I am still trying to finish up what I wanted to finish last week…but I’ll get started with this post, in which I post various links I’ve received in the mail and seen in my own cybertravels.

The Popcaks have returned from China with their new daughter, Liliana Faith. They speak about the trip briefly in the beginning of yesterday’s show – podcast here.

Greg posts a bit here –

We received Liliana the Tuesday after Palm Sunday.  We arrived at the Civil affairs office and spotted her through the window right away, chewing on her laminated passport photo, clinging to it for dear life.  She was very quiet and reserved the first few days.  Very tentative.  Very concerned.  Just taking it all in.  But she cracked her first smile about four days after we received her and she has been steadily coming out of her shell since.  She is 13 months and about 18lbs.  Although she spent the entire first year of her life in the orphanage, she seems only slightly behind where she ought to be developmentally, and she seems to be catching up pretty quickly. 

We got a copy of her "finding ad" –the ad that the Chinese government places in the local newpaper in an attempt to find the parents of abandoned children.  The ad indicates that she was only a few hours old when she was found at the "gates of the family planning clinic."  She looks like a little baby bird.  So helpless and sad.

And yet, she is flourishing now.  It is so wonderful to see.  Unfortunately, she is still operating on China time and has her days and nights hopelessly mixed up.  It has been exhausting.  But mom and dad are happy to be there for her and her brother and sister are wonderful supports.

He will be posting more in bits and pieces.

Here’s his post about their experience attending Easter Mass.

Zadok is working his way through the Pope’s Jesus book:

Points of interest:
1. Note that the Holy Father is pretty explicit about this book being based around the idea of a Christology ‘from above’. The starting point is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and this allows the details of his earthly existence to fall into place and make sense. It’s very much a case of ‘credo ut intelligam’ – I believe so that I might understand.
2. That doesn’t mean that the full humanity of Christ is neglected. The Pope makes a very clear reference to the human soul of Christ and tries to help us understand what His Divine Sonship might mean in terms of the human operations of His soul… without engaging in any imprudent and ultimately fruitless speculations that say too much about the human conciousness of Christ.

3. This leads us to, what seems to me, a very Augustinian understanding of Christ – namely the One who is both God and Man, and therefore is the one and only Mediator between God and Man. Thus, closeness to Jesus allows the prayer of the disciple to also share in the communion which Christ has with the Father by virtue of His Divine Sonship.
4. Finally, we have a reference to man’s openness to communion with God. Without suggesting anything as explicit or as technical as De Lubac’s fashionable (but flawed) theory of a natural desire for the supernatural, or proposing some form of the Thomistic ‘capax Dei’, Pope Benedict again expresses himself in a simpler, and what I would regard as a fundamentally Augustinian way. Man is said to have some kind of predisposition towards this incredible step towards communion with God (which happens through Christ the mediator) right from His creation – a decided echo of St Augustine’s You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
5. All in all, the Holy Father is presenting some fairly profound ideas, but with the simplicity and lightness of touch of one who has a keen existential and intellectual grasp of what he’s talking about.

Much more.

Fr. Finigan at Hermeneutic of Continuity has links and commentary on the story that came out yesterday about the declining number of British doctors willing to perform abortions.