{"id":4433,"date":"2006-11-22T08:34:15","date_gmt":"2006-11-22T08:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/of-paul-and-lebanon.html"},"modified":"2006-11-22T08:34:15","modified_gmt":"2006-11-22T08:34:15","slug":"of-paul-and-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/of-paul-and-lebanon.html","title":{"rendered":"Of Paul and Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/p>\n

Today’s General Audience, mostly in the rain:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The murder of the Christian minister, Pierre Gemayel in Beirut yesterday evening should prompt the Lebanese people to work together to build national unity and countries with the welfare of the Middle East at heart to strive to eliminate injustice afflicting it. Benedict XVI talked about the latest murder in Lebanon at the end of the general audience, launching an appeal to the Lebanese people to refute violence and to the international community to face the tragic situation in the Middle East. <\/p>\n

The pope expressed \u201cprofound sorrow\u201d for the \u201cbrutal murder\u201d of Gemayel, which he \u201cfirmly condemned\u201d. He said: \u201cI give assurance of my prayers and spiritual closeness to the family in mourning and the beloved Lebanese people.\u201d He continued: \u201cFaced with the dark forces that are seeking to destroy the country, I invite all Lebanese not to allow hatred to triumph but to develop national unity, justice and reconciliation and to work together to build a future of peace together. I invite state leaders who have the interest of Lebanon at heart to contribute to a global, negotiated solution to heal the situations of injustice that have marked the region for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He continued with his catechesis on Paul, today emphasizing Paul’s thinking on Church:<\/p>\n

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Underlining the need for unity however does not mean \u201cmaintaining that Christian life should be made uniform and hammered out according to only one way of working,\u201d said Benedict XVI, adding that Paul himself had cited countless Charismatic manifestations of the Spirit. For the apostle, then, everything should \u201ccontribute to weaving the ecclesial fabric\u201d, both vertical, between Jesus and the faithful, and horizontal, between \u201call those who distinguish themselves in the world because they invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.\u201d He added: \u201cIt is well understood how desirable it is that what St Paul hoped for will be realized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More on Lebanon, from AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir will preside over the funeral at 1pm on Thursday, 22 November, in the Cathedral of St George in the heart of Beirut. He said he considers \u201cthe murder of Minister Gemayel as a new blow to much desired peace in the country after years of war\u201d and he called attention to the necessity of keeping calm and not reacting violently, because Lebanon is no longer able to pay the price of violence. The patriarch finally appealed to the people\u2019s conscience, that they may double efforts to stop this campaign of violence, expressing his solidarity with the family of Minister Gemayel. The religious ceremony for the murdered minister was desired by the Gemayel family as a \u201cnew act of obedience to God\u2019s will.\u201d After the funeral, the body will be taken to the minister\u2019s village of origin in Bikfaya, near the tomb of his uncle Bashir, killed in 1982, his grandfather Pierre, founder of the Lebanese Phalange Party, and the daughter of President Bachir, young Maya, also killed 22 years ago by a car bomb. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s General Audience, mostly in the rain: The murder of the Christian minister, Pierre Gemayel in Beirut yesterday evening should prompt the Lebanese people to work together to build national unity and countries with the welfare of the Middle East at heart to strive to eliminate injustice afflicting it. Benedict XVI talked about the latest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOf Paul and Lebanon - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/of-paul-and-lebanon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Of Paul and Lebanon - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today’s General Audience, mostly in the rain: The murder of the Christian minister, Pierre Gemayel in Beirut yesterday evening should prompt the Lebanese people to work together to build national unity and countries with the welfare of the Middle East at heart to strive to eliminate injustice afflicting it. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}