Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn to Live as Exiles in Our Own Country

TIME.com has an excellent article by Rod Dreher on the implications of Friday's Supreme Court decision:

http://time.com/3938050/orthodox-christians-must-now-learn-to-live-as-exiles-in-our-own-country/

To blog or not to blog? That is the question

Ah, of all the days to choose to [maybe] start blogging again. . .  Not that anyone is reading; I'm just writing.

This day is my day off. And this very moment I am meant to be finishing up a paper for class #9 out of 10 (not including my "Major Project") in my Doctor of Ministry course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

The paper is about Technology and the Church. More specifically, it deals with the online world as both savior and seducer.

In my year-and-a-half hiatus from blogging, which had turned into slogging and then into fogging, I never looked to see if anyone was still coming here to contemplate with me. Frankly, I didn't care. And that's not altogether a bad thing, as I mention in my paper.

After chatting a little about how some friends of mine in the same church, but at either end of the political spectrum, let rip on Facebook for and against Governor Scott Walker, I write this:

On a personal level, I well understand the ease with which one can act differently online. I have a blog, The Contemplative Kiwi, from which I am currently taking an extended sabbatical. I found it so tempting to present a certain side of myself—a side that I wanted people to like and enjoy and think highly of. 

Selectivity and “putting forward your best self” is, to some extent, part of everyday life. After all, we brush our teeth in the morning, try to dress in colors that match and do our best to avoid breaking wind in public. But the internet, it seems at times, invites the creation of “another self” to market to the world and to even hide behind. 

For Christians, this should come as no great surprise; we’ve been hiding behind things since the Garden. In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve first hid behind fig leaves. Finding they were still exposed to the gaze of a holy God, Adam ducked behind Eve and deflected blame and attention to her rather than confront the reality of his true self in all of its ugly brokenness. Eve followed his lead and hid figuratively behind the serpent. 

We’re still in the Garden, only it’s an electronic one now. Psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude says it all in his superb book, Virtually You: The Dangerous  Powers of the E-Personality: “…while the internet is a force for good in many arenas, it also has the power to interfere with our home lives, our romantic relationships, our careers, our parenting abilities—and our very concept of who we are” (Aboujauode 2011, 10). 

“The way we see and evaluate ourselves is changing as a function of new personality traits born and nurtured in the virtual world. These include an exaggerated sense of our abilities, a superior attitude toward others, a new moral code that we adopt online, a proneness to impulsive behavior…” (Aboujauode 2011, 10-11).

The impact of the online world on Christians is sadly illustrated by a story Aboujauode tells about Linda Brinkley, a twice-divorced fifty-five year old mother of four from Arkansas who was interested in religious studies and had aspirations to become a missionary. Her avatar in the online game Second Life, however, was a “prostitute and half-naked hostess” at a virtual nightclub owned by avatar Dave Barmy who appeared young and svelte online, but was in real life the projection of  Dave Pollard, a 350 pound unemployed man from Cornwall, England. Pollard’s real world wife, who also played Second Life as someone far removed from reality, found her husband repeatedly cheating on her sexually in the game. After three years of this, she filed for divorce in the real world. Not to be deterred, her now ex-husband found marital bliss on Second Life with his topless waitress. That being such a success, they decided to also get married in their “first life” (Aboujauode 2011, 164-165). 

Most likely, Linda Brinkley from Arkansas will now be putting her missionary career on hold.

Given that cautionary tale, it's highly ironic that I find myself back in the blogosphere—to opine or whine or maybe dine on this veritable feast God has given us called life.

[Actually, I'm going on a few trips in the next months and just want to document them here because I have a tendency to lose my little hand-written journals. After all: "what happens online stays there forever."]

 

Blood on Our Hands

Yesterday I saw a still photo of a man in England, meat cleaver in one hand, blood on the other. He was posing for the media after butchering, dismembering, a British soldier. I felt horror at the brutality, as did most of the world.

Then last night I read, and this morning watched, the dispassionate but riveting testimony before Congress of a former abortionist. He described daily deaths every bit as violent and repulsive. The difference? These are legal and sanctioned by society. What have we become? O God, what will become of us? We have blood on our hands. SO much blood.

Levatino's Testimony:

(original article by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 5/23/13 12:52 PM)

Ertelt's Introductory Comments: Dr. Anthony Levatino is a pro-life physician from New Mexico but, before having a change of heart on the issue of abortion he was an OBGYN who also performed abortions.

Levatino did as many as 1,200 abortions — some of them after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Then, after his daughter died in a tragic automobile accident, he re-evaluated his position on abortion and stopped doing abortions.

Today, Dr. Levatino told members of a Congressional committee that they should support a bill sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks that would ban abortions nationwide aft 20 weeks of pregnancy.

-------------------------------------------------

Chairman Franks and distinguished members of the subcommittee, my name is Anthony Levatino. I am a board-certified obstetrician gynecologist. I received my medical degree from Albany Medical College in Albany, NY in 1976 and completed my OB-GYN residency training at Albany Medical Center in 1980. In my 33-year career, I have been privileged to practice obstetrics and gynecology in both private and university settings. From June 1993 until September 2000, I was associate professor of OB-GYN at the Albany Medical College serving at different times as both medical student director and residency program director. I have also dedicated many years to private practice and currently operate a solo gynecology practice in Las Cruces, NM. I appreciate your kind invitation to address issues related to the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R.1797).

During my residency training and during my first five years of private practice, I performed both first and second trimester abortions. Duringmy residency in the late 1970s, second trimester abortions were typically performed using saline infusion or, occasionally, prostaglandin instillation techniques. These procedures were difficult, expensive and necessitated that patients go through labor to abort their pre-born children. By 1980, at the time I entered private practice first in Florida and then in upstate New York, those of us in the abortion industry were looking for a more efficient method of second trimester abortion.

The Suction D&E procedure offered clear advantages over older installation methods. The procedure was much quicker and never ran the risk of a live birth. Understand that my partner and I were not running an abortion clinic. We practiced general obstetrics and gynecology but abortion was definitely part of that practice. Relatively few gynecologists in upstate NY would perform such a procedure and we saw an opportunity to expand our abortion practice.

I performed first trimester suction D&C abortions in my office up to 10 weeks from last menstrual period and later procedures in an outpatient hospital setting. From 1981 through February 1985, I performed approximately 1200 abortions. Over 100 of them were second trimester Suction D&E procedures up to 24 weeks gestation.

Imagine if you can that you are a pro-choice obstetrician/gynecologist like I once was. Your patient today is 24 weeks pregnant. At twenty-four weeks from last menstrual period, her uterus is two finger-breadths above the umbilicus.

If you could see her baby, which is quite easy on an ultrasound, she would be as long as your hand plus a half from the top of her head to the bottom of her rump not counting the legs. Your patient has been feeling her baby kick for the last 2 months or more but now she is asleep on an operating room table and you are there to help her with her problem pregnancy.

The first task is remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate it sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform. With that accomplished, direct your attention to the surgical instruments arranged on a small table to your right. The first instrument you reach for is a 14-French suction catheter. It is clear plastic and about nine inches long. It has a bore through the center approximately ¾ of an inch in diameter. Picture yourself introducing this catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine which is connected through clear plastic tubing to the catheter. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid that looks a lot like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This is the amniotic fluid that surrounded the baby to protect her.

With suction complete, look for your Sopher clamp. This instrument is about thirteen inches long and made of stainless steel. At the end are located jaws about 2 ½ inches long and about ¾ of an inch wide with rows of sharp ridges or teeth. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go. A second trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby can be in any orientation or position inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the Sopher clamp and grasping anything you can. At twenty-four weeks gestation, the uterus is thin and soft so be careful not to perforate or puncture the walls. Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard–really hard. You feel something let go and out pops  a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.

The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a large plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush d own on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.

Congratulations! You have just successfully performed a second trimester Suction D&E abortion. You just affirmed her right to choose. If you refuse to believe that this procedure inflicts severe pain on that unborn child, please think again.

Before I close, I want to make a comment on the necessity and usefulness of utilizing second and third trimester abortion to save women’s lives. I often hear the argument that we must keep abortion legal in order to save women’s lives in cases of life threatening conditions that can and do arise in pregnancy.

Albany Medical Center where I worked for over seven years is a tertiary referral center that accepts patients with life threatening conditions related to or caused by pregnancy. I personally treated hundreds of women with such conditions in my tenure there. There are several conditions that can arise or worsen typically during the late second or third trimester of pregnancy that require immediate care. In many of those cases, ending or “terminating” the pregnancy, if you prefer, can be life saving. But is abortion a viable treatment option in this setting? I maintain that it usually, if not always, is not.

Before a Suction D&E procedure can be performed, the cervix must first be sufficiently dilated. In my practice, this was accomplished with serial placement of laminaria. Laminaria is a type of sterilized seaweed that absorbs water over several hours and swells to several times its original diameter. Multiple placements of several laminaria at a time are absolutely required prior to attempting a suction D&E. In the mid second trimester, this requires approximately 36 hours to accomplish. When utilizing the D&X abortion procedure, popularly known as Partial-Birth Abortion, this process requires three days as explained by Dr. Martin Haskell in his 1992 paper that first described this type of abortion.

In cases where a mother’s life is seriously threatened by her pregnancy, a doctor more often than not doesn’t have 36 hours, much less 72 hours, to resolve the problem. Let me illustrate with a real -life case that I managed while at the Albany Medical Center. A patient arrived one night at 28 weeks gestation with severe pre-eclampsia or toxemia. Her blood pressure on admission was 220/160. As you are probably aware, a normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80. This patient’s pregnancy was a threat to her life and the life of her unborn child. She could very well be minutes or hours away from a major stroke. This case was managed successfully by rapidly stabilizing the patient’s blood pressure and “terminating” her pregnancy by Cesarean section. She and her baby did well. This is a typical case in the world of high-risk obstetrics. In most such cases, any attempt to perform an abortion “to save the mother’s life” would entail undue and dangerous delay in providing appropriate, truly life-saving care. During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by “terminating”pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those hundreds of cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.

Original Source: http://drudgegae.iavian.net/r?hop=http://www.lifenews.com/2013/05/23/doctor-who-did-1200-abortions-tells-congress-to-ban-them/

Whitney and the Cult of Personality

Whitney Houston died yesterday, aged forty-eight. It was a tragic death, after such a charmed life. The obituaries in print and online observe that she was a victim of her own success, of the cult of personality. They chronicle the reign of the diva in the '80s and '90s, and the addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol that destroyed her.

Right now, I'm watching the news: live footage of stars walking the red carpet at the Grammys. Though an official pall has been cast over the celebrations, the stars still can't help posturing in front of the cameras. After all, it's who they are, it's what they do. More than that, it's who our culture has made them. It's the cult of personality. As one mourner just stated on TV, "She was our American idol before there was American idol."

There's something deep within us that gravitates towards idolizing people, towards hero worship. This is true inside the church, as well as outside the church.

I'm halfway through a superb biography of Bonhoeffer. The following sentence in my reading today jumped out in light of Whitney’s death: "He never wanted his classes or the seminary to become a cult of personality, centered on him" (p 265).

The country was drunk on nationalism and the messianic persona of the new Fuhrer, a word which literally means 'Leader.' Bonhoeffer saw the ease with which fuhrer worship outside the church so quickly seeped into the church. The 'German Christians,' as the state church was known, embraced many of the values of the Nazis--largely out of nationalistic fervor and loyalty to Hitler. Bonhoeffer recognized this damnable human inclination and sought to guard against it in the breakaway church movement which became known as the 'Confessing Church.' The last thing that would be tolerated in this new collection of protesting pastors was the unhealthy elevation of any individual, especially him.

Like Paul, he recognized the fleshly tendencies that can be so divisive in the church:

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’: another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’          (1 Corinthians 1:10-12)

Bonhoeffer knew that each one of us must guard our hearts in what we both give and receive since, in the words of John the Baptist, there is only one who deserves adulation. He is the Leader par excellence. The Christ. The One and Only, our Savior.

And so, with John, we affirm this essential truth:

“He must increase, but I must decrease”  (John 3:30).

Cultural Superiority and Vacation Deprivation

This Amerikiwi really struggles to disengage from reading emails while on vacation. (I have to delete the account or the temptation is too great.) So it was with great interest (especially after my last post) that I read the following article in USA Today, titled: "Who Gets the Most Vacation Time? And Who Gets the Least?" (Clue: I've just decided to move to Brazil. Questions: Are they lazy? Or are we driven? Which cultural values are superior? Hmmm.)

The average working European earns 25 to 30 vacation days annually and usually takes them all. In 2011, the typical American employee earned 14 days off, but took only 12.

That's according to a survey out today commissioned by the online travel agency Expedia.com. The wide-ranging 2011 Vacation Deprivation study queried 7,803 adults in 20 countries about how much vacation they earn – and actually take – and also about their attitudes regarding time off.

The results differ from another recent survey on the topic by Hotwire.com, which reported that the average American leaves 6.2 days of vacation unused each year. (That survey was based on online responses from 2,000 workers.)

Other highlights from the Expedia.com survey:

Asians get – and take – fewer days than residents of other parts of the world. Japanese reported taking just five days out of 11 earned. South Korean respondents, who earned 10 days off, took seven. Brazilians outpace even holiday-hungry Europeans in using time off. They typically earn 30 vacation days and use them all.

Lack of money was the most frequently cited reason for not taking a vacation. Lack of planning was No. 2.

More Americans than other nationalities cite money worries as the reason for foregoing a getaway. However, 50% characterized their financial situation as "solid" or "good," reinforcing the idea that Americans regard vacations as a luxury. Brazilians, on the other hand, were least likely (6%) to cite money issues.

The Danish find it easiest to disconnect from work mode. Only 1 in 7 respondents said they check email while away and half said they never check it. Only 25% of Americans said they check email regularly on vacation; 75% said they check in sporadically or not at all.

How about you? Will you be leaving vacation time unspent this year? And if so, why?

Source: http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/11/who-gets----and-takes----the-most-time-off-work-and-who-gets-%C3%83%C2%A2%C3%A2%E2%80%9A%C2%AC%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C5%93-and-takes----the-least-/574893/1

Cultural Superiority: Good or Bad?

When, if ever, is pride a virtue? When is it a vice?

We recognize and condemn it in arrogant individuals (other people, of course, not ourselves). We recognize and condemn it in the destructive nationalism of a Nazi Germany or a xenophobic Japan.

But does our sense of "American exceptionalism" (the decline of which I have heard lamented repeatedly since Obama's election) ever cross the line from appropriate self-awareness to hubris?

What about the nationalistic pride of other nations?

Whatever the answer, it is clear from the following that geographic and demographic boundaries do little to foster humility. A new study by the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project reveals that nationalistic superiority complexes, though robust, might be in decline. Commendable? Or lamentable?

The report:

About half of Americans (49%) and Germans(47%) agree with the statement, 
“Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others;” 
44% in Spain share this view. In Britain and France, only about a third or fewer (32% and 27%, respectively) think their culture is better than others.
While opinions about cultural superiority have remained relatively stable over the years in the four Western European countries surveyed, Americans are now far less likely to say that their culture is better than others; six-in-ten Americans held this belief in 2002 and 55% did so in 2007. Belief in cultural superiority has declined among Americans across age, gender and education groups.

For more go to: http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/11/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Values-Report-FINAL-November-17-2011-10AM-EST.pdf

Don't Canonize Steve Jobs

Yeah, I've confessed to wishing I had some Apple products (all donations gladly accepted!). So it might sound like sour grapes (or apples) to point you to this very excellent article from Gawker.com titled, What Everyone is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs. It provides enough realism to temper our sadness, our adulation, and our near-deification of this remarkable, but deeply-flawed man. I think it's well worth a read, so here's an excerpt with the link afterwards:

It's the dream of any entrepreneur to effect change in one industry. Jobs transformed half a dozen of them forever, from personal computers to phones to animation to music to publishing to video games. He was a polymath, a skilled motivator, a decisive judge, a farsighted tastemaker, an excellent showman, and a gifted strategist. 

One thing he wasn't, though, was perfect. Indeed there were things Jobs did while at Apple that were deeply disturbing. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees—the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements—have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple. Jobs contributed to global problems, too. Apple's success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes. And, for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company.

The article (perhaps unintentionally) raises a very important question for all of us: What price are we willing to pay for success? What virtues or relationships or principles are we prepared to incinerate on the altar of achievement? Jobs was uniquely successful. He's been compared to Edison and Einstein and called the greatest innovator of the last century. But as this article demonstrates, the cost was exceptionally high.

Here's where you can read more:
 http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say-about-steve-jobs

Steve Jobs' Death

Even though I'm not an Apple kind of guy (sadly, I just never seem to have the $), I have engaged in my share of ipad-envy and similar sins over the years.

And so, it was with sadness that I read about Jobs' [premature] death at age 56. I put "premature" in brackets because it seems self-evident that such a cool and gifted guy really has the right to be around a bit longer.

I mean, hasn't Steve Jobs made all of our lives better (if only by providing Microsoft's Windows and Google's Android a benchmark against which to improve)?

I know. That's rather a utilitarian and shallow perspective, even if I say so myself to myself.

But it's a great reminder of how easily we assign value to someone's life (and death) based on some ultimately meaningless criteria like giftedness or fame or wealth or royalty or relationship to ME. It's a distortion of the Christian Gospel which insists that every life is valuable and every death is a tragedy.

Which is a nice good sad segue to Justin Taylor's blog (where I stole the above pic) and his excellent post titled, "The Gospel According to Steve Jobs"
 http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/10/06/the-gospel-according-to-steve-jobs/ which, in turn, takes us to the original article in Christianity Today
 http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=90749
which was originally published in Culture Making, which I'm not going to provide a link to since this sentence is already way too long. Such is the stuff of blogging and borrowing and plagiarizing (hey, I steal, but always give credit; originality is nothing more than a poor memory).

Here's a little teaser--hopefully enough to get you to read it:

But the genius of Steve Jobs has been to persuade us, at least for a little while, that cold comfort is enough. The world—at least the part of the world in our laptop bags and our pockets, the devices that display our unique lives to others and reflect them to ourselves—will get better. This is the sense in which the tired old cliché of “the Apple faithful” and the “cult of the Mac” is true. It is a religion of hope in a hopeless world, hope that your ordinary and mortal life can be elegant and meaningful, even if it will soon be dated, dusty, and discarded like a 2001 iPod.

RE: July 4th: Celebrate, Don't Abuse, Freedom

A couple of nights ago I was reading TIME magazine's cover article: "The War Next Door: Why Mexico's drug violence is America's problem too." It stated that in Juarez, just over the border, 3,200 people were murdered just last year. Drug wars have made it the most dangerous city on earth. And here's the reason:

According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Americans consume $65 billion worth of illegal drugs annually, roughly what they spend on higher education, and most of those drugs are either produced in Mexico or transit through it. The U.S. is also a primary source of weapons the cartels use to unleash their mayhem: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that 70% of the guns seized in Mexico in the past two years were smuggled from north of the border. "The current flow of weapons," Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, charged last year, "provides the drug syndicates with their firepower." (TIME, July 11 2011, p 26, 27)

Do we realize the significance of what we've just read? This means that the argument, "What I do in the privacy of my home is my business and doesn't hurt anyone," is finally exposed for what it is: sheer self-centeredness that in reality costs someone his or her life.

This means that this country we love is complicit in Mexico's human tragedy on so many levels. The addictions which we pursue in our self-indulgent "freedom" finances the narco-economy that lures in the poor and greedy alike. And to add insult to injury (or, more accurately, deadly injury to insult), we supply the majority of the guns with which they blow each other away!

Freedom is a wonderful thing. We value it highly, and rightly so, for it gives us the freedom to worship and to live as we see fit. And therein lies the rub. So many of us use our freedom, to quote Paul, to indulge our flesh.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13)

Don Carson, in a book I read earlier this year, helps us understand that our cultural definitions of freedom can often be a far cry from what Scripture means by freedom. In Christ and Culture Revisited (2008), he writes:

The democratic tradition in the West has fostered a great deal of freedom from Scripture, God, tradition, and assorted moral constraints; it encourages freedom toward doing your own thing, hedonism, self-centeredness, and consumerism. By contrast, the Bible encourages freedom from self-centeredness, idolatry, greed, and all sin, and freedom toward living our lives as those who bear God’s image and who have been transformed by his grace, such that our greatest joy becomes doing his will (p.138). 

It's an Ugly World We Live In

"You're Ugly!"
Thirty-thousand people recently got good news and bad news from beautifulpeople.com, an online dating service where 'beautiful men and women' meet. The good news: we'll give you a refund. The bad news: you're ugly! So we're going to dump you!

For more read here:
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpps/news/offbeat/dating-site-causes-outrage-by-dumping-ugly-people-dpgonc-20110620-fc_13763177

Gendercide: Aborting Girls
Even uglier than the people who got given the boot, and the company who dropped them, is the worldwide moral climate in which abortion, for whatever reason, is readily available. A new book, Unnatural Selection, estimates that since the late 1970s, 163 million girls have been aborted . . . because . . . they . . . were. . . girls.

The Wall Street Journal review notes:

Despite the author's intentions, "Unnatural Selection" might be one of the most consequential books ever written in the campaign against abortion. It is aimed, like a heat-seeking missile, against the entire intellectual framework of "choice." For if "choice" is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against "gendercide." Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother's "mental health" requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: "I have patients who come and say 'I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra.' "

This is where choice leads. This is where choice has already led. Ms. Hvistendahl may wish the matter otherwise, but there are only two alternatives: Restrict abortion or accept the slaughter of millions of baby girls and the calamities that are likely to come with it.

You can read more here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576361691165631366.html

Pope Invites Graham to Join Facebook

I have finally done it. Many of you know I've been holding out for many years. But my friend, the cleric previously known as Cardinal Ratzinger (we friends know him affectionately as just 'Ratz'), has invited me to Facebook.

And when Pope Benedict XVI calls, you answer.

My biggest question (on which he hasn't gotten back to me yet) is this: Is it ok for a pastor to 'unfriend' somone? Here's an excerpt from the public proclamation that followed his and my personal correspondence:

Pope Benedict XVI May Be Old, But He's Still With It.

REUTERS/Max Rossi

Wracked with Catholic guilt every time you access Facebook? Worry no longer -- the Pope approves. In a message entitled "Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age," Pope Benedict XVI gave social networking his blessing, but warned that it cannot replace real human contact. The proclamation, created for the Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, noted, "I would like then to invite Christians, confidently and with an informed and responsible creativity, to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible."

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/24/faithful-facebook-pope-benedict-blesses-social-networking/#ixzz1DZbGlaj2