ISIS New Propaganda, Vatican Warns & Francis Equates All War With Hatred
So, basically, ISIS is threatening to detonate a bomb in Times Square, but don't worry, Bill De Blasio and NYPD Chief Bill Bratton say you should not be "intimidated." Here's GOP mouthpiece Fox News:
However, it's a delicate balance, because while you want the public to be mad enough to support continued intervention, what you don't want is an outright voter rebellion wherein suddenly, everyone starts asking the tough questions (like when an exasperated Jim Acosta asked Obama why America doesn't "just take out these bastards") because that's when the narrative starts to unravel and you start having to try and explain why ISIS is a useful destabilizing element in Syria where the top priority (above all else up to and including fighting ISIS), is ousting the Assad government.
In any event, we'd also note that this is at least the second time this year that ISIS has used stock footage of a TGI Friday's. Apparently Islamic State, like everyone else in the known universe, has had a bad TGI Friday's experience at one time or another...
The November 18 notice is billed as a “Security Message for U.S. Citizens” regarding a potential for terrorist attacks, and arrived punctually into the email boxes of all Americans registered with the embassy, including that of Breitbart News.
Along with the Vatican, the State Department singles out the Duomo (cathedral) and La Scala opera house in Milan. It goes on to note that general venues “such as churches, synagogues, restaurants, theatres, and hotels” in both Rome and Milan are possible targets as well.
The embassy notice says: “Terrorist groups may possibly utilize similar methods used in the recent Paris attacks,” meaning bombs and assault rifles.
The alert also mentions that Italian authorities are aware of these threats, signaling that there will be additional security in these places, a phenomenon that is already evident.
Immediately following last Friday’s jihadist attacks in Paris, the Italian government issued a level-two terrorist alert for the whole country, considerably increasing security measures around the Vatican City State.
The level-two alert comprises the deployment of forces from the army’s special units. Army units have been dispatched to conduct regular patrols on the streets surrounding the Vatican, and can be seen in clusters around the city-state carrying high-powered weapons.
Patrols will reportedly intensify in the coming weeks leading up to the beginning of the Vatican’s Jubilee Year of Mercy on December 8.
“The danger is real and objective,” said Franco Roberti, the head of Italy’s anti-mafia and counterterrorism task force earlier this week, “but it is not concrete or delimited.”
“We must protect ourselves from this danger by adopting all the preventive measures necessary. We do not need special laws, but we must be prepared to give up some of our personal freedoms, in particular in the area of communication,” he said.
The embassy alert advised U.S. citizens “to remain vigilant and aware of their surroundings.”
It also encourages them “to monitor media and local information sources and factor updated information into personal travel plans and activities.”
Walking through the posh neighborhood of Embassy Row in October, I stumbled across a scoop: that Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl lives in a penthouse atop a mansion priced north of $40 million.
That Embassy Row mansion is the Our Lady Queen of the Americas parish. As I approached the mansion, across from the elegant Russian Cultural Center, I wondered if it contained a chapel. Curious, I walked inside. On the first floor, I walked past posters touting open-borders propaganda (“Ten Myths About Immigration” and so on) and saw signs for a leftist outfit called the “Washington English Center,” which offers language and job services to immigrants, legal and illegal.
Not finding the chapel on the first floor, I looked for a priest to direct me to it. I found one, or maybe I didn’t. A man with dyed hair and an ornament in his ear, sporting a priestly collar of an unspecified denomination, was standing near the stairs. “Where is the church?” I asked him. “It is on the second floor,” he replied. “Cardinal Wuerl lives in a penthouse on the third floor,” he added with a grin.
I gave this information to ChurchMilitant.com, which ran a story last week titled, “Cardinal Donald Wuerl, A New Bishop of Bling.”
The article’s author, Christine Niles, reported that the faithful have been paying from $50,000 to $100,000 in taxes for Wuerl’s mansion-complex each year, and that the archdiocese was in no mood to talk about it:
The Catholic faithful in Washington, D.C. — who after all are financing Wuerl’s taste for high living — should stroll over to this mansion-complex and check out the champagne socialism of our humble pope’s favorite American cardinal. It is a window on the modernist and Marxist rot within the Church. Behind the Potemkin village of classrooms and cozy administrative offices lies a network of deep-pocketed leftists who seek to use the Church as an instrument of socialist propaganda.
The Washington English Center receives money from the Herb Block Foundation, among many other liberal groups. Careful students of Marxism will immediately grasp the significance of that foundation name: Herb Block, a celebrated cartoonist, was a hardcore leftist and Communist sympathizer who coined the polemical term “McCarthyism” in an attempt to smear anti-Communism on the Right.
As Cardinal Wuerl holds soirées on his penthouse terrace overlooking the grand avenues of Washington, D.C., socialists in the mold of Herb Block on the floors below promote open borders and an ever-expanding welfare state.
This is the “social gospel” of Cardinal Wuerl, who rose to power as a covert spirit-of-Vatican-II leftist, duping pious Catholics by day, hobnobbing with modernists and Marxists by night. Membership in the humble church of Pope Francis has its privileges: not only does Wuerl live in an Embassy Row penthouse, he also enjoys the power to name institutions after himself, such as Cardinal Wuerl High School in Pittsburgh.
As a young priest on the make at the Vatican in the 1970s, Wuerl prominently displayed in his office a copy of the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao, a fact that startled a People reporter covering him at the time. These days his limousine leftism takes the form of padding downstairs from his penthouse and gazing up happily at a bulletin board that calls for open borders and an end to the rule of law. Like a pampered member of the Red nomenklatura, Wuerl awaits that glorious day when all classes are abolished except his own, the elite of the global Left into whose service he has devoted his decadent, heterodox, and baldly hypocritical episcopacy. In these supposed days of modesty under Francis, he remains the prince of Embassy Row.
A mysterious Roman basilica built for the worship of an esoteric pagan cult and now lying hidden more than 40ft below street level has opened to the public for the first time.
Is Times Square Next? ISIS Releases Video Of Suicide Bomber Preparing To Detonate In NYC
Earlier this week, Americans were shocked - shocked - when ISIS released a new video threatening to attack Washington DC.
The clip - another Hollywood special shot in full HD - is a kind of
mini-lecture series featuring three jihadist speakers. One is an
intellectual-looking fellow who calmly makes his case against a serene
looking oasis background, another is a raving, crazy-eyed militant who
is inexplicably sitting in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck, and the
third is a soldier flanked by two not-so-serious looking comrades
speaking against a backdrop that features some shrubs and an armored
vehicle manned by a couple of set extras and/or character actors.
As patently absurd as it was, it scared a lot of people and at least
according to new “information” acquired in raids by French police this
week, the militants were indeed intent on keeping at least one of the
promises they made in the video - that is, staging more attacks on
France, as Reuters reported on Wednesday that the cell raided in St-Denis planned to attack La Defense and the Quatre Temps.
The video described above was actually one of two released on the
same day by Furat Media and indeed, ISIS’ video production team has been
working overtime this week to capitalize on the frenzy around the Paris
attacks.
Furat's latest effort (out last night apparently) is another France montage but there’s
a notable 30 second portion which depicts a man building a suicide
belt, strapping it on, walking into a crowd, and hitting the switch.
There are still shots of New York (specifically Times Square) that flash throughout.
So, basically, ISIS is threatening to detonate a bomb in Times Square, but don't worry, Bill De Blasio and NYPD Chief Bill Bratton say you should not be "intimidated." Here's GOP mouthpiece Fox News:
Well, some people undoubtedly will be fearful, which is fine because if you're Washington (and especially if you're The Pentagon) you need to keep the fear factor sufficiently elevated to ensure that the public continues to blindly support the lunatic "mission" in Syria.Police Commissioner William Bratton described the video as "hastily produced," while Mayor Bill De Blasio insisted that New Yorkers "should continue to go to work, live their lives, and enjoy the greatest city in the world."
"Be aware, but do not be afraid. The NYPD will protect you," Bratton said. "We cannot be intimidated, and that's what terrorists seek to do. They seek to create fear. They seek to intimidate. We will not be intimidated, and we will not live in fear."
However, it's a delicate balance, because while you want the public to be mad enough to support continued intervention, what you don't want is an outright voter rebellion wherein suddenly, everyone starts asking the tough questions (like when an exasperated Jim Acosta asked Obama why America doesn't "just take out these bastards") because that's when the narrative starts to unravel and you start having to try and explain why ISIS is a useful destabilizing element in Syria where the top priority (above all else up to and including fighting ISIS), is ousting the Assad government.
In any event, we'd also note that this is at least the second time this year that ISIS has used stock footage of a TGI Friday's. Apparently Islamic State, like everyone else in the known universe, has had a bad TGI Friday's experience at one time or another...
Terrorist Alert: U.S. State Dept Warns Americans Abroad to Steer Clear of Vatican
The United States Embassy in Italy has issued a security alert to all Americans abroad, warning them to avoid locations that have been identified as potential targets for terrorist attacks.
At the top of the short list is “St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (Rome).”The November 18 notice is billed as a “Security Message for U.S. Citizens” regarding a potential for terrorist attacks, and arrived punctually into the email boxes of all Americans registered with the embassy, including that of Breitbart News.
Along with the Vatican, the State Department singles out the Duomo (cathedral) and La Scala opera house in Milan. It goes on to note that general venues “such as churches, synagogues, restaurants, theatres, and hotels” in both Rome and Milan are possible targets as well.
The embassy notice says: “Terrorist groups may possibly utilize similar methods used in the recent Paris attacks,” meaning bombs and assault rifles.
The alert also mentions that Italian authorities are aware of these threats, signaling that there will be additional security in these places, a phenomenon that is already evident.
Immediately following last Friday’s jihadist attacks in Paris, the Italian government issued a level-two terrorist alert for the whole country, considerably increasing security measures around the Vatican City State.
The level-two alert comprises the deployment of forces from the army’s special units. Army units have been dispatched to conduct regular patrols on the streets surrounding the Vatican, and can be seen in clusters around the city-state carrying high-powered weapons.
Patrols will reportedly intensify in the coming weeks leading up to the beginning of the Vatican’s Jubilee Year of Mercy on December 8.
“The danger is real and objective,” said Franco Roberti, the head of Italy’s anti-mafia and counterterrorism task force earlier this week, “but it is not concrete or delimited.”
“We must protect ourselves from this danger by adopting all the preventive measures necessary. We do not need special laws, but we must be prepared to give up some of our personal freedoms, in particular in the area of communication,” he said.
The embassy alert advised U.S. citizens “to remain vigilant and aware of their surroundings.”
It also encourages them “to monitor media and local information sources and factor updated information into personal travel plans and activities.”
Francis Is Comfortable With The Abolition Of The Traditional Church
Francis continues to surprise everyone with his sudden outbursts against traditional values.
After saying things such as that Jesus had failed on the cross, calling for a world government and pushing socialist policies of wealth redistribution
by forcing people to pay fees on carbon emissions, now Francis is
telling priests to forget about traditional conservative postures of the
faith, which he says are fundamentalist in nature.
In a recent speech to Italian bishops in
Florence, the Pope explained that the Church needs to “stop clinging to
conservatism and fundamentalism as a defensive response to the problems
it is facing.”
Francis and the Vatican are well-know
for their inflammatory rhetoric against the traditional values of the
Catholic faith while refusing to stop, once and for all, with the
concerning and growing corruption practices that He and his predecessors
have tolerated in the Holy See.
In addition to not enforcing ethics and
civil law, the Pope has refused to publicly call for the prosecution of
child abuser priests who now run free without being punished for their
crimes against innocents.
As we pointed out last week, the Vatican
is not holy or flawless as many blind followers believe it to be. It is
ruled by a hypocrite Pope who refuses to clean up the house. The Pope
has endorsed the secrecy policy concerning financial fraud and
pedophilia, among other scandals, that previous leaders of the Vatican
also supported. In doing so. Francis has betrayed his followers.
Francis told the bishops that in the
face of the current scandals, they should not resort to obsolete
conduct, without being specific about what he referred to. “Before the
problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in
conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct
and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant
culturally,” he stated.
Later, Francis went further to explain
that “Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating
questions, doubts, interrogatives. But it is alive, knows being
unsettled it does not have a rigid face, it has a body that moves and
grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ.”
Clearly, the Pope is seeking to abolish
the traditional pillars that have supported the faith of millions of
followers worldwide. For Francis, doctrine needs to be flexible to the
wishes of certain social groups whose stance could not be further from
the principles upon which the Church was founded.
“While Francis has cast himself as a
reformer who is seeking to portray the Church as a less rigid and less
dogmatic institution, which stands with people who live on the margins
of society, there are factions in the church that are vigorously
resisting his plea for the church to be more flexible and open,” writes
Stephanie Kirchgaessner for The Guardian.
“I would like an Italian Church that is
unsettled, always closer to the abandoned, the forgotten, the
imperfect,” said Francis. “I desire a happy church with face of a mother
who understands, accompanies, caresses,” said Francis on Tuesday’s
speech.
“The Italian church is very large and
wealthy in terms of property. This was a call for the Italian church to
be more missionary, less dependent on status and wealth, and more
radical and pro-poor,” Ivereigh said.Austen Ivereigh, the papal
biographer.
But the Pope is far from being the ruthless reformer that many say he is. As we reported before,
Francis continues to tolerate luxury, arrogance, secrecy and above all
unethical schemes such as the of pay-per-saint practice.
“The life of every community requires
that we fight the cancer of corruption, the cancer of human and labor
exploitation and the poison of illegality,” he said, while he permits
his Vatican to carry out the most corrupt activities on the face of the Earth.
Cardinal Wuerl’s Embassy Row Penthouse
Walking through the posh neighborhood of Embassy Row in October, I stumbled across a scoop: that Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl lives in a penthouse atop a mansion priced north of $40 million.
That Embassy Row mansion is the Our Lady Queen of the Americas parish. As I approached the mansion, across from the elegant Russian Cultural Center, I wondered if it contained a chapel. Curious, I walked inside. On the first floor, I walked past posters touting open-borders propaganda (“Ten Myths About Immigration” and so on) and saw signs for a leftist outfit called the “Washington English Center,” which offers language and job services to immigrants, legal and illegal.
Not finding the chapel on the first floor, I looked for a priest to direct me to it. I found one, or maybe I didn’t. A man with dyed hair and an ornament in his ear, sporting a priestly collar of an unspecified denomination, was standing near the stairs. “Where is the church?” I asked him. “It is on the second floor,” he replied. “Cardinal Wuerl lives in a penthouse on the third floor,” he added with a grin.
I gave this information to ChurchMilitant.com, which ran a story last week titled, “Cardinal Donald Wuerl, A New Bishop of Bling.”
The article’s author, Christine Niles, reported that the faithful have been paying from $50,000 to $100,000 in taxes for Wuerl’s mansion-complex each year, and that the archdiocese was in no mood to talk about it:
But the story doesn’t end there. On the floors below the cardinal’s penthouse, as my initial discovery led me to research, lies a nest of Marxists, socialists, and liberals known as the Washington English Center (along with no doubt some blameless teachers and students seeking to learn English and gain job skills).The archdiocese itself is intensely tight-lipped about his living arrangements. When ChurchMilitant.com called Cdl. Wuerl's office requesting his home address, the parish secretary gave a location in Hyattsville, Maryland. When pressed, she admitted the location was not his living quarters, but rather was where the cardinal "receives things." ChurchMilitant.com asked whether Cdl. Wuerl's home address is public record considering it is archdiocesan property, and the secretary explained it was policy not to give out his residential address.
ChurchMilitant.com then called Our Lady Queen of the Americas parish to confirm Cdl. Wuerl's residence, but the parish secretary refused to answer the question, and the line was abruptly disconnected.
In spite of the secrecy, multiple sources — both clerical and lay — confirmed to ChurchMilitant.com that His Eminence does indeed reside there.
One of our sources, George Neumayr, columnist for the American Spectator, verified this fact…
The Catholic faithful in Washington, D.C. — who after all are financing Wuerl’s taste for high living — should stroll over to this mansion-complex and check out the champagne socialism of our humble pope’s favorite American cardinal. It is a window on the modernist and Marxist rot within the Church. Behind the Potemkin village of classrooms and cozy administrative offices lies a network of deep-pocketed leftists who seek to use the Church as an instrument of socialist propaganda.
The Washington English Center receives money from the Herb Block Foundation, among many other liberal groups. Careful students of Marxism will immediately grasp the significance of that foundation name: Herb Block, a celebrated cartoonist, was a hardcore leftist and Communist sympathizer who coined the polemical term “McCarthyism” in an attempt to smear anti-Communism on the Right.
As Cardinal Wuerl holds soirées on his penthouse terrace overlooking the grand avenues of Washington, D.C., socialists in the mold of Herb Block on the floors below promote open borders and an ever-expanding welfare state.
This is the “social gospel” of Cardinal Wuerl, who rose to power as a covert spirit-of-Vatican-II leftist, duping pious Catholics by day, hobnobbing with modernists and Marxists by night. Membership in the humble church of Pope Francis has its privileges: not only does Wuerl live in an Embassy Row penthouse, he also enjoys the power to name institutions after himself, such as Cardinal Wuerl High School in Pittsburgh.
As a young priest on the make at the Vatican in the 1970s, Wuerl prominently displayed in his office a copy of the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao, a fact that startled a People reporter covering him at the time. These days his limousine leftism takes the form of padding downstairs from his penthouse and gazing up happily at a bulletin board that calls for open borders and an end to the rule of law. Like a pampered member of the Red nomenklatura, Wuerl awaits that glorious day when all classes are abolished except his own, the elite of the global Left into whose service he has devoted his decadent, heterodox, and baldly hypocritical episcopacy. In these supposed days of modesty under Francis, he remains the prince of Embassy Row.
Secret pagan basilica in Rome emerges from the shadows after 2,000 years
An underground chamber that was a place of worship for a mysterious cult 2,000 years ago has opened to the public for the first time
A mysterious Roman basilica built for the worship of an esoteric pagan cult and now lying hidden more than 40ft below street level has opened to the public for the first time.
The basilica, the only one of its kind in the world, was excavated from
solid tufa volcanic rock on the outskirts of the imperial capital in
the first century AD.
Lavishly
decorated with stucco reliefs of gods, goddesses, panthers, winged
cherubs and pygmies, it was discovered by accident in 1917 during the
construction of a railway line from Rome to Cassino, a town to the
south. An underground passageway caved in, revealing the entrance to the
hidden chamber.
Read Here!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/12005864/Secret-pagan-basilica-in-Rome-emerges-from-the-shadows-after-2000-years.html
Making the world a better place, he said, "is all about individuals, it is about bottom up, it is about little acts of mercy. ... It's not going to happen through conferences of interfaith leaders making more proclamations about the meaning of mercy or theologians delving deeply into what mercy means, but it's about people of different faiths living together and trying to see the other for who the other really is and responding accordingly."
"It happens on the ground," the rabbi said. "It happens in a million different little acts every day."
For Jews, he said, God's justice and mercy go together. "There is a passage of Jewish teaching in the Talmud that states that if someone is merciful to the cruel, they will end up being cruel to the merciful. In other words, justice is important in Judaism; it is not just unadulterated mercy."
"But what we do in our liturgies," the rabbi said, "we are constantly asking God to temper his justice with mercy."
It is a "bit of a caricature" to say the might of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is greater than his mercy, Rabbi Brawer said, because the Bible presents different images of God. "There are times in which he is angry and vengeful, but then there are times in which God is extraordinarily vulnerable, betrayed and almost astounded by the behavior of a people he loves who are not returning that love. So, yes, God can be vengeful and wrathful and demand justice, but then he very often allows humans to challenge that, invites humans to challenge that and I think that's the fuller picture."
For example, he said, after the Israelites worship the golden calf, God tells Moses, "'I'm going to wipe this lot out,' -- that's one snapshot -- but what's equally important is the following snapshot in which Moses intercedes and God gives way, and that's an extraordinary thing."
Houshmand said 113 of the 114 chapters of the Quran open with the phrase, "Bismillah al rahman al rahim," usually translated as, "In the name of God, the most gracious, most merciful." Muslims begin their formal prayers with the phrase, they say it before meals, begin formal speeches with it and recite it at the beginning of wedding and funeral rites.
"Why does the Quran repeat this name so often? Maybe it is because God knows that unfortunately the human heart needs to hear repeated, constantly and often, that God is mercy," she said. "With our instincts and selfishness, our failures and pettiness, the human being tends always to flee from mercy, so the Quran repeats and repeats and repeats it."
As in Catholicism, in Islam invoking God's mercy is particularly tied to asking God's forgiveness for one's sins, she said. Islam teaches that "God, the fullness of love, knows and sees the mistakes, errors and sins of the human person. But his mercy never stops in the face of anything. His mercy embraces all of creation -- the good and the bad, saints and sinners -- and he says, 'I see you, I see your sins, but I am still merciful always. And the doors of my mercy, of my forgiveness are always, eternally open to you.'"
Muslims, she said, believe that at different times of the year -- such as the last days of the fasting month of Ramadan -- the gates of heaven open wider and God's mercy flows more abundantly. "I see the jubilee as having this purpose, too, of healing deep wounds. We must welcome this call to mercy and remember than no one is perfect, no one is without need of mercy. Like Jesus said, 'Let whoever is without sin throw the first stone.'"
ROME — As major global powers debate how to take the fight to ISIS in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, Pope Francis on Thursday said that “the whole world is at war,” adding that Jesus weeps “because we have chosen the way of war, the way of hatred.”
The pontiff called those who fuel today’s conflicts “criminals” and “cursed.”
“When all the world is at war as it is today – piecemeal, a little here, a little there, and everywhere – there is no justification and God weeps,” he said. “Jesus weeps.”
The comments came during the pope’s daily Mass in the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lives.
“We are close to Christmas,” the pope said. “There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.”
“The world has not understood the way of peace,” he said.
According to Vatican Radio, Pope Francis said the only things
produced by today’s violence are “ruins, thousands of children with no
education, so many innocent dead … and so much money in the pockets of
gun-traffickers!”
Quoting Thursday’s Gospel, Francis said greed is an element in sustaining violence.
“War is the right choice for him who would serve wealth,” he said. “Let us build weapons, so that the economy will right itself somewhat, and let us go forward in pursuit of our interests.”
The pope also hailed “poor workers of peace who give their lives to help one person, who spend themselves utterly, and even give their lives,” offering the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Francis said that the “powerful and cynical” might wonder what she ever accomplished by “wasting” her life “helping others on their way to death,” saying that incomprehension illustrates that “we do not understand the path of peace.”
Pope Francis has denounced what he calls a “piecemeal world war” on multiple occasions, but he has also seemingly signaled understanding that the use of force may be necessary in response to terrorist movements with a global reach.
In August 2014, for instance Pope Francis flashed a cautious yellow light to a US-led coalition striking at ISIS targets, saying, “it’s legitimate to stop an unjust aggressor.”
Since then, the Vatican has openly supported the use of military force if it has an international warrant.
Last March the Vatican’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva called for a coordinated international force to stop ISIS.
“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”
In the wake of the attacks in Paris, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin also supported a military intervention to disarm “an unjust aggressor.”
Read Here!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/12005864/Secret-pagan-basilica-in-Rome-emerges-from-the-shadows-after-2000-years.html
"Mercy", The Common Denominator?
God is mercy: Holy Year affirms belief Christians, Muslims, Jews share
Making the world a better place, he said, "is all about individuals, it is about bottom up, it is about little acts of mercy. ... It's not going to happen through conferences of interfaith leaders making more proclamations about the meaning of mercy or theologians delving deeply into what mercy means, but it's about people of different faiths living together and trying to see the other for who the other really is and responding accordingly."
"It happens on the ground," the rabbi said. "It happens in a million different little acts every day."
For Jews, he said, God's justice and mercy go together. "There is a passage of Jewish teaching in the Talmud that states that if someone is merciful to the cruel, they will end up being cruel to the merciful. In other words, justice is important in Judaism; it is not just unadulterated mercy."
"But what we do in our liturgies," the rabbi said, "we are constantly asking God to temper his justice with mercy."
It is a "bit of a caricature" to say the might of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is greater than his mercy, Rabbi Brawer said, because the Bible presents different images of God. "There are times in which he is angry and vengeful, but then there are times in which God is extraordinarily vulnerable, betrayed and almost astounded by the behavior of a people he loves who are not returning that love. So, yes, God can be vengeful and wrathful and demand justice, but then he very often allows humans to challenge that, invites humans to challenge that and I think that's the fuller picture."
For example, he said, after the Israelites worship the golden calf, God tells Moses, "'I'm going to wipe this lot out,' -- that's one snapshot -- but what's equally important is the following snapshot in which Moses intercedes and God gives way, and that's an extraordinary thing."
Houshmand said 113 of the 114 chapters of the Quran open with the phrase, "Bismillah al rahman al rahim," usually translated as, "In the name of God, the most gracious, most merciful." Muslims begin their formal prayers with the phrase, they say it before meals, begin formal speeches with it and recite it at the beginning of wedding and funeral rites.
"Why does the Quran repeat this name so often? Maybe it is because God knows that unfortunately the human heart needs to hear repeated, constantly and often, that God is mercy," she said. "With our instincts and selfishness, our failures and pettiness, the human being tends always to flee from mercy, so the Quran repeats and repeats and repeats it."
As in Catholicism, in Islam invoking God's mercy is particularly tied to asking God's forgiveness for one's sins, she said. Islam teaches that "God, the fullness of love, knows and sees the mistakes, errors and sins of the human person. But his mercy never stops in the face of anything. His mercy embraces all of creation -- the good and the bad, saints and sinners -- and he says, 'I see you, I see your sins, but I am still merciful always. And the doors of my mercy, of my forgiveness are always, eternally open to you.'"
Muslims, she said, believe that at different times of the year -- such as the last days of the fasting month of Ramadan -- the gates of heaven open wider and God's mercy flows more abundantly. "I see the jubilee as having this purpose, too, of healing deep wounds. We must welcome this call to mercy and remember than no one is perfect, no one is without need of mercy. Like Jesus said, 'Let whoever is without sin throw the first stone.'"
Francis Equates War With Hatred?
Francis says ‘Jesus weeps’ over piecemeal world war
ROME — As major global powers debate how to take the fight to ISIS in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, Pope Francis on Thursday said that “the whole world is at war,” adding that Jesus weeps “because we have chosen the way of war, the way of hatred.”
The pontiff called those who fuel today’s conflicts “criminals” and “cursed.”
“When all the world is at war as it is today – piecemeal, a little here, a little there, and everywhere – there is no justification and God weeps,” he said. “Jesus weeps.”
The comments came during the pope’s daily Mass in the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lives.
“We are close to Christmas,” the pope said. “There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.”
“The world has not understood the way of peace,” he said.
Quoting Thursday’s Gospel, Francis said greed is an element in sustaining violence.
“War is the right choice for him who would serve wealth,” he said. “Let us build weapons, so that the economy will right itself somewhat, and let us go forward in pursuit of our interests.”
The pope also hailed “poor workers of peace who give their lives to help one person, who spend themselves utterly, and even give their lives,” offering the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Francis said that the “powerful and cynical” might wonder what she ever accomplished by “wasting” her life “helping others on their way to death,” saying that incomprehension illustrates that “we do not understand the path of peace.”
Pope Francis has denounced what he calls a “piecemeal world war” on multiple occasions, but he has also seemingly signaled understanding that the use of force may be necessary in response to terrorist movements with a global reach.
In August 2014, for instance Pope Francis flashed a cautious yellow light to a US-led coalition striking at ISIS targets, saying, “it’s legitimate to stop an unjust aggressor.”
Since then, the Vatican has openly supported the use of military force if it has an international warrant.
Last March the Vatican’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva called for a coordinated international force to stop ISIS.
“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”
In the wake of the attacks in Paris, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin also supported a military intervention to disarm “an unjust aggressor.”
