1. Daily Mail: ISIS executes Coptic in Egypt ‘as a warning to Christians’
Nabil Habashi Salama, 62, a member of Egypt‘s minority Coptic Orthodox Church, was shown being shot in the back of the head in a video released Saturday.
In the footage, a militant with his face blurred, an AK-47 slung across his chest and index finger raised to the sky, warns the ‘Christians of Egypt’ that ‘this is the price you pay for supporting the Egyptian army.’
2.
Praying repose for #NabilHabashySalama, kidnapped by Islamists in Egypt in January, and video of his senseless, brutal execution and murder released today. Nabil’s crime was to build a church in North Sinai. #RIP
Praying comfort for his family and community.#ContemporaryMartyrs pic.twitter.com/F0Qs7oFgDh
— Archbishop Angaelos (@BishopAngaelos) April 18, 2021
3. Biden administration to allow research on fetal tissue of aborted babies
4.
PHOTOS: Final goodbyes. Reunions after COVID-19 kept them apart for months. Nurses, funeral workers and clerics risking their own health to do their jobs. Fifteen @AP photographers picked the single pandemic image that affected them the most. https://t.co/pKS5ObJIcL
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 18, 2021
5. Archbishop Hebda asks all priests to join him in offering a special mass for peace
Police and Minnesota National Guard units have been activated in the Twin Cities to help maintain peace. The archbishop noted that tension already was high with Chauvin’s trial drawing to a conclusion. Wright’s death added to the unease and unrest.
The archbishop said he will celebrate the special Mass (no. 30 in the Roman Missal) at 7:30 a.m. at the Cathedral.
“It is only by seeing Christ in each other that we will honor the dignity of each person and arrive at true peace and justice in our world, in our country, in our communities and in our families,” Archbishop Hebda said.
6. Minneapolis Public Schools To Go To Distance Learning For Chaiven Verdict
Superintendent Ed Graff said he came to the decision after consulting with “Hennepin County sources.” He also noted that MPS students may participate in protests, and topics of racism and violence may be discussed in classrooms.
7.
The Taliban won’t respect the rights of women and girls. Next move, Secretary Blinken. https://t.co/kHzXtZb5LJ
— Melissa Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) April 19, 2021
8. Pope Francis Applauds Beatification of Monks Who Died Protecting the Eucharist
“In 1799, when French soldiers, in retreat from Naples, sacked churches and monasteries, these meek disciples of Christ resisted with heroic courage, unto death, to defend the Eucharist from desecration,” the Pope said.
“May their example spur us to a greater commitment of fidelity to God, capable of transforming society and making it more just and fraternal.”
. . .
The French army, which had occupied Naples, had sacked the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino and other churches and monasteries while on retreat northward.
While most of the Cistercians of Casamari Abbey escaped amid chaos of the looting, six monks remained to try to save the consecrated Hosts in the tabernacle from desecration and were killed by the soldiers.
9. Bob Greene: Queen Elizabeth Confronts the Silence
She has long been required to share every public moment with the world, so there she was, doing it again, as her husband of more than 73 years was taken from her presence for the last time. In the U.K. there was a moment of silence observed for him, and by extension for her, but she was certainly aware that the real silence lay ahead.
. . .
It’s the things that suddenly are no longer there:
The sight of that distinctive handwriting on a note left on a night table. It doesn’t matter if the note is on engraved palace stationery or on an old grocery-store receipt — the curves of the letters caught out of the corner of your eye are like a hello. Until they’re gone.
The sound of a doorknob turning, and the knowledge of what the first syllable of a voice will sound like as soon as the person takes the initial step into the room.
10. New York Times: Marie Supikova, Survivor of Nazi Terror in Czech Village, Dies at 88
Her new parents, Alfred and Ilsa Schiller, gave Marie a new name, Ingeborg Schiller, and a tiny room behind the kitchen in their home in Poznan. In an article in The New Yorker in 1948, Mrs. Supikova recalled that the Schillers had argued about her presence in the household.
“You and your Party friends!” she quoted Mrs. Schiller saying. “Why did they pick you to take this girl?” Mr. Schiller, she said, shouted back, “They have ordered us to make a German woman out of her and we are going to do it.”
They ordered her to speak only German and told her never to mention Lidice.
“If I ever hear the word ‘Lidice’ in my house I will beat you half dead,” she said her adoptive mother told her.
…
She bore witness to her Holocaust experience when she testified in October 1947 at the Nuremberg trial of members of the SS Race and Resettlement Main Office. Then only 15, Marie was one of three people — two teenagers and one middle-aged woman — to testify that day about the massacre and their lives afterward.
11. David J. Ayers: Cohabitation Among Millenials: A New Norm?
In Evangelical circles, the argument sometimes is that evangelical cohabitation is different from “worldly” cohabitation because it is overwhelmingly tied to impending marriage. But the facts suggest otherwise. Among Evangelicals who have ever cohabited, only 49% of first cohabitations culminated in marriage by the time they were surveyed. Evangelicals are not very different from Catholics (45%) and Mainline Protestants (who get married slightly more often—53%) on this issue. Among female Evangelicals who have ever cohabited, only 18% were formally engaged when they moved in with their first cohabiting partner, and another 18% had definite plans to marry; thus, only 36% combined had serious marital intent.
12. Heather King: Wanted: Disturbing Homilies
If my friends and I are any indication, we in the pews are hungry, famished, for real instruction, real meat, real questions that we can ponder, pray over, chew on. Real challenge, real encouragement: to examine our consciences and hearts, to change our lives.
Homilies that suggest the priest himself is wrestling with the vital question: What does it mean to love Christ as he loved us and to love our neighbor as ourselves?
13. Karen Swallow Prior: Reading Up During the Pandemic is Good for Christians
. . . My desire to spread the gospel of good literature isn’t merely a matter of wanting others to love what I love. Rather, good literature has been and continues to be a preservative of the good, beautiful, and true. Good literature is also in many ways part of our legacy as people of the Word. I do not think it is overreaching to say that the future state of literature and literacy will directly reflect the state of the church and its role in influencing the surrounding culture. After all, as Percy Bysshe Shelley famously proclaimed in his A Defense of Poetry, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” What we read—and who is reading—has profound implications for what our world will look like.
14. Daily Mail: Oldest living American who had 120 great-great grandchildren dies peacefully aged 116
Ford was born on a farm in Lancaster County, South Carolina, in 1905, if you accept the more conservative estimate of her age.
Born when Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House, Ford lived through 21 different presidential administrations. She was 15 when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
15. New York Times: She’s 94 Now, but at 17 her Voice was Magical. Have a Listen.
She took a job as a secretary but sang whenever she could, like the day in 1946 she went to Hertz Studios in Newark. For a few dollars, anyone could record a song or two with the in-house band. On the spot the studio would cut a 78 r.p.m. record for you.
“I remember going there, seeing a microphone and getting up and singing,” Ms. Forman recalled. “I probably closed my eyes.” At the end, she was given the 78 as a souvenir, and that was that. Seven years later she married Joe Forman, an accountant, and they had two children and eventually settled in West Long Branch, N.J. The recordings from her wedding and the studio were put in storage and pretty much forgotten.
Until the pandemic hit.
. . .
All seven songs are now available free on SoundCloud or at MadelineForman.com.
16.
Me: “Great news: I finished one of the books in my to-read pile.”
Also Me: “That *is* great news.”
Me: “Better start another one.”
Also Me: “Or, hear me out, reward yourself by buying three more books.”
Me: “But the to-read pile!”
Also Me: “Positive reinforcement is important.”— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) April 19, 2021