the German Egyptian

aint it a BITCH

2010-04-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

Pro-Lifers Make Women Cry

Pro-aborts are actually accusing pro-lifers of making women cry. Yup. That's the new tactic. The ol' "pro-lifers are a bunch of meany pants" defense.

Fox News reports:

The requirements of Oklahoma's new abortion law are drawing some emotional responses from patients, a clinic director said Wednesday, now that women must have an ultrasound and hear a detailed description of the fetus before the procedure can be done.

The law went into effect a day earlier, when the state Senate overrode Gov. Brad Henry's veto of that measure and one that prohibits pregnant women from seeking damages if physicians withhold information or provide inaccurate information about their pregnancy.

"It's been difficult for some of the patients," said Linda Meek, executive director of Reproductive Services of Tulsa. "We've had patients leave the ultrasound room in tears because of what they had to hear."

...The new statute requires the person performing the ultrasound to describe the dimensions of the fetus, whether arms, legs and internal organs are visible and whether there is cardiac activity. It also requires the doctor to turn a screen depicting the ultrasound images toward the woman to see them.

Meek said no patient at the clinic had yet canceled an abortion after hearing a description of the fetus. Jennifer Mondino, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights that filed the lawsuit, said that so far no patient at the Tulsa clinic has decided to view the images.

You can understand how hard it must be for abortionists to hear crying in their clinic as they're not used to hearing the screams of their victims (See the Silent Scream).

And here's the kicker. I don't believe them anyway. They're lying that the law is having no effect on the women's decision. It's interesting to watch because these abortionists are really walking a fine line here because they have to argue that the information these women is so traumatizing that they're breaking out in tears but then they have to turn around and argue that it also has no effect on the women's decision. It's really a Catch-22 for abortionists.

These abortionists are fighting tooth and nail to have this law overturned because they know when a woman hears the truth or sees the truth they are much more likely not to get an abortion. They don't give a hoot about these women. They care about the cost of the abortion. That's it.

Posted by matthew archbold at 8:54 PM

In honor of Marx's Birthday err, sorry, Earth Day

2010-04-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

You did know that Earth Day is on Carl Marx birthday didn't you? I believe on purpose, to vilify capitalism and catholic and Christian belief. I mean, really, the first video shows Earth Firsters acting out their pagan religion. Marx would be proud. The second is a hoot but only makes sense if you watch the first one, puts the Tree worshipers in their place, enjoy.
The Egyptian
ps. I agree with the elm tree

The human being is a threat to the ideals of a Progressive New World Order.

2010-04-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

I will be running Michaels columns as they become available, he is right up my alley
The Egyptian

Ordinary Miracle

by Michael Moriarty

For me the human being is a miracle.

For Progressive Americans, however, because of the particularly Progressive Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade Decision of 1973, the human being has become less than ordinary.

The human being is now an easily disposable or aborted threat to the ideals of a Progressive New World Order.

With this “fundamental transformation of the United States of America,” as President Barack Obama has reminded us, I begin the first excerpt of a possibly endless series entitled, The Ordinary Miracle.

As a self-imposed exile, my life’s journey from my birthplace in Detroit, Michigan to Canada is a bit longer than the mild jaunt across the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario.

The country I left under the subtly unconstitutional care of Bill and Hillary Clinton has now exploded into the incipiently treasonous arrogance of the Obama Nation.

My life is now a miraculous melodrama in which those who would make me and many fellow members of the human family less than ordinary are an indisputable villainy.

From my personal experience, the American Progressive Movement has endeavored to paint what is traditionally American into an increasingly vilified form of irrelevance.

Meanwhile, the Progressives now move from legalized abortion to Health Care Death Panels.

It’s progress, you see.

It is actually thanatos, the love of death … as versus eros and agape, the love of life … that is being offered as the best solution to the problems of life.

More on those wonderfully ancient words in later excerpts of this offering.

It is, indeed, the replacement of a Judeo-Christian God with the Marxist God of Science.

To Karl Marx even his suicidal economic theories were a science.

Now with Global Warming, a tyrannizing delusion arising from Marxist Science, we’re in the last big chapter of the Bible.

Revelations.

And we’re the Good Guys!

This is as certain as the goodness of the Allies versus the evil of the Nazi, Fascist and Imperialized Japanese Axis.

Instead of the Axis we face Red Islam, Communist Jihads best represented by our unquestionably mortal enemy, Osama bin Laden and the equally Marxist imprint that President Barack Obama would like to leave upon not just the earth, but all of Mankind.

This cast of good guys and bad guys is so clear, so eternally indelible, that this editorial series of mine may soon turn into either a Batman/Superman epic or into The Ordinary Miracle of G.I. Joe.

Those to the rescue, however, are in the millions and, yes, most of them are The Ordinary Miracles of the Tea Party Movement.

With that intensely short introduction, let me begin my American recollections, not necessarily in chronological order.

Much of this will be an improvisation which I am occasionally good at.

Let’s start with my first introduction to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.

Yes, many of you were there and, of course, Big Hollywood’s interest in me was its discovery of my persistently dedicated commitment, through my writings for enterstageright.com, my immense trust in the proven power of not the American Constitution but her Declaration of Independence and its “inalienable” tribute to our “Creator.”

I am, indeed, a self-described, pro-life, Catholic libertarian.

Catholic libertarian may seem like a contradiction in terms.

However, when you compare my own form of faith to the Progressive Catholic hypocrisy of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, their pro-abortion defilement of a Judeo-Christian, five thousand year old commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”?!

Well … here’s my first Moriarty Pause in this possibly endless trip down memory lane.

I sigh and take a breath to recover from the cardinal sins committed every passing second by the Biden/Pelosi hypocrisy.

“Ye hypocrites!”

“Ye lawyers, you heap on people pains that you yourselves could not endure!”

That’s my rather Dionysian version of Christ engaging in a counter-revolutionary but very French pastime entitled J’accuse!

Ye Progressives!

You heap on your citizens, and their future generations, agonies which you, as Congressmen, Congresswomen and White House CEO’s cannot, will not and could never, in your most hypocritically brave or falsely humble moments, endure!

If you don’t like my Dionysian Catholicism blame it on the Jesuits who fed me Greek and Latin for two to four years.

My vocation in the theater was ordained by the Black Robes as certainly as they themselves were ordained priests.

Meanwhile, back amidst the counter-revolutionary dens of Big Hollywood, I have the great privilege of not only having a Tea Party audience but the very Third Millennium freedom to carry on a post-editorial conversation via an entirely state-of-the-art Town-Hall Meeting.

And we all have the courage to “go on the record!”

Life is good.

It is and can be so good that Christ’s words are confirmed daily.

“Unless ye become like little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

What is our counter-revolution but the classic child’s exclamation, “The Emperor has no clothes … and our President obviously cannot tell the truth about anything.”

His “transparency” is a big, fat, juicy, utterly irreversible, historically recorded Lie!

Now there’s a truth that cannot only set you free, it can release you into a whole new level of catharsis.

I also highlight that word because it, along with thanatos, eros and agape, will return repeatedly as the main force and rules of evidence for unseating the entire American Progressive Movement.

Send Progressivism back to France, where the whole, Communist nightmare began!

Here is my lesson for the day.

There has been a human genius so old that the “enlightened despots” of Harvard think it so antiquated that it no longer has contemporary relevance, except as a foil for their Progressive Comparative History Lessons, their “teachable moments”, their vision of Mankind’s inevitably scientific progress to the clearly envisioned destination: The Completion of The Progressive, One-Thousand-Year Plan For All of Humanity.

In other words, The New World Order.

The last Progressive of that ilk was Adolf Hitler.

We have seen and spoken of … repeatedly … the image of our President looking down his flared nostrils at us, and we’ve heard the words that accompany such arrogant certainty.

“The fundamental transformation of the United States of America!”

Within one year of office, President Obama has been captured in photos that make some of Mussolini’s grandstanding grimaces look reticent.

Oh, before I leave off, I will leave a “teaser” for you, one previously left on the response blog for my editorial, Bradley’s.

“Who is the new Jane Fonda?”

I’ll await your guesses with a few hints in future offerings from this, my apparently autobiographical series, The Ordinary Miracle.

Real Priests, we have it so easy today

2010-04-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

How sad the poor people in attendance could not participate, they were so deprived and didn't even know it. Bet they appreciated it more.

The Egyptian
From the Crescat.

mass in Bataan...

Posted by The Crescat

We now find out what is all in this piece of crap health care bill, a standing domestic army,

2010-04-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

A few quotes for you

"I propose a standing domestic army as strong as the regular army" Barrack Obama
Proof here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y&feature=player_embedded

"We have to vote this bill through to find out what is in it", Nancy Pisslousy
proof here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To

Well guess what is in the fine print of this "health care bill" watch and try to not bitch out loud.
The Egyptian

Try to hold your Breakfast

2010-04-07T05:27:00.000-07:00

Abortionist: "Abortion is Birth Control”

Here's your stomach turning quote of the day from Lila Rose's blog. Abortionist Peter Kopf said in a recent interview:

Abortion is birth control. Adoption is giving up your child and not accepting your duties as a mother. Most women are not interested in that. It’s only in a religiously-altered mind that that’s a true option.

What?! Check out the rest at Lila Rose's Live Action blog.

Another Progressive False God, er, OK Fruitcup will do

2010-04-07T05:20:00.000-07:00

Leftist Fruitcup Deepak Chopra Knows What Caused Baja Quake… His Powerful Meditation

Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 9:58 PM

Jim Hoft

Leftist fruitcup Deepak Chopra knows what caused the Baja earthquake on Sunday…
His powerful meditation.

Remind me not to mess with this guy.
AOL News reported:

The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological changes for Sunday’s 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened.

“Had a powerful meditation just now — caused an earthquake in Southern California,” Chopra wrote to his nearly 179,000 Twitter followers shortly after the quake.

And then, to clarify: “Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake,” he tweeted. “Sorry about that.”

Chopra might want to apologize directly to those in California, who haven’t suffered significant infrastructure damage but are still bracing for more temblors, and to those in Mexico, where two are dead, hundreds are injured and thousands are still without power.

Maybe this is progress?…
Last time he was pointing fingers he blamed the US for the Mumbai terror attacks.

My Rant on the Bogus Attacks on the Pope

2010-04-03T17:34:00.001-07:00

IT'S THE LAVENDER PRIESTHOOD
THAT CAUSES CATHOLIC CHURCH SCANDALS
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY SO
Finally, Finally the truth of the matter is the VAST MAJORITY of abuse, SEXUAL ABUSE, by priests is NOT pedophilia, ( the abuse of a female child by an adult male) but GAY assault, these gay priests will not be helped or changed by marrying, THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN WOMEN. They are rump rangers on the prowl, and the whole mess can be laid at the feet of the Second Vatican Calamity, liberalism is a sickness in society and the church, we have confused tolerance with acceptance and are now paying the price. Please read the LONG piece I post just below, the facts are not pretty, but the POPE is not the culprit, just the scapegoat to attack any return to proper worship and catechists. to quote Rush" The Catholic Church has a bunch of leftists in it who would just as soon destroy the church and remake it, as the government has liberals in it who want to remake our government and destroy the Constitution. Liberals are liberals. They do not value institutions until they run them and remake them in their own way, and nothing is sacred. Not the Catholic Church, not the Methodist Church. Nothing! Zilch, zero, nada. "

Second the definition of assault has changed, the Popes brother is accused of "boxing the ears of a choir boy" WHOOPTY DO probably not half a hard as the ass kickings I got and deserved as a mouthy kid, GROW UP, these people are out for money, nothing else

Finally someone is bringing this up.

2010-04-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

IGNORING THE OBVIOUS

IT'S THE LAVENDER PRIESTHOOD
THAT CAUSES CATHOLIC CHURCH SCANDALS
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO SAY SO

by Tom Roeser
"On The Other Hand"

The last time I wrote about the responsibility the Vatican has for sweeping pedophilia and other sexual sins under the rug, some guy contacted me brimming with erroneous theological rectitude saying—“who are YOU to judge the Popes?”

Huh? All of us can judge popes--since we have the gifts of free-will, critical judgment and utterly no prohibition on making our views known if they are malice-free and informed. Criticism in historic context is not verboten. But at the same time, those who have accepted the Faith under the magisterium of the Church can never have any just reason for changing that faith or calling it into doubt. Why not? Because God is never sparing with His grace and the evidence for accepting the Faith is such that a Catholic does not have objectively valid grounds for doubting or denying what he claims is trouble in believing.

Criticism of past popes if one the issues should not be confused with Satan’s work.

Peter was the greatest. Viewing popes in my lifetime, Pius XI was a liberal scholar, he a forerunner (with Leo XIII who was far more balanced skewing excesses of capitalism, socialism) of the “social justice” papal and theological mindset seeking to instill some “morality” in the capital markets --Quadragisimo Anno implied international bankers are wicked: okay but then as with most clerics, economics was not his strong suit.

Pius XII outstanding, maintaining an even keel in World War II, promulgating brilliantly that Communism was an evil force; and for this as payback, victimized cruelly because of this to allege he was a crypto Nazi from a fictitious play, “The Deputy,” that fabricated his alleged anti-Semitism out of whole cloth (ignoring his heroic rescue efforts of hundreds of Jews for which he received accolades from the chief rabbi of Jerusalem).

John XXIII rightly called Vatican II into session but it was the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” in his latter years and following his death that embraced often thoughtless, excessive and mindless “reform” by theological liberals. Read the documents and you’ll see that the doctrines ratified were sound—sample: pantheism condemned…clerical celibacy upheld….abortion condemned…the Bible prominent…brilliant on the essence of religious life, freedom of education, historicity of the Gospels, the morality of war, purgatory, on the teaching of sexual pleasure, on the universal call to holiness, on veneration of saints etc. Paul VI suffered mightily in striving to turn back the revolutionaries imbued with the “spirit of Vatican II”… saving the day and who by the grace of God rallied and wrote Humanae Vitae which earns him 4 stars in my book.

JPI died too early to be rated. JPII a classic world leader despite administrative curial difficulties who collaborated with Reagan, Thatcher and Lech Walesa to help overthrow communism. Benedict XVI with a weakness for eco-liberalism and “capitalist greed is bad” theories is still one of the world’s greatest theologians…and even enforced more strictly rules against priestly sexual abuse despite serious personal and curial administrative lapses which let some erring bishops go free.

You shouldn’t judge popes? That’s the kind of goofy misplaced robot-style blind-folded-ness that led the human side of the papacy into grievous error many times in the past…has produced the Protestant reformation…as it threatens to stir disunion again. Fortunately sometimes deluged by a sea of zircons the Church has developed great diamonds… popes who served civilization brilliantly every 500 years or so…including:

Gregory II, five hundred years after the crucifixion of Peter, a former Roman senator turned Benedictine monk, who stood tall against the barbarian tidal wave that threatened to sweep away all vestiges of Christianity—starting the counter-revolution that converted the barbarians into the ballast that became Christian Europe for a thousand years…

Gregory VII, another Benedictine monk 500 or so years later… who inspired scholasticism, saving the great manuscripts of antiquity…including Aristotle and Plato…to enrich and fortify the ages….Pius V a great Dominican 500 years after that who applied the doctrines of the Council of Trent building a canonical structure that exists to this day…and 500 years after that John Paul II with all his imperfections administratively who strove mightily to overturn communism and who with aforementioned help did.

But lest you think the litany of popes is the whole story of Catholicism, hang tight to the end of this long (I confess) post.

The Lavender Emerges
Largely the institutional laxity of curia and diocesan functionaries is responsible for undue toleration of the Lavender Priesthoo including failure to discipline the seminaries, religious orders and so-called “Catholic” universities…due to a largely absentee and compliant papacy, aided by weak, bishops, putty in the hands of their bureaucracies —dominated by a mindset that prattles “we must not allow scandal that engulfs the Church to scandalize the world.” Important: not all homosexuals are child abusers—but all child abusers…especially of little boys…are homosexuals. Spurious so-called statistics from the psychological industry are politically correct accommodations.

Permissiveness of the Lavender Priesthood has been… and will continue to be… disastrous unless it is corrected immediately. The toleration and winking at it…as with the case of the Chicago jailed pedophile ex-priest Dan McCormack where the then rector of Mundelein told the Sun-Times he would ordain McCormack yet again…and went from there to auxiliary bishop of Chicago…bishop of Tucson and number two in the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—soon to be number one…while the paper’s religious reporter was let go since after its publication she could get no archdiocesan spokesman to return her call--is inexcusable…and shows that in pushing her out, the ultra-liberal paper collaborated with the archdiocese.

--That and the fact that the p. r. spokesman for the archdiocese was quoted as telling the press “well, he didn’t rape anybody”. How’d you like to have your 8-year-old boy sexually fondled and hear that comment?

In all too many cases the papacy, curia and offending bishops have not applied the view of the Apostle Paul who said

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortionists shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Lest some other Simple Mind thinks I am going south on the Church I love and have venerated since childhood, let’s review the theological facts.

7 Inflexible Truths
Let’s review the bidding of indelible lessons from Fr. Ernie.

It has been the unanimous teaching of the ancient Fathers that
the Church was born from the side of Jesus Christ on the cross. 2. By Christ’s death and resurrection, the New Testament replaced the Old Law. 3. By His death on the cross, Christ merited human salvation—making it possible for those before and since to receive the manifold graces they need to reach heaven. 4. In Against Heresies, St. Ireneus identified the root of all heresies as the unwillingness to accept the Church’s teaching centered in the Vicar of Christ on earth, the visible head of the Church, the bishop of Rome.

5. This means there is one Church established by Christ: the Catholic Church which is governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. Does this mean other Christian churches have no standing? No, but they exist in greater or less measure in their divinely ordained fullness (read this as subsisting) in the Roman Catholic Church.

6. The infallibility of the popes, defined by Vatican I teaches that when they speak ex cathedra or “from the chair” on doctrines of faith and morals, they are immune from error. This may seem like hair-splitting but being immune from error on faith or morals is not the same as the perception that everything they say on any subject is infallible. So far a perfect record although Honorius I came close, did not attend a consistory where his representative promulgated error and shrugged it off pragmatically—for which he was properly anathematized.

7. Again: Infallibility does not mean that popes are immune from error on matters where they don’t speak ex cathedra or judgments they may make on social issues as human beings or administrative failings…nor that their judgments are free from error in the realm of non-doctrinal matters. To think otherwise is to confer on them impeccability which is a far different thing.

What we have here with pedophilia swept under the rug is this: This disgraceful condition of toleration for the Lavender Priesthood has invaded the bureaucracies of many archdioceses including Chicago’s…and has permeated the Vatican curia. The latest case is toxic. But let’s be clear anent The New York Times’ revelations insisting Benedict alone is to blame.

Not so. To insist that Benedict or John Paul II solely are responsible for laxity in dealing with pedophilia is akin to saying a president of the United States is guilty of the derelictions of subordinates (though conceding, that in Watergate Nixon was personally involved in cover-up and in Bill Clinton’s abuse of the intern Monica Lewinsky after which he lied under oath, he undeniably was). As we know from a practical point of history, there have been given latitude to presidents…JFK for the Bay of Pigs (by believing without checking what the CIA’s Alan Dulles and Richard Helms insisted would be a success)…Jimmy Carter for believing that the stupid rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages via helicopters could work.

In most cases of gross error, popes and rulers aren’t personally involved. But they must take responsibility. There is no doubt that the secular media want to indict Benedict personally for dereliction for one reason alone: He stands for absolutes in moral theology that the relativist media find objectionable. God-hater and atheist fulminator Christopher Hitchens who assailed Mother Teresa on TV during her funeral and Irish rock singer baldy Sinead O’Connor are the most extreme examples.

Saying thisdoesn’t absolve the Vatican of responsibility or popes who are supposed to administer their office meticulously. And it is a fact that the Vatican declined to defrock a Milwaukee priest who abused as many as 200 deaf boys even though a number of bishops repeatedly warned it about the consequences. It is also a fact that correspondence addressed to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was often ignored and that he and/or his subordinates did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests when he served as an archbishop in Germany or as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer. But before you make the final judgment, consider this:

The New York Times Inquisition
For these things The New York Times is assailing Benedict. If they were objective they would also be assailing Obama for evading culpability for allegedly offering the post of secretary of the navy to ex-admiral Rep. Joe Sestak get him out of the way from running against Arlen Specter—a federal crime worthy of impeachment if provable. If they wanted to be true to their so-called “objective” investigative image The Times wouldn’t be sweeping THAT under the rug…as indeed it IS.

Several reservations must be considered before we get to the facts. First, , contrary to implications in The Times Ratzinger was not the point man from 1981 until his election as pope in April 2005. He did not have any responsibility for handling the overall Vatican sex abuse response until 2001, four years before he became pope.

Second, that which the media considers a “smoking gun” is no. They refer to a May, 2001 letter from Ratzinger to the bishops recommending that certain grave crimes including sexual abuse of a minor should be referred to his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and that they are subject to “the pontifical secret.” Sounds conspiratorial but it pertains to the church’s disciplinary measures—not to be construed as holding back on reporting cases to the police.

Third, a story that relatively few cases were subjected to a full canonical trial is misleading. Strong American bishops fought canonical trials because Roman trials can last years and even then may not be conclusive. In fact handling 60% of the cases by the bishops themselves is seen as evidence of renewed need for action. In the recent past, Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl removed a priest after allegations of sexual abuse. The priest appealed to Rome. The Vatican ordered the priest reinstated. Wuerl himself went to Rome and got the job done—but the experience convinced many U.S. bishops that canonical trials were not the right way to handle this. The problem seemed to be then that the Vatican was more concerned about the rights of accused priests than the child victims.

The Milwaukee Case
Still, the facts are extremely serious. The case against the Milwaukee priest was called to the Vatican’s attention in 1996 by none other than Archbishop Rembert Weakland (himself later a self-admitted homosexual…although there could be some speculation as to his motivation). Whoever was responsible…Ratzinger’s staff or him personally…the fact remains that Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters from Weakland.

After eight months of inexcusable laxity and non-response Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to the priest’s dismissal. The fact remains that Bertone ended the process after the priest wrote to Ratzinger saying he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was beyond the Church’s own statute of limitations—and was given a pass.

Meaning the criminally guilty pedophile priest was never tried or disciplined by the Church itself but got a pass from police and prosecutors who ignored reports from the victims. A total of three archbishops of Milwaukee were told about the priest’s derelictions but never told civil authorities. So don’t get the idea the Milwaukee case was an exception. We all know it isn’t. In fact, while Dan McCormack was awaiting sentencing for a crime he confessed, he and a group of archdiocesan clergy…including at least one Higher Up—not the archbishop, though-- went off on a vacation together.

The question remains: What will the Church and the Pope do about this laxity? Merely writing tracts and issuing statements of remorse without reforming the Curial deficiencies are insufficient. Everyone dealing with the Curial bureaucracy on this and other matters know the legendary Italianate winking and inefficiency. The anomaly of last week was Benedict’s lecturing Irish bishops for laxity which he himself showed as bishop of Munich. There’s no avoidance of the fact that his handling of the crisis, in Munich, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or as pope cannot be improved. To me, it should include far more than the ordinary reforms—but should concentrate on The Lavender Priesthood that also affects too many bishops.

Benedict must reform it now and replace it with an alert immediate response action team. The cases are endemic. More than a decade ago a downstate Illinois prelate was reported as constantly on the prowl in his automobile for young men to pick up. What happened? Nothing: the guy was allowed to retire when his successor was appointed.
(For more on that click HERE and HERE)

The laxity throughout the Church on the Lavender Priesthood was and is a virulent disgrace.
Then there is this fact: Most of the charges and convictions come from an organization known as SNAP.

SNAP’s Denial of Fact
While there is no doubt the media enjoys exploiting leaks in the bark of Peter, slurring of the curia and its officials including the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger now Benedict XVI…much of their reports have come not from their investigations…but from an organization which is worthy of some scrutiny itself.

I say this as one who works as a columnist for The Wanderer, the oldest and most venerable national Catholic weekly in America…the first and to a startling degree the only Catholic newspaper to sustainedly spotlight these abuses with definitude…investigators who belong to an organization called SNAP [Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests]…whom I interviewed repeatedly…have personal axes to grind against the Church beyond the immediate charges they make. Those axes do not erase the validity or their original charges but nevertheless exist. Two major points.

First: The SNAP people as social and political liberals cannot bring themselves to admit that homosexuality which has run rife, producing the Lavender Priesthood, is the overwhelming cause of the scandal. They have adopted the same cultural bias of today’s liberals and media about homosexuality…that it is not a sinful choice or a weakness and definitely not an abuse of the sexual faculty…but misled by certain liberal pathologies they believe that it is neither reversible but merely a normal variation, like being left-handed.

In fact if SNAP had used its findings to blast the Lavender Priesthood, the chances are great that the media would be loath to run the stories.

Most SNAP authorities declare that if in fact homosexuality is the cause, the so-called “repression” factor is responsible: victims are those too ashamed of the sin that “dare not tell its name.” Many feel that matters would be improved if only the Church would relent in its insistence of the male only priesthood. Others have told me that celibacy should be relaxed (not understanding that the celibate priesthood is not covered by inflexible moral norm but is a tradition).

But most important: The conclusion of the SNAP people is adamant—that homosexuality is NOT the cause of pedophilia. That’s every bit as much denial as the Church has done with erring priests. This goes hand-in-hand with a drive, popular in our culture, that homosexuality is on the way to being accepted by the nation, the armed services and it’s only a matter of time when it is embraced by the Church totally.

Louvain’s Heresy
Such is the statement of none other than the chairman of the department of moral theology of the up-to-now renowned Catholic University of Louvain:

“I think we are virtually on the edge of accepting the homosexual relationship. The Church will accept the homosexual relationship like those divorced and remarried. We must live as brother or sister or brother and brother and sister and sister as the case may be…What is important is that the relationship be recognized as valuable, fruitful, meaningful, alternative, creative relationship. We are on the verge of accepting this.” [The Meanings of Human Sexuality, New Ways Ministry, 4th National Symposium] as cited in Catechism on Homosexuality [Eternal Life publication 2003, written by the late theologian Fr. John Hardon SJ and published with the imprimatur of Bishop Raymond Burke, then bishop of LaCrosse, Wis.].

The Louvain chairman’s words are, of course, heretical and at total variance with the traditional teaching of the 2000-plus year old Catholic Church. The definitive position that while homosexual inclination is of itself not a sin but something to be disciplined…practiced homosexuality is a mortal sin and has been declared many times by the Popes as matters of faith and morals.

The document of Vatican II On the Church in the Modern World states that in matters of morality man cannot make value judgments according to personal whim. “In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose on himself but which holds him to obedience…For man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged.”>

That is this: the sexual nature of man and the human faculty of procreation are essentially superior to all other lower forms of life. At the root of this superiority is that human sexuality pertains exclusively to marriage and to a finality which is unique in the visible world of living beings.

Further that sexual actions belong to conjugal life, do not depend solely on sincere intentions or on people’s motives but are determined by objective standards—based on the nature of human beings and their acts while preserving the full sense of mutual self-giving and procreation in the context of true love.

Cultural decadence and laxity have led some thinkers and theologians to defend homosexuality by analyzing the morality of human acts regarding their intention. How a person enjoys sexual pleasure is seen by many as unimportant…and the sin that the Apostle Paul maintained excludes one from the kingdom of heaven is seen…with tortured linguistics…as a form of gay-ness or gayety.

Second: I asked both the founder and the executive director of SNAP to tell me if their organization is funded heavily…or at all… by the Personal Injury Bar which has a direct financial stake in suing the Church…making SNAP a direct beneficiary of their largesse as well. That was several years ago. To date I have not received any systematic denial that they are not so funded and they have not submitted financial records that would deny it. The conclusion is that they indeed do have a tie-in with the personal injury bar.

Thus they have a pecuniary reason for digging up scandal that harms the Church: their jobs and livelihood depend on it. Nor do they make a pretense of being devout Catholics who fulfill their obligations by going to Mass each Sunday. The founder told me she does when she thinks of it but her attendance if irregular at best. The executive director makes no pretense that he is an observant Catholic—in fact he told me he is no longer a Catholic at all.

Catholicism’s Greatness Beyond the Popes
In conclusion, Catholicism’s priceless lineage is far more than the litany of popes. Consider the brilliant examples of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Padre Pio, Theresa of Avila, Theresa of Lisieux, Dominic, Benedict the founder of monasticism, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Augustine, Anselm, John of The Cross…on and on through the ages.

Moreover who can not acknowledge that civilization was saved by the monks, the creation of academic life by the great clerical professors, the contribution the Church made to science (notwithstanding the fiction concerning Galileo which cannot stand scrutiny), its gigantic contributions to art and architecture…its devising the foundations of international law, its birthing the original idea of widespread charity, its inscribing the origins of western law, its up-building of the concept of western morality.

If this article puts into perspective the contemporary scandals with the stature of the Church as an essential conduit for eternal salvation and a civilizing treasure—at the forefront of the development of laws, science, and institutions constituting western civilization—it will serve this writer’s intention.

Thomas F. Roeser is radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher and former VP of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. A former John F. Kennedy Fellow, Harvard and Woodrow Wilson International Fellow, Princeton, N. J., Roeser is the author of the book Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott. To read more about Tom, Click here.

A True Priest

2010-04-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

And now days we have ecumenicism, and interfaith talks, would any priests be willing to serve as father Coyle ? Many are afraid (or embarrassed) to even act Catholic.
The Egyptian

From the Knights of Columbus

Tragedy in Birmingham

by Sharon Davies

Remembering the 1921 slaying of Father James E. Coyle

Father James E. Coyle courageously spoke against anti-Catholic prejudice in the South. (Bill Fex Collection, Birmingham, Alabama)

Father James E. Coyle, an extraordinary priest and Knight of Columbus in the early 20th century, courageously stood up against widely-held anti-Catholic views at the risk, and then cost, of his life.

The Irish-born priest was scarcely in his 20s when, after his ordination in Rome, he was dispatched to Alabama to begin his priesthood. The Catholic population in Alabama had exploded with a promise of jobs, especially in and around Birmingham’s network of coal mines, steel mills and iron foundries. Father Coyle arrived in the city shortly before a wave of anti-Catholicism flooded the country, and the revived Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rebranded itself as a “patriotic” fraternity, targeting blacks, Catholics, Jews and foreigners.

It was a tense time in America, and fear of the new immigrants gripped more than a small band of hysterics. A number of states passed “convent inspection laws,” which authorized the warrantless search of convents, monasteries and even Catholic hospitals. Investigators looked for Protestant women and children purportedly being held against their will and for weapons and ammunition the Knights of Columbus had supposedly stashed there. Knights were plotting an insurrection, the fear-mongers said. They were the pope’s secret foot soldiers and could never be “true Americans.”

Against these baseless accusations, Father Coyle defended the faith and the Order, becoming a lightning rod for attacks. Federal agents warned Bishop Edward Allen of Mobile, Ala., of threats against Father Coyle’s life and of plans to burn his church to the ground.

Then, on Aug. 11, 1921, Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson, a Methodist minister and Klansman, stepped onto the porch of St. Paul’s rectory with a loaded handgun. About an hour earlier, Father Coyle had officiated the wedding of Rev. Stephenson’s 18-year-old daughter, Ruth, to Pedro Gussman, a Catholic migrant from Puerto Rico. Like many other Klansmen, Rev. Stephenson despised Catholics. When he learned that Father Coyle had married his daughter to Gussman, he was livid. He shot the priest in cold blood, and Father Coyle died within minutes.

The climate for bringing Rev. Stephenson to justice could not have been worse. A veteran prosecutor spent weeks trying to convince a grand jury to return an indictment, and when it finally did, the Klan ran a statewide drive to raise funds to hire a young lawyer named Hugo Black to lead Rev. Stephenson’s defense. Black would later be elected to the U.S. Senate and appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Klan’s presence at Rev. Stephenson’s October 1921 trial was manifest. Historians would later report that the jury foreman and the presiding judge were both Klansmen. Hugo Black himself would join the ranks of the KKK less than two years later to forward his own political aspirations.

On the eve of trial, Rev. Stephenson’s lawyers announced they would amend his plea to “not guilty by reason of insanity” to permit the argument that Rev. Stephenson was not responsible for his actions after he learned Father Coyle had married Ruth to Pedro. The minister and his wife both claimed that “the Catholics” had tried to seduce Ruth away from her Protestant faith; news of their daughter’s marriage was the last straw.

Though little remembered today, Rev. Stephenson’s weeklong trial was a national sensation. Reporters from far-flung cities raced to Birmingham to observe the spectacle. The jury, however, took only a few hours to return their verdict: “Not guilty.”

Catholics in Birmingham have never forgotten the outrage. “It is our hope that the sharing of the life and death of this holy man may promote greater understanding, reconciliation and peace among all of God’s children,” writes James Pinto Jr., a member of Father James E. Coyle Council 9862 and an organizer for the Father James E. Coyle Memorial Project.

Before his death, Father Coyle served as the chaplain of Birmingham (Ala.) Council 635 and was a charter member of Mobile (Ala.) Council 666. He remains a model of faithful and courageous priestly service today.

For more information about Father James E. Coyle, visit www.fathercoyle.org.

PAGAN catholics, sure looks that way, you decide

2010-04-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

This is an example of the modernists cited in the previous post.
From Catholic Church Conservation , go to them to see the other 11 videos if the first one posted here doesn't make you lose your lunch, positively pagan.

PS. Deacons wives are not to process up with their Husbands, the wives are not ordained.

The Egyptian

Why does it take a LUTHERAN theologian to explain the problem,

2010-04-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Pardon me but where the HELL are you Catholic theologians, for the love of Pete defend the man will you or are you glad to see him suffer, perhaps your true colors are being displayed by your silence, Angels defend him from the wolves and all of us pray for him. God Bless Papa
I know this is long but the read is absolutely worth it, the polyester nightmares and happy clappy types really do HATE the Pope, and it shows

The Egyptian

from Logia, a journal of Lutheran theology

The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:43

Some ecumenical thoughts at Holy Week 2010 from John Stephenson

The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.

But shrewd observers must wonder about the startling disproportion between the enormous hue and cry artificially whipped up by the media and the softly spoken real life figure who seems always to have avoided hyperbole like the plague. Even though the curial department over which he presided for almost a quarter century is the direct heir to the 16^th-century Inquisition, the disciplinary measures dealt out by Ratzinger against barely a score of wildly Modernist (actually mostly apostate) theologians over more than two decades add up to a string of fairly mild censures, gentle slaps on the wrist in most cases. Hans Küng lost the right to teach theology as an accredited representative of the magisterium (as his missio canonica was stripped from him), but (despite his clear disavowal of the divinity of Christ!) retained his status as an incardinated (=rostered) Roman Catholic priest, and he has, well, greatly profited in fame and fortune from his much trumpeted role as Rome’s chief dissident. Had he rather than Ratzinger landed in the chair of cardinal prefect back in the early 1980s, the media would have shown no sympathy for the advocates of traditional Christianity that a totalitarian liberal such as Küng would have hounded to the remotest margins of Church life; ironically, there is no more illiberal force on earth than a liberal with his hands on the levers of power.

Moreover, when someone takes the trouble to examine Ratzinger’s huge opus over close to six decades as a professional theologian, they make the discovery that he occupies a centrist position in the constellation of modern Roman Catholic theology; he is at most mildly “conservative”, the “ultra-conservative” label routinely affixed to him by most sections of the press being sheerly laughable.

As I set forth the Roman Catholic reality in our St. Catharines Religious Bodies (Comparative Symbolics) course, I point out the current uneasy coexistence of three groupings in that vast church body.

Modernism on the rampage (or the elephant actually destroying the living room)

In the one corner are the media-supported Modernists, those who do not acknowledge the definitive quality of God’s unsurpassable self-revelation in Christ, and who thus regard faith and practice not as givens to be handed down intact but as man-made constructs to be refashioned at whim according to the capricious desire of succeeding generations. Roundly condemned and solemnly proscribed by Pius X (1903-1914) and still held back to a great extent by Pius XII (1939-1958), the Modernists crawled out of the woodwork during the reign of John XXIII (1958-1963), and Modernism swiftly rose to a dominant position in Roman Catholic theology in, with, under, and around the (sixteen) officially promulgated documents of Vatican II (1962-1965).

As a young theologian, Ratzinger attended Vatican II as a peritus (=expert) of somewhat “progressive” tendencies. By Council’s close he was uneasy over the tone and content of its last document, Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World. Shocked to the core by the virulently anti-Christian positions embraced even by theology students (led by such figures as the radical Tübingen exegete Ernst Käsemann) in the student uprisings of 1968 (Achtundsechziger [“68ers”] is an actual word in modern German), Ratzinger firmed up his centrist credentials and switched his support from the left-leaning magazine Concilium (the house organ of Küng & Co.) to the middle of the road Communio (the substitute publication of von Balthasar and friends).

Clearly, the Modernists who surged forth to theological dominance in the wake of Vatican II have never forgiven Ratzinger for his “betrayal” of their cause; in their books (literally, in the case of Küng’s interminable memoirs) he is and remains a cross between Brutus and Judas Iscariot. At least some of his media woes are attributable to the Modernists’ insatiable thirst for revenge for, say, his pointed critique of Gaudium et spes written ten years after the close of the Council. But these pages of sober commentary are surely sweet music to orthodox Lutheran ears. Yes, Vatican II was infected by the dementedly schwärmerisch optimism of the Kennedy era (Principles of Catholic Theology, 372; 383). Yes, Gaudium et spes considers the “world” a positive entity, with which it seeks dialogue and cooperation with a view to building jointly with it a better global state of affairs (Principles, 379f.). Had he lived much longer, Hermann Sasse, who was careful to register both the strengths and the weaknesses of Vatican II, would surely have added his Yea and Amen to Ratzinger’s analysis of Gaudium et spes.

As they still pretend that everything in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic garden is fine and dandy, the Modernists undoubtedly continue greatly to resent Ratzinger’s telling Vittorio Messori in the early 1980s how “we must speak …of a crisis of faith and of the Church” (Ratzinger Report, 44; “the gravity of the crisis,” 62; “in this confused period, when truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith,” 105). Later in the same decade I headed the first chapter of CLD’s Eschatology volume “General Apostasy: the Sign of our Time.” Guess what? Ratzinger, the GAFCON Anglicans, and I are spot on. Might there be something slightly fishy in the direction ELCA, ELCiC, TEC (the US Episcopalians), and the Anglican Church of Canada have been heading lately? The Modernists and their media allies would much prefer that no one notice these developments.

The traditionalist rump

In the opposite corner to the Modernists who can do no wrong in the eyes of the mainstream media stands the numerically much smaller traditionalist minority that can do no right. When did you last read a fair account of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) in the “quality” press? When did you ever read there an objective appraisal of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) that Lefebvre founded to withstand the Modernist juggernaut that came out of the Council? But the sainted Professor Marquart would have rejoiced at the clear profession of Ac 4:11-12 (“no other Name”) with which the SSPX politely responded to Benedict XVI’s address at the Jewish synagogue in Rome on Sunday 17 January 2010 (http://www.dici.org/en/?p=4263). After Archbishop Lefebvre (without papal permission) ordained four bishops in 1988 to continue his work, he and they incurred automatic excommunication, with the result that the SSPX has (paradoxically, given its deepest intent) been out of communion with Rome since that date.

With his vast breadth of learning and his generosity of spirit towards the Orthodox and the heirs of the Reformation (especially the Lutherans: “The Lutherans are to Ratzinger what the Orthodox are to John Paul: the separated brethren he knows best, and for whom he has the greatest natural affinity.” John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, 231), Ratzinger is far removed from the wavelength of the SSPX and of the former members of that body who have returned to full communion with Rome under the auspices of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). Of course, these groups are well aware that it is humanly impossible for them to face a more favourable occupant of the papal chair in the foreseeable future, with the result that the SSPX has lately toned down its anti-papal polemics and willingly begun to participate in a theological dialogue with the CDF.

In the centre receiving shots from both (all) sides

Ratzinger belongs to the centrist mass of Roman Catholics who accept Vatican II, but decline to see the Council (as do Küng & Co.) as a brutal rupture with the foregoing tradition. To understand his papal programme (inasmuch as we may talk of such a thing), we must realise that he is endeavouring to steer his massive ecclesial ship back into a centrist channel after a good forty years of disastrous leftward lurch—just consider the pitiful liturgical shambles that emerged from Paul VI’s Novus Ordo of 1968, causing Hermann Sasse to remark in his last years how Rome had suddenly “canonised St. Zwingli.” A few years ago, in his new capacity as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger coined the phrase “hermeneutic of continuity” to describe an approach to Vatican II that seeks to interpret its documents in harmony with what went before. A major task awaits orthodox Lutheran theology in the shape of updating Chemnitz’s Examen Concilii Tridentini by performing the same service for the documents of Vatican II. Applying the hermeneutic of continuity to these texts, a Chemnitz of our time would discern areas of interconfessional agreement and rapprochement, on the one hand, and of ongoing dissent and debate, on the other.

As, in company with his predecessor on the papal throne, Ratzinger has occupied Rome’s middle ground, significant differences of interpretation and emphasis have certainly existed between the close colleagues. With his undying commitment to Gaudium et spes, Woytyla was some degrees to the “left” of Ratzinger, who is very much a man of Lumen Gentium, the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. As he approved my copious quotations from Ratzinger in the CLD volume on Eschatology, the sainted Robert Preus commented to me that Raztinger (whom he respected) was “more Catholic in the best sense” than the Pope under whom he served.

By the way, the world still hates, loathes, & detests Christ and His Church!

In addition to the unremitting hostility directed at him from the Modernist wing of his own Communion, even prior to his election as Pope, Ratzinger was a favourite target of the unbelieving world’s impassioned hatred for Christ Jesus our Lord and the members of His mystical body. Some years ago, the British Daily Telegraph (which at one time had the reputation of being a “quality” newspaper) reported that the then cardinal had committed a terrible “gaffe” by publicly expressing hope for the conversion of the Jews. Fancy that, a Christian wishing salvation for a sizeable group of his neighbours, a faux pas indeed! A Google search has confirmed my memory that British journalists were likewise incensed by the then cardinal’s comparison of Buddhism with spiritual autoeroticism. How scandalous that a Christian spokesman should speak candidly of religions that offer a spurious salvation!

The Canadian mainstream media were frenziedly sharpening their knives against Joseph Ratzinger in the weeks when he was a strong candidate to succeed John Paul II. His papacy was barely a few hours old when the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) evening news ran a segment on an aged Italian woman (a “good Catholic”, of course) who stood crestfallen amid a jubilant crowd as Benedict XVI appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s, walking dejectedly away as she realized that women’s ordination, contraception, sexual licence, abortion on demand, and all that good stuff would still be denied the papal seal of approval. That bloody hatchet job had been carefully prepared way ahead of a cardinal’s booming “Habemus papam—reverendissimum dominum Josephum Cardinalem Ratzinger” from the balcony!

Reason was thrown to the winds and sheer hysteria set in on Benedict XVI’s second visit to his German homeland, when he delivered a thoughtful lecture to the University of Regensburg in his capacity as emeritus professor of its faculty of theology. How sheerly outrageous that Ratzinger dared quote a harassed Byzantine emperor to the effect that Islam first conquers and then sustains itself by the sword! As the media, with the BBC in the forefront, stoked Islamic wrath and liberal outrage, they failed to state that the orchestrated acts of violence that rapidly broke out from one end of the Islamic world to the other only corroborated the simple, incontestable fact that Islam is, well, not quite a religion of peace as President Bush once fantasised.

Remarkably, when the press manufactured further storms of outrage on his lifting of the excommunications still hanging over the four remaining SSPX bishops in January 2009, one of the strongest defences made of Benedict XVI in his homeland came from the word processor of Germany’s leading orthodox Lutheran theologian. Gottfried Martens once told me that he shares Joseph Ratzinger’s appraisal of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, namely that he also takes the view that the laboriously achieved document does not in fact represent an authentic, deeply based agreement on the topic in question. And yet, with much greater clarity and conviction that most German Roman Catholic spokesmen could muster, Dr. Martens pointed out in his parish newsletter that the Pope had simply smoothed the way for talks between the SSPX and the CDF by graciously lifting the excommunication of the four renegade bishops; he had not granted them a recognized public ministry in the Roman Catholic Church—they remain unrostered, to use our terminology; and least of all did he knowingly “rehabilitate” a Holocaust denier. But instead of surfing in search of better information to http://www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=18, the mainstream media take every opportunity to add the charge of “rehabilitating a Holocaust denier” to their already lengthy list of Ratzinger’s many sins. The day after his election to the papacy, the headline of a British tabloid read, “From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi!” For as is well known, conscripted teenagers forced into the collapsing armies of the Third Reich shared all the guilt of the worst war criminals, especially if these young men happened to be German nationals.

The negative reaction aroused already by the Ratzinger Report laid bare the sheer fury shared by Roman Catholic Modernists and the unbelieving world in general against anyone who dares to intimate that the historic Christian religion is, to put it bluntly, true. Neither apostates within Holy Christendom nor naked unbelievers outside her borders will ever forgive Ratzinger for the grave breach of secularist, pluralist etiquette involved in the first volume of his Jesus of Nazareth. It goes without saying (and around the Holy Week of each year the several forms of mainstream media say it loudly, often, and emphatically) that Jesus was an ordinary man, a wacko apocalyptist, or a failed political revolutionary. Stones must fly and clubs be brandished against a learned man fully familiar with all the “Jesus of history” literature from Reimarus to the present, who winsomely draws on believing scholarship of all confessions to offer a calm and cogent argument that the real, actual Jesus is the one who meets us in the Gospel record. Where the North American liberal intelligentsia can offer no refutation, they spit contempt. And a Western Europe sunk in a new heathenism and undergoing Islamic takeover can only howl at this attempt to arrest its suicidal downward slide.

Preaching the homily at the opening Eucharist of the 2005 papal conclave, an address that he likely regarded as his swan song before heading back to private life in a Bavarian retirement, Ratzinger dared to call a spade a spade by drawing attention to la dittatura del relativismo, a now familiar phrase that surely needs no translation. So, as even more lamentable reports surface of the horror of sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests and religious brothers, it goes without saying that the secular press has tried, convicted, and executed Ratzinger for a string of alleged cover-ups as archbishop, cardinal, and Pope. The declining John Paul II may indeed have been somewhat remiss in addressing this evil, but the press, spoon-fed by Roman Catholic Modernists, cannot be expected to highlight insignificant details such as the fact that Benedict XVI has vigorously addressed this issue from the first days of his papacy (remember the disciplining of Fr. Maciel, once the protecting hand of the former Pope was withdrawn?). The Manchester Guardian (another allegedly “quality” newspaper from the UK) announced the other day that, for twenty-four years, Ratzinger failed to act on clerical sexual abuse of children; its journalists forgot to mention that the issue was only directly handed to his congregation in 2001! (Check out http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/keeping-record-straight-benedict-and-crisis ) When guilt is foreordained and execution already carried out, mere supporting evidence is of no account. Barely a week ago the New York Times headlined the “news” that, as cardinal prefect in 1996, Ratzinger quashed the canonical trial of a priest of the Milwaukee archdiocese accused (and believably guilty) of unspeakable crimes. There is no likelihood of the NYT apologising for its barefaced lie, uttered after it declined to interview the canon lawyer who presided over the judicial proceedings in Milwaukee. http://catholicanchor.org/wordpress/?p=601 According to him, the canonical process was still in full swing when the accused priest died; we can’t expect the secular press to get the point that the case then moved to the final court of appeal.

Christendom as a whole is under attack

In a letter to the Sunday Telegraph published in that newspaper’s 28 March 2010 edition (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/7528487/The-religious-rights-of-Christians-are-treated-with-disrespect.html), five Evangelical bishops of the Church of England have politely drawn attention to the increasing volume of persecution of Christians in England and, in a governessy sort of way, insisted that the antichristian forces in British society cease and desist forthwith. The bishops’ reproach fell somewhat short of white-hot prophetic vigour: “We are deeply concerned at the apparent discrimination shown against Christians and we call on the Government to remedy this serious development.”

As the bishops’ letter begins with a protest over the case of a middle-aged English nurse dismissed for insisting on displaying, when on duty, a crucifix that she has worn since her confirmation decades ago, it demonstrates how British society in particular (along with European society in general) has lurched dramatically back to a stage prior to the work of the much maligned Constantine the Great. While the bishops’ concern is genuine and the issue they address real, one wonders whether they are taking the right approach. Can we picture Peter and Paul, around the year 68, stamping their feet and stressing the paramount need for Nero to respect the human rights of the nascent Christian community in Rome? Can we get our hands on evidence that the bishops and other ecclesial spokesmen of the day adopted the tone of these Anglican Evangelical prelates toward Decius and Diocletian? More to the point, can we imagine Diocletian, Decius, and Nero meekly agreeing to “remedy the serious developments” that had occurred on their respective imperial watches? Rather than issuing impotent appeals to the successive beasts that arise from the earth, bishops are to prepare and equip the Christian faithful to undergo the fires of tribulation that the Lord permits to come their way. For, make no doubt about it, the days of Diocletian and Decius and perhaps of Nero also are fast returning to the Western world.

Not in the same ballpark as Leo X & Co.

Orthodox Lutherans would have to be churlish in the extreme if they could not spare an ounce of affection for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as perhaps the first Pope in history to have a good idea what the Lutheran Reformation was and is all about, and, moreover, to have at least a shred of sympathy for its core concerns. In his writings Ratzinger routinely quotes Luther from the Weimar Edition and the Confessions from Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht’s edition of the Bekenntnisschriften; not all Lutheran professors of theology do the same. His aversion to the philosophical trajectory of Karl Rahner took concrete form in Ratzinger’s preference for the Bible and the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, over Thomas Aquinas (see Milestones, 44, 52f., 128f.). Isn’t this how we too want to do theology?

The following quotations randomly chosen from a couple of his works show that Ratzinger “gets it” in a way that the Renaissance (and Tridentine?) Popes did not. For starters, some words from the Ratzinger Report on sacramental confession, where the cardinal spoke of “the seriousness of the encounter between two persons aware of being in the presence of the shattering mystery of Christ’s forgiveness that arrives through the words and gestures of a sinful man” (Ratzinger Report, 57). And then:

...at the inmost core of the new commission [Mt 18:15-18; Jn 20:23], which robs the forces of destruction of their power, is the grace of forgiveness. It constitutes the Church. The Church is founded upon forgiveness. ...The Church is by nature the home of forgiveness, and it is thus that chaos is banished from within her. She is held together by forgiveness …she is not a communion of the perfect but a communion of sinners who need and seek forgiveness (Called to Communion, 64).

And:

…we are all in need of forgiveness, which is the heart of all true reform. …The Church is not a communion of those “who have no need of the physician” (Mk 2:17) but a communion of converted sinners who live by the grace of forgiveness and transmit it themselves. …I believe that the core of the spiritual crisis of our time has its basis in the obscuration of the grace of forgiveness (Called to Communion, 148f.).

Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue got off to a skewered start at the very outset when Luther proposed a discussion on soteriology only to have Sylvester Prierias (in terms of curial office the 1981-2005 Ratzinger of that day) use ecclesiastical strong-arm tactics with a distorted account of Scripture and tradition by way of response. If a formal dialogue were ever to take place between the orthodox Lutheran Churches of the world and the Holy See, some critical questions would certainly need to be posed, and spirited discussion would certainly ensue. Perhaps another perspective might be offered on the 11^th-century Cluniac Reform from the account given by Benedict XVI in his catechesis of 11 November 2009: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091111_en.html. And maybe we might explore a little further Ratzinger’s rationale for priestly celibacy, in the course of which he made the barbed remark that the married clergy of the East are not real pastors, just liturgical ministers (Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, 199). Ouch! Should a panel of our theologians ever sit down with a group of their Roman Catholic counterparts, concern might be raised that Benedict XVI has been somewhat profligate in his granting of indulgences, a form of bounty that all Lutherans will forever denounce as counterfeit spiritual currency. As Easter of 2010 approaches, though, if for no other reason than that we remember Martin Niemöller’s post-war regret at not having spoken up for the Jews in due season, we might fitly major in sympathy, understanding, and prayer for the courteous and learned aged prelate who is right now a walking target for innumerable hellish darts launched by theological Modernists and by the unbelieving world that have between them zero tolerance for any crisp, clear, and confident confession of Christ Jesus our Incarnate God.

Ass Hats

2010-03-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

Iowa Town Renames Good Friday to 'Spring Holiday'

Citing the Separation of Church and State, Davenport Nixes Holy Day

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

March 29, 2010—

One week before the most solemn day in the Christian year, the city of Davenport, Iowa removed Good Friday from its municipal calendar, setting off a storm of complaints from Christians and union members whose contracts give them that day off.

Taking a recommendation by the Davenport Civil Rights Commission to change the holiday's name to something more ecumenical, City Administrator Craig Malin sent a memo to municipal employees announcing Good Friday would officially be known as "Spring Holiday."

"My phone has been ringing off the hook since Saturday," said city council alderman Bill Edmond. "People are genuinely upset because this is nothing but political correctness run amok."

Edmond said the city administrator made the change unilaterally and did not bring it to the council for a vote, a requirement for a change in policy.

"The city council didn't know anything about the change. We were blind sided and now we've got to clean this mess up. How do you tell people the city renamed a 2,000 year old holiday?" said Edmond.

It didn't take long for the city the resurrect the name Good Friday. Malin was overruled today and the words "Spring Holiday" disappeared.

Good Friday commemorates the day Jesus was crucified and died. Christians celebrate his resurrection the following Sunday, Easter.

The Civil Rights Commission said it recommended changing the name to better reflect the city's diversity and maintain a separation of church and state when it came to official municipal holidays.

"We merely made a recommendation that the name be changed to something other than Good Friday," said Tim Hart, the commission's chairman. "Our Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Davenport touts itself as a diverse city and given all the different types of religious and ethnic backgrounds we represent, we suggested the change."

News of the change could not have come at more significant time in the Christian calendar. News of the name change spread through the town on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, becoming a topic of conversation at church services throughout Davenport.

Davenport Dispute Over Good Friday

"If you deny the idea of Good Friday then you have to deny Easter," Monsignor Robert Schmidt told ABC affiliate WQAD.

Hart said the commission had no plans to change the name of Easter Sunday, because it fell on a weekend and government offices were already closed. The commission, he said, discussed changing Christmas, but decided enough other religions celebrate Christmas too. Hart, however, could not name one.

The religious right has attacked town governments that have removed public Christmas displays, calling such practices a "war on Christmas."

City employees, beginning with local police, feared the name change would violate their union contracts with the city, which specifies Good Friday as an official municipal holiday. Employees that work city holidays are paid time and a half.

Davenport officials called the name change an "error."

"The City of Davenport will be observing "Good Friday" as a City Holiday on April 2," read a statement released today.

"City Administrator Malin, in error, forwarded the recommendation to staff for further review and action, leading to release of a holiday notice with the holiday named 'Spring Holiday,' rather than "Good Friday," read the release.

Davenport's mayor said people were right to be angry but that Good Friday would continue to be acknowledged.

"I understand why people were so upset," said Mayor Bill Gluba. "My position is we have a lot more important issues. We'll fix this and move on."

This story was revised at 5:50pm ET

Politics

2010-03-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

I like Pat, years ago he wrote of the return of the Latin Mass in glowing terms, SSPX, and he predicted its return. I know this is politics but read it and think what has happened to our church

The Egyptian

By Patrick J. Buchanan

As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote for health-care reform, tea partiers reportedly shouted the "N-word" at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name.

Tea partiers deny it all. And neither audio nor video of this alleged incident has been produced, though TV cameras and voice recorders were everywhere on the Hill.

Other Democrats say their offices were vandalized and they've been threatened. A few received, and eagerly played for cable TV, obscene phone calls they got.

If true, this is crude and inexcusable behavior. And any threat should be investigated. But Democrats are also exploiting these real, imaginary or hoked-up slurs to portray themselves as political martyrs and to smear opponents as racists and bigots.

This is the politics of desperation.

Majority Whip James Clyburn accuses Republicans of "aiding and abetting ... terrorism." New York Times columnist Frank Rich compared the tea-party treatment of Democrats to Nazi treatment of the Jews during Kristallnacht:

"How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht."

Kristallnacht, "Crystal Night," the "Night of Broken Glass," was the worst pogrom in Germany since the Middle Ages. Synagogues were torched and hundreds of businesses smashed. Shattered glass covered the streets. Women were assaulted and men beaten and murdered. After that terrible night, half the Jews remaining in Germany fled.

To compare a brick tossed through the window of a congressional office and two shouted slurs to Kristallnacht suggests a growing paranoia on the left about the populist right.

Not since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made "some Americans run off the rails," said Rich, have we seen anything like this.

Was Rich awake in 1964? Because it wasn't the right that went off the rails. The really big riot in 1964 was in Harlem, lasting five days, with 500 injured and as many arrested. The Watts riot in 1965, Detroit and Newark in 1967, Washington, D.C., and 100 other cities in 1968, all bringing troops into American cities, were not the work of George Wallace populists or Barry Goldwater conservatives. They were the work of folks who went "all the way with LBJ."

Nor was it Young Americans for Freedom that burned ROTC buildings, vandalized professors' offices, toted the guns at Cornell or took over Columbia in 1968. And it was not the Birchers who set off that 1970 explosion in the Greenwich Village townhouse that killed three radicals and aborted the terrorist bombing of the NCO club at Fort Dix.

No, this was not the New Right. This was the New Left, and it was Obama not John Boehner who used to "pal around" with one of the boys who did the Pentagon and Capitol Hill bombings.

(Column continues below)

As for calling Barney Frank a naughty name, that is not nice. But one wonders what Rich thought of the students marching under Viet Cong flags chanting, about the man who signed that Civil Rights Act, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" and, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win," when American boys were dying in the hundreds every week fighting the communist NLF?

The 1967 attack on the Pentagon, where thousands tried to break through military police to get into the building, was the work of left-wing radicals. Did the tea-party folks who chanted, "Kill the bill," outside the House behave worse than that?

Some of us recall the anarchy of May Day 1971, when 15,000 leftists tried to shut down Washington on a Monday morning by rolling logs onto Canal Road, smashing car windows, blocking traffic circles and wilding in Georgetown. Most wound up behind a chain-link fence at the Armory.

How many were arrested on Capitol Hill Sunday a week ago?

Not one tea partier, man or woman.

The "mass hysteria" of the tea-party right, writes Rich, is at root about race. "By 2012 ... non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The tea party is virtually all white. ... Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded."

Rich is implying that when America's white majority disappears, in 2042 according to 2008 Census Bureau projections, the day of the white conservative is over.

Given the rise in ethnic consciousness among all Americans, Rich may be right. But it is not just white folks who want illegal aliens deported and legal immigration curtailed, while 25 million of our own are out of work or underemployed.

A Zogby poll for the Center for Immigration Studies found that 56 percent of Hispanics, 57 percent of Asian-Americans and 68 percent of African-Americans think legal immigration is too high.

If the tea-party folks think it is leftist elites who detest and wish to be rid of the America they grew up in and love, they are right.

Rush hits it on the head, especially the polyester nightmares

2010-03-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

RUSH: And you're really distressed because there may not be that there's a pro-life church, anymore. The left is taking over every institution. They have to be stopped, and it's about time, maybe... You know, I'm not trying to be Pollyannaish and look at the bright side of this (because I don't, frankly, see many) but one of them is: Don't doubt me anymore! It's out in front of your eyes! Believe what you see, believe what you hear. It is real! The Catholic Church has a bunch of leftists in it who would just as soon destroy the church and remake it, as the government has liberals in it who want to remake our government and destroy the Constitution. Liberals are liberals. They do not value institutions until they run them and remake them in their own way, and nothing is sacred. Not the Catholic Church, not the Methodist Church. Nothing! Zilch, zero, nada. I shouldn't have to say this, especially after this weekend. The real challenge -- and it's hard; I know it's hard -- is you can't believe that we've elected people to run this country who don't like it. Well, we did, but not on purpose. They were fooled, lied to, defrauded, everything else. So it's out there right in the open for everyone to see and take note of. They don't deserve to win another election ever. The country cannot withstand them winning another major election. Don't doubt me.

good and funny at the same time

2010-03-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

We could use more like this guys mom in this country, read and enjoy especially the second half

The Egyptian

My “Mugger-Loving” Mom

Posted by John Zmirak on March 14, 2008

The racial reference that forced Geraldine Ferraro to leave the Clinton campaign and fly off on her broom brings back for me bittersweet memories of teenage years and Queens. I’d grown up in the congressional district of benevolent, pro-life Mafia-connected Democrat Mario Biaggi. He’d done a good job, as far as we could see. He’d voted right. He’d made key phone calls in support of the tenants association started in the tenement where we lived, a group run by my mother: a Hell’s Kitchen-Irish chain-smoking agoraphobic compulsive gambler who somehow found a way to lose tens of thousands at church bingo—and a genius at grass roots politics. People begged her to run for City Council, and she considered it, until she found out the job included going “into the City” (Manhattan). She hadn’t been there for 30 years. If I ever write a memoir, mom’s chapter will be called “Angela’s Ashtray.”

With Biaggi’s help, my mother faced down our slumlord, and forced him to start providing heat and hot water to bewildered Greek immigrants. Then she organized the tenants to schlep out the pee-soaked mattresses and liquor bottles in the gardens, and plant hundreds of rose bushes and poplar trees. When the landlord threatened to start bringing in tenants on welfare, she told him “That’s blockbusting!” and promised a rent strike. He backed down. A crusader for tenants rights. The most effective segregationist in Queens. Mom was little of both.

She also bore a disturbing resemblance to Geraldine Ferraro, from the cheesy Helen Reddy haircut and sharp red fingernails to the scrape-down-the-chalkboard New Yawk accent. In the early 80s, redistricting had peeled away Archie Bunker’s Astoria from Biaggi and given it to Ferraro, which presented our Catholic neighborhood with a whole new kind of politician. Long the congressman for upscale, secular Forest Hills, Ferraro had signed on with the leftist platform that the Democrats adopted after 1968. But she still knew how to pander, old school—in her party’s grand tradition.

My mother, one of 11 children, only 5 of whom lived past infancy, became a Democrat at age 10, while waiting in a food line. As she reached the front and took her sack of bread, cheese, and soap, the party worker warned her: “Remember that you’re only getting this because of FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT.” Mom never forgot. She only abandoned the Democrats when Ronald Reagan belatedly came out against Roe v. Wade.

Ferraro knew how to work a crowd, and showed it when she came to visit our parish, Immaculate Conception. The church hall filled up, mostly with nice old ladies from the Rosary Society. On the dais, the youthful priest beamed like an Irish wardheeler at this Very Important Person. She was flanked by the pant-suited nuns who’d terrorized my childhood—not with anything so wholesome as corporal punishment, but through psy-ops such as folk Mass, “Godspell,” and sinister little buttons we had to wear that read “God Don’t Make Junk: I’m Lovable!”

Ferraro began on a strong note, with relish slicing off the chunks of pork she’d offer the voters, from larger Social Security checks (i.e., bingo money) to extra Miltowns from Medicaid. She spiced things up with digs at Ronald Reagan. Three hundred or so teased heads of blue or 14 karat hair bobbed in approval, and Ferraro beamed. (She must have missed the look on the face of Theresa Marie Zmirak.) The meeting was going really smoothly, right up until a nice old lady with a name like Dolorosa stood up with a tentative question. “My son told me that you support legal…” she hesitated to use the word—an obscenity during her girlhood. “Abortion. Is that right?”

The crowd stirred nervously, but Ferraro was ready for that one. “I’m glad you asked that, Sweetie. You know that I’m a Catholic, and I try to be a good one.” She glanced at the priest, who smiled. Or maybe he winked. “That’s why I’m personally opposed to abortion. I think it’s a tragedy. But I have a daughter, and I love her very much. If something were to happen to her…” She looked a little choked up. “If she were to be raped by a…” Then she used the word, and the way she used it tapped into the deepest anxieties of all those mamas and grandmas. “By a… mugger...”

She paused for full effect. This was New York City in the 80s, when street crime raged—albeit not in our neighborhood, but that didn’t seem to matter. “I’d want her to have the CHOICE about what to do. That’s my personal belief.”

Dolorosa sat down, relieved, and applause smattered through the room. Ferraro had used the right word, so vivid and memorable—only two letters away from the word she really meant everyone to hear. A “mugger.”

Inside those nice old ladies, racial solidarity wrestled with old catechism lessons, and Ferraro stood before them like Joan of Arc. The meeting was back on track, and Ferraro knew it. She smiled: “No more questions?”

Then mom got up. Gesturing with a blazing Marlboro Light, she demanded of the U.S. Congressman, “First of all, I wanna know where you get off, calling yourself a Catholic and sayin’ you’re for ABORTION.”

Ferraro began to answer. She had no idea whom she was dealing with. “THEN I wanna know what you so-called priests and NUNS are doing up there, grinning like idiots while she peddles this garbage.”

The priest purpled like a grape and tried to respond, but hadn’t a prayer. “And then I wanna know what all of YOU people are doing eating up this CRAP. I don’t know about you, but I’m walking OUT.”

And mom stalked out of the bingo hall. To thunderous applause. The meeting collapsed into one long abortion argument, and Ferraro’s tone got shriller by the minute, until she finally gave up and left. She never came back to Immaculate Conception.

And that is how I like to remember mom.

The Stuff Priests Are Made Of

2010-03-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

I bet it wasn't in English either, pity the soldiers couldn't get anything out of it ;>)

The Egyptian

defend us in battle... from the Crescat

...With a canvas tarpaulin for a church and packing cases for an altar, a Navy chaplain holds mass for Marines at Saipan. The service was held in memory of the brave men who lost their lives in the initial landings. Photo by Sgt. Steele, June 1944. Source: US Marines.

I cry for them, they have fallen so far

2010-03-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

I was truly saddened and dissapointed to find out that the MANAGEMENT TEAM of the SISTER OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD, signed on in support of the Obominations health (abortion) bill, read it and weep for the polyester nighmares.

http://www.networklobby.org/press/3-17-10HealthcareSistersLetter.htm

And these types wonder why there is an Apostolic Visitation, to quote a wise sage, DUH
You are complicit in the murder of millions to come, all of whom will never have the chance to enjoy you precious SOCIAL JUSTICE CRAP, because they are DEAD. I believe the article below mey be the reason however misguided these former Holy Women have sided with Satan, may God have mercy on them, read and comment

The Egyptian

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Why Nuns Support ObamaCare

59,000 nuns support ObamaCare, in the calm, cool ignorance that they will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Why would 59,000 nuns support ObamaCare in defiance of the USCCB?

The answer is simple really.

Most of the liberal orders of nuns are dying.

Nobody in these orders is under 60 years of age.

None of these orders have paid into Social Security, unemployment or Medicare/Medicaid.

They are due absolutely no government benefits.

In most cases, the dioceses aren't going to help them much, if at all.

Apart from those nuns who managed to earn a diocesan retirement because they worked in a diocese for awhile, no diocese has any financial obligation towards a member of a religious order.

Religious orders are supposed to take care of their own.

Now, in the past this worked out because the fresh blood coming in at the bottom would find employment somewhere in the Church and provide the necessary funds to keep open the religious orders' retirement homes. This cycle works great when you have a steady stream of young postulants, novices, etc.

Unfortunately, there aren't any new vocations in the liberal orders. Their old revenue stream is now as dry as the wombs of most of the post-menopausal Wicca worshippers; it's as out-of-date as the 1970's pantsuits that are their new traditional habit.

The truly sad thing is, some of the nuns trapped in these orders are still faithful to the Church - their order has just been destroyed by the Powers That Be(tm) who run their lives.

The rain fails to fall on both the just and the unjust.

In any case, every nun in every one of these dying orders is VERY worried about her retirement.

After a year of staring at the ticking clock on the wall, the same wall that Barack, Nancy and Harry have been running their heads into for the last year, the nuns are scared to death.

What if ObamaCare doesn't pass?

It's a positive nightmare.

From their point of view, government-run health care is their only ticket to a trouble-free old age. If they don't throw their weight aboard now, the train might never leave the station. So, they've climbed out and have begun to push.

They don't really give a damn about the women who will be injured by abortion or the children who will die as a result. Those young girls - both the girls in the womb and the women carrying them - were never going to join their Magic Circle novitiate anyhow. To hell with them.

What these Kumbaya creatures don't realize - or don't want to know - is that ObamaCare intends on solving the Medicare gap by euthanizing old people. Sister Sillypants had her fingers in her ears when Obama talked about euthanizing his own grandmother.

Obama is her only hope, and she has to count on likely dying before he gets the euthanasia panels fully operating. Or at least she can look forward to three hots and a cot while she waits for the pillow over her face.

So that's the great irony of the thing.

These nuns REALLY WILL be the first ones up against the wall.

And, deep in their hearts, they know it.

But now that they've given up on Christ, Obama is the only source of hope they have.

If they abandon him, to whom will they go?

We Need Many More Like HIM

2010-03-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

From The Times

March 13, 2010

On Satan’s trail with Don Gabriele, the world’s most famous exorcist

Richard Owen, Rome

Father Gabriele Amorth

"Are you afraid of the Devil?” The world’s most famous exorcist levels his gaze at me and then smiles.

“No, it is he who is afraid of me. I work in the name of the Lord. Poor Satan.”

Poor Satan?

“Oh yes. The Evil One shouts and makes noises, but we are made in God’s image, we have the Holy Trinity on our side. There is no need to be afraid of the Devil unless we give in to his temptations.”

We are in the infirmary of the Society of St Paul, the order of Father Gabriele Amorth, in the shadow of St Paul’s Basilica, Rome. The Vatican’s chief exorcist was taken to hospital last autumn with a blood infection and is now convalescing — “they found nothing serious”. Perhaps it was the Devil who laid him low. “Oh no — just an illness. He has more serious evil to perform.”

Father Amorth made headlines this week by suggesting that those who had “given in to Satan’s temptations” included paedophile priests and even some cardinals and bishops who paid only lip service to the Gospels.

The growing crisis over the clerical sex abuse now engulfing Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican, he said, was the work of Satan, who had even “infiltrated the Vatican corridors”.

Is the sex abuse crisis really due to the Devil? “Oh yes. All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including paedophilia.”

And the Vatican? “Legions of demons have lodged there. The majority of those in the Vatican do good work. But Pope Paul VI talked about the ‘smoke of Satan’ infiltrating the Vatican as long ago as 1972. Satan sets out to damage the leadership of the Church — and of politics, industry and sport, for that matter.”

And although all manner of incidents, scandals and misdemeanours in Italy and abroad leap to mind as potential evidence of diabolical intervention, he declines to give examples. Father Amorth — or Don Gabriele, as he is universally known — has just published The Memoirs of an Exorcist, a book of interviews with Marco Tosatti, the Vatican journalist. In a style that is somewhat reminiscent of a medieval chronicle, he describes his often hair-raising experiences over the past quarter of a century in the front line against the Evil One and his minions.

Father Amorth, aged nearly 85, is honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists. He fought for the Resistance in the Second World War, took a law degree but then entered the Church. He began conducting exorcisms shortly after his ordination 60 years ago; in 1986 he was appointed by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, then the Vicar of Rome, as assistant to Father Candido Amantini, the chief exorcist, eventually succeeding him.

Now frail, he becomes animated as he describes his life-long struggle with demons who possess the bodies of their victims, at one stage spreading his arms wide to show me the length of one particular demon occupying the body of a woman he had “liberated”.

He talks to Lucifer and his demons, he says, and knows their names. On the writing table in his room he keeps pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, “who came into the world to fight the Devil and return us to God”. But the modern world, he says, has “given in to the Evil One. You see it in the lack of faith, the empty churches, the collapse of the family.”

“Compare the world of today to when I was a boy in Modena: families and parish communities were strong, women did not go out to work. Now they have to because one income cannot support a family. So young people are left to their own devices, they get into bad company, they have lost their roots and replaced them with the negative influences of television and the internet, or the occult.”

What about those who believe in neither God nor Satan? “The Devil is only too happy to take advantage of those who do not believe in his existence. It means he can operate with complete freedom, even inside the Church. He exploits lust and power.”

The Devil tries to reach all of us, Father Amorth adds, and “the possessed are those who listen to him most. Mind you, they are a minority. If you read my book you might get the impression the whole world is possessed, but I am describing a small number of cases, comparatively speaking.”

His claim to have carried out 70,000 exorcisms seems incredible. “But I was talking about the number of exorcisms, not the number of people exorcised. You often have to exorcise someone dozens, even hundreds, of times, and an exorcism ritual can take anything from a few minutes to several hours.”

Exorcism can only be done with the approval of the local bishop, usually after medical or psychiatric tests show no rational explanation for the symptoms, which include vomiting, violent headaches and stomach cramps but also superhuman strength, fits and extreme aversion to holy symbols. He is adept, he says, at distinguishing hysterics from the real thing. There are more women than men among the possessed, “but we don’t know why. There are various explanations: Satan taking revenge on the Virgin Mary, or using women as a means of reaching men. None of them is convincing.”

The possessed talk in languages they do not know, including ancient tongues such as Aramaic, the language of Christ. “Sometimes the language is incomprehensible. I once asked a demon what it was and he said, ‘Satanic language’.” The victims often react so violently to the ritual of prayers, incantations, holy water and the sign of the Cross that they have to be held or tied down while the priest touches the possessed person with his stole and places his hand on his or her head.

In many cases, he says, they vomit objects such as nails or glass. Father Amorth has a collection weighing two kilograms. “You get used to being vomited over. I once performed an exorcism on a woman who managed to hit me in the face with a stream of vomit from the other side of the room — physically impossible.”

The Devil, he says, is humourless but does sometimes play tricks. He and his demons speak through the victim, sometimes using their normal voice but sometimes in hoarse, raucous tones. He imitates the unnerving low growl for me. They are not, however visible, any more than angels are.

“Angels exist, and how, but they are not as depicted in art — they are pure spirit. We all have guardian angels. Demons are, of course, fallen angels who rebelled against God; that is why they are so intelligent, and so arrogant.”

He does not believe in ghosts, which are “an invention of the human mind”.

Father Amorth has no designated successor, and complains that even now the Church hierarchy does not take exorcism — or the Devil — seriously enough. But “the Lord has made use of me” and his example has inspired many other priests — as did the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although “exaggerated” was “substantially true”.

At his age does he still have the stomach for the battle with Satan? “Oh yes. I have work to do.”

maybe we are winning after all

2010-03-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

The Age of Faith

from the Belmont Club

Posted By Richard Fernandez On March 12, 2010 @ 6:18 pm

Philip Jenkins ^[1], a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University says the remarkable thing about the recent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is that they are not remarkable. In a process largely unnoticed in the West, billions of people in Asia and Africa have swapped out their indigenous faiths for either Christianity or Islam. And to an even greater astonishment of Western intellectuals most have chosen Christianity. Now the equalization of numbers has caused a fault line to appear through the Third World at about the tenth degree of latitude where the two aggregations face each other “at daggers drawn”.

The word “Christian”, associated in the 19th and 20th centuries with the missionary enterprises of Europe, has now come to mean something different in political terms. Today Christianity is a religion of the Third World. Europeans have largely converted to some soft and watered-down variation of the West’s only indigenous creed, Marxism, as represented by John Lennon’s “Imagine” song. Christianity can no longer be associated largely with the West. Ex oriente lux a phrase which once described the belief that all great world religions rose in the East is now truer than ever. With Marxism shrinking to the margins of the Guardian, the monotheisms have reclaimed the field at least in raw numbers.

TE Lawrence in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, described the peculiar relationship of the monotheisms to the Middle East, populated by “the least morbid of peoples, they had accepted the gift of Me unquestioningly, as axiomatic. To them it was a thing inevitable, entailed on man, a usufruct, beyond control. Suicide was a thing impossible, and death no grief.”

They were a people of spasms, of upheavals, of ideas, the race of the individual genius. Their movements were the more shocking by contrast with the quietude of every day, their great men greater by contrast with the humanity of their mob. Their convictions were by instinct, their activities intuitional. Their largest manufacture was of creeds: almost they were monopolists of revealed religions. Three of these efforts had endured among them: two of the three had also borne export (in modified forms) to non-Semitic peoples. Christianity, translated into the diverse spirits of Greek and Latin and Teutonic tongues, had conquered Europe and America. Islam in various transformations was subjecting Africa and parts of Asia. These were Semitic successes. Their failures they kept to themselves. The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths.

What might have surprised Lawrence, apart from the phenomenon that Islam in its doubt, was turning to suicide, was that by the early 21st century Christianity would have moved on from Europe and America to compete head to head with Islam in “Africa and parts of Asia”. Globally, as Jenkins sees it, the existential threat to Islam comes not from the declining number of Europeans indoctrinated in the quasi-Marxist “Imagine” creed, but from the burgeoning millions of the Third World. Whether Muslims are impressed by the secular belief system captured so succinctly in John Lennon’s song is open to debate. But the attractions of Christianity to the populations of the Third World apparently is not. Whatever the appeal of Islam in London might be, it is less so in Africa. “One factor driving Islamic militancy in many nations is the sense that Christianity is growing. Outside of the West, evangelism and conversion are two of the most sensitive issues in the modern world.”

Christianity, which a century ago was overwhelmingly the religion of Europe and the Americas, has undertaken a historic advance into Africa and Asia. In 1900, Africa had just 10 million Christians, representing around 10 percent of the continental population. By 2000, that figure had swollen to over 360 million, or 46 percent of the population. Over the course of the 20th century, millions of Africans transferred their allegiance from traditional primal faiths to one of the two great world religions, Christianity or Islam—but they demonstrated an overwhelming preference for the former. Around 40 percent of Africa’s population became Christian, compared to just 10 percent who chose Islam.

With the numbers between Christians and Muslims equalizing in the region of the 10th degree of latitude, many places formerly dominated by Islam are now doubtful ground. It’s upsetting the equilibrium. Jenkins thinks the Third World populations can work out a modus vivendi, “if only Washington and Riyadh can refrain from pouring fuel on the hostilities”. And probably they can, but the professor may be mistaken in believing Washington is pouring fuel on anything. There is no Western Christian equivalent of Saudi-sponsored “anti-Christian propaganda across the Global South”. Consequently the Christian response to Islam will increasingly be independent of the West because the West has dealt itself out of the game. If the Western intelligensia takes any side in this fight it is likely to be Islam’s. But in all probability the sophisticates will continue to think that all religions save “Imagine” are equally worthless superstitions and remain aloof; disdainful of taking the religious issues seriously.

The Independent ^[2], for example, falls back on explaining away the clashes on the grounds of primitivism combined with a competition for resources. And though doubtless it is true in some cases, outlets like the Independent would prefer that the aggressors, as always, be the Christians. It explains things in the following way not because it makes any sense, but because it provides them with mental comfort:

In Jos, population growth and economic decline has increased competition for land and other resources, heightening tension between communities.

Politics here have been poisoned by the distinction between the longer-standing Christians, or “indigenes”, and Muslim “settlers”. The former are favoured in land rights, the latter denied the opportunity to stand in elections. This has caused resentment, which has erupted in 2001, 2004 and 2008, leaving thousands dead, many more displaced and the city polarised. The truth depends on where you are in Jos. …

Christians and Muslims used to live peacefully in the central Plateau state. But Muslims who have lived there for decades are still classed as settlers, and in the last decade there have been regular bouts of sectarian killing. The underlying reasons are economic – with competition for resources – and political – with a struggle for domination.

As a general assignment of guilt or innocence, the Independent’s narrative is a fairy-tale. Al-Qaeda may eventually exploit this systemic blindness ^[3] because the West is far less likely to react to massacres against Christians in the Global South than it is to react to airplanes flown into buildings in Manhattan. But Professor Jenkins raises a number of interesting issues two of which deserve some thought. If Islam imposes a greater handicap on Third World societies than Christianity then will we not over time find that Christian indigenes prosper at a faster rate the Muslims? If so there will be a widening gulf between the power of both which will spur a greater desperation within Islam.

The other is the implied question on the fate of Judaisim. What happens to the Jews in a world where hundreds of millions of people are either becoming Christians or Muslims? Perhaps it is all as well that the Jews are guaranteed existence ^[4] by Yahweh himself. They will need His interest and His concern as none will be forthcoming from the bastions of Western thought. Neither of these issues are fit subjects for a respectable foreign policy journal article, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be dealing the consequences of these non-existent trends in a few decades.

2010-03-13T13:39:00.000-08:00

Accordingto a good friend of mine, intelligence is limited by genetics, education and upbringing. However there is NO limit to STUPID

the Egyptian

This teacher is truly a genius!
As the late Adrian Rogers said, "you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
This man is truly a genius!

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before,
but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A...
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D!
No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F..
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) \

Remember, there is a mid-term election in 2010!

ties in to previous post

2010-03-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

Blaming the barren

A Vatican economists attributes the Great Recession to our low birth rate:

ROME, FEB. 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Bankers are not the cause of the global economic crisis, according to the president of the Institute for the Works of Religion. Rather, the cause is ordinary people who do not "believe in the future" and have few or no children.

"The true cause of the crisis is the decline in the birth rate,” Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, said in an interview on Vatican Television's "Octava Dies."

He noted the Western world's population growth rate is at 0% -- that is, two children per couple -- and this, he said, has led to a profound change in the structure of society.

"Instead of stimulating families and society to again believe in the future and have children […] we have stopped having children and have created a situation, a negative economic context decrease," Gotti Tedeschi observed. "And decrease means greater austerity."

“With the decline in births,” he explained, “there are fewer young people that productively enter the working world. And there are many more elderly people that leave the system of production and become a cost for the collective.

“In practice the fixed costs of this economic and social structure increase. How dramatically they increase depends on how evidently unbalanced the structure of the population is and how much wealth it has. The fixed costs however increase: The costs of health increase and the social costs increase."

When this happens, the economist stated, "taxes can no longer be reduced.” ...

Dear God, It's Come to This

2010-03-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

murderous, insidious, hideous, venomous, satanic, blood thirsty, greedy, vile, viperous, evil, eugenic promoting, callous, debauched, deranged, final solution type, sick BASTARDS. I hope there is a special room in Hell for these politicians, especially the so called catholic ones.

The Egyptian
courtesy the Gateway Pundit

Rep. Bart Stupak: Dem Leaders Told Me Abortion Is Good Because Kids Cost Money

Friday, March 12, 2010, 7:12 PM

Jim Hoft

Good Lord. They’re animals.
Pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak (D-MI) told National Review today that democratic leaders told him abortions are good because kids cost a lot of money.

Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party.

The House democrats are ready to pass the Senate health bill without voting on it.

Do You Think This has Become A Religion ?

2010-03-01T13:47:00.001-08:00

He who believes in nothing will believe anything,
Al Gore you have created hysteria and grief that is uncontrolled and it has made you rich, enjoy your cash, it will be your reward. How long before this is Bush's fault?

The Egyptian

Baby Survives 3 Days With Shot in Chest After Parents Commit Global Warming Suicide

Monday, March 1, 2010, 5:59 AM

Jim Hoft

A seven-month old baby girl survived a shot to the chest after her parents shot themselves and their two-year-old in a global warming murder-suicide pact.

This is the last public photo of Francisco Lotero before he shot himself, his wife and two-year-old son in response to fears about global warming. (El Litoral)

The New York Post reported:

A seven-month-old girl miraculously survived alone for three days after one of her parents shot her in the chest – apparently as part of a bizarre murder-suicide pact blamed on global warming.

The baby was discovered with a bullet casing in her chest and covered with blood by police in the Argentinean city of Goya, near the bodies of her parents and 2-year-old brother, the Latin American Herald reported Saturday.

Police broke into the home after neighbors complained of a stench coming from the house. The boy was found with a gunshot wound in his back, while his parents died from gunshot wounds to the chest.

The parents, 56-year-old Francisco Lotero and 23-year-old Miriam Coletti, are believed to have been spurred by their fears about global climate change, London’s Telegraph reported.

A letter was found on a table expressing the couple’s anger at the government for not responding to the environmental crisis.

Doctors said the baby’s condition has been improving every day, the Herald Tribune reported.

Someone should sue Al Gore. He played on their fears and now a whole family is dead.

Good Instruction on Mass Participation

2010-02-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

another one from 10 reasons

Notice there is nothing about holding hands or orans position, just prayerful dignity, no Happy Clappy crap.

The Egyptian

Real liturgical movement

The other day I posted about the University of Dayton's "euphemization" of liturgical dance by renaming it movement. Yet as the latest issue of the Adoremus Bulletin shows us, the Mass already contains plenty of required and recommended movements, many of which go unobserved. We might spend time learning them instead of going off in dubious directions. Here's a list of these gestures and postures for just the entrance rites:

Make the sign of the cross with holy water (a sign of baptism) upon entering the church.

Genuflect toward the tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament and the Altar of Sacrifice before entering the pew. (If there is no tabernacle in the sanctuary, or it is not visible, bow deeply, from the waist, toward the altar before entering the pew.)

Kneel upon entering the pew for private prayer before Mass begins.

Stand for the entrance procession.

Bow when the crucifix, a visible symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, passes you in the procession. (If there is a bishop, bow when he passes, as a sign of recognition that he represents the authority of the Church and of Christ as shepherd of the flock.)

Remain standing for the entrance rites. Make the sign of the cross with the priest at the beginning of Mass.

Strike your breast at the “mea culpa(s)” (“through my fault”) in the Confiteor.

Bow and make the sign of the cross when the priest says “May Almighty God have mercy…”

Bow your head when you say “Lord, have mercy” during the Kyrie.

If there is a Rite of Sprinkling (Asperges), make the sign of the cross when the priest sprinkles water from the aspergillum in your direction.

Throughout the Mass, bow your head at every mention of the name of Jesus and every time the Doxology [“Glory be”] is spoken or sung. Also when asking the Lord to receive our prayer.

Gloria: bow your head at the name of Jesus. (“Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son…”, “You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ…” )

Gestural disunity

2010-02-26T06:29:00.000-08:00

I have tried to explain this to people here, they just say so what. People ct as if you are anitsocial if you don't grab their hand, sorry but I don't like it

The Egyptian

Thanks to a new found blog 10 Reasons

Gestural disunity

Here is a picture of worshipers adopting a hands-clasping version of the Orans position, presumably during Mass, on the home page* for the Worship office of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati:

And here is a backgrounder from renowned canon lawyer Ed Peters on the dubiousness of that very practice:

While the orans position as such has a rich tradition in Jewish and even ancient Christian prayer life, there is no precedent for Catholic laity assuming the orans position in Western liturgy for at least a millennium and a half; that point alone cautions against its introduction without careful thought. Moreover — and notwithstanding the fact that few liturgical gestures are univocal per se — lay use of the orans gesture in Mass today, besides injecting gestural disunity in liturgy, could further blur the differences between lay liturgical roles and those of priests just at a time when distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood are struggling for a healthy articulation.

Love the Attitude

2010-02-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe we should approch being Catholic this way ;>)

The Egyptian

well laugh dammit, its funny

Its Not Nice To Mess With Mother Nature

2010-02-25T05:45:00.000-08:00

In the Old Testament the first born of man or animal was offered to the Lord , man to be in service to the Lord, animals in sacrifice, makes on wonder, are we ticking off someone whom we shouldn't. Some claim nature, but what is nature and who ordered it, we are playing with fire and getting burned. See my two previous posts

The Egyptian

http://germanegyptian.blogspot.com/2010/02/natural-woman-my-ass-what-crock.html
http://germanegyptian.blogspot.com/2010/02/figures.html

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007

Study Links Abortion and Preemies

By Laura Blue

Abortions increase the risk of low birth weight in future pregnancies by a factor of three, and of premature birth by a factor of two, according to the largest U.S. study of its kind. The study is hardly perfect; the data is more than 40 years old and doesn't distinguish between medical abortions and "spontaneous abortions," better known as miscarriages. Yet the report, published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH), shows one of the strongest links yet between miscarriage or abortion on premature birth and low birth weight — major risk factors for infant death or sickness.

What makes report significant is the size and detail of data. Some previous, smaller studies on abortion and future birth weight have suffered because researchers were unable to untangle the effects of abortion from, say, the effects of being poor (which also happens to increase a woman's odds of having an abortion). But the researchers behind the JECH study, which evaluated just over 45,000 single-child live births from 1959 to 1966, were able to adjust for an impressive array of confounding variables, including race, age, weight, height, marital status, occupation, the number of prenatal visits, the number of previous children, smoking and drinking habits, drug habits, infant gender and both parents' education levels.

That kind of rigor makes the new findings particularly important. The study not only found a link between abortion or miscarriage and low birth weight, but it also found that the risk appears to increase with every subsequent miscarriage or abortion. The accruing risk, says co-author Tilahun Adera at Virginia Commonwealth University, suggests that termination of pregnancy is a true cause of low birth weight and preterm birth rather than a variable associated with such conditions. "It's not just an association," he says. "The risk of premature birth increases with the increasing number of abortions."

Women who had had one, two or three prior abortions or miscarriages were three, five and nine times more likely, respectively, to have a low-birth-weight child, the data showed. Though it's still not clear why that's so, doctors theorize that the cervix may be weakened by miscarriage or abortion, increasing the risk of preterm birth later on. Or, it could be that uterine adhesions or infections from the terminated pregnancy slow the growth of the fetus in subsequent pregnancies.

Recent major studies from Australia and Canada have also concluded that miscarriages and induced abortions raise the odds of premature birth and low birth weight — but only modestly. (Those studies were able to distinguish women who had miscarried from women who had intentionally ended their pregnancies.) Many other studies have found no clear link at all. Perhaps that's because different study populations, taken from all over the world, involve different risk factors for premature birth; or it may be simply that the sample sizes in some studies were too small to pick up relatively small differences between women who had had abortions and those who had not.

The big question, however, is how well data from the 1960s really represents American women today. Back in the '60s, induced abortions were illegal in the U.S. It's possible that some women in the study had abortions but denied it — even to their doctors — or claimed to have miscarried. That makes the data harder to interpret. Illegal abortion techniques of the day, moreover, were no doubt cruder than abortion procedures today, and they may have caused more permanent damage to the reproductive system.

Indeed, the public-health implications of the JECH study may be more suitable for developing countries, says Adera — places where abortion is still illegal, and where prenatal care may be similar to what was offered in the U.S. half a century ago. Still, he says, all over the world, "Women need to be informed about these risks."

ash blot test

2010-02-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

No comment, it says it all

The Egyptian

Sunday funny 2-21-10

This one deserves to stand alone, by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com (click to enlarge)...

2010-02-24T17:11:00.001-08:00

now for the light side, enjoy

The Egyptian

Defend marriage

2010-02-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

The Other McCain is a protestant with a passel of kids and a saintly wife for putting up with him. But seriously why do we not hear this kind of thing from pulpit in the Catholic Church these days? Does it really take an evangelical to say it, Has the church become so secular that it no longer wants to tell the truth. Why is the church short of priests and sisters today? We are losing the high ground on birth control and marriage that's why, too much of Bernadine's seamless garment happy clappy crap, and CINOs such as the Kennedys and Pisslousy, look at all the Cinos in Washington, it's a damn disgrace

The Egyptian

‘Forbidding to Marry’

If you put something out with the trash . . . it’s not really yours anymore; you’ve relinquished your claim to it. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with marriage. We might as well let gays have it. We’re not using it. . . .

And for my fellow Christian conservatives: we haven’t got a moral leg to stand on. Our divorce rate is identical to the national average.

Well, to repeat the punchline of an old joke, “What do you mean, ‘we,’ Kemosabe?” As of next Monday, I will have been married to the same woman for 20 years. My lovely and long-suffering wife deserves almost all the credit for that achievement, of course, but I have at least been present for the occasion.

Most of what you have written about the marriage crisis is, of course, right on target, especially when you say that Christian churches “fail to create a culture of marriage in our youth and twenty-somethings.” But, as with your statistical generalization about the failure of “we,” I fear that you are missing the trees for the forest on this issue. What has happened, it seems to me, is that everybody’s sitting around moaning about “society” and “the culture,” rather than seeking to intervene directly and personally to make a difference in the lives of those closest to them.

For me, being pro-marriage, pro-family and pro-life is more than a political position. My wife and I have six kids ranging from age 5 to 19, and you can imagine how challenging this has been on a journalist’s pay. (Never mind a blogger’s pay.) But as my late father advised me long ago, “Son, if you wait to have kids until you can afford to have kids, you’ll never have kids.”

‘TWO AND TIE ‘EM’
Christians believe that marriage is an institution ordained by God, and every marriage is thus blessed. However, in ordaining marriage, God commanded man to “be fruitful and multiply.” This commandment has never been repealed or amended, no matter what any Malthusian population-control fanatic tries to tell you. One trend that has undermined marriage has been the rise of the Contraceptive Culture, which celebrates sterility as the norm and views fertility as a pathology requiring medical prevention.

How many Christians have embraced this false — dare I say, evil — worldview? How many young Christian married couples use contraception because “we can’t afford children now”? And how many married Christian couples have unwittingly subscribed to the Zero Population Growth ideal of exactly two children per couple? Did you know that surgical sterilization (tubal ligation) is the No. 1 form of birth control for American women? It’s the “two and tie ‘em” mentality: Have exactly two children, then get yourself surgically sterilized.

My wife and I encountered this mentality with our second pregnancy (our twin sons, who are now 16). During a prenatal examination, the obstetrician told my wife, “If you want me to perform a tubal at the time of delivery, it will be cheaper than if you want me to do it later, because the insurance will only have to pay for one hospitalization.” My wife came home in tears: “Am I an unfit mother? Why would he even suggest such a thing?” But millions of women across America not only accept such suggestions, they actively seek sterilization, viewing it as a liberation from the menace of pregnancy.

In this, many “Christian conservatives” seem entirely comfortable with being “conformed to this world,” slavishly following the secular trend. What one confronts is an attitude I call “middle classism”: The belief that the object of life is to accrue the symbols of middle-class status (college education, office job, new cars, home in the suburbs, vacation travel) and to ensure that one’s children accumulate the same symbols.

A SHOCKING CHOICE
Life without these symbols is deemed unworthy — “underprivileged” — and many parents who consider themselves Christian conservatives strongly caution their children against early marriage and early parenthood, since these are perceived as obstacles to obtaining middle-classness. If a 19-year-old returns from her freshman year at college to announce that she is a lesbian, her Christian conservative parents may not approve, but they will still love and cherish their child. Let the same 19-year-old announce that she’s marrying her boyfriend and dropping out of school to start a family, and this would drive her Christian conservative parents to the verge of suicidal grief: “You’re ruining your life!”

What is the result of this attitude? I wrote about it a decade ago:

Fact: In 1960, the median age at first marriage for U.S. women was 20. Today, it´s 25. For men, the median age at first marriage has gone from 22 in 1960 to 27 today. Yet researchers report that the average young American today first has sexual intercourse at age 17 or 18.
Judging from these statistics, then, most young people in this country will be “sexually active” . . . for eight to 10 years before marrying. If that is true, what future can there be for the politics of “family values”? . . .
If young Americans are less likely to marry than Americans of a generation ago, they are also less likely to become parents.
Overall, U.S. fertility rates have declined by 43.6 percent since 1960 and like the marriage trends this decline is most pronounced among the young. The birth rate for women aged 20-24 decreased 56.5 percent between 1960 and 2000, according to the Census Bureau. For all the outcry over America´s “teen pregnancy crisis,” the teen birth rate is now 34.7 percent lower than it was in the final year of the Eisenhower administration.

This trend away from marriage and parenthood has not been opposed or condemned by Christian leaders, who are afraid to offend their congregations. Many evangelical Christians like to talk about “stepping out on faith,” even while they live an existence carefully calculated toward attainment of upwardly-mobile middle-classness. Thus, at noon on Sunday, they get into one of their 2.4 cars and drive home from their suburban mega-church to their cul-de-sac development, to their 4BR/5BA house with 1.7 children. And then they wonder why they don’t feel particularly “spiritual.”

Too many people who consider themselves Christian conservatives are disobedient to God’s commandments, yet idolatrously reverent toward the conventions of a middle-class lifestyle. Their true religion is the Theology of Niceness: Get a nice job so you can live in a nice neighborhood with nice schools for your nice children who will wear nice clothes when you drive them in your nice car to play with their nice friends. Everything all neat and tidy, you see? Hard for the Duggars and their 18 children to live nice like that. Yet they work hard and have faith in God, and somehow they don’t all starve to death.

Thou shalt go to college is the first commandment of middle-classness, and the lifestyle idolators don’t consider how this inflexible attitude contributes to the flourishing of adolescent fornication. It’s very good to tell young teens that they should save sex for marriage, but . . . well, how soon can they get married?

“Oh, you’ll have to go to college, start a career and become financially stable first.” And the 13- or 14-year-old does the math and thinks, “Twenty-five? 26? 27? You’re freaking kidding me! That’s like a zillion years in the future! I’ll be practically 30 by that time!” The prospect of an (honestly) white wedding being dangled off in the distant future has a profoundly demoralizing effect on kids. As a result, every church youth leader can tell you stories about the 17-year-old girl who got pregnant after her boyfriend convinced her that “it’s not wrong if we really love each other.” (It’s the oldest line in the book, girls.)

THE DEATH OF ROMANCE
This is why pop songs no longer feature promises of “endless love” and “always and forever.” In 1971, the protagonist of the Temptations’ hit “Just My Imagination” saw a beautiful girl walk past and dreamed:

Soon we’ll be married
And raise a family.
In a cozy little home out in the country
With two children, maybe three.

If such visions of wedded bliss occupy no part of the youthful imagination today, why not? Perhaps because children are indoctrinated to believe that marriage is strictly for grown-ups — heaven forbid an 18-year-old boy should get a job, marry his high-school sweetheart, and start their life together in a tiny little basement apartment. What about college? What about your career? What about the upwardly-mobile ambitions of middle-classness?

If this status idolatry isn’t anti-marriage, what is it? I’m reminded of the fourth chapter of Timothy:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry . . .

Myself, I try to actively encourage marriage for young people. I’m a relentless matchmaker, and as soon as I see young folks pairing up as boyfriend and girlfriend, I start asking, “When’s the wedding?” (And once they’re married, “When’s the baby due?”) Instead of sitting around waiting for somebody’s legislative agenda, I’m “pro-family” in the most direct, personal way possible.

If young Christian conservatives want to be “pro-family,” then, they need to be getting married and having babies. And what a youth rebellion that would be, huh? “No, mother, I’ve decided against law school. As a matter of fact, Jennifer and I went to the courthouse and got married last Saturday and . . .” Strange to say that the most shocking thing a young person can do in 2009 is to get married. They can change the world one “I do” at a time.

UPDATE: Is this a harmonic convergence or what? While I was writing this, it appears that Laura was updating her post to link my American Spectator column, “Marriage: A Hill to Die On.”

UPDATE II:In the comments at my blog, father-of-five Larry says:

I cannot count the number of times we have been unintentionally insulted by well meaning, self-identified Christians, asking if we know what causes that (pregnancy) . . .

To which I always answer, “Yes, and we’re very good at it.” That shuts ‘em up quick.

In the comments here, meanwhile, Feel of Shadows calls our attention to an article in First Things outlining the role of the decline of the family in the economic crisis:

America’s population has risen from 200 million to 300 million since 1970, while the total number of two-parent families with children is the same today as it was when Richard Nixon took office, at 25 million. In 1973, the United States had 36 million housing units with three or more bedrooms, not many more than the number of two-parent families with children—which means that the supply of family homes was roughly in line with the number of families. By 2005, the number of housing units with three or more bedrooms had doubled to 72 million, though America had the same number of two-parent families with children.
The number of two-parent families with children, the kind of household that requires and can afford a large home, has remained essentially stagnant since 1963, according to the Census Bureau. Between 1963 and 2005, to be sure, the total number of what the Census Bureau categorizes as families grew from 47 million to 77 million. But most of the increase is due to families without children, including what are sometimes rather strangely called “one-person families.”
In place of traditional two-parent families with children, America has seen enormous growth in one-parent families and childless families. The number of one-parent families with children has tripled. Dependent children formed half the U.S. population in 1960, and they add up to only 30 percent today. The dependent elderly doubled as a proportion of the population, from 15 percent in 1960 to 30 percent today.

BTW, we should not neglect to mention that, in myriad ways, government policies have incentivized the decline of the traditional family. Beginning in the 1960s, federal money paid for “family planning” services, numerous welfare programs that fostered unwed motherhood, and policies that tended to destroy the kinds of neighborhoods where young families once got their start.

A Former Pro-Choice Atheist Reflects on Sex, Abortion and Anger

2010-02-24T16:39:00.000-08:00

Please read this and pass it on, originally posted on the Other McCain.
Written by – Jennifer Fulwiler Every woman and girl should read this and them their men and boys too
The Egyptian

Quote

“In every society, there are two critical lists: acceptable conditions for having a baby, and acceptable conditions for having sex. . . . It was only with the widespread acceptance of contraception in the middle of the 20th century, creating an upheaval in the public psyche in which sex and babies no longer went hand-in-hand, that the two lists began to diverge.”
Unquote

read the whole story

natural woman my ass, what a crock

2010-02-24T16:02:00.000-08:00

from Creative Minority report

in the farm world we refer to this as barren.

The Egyptian

I was over a friend's house picking up a buddy of mine this past weekend. He wasn't ready so I ended up hanging out for a few minutes with his wife and her friend. I'd met the other woman before but don't know her all that well. She was talking a mile a minute about how "natural" she lives and how great she feels. Of course, she was telling us that we should be living the same way. She lectured me about different herbs and how she's detoxing her body.

She's been "living naturally" since New Year's Day. (Her words)

She said she feels so much better ("fantabulous!!!" was her word) and she's been doing a lot of reading about all the "unnatural" chemicals people put in their bodies and how harmful it all is.

My buddy came into the room and rolled his eyes but I didn't know her well enough to joke about it since she seemed to take it all very seriously so I listened to her. Actually, I kind of pretended to listen by just nodding my head and occasionally grunting.

In the conversation my buddy joked about me "detoxing" my five children.

"What?!" gasped the woman. "Really? You really have five kids?"

One of the funny things about writing a Catholic blog is you sometimes forget that having five kids is a lot. But around the Catholic blogosphere I read about so many people who have that many children and many more that I forget how countercultural it is to have more than two children.

Then she asked me if I was crazy?

I responded I was. (I mean, how else do you respond to that?)

"My gosh," she said, slowing herself down for a moment. "I couldn't even imagine. One's enough for me. I'm not having anymore. My husband wants more but thank God for the Pill."

Ms. Natural Living is on the Pill?

I couldn't hold me tongue so I just threw it out there. "How does all this natural living coincide with all the chemicals you're putting in your body from the Pill?"

And then she said that she needs to be on the Pill because it allows her to live naturally. If she had more children then she wouldn't have the time to live the way she wanted to live, she said.

I held my tongue after that. Remember, I was the crazy one.

Erin Manning wrote:

What a horrific lie it is, to convince millions upon millions of healthy woman that their bodies' natural fertility is a terrible disease for which a decades-long prescription to a drug engineered to fight against it is not only necessary, but imperative!

It is rather an oddity that with all this focus on natural foods that many women still don't consider birth control in the same manner.

A Misunderstood Pope

2010-02-24T15:58:00.000-08:00

The lies that persist about this good man are terrible. Read to the end maybe its about the Rabbis conversion ;>)

The Egyptian

Pope Pius XII’s Canonization: Another Hurdle to Jump

One of the ironies of living in today’s Catholic world is that while some people are falling all over themselves to get John Paul II canonized, there are those others who still believe the Black Legend that Pope Pius XII, also up for canonization, did not do enough for European Jews during the Holocaust.

Reuters has an article up about a letter that was recently sent to His Holiness by a group of Catholic scholars from the United States and elsewhere. In their letter, the group “implores” His Holiness to stop the Process of Canonization because it would damage relations between Catholics and Jews.

As many of you will know, this kind of appeal is nothing new. Smear campaigns against the memory of Pope Pius XII have been around for years. Yet few people know that he tried as hard as he could to save as many Jews as possible. Take the following story as an example about the Allied bombardment of Rome:

There were many Jews. On September 28, the Chief Rabbi of Rome sought the aid of the Holy Father. THe Nazis and neo-Fascists had demanded the tremendous ransom of 1,00,000 lire and one hundred pounds of gold from the Jewish residents with threat of looting their homes and enslaving them. The Jews of Rome raised the lire, but they simply did not have that much of the precious metal. Could the Pope help them?

Pius did not hesitate. Within twenty-four hours, the ransom was paid. Though he never told anyone how the gold was obtained, it is known that he ordered holy vessels melted down to provide the funds for this most Christ-like succor of those of an alien faith.

But the gold sacrifice bought not safety, but only a respite for the Jews. Soon the methodical pogrom began again. Jewish houses and stores were smashed and looted by the neo-Fascists; Jewish families were broken up, their men-folk shipped into slavery in northern Italy and Germany; the women and children left without sustenance or shelter. Hundreds sought protection in the Vatican. Among them was Chief Rabbi Zolli himself.

Two years later, after the invader had gone and ITaly was once more free, the Chief Rabbi of Rome embraced the Catholic faith. (Hatch and Walshe. Crown of Glory: The Life of Pope Pius XII. Hawthorn, 1958.)

In reading this account of Pope Pius XII’s efforts on behalf of the Jews, we should come to acknowledge that the myth of Hitler’s pope is just that. A myth.

As for Pope Pius XII himself, he was one of the greatest shepherds our Church has known in recent decades. He sacrificed himself so that the flock of Christ would be preserved throughout the world by fighting a war on two fronts against Communism and Fascism. Such a man deserves our deepest admiration and thanks.

figures

2010-02-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

had this lying around for a while, just cleaning up and found it in the files. It kind of makes sense doesn't it

Thje Egyptian

Federal Study Confirms Contraception-Breast Cancer Link

Posted by Tim Drake

Ten years ago, Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, authored the book Breast Cancer: Its Link to Abortion and the Birth Control Pill, which established the connection between the birth control pill and breast cancer.

Now, a federal study confirms that data.

The study shows a strong connection between the use of oral contraceptives and a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer with a high mortality rate, known as “triple-negative” breast cancer (TNBC). The study also found that the connection was highest among women who began using oral contraceptives while they were teenagers.

The 2009 Jessica Dolle study of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center appeared in the April 2009 issue of the cancer epidemiology journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The research showed that women who start using oral contraceptives before the age of 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times. Recent users of oral contraceptives within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times.

Furthermore, the study is noteworthy because it contained an admission of the link between abortion and breast cancer by National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton, who had previously influenced the agency to deny an abortion-breast cancer link.

The study showed a 40% risk increase for women who have had abortions, and one of the study’s tables listed abortion as a “known and suspected risk factor.”

Dr. Joel Brind, professor of biology and endocrinology and deputy chair for biology at Baruch College, City University of New York, described both findings a “bombshell.” Brind provided an analysis of the study.

Although the data’s been available for nine months, observers wonder why the mainstream media and cancer groups have been silent.

“Although the study was published nine months ago, the NCI, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and other cancer-fundraising businesses have made no efforts to reduce breast-cancer rates by issuing nationwide warnings to women,” said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer. “Obviously, more women will die of breast cancer if the NCI fails in its duty to warn about the risks of oral contraceptives and abortion and if government funds are used to pay for both as a part of any health-care bill.”

Leonine Prayers explained

2010-01-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

great new blog, always wondered how some prayers started, well the Leonine Prayers are explained here
the Egyptian

from: Let The Welkin Ring

St Michael Archangel

On October 13th, 1884, Pope Leo XIII had a remarkable vision. When the aged Pontiff had finished celebrating Mass in his private Vatican chapel, attended by a few Cardinals and members of the Vatican staff, he suddenly stopped at the foot of the altar. He stood there for about ten minutes, as if in a trance, his face ashen white. Then, going immediately from his chapel to his office, he composed the prayer to St Michael, with instructions it be said after all Low Masses everywhere. When asked what had happened, he explained that, as he was about to leave the foot of the altar, he suddenly heard voices – two voices, one kind and gentle, the other guttural and harsh. They seemed to come from near the tabernacle. As he listened, he heard the following conversation:

The guttural voice, the voice of Satan in his pride, boasted to Our Lord:

“I can destroy your Church.”

The gentle voice of the Lord:

“You can? Then go ahead and do so.”

Satan:

To do so, I need more time and more power.”

Our Lord:

“How much time? How much power?”

Satan:

75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service.”

Our Lord:

“You have the time, you will have the power. Do with them what you will.”

That was Pope Leo's vision in 1884. Satan said that he needed between 75 and 100 years. 75 years onto 1884 brings us to 1959 (incidentally, the year of my ordination!) and in the January of that year Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council. Just about the first thing to come from the deliberations of the Council Fathers, which began in earnest in 1963, was the abandonment in 1964 of the Leonine Prayers, the prayers at the end of Mass which called St Michael to the aid of the Church on earth.

In the years from 1959 to 1984, judge for yourselves whether Satan has kept his promise to destroy the Lord’s Church. Of course, the Lord’s Church can never be destroyed altogether. But, ask yourself, if you are old enough to remember, were parish churches fuller in 1984 (and since) than in 1959? What happened to parish societies, like the SVP and the Legion of Mary, in that time? Has the Church been more united in worship? Are we more united in doctrine than ever before, or is everyman his own Pope now?

One particular loss of belief which we have suffered is the belief in Satan and his awful army of devils who seek to destroy our spiritual life with God. I love to say the Leonine Prayers whenever I can, and I hope and pray that some day they will be re-instated at the end of every Mass which is celebrated.

gratitude for this wondrous day

2010-01-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

As you wish Patrick, I have posted and I pray

The Egyptian

Join The Non Nobis Network

I want you to do something, so please read this entire post.

For many, I suppose that the true meaning of last week's events has yet to sink in. For the last few days as I pondered the meaning of the arguably miraculous turn of events, I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

As we approached the birthday of Our Lord, pro-lifers in the U.S. reluctantly realized that this momentous battle in the war on life was likely lost. The opposition had overwhelming superiority in numbers and a steely determination to institute a universal health-care regime that funds abortion. We, along with many other concerned citizens of various stripes, protested, marched, attended townhalls, lobbied, and prayed, seemingly to no avail. The Senate had passed, in complicity with ostensibly pro-life Senators, its version of the bill with its thinly disguised abortion on demand funding.

The passage of the Senate bill signaled what seemed to many, the end of the fight. Democrats huddled to hammer out any compromises necessary to achieve final passage of the bill. We watched in dismay as every day inched closer to the compromise that would seal the deal and put the bill on the desk of the President in time for the State of the Union. We had lost, there was nothing more we could do, but pray.

But God had other plans.

In a way that seemed almost impossible, the entire battle has turned. I need not go into detail here, you all know the story. We understand that the war on life is far from over, but today, at least for a while, by the grace of God, we have avoided institutionalized and tax-payer funded abortion. There will be other battles and perhaps they will be very soon, but it is incumbent upon all of us to acknowledge the great miracle that we have witnessed and to thank God for delivering us from this evil.

So what I propose is that we Catholic, Christian, and pro-life bloggers everywhere give thanks to God by way publishing the Non Nobis in gratitude for this wondrous day.

Non nobis, non nobis, Domine
Sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Not to us, not to us, o Lord,
But to your name give glory.

I ask that any blogger interested in showing their gratitude for this victory, print the Non Nobis. I will also encourage you to also link or show your favorite version of the Non nobis. Mine is the scene from Henry V after the battle of Agincourt.

Giving Thanks!

Time to end Communion in the Hand? I believe so

2010-01-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Monday, 24 March 2008

A Belated Response.

A few weeks ago Fr Z made a clinical [and deservedly] scathing
attack on Richard McBrien's disgusting remarks regarding reception of communion according to the sentiments of the pre-conciliar church . McBrien stated we were now equals with the clergy by standing to receive, we no longer kowtowed by feeding ourselves etc etc etc...
I wanted to 'freak out' and rip the catholic commentator to shreds; but was reticent to as I would have probably burst a blood vessel ! Anyway - here's my version of a response:

A couple of months before his death Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was interviewed on national television. One of the questions was this:

"Bishop Sheen, you have inspired millions of people all over the world. Who inspired you? Was it a Pope?"

Bishop Sheen responded that it was not a Pope, a cardinal, another bishop, or even a priest or a nun. It was a little Chinese girl of eleven years of age. He explained that when the Communists took over China, they imprisoned a priest in his own rectory near the Church. After they locked him up in his own house, the priest was horrified to look out of his window and see the Communists proceed into the Church, where they went into the sanctuary and broke into the tabernacle. In an act of hateful desecration, they took the ciborium and threw it on the floor with all of the Sacred Hosts spilling out. The priest knew exactly how many Hosts were in the ciborium: thirty-two.

When the Communists left, they either did not notice, or didn't pay any attention to a small girl praying in the back of the Church who saw everything that had happened. That night the little girl came back. Slipping past the guard at the priest's house, she went inside the Church. There she made a holy hour of prayer, an act of love to make up for the act of hatred.

After her holy hour she went into the sanctuary, knelt down, bent over and with her tongue received Jesus in Holy Communion, (since it was not permissible for laymen to touch the Sacred Host with their hands.)

The little girl continued to come back each night to make her holy hour and receive Jesus in Holy Communion on her tongue. On the thirty-second night, after she had consumed the last and thirty-second host, she accidentally made a noise and woke the guard who was sleeping. He ran after her, caught her, and beat her to death with the butt of his rifle. This act of heroic martyrdom was witnessed by the priest as he watched grief-stricken from his bedroom window.

When Bishop Sheen heard the story he was so inspired that he promised God he would make a holy hour of prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament everyday of his life. If this frail, little child could give testimony and witness to the world concerning the real and wonderful Presence of her Savior in the Blessed Sacrament, then the Bishop was absolutely bound by all that was right and true, to do the same. His sole desire from then on was to bring the world to the burning Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

This is Inspirational, there is hope yet for the priesthood

2010-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

Top A's prospect enters priesthood

ESPN.com news services

As a top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, outfielder Grant Desme might've gotten the call every minor leaguer wants this spring. Instead, he believed he had another, higher calling. Desme announced Friday that he was leaving baseball to enter the priesthood, walking away after a breakout season in which he became MVP of the Arizona Fall League. "I was doing well at ball. But I really had to get down to the bottom of things," the 23-year-old Desme said. "I wasn't at peace with where I was at."

The A's need star hitters if they're ever to get somewhere, and Grant Desme didn't look like a future star, writes Rob Neyer. Blog

A lifelong Catholic, Desme thought about becoming a priest for about a year and a half. He kept his path quiet within the sports world, and his plan to enter a seminary this summer startled the A's when he told them Thursday night. General manager Billy Beane "was understanding and supportive," Desme said, but the decision "sort of knocked him off his horse." After the talk, Desme felt "a great amount of peace." "I love the game, but I aspire to higher things," he said. "I know I have no regrets." In a statement, Beane said: "We respect Grant's decision and wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors." Athletes and the priesthood have overlapped, albeit rarely. Al Travers, who gave up 24 runs during a one-game career for a makeshift Detroit Tigers team in 1912, became a Catholic priest. More recently, Chase Hilgenbrinck of the New England Revolution left Major League Soccer in 2008 to enter a seminary. Desme spoke on a conference call for about 10 minutes in a quiet, even tone, hardly sounding like many gung-ho, on-the-rise ballplayers. As for his success in the minors, he said "all of it is very undeserving." The Athletics picked Desme in the second round of the 2007 amateur draft and he was starting to blossom. He was the only player in the entire minors with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases last season. Desme batted .288 with 31 homers, 89 RBIs and 40 steals in 131 games at Class-A Kane County and high Class-A Stockton last year. He hit .315 with a league-leading 11 home runs and 27 RBIs in 27 games this fall in Arizona, a league filled with young talent. Desme went into the AFL championship game well aware it might be the last time he ever played. "There was no sad feeling," he said. He homered and struck out twice, which "defines my career a bit." The Big West Player of the Year at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Desme was ranked as Oakland's No. 8 prospect by Baseball America. There was speculation the Athletics might invite Desme to big league spring training next month. Rather, Desme intends to enter a seminary in Silverado, Calif., in August. He said abbey members didn't seem surprised someone who would "define myself as a baseball player" was changing his life so dramatically. Desme said he didn't consider pursuing his spiritual studies while also trying to play ball. His family backed his decision and he said the positive reaction to his future goal -- the surprising news spread quickly over the Internet -- was "inspiring." "It's about a 10-year process," he said. "I desire and hope I become a priest." In a way, he added, it's like "re-entering the minor leagues." Desme's first two years in the minors were beset by shoulder and wrist problems. He said his days off the field gave him time to think about what was most important to him, to read and study the Bible and to talk to teammates about his faith. In retrospect, he said, those injuries were "the biggest blessings God ever gave me." The Associated Press contributed to this story.

This is Church Music

2010-01-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't this be beautiful instead of the eagles wings dreck, it would really make a choir work

New Catholic Music by Kevin Allen

Like the "Second Spring" we've been seeing in church architecture, there is also something of a renewal of church music these days... and one of its bright lights is Chicago composer and conductor Kevin Allen. We are fortunate that he will return to the Mundelein Liturgical Institute's Sacred Music Retreat in June of 2010 as schola director. His web site tells that he has "developed a unique reputation as a composer of church music for the Roman Rite" and that his "works, sacred and secular, have been performed in churches and concert halls throughout the United States and Europe." Click the video below to enjoy a beautiful setting of "Desidero mi, Jesu" ("I desire, oh my Jesus, that you would refresh me on this, the food of angels") sung by soloists from the Lincoln Chamber Chorale in Chicago, directed by Timothy Woods. Imagine hearing this during your communion meditation... then realizing it is new music. Sing a new song unto the Lord, indeed.

The 70's died almost FOURTY years a go

2010-01-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

But this is the church music we are still exposed to in the name of making it youthful and relevant to the youth of today, bull, its the music the organist grew up with, the times have changed.
The Egyptian

"Dead language, facing a wall"

The National Catholic Reporter, which Americans sometimes portray as their equivalent of the Tablet, comes out this week with an astonishing attack on Cardinal Rodé which covers a sideswipe at the Pontificate of Pope Benedict. Fr Z has a fisk on the article, describing it as a "nutty" - which seems fair.

It's actually quite funny as well. Here's the purple passage:

Or is he upset that most do not prefer, as he does, dressing up in the trappings of royalty, the yards of silk in the cappa magna, the canopies and throne chairs and all the rest -- being attended by his minions, younger priests in lacy surplices, birettas and old-fashioned vestments encrusted with gold thread and jewels -- all the while speaking in a dead language, facing a wall, his back to the people?

This asinine description of Mass celebrated ad orientem in the timeless language of the Church, with dignified vestments, will doubtless be quoted by young traddies over pints of beer and guffaws of laughter for some time to come. As you wipe off the flecks of virtual spittle shooting out from the NCR, consider that the "nostalgia" most evident in articles such as this is for the mid-1970s, the era of glam rock, Acrilan^TM, and the eight track stereo. I was there. I share the fond memories; but as they say, it is time to move forwards, not backwards.

Lets Get With The Program, Shall We Folks

2010-01-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

What does the Holy Father have to do, whack Bishops with his Crosier. By the way the "east" referred to here is liturgical east or facing the lord with the congregation, verses west which is facing the people or Verses Populum, this is not an expensive thing or difficult, it serves as a reminder to the priest that he is not the center of attention here, the Lord is. I know for some priests that may come as a shock.

Pope wants crucifix at the center of ALL westward-facing altars during Mass, says papal MC. So why do our bishops ignore him?

By Damian Thompson

The Pope incenses an altar that displays a crucifix Photo: Getty

Monsignor Guido Marini, Benedict XVI’s master of ceremonies, this week strongly underlined the Pope’s recommendation that when Mass is celebrated facing westwards, the priest should place a crucifix at the centre of the altar. This was to make clear that the celebrant was not “facing the people”, but facing Christ.

The Holy Father could hardly have made himself clearer on this point. So why do the Bishops of England and Wales allow the vast majority of their priests to ignore his wishes? Why do the bishops themselves routinely ignore the recommendation?

Perhaps someone will ask the bishops when they make their ad limina visit to Rome at the end of this month. One hopes that Archbishop Vincent Nichols, president of the Bishops’ Conference, will be able to reply that the bishops have drawn up plans to introduce this reform universally – and also to make it easier for the faithful to receive communion kneeling and on the tongue, which is the preference of the Pope. (At the moment, too many parish priests treat anyone wishing to receive the Sacrament in this way as an oddball, rather than a Catholic following the example of the Holy Father.)

Below are some extracts from Mgr Marini’s address to the Year for Priests Clergy Conference in Rome, organised by the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Hat-tip to that incomparable resource, The New Liturgical Movement website.

Here is Mgr Marini on the question of orientation. Note that he, like the Pope, supports eastward-facing celebration where it is appropriate:

Without recourse to a detailed historical analysis of the development of Christian art, we would like to reaffirm that prayer facing east, more specifically, facing the Lord, is a characteristic expression of the authentic spirit of the liturgy. It is according to this sense that we are invited to turn our hearts to the Lord during the celebration of the Eucharistic Liturgy, as the introductory dialogue to the Preface well reminds us. Sursum corda “Lift up your hearts,” exhorts the priest, and all respond: Habemus ad Dominum “We lift them up unto the Lord.” Now if such an orientation must always be adopted interiorly by the entire Christian community when it gathers in prayer, it should be possible to find this orientation expressed externally by means of signs as well. The external sign, moreover, cannot but be true, in such a way that through it the correct spiritual attitude is rendered visible.

Hence the reason for the proposal made by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, and presently reaffirmed during the course of his pontificate, to place the Crucifix on the centre of the altar, in order that all, during the celebration of the liturgy, may concretely face and look upon Lord, in such a way as to orient also their prayer and hearts. Let us listen to the words of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, directly, who in the preface to the first book of his Complete Works, dedicated to the liturgy, writes the following: “The idea that the priest and people should stare at one another during prayer was born only in modern Christianity, and is completely alien to the ancient Church. The priest and people most certainly do not pray one to the other, but to the one Lord. Therefore, they stare in the same direction during prayer: either towards the east as a cosmic symbol of the Lord who comes, or, where this is not possible, towards the image of Christ in the apse, towards a crucifix, or simply towards the heavens, as our Lord Himself did in his priestly prayer the night before His Passion (John 17.1) In the meantime the proposal made by me at the end of the chapter treating this question in my work ‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ is fortunately becoming more and more common: rather than proceeding with further transformations, simply to place the crucifix at the center of the altar, which both priest and the faithful can face and be lead in this way towards the Lord, whom everyone addresses in prayer together.” (trans. from the Italian.)

Let it not be said, moreover, that the image of our Lord crucified obstructs the sight of the faithful from that of the priest, for they are not to look to the celebrant at that point in the liturgy! They are to turn their gaze towards the Lord! In like manner, the presider of the celebration should also be able to turn towards the Lord. The crucifix does not obstruct our view; rather it expands our horizon to see the world of God; the crucifix brings us to meditate on the mystery; it introduces us to the heavens from where the only light capable of making sense of life on this earth comes. Our sight, in truth, would be blinded and obstructed were our eyes to remain fixed on those things that display only man and his works.

In this way one can come to understand why it is still possible today to celebrate the holy Mass upon the old altars, when the particular architectural and artistic features of our churches would advise it. Also in this, the Holy Father gives us an example when he celebrates the holy Eucharist at the ancient altar of the Sistine Chapel on the feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

In our time, the expression “celebrating facing the people” has entered our common vocabulary. If one’s intention in using this expression is to describe the location of the priest, who, due to the fact that today he often finds himself facing the congregation because of the placement of the altar, in this case such an expression is acceptable. Yet such an expression would be categorically unacceptable the moment it comes to express a theological proposition. Theologically speaking, the holy Mass, as a matter of fact, is always addressed to God through Christ our Lord, and it would be a grievous error to imagine that the principal orientation of the sacrificial action is the community. Such an orientation, therefore, of turning towards the Lord must animate the interior participation of each individual during the liturgy. It is likewise equally important that this orientation be quite visible in the liturgical sign as well.

And on the question of kneeling to receive Communion on the tongue:

Here is the reason why everything in the liturgical act, through the nobility, the beauty, and the harmony of the exterior sign, must be conducive to adoration, to union with God: this includes the music, the singing, the periods of silence, the manner of proclaiming the Word of the Lord, and the manner of praying, the gestures employed, the liturgical vestments and the sacred vessels and other furnishings, as well as the sacred edifice in its entirety. It is under this perspective that the decision of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, is to be taken into consideration, who, starting from the feast of Corpus Christi last year, has begun to distribute holy Communion to the kneeling faithful directly on the tongue. By the example of this action, the Holy Father invites us to render visible the proper attitude of adoration before the greatness of the mystery of the Eucharistic presence of our Lord. An attitude of adoration which must be fostered all the more when approaching the most holy Eucharist in the other forms permitted today.

So let us get this straight. The Pope is asking priests to place a crucifix on the altar and inviting communicants to receive in the traditional manner. Yet these developments, arising out of the Pontiff’s profound reflections on divine worship, receive no support from the Bishops of England and Wales.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols has paid frequent tribute to the vision of Benedict XVI. The liturgical reality in most parishes in this country has not even begun to reflect that vision. The Archbishop is a strong and resourceful leader; when is he going to turn his attention to this discrepancy?

For. Crying. Out. Loud.

2010-01-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

Diversity yes - Catholicism no

I saw something recently that referenced a "parish diversity council", and naturally I wondered "What the he-"? What does a parish need a "diversity council" (or any council) for? Funny, whenever I found a "diversity council", I never saw any reference to a Latin Mass at those parishes. Just sayin'.

Maybe there should be some Parish Catholic Councils, as a way to ensure that some Catholicism is retained in a given parish. "Sorry Ms. Judy Attitudy, a Pie Throwers Mass doesn't square with the GRIM, so NO, you can't have one."

Acts of the Apostacy has a review of the recently experienced Talk Show Mass.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodby.

2010-01-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Or don't let the screen door....... Oh you know!!!!!

The biological solution is starting to work, the slow dying end to happy clappy felt banner Catholicism, may it rest in peace, the sooner the better

By CHARLOTTE ALLEN

Mary Daly, a retired professor at Boston College who was probably the most outré of all the dissident theologians who came to the fore of Catholic intellectual life in the years right after the Second Vatican Council, died on Jan. 3 at age 81. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, which might be called the golden age of Catholic dissidence, theologians who took positions challenging traditional church teachings—ranging from the authority of the pope to bans on birth control, premarital sex, and women's ordination—dominated Catholic intellectual life in America and Europe. They seemed to represent a tide that would overwhelm the old restrictions and their hidebound adherents.

Now, 45 years after Vatican II concluded in 1965, most of those bright lights of dissident Catholicism—from the theologian Hans Küng of the University of Tübingen to Charles Curran, the priest dismissed from the Catholic University of America's theology faculty in 1987 for his advocacy of contraception and acceptance of homosexual relationships—seem dimmed with advanced age, if not extinguished. They have left no coherent second generation of dissident Catholic intellectuals to follow them.

Prof. Daly certainly pushed the envelope. In 1968, she published "The Church and the Second Sex," a book that accused the Catholic Church of oppressing and "humiliating" women by excluding them from its "patriarchal" hierarchy. The title of her most famous work, "Beyond God the Father" (1973), is self-explanatory. At some point afterward, Prof. Daly, despite being raised Catholic and earning degrees in theology and literature from three different Catholic colleges plus the University of Fribourg, left the church to embrace ever more belligerent brands of feminism.

She got into trouble with Boston College, the Jesuit institution where she had taught since 1966, for barring men from her advanced classes in women's studies. In the wake of a sex-discrimination complaint launched by a male student, Prof. Daly and her employer engaged in a round of litigation during the late 1990s that culminated in her voluntary retirement in 2001. She spent her last years promoting vegetarianism, antifur activism, a protest of Condoleezza Rice's 2006 commencement speech at Boston College, and the coining of male-baiting neologisms (an example: "mister-ectomy").

The trajectory of her life story is not unusual among Catholic dissidents. The Young Turk of Vatican II—and pet of the progressive Catholic media of the time—was Hans Küng. A Swiss-born, movie-star-handsome priest whom Pope John XXIII had made a peritus, or theological adviser, to the council, Father Küng swept through a tour of U.S. Catholic universities to accolades in 1963. And his 1971 book questioning papal infallibility—which got him stripped of his license to teach Catholic theology in 1979—turned him into a living martyr among progressives. He is still at Tübingen (last heard from in October blasting Pope Benedict XVI's overtures to conservative Anglicans as "angling in the waters of the extreme religious right"), but he's 81.

The Belgian Dominican priest Edward Schillebeeckx, who had worked unsuccessfully to persuade the assembled bishops of the Second Vatican Council to downgrade the authority of the pope—and who was condemned in 1986 for holding that there was no biblical support for the ordaining of Catholic priests—died in December at age 95. The Rev. Charles Curran, who was a controversial figure at Catholic University as early as 1967, when he was temporarily removed from his tenured position over his views on birth control, and who moved to Southern Methodist University after his final dismissal from Catholic two decades later, is now 75.

Another prominent figure in liberal Catholic intellectual circles is Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, who is famous for her assertions that Jesus was a feminist and that God should be referred to as "she" as well as "he," as well as for her advice that progressive orders of nuns treat representatives of a planned Vatican investigation like "uninvited guests." She is also past retirement age and is listed as "professor emerita" at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

So where is the second generation of brilliant progressive Catholic theologians? There are plenty of liberal lay Catholics. The church's ban on artificial birth control is nearly a dead letter, a majority of Catholics say they believe their church should ordain women, and 40% have no moral objections to abortion, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. But dissident Catholicism seems to have lost steam as an intellectual movement, and not only because the issues relating to sex and papal authority that originally sparked Catholic dissidents have not changed in nearly 50 years.

The first-generation dissidents were products of a strong and confident traditional Catholic culture against which they rebelled, one whose intellectual standards grounded them in the faith they later came to question. Sister Schneiders, for example, earned four degrees from Catholic institutions, including the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Yet most Catholics of her generation have not passed on the tenets of their faith to their children—the offspring of the Vatican II generation tend either to be churchless or not to go to church—or, in the case of academics, to their students. It's hard to rebel when you don't even know what you are rebelling against.

Not that conservative Catholicism is in any better straits; it's a vibrant but niche branch of the religion, and its leading intellectuals—Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon—aren't theologians. But it is fair to note that when Prof. Daly died, she left behind no young Mary Dalys to continue waging her quixotic war against the faith that shaped her, whether she liked it or not.

Ms. Allen is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's Minding the Campus Web site.

Soaring to Heaven

2010-01-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

More on church architecture from Fr Longnecker

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Why Catholic Churches Should be Tall

Why does a lofty Gothic church inspire and a carpeted church with drop ceilings does not? I have heard the theory that the Gothic church is reminiscent of a forest. The pillars rising like trunks of trees and the vaulting overarching like the boughs of many trees. I think this is too literal an understanding of the impact of architecture.

Instead I think a lofty church inspires because there is something sacramental about it. Everything in a gothic church points up. When you enter the heart lifts because the building lifts. The gothic structure of solid stone seems to be made instead of something lighter. The delicate tracery, the pointed arches, the finials and filigree transforms the stone and suddenly I am longing that my heart of stone might be re-made and transformed into a heart of fire and light.

Then as the pointed arches rise I see my hands placed together in prayer like little pointed arches themselves and I want to be a sacrament of stone and light. I want my heart to arch up to heaven and become a temple of the Holy Spirit--a dwelling of peace and beauty that speaks silently of grace and welcomes sinners home.

I look and see high stained glass windows, too far away for my mortal eyes to see the detail and to understand and I know that the joys of heaven are as beautiful and distant and complex and colored and mysterious as those high windows. Further down I can see some windows where saints are pictured and I want to be like that--a saint standing in eternal stillness radiant through with the light from beyond.

This is why Catholic Churches should be high and clear and beautiful. This is why churches that look like shopping malls or parking garages should be...shopping malls or parking garages.

I know its politics

2010-01-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

Hits the nail on the head, we will get Government (US) paid abortions one way or the other. BASTARDS

The Egyptian

click to read, from my friend Chris Muir

Feeling much better now

2010-01-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

I'm back at it, just had a real case of the blues this Christmas season, for some reason the death of my son 6 years ago really came back to haunt me this year.
4 new posts for you to lookat below, rad and comment, the comments keep me going

The Egyptian

This is amaizing, God works in mysterious ways

2010-01-09T18:15:00.000-08:00

ELEPHANTS ATTACK IN ORISSA EXACTLY AFTER ONE YEAR OF PERSECUTIONS
[ Fr. Sunil De Silva - 09.12.2009 ]

In July 2008 a severe persecution of Christians broke out in the Indian state of Orissa. A 22 year old nun was burnt to death when angry mobs burnt down an orphanage in Khuntpali village in Barhgarh district, another nun was gang raped in Kandhamal, mobs attacked churches, torched vehicles, houses of Christians destroyed, and Fr. Thomas Chellen, director of the pastoral center that was destroyed with a bomb, had a narrow escape after a Hindu mob nearly set him on fire. The end result saw more than 500 Christians murdered, and thousands of others injured and homeless after their houses were reduced to ashes. Recently a strange and dramatic event took place in Orissa, which has many people talking and wondering.

In recent months, herds of wild elephants have begun to storm villages that are home to some of the worst persecutors of Christians during the troubles. In one village, where in August a year ago the Christians had to run for their lives while their homes were being destroyed by rioters, a herd of elephants emerged from the surrounding jungle exactly one year later, in July 2009, at the same time of the day of the attack.

These elephants first attacked a rock crusher machine owned by a key leader of the persecution movement. They then went on to destroy his house and farms.

Hundreds of villagers have been forced to take shelter in camps in the Indian state of Orissa after repeated attacks by a herd of elephants.

Seven people have been killed and several others injured in attacks by a herd of 12-13 elephants over the past few weeks in Kandhamal district.

Over 2,500 people living in 45 villages have been affected by the attacks, district chief Krishen Kumar said.

It is, however, unclear why this herd of elephants migrated from the Lakheri sanctuary in a neighbouring district. He said the herd had travelled some 300km into Kandhamal, and even entered a town in the district. Wildlife officials were camping at the site of the attacks and trying to find out why the elephants had come out of their sanctuary. The villagers say elephants attack their areas in herds, causing heavy destruction.

Gaining momentum, they rampaged through other non-Christian homes, demolishing gardens and singling out the home of persecutors, leaving Christian homes untouched.

These strange attacks have spread, and according to a report, the elephants have already destroyed more than 700 houses in 30 villages, and killed five people. Nobody in this area has seen or even imagined the unique appearance of a herd of wild elephants such as this. The elephants are not ordinary elephants; they appear to be on a mission.

Typically, smaller elephants enter a village first, appearing to survey the community. They then rejoin the larger herd, and larger elephant soon follow and get the job done.

The ministry partner in India stated “We think that it might have something to do with the avenging the blood of martyrs. In fact the fear of God has fallen on the local people, who have labeled these elephants “Christian elephants.”

With little help coming from the administration, the villagers have taken to road blockades. "The elephants have destroyed crops and selected houses. But officials too express helplessness. "There is no permanent habitat of elephants in Sundargarh. They come from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where their habitats have shrunk. But is not clear how and why these elephants reached Orissa.

This priest is all about himself, not Christ's sacrifice in the Mass

2010-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

This is just enough to make me grind my teeth, there are times I see more of this happening up here and it really starts to bug me. I sure would appreciate the people leaving the Church quietly after mass so that maybe we can reclaim some semblance of the idea of "sacred space", A time for private prayer after mass instead of group visits during the mad rush for the door, take it outside, we used to.

This priest needs his ass kicked up over his non existent biretta.

The Egyptian

The Talk-Show Mass

I had kinda hoped this wasn't going to come up so soon in the new year, but alas, it has.

Today's Mass was as close to a talk-show as I had ever experienced. The liturgy was processing fine until after the Gospel. Then Father Limelight asked for the children to come to the altar and gather near the nativity scene (the Three Wise Men were conspicuously absent...perhaps they knew what was going to happen and skedaddled outta there?). After repeating several times "Come on up, kids. All the children, come to the nativity scene!", only five ~~victims~~ children came forward, and then he led them in a verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful", accompanied by some of the congregants. Then he blessed them, sent them back to the pews and said "Let's give them a hand!" Some polite clapping ensued.

Then Fr Limelight returned to the pulpit and said "I'd like someone, anyone, to come up and say a few words about what Christmas hope means to them - speak a bit about how they celebrated Christmas, and I'm just going to sit down. Anyone? No one? Come on, children, take your father or mother by the hand and lead them here. Anyone? Just one person...anybody?" Finally, a man seated near the front rose and stepped up to the podium, while Father sat down. The guy gave a one-to-two minute description of how he celebrated Christmas with his family. When he went back to his seat, Father jumped back up and started a round of applause.

"Beautiful, beautiful," he said. "And now we need one of the ladies to come up. C'mon, I can't stand up here and speak for any of the women here. Any mom or grandma want to come up and talk about their Christmas dreams and wishes? Anybody? Any kid want to bring their mom up here? I can't go on with the Mass until one of you ladies comes up. Any of you? Anyone?"

After Father Limelight subjected us to a full minute of excruciating begging, an elderly woman stood up, came to the pulpit and gave her two minute spiel. Another round of applause led by Father.

Then he started his homily. By now Mass had become an occasion of sin for me as my anger was reaching the tipping point. My sons noticed - I have a habit of clenching my jaw and bouncing one leg when I'm suppressing anger - and Younger Son was pressing down on my leg to make it stop. He even whispered to me: "Dad - it's like he's a talk-show host!"

I had briefly considered standing up when Father first asked for volunteers to go up and make a fool of themselves - but I would have taken my opportunity to tell Father that it's his business to deliver the homily and not ours, and that we have the right to expect the Mass to be done according to the rubrics. But I didn't - he was embarrassing himself enough, at least in my mind he was, and adding to it would not have accomplished anything positive.

Fast forward to the end of Mass. Before the final blessing, Father went back to the pulpit.

"Well, Happy New Year to all of you - and hey, let's congratulate the kids to came up to the nativity scene." *clap clap* "Oh, and the music group did great today too. *clap clap clap* "And since this is Christmas time, I'm going to do what I do every year and sing you my favorite carol."

*WHAT?*

"Too bad I don't have my guitar with me, but I can probably manage at the piano."

**DOUBLE WHAT!?!**

So Father Limelight walks over to the music group, excuses the pianist and begins playing some obscure Christmas carol that has to with Mary and Joseph and Bethlehem and such, singing as he plays (his playing was fine, but the singing was less than to be desired) for about FIVE MINUTES and when he finishes, guess what? More stinkin' applause!! Heck, this wasn't a talk-show but a Variety Hour! Six times of applause during the Mass.

So he finishes, gives the final blessing, and then the recessional begins. As he walks down the main aisle, he stops and shakes hands with every person sitting at the end of the pew, on both sides.

Father Limelight is a visiting priest at the church where we attended Mass today - in fact, we go there quite often and the Mass is normally holy and intentionally accurate - but today's exhibition was beyond the pale. It's nearly gotten to the point where my options for Mass are drying up - for example, at my home parish, the pastor allowed the Pastoral Associate to give the homily during the early morning Mass last Sunday. When you no longer know what to expect at any given Mass, and attendance descends into an occasion of sin, it's time to make a change.

I just didn't think it was going to happen so early in 2010.

Proper Nuns or A Good Habit to Keep

2010-01-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

: Now those are real Sisters, the ones that taught me for the first 3 grades in public school, that lived in a convent and led us in prayer, not the happy clappy polyester nightmares of today that live in condos and priest less rectories "because no one lives where they work anymore". Sad to witness the decline of such a good order, instead of looking like nuns they now look like little old ladies that are soon to the nursing home, cute frocks, ear rings and pearls, lets not forget the tiny cross on their blouse to tell the world that "I am a religious" may they learn from the Dominicans and reclain their heritage before it's too late.; I'm not holding my breath.
The Egyptian

Pioneer Group

1957: “Pioneer group of Sisters of the Precious Blood who will be the first members of their religious congregation to engage in missionary work in Chile, South America, received a blessing from Archbishop Karl J. Alter before embarking on their new career last week. Left to right are Sister Mary Geneva, Sister Mary Ignatius, Sister Mary John, Archbishop Alter, Mother Mary Aquinas, Superior General of the congregation, who is accompanying the missionary sisters to Chile and will return to the U.S. after they take up residence there; and Sister Mary Amelia. In Chile, the sisters will teach in St. Gaspar's School, which is attached to Santo Domingo Parish, the Vicariate of the Precious Blood Fathers who have been serving in South America for several years.” (The Catholic Telegraph-Register, January 4, 1957)

Very Inspirational

2010-01-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: They Stole Our Future, But They Cannot Break Our Will.

Bill is a great speaker, the site will let you watch for free just follow the instructions, his comments also go for the Catholic Church in America as well, I follow the stories on PJTV daily, this is the other side of the news

The Egyptian

Oh so TRUE, beige brick boxes don't cut it

2010-01-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

from Fr Longnecker

Mother of God

Charleston Cathedral all dressed up for the Solemnity of the Mother of God on Friday. It was really nice to be able to sit in the pew and worship quietly for once. The beauty of the liturgy and the high gothic style of the cathedral reminded me how important beauty is for worship. The anonymous architect of the ancient abbey of Glastonbury said, "I want to create a building so beautiful that even the hardest heart will be moved to prayer."

Pancake and circus tent churches just don't cut it. This is because they have been designed by followers of the 'form follows function' school of architecture. Even if this is a proper dictum for architects, it overlooks the fact that one of the functions of a Catholic church is to inspire and uplift the heart, and the only way to do that is through beauty. Why does the heart lift in a church with high ceilings, lofty stained glass and pointed arches? Because as they eye is lifted up the heart is lifted up. The eye, the mind and the heart ascend in an act of worship simply by entering a lofty building. The beauty and richness of marble and stone and glass take the worshiper into a new dimension--a less mundane dimension.

Of course the Mass is the Mass, and the Christ child who was born in a stable is still present in the humblest of settings. But that Christ child of Bethlehem is also the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We should try our hardest and make the sacrifices necessary to build a temple fit for the one before whom the kings of the East prostrated themselves.

TRUTH AT LAST

2009-11-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

Kudos Kathryn, this is great
The Egyptian

November 25, 2009, 0:00 a.m.

Providence Provides
Patrick Kennedy and His Church.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Patrick Kennedy has a remarkable opportunity. The Democrat, a congressman from Rhode Island and son of the late senator Edward M. Kennedy, is currently embroiled in a scandal of his own making. As it plays out, I’d be delighted to be able to write a profile of his courage.

First of all, contrary to the game of telephone sometimes referred to as “journalism,” Patrick Kennedy’s bishop did not seek to publicly reprimand Kennedy. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence (no pun intended) was summoned by Kennedy’s public scandal. Tobin has long sought to address, privately, the scandal that is Kennedy’s support for legal abortion.

But in the wake of his father’s passing, in the heat of the health-care debate in Washington (considered by many an exercise in tribute to Ted Kennedy), Patrick Kennedy decided to take the opportunity to lecture the Catholic Church about morality, public policy, and abortion.

In an interview as the U.S. House of Representatives was about to take up health-care legislation that, unamended, would involve federal funding for abortion, Kennedy complained about the Catholic bishops’ opposition to any federal funding of abortion that might be mandated by health-care “reform” legislation or that might otherwise slip through. Against the largest health-care provider in the United States, a Church whose name he uses to modify his, Kennedy railed: “You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life-saving health care? I thought they were pro-life.” He continued: “If the Church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health-care reform, because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive. So this is an absolute red herring and I don’t think that it does anything but to fan the flames of dissent and discord and I don’t think it’s productive at all.”

The problem, of course, is that various iterations of the health-care legislation would allow the denial of some of the most innocent life.

And so, when Kennedy gave this interview in October, his bishop really had to respond. This is what a father does. He corrects.

Tobin called Kennedy’s statement about life and the Church “irresponsible and ignorant of the facts.” He explained the Church’s position and he called for an apology: “I believe the Congressman owes us an apology for his irresponsible comments. It is my fervent hope and prayer that he will find a way to provide more effective and morally responsible leadership for our state.”

After canceling a meeting with Tobin, Kennedy announced that “the fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Kennedy would continue the public discussion as the health-care debate began in the Senate, announcing to a local paper that Tobin had instructed priests not to give him Communion. Once again, Kennedy was making it necessary for Tobin to respond. Tobin released the contents of a letter that he had sent Kennedy in 2007 that asked him not to receive Communion. In the letter, he told Kennedy: “I am writing to you personally and confidentially as a pastor addressing a member of his flock. . . . At the present time I have no need or intention to make this a public issue.” Kennedy wrote back: “I understand your pastoral advice was confidential in nature and given with the best intentions for my personal spiritual welfare.”

Well, so much for that.

But Kennedy’s obstinacy — born, most likely, out of deep confusion about what it means to be Catholic — offers Catholics a much-needed catechetical opportunity. In the days after Kennedy made his inaccurate announcement about what exactly his bishop had said to him, Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Patrick Murphy — another “Catholic abortion rights supporter,” in the Boston Globe’s words — received a JFK Foundation award from Patrick Kennedy’s cousin, Caroline. Murphy, who voiced support for Kennedy, told the newspaper that he agrees with the Church on “99 percent of the issues.”

That may be a convenient answer for a politician who wants to be known as a Catholic. But it’s just not so. As Tobin put it in a public letter to Kennedy after his “any less of a Catholic” declaration this fall: “When someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church.”

The sanctity of human life isn’t a footnote, or just another box to check. And “being a Catholic has to mean something,” as Tobin has explained. These realities are being fleshed out in very public ways thanks, as it happens, to Patrick Kennedy.

It’s hard not to think of the late Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey, another Catholic Democrat. In a speech at the University of Notre Dame in 1995, he said: “Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself. The value of everything else is weighed against it. The abortion debate is not about how we shall live, but who shall live. And more than that, it’s about who we are.” There’s a secular nudge that very much echoes the opportunity Tobin presents Kennedy: “It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic ‘profile in courage,’ especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children.”

At his funeral, Ted Kennedy was hailed as a “beacon of social justice.” If his son heeded the guidance of his bishop and the words of the late governor and became a brave pro-life Democratic leader, the Kennedy name could rightfully be just that.

— Copyright 2009, Kathryn Jean Lopez. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor of National Review Online.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTFiZGU0MDIxNTJhN2Y2NmFlNzcwZGY4YmJiMWJiNmI=

eewwww thats bad

2009-11-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

For your viewing enjoyment I give you the ineffable blog Bad Vestments the pictures are bad enough but the commentary is a scream, you'll have to go there to read the commentary

The Egyptian

some recent pictures

JOHNSON'S GRAND UNIFIED THEORY OF INAPPROPRIATE LITURGICAL CLOTHING

FLOWER POWER

ORRIS?

KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI GOES TO THE RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL!!

Timespace Liturgy

2009-11-26T06:04:00.000-08:00

From Smaller Manhattans Thanks
this is the best description of the Mass I have read, what a CCD teacher, she deserves an award, no touchy feely happy clappy crap, just the mystery that is so lacking in our worship, The Latin Mass so captures this where the Novus Ordo meal falls flat, enjoy
The Egyptian

One of the key concepts in 6th grade Wednesday Sunday School is that our worship at Mass connects directly, physically to the unceasing worship that goes on in Heaven. I use the term 'Holy Tornado' along with some blackboard sketching to show a temporary timespace continuum between Heaven and Earth. (see Trou de Ver) Our prayers go up, zhhhhhpp! Jesus comes down, shhhhhhp! Then after a few minutes, bzhht! the connection is broken until the next Mass. The kids dig the science-fiction-movie sounds.

I use this line from Eucharistic Prayer I to reinforce the point:

“Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in Heaven.” Until now I've always drawn this concept on the board. From now on I also have some art to show.

Look at that great image I stumbled upon recently at Tiber Jumper's blog. It differs from similar Mass pictures I've seen since my pre-Vatican 2 childhood. In addition to the crucified Christ made present, it shows an angel ascending to heaven in the midst of the Mass. I imagine the painting is directly inspired by that line from the Eucharistic Prayer, which itself must be partially inspired by descriptions in Revelations of activities around the altar in heaven, e.g., 8:3-4 which is covered in class:

"And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand."

And check out the upper half of the image....the angel is being caught up (raptured!) by the swirling timespace winds of the Holy Tornado! Who knew?!

If anything beats catechizing 6th grade I want to know what it is.

Batshit Crazy, Polyester Nightmare of a NUN or The Visitation can't come fast enough, part two

2009-11-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

This pagan has not changed her ways or ever intends to, so stop defiling my Church and please leave, don't let the convent door hit your ass on the way out.
Makes me wonder about the rest of the "sisters" in her group (definitely not an order), are they all pagan turd worshipers or just run of the mill Vat 2, anything goes, we have moved beyond Christ and are entering the cosmos of awareness, this is the dawning of the age of..........oh hell you get the drift. Don't believe me, read the blue highlight below

The Egyptian

Nun decides to suspend activism for abortion rights after a rebuke by her order
For decades, Sister Donna Quinn has championed the rights of women to use contraception, seek ordination and end unwanted pregnancies

By Manya A. Brachear

Tribune reporter

November 4, 2009

For decades, Sister Donna Quinn has championed the rights of women to use contraception, seek ordination and end unwanted pregnancies.

The Dominican nun has picketed for abortion rights in Washington, petitioned the pope for a female archbishop and escorted women into abortion clinics.

But as the Vatican turns up scrutiny of the nation's nuns and U.S. Roman Catholic bishops refuse to support universal health care if it covers abortion, Quinn has put her crusade on hold.

"I want to be clear that this is my decision," she said in a statement Tuesday, saying she would suspend her role as a peacekeeper outside the ACU Health Clinic in Hinsdale. "Respect for women's moral agency is of critical importance to me, and I look forward to continuing to dialogue with our congregation on these matters as a way of informing my actions as well as educating the community."

Oh for the love of Pete, more damn dialogue

On Tuesday, the Wisconsin-based Sinsinawa Dominican order announced that Quinn had been reprimanded for escorting patients into a Hinsdale clinic that provides abortions.

"After investigating the allegation, congregation leaders have informed Sister Donna that her actions are in violation of her profession," Sister Patricia Mulcahey, head of the Sinsinawa Dominicans, said in a statement. "They regret that her actions have created controversy."

Quinn said the order's announcement only served to stir more controversy. A private meeting to discuss her position had been set for later this month, she said.

"I am disappointed that the process agreed upon was circumvented," she said. "As a peacekeeper, my goal is to enable women to enter a reproductive health clinic in dignity and without fear of being physically assaulted. ... I am very worried that the publicity around my presence will lead to violations of every woman's right to privacy and expose them to further violence."

The sudden rebuke highlights the tension in America's women's religious communities, now targeted by two sweeping Vatican investigations. Quinn's activism was no secret. But in years past, Dominican leaders have come to her defense.

The primary example was in 1984 when the Vatican instructed religious orders to dismiss nuns who refused to retract their claim that Catholics held a range of opinions on abortion rights. Instead, the leaders talked to Vatican officials and resolved the issue with no ousters of nuns.

But that was a different era, said Sister Beth Rindler, co-coordinator of the National Coalition of American Nuns, a group of nuns who push for women's ordination, gay rights, abortion rights and an end to war.

"We're standing with her very much. We consider her one of our prophets," said Rindler, a Franciscan Sister of the Poor. "She's standing with women who she believes can make good moral decisions."

A prophet!!!!, OK start your own religion, you already have your own prophet

But Mary-Louise Kurey, director of the Chicago archdiocese's Respect Life Office, said Quinn's efforts to shield women from abortion opponents at clinics pose harm. "I feel really sad because these are individuals who are trying to help women and those actions are profoundly misguided," Kurey said.

Quinn showed no signs of changing her ways Tuesday.

"I take this opportunity to urge those demonstrating against women who are patients at the Hinsdale Clinic, whom I have seen emotionally as well as physically threaten women, to cease those activities," she said. "I would never have had to serve as a peacekeeper had not they created a war against women."

mbrachear@tribune.com

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

A New Template for the U.S. Bishops

2009-11-10T16:41:00.000-08:00

Anyone who reads this pray for our Bishops and if possible drop Bishop Tobin a line and thank him for his clarity, either care of his diocese newspaper www.theRICatholic.com and his editor blowney@thericatholic.com or the bishops snail mail is

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin

Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence

Office of the Bishop

One Cathedral Square

Providence, RI 02903

Representative Patrick Kennedy and Bishop Thomas Tobin

REJECTING CHURCH TEACHING
IS MORE THAN MERE "HUMAN WEAKNESS"
An Open Letter to Congressman Patrick Kennedy from Bishop Thomas Tobin

11/12/09

Dear Congressman Kennedy:

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” (Congressman Patrick Kennedy)

Since our recent correspondence has been rather public, I hope you don’t mind if I share a few reflections about your practice of the faith in this public forum. I usually wouldn’t do that – that is speak about someone’s faith in a public setting – but in our well-documented exchange of letters about health care and abortion, it has emerged as an issue. I also share these words publicly with the thought that they might be instructive to other Catholics, including those in prominent positions of leadership.

For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the “Code of Canon Law” says, “Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine.” (Canon 229, #1)

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says this: “Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles, ‘He who hears you, hears me,’ the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.” (#87)

Or consider this statement of the Church: “It would be a mistake to confuse the proper autonomy exercised by Catholics in political life with the claim of a principle that prescinds from the moral and social teaching of the Church.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002)

There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?

Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.

Congressman, I’m not sure whether or not you fulfill the basic requirements of being a Catholic, so let me ask: Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?

In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?

Your letter also says that your faith “acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.” Absolutely true. But in confronting your rejection of the Church’s teaching, we’re not dealing just with “an imperfect humanity” – as we do when we wrestle with sins such as anger, pride, greed, impurity or dishonesty. We all struggle with those things, and often fail.

Your rejection of the Church’s teaching on abortion falls into a different category – it’s a deliberate and obstinate act of the will; a conscious decision that you’ve re-affirmed on many occasions. Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an “imperfect humanity.” Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin

Bishop of Providence

EVIL, VAIN CONCEITED, EVIL

2009-10-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

THIS IS BEYOND THE PALE, A NEW LOW, VANITY IS AN EVIL, RIGHT. Heaven help us all

The Egyptian

From the gateway pundit

Sick. Skincare Company Now Using Aborted Fetal Tissue in Anti-Aging Cream

Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 12:11 PM

Jim Hoft

How sick. This is just gruesome.
A skincare company has started using aborted fetal tissue in its anti-aging skincare cream.
Christian News Wire reported:

Children of God for Life announced today that Neocutis, a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology and skin care is using aborted fetal cell lines to produce several of their anti-aging skin creams.

“It is absolutely deplorable that Neocutis would resort to exploiting the remains of a deliberately slaughtered baby for nothing other than pure vanity and financial gain,” stated Executive Director Debi Vinnedge. “There is simply no moral justification for this.”

For years Children of God for Life has been a watchdog on pharmaceutical companies using aborted fetal cell lines in medical products and they have received thousands of inquiries from the public on the use of aborted fetal material in cosmetics.

Until now, this was the first time they have encountered any company bold enough to put the information right on their own website and product literature. A quick investigation into the science behind the products revealed the shameless data.

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere. But Vinnedge is calling for a full boycott of all Neocutis products, regardless of their source.

“There is absolutely no reason to use aborted babies for such selfish motives,” Vinnedge said. “It is anti-life, anti-woman and counter-productive as Neocutis is about to find out!”

Sure enough.
Neocutis describes their Processed Skin Cell Proteins (PCP) used in their anti-aging creams on their website:

From the website:

Through years of research, physicians discovered fetal skin has a unique ability to heal wounds without scarring. Inspired by this, medical researchers at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland created a biotechnology process to extract the rich proteins responsible for scarless wound healing from cultured fetal skin cells. A small biopsy of fetal skin was donated following a one-time medical termination and a dedicated cell bank was established for developing new skin treatments.

on the lighter side

2009-10-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

Zoinks!!

Coming to a bookstore near you, just in time for the Christmas season! A new exciting mystery featuring Scooby Doo and the gang!
Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and the world's most famous canine sleuth visit Velma's Aunt Veronica and soon become embroiled in a cryptic case of canonical chaos. Aunt Veronica's church has been invaded by a screeching spectre, The Spirit of Vatican 2, soon after she requested to have the Extraordinary Form of the Mass held there. Now the more-traditional minded parishoners are being driven away from the frightful fiend and its ghastly guitar of Haugen Hymns.

Does the pastor, Fr Fencesitter, have something to do with this haunting? Or perhaps the overbearing Pastoral Associate, Sister Dee Sentyr, is behind the fiendish plot? Maybe the musical director Miss Claphappy is responsible. Or maybe...just maybe it's the Smoke of Satan....

Regardless, Scooby Doo might need divine intervention along with his Scooby Snax, if he and the gang are to successfully help Velma's aunt! Collect the clues as you read along, and see if you can solve the mystery before they do....the mystery of The Spirit of Vatican 2!
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snicker- giggle- snort LOL love it

The Egyptian

Saints at Work

2009-10-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Anglican Bishop Confirms St. Therese is Behind Anglican Ordinariate

Yesterday we conveyed the suspicion of former Episcopal and now Kansas City Catholic priest, Father Ernie Davis, that the intercession of St. Therese of Lisieux was behind the Vatican’s move to provide a structure to welcome Anglicans into full communion. Now, the Anglican Catholic Bishop of Canada strongly confirms that thought.

Father Davis, who leads St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City which hosts an Anglican Use community, wrote of the news from the Vatican:

Anglicans and Catholics flocked to visit the relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux as they made a very recent pilgrimage to England. Her relics rested on her 2009 feast day at York Minster, the Cathedral of the Anglican Archbishop of York. When I read about that, I told the people here at St. Therese Little Flower that she was working on something big. In other words, preparations for this Apostolic Constitution have been in process for 170 years, and some of the preparations have been made at levels that are higher than popes.

The Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop of Canada saw the claim and sent an email today to Father Davis with remarkable details of St. Therese’ intercession. Here’s the email:

Dear Father Davis,

Your story about the Anglican Ordinariate and St Therese (which came to me via England this morning) is very interesting. And I can tell you another connexion with her.

I am the Anglican Catholic Bishop of Canada in the TAC. I was present at the Synod of TAC Bishops in Portsmouth England in October 2007 which voted unanimously to ask for full communion, and signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The first full day of the Synod was October 1st, the 'new' date of St Therese's feast, and the actual vote to ask for full communion was taken on October 3rd 'old' date of her feast.

I also accompanied the Primate and Bishop Robert Mercer CR to deliver the Letter to the CDF where we had been directed by the Holy Father. My friend Mother Teresa of the Carmel in Edmonton had given me some holy cards with a piece of cloth touched to her relics. Each of us carried one of these cards, and we asked St Therese's prayers on our venture. We also had similar cards from Poland of the Servant of God John Paul II.

I have continued 'to bother her' about a favourable response to our request, and now thanks to the generosity and love of the Holy Father who has taken a personal interest in us for many years, and the prayers of St Therese, something wonderful has come about.

God bless you,

+Peter Wilkinson, OSG
Bishop Ordinary
Anglican Catholic Church of Canada
TAC

Father Davis has posted the letter at his blog, which is also on our blog roll. He's been quiet for a while, working on a book, but I'll bet it'll be worth checking in there as things progress.

Welcome Home Prodical Sons

2009-10-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

Joint Statement of Archbps. Nichols (Catholic) and Williams (Anglican)

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf @ 8:02 am

The doors to the Church are always open to those wishing to enter. Now there is not only a door open to Anglicans, but also a house full of furniture.

The Holy Father will establish ordinariates for Anglicans who wish to enter fuller manifest unity with the Catholic Church.

To that end, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury issued a joint statement.

Let’s have a look with my emphases and comments.

JOINT STATEMENT BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER AND THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Today’s announcement of the Apostolic Constitution is a response by Pope Benedict XVI to a number of requests over the past few years to the Holy See from groups of Anglicans who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and are willing to declare that they share a common Catholic faith and accept the Petrine ministry as willed by Christ for his Church. [Christ established His Church with certain necessary elements. Among them are not only apostolic succession, or bishops (and Anglicans except some version of that) but also the ministry of Peter and his successor, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.]

Pope Benedict XVI has approved, within the Apostolic Constitution, a canonical structure that provides for Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual patrimony.

The announcement of this Apostolic Constitution brings to an end a period of uncertainty for such groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the Catholic Church. It will now be up to those who have made requests to the Holy See to respond to the Apostolic Constitution.

The Apostolic Constitution is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition. Without the dialogues of the past forty years, this recognition would not have been possible, nor would hopes for full visible unity have been nurtured. In this sense, this Apostolic Constitution is one consequence of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. [This is a joint statement, remember? This statement (i.e., by Williams) seems very positive about what is happening.]

The on-going official dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion provides the basis for our continuing cooperation. [The talks continue!] The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) agreements make clear the path we will follow together. [Don’t hold your breath about an ordinariate for Anglicans who want homosexual marriage or women priests. Just don’t.]

With God’s grace and prayer we are determined that our on-going mutual commitment and consultation on these and other matters should continue to be strengthened. Locally, in the spirit of IARCCUM, we look forward to building on the pattern of shared meetings between the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales and the Church of England’s House of Bishops with a focus on our common mission. Joint days of reflection and prayer were begun in Leeds in 2006 and continued in Lambeth in 2008, and further meetings are in preparation. This close cooperation will continue as we grow together in unity and mission, in witness to the Gospel in our country, and in the Church at large.

London, 20 October 2009

+ Vincent Gerard Nichols

+ Rowan Williams

As I read this I had the sense that Archbp. Williams has leaned very much in favor of union with Rome. It is a joint statement, after all.

But really… what is the alternative for Anglicans who really believe in God as God and who accept that Scripture contains the truth not subject to man’s whims or fads?

Batshit Crazy, Polyester Nighmare of a NUN or The Visitation can't come fast enough

2009-10-24T05:34:00.000-07:00

found the link to this on the Lair of the Catholic Cavemen.
Most of the bloggers there are retired military and law enforcement, God Bless you guys.

And People are UPSET about an apostolic visitation!!!!!!! How about a good old burning at the stake I'll get the catholic matches, for the love of God this witch thinks she is helping, helping what, women to commit a mortal sin and risk their immortal soul, not to mention to kill the very least of us. Talk about SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Egyptian

P.S. compare this to my previous post, how far have Sisters fallen!

Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois

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Sr. Quinn's prioress said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protesters."

isn't that rich, sheesch

E
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By Kathleen Gilbert

HINSDALE, Illinois, October 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Dominican nun has been seen frequenting an abortion facility in Illinois recently - but not, as one might expect, to pray for an end to abortion or to counsel women seeking abortions, but to volunteer as a clinic escort.

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

"I've called her sister several times, and she never responded," local pro-lifer John Bray told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN). "But it's her."

Amy Keane, a pro-life witness for 11 years, says Quinn has acted as escort for "six years, at least." Keane described one incident in which Quinn began shouting at the pro-lifers as they spoke to a woman about to enter the abortion facility.

"[Quinn] was so angry, and burst out very loudly so everyone could hear: 'Look at these men, telling these women what to do with their bodies!'" said Keane. "She was so angry, that it really took all of us aback." Keane says that the group was peaceful, and that the men present were not among those engaging the woman.

"For those of us who are Catholic, to have a member of a religious order so blatantly - it is so disheartening. It really is," said Keane. "She's participating actively in abortion. That is what is so disturbing for us."

Sr. Donna Quinn, OP, is renowned in the Chicago area as an advocate for legalized abortion and other liberal issues.

In 1974 she co-founded the organization Chicago Catholic Women, which lobbied the USCCB on a feminist platform before it dissolved in 2000. She is now a coordinator of the radically liberal National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), which stands in opposition against the Catholic Church's position on abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the male priesthood.

While LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) was unable to reach Sr. Quinn for comment, NCAN's Sr. Beth Rindler confirmed to LSN that Quinn is still a member of their group, which favors unrestricted legalized abortion and disagrees with the teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil. "We respect women, and believe that they make moral decision, and so we respect their decisions," Rindler explained.

In a 2002 address to the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, Sr. Quinn described how she came to view the teachings of her Church as "immoral": "I used to say: 'This is my Church, and I will work to change it, because I love it,'" she said. "Then later I said, 'This church is immoral, and if I am to identify with it I'd better work to change it.' More recently, I am saying, 'All organized religions are immoral in their gender discriminations.'"

Quinn called gender discrimination "the root cause of evil in the Church, and thus in the world," and said she remained in the Dominican community simply for "the sisterhood."

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protesters. Her stance is that if the protesters were not abusive, she would not be there."

Though Sr. Mulcahey claimed that her sisters "support the teachings of the Catholic Church," she declined to comment on Quinn's public protest of Catholic Church teaching.

Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League says Quinn came in contact with his own office in 1982, when she and a group of other pro-aborts picketed his building on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

"She figures it's part of her religion to take these women in and protect them, and get them abortions," said Scheidler of Quinn's recent activity. "Something dreadful has happened to make a Catholic nun become an escort at an abortion clinic - that's the lowest form you can reach, where you escort a woman with a living child in her into a place to have the child killed, and to ruin that woman's soul."

"If I didn't even believe in the humanity of the child - which of course would be crazy - even if I didn't, I would fight abortion for the sake of the women," Scheidler added. "They miss that baby, and they can't get it back. They never can."

Nice Picture

2009-10-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

More from the Catholic Telegraph
Grandfather of a friend of mine, he was very talented with his hands and it seems to carry on through the next several generations.

The Egyptian

P.S. Isn't it nice to at least SEE a picture of a Sister in a habit instead of a polyester nightmare, the Sisters used to mean so much and now they have made themselves disappear into irrelevance
E

Statue Donated

1963: “Statue of St. Joseph the Worker, carved from wood by Frank Dahlinghaus of St. Joseph's parish, Egypt, has been donated to the Sisters of the Precious Blood at the new Maria Stein Retreat House. With the statue here are Mother Mary Nathalia of the retreat house and Dahlinghaus. The sculptor, who owns and operates a poultry farm at Minster, Route 1, describes himself as a "whittler." Besides the contemporary-style statue of St. Joseph, he has carved several other statues and a wide variety of intricate objects. One of these is a wooden bird perched inside a wooden cage, all carved from a single block. In making the statue of St. Joseph, Dahlinghaus included a carpenter's box containing a variety of carved small wooden tools. (The Catholic Telegraph, August 9, 1963)

Carthagena, St Charles Seminary

2009-10-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Joyfully picked from the The Catholic Telegraph Photography Project,
This is what I mean, this chapel was beautiful but the "wreckovation" turn it into a cold sterile empty hall with no beauty whatsoever. ( personally I think it is butt ugly) Wonder if there are any photos of it in color, the art work must have been incredible. Fr Troust was a great artist and the idea of his work being destroyed just angers me.

The Egyptian

click on pictures to enlarge

Jubilee at Carthagena

1961: “The seeds of religious vocations, nurtured at St. Charles’ Seminary, Carthagena, have produced more than 700 priests over the past 100 years. This month, as the Precious Blood Fathers’ major seminary observes its centenary, it can point to its ‘graduates’ at work in 21 states and in South America. To meet the demands of a growing religious society, St. Charles’ Seminary recently completed a construction program.

“Before and after pictures show the chapel as it was before its renovation, above, and after its renovation. The ornate decorations in [the top] picture were the work of a seminary rector, Father Paulinus Trost, a talented painter. He drew his own image on a mural depicting Purgatory on the sanctuary walls. The renovated chapel [below] stresses the theme, "Blood of Jesus—Center of Earthly and Heavenly Liturgy." The figure of Christ dominates the mosaic behind the altar, which emphasizes the theme of the Precious Blood in the life of the Mystical Body. The chapel also has an imposing stained glass window honoring the Assumption. The new organ, placed in the sanctuary, contains 1,600 pipes, arranged in a series, from 16 feet high down to the size of a pencil.” (See The Catholic Telegraph-Register, October 6, 1961)

Pelosi’s Continuing Dissent from Catholic Church Teaching

2009-10-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Isn't it about time for the heave ho, this witch has defied her Bishop, and lied through her teeth. excommunication is automatic in these circumstances but obviously she hasn't gotten the memo

The Egyptian

By James Todd
Pewsitter.com

Speaker Pelosi continues to dissent from Church teaching, since her meeting in February with Archbishop Niederauer.

October 13, 2009 - Late last year Speaker Pelosi made a couple of rather outrageous statements about the teachings of the Church with regard to abortion and when life begins. Several bishops responded to correct Pelosi’s false statements. There was sufficient outrage among faithful Catholics to prompt Pelosi’s bishop, Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco, to meet with her in February of this year. The result of that meeting? Pelosi’s spokesman confirmed that a meeting had taken place and that Pelosi was not about to change her position on abortion.

Since that February meeting Pelosi continues to dissent from Church teaching as evidenced by both her public statements and actions. Here is a small sampling of activities by Pelosi since she met with Archbishop Niederauer in February:

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research (April of 2009)
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed critics of federal funding of life-destroying embryonic stem-cell research with this argument: “We’ve had a situation where it’s faith or science — take your pick,”

Regarding Same-Sex Marriage in California (May)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) deemed the California Supreme Court's decision today to uphold Proposition 8 as "deeply disappointing" in its stripping of marriage rights from same-sex couples.

Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Thru NFPA (June 2009)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that taxpayers should be forced to fund the UNFPA even though it has been shown to work closely with Chinese population control officials who subject women to forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations.

TaxPayer Funded Abortions in Washington DC (July)
Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that includes language overturning the longstanding ban on forcing taxpayers to fund abortions in the nation's capital. The vote on the bill came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi manipulated a vote on rules prohibiting an amendment to stop it.

On Health Care Reform (August)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has subjected herself to criticism for authoring an editorial in USA Today in which she calls Americans who oppose the pro-abortion health care plan before Congress "un-American."

This continued dissent must be placed in a historical context. Mrs. Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1987. Precisely when her first Congressional vote on an issue that placed her in opposition to Church occurred is unclear. What we do know is that as far back as 1993 her dissent from Church teaching was on public display when she voted against the Hyde Amendment. Three years later congressional voting records show she voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It is clear the Mrs. Pelosi record of dissent goes back at least 16 years, and possibly further. Voting records prior to 1993 are readily available.

Catholics understand and support the behind-the-scenes dialogue and diplomacy that was undertaken by Archbishop Niederauer earlier this year when he met with Pelosi. Most Catholics would prefer to have such issues resolved in this way and not to air our dirty laundry in public. However, when public dissent by prominent Catholics continues not just for years but decades – as is the case with Speaker Pelosi - in spite of the actions and activities that have been undertaken by the current and most likely past archbishops, a line must be drawn in the sand.

The key word in the above paragraph is “public”. If Pelosi’s dissent were behind closed doors or private, it could be dealt with in private. But Pelosi’s very public dissent has created a public scandal – and the only way to rectify a public scandal is to address it publicly.

Bishops who do not withhold communion or institute some other serious, public disciplinary action against such prominent Catholics that obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin, leave the impression such actions are condoned, or at least tolerated, and thereby perpetuate this scandal.

With Pelosi – as well as with many other Catholic politicians - the line in the sand has not only been reached but breached.

We attempted to contact Archbishop Niederauer’s spokesman, Maurice Healy and his assistant - both by phone and email - to ask about the Archbishop’s next step with Speaker Pelosi. There was no response.

Many faithful Catholics see a double scandal here. There is the scandal of a prominent Catholic in public life dissenting from Church teaching and continuing to receive communion. And there is a second scandal which is the unwillingness of Catholic Bishops to address the first scandal in any meaningful, concrete fashion. It appears that Archbishop Niederauer and other bishops have made the judgment that the public scandal to millions of Catholics is LESSER IMPORTANCE than avoiding a public confrontation with ONE or a handful of prominent dissenting Catholics whose actions continue to cause grave spiritual damage.

Missouri bishop blames ‘mentality of sterility’ for crisis in family life

2009-10-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

Finally some one with the hangy down things to come out and say it in plain english.
Good work Bishop,
God Bless
the Egyptian

Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau James V. Johnston

St. Louis, Mo., Oct 8, 2009 / 03:25 am (CNA).- A Missouri bishop has decried a “mentality of sterility,” naming it as a main factor in the present crisis of family life. He predicted that the renewal of the family and the Church would take place only when Catholics rediscover their “call to fruitfulness.”

Speaking at a Sept. 26 workshop for the assembly of the Missouri Catholic Conference, Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau James V. Johnston said that all love “tends toward an incarnation” and requires the “daily cultivation of the soul” in holiness.

“It is a call that we must respond to anew each day to God’s question, ‘Where are you?’”

According to the St. Louis Review, the bishop said family life is now in crisis because it is formed in a mentality of sterility. He compared contraception within marriage as the “sacrament” of this attitude.

Family life, the culture and the Church will only be renewed when the “domestic church” rediscovers “its call to fruitfulness at every level.”

In comments after his speech, Bishop Johnston said the Church can save the world by starting with the family. True love, freely given and unconditional, faithful to the end and fruitful, is revealed by Jesus on the Cross.

The bishop noted that in many dioceses the number of sacramental marriages is decreasing even as the numbers of Catholics increase.

But marriage and family is where a Christian “learns the discipleship of Christ and learns to say yes to God.”

Other topics at the Conference assembly included workshops on poverty, school choice, immigration, social networking, saving Catholic schools, pro-life legislators and Missouri’s response to the economic downturn, the St. Louis Review reports.

The assembly also honored five Missourians for promoting the common good. They included Cindy Finney of Mary Queen of Peace Parish in Webster Groves, a founder of First Friends of Immigrants and Refugees. She was given the Citizen Recognition Award for her work helping immigrants and refugees.

Advice for Obama's Point Man at Notre Dame

2009-10-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

copied from Veritatis,
do you think that Fr Jenkins will hear or care, or is he indeed a wolf in "shepherds" clothing
The Egyptian

Dr. Charles Rice: Devout Catholic, Ardent Defender of the Defenseless, Renowned Legal Scholar & Authority on the Natural Law, Notre Dame Professor Emeritus & Alumnus

Fr. John Jenkins: Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing

Yesterday, one of my Catholic, pro-life heroes, Dr. Charles Rice, issued an open letter to Fr. John Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Rice has put into words what many pro-life advocates would like to tell Jenkins ourselves. Some of those words follow, beginning with reference to the appalling charges still pending against eighty-eight pro-lifers:

This is not an ordinary case of trespass to land such as would occur if a commuter walks across your lawn and flower bed as a short-cut to the train station. Notre Dame is ordinarily an open campus. Those 88 persons, 82 of whom are represented by Tom Dixon, ND ’84, ND Law School ’93, were arrested not because they were there, but because of who they were, why they were there and what they were saying. Other persons with pro-Obama signs were there but were not arrested and not disturbed. Serious legal and constitutional questions are involved, arising especially from the symbiotic relationship between the Notre Dame Security Police, who made the arrests, and the County Police. This letter is not a legal brief. Rather I merely note that it is disingenuous for Notre Dame to pretend that this is merely a routine trespass case.

Elsewhere in his letter, Dr. Rice alludes to Jenkins' pride, hypocrisy and contempt for the faithful:

Please permit me to speak bluntly about your announced purpose to participate in the March for Life and to “invite other members of the Notre Dame Family to join me.” Notre Dame should have had an official presence at every March for Life since 1973. But until now it never has. Notre Dame students, with the encouragement of Campus Ministry, participate in the March but the University, as such, has not done so. To put it candidly, it would be a mockery for you to present yourself now at the March, even at the invitation of Notre Dame students, as a pro-life advocate while, in practical effect, you continue to be the jailer, as common criminals, of those persons who were authentic pro-life witnesses at Notre Dame. When the pictures of Fr. Weslin’s humiliation and arrest by your campus police was flashed around the world it did an incalculable damage to Notre Dame that can be partially undone only by your public and insistent request, as President of Notre Dame, that the charges be dropped. In my opinion your attachment to the March for Life, including your offering of a Mass for Life, could give scandal in the absence, at least, of such an insistent request to dismiss those charges. Your decision to present an official Notre Dame presence at the March could be beneficial, but not in the context of an unrelenting criminalization by Notre Dame of sincere and peaceful friends of Notre Dame whose offense was their desire to pray, on the campus, for the University and all concerned including yourself. If you appear at the March as the continuing criminalizer of those pro-life witnesses, you predictably will earn not approbation but scorn—a scorn which will surely be directed toward Notre Dame as well. As long as you pursue the criminalization of those pro-life witnesses, your newest pro-life statements will be regarded reasonably as a cosmetic covering of the institutional anatomy in the wake of the continuing backlash arising from your conferral of Notre Dame’s highest honor on the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world.

It goes without saying that Jenkins has effectively abandoned his vocation, forfeiting any moral authority he might once have possessed. The proof is in the pudding: When a lone pro-lifer called out to Barack Obama, "Stop killing our children," Jenkins' graduates shouted him down with "Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can..."

The full text of Dr. Rice's letter is a must-read for anyone concerned with anti-Catholic, anti-life dissent within the Church. It's available at http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/09/open-letter-from-dr-charles-e-rice-to-fr-john-i-jenkins.html

Disco Priests

2009-10-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

How awe inspiring, yuck, disco is dead

The Egyptian

"Mass" at Plobsheim, France, Pentecost 2009 from Donald Jenkins on Vimeo.

Father Roman Polanski ?

2009-10-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

What would the artsy fartsy community say if he was Father Polanski ?

Just askin

The Egyptian

Toys"R"Us Spokeswoman Defends Child Rape

Toys"R"Us spokesperson on Roman Polanski forcibly raping a 13 year-old girl,
"I don't think it was rape-rape."

Toys"R"Us spokeswoman Whoopi Goldberg

Toys"R"Us spokesperson Whoopi Goldberg used her fame to defend child rape this week.
FOX News reported:

Hollywood moguls are pressuring California lawmakers to do what they can to stop the extradition of Roman Polanski, aiming to prevent the Oscar-winning director from being forcibly returned to the U.S. to do time for raping a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s.

The only problem — the government isn't interested.

Actors and actresses from Harrison Ford to Debra Winger have reportedly joined the growing throng of liberal celebrities calling for Polanski to be released following his arrest in Switzerland last week...

Whoopi Goldberg used her spot on ABC's "The View" to try to clear up the record regarding the crime to which Polanski pleaded guilty in 1978.

"I know it wasn't 'rape' rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was 'rape' rape," said Goldberg, dismissing the possibility that Polanski had forced himself on anyone.

Actually, Polansky's crime is worse than people know.

More... It appears Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

the Antichrist ??

2009-09-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

To Obama we Pray??? We are witnessing the birth of a new cult, have we met the Antichrist ???
This is down right scary, and we are supposed to act ecumenical to these devils

The Egyptian

no comment

2009-09-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

says it all

2009-09-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

The Ex Sisters got the gold mine and the Church got the shaft

2009-09-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

And we wonder WHY an Apostolic visitation is need, these nit wits are a good reason. Moving beyond Christ INDEED, some of you vat 2 sisters are asses, there I said it, get over it, smell the coffee and GROW UP

The Egyptian

from the Catholic Key Blog

http://catholickey.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-leave-church-and-keep-deed.html

In 2006, two long-serving Benedictine Sisters from Wisconsin renounced their vows and left their order. The Vatican concurred in releasing them.

Nothing surprising there - Religious leave their orders all the time. What is unique about this case is that the two women figured out how to take all of their former order’s assets with them. In October, a group of leaders from men’s and women’s religious orders will learn how to do the same.

Here’s the background. In 2007, Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink gave the keynote address at the annual convention of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious held in Kansas City. Titled, "A Marginal Life: Pursuing Holiness in the 21st Century"(pdf), her talk looked at different ways various communities of women religious were dealing with decline and evolving. One possible way was to be a “sojourner”:

Sojourners have left the religious home of their fathers and mothers and are traveling in a foreign land, mapping their way as they go. They are courageous women among us. And very well may provide a glimpse into the new thing that God is bringing about in our midst. Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God? A movement the ecclesiastical system would not recognize. A wholly new way of being holy that is integrative, non-dominating, and inclusive. But a whole new way that is also not Catholic Religious Life. The Benedictine Women of Madison are the most current example I can name. Their commitment to ecumenism lead them beyond the exclusivity of the Catholic Church into a new inclusivity, where all manner of seeking God is welcomed. They are certainly religious women, but they are no longer women religious as it is defined by the Roman Catholic Church. They choose as a congregation to step outside the Church in order to step into a greater sense of holiness.

One problem with sojourning “beyond Christ” in a way “the ecclesiastical system would not recognize” is that you have to leave behind the good will of being a Catholic religious sister and begin anew. When you leave the Church, you also leave behind the trappings of the Church – the monastery, the land, the endowment. All of these things were entrusted for an ecclesial purpose and you have chosen to no longer serve that purpose. If you quit the convent, you have to find a new roof.

But the two Benedictine sisters in Wisconsin who wanted to leave their order were in a unique position. They were the last two active members of their community. They had no one to return the keys to. So they took them.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, Benedictine Sisters Mary David Walgenbach and Joanne Kollasch started thinking about leaving the Catholic religious life and starting a way of life the Church would not recognize in 1992. In 2006, they were officially released from their vows.

Between 1992 and 2006, they had a lot of work to do. According to public records, in 1998, they set up a Non-Stock Corporation headed by themselves called the Benedictine Women of Madison, Inc. The new corporation was non-canonical, ie., not connected to or bound by any of the laws of the Church.

In late 2000, the two sisters signed over the deeds for the various parcels of land belonging to their canonical, ecclesial religious order to the non-ecclesial corporation run by themselves. A separate, non-ecclesial foundation was also set up for the benefit of the new Benedictine Women of Madison, Inc.

When the two sisters finally were released from their vows in 2006, they had already transferred the ecclesial property of their order essentially to themselves. They took new vows to their non-Church related order and now run the Holy Wisdom Monastery on the property of their old order’s former high school.

Holy Wisdom Monastery has one other professed member, a Presbyterian minister. They are open to accepting “sisters” of other faiths, but so far no takers. Madison Bishop Robert Morlino has forbidden priests from offering Mass at the monastery, but in late August, they began “sharing the Bread of Life around a common table” at a weekly, inclusive, ecumenical Eucharist at their just-constructed $8 million eco-friendly monastery.

Are there any other religious orders contemplating quitting the Church and taking the Church’s patrimony with them? The Resource Center for Religious Institutes must think so.

RCRI is an organization formed by the merger of two religious resource groups sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. At their National Conference on October 23, participating religious leaders will have the opportunity to attend a workshop called “Going Non-Canonical”. It will be led by the former sister from Wisconsin, Mary David Walgenbach, and Benedictine Father Dan Ward, the canon lawyer who helped the Benedictines of Madison quit the Church. Here’s the description, my emphases:

The story of a small Benedictine community’s journey of becoming non-canonical. The content includes their ecumenical ministry, visioning process, development of an ecumenical board, relationship with the Federation of St. Gertrude and canonical and civil procedures for the transfer of assets.

Why would any leader of a religious community need to learn that?

We have all known this person, now he's in the White House

2009-09-09T05:27:00.001-07:00

Don't Save This Drowning Man

I feel as if I know the President. Like I have met him before.

Some years back I worked with a man who I will call Drew. Drew was the epitome of the Peter principle. Promoted to a level of gross incompetence, in this case a Vice President in a large international firm, Drew was in way over his head. Drew was tall and extroverted to the Nth degree giving him the illusion of command and competence. He spoke real fast and had command of litany of buzzwords that could make your head spin. I suppose this is part of what helped him make it to his position.

I remember when I first met him (he had recently been promoted) he wanted me to get something done for him quickly that had been ignored by him and his staff for some time. Drew was already in way over his head and he knew it and his tail was on the line and he needed me to help him save it. But rather that asking me to do help him out in a pinch and acknowledging the lateness of his request he decided to threaten me while dropping the fact that he was a vice president at least five times in a three minute conversation. When I told him I had my own problems he decided to go above my head. Unfortunately for Drew, the CFO of the company at that time was patient and listened to facts. He chastised Drew for his tardiness and threatening behavior and asked me to see what I could do to help.

That is the way it is with charismatic demagogues particularly when they are in way over their heads. They live in perpetual fear of being found out and they constantly feel the need to double down when they are already out of chips.

So it is with the President. I write this on the eve of the President's speech to congress attempting to save his reputation and his troubled healthcare reform. The President, in over his head and too clever by half, tried to force this health care bill down our throats quickly and by using Congress as cover insulate himself from any criticism. That manifestly did not work. The public outcry against the liberal wishlist of ideas is like nothing that has been seen in this country in recent memory. But rather than reassess his approach and his plans, all indications are that the President intends to double down and force a vote - public option and all. If he does he may succeed in destroying his own party.

Back to Drew for a moment. His general incompetence at last made manifest, Drew was given notice that his contract would not be extended and they allowed him to work for a few months before showing him the door. But Drew, so fearful of admitting his own shortcomings spent those final months tirelessly trying to ruin the reputations of all with whom he was associated. Blaming anyone and everyone else for his own failures. Eventually, they asked Drew not to come to work anymore.

This is the way it works folks. Like the drowning man, the exposed charismatic demagogue will take all around him down with him rather than ever admit he cannot swim. The Democrats in Congress should be wary of trying to save this drowning man lest they be dragged to the bottom as well.

Total Faith In GOD

2009-09-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

forgot where I got this but the bravery and FAITH of the priests in WWII is beyond compare, really people are so soft today

The Egyptian

Once there was a time...

I told this story at dinner the other night. The family liked it, and Puff told me I should write it out on the blog. Like most of my best stories, it isn't my story at all, but my father's, and like many of his best stories, it's from the war.

Dad was at or near the front lines in Italy one day when an officer came down the line. "Any Catholics here," he began. "There's a priest about to say Mass in the next field." Dad took his helmet and rifle and headed over to the next field, as did several other Catholics.

He was appalled when he arrived. The field was wide open, easily visible from the Germans, and exposed to any kind of enemy fire. The men immediately looked for a hill, a shell hole, a rock, a furrow- anything that might give them any sort of cover. Meanwhile, in the middle of the field stood the priest, carefully setting up his Mass kit on a big rock, taking his time and doing it properly, appearing as if he had no concern in the world other than this, and going about it as if he were in a parish back home, and there was no war to trouble anyone or anything.

If there was ever a time for a Tridentine speed Mass, this could have been it. But, to Dad's horror, (and he knew, because he used to be an altar boy at a Cathedral) the priest said the Mass slowly and carefully, doing every movement as prescribed, omitting no prayer, while gunfire raged around them.

At last the priest turned, holding the consecrated host. "Come to Communion!" he shouted out to the men hiding in the field. "I grant you all full absolution. Come!"

Dad's reaction was: "He's got to be kidding." But then he saw it: the soldiers making their way forward to receive communion. Granted, they approached the priest at a dead run, and left at a dead run as soon as it was received. But still they came. Dad, emboldened by the other men, came forward himself, received, thanked God, and raced away.

He stayed in his furrow watching as the priest put away his Mass kit as properly as he set it out, and, when finished and having said his final prayers, the priest snapped his case shut and walked away.

That's the story. Not the best punch line, but the family liked it. I like it for it reminds of a good man I once knew and shall never see again in the flesh. It reminds me that there were other good men like him, once upon a time. Men who believed there were things to stand for, things to fight for, things that were worth risking your life for. And on that list of things worth risking your life over was Mass, and the chance for Communion.

liberal sacrimentals

2009-09-02T05:30:00.001-07:00

This combined with the high amount of hormones in our water, (where do you think all that goes after our bodies digest it, pee, and water treatment does not remove it), but the pill is the holy grail of liberals, so get used to more

Did you know the World Health Organization ranks The Pill as a Group I carcinogen?

by intern Anne Marie

Perhaps the best-kept secret of modern medicine is the link between oral contraceptives and increased breast cancer risk.

While combined oral contraceptives, better known as The Pill, rank as Group I carcinogens according to a 2005 report released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, doctors continue to routinely prescribe the pill for a variety of conditions, ranging from acne to birth control (American Cancer Society, 2008)....

Combined oral contraceptives are composed of estrogen and progesterone or progestin, a synthetic form of progesterone. Estrogen and progesterone are female sex hormones; estrogen thickens the lining of the uterus, and progesterone/progestin prepares the endometrium for implantation of the egg. (National Cancer Institute, 2006).

The reasoning behind a combination of estrogen and progesterone/progestin is that estrogen given on its own increases the risk of uterine cancer. Taking a combination of the 2 confers protection from uterine cancer but increases breast cancer risk.

In short, the science behind the increased breast cancer risk stems from 2 primary mechanisms. In both instances, progesterone/progestin becomes a double-edged sword, as it confers protection from increased uterine cancer risk but "gives permission" for estrogen to negatively affect breast DNA.

First, the combination of estrogen plus progesterone/progestin functions as a genotoxin, meaning it directly damages DNA in the breast. Several estrogen metabolites, or breakdown products, including 4-hydroxy-catechol-estrogen quinine, have been proven to function in this manner (Lanfranchi, 2007).

Second, estrogen functions as a mitogen, or cancer promoter, and estrogen promotes cancer in 2 ways. As seen in the graph, it stimulates an explosion of rapid proliferation of cells in breast lobules, causing a greater likelihood of mutations with the increased rate of division.

Additionally, estrogen promotes speedier development of any already-cancerous cells in the breast (Lanfranchi, 2007).

Why doesn't the American public know about the increased risk? Why is the teenage girl on the pill for acne unaware of the health risks involved? Women deserve better.

THIS IS LIFE

2009-08-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

my first granddaughter, baptized today, this is what life is all about

The Egyptian

Says it All to Me

2009-08-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Small town, Small farm America

2009-08-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

A local young farmer, Brad , 22 , Skip to his friends, was killed in a farm accident at home when a forklift removing a disabled skid loader off a truck tipped and pinned him, he was a classmate of my eldest daughter . His father Paul lost his wife to cancer 4 years ago and just 3 weeks ago remarried another farm widow of 8 years, the poor man is despondent, the whole family is in my prayers. After the funeral mass at Precious Blood Catholic Church, (held there because his home church could not hold the crowd), the procession to the cemetery at St Sebastian Parish was greeted by a show of support by the local young farmers association, they have been doing this every time one of their own is claimed by an accident, I drove through shortly before Mass left out, and took these pictures. The combine has his football jersey in the window. I cried my eyes out as I left. Only in small town, small farm America

The Egyptian

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