoms and determining if one is homosexual as well as a discussion area open only to teens. "The family planning and abortion-service referrals throughout the Web site, solely for Planned Parenthood's network of clinics, highlight their true motives. This site is about nothing more than profit -- and the no-consequence, unsafe sexual agendas of repressed, guilt-stricken baby boomers," said Kemper.

For more headlines and articles, we suggest you go to the Catholic World News site at the CWN home page and Church News at Noticias Eclesiales. Both CWN and NE are not affiliated with the Daily CATHOLIC but provides this service via e-mail to the Daily CATHOLIC Monday through Friday.

     Continuing to bring you Catholic resource sites, we present today the CATHOLIC INFORMATION CENTER ON THE INTERNET which provides, in a frames format, a plethora of data bases and links as well as a full spectrum of biblical and catechetical teachings and much more supplied by this site loyal to the Magisterium of the Church.

Click here to return to SECTION ONE or click here to return to the graphics front page of this issue.

February 25, 1999 volume 10, no. 39   DAILY CATHOLIC