HOW CAN BUSINESS AND MONEY DARKEN CHRISTMAS?

“Christmas this year will be sad because the stock market is in crisis….” Here is what we are still hearing from the media these days. That announcement, obviously, makes parents anxious and angry. Where can they get money to offer a gift as and high-definition television, i-Pods, MP3 players, laptops, digital cameras, games consoles and satellite navigation equipment… to their kids and friends, they ask themselves? So, Christmas 2008 might be a tragedy because there is no money.

Meg McMullen, the president of New England Research and Management strongly agrees with this expectation. He told Reuters on December 8th: “There will be no great Christmas on Wall street this year…” We also guess, in Europe specifically in Italy and in France, it is the same thought.

But let’s ask ourselves: is it normal to connect Christmas and money? Christmas is probably a feast. And we cannot enjoy a feast without money. Christmas is also a religious feast. However, much more than a religious feast, Christmas is a Christian feast for several centuries which celebrates the birth of Jesus.

At Christmas, we commemorate the coming of the savior among Human Beings. Christmas is God with us. During Christmas, God himself comes on the earth to visit us, to live as we live, feel as we feel, see as we see, hear as we hear. At Christmas, God comes to rejoice but suffer with us. Jesus has already come over 2000 years ago. But nowadays, his coming is hidden as saint Bernard says in one of his homely. Only those who believe in him and greet him (actually Christians and people of good will) can really feel his coming and his effect: peace, joy reconciliation, love and forgiveness in their heart.

So, Christmas is a bit more than a stock market and a purchasing power affair. If so, lots of poor countries around the Globe will not celebrate it. Christmas is GOD WITH US. It is our task, we Christian, to proclaim this Good News and not some journalists who behave themselves as the spokesmen of big industries which interest is to produce their shiny turnover in this period.

Let’s rejoice Christmas in the temperate way as God himself has come to visit us.

Merry Christmas.

F. Maxime

WHY WE ARE NOT GOD. (1)

Progressively, people are finding out that they are not God and they don’t know everything. Therefore they are to humble themselves and work for Human’s benefit.

The famous Scottish embryologist researcher Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep, has courageously turned his back on therapeutic cloning with human embryos in spite of enormous European funds he received. He decided to join the Japanese Dr. Shinya Yamanaka who has found a way to create human embryo stem cells without the need for human eggs and without the need to create and destroy human cloned embryos.

This passed Tuesday, November 20th, we heard that a Japanese researcher’s teams (in fact Yamanaka’ team) with and American teams researchers have successfully produced Embryonic Stem Cells from skin which have the same characteristics as those derived from embryos. From now on, many deceases as cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer might be treated. This is a good news. So, the debate about the use of human embryo for producing stem cell should be close! Let’s rejoice that thousands of children will be rescued. As Mr Wilmut told The Daily Telegraph, it’s an ethically correct, just and wise new way in the biomedical research.

Many people around the world were happy to hear the news above all those who want Human Beings to progress according to the moral, human and healthy values.
Unfortunately, some scientists are taking other sinful ways. They want, at all costs, to fulfill their will by manipulating the human specie and giving him a strange aspect. This is a threat for Humanity.

Actually in these days, politicians in Britain are to pass the bill about “Human fertilization and Embryology”. This bill will legalize the creation of human-animal embryos. In fact, researchers will use together the human sperm and animal eggs to form a person!

Two of the Catholic Britain Church’s official, the cardinal Keith O'Brien and archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow have reacted strongly against this bill. They made a statement in which they urged politicians not to vote it because it can harm human dignity.

The issue is serious because some researchers are working for financial interest. So they forgot that they are human beings and therefore limited. But politicians don’t do anything. Instead of distinguishing things and making good decisions for citizen, they let drop all moral issues because of ideology based on false knowledge. Lawyers in their turn, hypnotized by the politic and parliamentary decisions, will put this stupid law in practice. Consequently, this behavior will sign the death of the separation of power advocated by Montesquieu. And democracy will become a weak government system.

Little by little, the world is going down because of a minority who claims to be…God. Fortunately, there are many facts in the history which bring us hope. In fact, there will be always people of good will led by the Holy Spirit as Ian Wilmut for helping us to think and for showing us the way to abandon our disastrous project, which is to destroy the creation. Let’s hope! God is among us.

Fr Maxime