Comments for On "Re-Evangelizing" Europe at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 23 May 2013 00:26:07 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-re-evangelizing-europe.html#comment-5287 The people rejected that "intelligent and benevolent God." Free will. The United States is rapidly approaching the levels of rejection found in Europe, thereby approaching the same levels of despair. The United States has already committed genocide of far greater violence than Nazi Germany did during it's reign, and the full blood lust of absolute pure unadulterated hate against these young innocent human beings continues as this is being typed. Western civilization can not last for much longer. We are destroying ourselves. God has not abandoned us; we have abandoned him. As it currently stands, things will get far far worse for us until we get back to God. We have only until Islam as created by Muhammad overtakes the population of the western world. - Kenneth Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:23:34 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-re-evangelizing-europe.html#comment-5286 Forty-five years ago, in the English Department at the University of Texas, the saying ‘birth, copulation and death’ was frequently proffered as the rock-bottom, all-around-right-answer to the question of what any given piece of literature was ‘about’ because of, we were to be taught, the intimate relationship between literature and life, and particularly because, as Fr. Schall quotes Benedict XVI as saying these are, “those moments of human existence which have the most significance.” Indeed! Well, actually the Pope said ‘birth, suffering and death’ not ‘birth, copulation and death’. As Fr. Schall explains, the Pope deplores the trend that, “These…events no longer are understood as graced moments that connect each person with his origin and transcendent destiny.” But I am thinking of how pointedly these words DO also apply to copulation insofar as the procreative element (with its attendant ‘suffering’…the pains of childbirth and the trials of raising children properly?) is effectively removed by means of contraception/abortion, not to speak of the self-annihilation of non-replacement birthrates now prevalent in most of the ‘First World’ countries. Here we could even limit ‘origin and transcendent destiny’ to ‘mother and child’ without offending the argument that what the First World is doing is just plain stupid, much less irreligious. - Howard Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:31:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-re-evangelizing-europe.html#comment-5285 Father, Europe is in a terrible funk right now, much like in 1815, when Napoleonic and counter-Napoleonic armies ravaged every country and spawn an age of pessimism that was to grip the continental for decades. Consider, Byron in England, Heine in Germany, Pushkin in Russian, Schopenhauer's dark philosophy taking hold. The great age was over, said Goethe, writing: "I thank God that I am not young in so thoroughly a finished world." Today, despair permeates Europe from Portugal on the west to the Russian on the East, from Italy in the south to the Baltic in the north. Greece and Ireland on the verge of financial collapse, Portugal and Spain not far behind, Germany, France and England, threatened by Islamic takeover -- all mitigate against spiritual reawakening. Europeans look about in consternation and wonder how it is that their world or any other is in the hand of an intelligent and benevolent God. - James Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:59:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-re-evangelizing-europe.html#comment-5283 A good start is seeing the problem squarely in the field of vision. - Other Joe Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:48:13 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-re-evangelizing-europe.html#comment-5282 Very interesting. Yes, Europe needs to be evangelized. How can this be done? Any ideas? - Dan Deeny Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:17:00 +0100