Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 4, 2022 / 07:00 am (CNA).
An emeritus Texas bishop is highlighting an Advent message hidden in the O Antiphons — prayers that are recited or chanted in an ancient tradition leading up to Christmas.
“Composed in the sixth or seventh century, the seven O Antiphons are drawn from the Book of the prophet Isaiah and the first letters of each antiphon form the Latin word SARCORE, which read backwards is ERO CRAS, which means ‘Tomorrow I come,’” Bishop Michael D. Pfeifer, OMI, bishop emeritus of San Angelo, wrote in a December statement.
Pfeifer, who served as the bishop of San Angelo from 1985 to 2013, listed the O Antiphons, which are said Dec. 17–23 during Vespers (the Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours) and Masses. The first letters spell the message in an acrostic:
Dec. 21 — “O Oriens”/“O Dawn of the East” (Isaiah 9:2)
Dec. 22 — “O Rex Gentiu”/“O King of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 2:4; 9:7)
Dec. 23 — “O Emmanuel”/“God with Us” (Isaiah 7:14)
Together, these antiphons spell out “a hopeful message about the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, of Jesus as we prepare for his birthday each year on Dec. 25,” Pfeifer said.
He went on to explain why they end on Dec. 23.
“Traditionally feasts were said to begin on the eve of their celebration, so Christmas begins at sundown on Dec. 24,” he wrote.
The message in the antiphons holds true today, Pfeifer emphasized.
“Each Christmas Jesus fulfills the promise ‘I will come tomorrow’ by being born again as a tiny baby, the Godman, Jesus Christ,” he wrote. “We can make the following O Antiphons part of our Advent preparation for the birth of Christ by using them in our prayers or Advent scriptural readings.”
He added: “Then in gratitude and joy we celebrate the birth of our long-awaited savior, Jesus Christ — Christmas.”
The seven prayers accompany the Magnificat canticle, or the canticle of Mary, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The USCCB lists the text of the O Antiphons, each asking the Messiah to come and, together, spelling out his response in the acrostic.
“They are a magnificent theology that uses ancient biblical imagery drawn from the messianic hopes of the Old Testament to proclaim the coming Christ as the fulfillment not only of Old Testament hopes, but present ones as well,” the U.S. bishops say on their website.
Pfeifer shared other recommendations to help prepare for Christmas.
“My strong pastoral message for Advent each year is ‘don’t forget the baby!’” he told CNA.
“First, when we think of a gift, let us open our hearts to receive the gift the baby wants to be for us,” he said. “Then, before all other gifts, we find in our hearts the gift we want to give the baby on his birthday.”
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Washington D.C., Jan 7, 2018 / 05:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The 2018 National Migration Week observed by the U.S. bishops’ conference will focus on the theme, “Many Journeys, One Family,” highlighting the experience of migrants who are … […]
A scene from the trailer promoting Liberty University’s campus ministry production of “Scaremare.” / Scaremare on YouTube
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 29, 2022 / 10:55 am (CNA).
This October some churches and ministries in the United States are once again hosting Christian versions of haunted houses, and nonbelievers and believers alike are lining up for some rather existential spine-tingling for the first time since the pandemic.
Popular among evangelical Protestant churches in the South, these “judgment houses” typically stage dramatic representations depicting what happens after people die, leaving visitors to ponder whether they themselves are headed for heaven or hell, and presumably, to act accordingly.
Is this a good way to save souls? Some Catholics experts in evangelization who spoke to CNA have reservations.
A different way to evangelize
The late Jerry Falwell, the Baptist televangelist, and founder of Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, is credited with hosting the first judgment house in 1972, “Scaremare.”
Scaremare is still going strong in Lynchburg, where the university’s campus ministry stages a production every year around Halloween that draws people from all over the region attracted by the lure of “fun-house rooms and scenes of death in order to confront people with the question ‘What happens after I die?’”
The performance does not disappoint those looking for the sort of adrenaline surge a horror movie produces. As many as 4,000 visitors a night witness gruesome death scenes including a massacre at a movie theater and a camper who is mauled by a wild animal.
According to Josh Coldren, the director of the 2022 production of Scaremare, the scenes are intended to make people think about their fears and their mortality.
“We talk about how everyone faces death, but how there is hope beyond our fears and hope beyond death, and that hope is in Jesus Christ,” Coldren told CNA.
According to Scaremare’s website, over 26,000 people who visited over the years “have made decisions for Christ over the past two decades. Ironically, this House of Death points to the Way of Life!”
While judgment houses can function as memento mori, efficacious reminders of the inevitability of death, some judgment houses, also known as “Hell Houses,” have become controversial for taking the idea to an extreme. Graphic scenes such as abortions, extramarital sex, and drug use are sometimes depicted along with the consequence of these actions as the sinners are shown condemned to spend eternity in hell.
Scaremare doesn’t get into these issues or talk about hell at all, Coldren told CNA.
“We don’t have a scene of hell, and we stay away from demons. We believe those things are real, we just make sure we stay away from them,” Coldren said.
Tom Hudgins, is the owner of Judgement House, a company based in Seminole, Florida, that provides scripts to churches to stage dramas. Before COVID, he told CNA, they helped as many as 350 churches at a time hold Judgement Houses. They are slowly getting back to business, he said, and about 50 participating churches are listed on their website.
Hudgins explained to CNA that, unlike more extreme Hell House productions, his scripts never talk about social issues. Small groups of visitors walk through scenes meant to encourage self-reflection. Each production begins with death, by a car crash or cancer, for example, and then the audience sees what happens after death.
“They see what hell would be like, but they also see what heaven will be like, and everyone can make their own decisions,” Hudgins said.
A scene from a production of a Judgement House script. Decaturville Pentecostal Church YouTube
Bonnie Gilliland, the dramatic director at Morningside Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, is staging a play with the help of Judgement House this October. She told CNA that the productions are a way of sharing the Gospel.
“We include a lot of scripture, it’s very biblically based,” she said.
Gilliland explained that this year’s production isn’t just for nonbelievers – it’s meant to give the regular churchgoer a wake-up call.
“The current drama gives people an opportunity to understand and examine whether they have a relationship with Jesus Christ because it’s more than just going to church, it’s about accepting Jesus as your savior and receiving the gift of eternal life,” Gilliland said.
Kelly Armstrong, the director of the judgment house at New Harmony Baptist Church in Albertville, Alabama, told CNA that past productions have depicted scenes of car wrecks, overdoses, and abuse.
Visitors see “how people make decisions that affect their eternity,” he said. “It brings our church together, and makes people think.”
Catholic criticism of “hell houses”
Judgment houses have not found favor among Catholic churches in the United States, and two experts in evangelization and pastoral care told CNA that they don’t think talking about hell attracts people to the Church.
Sherry Weddell is the founder of the Catherine of Siena Institute, an apostolate that helps evangelize Catholic parishes to turn pew-sitters into “intentional missionary disciples.” She told CNA that she advises any Catholics considering introducing hell-related themes to their Halloween decorations or celebrations, to rethink that idea.
“If you live in an area that has a significant number of young adults, especially parents of young children, or in an area that is highly secularized like urban areas of the East or West coasts, many will find it offensive or off-putting. And there is a real chance that sensitive and young children could be upset by it which would fuel their parents’ unhappiness with the sponsoring Catholic community,” Weddell explained.
“You could upset people who might otherwise have been open to attending an Advent or Christmas event at your parish or just open to a friendship with a Catholic like you.
“Instead of building or strengthening bridges of trust, you could be shattering or weakening whatever trust may already exist. There are creative, positive, child and parent-friendly alternatives such as “trunk-or-treating,” costume parties, and community of light events that foster both long-standing relationships and fun,” Weddell said.
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, the chief exorcist for the Archdiocese of Washington, and a psychologist and researcher at the Catholic University of America, told CNA that the threat of hell isn’t effective in this day and age.
“People today are not convinced or influenced by threats of hell. The Church just really stopped doing that because it just doesn’t work. You know, you can do all the hellfire and damnation sermons you want, but people just kind of yawn, “ Rossetti said.
“We’re trying to emphasize God’s love and God’s mercy, which I think is much more to the point, frankly. And also more of a message that’s needed in our day. And I think that started with Pope John XXIII at Vatican II. He said, today what the message needs to be is of God’s mercy and compassion and God’s love.
“This is what attracts people, and this is sort of the core of our message. God loves us and God has saved us out of his love and compassion in Jesus,” he said.
Sacramento, Calif., Feb 21, 2020 / 11:26 am (CNA).- Underage pornography and trafficking videos have been found on the online pornography platform PornHub.
By Feb. 21, a petition on change.org calling on the site to be shut down and its executive held accountable for aiding trafficking had more than 207,000 signatures.
The petition points to several instances of child rape pornography found on PornHub in the past year.
Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry’s Director of Abolition and the author of the petition, said there may be more instances of this illegal material on this site as well.
“We already have evidence, and it is just the tip of the iceberg,” the petition states. “It’s time to shut down super-predator site Pornhub and hold the executives behind it accountable.”
The petition will be sent to the US Department of Justice, the FBI, US President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and several US Congressmen.
Mickelwait’s organization was established to abolish commercial sex abuse, sexual exploitation, and global sex trafficking. Exodus Cry is based on two principles: altering mindsets and changing laws.
Dr. Melissa Farley, executive director of Prostitution Research & Education, said the petition is proposing a fair and moderate position. She said the actions which occurred on PornHub’s watch are already illegal.
“Laila and her organization are taking a very reasonable stance. They’re only talking about children and they’re only talking about children that are being advertised for sale. Any prostitution of a child according to U.S. federal law is trafficking,” she told CNA.
“This is pictures of the trafficking of kids, in other words, pictures of the prostitution of children. To prosecute PornHub for profiting from photographs of the sexual assault of children for money…I’m delighted that her organization is taking this on.”
While Mickelwait did not originally plan to make a petition, she told CNA the initiative came about after she received feedback from people who were angry at the news regarding PornHub’s negligence regarding illegal material on its site.
“Everybody’s in agreement that children should not be trafficked and raped. Women should not be trafficked and raped for profit, for the sexual pleasure of billions of people who visit that website. There’s just no arguing with that,” she said.
During last year, 58 videos of sexual abuse and rape of a 15-year-old girl appeared on PornHub. The girl had been missing for a year when her mother found her on the adult website, leading to the arrest of her captor, Christopher Johnson, a 30-year-old Florida man.
Mickelwait said the 15-year-old girl had been approved by the supposed “verification system” of Pornhub, despite the girl being underage. She said that to upload a video, all that is needed is a valid email address.
“They had verified that 15 year-old-girl who was raped and assaulted on 58 videos on their platform … that was part of kind of what’s been called an explosive revelation of what’s happening on this website,” she said.
Michael James Pratt, head of GirlsDoPorn, was sued for over $12.7 million by 22 women who had been led to believe they were applying for “modeling jobs.” As it was actually a pornography shoot, the women who agreed to participate were told they would only appear on physical DVDs published in other countries and not online. The women were aged between 17 and 22.
Pratt is now facing charges in the US for trafficking and producing child pornography. He is reportedly on the run in New Zealand.
According to BBC, Rose Kalemba was abducted, beaten, and raped at age 14. Later a video of her sexual abuse appeared on PornHub. She found out about the videos through her classmates, who sent her links and bullied her for it.
After she discovered the videos, she would email PornHub over the next few months pleading for the content to be taken down and emphasizing her status as a minor, BBC reported. The website only obliged once she posed as her own lawyer.
Mickelwait said that because of the massive amount of content on Pornhub, she believes there are more instances of the sexual exploitation and child pornography than has been reported.
“If you go on my Twitter and you just scroll through, you could see case after case, after case, after case of instances where real rape, real trafficking is being uploaded to PornHub and PornHub is profiting off of that exploitation. It’s a huge problem,” she said.
“If we know that there’s 10, 12, 15, 20[cases], [then] there’s probably hundreds, thousands [of cases of sexual exploitation]… We have no idea how huge this could be based on the amount of content they have on their site.”
Mickelwait said the company that owns PornHub has a monopoly on the pornographic industry, having consolidated nternet porn.
“When people do things that are not okay, they need to be held accountable for that. But it also sets a precedent and example for anybody else who would try to do something like this and allow it, promote it, profit off of it. The public in the world is not going to put up with that,” she said.
“If it can happen to the world’s largest, richest, most powerful internet porn company, it could happen to anyone. I think that that’s why this is particularly important.”
She said that viewers of pornography are also harmed: “Experimental exposure to porn leads men and women to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity,” she said.
“Studies have been done that show that and demonstrate that when you watch hardcore violent pornography, it creates what’s called permission-giving beliefs about rape. It makes people believe what’s called the rape myths: that women want rape, that they deserve rape.”
Farley told CNA that all violent pornography is a problem, which may lead to extreme and violent fetishes or cases of prostitution. She said that all people harmed by sexual assaults in pornography should be compensated.
“My concern as somebody who’s been studying the sex trade for 20 years is that pornography is filmed documentation of sexual assault, humiliation, degradation, threats, and things like that. So any photograph of sexual assault is a problem,” she said.
“I would go much further. I would say that any pornography that harms anyone, whether they’re six, 16 or 60 years old, whether they’re male, female, trans, anyone who’s prostitution is filmed, who’s abuse is film, if they can show harm, they should sue PornHub for just everything it’s worth,” she added.
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