President Michel Suleiman has said Lebanese authorities would push for the return of some of the Syrian refugees, who have escaped to Lebanon, to safe areas in their country. In remarks to An Nahar newspaper published on Monday, Suleiman said: “Their return would take place through coordination with the local administration.” “Some of the displaced […]
Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of safety, and met, so I am told, a […]
Lebanon is trying to redraw its border with Israel. Official Israeli sources say that Lebanon is about to award offshore oil and gas exploration licenses in areas that encroach on Israel’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It is unclear what Israel plans to do about this matter, which could ignite the border dispute with Lebanon. However, […]
President Michel Suleiman has postponed a visit he planned to make to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks with top officials, his office announced. The statement did not set a new date for the visit. It said Suleiman followed up the security situation in the eastern city of Baalbek and the issue of Lebanese asylum-seekers […]
There is No Such Thing as a Thankful Atheist
Anyone who believes that he has gifted himself with his own being, that he is a self-caused being, that he is causa sui, is irrational. And if he really believes that and not just be contrarian or stubborn for the sake of it, he is certainly insane.
Until the scientist learns to give thanks, he will never get to the answer of contingent existence.
To confront the reality of our contingent existence means–if we are to use our highest form of thought–that we give thanks, that we be grateful. And this, ultimately, yields to faith, what G. K. Chesterton called "faith in receptiveness," a faith in receptiveness which gives rise to a receptiveness to faith.
CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) – "I would maintain," wrote G. K. Chesterton in his A Short History of England, "that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
When each of us confronts the raw fact "I exist," "I am," we also know that we need not have existed. We know, in fact, that there was a time that we did not exist, a time that we were not. And we can infer with absolute certainty from those who die about us and from our understanding of nature and time, that there will be a time where we will not exist, at least not in the way we do now.
.- A Syrian priest has urged the West to remember the Christians in his country, many of whom are fleeing due to fear of the violence and shortages brought about by the ongoing civil war.
“I appeal to our fellow Christians in Europe and the U.S. not to forget us,” Father Ziad Hilal, S.J., told Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity that assists persecuted Christians around the world.
He stressed the need for a peaceful political solution to the war.
“I’m very much afraid that the exodus will continue,” he said. “The Christians are an integral part of this country, its culture and history. But if there is not a major change in the situation, it will soon look here like in Iran or Turkey.”
He explained that these countries once had “flourishing” Christian communities which have nearly vanished.
“May God spare Syrian Christians the same fate,” Fr. Hilal said.
Over 110,000 people have died in the conflict between Syrian rebels, both secularists and Islamists, and the government which began in March 2011. Over two million Syrians have become refugees because of the civil war, and another 4.25 million are internally displaced.
At least 60 Lebanese migrants drowned on Friday as they attempted to sail from Indonesia to Australia, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3). It said that no more than ten people survived the trip between the two countries and the corpses of the victims began to wash ashore on one of the Indonesian islands. Later […]
Lebanese activists are resisting a government decision to allow construction of luxury homes over nearly 2,000-year-old ruins believed to be from a 1st Century Roman chariot racing hippodrome. The two structures towering over ancient Berytus were a testament to the lavish endowments of King Herod who is said to have favoured the city, investing extraordinary […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As diplomats at the United Nations push for a peace conference to end Syria’s civil war, a collection of some of the country’s most powerful rebel groups have publicly abandoned the opposition’s political leaders, casting their lot with an affiliate of Al Qaeda. As support for the Western-backed leadership has dwindled, a […]