2006

12/27/06 - I've noticed that these columns seem to alternate between cranky pastor's rants and spiritual reflections; so, in order to keep the balance, it's time for another cranky pastor moment--and it's another telephone adventure to boot.
   "Is this Father?"
   "Yes, this is Father Michael. How may I help you?"
   "You sound so young!"
   "Thank you. How may I help you?"
   "Where are you from originally?"
   "Bethesda. How may I help you?"
   "Bethesda? Where's that?"
   "Maryland. How may I help you?"
   "I thought most of our people came from the coal regions."
   "How may I help you?"
   "What's your last name?"
   I repeated my Italian name, then added, "How may I help you?"
   "Oh, I guess your mother was one of ours, then."
   "Actually, my mother's family were all German Lutherans. How may I help you?"
   ...long pause... "What time is the Mass for Christmas Eve?"
   "At 5 PM we'll be celebrating Vespers and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil."
   "Thanks." ...click...
          Throughout all of the services for the Nativity and the two Holy Days which followed, I was preoccupied with this call, and not just because it was such a shining example of "P&T" Byzantines ("Pussy Willows and Theophany Water," as opposed to "A&P" Latins). While the problem of twice-a-year Catholics is not nearly as prevalent in the Eastern Churches as it is in the West, it carries with it a very dangerous ethnic dimension. For this caller, being a "Greek Catholic" as he would put it, is not so much a matter of faith and worship as it is one of being in an ethnic club. Without even having met him, I know that his membership in the Ruthenian Church (such as it is) has little to do with the teachings of the Fathers, the spirituality of the desert, or even the Gospel of Jesus Christ; it has to do with pirogues and lekvar rolls and stuffed cabbage and knowing how to pronounce certain seasonal greetings in Slavonic.
          One of our priests, who is of Irish decent, and who is a recognized expert in a certain field, was once giving a lecture at a catechetical conference. When the session was opened for questions, the first question he received was, "What are you doing in our Church?" To be fair, the question was asked tongue-in-cheek and without any malice intended; but it's still disturbing.
          "Our Church." "Our people." For those of us who joined the Ruthenian Church out of conviction rather than birth, the words blister on the ear. And it's not just a matter of a personal insult. The last Ruthenian Catholic stepped off the boat more than 30 years ago; this hasn't been an immigrant Church for two generations now. And while here in Pennsylvania there are still parishes with an ethnic majority, in some of our southern and western parishes you won't find an Eastern European name on the books. As the last of the immigrant Ruthenians dies out, and our children grow up to marry Roman Catholics, what's going to motivate them to continue to practice their faith in the Ruthenian Church? Knowing how to say "Christ is Born" in Slavonic? I don't think so.
          Scott Hann once wrote that the people who appreciate the truth and beauty of Catholicism the least are the ones born into it. He was speaking as a convert to Catholicism in general, but his words can be applied analogously to membership in an individual ritual Church as well. Are our Ruthenian parishes identified by anything other than the fact that our grandparents were born in some village in Slovakia? Do we have anything distinctive to offer a spiritually starved and searching generation other than potato pancakes and stuffed cabbage?
          The Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholic Church possesses such a rich heritage of spirituality, liturgy and music for worship; our services are permeated with theological truth and sublime mystery; our acsetical traditions call the faithful to interior reflection and union with Christ our God in quiet prayer and moral living. There's a whole generation out there, of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who are starving for truth, for beauty, for mystery, for a chance to awaken in themselves the love of God that St. Augustine believed was implanted in their souls at creation. The Ruthenian Church could fill that need like no other Church could. The question is, will "our people" allow it?
          Now, if you will excuse me, I'm gonna go eat a some pirogues. You'll forgive me if I put tomato sauce on them and call it ravioli.

by Priestly Pugilist

12/21/06 - The Birth of Christ is a celebration of joy. The fact that God became man and entered into our human life is seen in the icon of the Nativity. As in many festal icons, several episodes are grouped together and shown simultaneously.
          Wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger is the Christ Child. All the details of the Icon relate to His presence. This presence shines radically with the black opening of the cave in which He was born. This contrast is often seen in the writings of the Fathers of the Church in terms of the spiritual light of Christ's birth radiating through the shadow of death encompassing man. The black mouth of the cave, then symbolically, is precisely this fallen world in which the "Sun of Righteousness” has dawned, this wilderness which the "Light of Wisdom" has illumined. As in the Gospel, all mankind is called to this event. The Wise Men represent the learned and astute, and the shepherds represent the humble of this world. A multitude of Angels give glory to God and announce this good news to mankind.
          The Virgin Mother is shown half-sitting, supported by a hammock-type bed used by the early Jews in their travels--her gaze fixed not on her Son but on her husband, as if in sympathy for his feelings regarding the unusual nature of her pregnancy. Striking is the absence of the usual sufferings of childbirth which is iconographically seen to be an indication of the virgin-birth of Christ.
          In the bottom left corner, Joseph sits in painful thought, while the Devil, under the guise of an old and bent shepherd (or perhaps just a symbol of worldly concerns), suggests new doubts and suspicions to him about the nature of his wife’s pregnancy. In the opposite corner, two women are seen bathing the newborn Infant, to show the real humanity of Jesus; one even tests the temperature of the water with her hand--a stark rebuke to those heretics of the first three centuries who denied the real humanity of Christ.
          All of creation takes part in the birth of the Savior. In the cave, the Infant lies guarded by an ox and a donkey. While the Gospels do not speak of them, all icons of the Nativity portray them because of the manifest fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, "An ox knows its owner, and an ass its master's manger" (Is.1:3). The mountainside is a backdrop to the event. While it bears little correspondence to the terrain of Bethlehem in Judaea, it parallels a line from the prayer of the Prophet Habakkuk: "God comes from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Covered are the heavens with His glory, and with His praise the earth is filled" (Hab. 3:3).
          One final detail is the tree depicted in the center of the bottom of the icon, which carries a double meaning. In the words of the Prophet Isaiah, "But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him" (Is. 11:1-2). Some ancient traditions also view this tree as that from which the wood of the cross would later be taken, prefiguring the death of the Child who’s birth we are celebrating.
          The Icon of the Nativity calls us to praise and glorify the Birth of Christ. With the hymns of Vespers we too say: "What shall we bring to You, 0 Christ, Who, for our sake, was born on earth as man? Every creature brings thanks to You: Angels their songs; the heavens a star; Wise Men gifts; Shepherds amazement; the earth a cave; the wilderness a manger; but we - the Virgin Mother."

by Father Michael Venditti

12/18/06 - People for whom faith is a stumbling block like Christmas. Christmas presents to us a very non-threatening side of Christianity. Christmas trees, presents, the expectant joy of children, department store Santa Clauses, the so-called "Christmas spirit" which motivates us to smile at people to whom we wouldn't normally give the time of day. The Baby in the manger is a much more acceptable God to the worldly: he is small and weak, cute and beautiful, undemanding and unthreatening. What a panacea religion can be when we can picture our God as being perpetually in diapers!
          But the Advent of the incarnation--the birth of our Lord, the Baby in the manger--is a historical event. It happened in the past and is now over. It will not happen again. We can kneel before a manger scene and pray to the Baby, if that makes us feel better; but, the one who hears those prayers is not a Baby any longer. He is a man, he is God, he is the one who hung on the Cross, he is the one who rose from the dead and who sits at the right hand of the Father. And even if we choose to cling to a comfortable image of him helpless in a manger, he does not view the world now through a baby's eyes. And neither should we.
          All of life is an advent; and, like the first, it will end with the coming of the Savior. Let's not forget that as peaceful as the images of the first Advent are to us, they were not so to our Lady. Pregnant yet unmarried, totally alone in the awful commission that was entrusted to her, she rushed to do the will of God with a joyful heart. We can, if we want, tremble in fear at the prospect of the advent we are yet to experience, and hide behind the consolation that the image a baby provides; but there is no need. If Mary could face the Advent before her without fear, it was because she did not hesitate to do what God required.
          How do we respond to the advent which challenges us? Do we say, "Next year I'll get to confession. Next year I'll examine my life. Next year, the spiritual aspects of Christmas. But I don't have time right now. I've got relatives coming, and shopping, and the kids, and cooking, and in-laws to worry about. Next year, but not now. I just don't have the time"? Will that speech carry any weight before the throne of judgment? Is our religion just a matter of knowing that God loves us, and we should be kind to others, and everything will be O.K.? You'd have to wipe out two thirds of the New Testament to make it that. But if it is something more, more than just a "touchy-feely" philosophy of life, something that has implications for our final end, something which is symbolized not by a Baby in a manger but by a Man on a cross, then we have a serious business before us in celebrating the Nativity of Our Lord: the business of examining our lives, confessing our sins, and saying to our Lord, without fear, "Be it done unto me according to thy word."

by Father Michael Venditti

12/13/06 - The story of the Christmas trees being removed (then put back up) at the airport in Seattle made national news. Sued by a local rabbi because there were no Jewish symbols as well, I thought the airport's reaction was reasonable given the circumstances. How, the airport administrator argued, can the airport cater to every single religious sensibility? After all, they're trying to run an airport, and don't have the time or resources to spend in cultural anthropology. No doubt he was right when he suggested that if they went ahead and put up Jewish symbols along side the Christmas trees, then every religious group under the sun would come around asking for their particular symbol to be displayed as well, as if the display of religious or quasi religious holiday symbols is some kind of intramural competition. No doubt, everyone would miss their connections as they attempted to negotiate the obsticle course of exponentially mulitplying religous symbols. It strikes me that a religionist must be rather insecure in his faith if, by simply gazing on the symbol of someone else's faith, he is nervously offended.
          The story is disturbing on a couple of levels: first, because a Christmas tree is not, strictly speaking, a religious symbol. It has nothing to do with the Christian faith. But, more to the point, the whole mess seems to sidestep what is really at the root of the whole question of displaying the marks of one religion along side those of another. Religion is not relative. Jesus is not simply my God because I am a Christian, but not your God because you're not. Either Jesus is God or He is not. His divinity is not dependent on whether anyone outside of Himself acknowledges Him. There is no such thing as "For me, Jesus is God." He's not God "for me;" He is God in and of Himself! If I were to say that Jesus is not God, then I would be wrong. Even if the whole world were to cease to believe in Him--even if the Church herself were to fall into apostasy and deny the faith and there were no Christians left on the face of the earth--Jesus would remain God; and all of us would be faced with the truth of our apostasy on the day of judgment.
          Religious relativism--the notion that one religion is as good as another--may be the most prevalent heresy of our day. We are told, sometimes even by our religious leaders, that we must be sensitive to other faiths; but what does that mean? Does it mean that I must accept the fact that my fellow man doesn't believe in Christ, and pretend that his lack of faith is something with which I should be comfortable? If so, then Jesus certainly did us a disservice when he commanded us to "go forth and preach to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
          When we hear the ranting of Muslim leaders, like the president of Iran, talking about Jihad and the need to destroy all religions other than theirs, it's very easy to fall into religious relativism as a reaction, thinking that what's wrong with this attitude is the notion of converting people to one's own religion. But that's not the problem with it. The problem with it is that the religion to which they are trying to convert people is not true. Christianity is true; which is why we are required to convert anyone and everyone we meet. Of course we can argue about means--converting by persuasion, example, preaching, prayer, violence--but that is not relevant to the point. That argument is only prescient once we have all agreed that our religion is true, that all others are false, and we have a divine commission to spread our faith everywhere to everyone.

by Priestly Pugilist

12/1/06 - During this time of Phillip’s Fast we celebrate the feasts of saints about whom we know a lot more than we do about Nicholas of Myra; saints whose service to the Church seems to have been far more outstanding than his. Most of the stories we were taught as children connected with his life belong more to legend than to history; and even most of the history we know we can’t prove with any certainty. Historians over the centuries have posited that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that he took part in the Council of Nicaea, that he was imprisoned during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. And if we can’t be certain about even these innocuous sounding facts, then what are we to think of the hundreds of miracles and acts of charity attributed to him by popular legend, which is why he is called the Wonderworker. When Kaiser Otto II took a Greek woman as his empress, he brought not only her but also her devotion to St. Nicholas to Germany; which has the dubious distinction of having turned this popular saint into something called Santa Clause. Probably no other saint has been more portrayed both in western art and Eastern iconography; and many Eastern Catholic Churches, including our own Ruthenian Church, count St. Nicholas as their patron. We have more Churches dedicated to him than any other single saint; and every icon screen we have shows his image. And yet, in spite of all of this, there are only two facts we know about him for certain: that he was bishop of a town called Myra in Asia Minor, and that he died sometime around the middle of the fourth century.
          But if every legend has some basis in fact, then there is some significance to the fact that most of those legends have to do with great acts of charity and help to others, as well as wise and prudent service as a bishop. Think, for a moment, of the Troparion of his feast with which we are so familiar: “The sincerity of your deeds has revealed you to your people as a teacher of moderation, a model of faith, and an example of virtue.” most of these other saints that we commemorate during Phillip’s Fast -- Ambrose of Milan, John of Damascus, Clement of Rome, Gregory the Decapolite -- they’re all remembered as great theologians and thinkers, great teachers and, in the case of St. Clement, a great pope. But St. Nicholas isn’t remembered for any of that. What he’s remembered for -- what all the legends about him, true or not, point to -- is exactly what we sing about in the Troparion: “The sincerity of your deeds...”
          We’re all familiar with the cliché “actions speak louder than words.” Well, St. Nicholas is the living proof of that. When a man leaves absolutely no written record of himself behind, it’s almost a sure bet that a millennium and a half later he’s going to be forgotten. If he isn’t, it can only mean that the way he lived his life must really have made an impression! So many of the ancient Fathers of the Church we remember because they left behind great writings that survive and continue to nourish the Church today; if they hadn’t, they’d have been forgotten long ago. And maybe this is the reason that St. Nicholas’ feast is a Holy Day while the other saints feasts’ are not. There are a lot of saints who lived what they believed -- if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be saints; but there are very few, at least from that period, who are remembered for the example of their lives alone; and even fewer who’s lives continue to inspire devotion long after the actual events of their lives have been forgotten.
          But when you think about it, you don’t need to know the events of such a life; for all you have to do is open up the Gospel and read the life of Christ, and there you will find the life of every saint. For that is really what a saint is: someone who reproduces in his own life the life of Christ. Of couse, when you read the life of Christ you realize very quickly that this is exactly how Jesus is asking all of us to live. And as we prepare, during this Phillip’s fast, to celebrate the birth of our Savior, if we have not yet thought much about what we will say in confession, we might want to take that Troparion of St. Nicholas, and see how much of it could be said about us: do the sincerity of OUR deeds reveal US to others as teachers of moderation, models of faith and examples of virtue? And, if not, how can we change to make it so?

by Father Michael Venditti

11/27/06 - During my time as web master of the Eparchy's official web site, I would receive all kinds of e-mail from the Faithful (and from the not-so-Faithful, too) about all sorts of things -- kudos, complaints, ruminations, expostulations, rants, pants -- despite the fact that the site clearly states that the Eparchy doesn't do business by e-mail and if they want to say something to the bishop they need to put a stamp on it. One of these was from an irate member of "our good people" fuming over the closure of one of our parishes in Florida. "We have money here," he growled. "We have people attending. I don't see any reason why this parish must close." And I don't doubt that he didn't.
          Naively, I wrote back: "You may have money and you may have people; what you don't have is a priest because we don't have one to send you. Now, if you had been successful in convincing your son or your grandson to go the seminary, we could talk." I never got a reply.
          Back in the late 90's, I was a pastor of a parish in New Jersey when my former pastor in another parish passed away. Because I was familiar with that parish, the bishop asked me to take it on as an additional responsibility. All went smoothly until our first Christmas, when I had to provide services for both parishes by myself. "We've never had a Christmas Liturgy so late," whined a woman from one parish; "Why is there only one Liturgy for Christmas?" barked a man from the other.
          "Because I can't be in two places at once," I stupidly replied, thinking that logic and the laws of physics might mean something.
          "Why can't you just get another priest to do one?" the man snarled back. This time I resisted the temptation to say, "If this parish had more vocations among your sons and grandsons, maybe I could."
          In some Roman Catholic dioceses they now have priest-less parishes, where a lay person or a deacon gives out Holy Communion on Sunday with hosts consecrated by a priest during his last visit, whenever that was. We don't do that in the Ruthenian Church because -- as Pope John Paul II once pointed out -- it is important that the Eastern Churches maintain their historical & theological understanding of the link between the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Priesthood, not only in its celebration but even in its distribution; nor would (or even should) the Holy See allow an Eastern Catholic Church to make such a unilateral change in ligurgical practice so foreign to the sacramental theology of the East, and which would serve to further separate us from the Orthodox Churches with whom we have an important ecumenical relationship. That's why so many of our priests are serving Liturgies at ungodly hours and then burning gas racing to someplace else and -- in some cases -- racing someplace else after that; all the while smiling dutifully whenever the time of the service isn't compliant with the visit to grandma's or approved before hand by the Pop Warner Football League. As for the talk our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, gave on the importance of the Lord's Day and how we should schedule our Sunday around the Holy Eucharist and not the other way around -- well, let's just say that's a language in which most American Catholics, Eastern and Western, are no longer fluent.
          Fortunately, our two parishes have been served by one priest for over thirty years, so everyone here is used to the situation. Though every once in a while there remains a need to point out that scheduling services isn't simply a matter of logistically arranging start times on a chart: a priest is a human being who needs to eat something, have a bowel movement, take his medicine or maybe just put his rear end on a chair for fifteen minutes in between breaking the local speed limits.
          Still, I do feel bad about that one man who called last year and asked what time the Divine Liturgy was for Christmas in one particular parish. When I told him the time, he screeched back, "That's too early!" I hung up.

by Priestly Pugilist

11/22/06 -

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America: A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
          No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.
          I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
          In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln

11/17/06 - I was doing some "Fall cleaning" among my old computer files and came across this relic -- it was written by then news commentator Tony Snow, and reflected the national mood just a couple of days after 9/11/2001:

Good and evil almost never express themselves as harshly and clearly as they did Tuesday morning. People we don't know slaughtered people we do, and they did it with contemptuous calm. Yet, even as clouds of dust and smoke rose from the rubble, even as family members tortured by hope and doubt took to the streets with pictures and pleas, even as mobs celebrated in Gaza, Cairo, and Baghdad, something shook itself sluggishly to life and that something is a sense of ourselves. Kindness flourished amid the flames: a couple carried a disabled man down 68 flights of stairs; a priest crouched to give last rites as a mighty tower collapsed, and the hand of God closed above him; a man and woman, their hope gone, held each other and leaped. A solitary candle, a flag, a tear. These are the tokens of our renewal.
          The United States had a spirit before it had a name -- one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers, we are again today. We once were a nation under God, we are again today. Our enemies attacked one nation, they will encounter another. For they underestimated us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and hope, we've summoned what's best and noblest in us -- we are again Americans.

Isn't it facinating how quickly a national mood can change?
          In other news: thanks to everyone who helped make this year's St. Michael's Day celebration a success. We had lots of good food, and everyone was kind enough not to tell me how much they hated my crab soup. And congratulations to all our raffle winners!

by Priestly Pugilist

11/10/06 - This week we began the fasting period known as Phillip’s Fast. It’s called that because it begins on the day after the feast of St. Phillip, and lasts until Christmas. Sometimes it’s called the “Christmas Lent.” It’s somewhat longer than the Roman Catholic practice of Advent, which lasts only four weeks; Phillip’s Fast lasts almost six weeks. And like Advent, the focus is one of purifying ourselves for the celebration of the incarnation, particularly through reception of the sacrament of confession. The Gospel lesson for the Sunday prior is the parable of the Good Samaritan.
          When our Lord explains to the rabbi that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, and the rabbi responds with the question, “But who is my neighbor?” the rabbi knows very well the answer to that question. He’s hoping, of course, that our Lord will fall prey to the temptation to try and show himself off in front of an audience of religious scholars by giving them an answer so full of profound and didactic sophistry that the rabbi will be able to pick it apart and find some flaw in it that will enable him to expose Jesus for the charlatan he believes him to be. But our Lord resists the temptation and sticks to the simplicity of his overall message, responding to the question with an almost childlike story which makes his meaning perfectly clear.
          There are times when we chafe at simplicity, because simplicity doesn’t give us a way out. We like to take difficult questions, particularly ones that deal with what’s right and what’s wrong, and pick them apart and analyze them and look at them from five or six different angles, because when we do that we have a better chance of finding an answer that’s more to our liking then the one that appears at face value. And we justify this kind of moral sophistry by saying that we want to be thorough, look at every detail, cover all the bases. But covering all the bases doesn’t necessarily guaranty a home run; and sometimes the best play is not to even step up to the plate but accept things as they first appear.

by Father Michael Venditti

11/2/06 - Following up on the previous column on deceptive voters' guides directed at Catholics, this time around the playing field is not given over entirely to abortion; those darling little stem cells are also in the game. And like they do with almost every moral issue in the news, the journos have done their level best to convince everyone that if you oppose research involving them, that means you want people to be sick, you want Michael J. Fox to twitch and convulse even more, and you want grandma to be a drooling vegetable. But if you could only break free from your irresponsible and narrow-minded religious perspective and vote the "right" way, no one will ever be sick again, grandma will be calculating the square root of pi, and Michael J. Fox (who was so cute in "Back to the Future") will qualify to drive your kid's school bus.
          But, true to form, you don't get the whole truth, which means that you don't get the truth at all. The distinction between adult stem cells taken from non-lethal sources like amniotic fluid or umbilical cords, and embryonic stem cells taken from aborted children, is ignored and treated like some kind of irrelevant hairsplitting. But for the Christian, the distinction is crucial, not only morally but also scientifically. Morally, you don't kill someone in order to treat another; but scientifically, the evidence is just as compelling: to date, adult stem cells, taken without killing anyone, have shown promise in the treatment of 72 different diseases; embryonic stem cells, harvested from dead babies, have shown promise in treating 0 diseases. The reason for the difference is still being studied, but many scientists believe it is linked to the unstable nature of embryonic cells, which might explain the tumors and cancers that often result in patients treated with them, and the 0 success rate using them.
          An intelligent person might ask, "If the embryonic cells don't work, why all the hubbub?" Simple. Abortion is the sacrament of secular America. Misleading Americans into thinking that cells taken from aborted babies can cure anything provides a seemingly rational reason for keeping abortion legal, and makes anyone who opposes it feel guilty. Just remember: whenever a politician uses the phrase "stem cells" without preceding it with either the word "adult" or "embryonic," he's blowing smoke -- smoke designed to keep you in the dark about the truth.

In other news: Our oil company reports that our new boiler is sitting in their shop ready to be installed. The hang up? We're waiting on the variance from Harrisburg needed to install it in our present boiler room. Once received, the project should take about three days. In the mean time, I have to feed water manually into the boiler and shut off the feed to keep it from overfilling. Not an easy task to coordinate when I have to be at Ss. Peter & Paul's just prior to our Sunday morning Liturgy at St. Michael's . Hopefully, it won't be too much longer.

by Priestly Pugilist

10/19/06 - Well, the U.S. elections are coming up, and that means another crop of Voter's Guides designed to give Catholics permission to yank the lever for pro-abortion cadidates. The lastest to hit the market is called "Voting the Common Good: a Practical Guide for Conscientous Catholics." It differs from previous attempts to convince Catholics that they can vote for pro-abortion candidates by paying lip service to themes such as "Life" and "Family" and by quoting such notables as Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Clearly the heavy names are intended not to instruct the voter but to silence whatever objections believing Christians (renamed in election years as "the Christian Right") might have about voting for people who espouse ideas abhorant to the teachings of the Church.
          "Voting the Common Good" uses the shameless technique of deception to convince simple minded Catholics that they can, indeed, vote for a pro-choice candidate by quoting out of context a statement from 2004 in which the then Cardinal Ratzinger supposedly said it was O.K. to vote for such a person. Unfortunately, the guide doesn't tell the whole story. What the Cardinal was addressing in 2004 was a situation in which all the candidates in a given election were "pro-choice," giving the Catholic the choice of either voting against the teachings of his Church or not voting at all. In such a predicament the Cardinal said it's licit to cast one's vote for the least pestilential candidate (e.g., the one who's willing to draw the line at partial birth abortion, if he exists). "Voting the Common Good" turns this permission on its head in an attempt to convince Catholics that they can vote for any pro-abortion candidate when the Church has clearly taught that they cannot. It then goes on to suggest that a Catholic's vote for a pro-choice candidate isn't so bad if the person he's voting for is willing to off-set his pro-abortion position by supporting all kinds of social programs for unwed mothers. But let's not forget that there were lots of "good" Nazis in Germany in 1943 who, while they may not have promised to outlaw the gassing of Jews, did support Reich-based family clinics and government assistance to orphans and pregnant women; and a lot of German Catholics voted for them and swept the Nazis into power. With the same technique, "Voting for the Common Good" tells Catholics that they should look beyond the abortion issue and consider a candidate's position on other "life issues," and not turn a blind eye to poverty, war, the homeless, etc.
          The problem with this is that murder (i.e., abortion) is not commesurate with any temporal benefits the state might provide or withhold from its citizens, and it's dishonest to claim the contrary. There are electoral races in which the rival candidates propose radically different and mutually exclusionary public policies on abortion: one policy exposes a disfavored class of human beings to unjust killing, the rival policy would protect the same class from that fate. In such races, you can use your vote to make a concrete endorsement or rejection of a fundamental human good. You can contribute to a beneficent outcome or contribute to a maleficent one.

by Priestly Pugilist

10/14/06 - We all know someone who was turned away by a priest when they went to have a baby baptized because the parents were not practicing their faith. And what is it we always say when we hear of that? We say, “Why punish the baby for the sins of the parents?” And why do we think the baby is being punished when the priest refuses to do the baptism? Because we think the sacraments are magic. But a sacrament given to someone without faith is like a seed which is given no water or sunlight. It doesn’t grow just because you put it in the dirt; without these other necessary conditions, it just sits there and rots. The same is true of the Blessed Eucharist for someone who is not in the state of grace; someone who is in an invalid marriage for example, or some other situation which excludes them from the sacraments. These people are not being excluded from the sacraments because they’re being punished for something. And such people will often go to a church where they’re not known to receive Communion, because they think the Eucharist is a magic charm which will do something for them; but they receive nothing. The condition of their souls makes the transmission of grace from the Eucharist impossible. The only thing that can bring such a person closer to God is to resolve the state of his soul, so that the grace of the sacraments can become active again.
          But what is true regarding our relationship to the Holy Mysteries of the Church -- the Sacraments -- is even more true regarding our relationship to God in prayer. Back when I was working as a chaplain in a securlar hospital, there was much talk about spirituality from the state-required Director of Pastoral Care. She was convinced that spirituality has nothing to do with religion; that even secular hospitals were now realizing the need to care for the “spiritual” needs of the patient. And, of course, what she meant by spiritual has nothing to do with faith. Unfortunately, this idea is becoming alarmingly popular: there are people all over the place who don’t even believe in God who are claiming that they “meditate.” Well, excuse me, but I have no need for a spirituality that has nothing to do with my eternal salvation. I choose to worship God not because it satisfies me emotionally, but because it is my duty to do so: my love for God compels me to worship Him because He deserves my worship whether I feel like it or not.
          Spirituality without religion is nothing more than mysticism, and mysticism is just one step shy of circus side show magic. True spirituality has more to do with ascetecism. It does not deal with things like meditation, breathing techniques, getting in touch with our inner child, inventoring our emotions, or anything like that; it has to do with morality: how we live our lives, how we purge from our lives all the things that can and do distract us from God, how we nourish our relationship with God through authentic forms of prayer and frequent recourse to the sacraments of the Church.

by Father Michael Venditti

10/11/06 - I suppose it was predictable: as the population of the United States gets ready to cruise past the 300,000,000 mark, the fourth estate is already rolling out its big guns for another left flank manuvuer against Catholic teaching, veiled under the guise of social concern. And the call to arms is "The US is eating up the world!"
          Years ago, when there were still moms and pops taking some liberal ideas seriously around the kitchen table, blowing the over-population bugle could rally a fair number of troops, but not anymore. France is offering huge -- and I mean really HUGE -- personal tax incentives to any family with more than three children; and Japan is in virtual mourning since they discovered their population is actually shrinking. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized nation with a growing population. So, if you're a tired old retread from the 60's looking for a donkey to pin the over-population tail on, you've only got two targets left: the US and the Catholic Church.
          But be warned: don't raise the ire of the fourth estate by suggesting that poverty and hunger and other global social ills have nothing to do with the population. Don't dare prove to them that, if you took the world's population and stood them shoulder to shoulder, back to chest, they wouldn't fill half of Long Island. Attack the myth of what even some well-meaning Catholics, often in the name of Natural Family Planning, call "responsible parenthood" and you could very easily be burned at the stake as a heretic. Remind a Catholic that it isn't just a matter of means, and that NFP can be just as much an enabler of selfishness as artificial contraception, and even white-haired Monsignor O'Irish will think you're some kind of right-wing kook.
          Back when the Church was openly encouraging her faithful to have large families, the reasons were both spiritual and social: social because, as an oppressed minority, Catholics needed numbers to perserve their rights in society; spiritual in as much as life is much too precious to simply preserve -- it needs to be passed on -- and because the marital act, ordinarily a Godly act, becomes just the opposite when the transmission of human life is deliberately avoided. My questions is: Who was the Pope, where is the document, when was it ever taught that Catholics should no longer have large families? It seems I missed that memo.

by Priestly Pugilist

10/10/06 - It is very easy, I think, to watch the news and become upset or depressed or angry or all of the above, and to think that the world is simply coming apart at the seams; but is it really? I actually had a conversation not long ago with someone who was complaining about how upset she was about everything that she was seeing in the news, and I don’t think she was expecting the advice I gave her, because my advice to her was to switch it off. It’s like that old joke where the man goes in to see his doctor and he says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” And the doctor replies, “Then, don’t do that.” If watching the news upsets us, why is the advice to simply turn it off not acceptable to us? Because we’re afraid that if we do, we’re going to miss something.
          But what is it exactly we think we’re going to miss, and what do we think we can do about it? Not more than 30 years ago evening news broadcasts on TV were no more than 15 minutes. Was that because there was much less going on? When 24 hour cable news channels first appeared, the idea wasn't that anyone would watch the news for 24 hours; the idea was that someone could catch 15 or 20 minutes of the latest news when they had time to watch it instead of having to schedule their day around some stupid broacast. I challenge you to watch the news for 24 hours and then identify four major stories that are new or have changed in that period. But think about it: the man who reads the news to you on TV in the evening is not going to come on and say, “Well, folks, nothing much new happened today, so you might was well go watch Sienfeld.” Remember that journalism is not a public service; it’s a business. It makes its money by selling advertising; but advertising doesn’t make any money unless a lot of people are watching. So, the talking head spouting news at you has a commercial interest in doing everything he can to make sure your eyes and ears are glued on him and his channel as often and as long as possible. So, no matter what is actually happening in the world -- or not happening as the case may be -- he’s got to find a way to make sure you think the world is falling apart, and you’d better darn well watch it or you’re gonna miss it. If he’s got footage of some explosion or battle, he’ll play it for you over and over again, each time embellishing it with even more intense descriptions of the carnage; then he’ll truck out the ubiquitous panel of experts and analysts and retired generals who will each tell you how this is, indeed, the most important and critical thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe; and if you so much as leave to go to the kitchen and get a Coke, you’ll be sorry because you’ll miss the end of the world.
          My point is simply this: world events are not unfolding any faster than they have in the past, and the world is not falling apart at the seams. If it seems that way, that’s because the events of the day are being packaged and repackaged in an ever increasing sensationalistic way for the purpose of doing exactly what they're doing: causing us to park our rear ends in front of the TV, getting us all hot and bothered over events about which we can do nothing; nothing except, of course, to pray, which we should be doing every day anyway. So, the advice of the doctor in the joke is actually quite sound: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Then, don’t do that.”
          “Father, I get upset when I watch the news.” “Then, don’t watch the news.” I can guarantee that, if the world comes to an end, you’re not going to miss it because you weren’t watching the news.

by Father Michael Venditti

10/09/06 - Imagine the local librarian telling your teenager, "If you and your friends reserve a room and use our Internet connection to view pornography, the library will not interfere. Please remember, however, that you cannot hold a religious worship service in the room." Problematic? The Contra Costa Library Commission does not seem to think so.
          The Contra Costa Library Commission supports the efforts of the American Library Association to resist any government efforts to filter or monitor its Internet systems. In 2003, it even passed a resolution proclaiming that it "opposes the use of governmental power to suppress the free and open exchange of knowledge and information."
          Of course, at the time it already had no problem using government power to suppress religious worship on its premises. It maintained a policy that library rooms "should not be used for religious services." While the East Contra Costa Democratic Club, the Sierra Club, or Narcotics Anonymous could meet without fear of viewpoint discrimination, religious worshippers could not.
          Thus, one year later when the Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries held a "Women of Excellence" conference which included a praise and worship service, the library staff told them to cease and desist. It also canceled their future meeting scheduled in the library. The library could put up with people talking about saving the environment or the nation but it could not stomach allowing anyone to preach about saving souls. Apparently that is taking tolerance and religious liberty too far.
          The local county attorney defended the library by claiming, "Had we said Christians can use this but Jews can't, that would be discrimination," but "religious worship services is a category of speech that we are allowed to exclude." This sounds like someone from a country club saying, "We do not discriminate against African-Americans, Latinos or women, we just do not allow them to talk about certain subjects here."
          At first, a district court ruled the prohibition an obvious case of religious discrimination, but last month two Ninth Circuit judges overruled the District Court. There is nothing wrong with prohibiting religious worship in a limited public forum, they argued, as long as the rule is consistently enforced. Plus, they maintained that a library is meant for "the acquisition of knowledge through reading, writing and quiet contemplation," and it should not be allowed to be "transformed into an occasional house of worship."
          So if a group of Catholic monks asked for a room for quiet contemplation and reading of the Bible, would that be worship? Of course, this is really the heart of the matter. Does the government now get to define and regulate religious worship? Would a devout Muslim hoping to reserve a room for prayer also be prohibited from using the room? When would a talk by a local pastor become a worship service? If there is anything the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was meant to forbid is the government defining what religious worship is and is not.
          What the library should regulate, of course, is what librarians have always regulated -- the volume of a meeting. In fact, it appears that this was the real problem in this case. The worship was loud. Unfortunately, instead of giving a usual library "shhh!" Contra Costa requested and will now continue to ask religious believers, "Please take your worship outside where it belongs." If I ever get caught holding a prayer meeting with some friends in Contra County Library, however, I may be tempted to respond, "Oh, we're just discussing the porn we're viewing through your internet connection." Unfortunately, the Contra County Commission will likely say, "Whew, for a moment I thought you were holding a religious service!"

10/03/06 - Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant indulges his antipathy to the Church in his most recent effort, tee-ing off on Rep. Foley's celebration of diversity in order to backhand the priesthood. Oliphant's anti-Catholic imagination is beginning to creak, as he attempted the same joke eight or nine years ago, with a one-gloved Michael Jackson standing outside an imaginary "St. Paedophilia's" and asking to become a priest.
          The cartoon, obviously, is intended to be offensive, and it's semi-successful in its goal. But there's another sense in which its appearance is encouraging. As long as the editors of the Washington Post (and the other papers that run the cartoon) are asymmetrically eager to go after the Catholic Church -- and to contradict their own sanctimoniously propounded principles in doing so -- it proves the Church must be doing something right. The time to worry is when the Post becomes solicitous of Catholic sensitivities.
          More telling still, Oliphant's jab at sexual hypocrisy is, in spite of itself, an acknowledgment that the Church's teaching still has the power to sting. Feeble as his attempt may be, the jab hinges on the covert understanding that man-boy venery is bad. In that respect Oliphant's malice is a rogue shell that explodes in the breech of the artillery piece: to treat pederasty as risibly wicked does more damage, in the long run, to the Washington Post's Style section than it does to the Catholic Church, and that goes double for the editorial page. After all, who is it that's beating the drums for a change in sexual recreations, and who wants to defend the absolute moral norm? When the laughter dies (right quickly in this instance), what remains intact is the moral force of Catholic teaching.

by Diogenes, Catholic World News

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