05:51 PM 12/28/2008 - It is not possible, I believe, for us not to be edified by the example of Joseph, the foster father of our Lord, in how blindly he trusted in the will of God. He takes Mary as his wife under what were very unusual circumstances to say the least; he moves his family here, there and everywhere based on nothing more tangible than messages received by angels in dreams; and he does it all without expressing a single word of doubt or concern. We don’t know if that meant he had no doubts and concerns; we only know that he never voiced them. His blind trust and immediate obedience to God’s various commands, while they may strike us as example of docility, are in actuality, examples of a solid manliness. He knows, as any good father should, that his primary job in life is to guide his family in the ways of grace. The father has no more important responsibility than to see that his family pleases God.
          Of course, Joseph had the advantage of having as a partner the Mother of God. She, after all, is not going to object to anything he does in obedience to God’s will. Not every father is so fortunate. Sometimes the situation is reversed, in which the wife must take the lead in guiding her husband to know and follow God’s will. Every family is different because every family is composed of different personalities. But what is important for our reflection today, I believe, is the fact that God chose to begin the work of the redemption of mankind within the context of a family; and this is important to think about.
          When God decided to redeem man and come to earth, I suppose he could have done it anyway he wanted. He could have just appeared, fully grown. If he wanted to be a bit more dramatic, he could arrive like Elijah, on a fiery chariot. But instead he chose to be born as other men are born: to a human mother, in a real family. That choice was deliberate. It wasn't an accident. He didn't have to do it that way, but the first thing that the God-man blessed with his presence on earth was a home.
          Everything that's worth something in this life costs a little pain. And in this sense, there's nothing more expensive than love. It's impossible to love without risking some hurt; but is it better, therefore, not to love? When couples live together without benefit of marriage, as so many do these days, they will often defend their actions saying, "It's better than getting hurt. What if it doesn't work out?" But there's something noble in the risk. It's that willingness to take the risk of pain that says to the other person, "I am loved." Maybe that's the reason that couples who live together before marriage often don't stay together, even after they're married.
          There is nothing in this life more risky and more able to cause us pain than our own families. But is there even one among us who would be willing to get rid of them? They give us security, they teach our children virtue, they are the very foundation on which civilization is based. And sometimes they hurt us. Maybe that's why they're in danger. The family is threatened by a movement bent on completely redefining it. Men pretending to marry men, women pretending to marry women, then suing Catholic adoption agencies for not giving them children. In city after city all over the country, Catholic bishops are being forced to dissolve their adoption agencies because of laws which require them to violate the law of God. And there seems to be so little outrage among Catholic lay people, who continue to vote into office the people who make these laws. And maybe the reason so many people are willing to tolerate these things is because they've been hurt too many times. The solid family, based on a monogamous marriage, is a risky business.
          But was it less risky for the Holy Family of Nazareth? Mary's family didn't believe that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Who would? Would you have? And Joseph's family couldn't believe their eyes when he married her anyway. And there was no conjugal love between the two, as the Church teaches that she remained a virgin all her life. That's enough of a strain on any marriage.
          It is a sad fact of life that it hurts sometimes to live in a family. And families that are resolved to stay together often find themselves very much like sheep among wolves, very much like the Seventy Disciples, whose feast we commemorate next Sunday, whom our Lord sent out in one of the Gospel lessons. When, at the beginning of the passage, our Lord says that the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, many people just assume he's talking about the holy priesthood. But this event in the life of our Lord occurs long before Jesus chooses his twelve apostles. These men he sends out to preach the kingdom are laymen. We can presume that many of them had families. And our Lord charges them not to be concerned with how they're going to survive on their mission, but to be confident that God will provide. The decision to marry and start a family is a courageous one, trivialized by those who marry but who don't start families which is essentially an act of cowardice.
          From baptism onward every Christian is called by Christ to perform a mission. For those who have embraced the covenant of marriage, that mission lies in the raising of children in the faith. Maybe they feel ready for the burdens of family life and maybe they don't. But ready or not they have accepted the call. They are like the Seventy which the Lord sent forth, not concerned about purse or bag or sandals, or what they were to eat or where they were to stay. Those seventy knew only that Christ had given them a mission, and nothing was going to prevent them from fulfilling it. They were prepared to sacrifice everything for him.
          May those couples, who have courageously accepted their own mission, be supported in their sacrifice by the help of all of us; and, may we take courage from their example in always trusting that the Lord lays no burden upon us without the grace to complete the mission.

by Father Michael Venditti

05:37 PM 12/25/2008 - It’s possible some of you may remember celebrating Christmas on January 7th. None of our parishes do anymore, and even many of the Orthodox Churches have changed to what we call the “new calendar,” even though it’s almost as old as the other one. And while I would never advocate returning to the old Julian Calendar, I am attracted to the idea, but not for the same reasons that some Orthodox Churches keep that observance. The one advantage that the old observance of Christmas on January 7th had is that it forced people to distinguish between the glitter and hype and the secularized commercialism that is Christmas in our society, and the real reason for the celebration, which is the miracle of God becoming a man in order to be able to suffer and die for the remission of our sins. Most people take down their trees and lights around New Years; they take their “Christmas Spirit“ -- whatever that’s supposed to be -- and pack it away for another year. It seems to me that that might be a good time to settle down and really contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation: how the creator of man became a man in order to save all men.
          The way things stand now, Christ our God has to compete for our attention. For most Americans today, Christmas really has nothing to do with Christ or the Christian Faith? Even in those few instances where someone may try to imbue Christmas with a token religious significance, it’s hardly ever the religion of the Gospel; it’s some kind of vague religion of “niceness,” according to which the “Christmas Spirit” -- again, whatever that is -- becomes identified with being nice to people. Of course, you can’t find this idea anywhere in the Bible, but to most Christians this is what Christmas means. And we reinforce that idea by making sure that all the holiday trappings with which we surround ourselves -- both religious and secular -- have little to do with the reason for the Incarnation, and more to do with recreating the cuteness of the moment: the cute little baby Jesus in his manger, watched over by a cute little ox and a cute little donkey; cute little shepherds with cute little sheep receiving a message from a cute little angel; cute little wise men bringing cute little gifts -- and it’s even cuter when you spray it all with that horrid gold metallic spray paint. Add to that the secularized trappings of Christmas: trees, lights, presents, parties, eggnog, shopping malls, sales; then over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go, on Route 78 or the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and stuff ourselves with good food and talk about all the other relatives who aren’t there. And somehow, amid all of this, we’re supposed to contemplate and celebrate the fact that God himself decided to become a man and, by doing so, gave us a supernatural life: as St. Paul said, "God became a man in Christ so that all men might become 'God.'"
          But, we don’t want to be God; and that, I think, is one of the reasons that we treat Christmas the way we do. The Incarnation is a ruthless leveler. By becoming one of us, and calling himself Jesus, God destroyed all our excuses. We can’t dismiss religion as a superstition anymore, we can’t dilute the moral life of virtue as some unattainable ideal, we can’t reduce the life of faith and religious practice to a mere set of social conventions, because God did them all; and he did it as a human being -- no more a human being and no less a human being than you or I.
          But far from removing from Christmas its traditional beauty, all of this reveals a deeper -- a more substantial -- beauty, because it’s a beauty based on truth. Like in most things, the early Christians understood Christmas a lot better than we do, and the traditional icon of the Nativity reflects their faith. While not all Nativity icons are exactly the same, most consist of a montage of sacred images surrounding the birth of the Savior: most of the images reflect the “shock” of the actual humanity of Christ, the God who comes into the world of men.
          The icon shows Jesus and his Mother in a cave which is as black as night. The cave reflects the world, darkened by sin, into which Jesus is born. An ox and an ass guard the crib because all creation is effected by his coming. Wise men follow a star; shepherds receive the joyful news from God’s Holy Messenger. But all is not divine: for the whole point of the Nativity is that God became a man, not in symbol but in fact. In one corner of some icons, two women prepare the infant Jesus for a bath; one of them even tests the water with her hand so he won’t be scalded - another testimony to the "realness" of the Incarnation.
          In another corner, in perhaps the most striking portion of the icon of the Nativity, Joseph sits on a rock, a worried expression on his face, his head in his hand, listening as the devil, disguised as an old shepherd, feeds him new doubts and suspicions about the source of his wife’s pregnancy. And the Mother of God, from her place in the cave, has her eyes fixed not on her son but on her husband, as if to reassure him of her love and her fidelity. ...because the Incarnation is not a pious platitude, nor does it cancel the force of human emotion and human concern.
          But perhaps the most important part of the icon is at the bottom, underneath the cave, where there is a small tree. It represents two things: it is the tree of Jesse, from which, as the Prophet Isaiah predicted, a shoot shall sprout ... and from his roots a bud shall blossom, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. It shows that Jesus is the long-awaited messiah. But the tree is also something else: it is the tree from which, thirty-three years later, the wood of the cross will be carved. And it, more than any other image in the icon, points to the real meaning of Christmas: not a celebration of childhood memories, family fellowship, lights, ornaments, gifts -- though all those things are good -- but as the singular event in human history -- the history of man’s relationship with his God -- that must change our lives. "Put off the old man, which is corrupted of the flesh," says St. Paul, "and put on the new man, which is Christ." If that doesn’t happen -- if our lives do not change, if the Gospel does not become the guide of our lives, if the will of God does not replace our own desires, if the sacraments do not become our food and drink, if charity does not become our hands, and faith our speech, and hope our hearts, if we do not live every moment of our lives on earth as representatives of God -- then all of our seasonal paraphernalia is a fraud. Because that cute little baby is going to die on the wood of that tree; and he’s going to do it to save us from our own sins, which made that tree necessary in the first place.
          When people talk about the “Christmas spirit” I don’t know what it is they mean; but I know what it should mean. It should mean a life lived in union with God, not just on Sundays, not just in December, but always.

by Father Michael Venditti

01:20 PM 12/20/2008 - One of the reasons Philip’s Fast is overlooked in many of parishes is because it’s observed in a such a subtle way. The Altar coverings are changed to a penitential color, and fasting recommendations are made for the season; but, other than that, Phillip’s Fast is simply announced. There’s nothing done liturgically to mark its arrival: no special prayers or Advent Candles or anything like that. Historically, the reasons are simple: Advent liturgical customs are a relatively recent development in the Western Church and were never really a part of the Eastern Tradition. But that doesn’t mean we ignore it altogether. The Typikon does interject two Sundays, just before Christmas, which do touch directly on our preparation for the celebration of the Nativity: The Sunday of the Holy Fathers, which we celebrate today, sometimes called the Sunday of the Patriarchs, and the Sunday of the Ancestors of our Lord, also called the Sunday of the Genealogy, since on that Sunday the genealogy of Our Lord from St. Matthew is read.
          Scripturally, the Gospel lessons for these two Sundays point directly to the fact the Jesus is the Messiah for which the Jews had been waiting for 2000 years. Today’s Gospel is the famous one of the Wedding Banquet, to which those who were invited (meaning the Hebrew people) were not worthy to enter, opening the banquet to the gentiles (meaning the rest of us), and thus making salvation possible for everyone. And one could say that it’s a message destined to fall on deaf ears, given everything that competes to occupy our attention this time of year. It’s ironic that the way Christmas and the preparation for it has morphed in modern times makes this the one time of year when we probably think about our faith the least, not out of indifference, but simply because there are so many other things we’ve convinced ourselves we have to worry about. And that’s a great shame, because the real message of the Church in this time of year is a vital one: when we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord, we do not simply commemorate the historical event of the coming of our Lord in the manger; many of the Gospel lessons directly following the Nativity present our Lord's instructions concerning the end times, the final judgment, repentance from sin. The Advent that we celebrate is not just a historical one -- not just the coming of Christ in the manger --, it's the Advent of Christ the King, when our Lord, who once came humbly in a cave, will come again gloriously as the judge and ruler of the universe, when all of history will be brought to its completion, when the righteous will be separated from the unrighteous, when good will win its final victory over evil, and when the gates of heaven and hell will be shut forever; when all that this world has prepared us for will come to pass, and history will be no more.
          When the Church presents to us the Christmas stories with which we're so familiar -- the angel coming to Mary, the preaching of John the Baptist, the visit to Elizabeth, the birth of our Lord, the shepherds, the wise men -- these historical events serve as but a preview. What happened before will happen again, but with much more final results. Mary is no longer the humble maid of Nazareth: she is the Immaculate Queen of Heaven and Earth; Joseph is no longer a simple carpenter: he is the patron of the Universal Church; and Jesus is no longer the little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes: he is God made Man, the second person of the blessed Trinity, the Lord of history, the judge of mankind. The stakes are much higher now than they were when Christ came to earth the first time. When he first came it was to present to us the way we should go; now, he does not come to show us the way, but to judge for himself whether we followed.
          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 the 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: 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

01:03 PM 12/20/2008 - You’ll be pleased to hear, I’m sure, that this is our last homily on the Holy Mystery or Sacrament of Confession. I’ve tried, during the last four weeks, to convey to you the importance of this sacrament; how it was deliberately instituted by Christ as the ordinary means by which we have our sins forgiven; and why it is important to have our sins forgiven in the first place. I’ve tried to address some of the common reasons that people sometimes give for not going to confession, and some of the apprehensions that keep some people from going. And that’s pretty much the limit of my ability: I can teach you the doctrine of the Church; I can encourage and admonish you to follow it; but what happens after that is up to you. I can’t put a gun to your head and make you go to confession. But before you go shopping around for a parish that has confessions convenient to you, there’s are a couple of things I need to remind you to watch out for.
          Once in a while you’ll find a Roman Catholic parish which will advertise what they call “general confession” or “general absolution” or something similar to that. You see it sometimes advertised in very large parishes; and the idea seems to be that you go to the church where they have some kind of service, during which the priest waves his magic hands over everybody and gives them absolution from all their sins, without anyone having to actually go into a confessional and speak their sins privately to anybody. It’s important for you to know that the Church has specifically forbidden this outside of a “danger of death” situation. So, if this were the Titanic and I was the ship’s chaplain, and we had just hit an iceberg and are on our way to a watery grave at the bottom of the chilly North Atlantic, I could legitimately give you all absolution from your sins because we’re all about to die, and we don’t have time for me to hear all of your confessions. The caveat is that if any of you were to survive, you would be obligated to speak your sins privately to a priest as soon as possible. But this isn’t the Titanic, and I’m not a ship’s chaplain; this is the Church of St. Michael, and it’s not sinking -- it’s on solid ground; which means that, if you want your sins forgiven, you have to go to a priest in confession and speak your sins out loud to him. Now, you may ask, “Why do some parishes offer general absolution when the Church has so clearly forbidden it?” but you know the answer to that question. The Catholic Church is a big organization; and, like any big organization, having rules is one thing, enforcing them is another. That’s why it’s important for you to know what’s required of you: so that a priest who may have an imperfect agenda is not able to mislead you.
          That being said, there are a number of different ways to go to confession, all of them legitimate; and different churches, both inside and outside the union of Catholicism, have different customs with regard to confession. Most of us are familiar with the standard confessional where you kneel (or stand, if you have bad knees) behind a screen so you can’t see the priest and he can’t see you. This is the standard why of confessing not only in the Roman Church but also in most Eastern churches which come from the Slavonic tradition of Ss. Cyril and Methodius: our Church, the Russian Church, the Ukrainian Church usually have this custom; and it’s the custom that most of us are probably comfortable with. Eastern churches from the Greek tradition commonly hear confessions right in front of the icon screen, with the priest and penitent standing in front of the icon of Christ. The difficulty there, of course, is that you can’t have anyone sitting too close to the front of the church lest they hear what’s being said by someone going to confession. In some Roman Catholic churches you may be asked to go into what looks like a little living room, and you sit in a chair facing a priest who can see you and you can see him. I’ve heard confessions this way before and also gone to confession this way. The only drawback there -- and this is just my personal opinion -- is that it tends to make confession much too long, because you’re tempted to want to discuss all your personal problems with the priest; which is not what confession is for. Like I mentioned in my homily three weeks ago, the confessional is not a psychologist’s couch: we go to confession to have our sins forgiven, not to get in touch with ourselves. I don’t need to know who you are or what your personal life is like in order to forgive your sins; all I need to know is what you did, how many times you did it as far as you can remember, that you’re sorry for doing it, and that you’ll try your best not to do it again. That’s all I need to know. And a priest -- any priest -- should not need or want to know anymore than that; though once in a while someone will make a confession that is so nonspecific that the priest may have to ask a couple of questions just to get that basic information, so he knows what it is he’s being asked to absolve.
          But whatever is the best way among the legitimate ways of going to confession, what’s most important is that you go. We emphasize confession before big holy days like Christmas and Easter -- and most people seem to want to go during those times -- but confession should be a year-round thing. It’s a sacrament that we should be receiving regularly. Even if we’re fortunate enough to have no mortal sins to confess, confession is still a good thing to do on a regular basis. As I mentioned to you three weeks ago, people who go to confession regularly always seem to have more to confess than other people, not because they’re greater sinners, but because frequent confession has sensitized them to the presence of the smaller more subtle kinds of sin that are a part of all of our lives; and this is how ordinary people can become saints. I guess the bottom line is how much do we love our Lord that we want to make our lives as holy as possible to please him?
          So, I hope you have found these four weeks about confession instructive at least, and I pray that they may have played some part in inspiring you to resolve to make a good confession before Christmas; and, better yet if they have helped to inspire you to practice frequent confession throughout the year.

by Father Michael Venditti

03:58 PM 12/5/2008 - As you know, we’ve been talking about confession during this Phillip’s Fast. We began some three weeks ago with the parable of the Good Samaritan; though we were concerned not so much with the story of the Good Samaritan itself but with the question that prompted Jesus to tell the story. A rabbi had asked our Lord, “What must I do to be saved?” (the same question with which today's Gospel begins). It is, in effect, the quintessential question of Christianity. We are born into this world and given time to live out our lives for one reason only: which is to make ourselves worthy of heaven. We are here to work out our salvation. That is what life is all about. Confession, of course, is an integral part of that, since, in order to be saved, we have to put ourselves right with God and do whatever is necessary to stay there. Our Lord instituted the sacrament of Confession for this reason.
          Consider for a moment that our Lord did not have to give us Confession. That’s an interesting thought for someone who hasn’t been to Confession in a number of years and may be resisting going to confession at all. Christ could have simply given us baptism and left it at that. He had no obligation to institute the sacrament of Confession. Which would mean that once we commit a mortal sin, that’s it; it’s over. Heaven is no longer available to us and there would be nothing we could do about it. So, in giving us this gift of confession, our Lord has in fact made heaven available to anyone who wants to go there; since we now have this opportunity to cleanse ourselves of whatever sins we’ve committed, and make ourselves right with God whenever we want or need to. And he made the whole thing incredibly easy besides. He instituted the priesthood and gave to these men the ability to forgive sins in his name, and all we have to do is go to one of these men, say what it is we’ve done, be sincerely sorry for doing it, promise that we’ll do our best not to do it again, and that’s about it. Not only that, but we can do this as often as is necessary. And the church makes it easier still by charging her priests, on pain of their own immortal souls, not to reveal anything they hear in the sacrament of Confession, so that no one will be afraid to receive it.
          Now, last week we spoke about some of the reasons people don’t go to confession: some people are afraid, some people are arrogant and can’t admit that they’re capable of doing anything wrong, some people invent strange theological reasons saying, “I don’t see why I need to tell my sins to a priest; I can just tell God I’m sorry on my own.” And we discussed these and pointed out why they were wrong. But what we didn’t mention was how ridiculous all of these barriers to Confession are given the fact that our Lord and his Church have gone out of their way to make the whole thing so easy. Think of someone who decides not to buy a lottery ticket because he’s convinced that he’ll never win; so the clerk at the store pulls him aside and whispers, “Hey, buddy, here’s a winning ticket. I know because I fixed the machine; and if you take this ticket you’ll win a million dollars, guaranteed. And I’m gonna let you have it for free.” Now think of that person saying, “No thanks. I don’t want to be bothered.” Would we not say that that person is a moron? That’s exactly what it’s like when someone makes up reasons for not going to confession.
          If the reason for my life is to be saved, and if Jesus has given me a sacrament which guarantees I will be if I only use it regularly, but instead of using it I spend even more energy making up reasons why I don’t or shouldn’t have to, then I must be a moron. Now, in defense of the morons, there are a lot of psychological reasons why people resist confession, and we addressed a few last week. Some people are perfectionists who simply can’t bring themselves to admit they’re not perfect. But, there are two kinds of perfectionists: There’s the neurotic, obsessive-compulsive perfectionist who spares no expense to make sure everything he does is perfect, and who beats himself up if it isn’t, and who is also very intolerant of the imperfections of others and even more so of his own. If you live with one of these, you know he’s an impossible person to live with. But more common is the -- for lack of a better term -- arrogant perfectionist. This is the person who achieves perfection not by trying to be perfect (because that requires too much effort), but by simply condemning as inferior anything or anyone who might expose his faults. The idea of actually coming to terms with the fact that he’s not perfect, and that he needs forgiveness, and that he doesn’t have to be perfect but all he needs to do is acknowledge his faults and make some effort to do better each time he sins, is impossible for him because he simply can’t take the step of admitting that anyone knows better than he does, even our Lord.
          Whenever someone says to me that they don’t feel they need to go to confession, I always point out to them that our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, goes to confession every morning before his morning Mass. And I don’t mention that because I’m advocating that people should go to confession every day. Far from it. I think once a month or so is quite sufficient for most of us, unless we’re conscious of some mortal sin which needs to be addressed immediately. I mention it only because our Holy Father, who is the pope, obviously feels there’s some benefit for him in receiving this sacrament every day. And if he feels that he needs it every day, what does that say about those of us who haven't been to confession in ten or twenty years? Do we really believe we’re holier than the Pope? If so, I would suggest we don’t need a priest; we need a shrink. Now, we might say that the Pope has greater responsibilities and needs to be more careful than we do about the presence of even venial sin in his life; but, then again, if someone is a wife or a husband or a mother or a father, or a parish priest, are these not tremendous responsibilities in themselves? Do we not need all the grace we can get to help us fulfill these great responsibilities? Do we actually believe that we can do them without God’s help?
          Most of us know or have known someone -- a friend or relative -- who never goes to the doctor no matter how sick he is. Anyone with half an eye can see he’s coming down with something; but, when you suggest he go to the Medimerge or to his own doctor for an antibiotic which could make him well in days, he refuses, and stubbornly clings to the notion that he’s a tough guy who never gets sick. And you and I sit back and watch that person get more and more miserable with each passing day, and think to ourselves, “Isn’t that ridiculous?” But, of course, it’s only ridiculous if we’re sure we would behave differently ourselves. Whenever our Lord spoke of sin in the Holy Gospel, he used a medical metaphor: when the Pharisee complained that our Lord was keeping company with unsavory characters, he replied, “It is the sick who need the physician, not the healthy.” Because that’s what sin is: it is a sickness which robs us of the ability to absorb the grace we need to live a good and decent life. We certainly can’t live a good life without grace; that much is clear to any second grade catechism student.
          So, what do we do when our souls are sick and we know we’ve sinned? What do we do, even when our souls are healthy, but we know temptation is out there, and we know we need God’s help to meet the responsibilities of the state in life God has given us? Do we stubbornly insist that we need no help and can do it all ourselves; or do we visit regularly with the physician of our souls who, through the instrumentality of his priest, can heal our souls instantly with the antibiotic of absolution, and inoculate us with his grace, without with we wouldn’t have a fighting chance?

by Father Michael Venditti

08:38 PM 11/25/2008 -

[The icon of the Holy Trinity, written -- a true icon is written, never "painted" -- in the 15th century by the Russian monk Andrei Rublev (Roublev), is one of the most important in Christendom. There is scarcely an Eastern church, Orthodox or Catholic, that does not possess a replica of it. Rather than attempt my own poor explanation of this important icon, your PP will defer to Frédéric Manns' excellent meditation which comprises the second part of this post, wrtitten on the occasion of the late Pope John Paul II's visit to the Holy Land in 2000. Manns' meditation, in addition to explaining the icon in detail, serves as the quintessential primer for learning the proper way to "read" an icon.
     The first part is what occasioned the post: a contemporary news story surrounding Rublev's original icon.
     The three images accompanying this post are (in order): the orignal icon on display at the Tretyakov Gallery, the close-up of the same, and a typical replica as can be found in any number of Eastern churches today. --PP]

MOSCOW (AFP) — The Russian Orthodox Church is under fire from experts at a Moscow art museum after it asked to borrow a precious 15th-century icon they say is too fragile to move, Russian media reported Friday. Curators at the Tretyakov Gallery are upset about a request from the head of the church, Patriarch Alexy II, to move the Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev to a monastery outside Moscow for a religious holiday next year, newspapers said.
          Fulfilling the request would be "practically fatal" for an artwork widely considered a masterpiece of icon-painting, Levon Nersesyan, a senior expert on medieval Russian art at the Tretyakov Gallery, told the Kommersant daily. Nersesyan had earlier accused the museum's management of bending to pressure from the politically influential patriarch, a close ally of the Kremlin, in a blog posting that brought the controversy to the public's attention. "If we obediently give in to someone's idiotic whim and carry this icon 70 kilometres and back, place it in a cramped church with hundreds of lit candles and crowds of pious pilgrims lunging to touch it, nobody would be able to guarantee its safety," he said in a weblog.
          The director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Valentin Rodionov, told the Izvestia daily that "most of the experts said the condition of the icon does not allow it to be transported." But Rodionov said a decision had yet to be made on whether to display the icon for three days next year at the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, a major Orthodox pilgrimage site about 70 kilometres (45 miles) north of Moscow. The lavra is where the icon was painted in the early 15th century. "Lavra" is a term for a kind of Orthodox Christian monastery.

Since centuries, the Christian tradition has contemplated the mystery of Trinity in the famous Roublev’s Icon which portrays the three angels invited to table by Abraham. An icon is worth ten thousand words, says a Chinese proverb.
          The truth of it is found in the showing of hospitality, as Louis Massignon used to say. In inviting the poor to our table, it is Christ that we actually receive. Roublev’s Icon of the Trinity, which illustrates a scene of hospitality, presents in an original fashion, an intuitive approach to the mystery of the paternity of God. Sometimes, the artists more than the theologians have clearer flashes of intuition. Art is capable of putting into music a unique note with unbeatable eloquence. And image is worth more than a thousand words. The matching of colours and the vivacity of the looks make of Roublev’s Icon more than just a piece of art which would illustrate the mystery of hospitality. The Icon introduces us to the threshold of the mystery of God.
          Roublev is an artist of intense silence. After many years of meditation on the Bible, his world has been laden with symbols. The Bible records that Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent, under the Oak of Mamre. He saw three men passing and he prostrated himself in front of them and invited them to have a rest and take some food. "My Lord", he says in the singular, as if he had seen God in their covered faces. Augustine comments: "Tres vidit unum adoravit" (He saw three and adored one). The book of Genesis notes that they were the angels who had come to visit Abraham. God had made an arrangement through their intermediary with Abraham which would save Sodom if it had ten just men on account of whom Abraham pleaded for the city. Abraham, as a true Semite, receives his guest according to the norms of oriental customs. The Synagogal version of the Scripture comments "They looked as if they were eating". By contrast, the village neighbours, perverts and profligates as they were, thought only of violating the angels. A curious paradox of situation! However, there where evil abounds, grace abounds even more.
          The three personages were accommodated, but they were for Abraham an only Lord. Very early, the Church saw in this scene, a prophetic announcement of the Trinity. Behind each of the three personages, Roublev has put a symbol which enables it to be identified. On the left, the House of the Father, at the centre a tree, where the cross transforms itself into a new tree of life, and on the right a rock from which gushed out the water in the desert prefiguring the gift of the Spirit. The dish offered by Abraham to his guests resembles the Paschal cup, which announces the Eucharistic cup. In fact, the Synagogal version situates the meeting of Abraham with his guest at Paschal time, hence Sara prepared the unleavened bread.
          For Roublev, the meeting of Abraham with the three angels reveals God, his divine council where it elaborates the plan of salvation. The angel in the middle, associated with the tree, symbolises Christ, the true fruit of the tree of life. His clothes, celestial blue and terrestrial brown, suggest the union of the divine with the human. His look of obedient love is turned towards the Father while he blesses the cup of his sacrifice which he takes up to drink in order to do the will of the Father. The stole which hangs on his right shoulder is a distinctive sign of his priesthood. His two fingers placed on the table signify his double nature.
          The angel on the left embodies the Father above whom is the figure of the house. "There are many rooms in my Father’s house". The Father is the one who receives his children in his house. His cloak transparent of a luminous blue mixed with pallid gold expresses the inaccessible source of the divinity. It is out of love that the Father reveals himself and gives himself in the incarnation of his Son. The Father also blesses the cup, showing the communion of love which exists between him and the Son. To this double blessing corresponds that of the Church: "Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". The Father looks at the angel on the right, whose green cloak anticipates the resurrection.
          The third angel symbolises the living Spirit in which the Father will resurrect Christ and will communicate life to the world. His blue clothes is the expression of wisdom, while his green cloak expressed the human nature evoked at rebirth. The angel which embodies the power of God expresses also his unchangeable youthfulness. The living water of the Spirit which gushed out from the rock is capable of renewing the world. The angel points the finger beside the cup, because it is by the power of the Spirit that the wine is transformed into the blood of Christ.
          The three symbols which enable the angels to be identified re-echo equally in the Old Testament and constitute an important inclusion in the history of salvation. The house recalls the oracle of Nathan. It is not David who will build a house for God, but God who will build a house for him. The tree embodies Paradise at the middle of which was found the tree of life. Finally, the rock evokes the scene of the desert where Moses struck the rock with his rod. The message of the three symbols could be summarised thus: From Paradise to announce the coming of the Messiah. The central stage is that of the blessing of the Paschal cup.
          A peaceful communication of love passes by the looks of the three personages. The circular look created a movement of unity among them. A subtle game of graph among themselves underlines the fact that this harmony consists in the divine communion which reflects the hospitality of Abraham. Furthermore, the looks express the self-emptying of God who reveals himself. All the Trinity is self-emptying: the Father gives himself to his Son, the Son humbles himself and the Spirit is the humility of God.
          On the table, under the Eucharistic cup, a little rectangle symbolises the world with its four corners, the world that cannot subsist without the sacrifice of the lamb. Without the Paschal, the suffering of the world is absurd. The blood of the lamb takes away the sin of the world. The space of the table left free by the angels sidesteps the foot of a cup. It is easy to continue to trace the cup which rejoins the shoulders of the angel on the right and of the angel on the left. It is as if a big cup, bounded by the angels on the right and left, drew itself at the centre of that table. The cup of blessing is given to men because the son has drunk the cup of the will of the Father. Humanity is invited to drink the wine of the feast, to accept God’s hospitality.
          The message of the Icon is clear: In God the self is a total gift, the personality pours out eternally as a clear look towards the other or as a pure relation to the other. The Father is only a loving look towards the Son, the Son is only an obedient look turned towards the Father and the Holy Spirit is only a breadth of love between the Father and the Son. In God the personality reveals itself as a power of liberation of self. God is completely personal. His nature passes in the relations among the divines, without any possibility of falling back into the possessive sphere which is capable of arousing the least complacency in self. All his being is gift, love and selflessness. It is in the self-emptying that the transcendence of God becomes manifest.
          The Jewish tradition underlined the fact that Abraham was rewarded for his gesture of hospitality. Because it is said: "Look for water and wash your feet". God will give the sons of Abraham water to drink when they will be thirsty in the desert for forty years. The Synagogal version went as far as saying that Abraham himself washes the feet of his guests, anticipating thereby the prophetic aspect of the gesture of Jesus before his death. Because Abraham had said: "I am going to look for bread", God will give the Manna to his children. Because he took a calf to prepare and offer to his guests, God will nourish his children with quails in the desert. This reward will be prolonged on the earth until the eschatological times. God will bring out a source from Jerusalem and it will nourish his people just as a father nourishes his children. In other words, the visit of the three angels no longer belongs to time, but it opens a dimension of eternity.
          The better reward, however, was reserved to Sara who was absent from the table. God reveals to Sara and to Abraham that even at their old age, a son would be given to them, the chief of a descendant more numerous than the stars of heaven. God could not forget his agreement with Abraham and his descendant. Nothing is impossible before God. The oracle of Nathan would find its realisation .
          The function of the image is to introduce reflection and meditation into the world. The contemplation of Roublev’s Icon of the Trinity indicates the path to follow in deepening the mystery of the Father which is inseparable from that of the Son and of the Spirit. It is the Old Testament that communicates the first announcement of the mystery of the Father. Its Jewish reading enables one to verify how Jesus himself and the Evangelists have read the word of God. For Jesus remained anchored in the tradition of his people. It is the heritage of the great monotheistic tradition which had celebrated the paternity of God. The exegesis made by Jesus himself carries the great novelty: "I and the Father are one". It is Christ who can successfully reveal the secrets of the paternity of God. Finally, since the mystery of Christ is prolonged by the Spirit in the Church, it would be necessary to examine the Fathers of the Church, particularly, their commentaries of the prayer of the Lord. Thus, we retrieve the serene circulation of love characterising Roublev’s Icon which envelops the whole history of the Church. The tenderness of the Father and his ineffable proximity embracing the whole earth continue even today, to give the Eucharistic Manna and the water of the Spirit. The suffering of God expressed in the look of the three personages, takes its origin from love. It is love that has caused the suffering.
          The contemplation of the icon of the Trinity is therefore, transformed into a meditation on the whole history of salvation. It finds here its completion in the mystery of the Father, of the Son and the Spirit. Human adventure is not the outcome of haphazard arrangement. It is orientated by love towards the Trinitarian communion.
          "Three: he who loves, he who is loved, the Love" (Saint Augustine).

by Frédéric Manns

02:52 PM 11/25/2008 -

[More information about the following story can be found at the University of Calgary's Pro-life web site. --PP]

CALGARY, AB, November 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The University of Calgary is threatening arrest, fines, expulsion and suspension of a group of its students if they express their views on abortion through a controversial display on campus this week.
          Although the group of pro-life students has exhibited signs from the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) five times previously on campus without incident, the university is now demanding that they face their signs inwards so no passers-by can see the signs, effectively censoring the students. "Rather than fulfilling its mission of being a forum where all views can be expressed and debated, the university is censoring a minority opinion on the basis of anonymous complaints," said Alanna Campbell, of Campus Pro life (CPL), the student club which sponsors the display.
          Dr. Harvey Weingarten, president of the U of C, has stated in the past, "The role of universities is to promote, permit and enable the free exchange of ideas, debate and civil discourse. If universities do not support these values, which societal institutions will?" The president's comment reflects the university's own policy laid out in its Academic Calendar showing that the University aims "to promote free inquiry and debate." However, the university is justifying its censorship of the pro-life display because of anonymous complaints, and claims that the display could provoke violent reactions. However, there have been no such incidents on the previous five occasions the display has been shown on campus.
          "Banning an event because of the possibility of someone else being violent towards it, is like telling women they are not allowed to walk on campus at night because of the possibility they may be sexually assaulted," stated Leah Halllman, president of CPL. "The right solution to that potential crime is to provide lighting and security to deter the person who might commit such a crime, not to ban the women." Hallman adds that her group requires all of its GAP display participants to agree to a code of conduct, which includes a commitment of non-violence.
          GAP is a peaceful, educational display which utilizes 4x8-foot signs to show the reality of abortion to the public, drawing comparisons between abortion and other genocides. Hallman states that the students just want to exercise their legal right to peacefully express their views without the fear of censorship. "We do not want to be arrested, but the university's attempt to bully us is wrong. If the university can silence our viewpoint on campus just because it's unpopular in some quarters, then they can censor other views as well," said first-year student and vice president of CPL, Cameron Wilson. "Being told to turn signs inward is like being told that you can express your views as long as nobody can hear you."
          The students plan to defy the university's censorship demand and exercise their free-speech rights on campus on Wednesday November 26 and Thursday November 27.

[Meanwhile . . .]

November 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new Environics poll shows a majority of Canadians want legal protection for the unborn child at some point before birth. This is consistent with survey results over the past seven years.
          Canada remains the only country in the developed world with no legal limits on abortion throughout all 9 months of pregnancy. Yet, almost 6 in 10 respondents support legal protection for unborn children at some point before birth. Only 33% support the current situation of protection only after birth. Once again, women polled showed far more support for protection from conception on than men did: 33% versus 24%. A majority of Canadians support informed consent requirements before an abortion that would be consistent with the informed consent expected and provided before any surgical procedure. Almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents agree that women considering abortion should be informed of the risks and possible consequences of the abortion procedure. “The hopelessly inadequate information most women receive before an abortion is appalling,” said Dr. Delores Doherty, president of LifeCanada, the group that commissioned the poll. “Many women who have had abortions feel betrayed by the doctors involved in their abortions and some are considering class action suits.”
          The poll also asked how Canadians feel about tax dollars funding a procedure that is predominately performed for social reasons, rather than medical necessity. Only 3 in 10 support the current situation of tax funding for most of the roughly 100,000 abortions performed annually. Half prefer public funding only in cases of medical emergencies and two in 10 think payment should be a private responsibility. “Despite years of polls consistently showing Canadians want changes in our abortion policy, elected officials in every party continue to ignore the issues or worse, shut down discussion and debate,” said Dr. Doherty. “This is a sad state for a democratic nation. It is past time for our political leaders to acknowledge and take action in line with the expressed will of their constituents. The issue is not going to go away!”
          The Focus Canada poll of 2023 Canadians was conducted between September 24 and October 21, 2008. It is considered accurate 19 out of 20 times, with a margin of error of +/-2.2%. LifeCanada, the national educational pro-life body, has commissioned an annual poll on life issues since 2002.

from LifeSiteNews

02:05 PM 11/24/2008 - I should begin by saying that I’m not a fan of the late comedian George Carlin. Some of you may remember him, but some of you may not have even heard of him. I’m in no way recommending that you should look him up because his standard act was very vulgar and irreverent. He apparently was raised a Catholic and went to Catholic school, and a lot of his early work focused on that experience. He used to tell, for example, how he and the other students were marched into church once a month to go to confession. And there was always one priest to whom everyone tried to avoid because he was old and hard of hearing, and he used to repeat whatever you told him at the top of his voice so everyone in church heard your sins.
          The only reason I mention that is because, having put the fear of God into you last week by introducing you to a typical examination of conscience, we now have to take the next logical step and address the fear that many people have about going to confession. Fear of confession is a very common thing; most people who don’t go to confession regularly may not be aware that they are actually afraid. After all, to admit that you’re a coward is not a flattering thing. So, people will often manufacture in their minds all kinds of logical rationalizations to mask from others -- and even from themselves -- the real reason they don’t go to confession, which is that they’re terrified.
          Some of these rationalizations are incredibly stupid, and if the people who make them were to actually think about them for five seconds they’d realize that. And one of the most common is: “I don’t see why I need to tell my sins to a priest. I just tell God I’m sorry directly, by myself.” Now, think about that for a minute. On the morning Jesus rose from the dead he appeared in the upper room to the 11 remaining apostles. He breathed on them and laid his hands on them, so the Bible says, and told them, “Who’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven; who’s sins you do not forgive, they are not forgiven.” The apostles, as they spread the new religion throughout the world, laid hands on other men giving them this same power, all the way down to our present time. This power to forgive sins is part of the Holy Priesthood that we have received in an unbroken line from the Apostles themselves, who received it from Christ. What’s significant about Christ’s institution of this sacrament is the phrase, “...who’s sins you do not forgive, they are not forgiven.” That’s important, because what Jesus is telling the Apostles is: "If someone has sinned and wants to be forgiven, they have to come to you. If they don’t come to you, and you don’t forgive their sins, their sins are not forgiven. They can’t do it by themselves." Now, the person who tries to mask his fear of confession by saying that he doesn’t have to tell his sins to a priest and he only needs to tell God he’s sorry himself (or herself) is basically saying that, after more than 2000 years of Divine Revelation, teaching and tradition, God has now given him or her a special privilege which he has never given to anyone else before: the ability to have his sins forgiven without recourse the sacrament which Christ established for that purpose; and that when Jesus said what he did to the Apostles, what he really meant was, “Oh, this applies to everyone except so-and-so, whom you don’t know, but who will be alive some 2000 years from now, and who will be the only person in the whole universe who won’t need to use this sacrament to have his sins forgiven.” Talk about ego!
          That’s why I said that I don’t really believe that anyone actually believes this, and when someone says, “Well, I don’t think I need to tell my sins to a priest,” what they really mean is, “I’m really scared to go to confession, but I don’t want to admit to you that I’m a spineless coward, so let me tell you this fairy tale about how I know better than Jesus Christ about how sins are forgiven.”
          OK. Now that we’ve established that people are afraid to go to confession, let’s talk about why. For some people it may be the very reason that George Carlin talked about in his irreverent joke: maybe they had a bad experience in the confessional once, and they’re just afraid to go back. I had a bad experience as a child in confession. In fact, it was the day of my first confession. We had those old fashioned confessionals where the priest sat in between two stalls with sliding doors on the screen; so, when you went in, he was already hearing the confession of the person on the other side. And you have to kneel there in the dark and wait, knowing that any moment that screen is going to slide back and you’re going to be expected to begin. And it seems that you’re waiting there for a year. And all kinds of things go through your mind: “My God! He must really be raking that guy over the coals. What’s he gonna do when he gets to me?” And then you try to go over what your supposed to say, and you can’t remember. And I was so scared waiting there, that I wet my pants. Of course, eventually the sliding door opened and I made my confession and it wasn’t that bad at all; but I had wet my pants. It didn’t really bother me much because I had a dark suit on and no one could tell by looking at me what had happened; but I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for the kid who went after me, trying to figure out who decided to turn confession into a water sport.
          What’s important is that I lived to tell the tale, and so will you. Some people are afraid because they haven't been to confession in twenty years or more, and they don’t know how the priest will react to that. And there’s no need to worry about that. You’re not the first person to go to confession and say you haven't been in twenty years. And what if you do go to confession someplace and you do get a mean priest who’s having a bad day? So what? What are you afraid he’s going to do? Punch you out? You finish the confession, get up and leave, say your penance, and hope you get a nicer priest next time. Big deal.
          Now, I want to continue with this topic next week, because we really do have to tackle this question of why people don’t go to confession as often as they should, and we have to do it in more detail then we did today. In the mean time, I have been asked to print up for you copies of the examination of conscience which I read to you last week; which I have not done yet, but which I will do and place on the window sill next to the confessional for next week. Until then, I would ask you to continue the exercise I’ve recommended that last two weeks, which was to end each day by calling to mind all the things you might have done during the day of which Jesus would not approve, and using that as a starting point for preparing to go to confession sometime before Christmas.

by Father Michael Venditti

12:45 PM 11/18/2008 - Your PP grew up in a Democrat household. After all, if you were a member of a Catholic immigrant family and your parents lived any part of their youth during the depression, it was a mortal sin not to be a Democrat, wasn't it? That's why I found this little article amusing, sent to me by a friend without by-line. It's a little late, but reinforces my contention that there needs to be some sort of intellegence test as part of voter registration.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

• I'm voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

• I'm voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

• I'm voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as they see fit.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe three or four pointy headed elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, when they come over here I don't want to have any guns in the house to fight them off with.

• I'm voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.

• I'm voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

• Makes ya wonder why anyone would ever vote Republican, now doesn't it?

by Priestly Pugilist

12:12 PM 11/18/2008 - His Eminence James Francis Cardinal Stafford criticized President-elect Barack Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,“ and said he campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform,” Thursday night in Keane Auditorium during his lecture “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul.“ “Because man is a sacred element of secular life,” Stafford remarked, “man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.”
          “For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden,” Stafford said, comparing America’s future with Obama as president to Jesus’ agony in the garden. “On November 4, 2008, America suffered a cultural earthquake.”
          Cardinal Stafford said Catholics must deal with the “hot, angry tears of betrayal” by beginning a new sentiment where one is “with Jesus, sick because of love.” The lecture, hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, pertained to Humanae Vitae, a papal encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1968 and celebrating its 40 anniversary this year. Stafford also spoke about the decline of a respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the original values of marriage and human dignity.
          “If 1968 was the year of America’s 'suicide attempt,' 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,” said Stafford, an American Cardinal and Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary for the Tribunal of the Holy See. “In the intervening 40 years since Humanae Vitae, the United States has been thrown upon ruins.”
          This destruction and America’s decline is largely in part due to the Supreme Court’s decisions in the life-issue cases of 1973, specifically Roe v. Wade. Stafford asserted these cases undermined respect for human life in the United States. “Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and integrity of the American republic,” said Stafford.
          Humanae Vitae (“On Human Life”) reaffirms traditional Catholic teachings regarding abortion, contraception and other human life issues. Pope Benedict XVI said in May it is “so controversial, yet so crucial for humanity’s future. What was true yesterday is true also today.”
          Monsignor Livio Melina, president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, gave the opening address at the lecture and spoke about the importance of agape love to gain knowledge. “Love itself is a form of knowledge, and this knowledge cannot be objectified,” said Melina. “It is a unique relationship between the believer and God.” Stafford said the truest reflection of the love between the believer and God is that of the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit anywhere within that framework. According to Stafford, the inner dynamic of a spousal relationship is much like the body itself, which ‘speaks’ in terms of masculinity and femininity.
          “The experience of love introduces us in a specific way to moral knowledge,” added Melina.

by Elizabeth Grden at CUA Tower (student Newspaper of the Catholic University of American)

11:41 AM 11/18/2008 -

[Father George Rutler is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Savior on Park Avenue. Ordained to the Episcopalian ministry as a young man, he converted to Catholicism and studied for the priesthood in Rome. He frequently appears on EWTN. Like many prominent churchmen cited here, he is a friend of your PP from his seminary days. The following is a letter he recently wrote to his parishioners, and is dated November 16th. --PP]

In February of 1943, the ill-prepared United States Army II Corps valiantly fought against the German-Italian Panzer Army at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia but had to retreat. The army did wake up, commanders were replaced, the troops regrouped, and eventually the war was won. This is a contemporary allegory, when we see the social consequences of poorly formed Catholics overwhelmed by secular forces that have no love for the Church.
          In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman warned that naïve Catholics would fall into "mass apostasy" through lack of preparedness in spiritual combat:

Do you think (the Prince of Lies) is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, — he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.

          Many have warned about the consequences of yielding the Faith to false messiahs. Years before becoming pope, Benedict XVI wrote: "Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic" (Truth and Tolerance, p. 116).
          We are about to witness many outrages against the dignity of life by politicians who have taken advantage of nominal Christians. For starters, we may expect removal of the present administration's ban on destructive embryonic research, and rejection of the Mexico City accords which restrained abortion and eugenics. Most immediately, the New York State legislature has proposed a bill removing the statute of limitations on lawsuits that would damage, and possibly bankrupt, Catholic and other private institutions. Since Cardinal Egan wrote his letter about this, the recent election gave both houses of the legislature to the party that favors this bill.
          As with the lesson of the Kasserine Pass, we are learning that there is no place for amateur soldiers in the army of the Lord. A short time from now, many will say: "We should have listened to the warnings." The hard response will be: "Why didn't you?"

Fr. George W. Rutler

01:33 PM 11/16/2008 - As you may recall, I had mentioned last week that I wanted to take the Sundays from the beginning of Phillip’s Fast until the Nativity and address the subject of Confession with you. And we began last week with the Gospel that the Church presented to us, which was that of the Good Samaritan. We recognized that our Lord told this story to the rabbi in response to the rabbi’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” The rabbi had asked our Lord a question about right and wrong, but he didn’t quite like the answer he received; so he thought he could get around it by being just a little too smart for his own good; and, of course, our Lord doesn’t let him get away with it. The point being that when we are faced with a question of right or wrong, we can try to weasel our way around it, like the rabbi did, or we can face it head on and deal with it honestly, even if it means admitting to ourselves our own shortcomings. And I concluded last week, you may remember, that confession is not a psychologist’s couch but a sacrament. We don’t go there to discuss our problems with the priest; we go simply to get forgiven for what we did that was wrong.
          That being said, it’s important, before going to confession, that we have some idea of what sort of things need to be said. And here I’ve found that a lot of people get very confused. We live, after all, in a very subjective society: morality is, more often than not, reduced to a question of personal conscience or -- to be more precise -- personal feelings; and there is a difference; and it’s very easy to forget that, for the Christian, right and wrong are not matters of personal opinion. Sometimes I think it would be helpful for lay people to be able to spend a day hearing confessions. Of course, if you were to do that you would be immediately excommunicated for impersonating a priest in the confessional. But what you would find amazing -- and what I find amazing -- is that people can go to confession no more than once or twice a year and still have not much to confess. “I told a few lies, I yelled at my wife, I watched a dirty movie on TV.” And that could be a typical confession of someone who hasn’t been to confession in ten years. By contrast, people who go to confession regularly, like once a month, seem to have much more to confess, and are able to do it in much more detail, sometimes more detail than is needed. And the reason for that is because the more you go to confession, the more you become sensitive to things in your life that are sinful that you wouldn’t have recognized as sinful before. It’s also the result of grace, because, after all, not only does confession forgive our sins, but it also gives us grace to resist sins as well as grace to recognize sin in our lives. That’s why the more we confess the more we have to confess, not because we’re getting worse and worse but just the opposite: because we’re becoming more sensitive to sin in our own lives; and this is how frequent confession leads us to spiritual perfection..
          So, what I would like to do today is take you through a typical examination of conscience. An examination of conscience is a series of questions we ask ourselves before we go to confession so that we have an idea of what we need to tell the priest. Now, no one form of examination of conscience is going to apply equally to everyone. Some of us are married and some aren’t. Some of us have children and some don’t. Some of us are old and some of us are young. So some of these questions simply won’t apply to all of us; but most of them will. This kind of general examination of conscience is very helpful especially for people who haven't been to confession in a long time; and probably some of the questions will surprise you, as you may not have thought of asking yourself some of these. So, here are the types of things that most people should be asking themselves in preparing to go to confession...

• When did I last go to confession? Did I confess everything to the priest? Did I conceal any sin from him? Was I truly sorry for my sins, and did I do my penance? Did I ever receive Holy Communion knowing that I should have gone to confession first?

• Do I set aside time every day to pray to God? Do I always thank God for the food I receive by saying grace at every meal, even when I eat alone? Have I ever questioned the authority of the Church, or denied my Catholic faith to others?

• Have I taken the Lord's name in vain? If so, how many times? Have I ever sworn an oath over something trivial? Do I keep my promises? Have I ever spoken disrespectfully of Christ, his Church, the Saints, or ridiculed devotion to them? Have I ever spoken disrespectfully of a priest?

• Have I ever willfully been absent from church on Sundays or other days when my presence was required? If so, how many times and for what reasons? Have I done unnecessary work on Sunday? Am I often late to church? If so, why? Am I attentive in church, making every effort to sing the Liturgy properly?

• Have I accepted responsibility for my children's religious instruction? Have I taught them their prayers and prayed with them? Do I see to it that they attend the Divine Liturgy and go to confession, and fulfill their religious obligations? Do I give scandal to my children by not fulfilling my religious obligations? Do I exercise concern over the company they keep, or the shows that they watch on television? Have I ever quarreled with my spouse in front of my children?

• Have I physically injured another? Have I endangered my life or the lives of others by the use of drugs, drink, or excessive speed when driving? Have I been drunk? If so, how many times? Have I ever wished harm on another? Have I, by my words or actions, ever led another into an occasion of sin? Have I ever had an abortion or helped someone to have one? Is my marriage open to the transmission of human life?

• Have I had sex outside of marriage, or committed adultery, or committed any impure act with myself or with others? If so, how many times? Did I expose myself to occasions of impurity by what I read or view on the computer or watch on television? Do I dress modestly, and teach my children to do the same? Am I vigilant about the company I keep, the jokes I tell, or the language that I use?

• Have I stolen anything? If so, how much was it worth, and did I give it back? Have I ever cheated anyone? If so, what restitution can I make? Do I pay all my debts promptly? Do I routinely spend more than I or my family can afford? Do I envy the property of others?

• Have I lied? Have I gossiped about others behind their backs? Do I keep secrets that are entrusted to me? Have I ever done anything to hurt the reputation of another; and, if so, what can I do to repair the damage? Do I pass judgment on others, or suspect them falsely?

• Do I confess my sins frequently to a priest, or do I try to pretend that God will forgive me without the help of a priest? Did I fulfill my Easter duty by receiving Holy Communion worthily during the Paschal Season? Have I ever received Holy Communion when I was not worthy? Do I keep the simple or strict fasts on the days these are required?

• Do I act with charity toward everyone I meet? Do I give to the poor? Do I contribute my fair share to the support of the Church? Do I place the needs of others before my own?

• When I am tempted to sin, do I pray asking God for strength?

10:26 AM 11/15/2008 - This week, as you know from your monthly calendar, we begin the fasting period known as Phillip’s Fast this coming Saturday. It’s called that because it begins on the day after the feast of St. Phillip, and lasts through to Christmas. Sometimes it’s called the “Christmas Lent.” And as you know also from the monthly calendar, the strict practice of this little Lent is optional in our Ruthenian Church, so long as we make sure to maintain a spirit of penance by fasting, by prayer, by participation in Liturgical services. 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. And so, I’ve decided, for the next six weeks until Christmas, to focus my homilies exclusively on this sacrament, hopefully with the effect of encouraging you to make confession a more frequent part of your spiritual life. And we have no better launching pad for this than the gospel for today, in which a rabbi asks our Lord a question, and receives as his answer the familiar story 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, even before he hears the beautiful little story told by our Lord, already knew the answer, and probably so did everybody else who was standing around our Lord that day. Our neighbor is everyone; and our Lord makes that point very clearly by making the hero of his story a Samaritan: a member of a race of people hated by the Jews. Notice that after the story is over, when our Lord asks the rabbi which character in the story did the will of God, the guy so hates the Samaritans that he tries to skirt the issue by saying, "Well, it was the one who helped the injured traveler." He can't even bring himself to say the word, "Samaritan." 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 a 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. Case in point, our Lord’s conversation with the rabbi: he wants to know what he must do to be saved. A very simple question. And our Lord gives him a very simple answer: “What does it say in the Law of Moses?” Answer: Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as yourself. Case closed. Next case.
          Now, to understand something about how the rabbi reacts to this, we have to understand something about him. He is, after all, a lawyer. St. Luke describes him as a “doctor of the law,” which is what a rabbi is. When someone has a question about what the Law of Moses requires in this or that situation, they ask the rabbi because he’s made the study of the scriptures his life’s pursuit. Now, our Lord is often called Rabbi by his disciples, but he’s never been to school. We have no evidence that our Lord ever received formal training in the scriptures other than what would have been taught to him by his parents growing up. And yet, here he is being called Rabbi, being followed by hundreds of people who hang on his every word. If Jesus were a nobody like you and me, the rabbi wouldn’t have any interest in what Jesus is saying; he’d just ignore him. But Jesus is someone who is enormously popular, and people are coming to him with questions that they would ordinarily go to the Rabbi to ask. It’s possible that he’s a little jealous that Jesus has stolen some of his thunder. So, he asks our Lord what he has built up in his own mind to be a very complex and multifaceted theological question, and our Lord gives him what is essentially a child’s schoolbook answer; not to insult the rabbi, but because, as far as our Lord is concerned, the answer really is that simple. “What must I do to be saved?”
          “Well, what’s it say there in Deuteronomy?”
          “Well, it says this...”
          “Well, go do that, then.”
          “But it can’t be that simple!!!”
          “Why can’t it? Because you’ve spent your whole life studying something every child can find out just by reading his Bible? That’s your problem, pal.”
          The bottom line is that whenever we find ourselves faced with a question of right or wrong, and we start analyzing it and going around in circles with it and consulting experts about it, it’s probably because we just don’t like the simple answer that’s staring us right in the face. Just like the rabbi: he asked our Lord a question, he got his answer; but he didn’t like that answer, so he started to analyze the question further, which is what prompted our Lord to tell the story of the Good Samaritan.
          As we approach the celebration of the Nativity, we should begin now to exam our consciences in preparation for confession. And when you go to confession, there is no need to analyze your behavior for the priest, and try to explain why you did what you did, and what all the circumstances were, and how you feel about it. A priest is not necessarily the most qualified person to help work out those kinds of problems. I know that some of you, when you come to confession to me, seem kind of surprised that I don’t ask a lot of questions or try to give some sort of advice. And that’s not out of disinterest or laziness; it’s by design. Experience has taught me over the years that confession is one of those things in which the simpler it is the better. To try and rehash all the things that brought you there in the first place is not really helpful from a spiritual point of view. You go in, you tell the priest what you did and how many times you did it, get your penance, get absolution and get out. That way it’s less traumatic, and maybe you’ll be more inclined to come back to confession more often.
          So, as you begin now to exam your conscience is preparation for confession sometime this month or next month, if you find yourself dwelling on things and trying to figure out things, stop. There’s no need. You know that when you walk into the confessional you’re going to walk out forgiven. The only person who would not be forgiven in confession is the person who thinks he’s done nothing wrong, or who is not sorry for what he’s done; and those people don’t go to confession. But if you’re willing to walk into a confessional, then it has to be because you’re sorry for whatever sins you’re aware you’ve committed. Which means you already fulfill the requirements the priest needs to absolve you.
          So, let’s resolve to be confident. Let’s resolve to be honest with ourselves and with God. Let’s begin our Phillip’s Fast by starting now, perhaps a little each evening before we go to bed, to recall the things we did or failed to do since our last confession of which Christ would not approve, so that we can confess our sins cleanly and openly, and prepare to meet the birth of our Lord with a clean slate and untroubled conscience.

by Father Michael Venditti

02:00 PM 11/6/2008 - In today’s Gospel lesson our Lord focuses on the subject of motive; and, he tries to explain to his disciples -- and to us -- that our attempt to follow in the footsteps of God will only be successful if our intention is clear and our goal is sound. The two individuals who seek cures from our Lord -- one for herself, and the other for his daughter -- are both motivated by a deep faith in the Lord Jesus; and, both of them must contend with forces which seek to dissuade them: the Rabbi from the Synagogue, the crowd that tries to convince him that it’s no use; and the woman with the hemorrhage, the fact that she is unclean according to Jewish law and shouldn’t even approach any man let alone touch him. [*] But both of them ignored these hardships because they were not interested in pleasing anyone else’s rules.
          To put it bluntly, if my primary goal in life is to please our Lord so that I can be saved, then what our Lord requires of me in life cannot be a burden; I will not shy away from the sacrifices and privations that the Gospel imposes on me because they tend toward the ultimate goal that I have set for myself, which is the salvation of my soul. If, on the other hand, I have other motives -- my personal comfort, success in my employment, the accumulation of wealth, the satisfaction of my natural urges, or simply the esteem of others -- then my faith, even if practiced with regularity and devotion, will still leave me empty and longing, and its obligations will seem burdensome to me, because they do not tend toward that which I have made the focus of my life. And you see this quite frequently among people for whom the practice of their Faith has become a matter of fulfilling obligations:
          “Why do I attend the Divine Liturgy on Sunday? Because the Church says I must do so.”
          "Why do I fast during Lent? Because I am required to.”
          "Why do I marry according to the law of the Church? Because my Church and my family expect it of me.”
          "Why do I practice my faith in this particular Church? Because it is common for someone of my ethnic background to do so.”
          And then when a crisis comes in our lives -- as it always does -- and we turn to our Church and our faith to give us solace and give us answers, we are disappointed to find that it has none to give, not because the Church has failed us or is somehow defective, but because we have failed to invest ourselves in the very purpose of our Church and our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. Our lives are motivated by other things. And one cannot see the destination if one is facing in the wrong direction. Just like the sick woman who touched our Lord’s cloak and was cured: our Lord said to her, Your faith has healed you, not to suggest that she accomplished this miracle all by herself, but because she threw aside every other concern and risked all to pursue our Lord, which is what enabled our Lord to help her.
          The ultimate goal of man is God. Our one reason for being on this earth is to work out our salvation. And to attain this goal we must commit ourselves entirely.

by Father Michael Venditti

05:32 PM 11/5/2008 - Well, it's the day after the beginning of the end, and your PP stands by every word of his last post. Sorry, but I won't be jumping on the unity band-wagon like John McCain ... not with 2.5 million children murdered every year, and our new president-elect poised to make at least two and probably three Supreme Court appointments. Three fossilized liberals on the court -- in less than excellent health and well past the age at which they would like to retire to go fly fishing -- have been clinging on by their fingernails because they didn't want a pro-life president to nominate their successors. Now, that won't happen. Prediction: Stevens and Ginsburg will announce their retirements very early into Obama's first term, possibly even before Christmas.
          Why did Obama win Pennsylvania? Because the legal wing of organized crime (a.k.a. unions) drank the Cool-aid in spite of the fact that Obama's tax-the-rich scheme (a.k.a. tax-anyone-who-employs-people) will result in half of them loosing their jobs. Nationally, the whole thing was summed up quite nicely by one old gentleman, quoted on the Drudge Report, who explained (paraphrased): "Obama will give me free medicine and pay off my mortgage." You and I could speculate about how such people will deal with their "buyer's remorse" when Obama doesn't give them free pills and pay for their homes; but, it's more likely that he won't have such remorse: the media will explain to him that it's all the Republicans fault, in spite of the fact that their aren't any Republicans left. Oh, I'm sorry. Republicans will still be able to stop all the wonderfullness promised by the Promiser-in-Chief by some sort of telepathy, even though they have no power in Congress.
          Which leads me to another question: Given the media's ability to shape an election now, should there be a rethinking of the First Amendment? Now hear me out....
          Take as a starting point the fact (yes, I said "fact") that it is possible to redefine a portion of the Bill of Rights. We've done it, haven't we, with the Second Amendment. Here's a pop quiz: Our Founding Fathers sought to guarantee the right to bear arms...

     (a) so the good people of North Dakota could repel an invasion by Saskatchewan before federal troops could arrive,
     (b) so good ol' boys could still go hunting unmolested,
     (c) so the citizens of the republic would always have the ability to rise up and overthrow their government should it become tyranical.

The correct answer is, of course, "C" (don't tell your children that, because if they repeat it in school they'll get sent the pricipal's office; but it's true). But, think about it. Bans on assault weapons and automatic weapons certainly confound the purpose of the Founding Fathers. The government has tanks, planes, machine guns, nuclear weapons, etc.; how can we resist them with shotguns and hunting rifles? So, clearly, the amendment has been severely changed. "In the 18th century there were no such things as assault rifles and machine guns. If there had been, the Founding Fathers would have written that amendment differently," or so we are told.
          Well, if you can change one amendment, you can certainly change another. There's no hierarchy among the first ten amendments -- one is not considered more important than another -- as clearly stated in the Federalist Papers. Well, when the Founding Fathers said there was to be a free press, there was no such thing as Cable News, nor a 24 hour news cycle, nor television for that matter. Nor was there an army of intellectual pea-brains sucking up everything they hear and see on the tube and taking it at face value. Why do you think that innocent old gentleman, who probably doesn't have a liberal bone in his body, believes that two weeks after inauguration day his pills will be free and he won't have to make any more house payments? Because he saw it on TV! Chris Matthews said so (as a thrill went up his leg). Besides, when the country was founded the only "press" in existence was printed (hence, the term "press" as in printing press); the only people who knew how to read were the highly educated; and there was no popular vote. As flippant as it sounds, there may actually be some merit in discussing whether the whole electoral system should be re-thought in light of television and the access of the feeble-minded to the democratic process.
          Okay, so you got the point that I'm depressed and not in a "unity" mood, right? But I did get a chuckle out of a contribution from one wing of the press that needs no reform. It comes from the good folks who publish the Rockdale Citizen down in Rockdale, Georgia. The story about Obama's victory was placed -- in newspaper lingo -- "below the fold," on the same level and in the same sized box as the results of the local school board election. And what's the lead story at the top of the page on the day after this "historic" election? A story about a rabid dog (you have no idea what I would like to say). Thanks for the laugh, fellas!
          Will I be praying for our new president-elect? Certainly! But understand what that means: I can't pray for his success; that would be a mortal sin since I would be praying for even more children to be murdered. Nor can I pray that he does well in his presidency, since that would be praying for a second term of increased baby-killing. What I can pray for is his conversion; and I will.

by Priestly Pugilist

01:05 PM 10/31/2008 - As our regular readers no doubt noticed -- assuming there are any -- the Priestly Pugilist was down for a couple of weeks. Of course, this was all your fault -- that's right, I mean you -- as the site exceeded its bandwidth due to too many visitors. We're not sure if it's the new design or what, but someone out there seems to think there's something worth reading about here; which is nice to know. Whenever the site exceeds its bandwidth quota as allocated by Earthlink, the site goes down automatically until the first of the month, when we're given a clean slate and start sucking bandwidth again. That's what you get for leaching web space for free.
          There's a number of things your PP would comment on since we went down; but it all seems moot in light of the fact that our country is about to elect the most anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-freedom individual ever to seek public office since Adolf Hitler ran for president (and lost to Hindenburgh). I can say this because, even though it's clear I am a priest, I have carefully kept my identity a secret so that the IRS cannot hunt me down. If my friend, Father Venditti, were to say such a thing, he would put himself and his parish in peril....
          Which is exactly the point which occupies my mind in this post. A private citizen named Joe Wurzelbacher was walking by an Obama rally near his place of business and heard the candidate ask for questions; so, Joe asked him a question. In the course of his answer, the candidate let slip a rather troubling remark which sounded a lot like Carl Marx. Within a week, official state government computers in Ohio were used to dig up dirt on Joe. The Roman Catholic bishop of Paterson, New Jersey, repeats the clear teaching of the Catholic Church for his flock in his own diocesan newspaper, reminding them that no Catholic can vote in good conscience for a pro-abortion candidate (without once mentioning Obama's name), and an Obama front group runs to a judge to have the whole diocese stripped of its tax-exhempt status; while liberal out-of-control priest Michael Fleger "preaches" a campaign speech for Obama and nothing happens to him. The excuse for the double standard, we're told, is that Fleger was not in "his own church" when he preached the "sermon." Of course, I don't think Bishop Serratelli was in church when he wrote his column for the paper which is his own personal in-house organ for his diocese; but why confuse the issue with facts? When an effigy of Mother-of-five Sarah Palin is hung, the local sheriff laments that there's nothing he can do because of free speech; but when an effigy of Barak Obama is hung, two arrests are made within minutes.
          No doubt you'll find your PP terribly alarmist if I express concern for the very concepts of truth and freedom in the event of an Obama victory, in much the same way that many regarded Cardinal Spellman an alarmist when he warned President Eisenhower that legalizing artificial contraception would lead to abortion. "That could never happen," said the president; "Americans would never tollerate abortion on these shores." Of course, they didn't have to; the courts "tollerated" it for them, and without their consent or electoral representation.
          Here's how the elimination of organized Christianity will come about in the years to come. It will be primarily a three-pronged attack:
          The first wave was already launched in New Jersey: a Methodist church refused to rent its social hall to a lesbian couple for their "wedding" reception. The couple sued the church, admitting that they only chose that particular hall because they wanted this fight. The judge promptly stripped the parish of its tax exhempt status, which will certainly result in the closure of the church after a short time.
          The second wave of the attack will also be launched by the gay wing of Obama's ghestapo. Since federal law already forbids discrimination of gays in the workplace, the Vatican's instruction forbidding bishops from ordaining gay men will make this one a slam-dunk as well. Bishops will have the choice of disobeying the Holy Father or not ordaining anyone to the Holy Priesthood; perhaps some will face jail on human rights charges.
          The third and final blow will be the one that ends the Church once and for all. With the three new Supreme Court justices nominated by Obama in place, a test case will quickly establish that, since abortion is a constitutional right as proclaimed in Row vs. Wade, anyone who would seek to deny that right to anyone for any reason would be the same as someone seeking to lynch a black man or deny a woman equal pay for equal work. The Church will be commanded, in the name of the Constitution, to cease all pro-life activities, which it will not do, resulting in the Church itself being declared unconstitutional. Recall that Barak Obama has already declared China a country he would like to emulate, but he wasn't only talking about public transportation and bridge repair; no doubt the scores of Catholic priests and bishops now rotting in Chinese prisons made him salivate with envy.
          Erika Jong, who is famous for having written a pornographic novel in the '70s but identified by the media as simply "an author," has predicted a civil war should Obama loose the election, with Dick Chaney leading the troops to try and put it down. Your PP actually agrees with the whore: there will be a civil war, but not as a result of Obama's defeat, and not the day after the election; it will happen as a result of Obama's victory, and not the day after but ten years after, when Americans who have hidden away the history books conficated and taken from the public schools, reveal why and how this country was founded, and who will want their freedom back. The government will successfully vilify them to the masses of the mindless who will be enraged that anyone would want to deprive them of their free healthcare.
          The United States has had liberal presidents before (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter), and she has had socialist presidents before (FDR), but never has she had a president who didn't submit himself to the Constitution. One could argue that Barak Obama, having declared the Constitution flawed because it did not authorize the government to redistribute wealth, is not able to take the Presidential Oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;" but somehow I don't see that bothering him on his inauguration day.
          But unlike you, my suffering won't last long. After the inauguration, it won't be long before someone in the Secret Service will stumble upon the Priestly Pugilist©, and Earthlink will receive a sopena for the name and address of it's owner. Oh well. At least the next time this site goes down, it won't be because of too many visitors.

by Priestly Pugilist

04:43 PM 10/30/2008 - I like, sometimes, to look at the little minor things that happen in the Gospel that no one else bothers to look at. And I was drawn to the last sentence in today’s Gospel lesson. Here Jesus exorcises demons from a man, casting the demons into a herd of pigs. This is nothing unusual for our Lord; he’s done it before. What I find interesting is that, after he does it, they run him out of town, or, as St. Luke puts it, As soon as they saw him, they implored him to leave. Now, there could be a lot of reasons for that: he is, after all, wandering around the country of the Gadarenes who are Gentiles, which is confirmed by the presence of a herd of pigs, which you would never find in the country of the Jews, because they don’t eat pork. So, it’s possible they just didn’t like him because he was a Jew. It’s also possible they didn’t think much of having a whole herd of swine disposed of in such a casual manner. But one commentator I read suggested a more sinister possibility. He suggests that "The attitude of [the] local people towards this miracle reminds us that meeting God and living a Christian life require us to subordinate personal plans to God’s designs." If we have a selfish or materialistic outlook we fail to appreciate the value of divine things and push God out of our lives, begging him to go away, as these people did. And I found that to be a very astute observation; because I’ve found -- and perhaps you have, too -- that even people who pray very much are secretly wishing that God would keep his nose out of it. I think of St. Augustine who, before his conversion, while in the midst of a life of reckless abandonment, prayed to God saying, “God, give me chastity, but not yet.”
          We want things from God. We want relief from our sufferings; we want an end to our troubles; we want to enjoy good health; we want family harmony; we want success in our relationships; and God is not adverse to giving us these things. But that’s not all you get when you haggle with God. When you accept Christ into your life, your whole life changes, or at least it should. This is what our Lord meant when he said, If you would be my disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross every day, and follow me. In other words, it’s a package deal: the price is that you give yourself completely to him. And there’s a lot of us who don’t want that deal.
          I remember when I was first ordained chatting with one of the neighbors who lived in the house behind the church, and she was chewing my ear off about all of her problems, and why doesn’t God ever listen to her prayers. And as it turned out she wasn’t practicing any religion at all with any regularity, and had lived with a succession of men, both in and out of marriage. And here’s she’s wondering why God has not come to her rescue. She wants the benefits of a relationship with Christ, but she doesn’t want the relationship itself, because any relationship -- particularly one with God -- is a two way street. It’s like a man who finds a nice girl who loves him, but he only wants what he can get from her, and he’s not interested in any kind of commitment to her. So he strings her along and takes what he wants without giving her the kind of security and protection that that kind of relationship implies, until he’s used her to the point that she just loses patience.
          Well, our Lord Jesus Christ is very patient. But he is not milquetoast. He certainly is willing to forgive us when we go astray, particularly in the Sacrament of Penance. But even the forgiveness we receive in confession implies an effort to change. But if we’re continually praying to God for this or that, but aren't making any effort to live a life that conforms to his plan as found in the Gospel and the teachings of the Church and of the Fathers, then what’s in it for him? How long can we reasonably expect God to go on watching over us, protecting us, comforting us, simply because we come to church, but continue to reject him in the living of our lives? And when our lives are over, and a decision must be made regarding the final disposition of our souls, what will we have to show in return for all we have received from God? Will we not say something like, “Well, I knew what Christ wanted, but it was too much for me to handle; I did the best I could.” Will we really have done our best? Or will we have simply convinced ourselves that what we were willing to do was our best, when, in fact, we never really knew what our best was because we never really tried?
          The Gadarenes had to be impressed by our Lord casting out demons and helping this man that no one else could help. But they understood the implications of his presence among them; and, while they were happy for the man who was now free, they weren’t willing to give anything in return; so they asked him to leave. Which he did. God forbid that any of us, who have received so much from our Lord, would ask him to leave.

by Father Michael Venditti

07:20 PM 10/23/2008 -

[The following story is taken from "USA Today." Bishop Serratelli was one of your PP's professors of Scripture in the seminary. This brings to three the total of bishops cited here who either taught or sat in class with your PP. --PP]

WASHINGTON — A church-state watchdog group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether the Roman Catholic bishop of Paterson, N.J., violated tax laws by denouncing Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. In a letter sent to the IRS on Wednesday (Oct. 22), Americans United for Separation of Church and State accused Paterson Bishop Arthur Serratelli of illegal partisanship for lambasting Obama's support of abortion rights.
          In a column posted on the Diocese of Paterson's website and published in its weekly newspaper, Serratelli also compared Obama to King Herod, the biblical monarch who ordered the death of John the Baptist. The bishop did not refer to Obama by name but only as "the present democratic (sic) candidate." Under federal tax law, nonprofit groups — including religious organizations — are prohibited from intervening in campaigns for public office by endorsing or opposing candidates.
          Serratelli wrote that Obama has pledged, if elected president, to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, abortion-rights legislation the Catholic Church vehemently opposes. "If this politician fulfills his promise, not only will many of our freedoms as Americans be taken from us, but the innocent and vulnerable will spill their blood," Serratelli wrote.
          The Rev. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United, said it is "impossible to interpret this passage as anything but a command to vote against 'the present Democratic candidate' because of his promise to sign a certain piece of legislation disfavored by the Catholic Church's hierarchy."
          The Paterson diocese said Serratelli's column was focused on proposed abortion legislation, not the upcoming presidential election. "It's absolutely, positively misleading to say that the bishop urged Catholics not to vote for Sen. Obama," the diocese said in a statement.
          Rob Boston, a spokesman for the Washington-based Americans United, said that of the estimated 90 claims it has filed with the IRS since 1996, only four others have accused Catholic bishops or dioceses of electioneering. Earlier this year, Americans United asked the IRS to investigate Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, for criticizing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was running for the Republican presidential nomination at the time.

By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service

[Here is the full text of Bishop Serratelli's column. --PP]

After committing a murder in Rome, the famous 17th century Italian painter Caravaggio went to Malta to avoid the death penalty. While there, the Great Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta commissioned him to do a painting for the chapel of the Co-Cathedral of St. John in Valletta. Caravaggio chose as his theme the martyrdom of John the Baptist. He produced The Beheading of St. John, his largest work, the only one he ever signed. No doubt the scene touched him personally.
          Herod was married to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. Because John the Baptist preached against this sin, he incurred the hatred of Herod’s wife. The day her daughter Salome delighted Herod with her seductive dance, Herodias had her make Herod promise to kill John the Baptist. Within the severe architecture of a 16th century prison, Caravaggio vividly depicts the grisly moment when Herod kept his promise.
          Caravaggio’s work, considered his greatest masterpiece, immortalizes the misguided fidelity of a ruler to his gruesome promise. With the stroke of the soldier’s sword, John dies and so does freedom. Freedom is based on the truth of the human person as created by God and protected by his law. When a ruler can decide against God’s law, true freedom is sentenced to death.
          Recently, a politician made a promise. Politicians usually do. If this politician fulfills his promise, not only will many of our freedoms as Americans be taken from us, but the innocent and vulnerable will spill their blood.
          On April 18, 2007, in Gonzales v. Carhart, The Supreme Court upheldthe Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. The very next day prominent Democratic members of Congress reintroduced the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The bill is misleadingly packaged as a freedom bill. It is not! It is a clear act of unreasoned bias to end abruptly and brutally the debate on the pressing and fundamental moral issue of the right to life.
          For thirty-five years, Americans have been wrestling with The Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade. Most Americans now favor some kind of a ban on abortion. Most who allow abortion would do so only in very rare cases. In fact, in January, 2008, the Guttmacher Institute published its 14th census of abortion providers in the country. Its statistics showed that the abortion rate continues to decline. Abortions have reached their lowest level since 1974. There is truly a deep sensitivity to life in the soul of America.
          The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) would mortally wound this sensitivity. In effect, it would dismantle the freedom of choice to do all that is necessary to respect and protect human life at its most vulnerable stage. FOCA goes far beyond guaranteeing the right to an abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy. It arrogantly prohibits any law or policy interfering with that right. While advocates trumpet this law as the triumph of the freedom of choice, they hide the dark reality that the law would actually inhibit choice.
          Laws protecting the rights of nurses, doctors and hospitals with moral objections to abortion would no longer stand. Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics would also vanish. Gone the freedom of health care professionals to be faithful to the Hippocratic Oath “to prescribe regimens for the good of …patients…and never do harm to anyone, to please no one [by prescribing] a deadly drug nor [by giving] advice which may cause his death.” Gone the freedom of conscience so essential for a civil society!
          If a minority of avid abortionists succeed to impose this law because of the ignorance or apathy of the majority, the law would force taxpayers to fund abortions. Gone the freedom of taxation with representation!
          In its 1992 Casey decision, The Supreme Court ruled as constitutional state laws requiring that women and young girls who seek an abortion receive information on the development of the child in the womb as well as alternatives to abortion. The ruling also determined that a period of waiting, usually 24 or 48 hours before making a decision about an abortion is not an undue burden. The Freedom of Choice Act would nullify these laws immediately. Gone the freedom of women and young girls to have all the information they need to make their own choices!
          In about half of the States, there are parental notification or consent laws in effect for minors seeking an abortion. The Supreme Court has ruled that these laws are permitted under Roe v. Wade. With the stroke of a pen, these laws would be abolished. Gone the freedom of parents to care for and protect their children and grandchildren!
          Advocates of FOCA redefine a woman’s “health” so as to expressly permit post-viability abortions. Thus, a child who survives an abortion can be left to die for the health of the mother. No politically correct word can mask this reality for what it is. This is infanticide. Gone the freedom for a baby, once born, to live!
          Science does not dispute that the child in the womb already has all the characteristics that he or she will develop after birth. Notwithstanding, abortionists obstinately refuse the right of the child within the womb to live as a fundamental human right. They are not happy that Americans have not swallowed their distorted propaganda that denies the dignity of the human person from the first moment of conception.
          Pro-abortion advocates close their eyes to the fact that abortion even hurts women as it undermines the very fabric of our society. Their zeal for the Freedom of Choice Act sounds the alarm for decent Americans to wake up! The more the right to life is denied, the more we lose our freedoms. The “pro-choice” movement is not pro-choice. It stands against the freedom to choose what is right according to the truth of the human person.
          In 2002, as an Illinois legislator, the present democratic candidate voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act. This law was meant to protect a baby that survived a late-term abortion. When the same legislation came up in the Judiciary Committee on which he served, he held to his opposition. First, he voted “present.” Next, he voted “no.”
          Along with 108 members of Congress, the present democratic candidate for President continues his strong support for the Freedom of Choice Act. In aspeech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund last year, he made the promise that the first thing he would do as President would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act. What a choice for a new President!
          At the time when Herod murdered John the Baptist because of his promise, Rome practiced the principle "one man, one vote." Whoever the emperor in Rome placed in authority over a subject people, ruled. Today we live in a democracy. We choose our leaders who make our laws. Every vote counts. Today, either we choose to respect and protect life, especially the life of the child in the womb of the mother or we sanction the loss of our most basic freedoms. At this point, we are still free to choose!

by Most Rev. Arthur J. Serratelli, Bishop of Paterson.

04:31 PM 10/23/2008 - The Catholic author Evelyn Waugh once complained that his generation, in its youth, was raised on an illusory image of romantic love by the fashionable novelists of the time, authors such as Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster, Marcel Proust, among others. Themselves homosexual, they used heterosexual characters to portray homosexual courtship (because it was the only kind with which they had any experience) with the result that neither the men nor women -- let alone the relationships between them -- were portrayed with any accuracy. It's an important observation which, to my non-PC, homophobic mind explains a lot that has gone wrong in the Church. But some things you don't figure out until after years of reflection.
          For example, some twenty-five years ago, when I was a seminarian in the final preparations for ordination to the diaconate, I was corralled to a presentation regarding the annulment process by the priest who would one day become Judicial Vicar of the diocese for which I was to be ordained (not your pp's current diocese). His opening remark was to the effect that, as far as he was concerned, when a marriage ends in divorce, we should presume that it is somehow invalid, and our task as representatives of the Church is to seek out and find the proof of that invalidity. Immediately, warning klaxons began to go off in my head; I remembered what I had been taught in Canon Law class: that a putative marriage (a marriage the validity of which has been challenged by one of the parties) is always presumed valid until proven invalid by a preponderance of the evidence. To be fair, he didn't go so far as to suggest that such evidence should be manufactured if not found; but he did ramble on about how the annulment process is there to "help" people, using all the touchy-feely clichés at his disposal - "help" obviously being defined as giving them what they want without any nasty, cold-hearted talk about truth.
          It wasn't until about ten years later, during some kind of touchy-feely mandatory "sharing and caring" convocation of priests, that this same priest stood up and confessed that he was a gay man "struggling" to live a celibate priesthood. Suddenly, this priest's replacement of the pursuit of truth in marriage annulment cases with "helping" people and making them feel good came to make perfect sense; and, has become -- for me, anyway -- the key to understanding a lot that has gone wrong in the Church in America for the last fifty years.
          An even clearer illustration of what I'm driving at can be found by reading the following (though I hestitate to present it for reasons that will become evident):

Today the small rejections of my life are too much for me - a sarcastic smile, a flippant remark, a brisk denial, a bitter silence, a failure to be noticed, a coldness from a colleague, an indifference from someone I love, a nagging tiredness, the lack of a soulmate, a loneliness that I can't explain. I feel empty, alone, afraid, restless, unsure of myself, and I look around for invitations, letters, phone calls, gifts, for someone to catch my eye in sympathy, for some warm gesture that can heal my emptiness. ... And right now I don't particularly want God, faith, church or even a big and gracious heart. I want simply to be held, embraced, loved by someone special, made to feel unique, kissed by a soulmate. I'm empty, a half-person. I need someone to make me whole.

Now, get hold of yourself, for that dose of Mrs. Butterworth's was not written by a middle-aged, unmarried Oprah viewer with an eating disorder, but by one Father Henri Nouwen, SJ. If it makes you feel creepy that this was written by a priest, thank God for that; but understand that, for a whole generation of priests ordained since the early '70s, this stuff was considered mainstream spirituality. The revelation that Nouwen was gay, made just prior to his death, did nothing to diminish his popularity among his retro-'70s fans; and to this day, you might still be considered a heretic if you should dare challenge Nouwen's status as the denizen of post-Vatican II spirituality. For those of us who were in the seminary at the time, the message was clear: If you weren't gay when you got here, we're going to make damn sure you are by the time you get out. The result was a whole generation of priests whose motto (and I've actually heard this) is, "I'm a heart priest, not a head priest." The triumph of emotion over truth.
          Why does the Judicial Vicar of my former diocese feel emotionally driven to find a way to grant every annulment in spite of the evidence? Why do priests from sea to sea preach about love and justice and peace and spew warm fuzzies without even a passing nod to the truth? For the same reason that the bishops of this country scrambled to proclaim with almost infallible certainty that homosexuality had nothing to do with the sex abuse crisis. When an entire generation of priests -- including those who are now bishops -- have been brainwashed into thinking that the emotional frailties of gay men represent the universal human condition, it's no wonder some of us think we're living in the Twilight Zone.
          Having discussed some of these thoughts with him, a priest friend of mine sent me the following by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. He didn't say where it was from, but it's worth repeating here (the paragraph breaks are mine, as his e-mail had none):

Perhaps no book on the priestly life and pastoral care has done more damage than the late Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer. In this view, priests become good pastors to the degree that they expose their own wounds to therapy, inviting others to similar disclosure. The teaching of the Church and centuries of spiritual and moral wisdom are judged by whether they inhibit or enhance the therapeutic norm.
     And so the therapeutic marches on from triumph to triumph. Treatment centers for priests take names such as "New Life Center" or "House of Affirmation." Resisting seminarians are packed off to clinical psychologists for "growth therapy" or what is called "Sexual Attitude Reassessment." The patient is liberated from "traditional" sexual roles and stereotypes to be his true self while, at the same time, taught to observe the "boundaries" of professional conduct.
     The Palm Beach bishop who was forced to resign used the claim that he was practicing therapy as an excuse for sex with young men. Three of the seminarians who accused him are now very openly gay. The bishop confessed to "having crossed the boundaries." In such a view, the boundaries are not grounded in moral truth or fidelity to ecclesial vocation but would appear to be merely external limits on the expression of an otherwise amoral therapeutic.
     Given all that has now come to light, bishops should resist the proposal that the solution is in adding another layer of the therapeutic. Some bishops continue to look to the therapists; it would seem to be the only answer they know, except for the force of law. But therapists can provide only a more intrusive and degrading approach to priestly formation. If now the order of the day is to tailor the therapeutic to the fear of legal liabilities, the result will be seminaries ever more disordered and ever more repressive. The result will be more testing, more scrutiny, more coerced self-disclosure and self-discovery -- and more files to turn over, in due course, to the public prosecutor.
     The alternative is love for Christ and his Church, including the tough love of disciplining the wild card in the poker of life that is sexuality. The great task and the great grace, as St. Augustine reminds us, is the right ordering of our loves and loyalties. In a word, fidelity. Or we might go so far as to rehabilitate another word banished by the therapeutic: holiness.

          For many of us, there's a line there -- "Some bishops continue to look to the therapists ... [b]ut therapists can provide only a more intrusive and degrading approach to priestly formation" -- that causes a whole block of their lives as seminarians and young priests to make sense for the first time; though I would have chosen a word stronger than "degrading."
          When the Holy See's instruction on homosexuality in priestly formation (referred to by some on both sides of the "orientation spectrum" as the "doomsday document") came out last year, in spite of the lobbying against it by many high-ranking American hierarchs, it was roundly dismissed as just another example of the Church trying to understand a modern phenomena with a medieval mentality. One person I know, assuming that the instruction was motivated by the sex abuse crisis (which it may have been), said he thought the Church was targeting the wrong people; but to those of us who managed to emerge from our seminary training with our heterosexuality intact but in check through discipline and prayer (albeit through a process of bobbing and weaving and lying through one's teeth, not to mention watching your back), it was a sign that someone finally understood something. All we have to do now is wait for the current generation of bishops to die off. In the mean time, it remains the current practice, in most American dioceses, whenever a square peg refuses to be pounded into a round hole (no pun intended -- or is it?), to throw the square peg to the ravenous hoard of therapists to be either converted or devoured.
          Like Fr. Nuehaus says, what's important here "is love for Christ and his Church, including the tough love of disciplining the wild card in the poker of life that is sexuality." What priests like Nouwen and his friends (I use the term broadly) didn't understand is that disciplining the [hetero]sexual passions isn't achieved by replacing them with passions of a different orientation, or even with an approximation of the same which, while not actually homosexual in nature or practice, is nonetheless grounded in the same kind of "softness," more often than not expressed in terms of compassion, empathy, warmth, emotionalism and a contempt for dogma and "institutionalism." It is kept it check by what St. Augustine recommended: holiness.
          Above I had speculated that the reason so many priests stress emotionalism rather than doctrine in their ministry is the same reason that the bishops of this country were so keen to drive a wedge between the sex abuse crisis and homosexuality among priests: an entire generation of priests and bishops have been brainwashed into thinking that the emotional frailties of gay men represent the universal human condition. But establishing a link between doctrinal murkiness and homosexuality can be easily misunderstood; and it’s necessary to clarify what I mean and what I don’t mean.
          Thank back to any one of a number of priests you may have run into from my generation, perhaps in the context of a wedding or funeral you attended, or in your own parish. He’s gentle. Almost too gentle. You shake his hand and there’s no grip, or else he latches on the tips of your fingers as if he’s afraid of damaging your hand somehow. When he speaks to you, it’s in a kind of Dr. Seuss-esque “sing-songy” manner (“I do not like green eggs and ham -- I do not like them, Sam-I-Am”). Ask him a question -- any question, but preferably one about doctrine or moral praxis -- and his answer will always begin with the word, “Well...,” followed by a long, drawn out litany of platitudes, albeit interlaced with the actual teaching of the Church (he’s not, after all, a heretic or dissident), but sufficiently diluted with enough filler to make sure you understand that he’s not imposing anything on you or suggesting any imperative to alter your life as a consequence. The lesson will then end with some kind of interrogatory about how you might “feel” about it, followed by a broad smile and a brief expression of affirmation just to make sure you’re convinced of nothing, but assured that (1) you continue to feel good about “where you’re at,” and (2) that Father is just a swell guy you can talk to anytime. You walk away from the encounter feeling a little creepy; but you accept it, thinking to yourself, “I guess that’s just they way they are.”
          My point is: Why are they the way they are? And it’s not necessarily because they’re gay (though that’s certainly possible). More often than not, the personal sexuality of a priest like this has been so deeply repressed that he's neither gay nor straight, pragmatically speaking. But throughout all his training and subsequent experience in the pastoral ministry, he’s been spoon-fed a steady diet of spirituality and pastoral theology that is based -- as I said -- on the presumption that the emotional frailties of gay men represent the universal human condition. He doesn’t know any better because he’s been in the seminary since he was 16 years old; and when Fr. Henri Nouwen, SJ, whom he has been taught represents the pinnacle of post-Vatican II spirituality, expresses his own personal depression when he says things like, “I want simply to be held, embraced, loved by someone special, made to feel unique, kissed by a soulmate,” he can only assume that that’s how everyone feels; he, himself, never having lived enough of life outside of the regimen of priestly formation to know any different.
          Now consider that this is precisely the generation of priests from which our current crop of bishops has been taken, and consider further what happens to the threefold mission of the priest to “rule, teach and sanctify.” He can’t very well rule, since his soft personality makes standing up to people impossible; he can't teach -- at least not well -- because he’ll always be afraid of offending someone. The only duty he’s left with is to sanctify, primarily through the liturgy of the Church; but even here his own personal peccadilloes get in the way. Based on the way his personality has been formed, his approach to the liturgy eschews any concern for validity or the historical significance of the actions he performs at the altar, and instead focuses on whatever in the liturgy can be made to appeal to the emotional. He could never, for example, celebrate the Eastern Liturgy or the Tridentine Liturgy since the lack of eye-contact with his brothers and sisters would make the whole thing meaningless to him. The liturgical act, therefore, becomes not so much an encounter between the worshipers and God as it is between the priest and his flock. In effect, his ability to sanctify is, indeed, impaired because his purpose in the sanctuary is not so much salvific as it is therapeutic, with the goal of the liturgical act being not the transmission of grace but the healing of emotions. A wedding is not a ratification of a covenant with God, but a celebration of love; a baptism is not the cleansing of Original Sin and restoration of Sanctifying Grace, but a celebration of life; confession is not the acknowledgment and forgiveness of sins, but a celebration of affirmation and reconciliation; a funeral is not an appeal to God to speed the soul on its journey and keep it safe until the final resurrection, but grief counseling for the family; and the Eucharist is not the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ offered for our sins on the Altar of the Cross, but a gathering of fellowship around the table of the Lord in which we find our “true selves” in communion with one another.
          That “soft” priest who limply clasps your hand as he half-whispers “hello” is not necessarily gay, and probably isn’t; he is, however, someone who’s whole world view has been colored by the presumption that everyone he meets is wounded, broken, deficient, and needs a hug -- presumptions which have their basis in the exclusive emotional experiences of homosexual men.
          Postscript: Some years ago, an auxiliary bishop in a northeastern diocese was discovered to have had numerous affairs with a number of [gasp!] women over the years. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting he should have kept his office -- sending him packing was certainly the right thing to do; but I would've given him a dinner and a gold watch first. At least he went out like a man!

by Priestly Pugilist

06:56 PM 10/19/2008 -

[On October 17th, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, gave an address at a dinner sponsored by ENDOW (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women). He becomes, therefore, the second Catholic churchman to have the courage to mention Barak Obama by name. The following is the text of his address, entitled "Little Murders." --PP]

I want to do three things with my time tonight. First, Terry asked me to talk a bit about my book, "Render Unto Caesar," and I’m happy to do that. Second, I want to talk about some of the lessons we can already draw from this year’s election. And third, I want to talk about the mission of ENDOW.
          Before I do any of that though, I need to say what a friend of mine calls my “Litany to the IRS.” Here it is. I’m not here tonight to tell you how to vote. I don’t want to do that, I won’t do that, and I don’t use code language -- so you don’t need to spend any time looking for secret political endorsements.
          I plan to speak candidly, but I can only do that if you remember that I’m here as an author and private citizen. I’m not speaking for the Holy See, or the American bishops, or any other bishop, or even officially for the Archdiocese of Denver. So the things I say tonight are my personal views, nothing more. I think they’re pretty solidly grounded in Catholic teaching and the heart of the Church, but it’s your task as Catholics and citizens to listen, evaluate and then act as you judge best.
          As adults, each of us needs to form a strong Catholic conscience. Then we need to follow that conscience when we vote. And then we need to take responsibility for the consequences of the vote we cast. Nobody can do that for us. That’s why really knowing and living our Catholic faith is so important. It’s the only reliable guide we have for acting in the public square as disciples of Jesus Christ.
          So let’s talk for a few minutes about "Render Unto Caesar." When people ask me about the book, the questions usually fall into three categories. Why did I write it? What does the book say? And what does the book mean for each of us as individual Catholics? This last question will be a good doorway into talking about the 2008 election, but let’s start at the beginning first. Why did I write this book, now?
          One answer is simple. A friend asked me to do it. Back in 2004, a young attorney I know ran for public office as a prolife Democrat. He nearly won in a heavily Republican district. But he also discovered how hard it can be to raise money, run a campaign and stay true to your Catholic convictions, all at the same time. After the election he asked me to put my thoughts about faith and politics into a form that other young Catholics could use who were thinking about a political vocation -- and it really is a “vocation.”
          That’s where the idea started. But I also had another reason for doing the book. Frankly, I just got tired of hearing outsiders and insiders tell Catholics to keep quiet about our religious and moral views in the big public debates that involve all of us as a society. That’s a kind of bullying, and I don’t think Catholics should accept it.
          Another reason for writing the book is that when I looked around for a single source that explains the Catholic political vocation in an easy, authentic and engaging way, it just didn’t exist. So I thought I might as well try to write it, because a friend told me it would “practically write itself.”
          Unfortunately, writing a new book is a bit like childbirth. You forget that it hurts until you’re living the labor. I didn’t remember the experience of my first book until after I signed the contract with Doubleday for my second.
          So what does the book say? I think the message of "Render Unto Caesar" can be condensed into a few basic points.
          Here’s the first point. For many years, studies have shown that Americans have a very poor sense of history, and that’s very dangerous, because as Thucydides and Machiavelli and Thomas Jefferson have all said, history matters. It matters because the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future. When American Catholics don’t know history, and especially their own history as Catholics, then somebody else -- and usually somebody not very friendly -- will create their history for them.
          Let me put it another way. A man with amnesia has no future and no present because he can’t remember his past. The past is a man’s anchor in experience and reality. Without it, he may as well be floating in space. In like manner, if we American Catholics don’t remember and defend our religious history as a believing people, nobody else will, and then we won’t have a future because we won’t have a past. If we don’t know how the Church worked with or struggled against political rulers in the past, then we can’t think clearly about the relations between Church and state today.
          Here’s the second point. America is not a secular state. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was “born Protestant.” It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has no established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for both believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a “secular” country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.
          Here’s the third point. We need to be very forceful in defending what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions. When we subvert the meaning of words like “the common good” or “conscience” or “community” or “family,” we undermine the language that sustains our thinking about the law. Dishonest language leads to dishonest debate and bad laws.
          Here’s an example. We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue, and it’s never an end in itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square -- peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.
          Here’s the fourth point. When Jesus tells the Pharisees and Herodians in the Gospel of Matthew (22:21) to “render unto the Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s,” he sets the framework for how we should think about religion and the state even today. Caesar does have rights. We owe civil authority our respect and appropriate obedience. But that obedience is limited by what belongs to God. Caesar is not God. Only God is God, and the state is subordinate and accountable to God for its treatment of human persons, all of whom were created by God. Our job as believers is to figure out what things belong to Caesar, and what things belong to God -- and then to put those things in right order in our own lives, and in our relations with others.
          So having said all this, what does the book mean, in practice, for each of us as individual Catholics? It means that we each have a duty to study and grow in our faith, guided by the teaching of the Church. It also means that we have a duty to be politically engaged. Why? Because politics is the exercise of power, and the use of power always has moral content and human consequences.
          As Christians, we can’t claim to love God and then ignore the needs of our neighbors. Loving God is like loving a spouse. A husband may tell his wife that he loves her, and of course that’s very beautiful. But she’ll still want to see the evidence in his actions. Likewise if we claim to be “Catholic,” we need to prove it by our behavior. And serving other people by working for justice and charity in our nation’s political life is one of the very important ways we do that.
          The “separation of Church and state” does not mean -- and it can never mean -- separating our Catholic faith from our public witness, our political choices and our political actions. That kind of separation would require Christians to deny who we are; to repudiate Jesus when he commands us to be “leaven in the world” and to “make disciples of all nations.” That kind of separation steals the moral content of a society. It’s the equivalent of telling a married man that he can’t act married in public. Of course, he can certainly do that, but he won’t stay married for long.
          I began work on "Render Unto Caesar" in July 2006. I made the final changes to the text in November 2007. That’s a long time before anyone was nominated for president, and it was Doubleday, not I, that set the book’s release date for August 2008. So -- unlike Prof. Douglas Kmiec’s recent book, "Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama," which argues a Catholic case for Senator Obama -- I wrote "Render Unto Caesar" with no interest in supporting or attacking any candidate or any political party.
          The goal of "Render Unto Caesar" was simply to describe what an authentic Catholic approach to political life looks like, and then to encourage Americans Catholics to live it.
          Prof. Kmiec has a strong record of service to the Church and the nation in his past. He served in the Reagan administration, and he supported Mitt Romney’s campaign for president before switching in a very public way to Barack Obama earlier this year. In his own book he quotes from "Render Unto Caesar" at some length. In fact, he suggests that his reasoning and mine are “not far distant on the moral inquiry necessary in the election of 2008.” Unfortunately, he either misunderstands or misuses my words, and he couldn’t be more mistaken.
          I believe that Senator Obama, whatever his other talents, is the most committed “abortion-rights” presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973. Despite what Prof. Kmiec suggests, the party platform Senator Obama runs on this year is not only aggressively “pro-choice;” it has also removed any suggestion that killing an unborn child might be a regrettable thing. On the question of homicide against the unborn child -- and let’s remember that the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer explicitly called abortion “murder” -- the Democratic platform that emerged from Denver in August 2008 is clearly anti-life.
          Prof. Kmiec argues that there are defensible motives to support Senator Obama. Speaking for myself, I do not know any proportionate reason that could outweigh more than 40 million unborn children killed by abortion and the many millions of women deeply wounded by the loss and regret abortion creates.
          To suggest -- as some Catholics do -- that Senator Obama is this year’s “real” pro-life candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse. To portray the 2008 Democratic Party presidential ticket as the preferred “pro-life” option is to subvert what the word “pro-life” means. Anyone interested in Senator Obama’s record on abortion and related issues should simply read Prof. Robert George’s essay of earlier this week, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism,” at thepublicdiscourse.com. It says everything that needs to be said.
          Of course, these are simply my personal views as an author and private citizen. But I’m grateful to Prof. Kmiec for quoting me in his book and giving me the reason to speak so clearly about our differences. I think his activism for Senator Obama, and the work of Democratic-friendly groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, have done a disservice to the Church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, undermined the progress pro-lifers have made, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue instead of fighting within their parties and at the ballot box to protect the unborn.
          And here’s the irony. None of the Catholic arguments advanced in favor of Senator Obama are new. They’ve been around, in one form or another, for more than 25 years. All of them seek to “get beyond” abortion, or economically reduce the number of abortions, or create a better society where abortion won’t be necessary. All of them involve a misuse of the seamless garment imagery in Catholic social teaching. And all of them, in practice, seek to contextualize, demote and then counterbalance the evil of abortion with other important but less foundational social issues.
          This is a great sadness. As Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said recently, too many Americans have “no recognition of the fact that children continue to be killed [by abortion], and we live therefore, in a country drenched in blood. This can’t be something you start playing off pragmatically against other issues.”
          Meanwhile, the basic human rights violation at the heart of abortion -- the intentional destruction of an innocent, developing human life -- is wordsmithed away as a terrible crime that just can’t be fixed by the law. I don’t believe that. I think that argument is a fraud. And I don’t think any serious believer can accept that argument without damaging his or her credibility. We still have more than a million abortions a year, and we can’t blame them all on Republican social policies. After all, it was a Democratic president, not a Republican, who vetoed the partial birth abortion ban -- twice.
          The truth is that for some Catholics, the abortion issue has never been a comfortable cause. It’s embarrassing. It’s not the kind of social justice they like to talk about. It interferes with their natural political alliances. And because the homicides involved in abortion are “little murders” -- the kind of private, legally protected murders that kill conveniently unseen lives -- it’s easy to look the other way.
          The one genuinely new quality to Catholic arguments for Senator Obama is their packaging. Just as the abortion lobby fostered “Catholics for a Free Choice” to challenge Catholic teaching on abortion more than two decades ago, so supporters of Senator Obama have done something similar in seeking to neutralize the witness of bishops and the pro-life movement by offering a “Catholic” alternative to the Church’s priority on sanctity of life issues. I think it’s an intelligent strategy. I also think it’s wrong and often dishonest.
          It’s curious that nobody seems to worry about the “separation of Church and state,” or religious interference in the public square, when the religious voices that speak up support a certain kind of candidate. In his book, Prof. Kmiec complains about the agenda and influence of what he terms RFPs -- Republican Faith Partisans. But he also seems to pay them the highest kind of compliment: imitation. If RFPs are bad, is it unreasonable to assume that DFPs -- Democratic Faith Partisans -- are equally dangerous?
          As I suggest throughout "Render Unto Caesar," it’s important for Catholics to be people of faith who pursue politics to achieve justice; not people of politics who use and misuse faith to achieve power. I have no doubt that Prof. Kmiec belongs to the former group. But I believe his arguments finally serve the latter.
          For 35 years I’ve watched thousands of good Catholic laypeople, clergy and religious struggle to recover some form of legal protection for the unborn child. The abortion lobby has fought every compromise and every legal restriction on abortion, every step of the way. Apparently they believe in their convictions more than some of us Catholics believe in ours. And I think that’s an indictment of an entire generation of American Catholic leadership.
          The abortion conflict has never simply been about repealing Roe v. Wade. And the many pro-lifers I know live a much deeper kind of discipleship than “single issue” politics. But they do understand that the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching is protecting human life from conception to natural death. They do understand that every other human right depends on the right to life. They did not and do not and will not give up -- and they won’t be lied to.
          So I think that people who claim that the abortion struggle is “lost” as a matter of law, or that supporting an outspoken defender of legal abortion is somehow “pro-life,” are not just wrong; they’re betraying the witness of every person who continues the work of defending the unborn child. And I hope they know how to explain that, because someday they’ll be required to.
          Before I conclude and we go to questions, let me say just a couple of things about ENDOW. When you’re a bishop, you meet a lot of very good people with very good ideas. You meet a lot fewer people who know how to make good ideas work, or who have the generosity, brains, stubbornness and endurance to lead and grow a good idea into a whole movement of good people who can make a much wider difference.
          Betsy Considine, Marilyn Coors, Terry Polakovic and the other women who founded ENDOW are exactly that kind of leader. And the success of ENDOW is a testimony not just to their enthusiasm and hard work, but to yours.
          ENDOW succeeds because its message for women is true. ENDOW succeeds because in forming women in the truth of Jesus Christ, it serves the Church and opens the door to the most powerful kind of renewal -- the kind that comes from a Christ-based friendship between husband and wife; the kind that comes from a family shaped by Christian love; the kind that comes from real Catholic leadership by lay and religious women in their communities, in business, in education, in medicine and in public life.
          These are difficult times for our country. Even within our Church, the economy, the Iraq War, the life issues in general, and this election in particular, have created a deep spirit of conflict and anxiety. But I do believe Scripture when it tells us not to be afraid. God uses each of us to renew the world if we let him. The genius of women is their capacity to love; to blend talent, intelligence and energy with patience, understanding, respect for the sacredness of life and compassion for others.
          That’s the kind of leadership we need, in our communities of faith, in our public service and throughout our country. Whatever happens next month and in the years ahead, ENDOW will have a hand in sustaining and refreshing the heart of the Church. That’s not a bad achievement for an organization so young. I’m proud of your witness, proud of what you’ve accomplished and very, very grateful for your service to the Church. God bless you.

by Most Rev. Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver

05:27 PM 10/19/2008 - WorldNetDaily, Oct. 18, 2008 - A growing movement that experts believe could end up in the criminalization of Christianity in the United States is being exposed in a new documentary being prepared for airing on October 26, officials at Coral Ridge Ministries have announced. "Hate Crime Laws" is a half-hour exposé that shows how Christians in America, Canada, Australia, and Sweden have been arrested and prosecuted for expressing opinions that are rooted in the Bible regarding homosexual conduct, Islam or other topics about which Scriptures express clear teachings.
          "On the surface, hate crime laws might sound like a good idea," said Jerry Newcombe, of Coral Ridge, who hosts the special. "After all, none of us advocates hatred or violence against another person. But if you look below the surface, suddenly you realize that these laws are really thought crime laws." The program will air on The Coral Ridge Hour time slot and local airing times are available online.
          WND has reported previously on hate crimes plans at the local level. In Colorado, for example, Gov. Bill Ritter [pictured at left] signed into law earlier this year a plan that analysts believe effectively bans publication of the Bible in the state. The gender "anti-discrimination" law bans publication of statements that can be perceived as being negative toward those individuals choosing alternative sexual lifestyles. WND also has reported when family groups with alarm have warned constituents about pending plans in Congress to institutionalize nationwide such laws. Pro-homosexual advocates long have sought such a law, but opponents fear it would be used to crack down on those who maintain a biblical perspective that condemns homosexuality as sin. Observers note it would criminalize speech and thought, since other criminal actions already are addressed with current statutes.
          Canada already has an aggressive "hate crimes" law, and there authorities have gone so far as to tell a Christian pastor he must recant his faith because of the legislation that bans statements that can be "perceived" as condemning another person. Some states already have similar statutes, too, and in New Mexico, a photography company run by two Christians was fined $6,600 by the state for declining to provide services to a lesbian couple setting up a lookalike "marriage" ceremony. The documentary cites the New Mexico case, as well as others.
          "Canadian youth pastor Stephen Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor in 2002 criticizing homosexual activism and offering compassion and hope for people trapped by homosexuality. A human rights tribunal took notice and slapped him with a $5,000 fine, ordered him to apologize in writing, and snuffed out his free speech rights by placing a prior restraint on his public expression of any 'disparaging' opinions about homosexuality," Coral Ridge officials said. "In Sweden, Pastor Ake Green spoke out against homosexual conduct in a 2003 sermon and was prosecuted for 'hate speech,'" the announcement continued. In Australia, all it took to bring two ministers into a courtroom on charges of vilifying Islam was a seminar in their own church about Muslim beliefs.
          The late Coral Ridge founder D. James Kennedy repeatedly had warned such developments would endanger Americans' civil rights. "This will silence churches, which is their great desire – that churches ... may not be able to say anything negative about homosexuality," he said in an earlier presentation.
          An online presentation on the issue features Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Homosexuals know they must silence the church in this country, and that's what's behind this," he warns. Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, also appears. The goal, he said, is the "criminalization of Christianity. If you say traditional morality is now a form of hate and bigotry, and bring the full weight of the government, you have criminalized basic Christian moral doctrine." Other guests include Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel; and Tristan Emmanuel, a Presbyterian minister who resigned from the pulpit to found the Equipping Christians for the Public Square Centre.
          Opponents of such actions note the deceptiveness of some of the proposals. In Colorado, for example, "Section 8 of the bill makes it a crime to publish or distribute anything that is deemed a 'discrimination' against the homosexual and transsexual lifestyle," according to the Christian Family Alliance. Mark Hotaling, executive director for the Alliance, said initially supporters and even some opponents of the bill explained that there was an exception for churches and church organizations. However, lawmakers then attached to the bill a state "safety clause" which is supposed to deal with laws that are fundamental to protecting the lives of residents. That, he said, simply stripped away any potential allowances for churches and church groups. "Anyone who claims that there's an exception for churches really doesn't know the ins and outs of the bill," Hotaling told WND. "So the religious exemption is purely window dressing and very deceptive," he said. "The Word of God literally now is banned, and that's a legitimate slam-dunk First Amendment issue there."
          President Bush has fended off at least one federal plan by deciding it was unnecessary and promising a veto if Congress would pass it.

from WorldNetDaily

In your PP's opinion, the alarmism evident in this story is not overblown. It is not at all inconceivable that a recent Vatican document forbidding the ordination of known homosexuals to the Catholic priesthood has already put the Church in the United States in the cross-hairs of those who would seek to have the Church declared "illegal" because it discriminates against gays in it's hiring policies. Wait for it. It's just a matter of time. Meanwhile, say one word about a religion (Islam) the scriptures of which actually state that all non-believers must be killed, and watch the fireworks.
          Funny, isn't it, how there are no "hate crime" laws proposed to protect believing and practicing Christians? Freedom of religion is expressly protected by the Bill of Rights, while deviant sexual practices are not mentioned there; but a quick glance at recent court rulings would give you the impression that just the opposite is true.

by Priestly Pugilist

02:52 PM 10/19/2008 - In turning to today’s gospel, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, we find it to be a very sobering and harsh story, quite in contrast to the accounts of healing and mercy that we’re used to hearing in the gospel of St. Luke. It’s a very severe warning: the egoistic enjoyment of this world will be paid for in the next. It deals with those mysteries which, in the Catholic Church, we traditionally call the four “Last Things”: heaven, hell, death and judgement. It’s message is pretty clear, or at least it seems so.
          As our Lord begins this lesson, he uses a curious turn of phrase: he says that “A certain begger...was laid at his gate.” I find that interesting because it shows that the world of suffering and misery is not unreal or far away. Now, most of us may not think we need to hear that. Often in our lives it’s painfully obvious; but it isn’t so for the rich man in the story. He’s used his wealth to isolate himself from what is ugly in the world around him, as rich people often do. But it doesn’t work, because the begger, Lazarus, is “laid at his gate,” as our Lord puts it. Which puts the rich man in an awkward position; because, now, in order to continue to isolate himself, he has to pretend that Lazarus isn’t there; he has to ignore him, which he does, for which he ends up paying the penalty by being sent to hell.
          Now, there are two points that are worth noticing here: first, the obvious fact that the rich man’s retribution, and consequently Lazarus’ reward, do not come in this life; they come in the next, when Lazarus is sent to heaven and the Rich Man goes to hell. It’s an important point to keep in mind, especially when we run into people who are having a hard time and who say, “I lived a good life; why is God letting this happen?” They are forgetting that reward and punishment do not happen here. The Rich Man is very remourseful for how he’s lived and for ignoring the begger at his gate; but by that time it’s too late: any opportunity he may have had to change his life is gone. And there occurs a very interesting -- and also sobering -- exchange between them. The Rich Man, in the fires of hell, realizing that there’s now no way out of his predicament, asks Abraham to allow Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool the Rich Man’s tongue. It’s an exact reversal of what was going on before they both died, when Lazarus was begging for a scrap from the Rich Man’s table. But it isn’t to be, as Abraham explains to the Rich Man that there is no communication between heaven and hell: Lazarus can’t reach across the gulf to cool the Rich Man’s tongue; the judgement made against him at the time of his death is final.
          But what’s really remarkable -- to me, anyway -- is that, having had this explained to him, the Rich Man lapses into a fit of charity: in the midst of this unbearable torment, brought on, of course, by his own neglect, the Rich Man wants to spare his brothers, who are also rich, from the same fate. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to them, so they can be warned to change their ways before it’s too late. It seems -- on the surface, anyway -- to be an extremely magnanimous gesture; and it occurs to us, I think, that Abraham should look favorably on such a request. After all, it’s probably the first time in this Rich Man’s existence that he’s thought of the needs of others rather than his own. But Abraham rejects the idea. He tells the Rich Man that, even for his brothers, it’s too late. And the reason we should find that so sobering is because his brothers are not yet dead. Presumably they still have a chance to change their ways, but they are not to be permitted this warning.
          It seems so unfair, but then Abraham explains why: they have Moses, they have the prophets, they have the Scriptures; they need nothing else. Everything they need to learn what they must do to be saved has already been provided. If they choose not to heed it, it is their own choice and their own fault. It’s a hard position for Abraham to take, but it’s a just position, and one we have to listen to.
          Why were the writings of Moses and the Prophets not enough to teach these men how to live in order to be saved? Well, one reason may be because, even by our Lord’s time, the books of Moses and the Prophets in the Old Testament were already a thousand years old. Everyone was familiar with them; they were read regularly as part of the synagogue service, and maybe that was the problem. They had become ritualized. Just like the gospel is for us. Father dresses up in pretty chothes, and chants the words of our Divine Savior, and we sing in response; but how often do we pause to listen to what is being sung to hear what those words are trying to tell us? It’s not as if the gospels are written in some kind of peculiar code which we need a priest to decipher. Our Lord’s lessons in these parables are too often painfully clear. It’s just that we don’t listen. Just like the Rich Man didn’t listen, just like his bothers didn’t listen . . . until it was too late. And then we run the risk of having one of those “head-slapping” moments wherein we say, “Oh, you mean I was supposed to actually apply that to my own life?! Who would have thought?”
          There is a second point about this parable, as I said, to which I would draw your attention; and it’s a point that’s made by St. Cyril of Alexandria in his commentary on Luke’s gospel. He points out the fact that the Rich Man is never named by Jesus in the parable, he simply calls him “a Rich Man”; but the poor man he mentions by name. Why? Because the Rich Man, having no fear of God in his heart, was nameless in God’s presence. And then he quotes Psalm 15, verse 4, in which God says, concerning those who do not fear him, “I will not make mention of their names with My Lips.” It’s a chilling statement about the harshness and finality of God’s judgement.
          It is so easy for us, Sunday after Sunday (or Saturday after Saturday) to come to church, sing the songs, say the prayers and go home to all the other “important” things that occupy our lives, having fulfulled our obligation to go to church for another week. If it’s going to be more than that, as I think we all agree it should be, then that’s an adjustment that has to be made by each one of us in our own hearts. It’s not up the priest to inspire us, although if we have a priest that does that for us it’s helpful; but ultimately it’s up to each one of us to decide what we’re doing when we’re here: what we’re thinking about, what we’re praying about, whether we are truely listening to what’s being sung and said and examining our lives in light of it. No one is responsible for doing that for us. As Cardinal Newman once said, “I can no more think with thoughts not my own than I can breath with lungs not my own, nor can I pray with words not my own.” Everything that we need to be inspired and consoled, to be sanctified and saved has been provided to us by Christ through his Church. What we do with it is entirely up to us.

by Father Michael Venditti

12:58 PM 10/18/2008 - Certainly the most impressive miracles and signs performed by our Lord in the Gospels are those in which he raises someone from the dead: the Synagogue leader’s daughter, the centurion’s manservant, his own relative, Lazarus, and this unknown person of whom we read today, a young man being carried to his grave, accompanied by his grieving mother. It’s a sad scene St. Luke paints for us, which has a happy ending when Christ miraculously restores life to the dead man. It’s a testimony to our Lord’s divinity -- for who can raise the dead except God? -- as well of his power over death, which he would proclaim most perfectly in his own resurrection.
          But the Scriptures speak a metaphorical language that is often foreign to modern ears. For this is more than just a story about Christ’s divinity and his power over death; it is a lesson about sin. All references to death in the Holy Gospel are references to sin. For the Evangelists, sin and death are the same thing: where one is mentioned, the other is understood. Just as physical death envelops the body in darkness, so sin envelops the soul in darkness; which is why St. John describes Christ as ...the light [that] shines in the darkness (John 1:5). Darkness is the quintessential evil for St. John: sin, error, heresy, disobedience, licentiousness, covetousness, death itself, are all part of the world of darkness in the Gospel of St. John. And Christ is that light which shines forth in the darkness, in the midst of prevailing error, and makes it disappear. Walk as a child of the light, says our Lord again and again, meaning, “Walk apart from sin.” Because the person who walks in the way of sin must walk in darkness; he prefers the darkness. It is the darkness that hides his sinful deeds from the eyes of men. Sinful deeds are committed in darkness because they must be secret. When Christ admonishes us to walk as children of the light, he is saying, “Have no need for secret acts.” Everything you do, no matter how private, should be able to be seen by all men without scandal.”
          When I was in the seminary I remember often discussions about when it is appropriate for priests to dress in clerical uniform and when it is not appropriate... certain types of restaurants or the cinema or some such places. And one holy priest interjected that whenever a priest found himself in a situation where being identifiable as a priest would be embarrassing or uncomfortable, even though there may be no sin involved, it’s probably a place where he ought not to be.
          Certainly everyone is entitled to privacy -- even priests -- and all of us have private parts of our lives, our jobs, our marriages, which are not intended for public view. Most of the time it’s a question of appropriateness or modesty. But when a person develops a part of his or her life that must be kept secret because it contradicts the life he or she lives in public -- because it would cause some sort of uncomfortableness for those who know them -- such a person must ask himself if it should be at all.
          Even ancient folk legends about vampires show this. Who is the vampire? He is the personification of evil. In all the Dracula movies, Dracula is this suave, sophisticated man about town, always dressed to the teeth, seducing impressionable women with his perfectly polished charm; but he never walks in front of mirrors, he never comes out in the daylight, because if he did, who he really is would be exposed. He makes darkness his home to perpetuate the illusion of being just like everyone else. And in the Church of Jesus Christ we have many spiritual “vampires:” men and women who go through the motions expected of them as members of the Church, but they have some secret, some dark room in their hearts where the light is never turned on and where the curtains are always drawn lest anyone see inside. These are the people who protest their right to privacy the most, but not out of a sense of simple modesty or inappropriateness.
          For example, when husband and wife make love, they close the binds, but not for any sinister reason. They hide it from prying eyes simply because it is something for themselves alone and is no one else’s business. But when a person is there with someone who is not his spouse, he closes the blinds for a very different reason, not out of concern for modesty or privacy or the sensitivities of others, but to hide what he knows is wrong. And so a part of his life must then be lived in “darkness.” He is, in fact, living two lives: one in the daylight and one in the darkness, struggling all his life through to keep the two from ever touching one another. And when, out of carelessness or spiritual fatigue, the two collide, he must suffer the embarrassment and the scandal that his secret life causes in the eyes of those who knew him in the light.
          Now, everybody sins. St. Peter says in his Second Epistle that anyone who says he is not a sinner is a liar. I sin, you sin, we all commit sins. But St. John Chrysostom explains to us that, even though we all sin, it is possible to distinguish the evil man from the good -- and I quoted this to you not too long ago. The good man, he says, when he is told he has sinned, reacts with sorrow and begs forgiveness. The evil man, when his sin is discovered, reacts with indignation, protesting that his privacy has been violated. And over the centuries, no excuse has been used more to defend sinful actions when they are brought to light then the so called right to privacy. The very quintessence of evil in our own society, abortion, was judicially legislated into the law of our country in the Roe vs. Wade decision not because the court said human life was not precious, not because it said abortion was good, but because of what they called the right to privacy. It never occurs to the proponents of this form of murder to ask, if it’s not wrong, why is it so important to protect its privacy. Why must it be done in darkness apart from the knowledge of others if there’s nothing wrong with it?
          When Jesus raised the dead man to life as we read in the Gospel lesson, St. Luke added the line, Then fear came upon them all, and they glorified God... (Luke 7:16). Fear came upon them because they realized that there is no darkness that can shut out the light of Christ, not even the darkness of death; that the dark rooms that they held in their hearts could also be enlightened by Christ. But they glorified God in this because they knew that once a man leaves the darkness and enters into the light -- once his sin is exposed and dealt with -- then he is free. He is free to walk in the light without shame, no longer having to lurk in the shadows, hiding a part of himself from the eyes of his neighbor, forced by his own choice to live a double life. For then does he realize that whatever pleasure or fulfillment he thought he had in the darkness, it cannot compare to the joy, the rest, the peace given to his soul when there is nothing to hide, when the light can shine brightly on his whole self without cause for shame. No wonder they said of him, A great prophet has risen among us; and, God has visited His people.

by Father Michael Venditti

01:08 PM 10/3/2008 - LONDON, September 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The invasive procedures used to detect Down syndrome in unborn children result in the miscarriages of two healthy children for every three Down babies detected, a British study has found.
          The study's researchers, from the charity Down Syndrome Education International (DSEI), estimate that in the process of detecting and aborting 660 Down babies annually, screening leads to the deaths of 400 babies who do not have the disorder in England and Wales alone. Based upon their findings, the researchers are calling into question the ethical standing of the government's policy of offering screening to all pregnant women.
          Women are regarded as being more at risk of carrying a Down syndrome child if they become pregnant after age 35. 6,000 women each year in Britain are offered screening by blood tests and subsequent invasive testing to assess the condition of their unborn babies. However, the researchers point out that 95 percent of women deemed to be high risk by the blood test will not be carrying a baby with the disorder, yet most go on to have the invasive tests, thereby greatly increasing the risk of miscarriage.
          The organisation opposes the widespread assumption that Down syndrome children should be aborted before birth and works to provide assistance to families and does research and lobbying on behalf of people with Down syndrome. "Our vision," DSEI says, "is a world where all young people with Down syndrome are offered the opportunities that they need to achieve their individual potential."
          Under British law, abortion for eugenic purposes is not restricted to the 24 week gestational limit, but may be legally carried out up to the point of birth for children suspected of having "serious" abnormalities.
          The DSEI research, which authors admit is only an "estimate" of the number of deaths of non-Down children, is backed up by findings published last year by Dr. Hylton Meire. Meire calculated that for every 50 children with Down syndrome successfully identified and killed by abortion, 160 non-affected babies are lost by miscarriage after the test.
          If a woman is suspected of carrying a Down baby, she routinely moves from screening to amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) tests. These involve inserting a fine needle through the abdomen to either withdraw amniotic fluid or tissue samples.
          Dr. Meire wrote in the Journal Ultrasound that with about one in every 1000 children conceived having Down syndrome, and with amniocentesis carrying a one in 200 risk of miscarriage, as many as 3,200 healthy babies die by miscarriage every year because of testing.
          The NHS admits of a miscarriage rate of only one to two percent following the invasive testing. However, the NHS only tracks statistics for Down syndrome children killed by abortion or who subsequently die as a result of miscarriage. The DSEI researchers said that the official statistics do not count the number of healthy children lost to miscarriages caused by the tests.
          DSEI research also found, however, that more children with Down's syndrome are surviving to birth than in the previous 15 years, despite the increasing pressure on women to have the tests and to kill their Down child before birth. Their research found that births of babies with Down syndrome have risen 25 per cent in 15 years in England.
          Frank Buckley, the charity's Chief Executive and co-author of the report, said, "At the same time, life expectancy and quality of life continue to improve."
          "More people are living with Down syndrome than ever before with over 600,000 across Europe and North America and maybe 4 million worldwide. There is still much more to do, but people with Down syndrome are achieving more thanks to better healthcare, better opportunities and more effective teaching approaches."

by Hilary White

12:36 PM 10/3/2008 -

[It's safe to say that the economy is on a lot of people's minds right now; and while this blog doesn't usually dable in such matters, the following article appealed to your PP who, as a registered (and dedicated) Republican, has always believed that the government that governs least, governs best; and who believes that anyone who looks to government to solve all our problems is some kind of communist. The Rev. Peter Mullen is a minister of the Church of England and Rector of St. Michael's, Cornhill, in the city of London. His article is dated 26 September 2008. --PP]

The deep credit crisis in world markets is playing havoc with life here in the City. I have the charge of two parish churches in the Square Mile and I am also chaplain to the Stock Exchange and to six Livery companies, so I meet scores of City and financial people every day. Many have lost their jobs and many more are fearful of losing them.
          Economists and others who know about these things say that the present downturn - the first since 1992 - is worse than anything in living memory. We have to look back to the dreadful Great Depression of the 1930s to see anything comparable. Because a great many City workers are only in their 20s and 30s - I recall Nigel Lawson's jibe about "teenage scribblers" - there are thousands of young bankers and brokers who have never experienced even a mild recession. Most of them were still at school when the last one occurred.
          At present there is no long queue up my church steps of distraught City workers seeking pastoral advice and support. The crisis is in its first phase and at the moment those involved are concentrating all their energies on trying to keep their jobs; or else they are vigorously looking for work elsewhere. The real problems will arise at Christmas and in the New Year when people who have been out of work for a few months will be desperately worried about how they are going to pay their children's school fees and the mortgage - even the fuel bills after the huge rise in energy prices. Sadly but inevitably these financial difficulties will create domestic and family problems. What else should we expect when people are at the end of their tether?
          I am writing this having just finished reading the morning paper in which there is a cartoon of Karl Marx with a bubble coming out of his mouth saying: "Ha! Ha! Ha!" For of course Marx famously predicted "crises of capitalism". What are we to make of this prediction? Have we really stumbled into our final crisis which will cause the masses to rise up in revolution and answer Marx's call: "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" Shall we at last be delivered by the inevitability of the Communist dialectic into the ultimate solution: the dictatorship of the proletariat and the earthly paradise which will follow the adoption of pure socialism in which the workers own the means of production?
          In a word, no. There have always been crises of capitalism. You might say that capitalism is permanent crisis, volatile, unpredictable, subject to fluctuations in prices, supply and demand. Indeed, capitalism has its own brand of dialectic: problems arise, solutions emerge and the market moves on to what old Hegel might have called a fresh synthesis.
          But the use of the word "capitalist" to describe our financial system is highly misleading. Britain does not run a free-market economy. Almost half our budget is Government spending - chiefly health and education - and the public sector is vast and ever increasing. Since New Labour came to power it has created 800,000 new civil service posts. That's 800,000 people in secure government jobs looking forward to retirement and guaranteed pensions. All paid for out of taxes. So what we have in this country is a mixed economy comprising a vigorous market regime and a very large government sector.
          Every time we run into financial difficulties we hear the old allegation that capitalism is unjust, immoral and certainly not compatible with Christianity, which is all about loving our neighbour - not about trying to put him out of business. Capitalism is represented as red in tooth and claw, a harsh and unfair system in which many are forced to the wall by the excessive greed of high financiers.
          Before passing on to examine the justification for this view, we need to look at the main historical alternative to capitalism, which is socialism. It is probably no exaggeration to say that socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried and in its extreme form has generally led to dictatorships, tyrannies, gulags, purges and mass murder of whole populations. Stalin is reckoned to have slaughtered forty million of his people. Notoriously he replied to his critics by saying: "One man's death is a tragedy: the death of a million men is a statistic." Mao is estimated to have killed up to twice as many as Stalin.
          Socialism, even when it does not lead to mass murder, has proved again and again to be inefficient. Have you heard the one about the Soviet citizen who bought a new car? He was told to expect delivery on a Tuesday 10 years hence. He asked the salesman: "Will that be in the morning or the afternoon?" The salesman was incredulous: "It's 10 years before delivery - why do you need to know morning or afternoon?" The resigned customer answered: "Because I've got a new washing machine coming that Tuesday morning."
          Marx talked about "the contradictions of capitalism". But these are as nothing compared with the contradictions of socialism. As Chesterton put it: "How is it that it is a crime for a man to own a field, but all right for the state to own an oil field?"
          But apart from its renowned inefficiencies, there is another and more fundamental reason why socialism doesn't work. It is an ideal. And ideals can be operated only by people who are themselves ideal. Whereas the Christian faith teaches that we are all mired and marred by Original Sin.
          This is not some weird, superstitious phenomenon; it is simply how we are. St Paul expressed it perfectly in words which even a member of the General Synod could understand: "The thing I would, I do not; and what I would not, that I do." The former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, put it colourfully: "Original Sin is just the buggeration factor." We all fall short of our best intentions. Who can put up his hand and say that he is all loving, kind, generous and entirely unselfish? Only a humbug would make such claims. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That is the heresy of Pelagianism. If we were naturally good, why would we need the Saviour? Actually it is those moral and political fanatics who do believe in their own righteousness and the perfection of their particular party who end up perpetrating the worst genocides.
          Capitalism is far from perfect, but at least it has a chance of delivering moderate success. And this is because it works with the grain of human nature rather than against it. In order to enrich himself a man works very hard and invents a good mousetrap. He becomes a millionaire. But in achieving his self-interested aim he enables millions of homes to be delivered from disease-bearing vermin.
          The market economy - freedom to own property and to trade under the rule of law - is an imperfect system. But it is probably the best mortal, fallen people are capable of this side of heaven. As we have seen on far too many occasions, the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.

by Rev. Peter Mullen

12:13 PM 10/3/2008 -

[Mention the crusades, and anyone educated in a public school will immediately envision Catholics engaging in a jihad-like "holy war," and with the same fanticism and hatred of anyone not like them. The notion that the crusades were not necessary "bad" would seem like so much nonesense to most. That's why the following book review attracted my attention. The book being reviewed is Fighting for the Cross by Norman Housely (of whom I know nothing), published by Yale University Press, 356 pages at a cost of $38.00. The reviewer, Vincent Ryan, is a doctoral candidate in medieval history at Saint Louis University. --PP]

The Crusades are typically thought of as the wars between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East that occurred during the 12th and 13th centuries. While this was their most famous manifestation, it was not the only one. They also involved conflicts against the Moors in Iberia, heretics in southern France, pagans in northern Europe and the political opponents of the papacy on the Italian peninsula. Yet, though medieval Christians viewed all these various campaigns as crusades, fighting in the Holy Land was understood as being the ultimate form of crusading. In his latest book on the subject, the prolific Norman Housley, a professor of history at the University of Leicester, provides a full immersion into the origins, experience and impact of crusading to the Middle East.
          Since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a noticeable surge of books on the Crusades. The “politically incorrect,” “idiots” and even those with short attention spans have all had titles aimed at satisfying their apparent thirst for crusading knowledge. In contrast to most of these recent tomes, however, Housley’s book is not a narrative history of the Crusades. While he does provide a short overview of the various crusading campaigns in the East so that the average reader has the foundation to proceed, his primary aim is to determine what crusading meant for the men and women involved.
          For many, the decision to go on crusade was rooted in personal piety. We tend to think of crusading as a holy war, but medieval people perceived it primarily as a new type of pilgrimage. Pilgrimages were an increasingly popular spiritual activity during the 11th century, and Jerusalem was considered the holiest place on earth. Pope Urban II’s fusion of penitential and pilgrimage language with warfare in proclaiming the First Crusade received great support throughout Europe. His message resonated especially with those who felt weighed down by an aching sense of sinfulness—namely the knightly class. While the audience was ripe, recruitment efforts were still necessary to secure the involvement of potential enlistees. Crusade preachers employed a variety of techniques and approaches. Some argued what a great bargain crusading was, since the punishment for one’s sins would be wiped away in exchange for participating in the expedition. Other preachers used motifs that played particularly to aristocratic audiences. For example, the Holy Land was portrayed as Christ’s fief and the crusaders as his vassals, who needed to regain their lord’s lost domain.
          The fact that they were motivated chiefly by piety does not mean that all crusaders maintained entirely pure motives. Some certainly enlisted to gain worldly riches. Others probably saw this as a secondary advantage to taking the cross. However, the old argument that crusading was mainly undertaken for financial reasons is no longer viable. As Housley convincingly demonstrates, crusading was a financially draining enterprise. At different times the crown or the church tried to help underwrite the costs, but most crusaders had to rely chiefly on family resources to fund their expeditions. Cash was crucial, and to raise it lands were often sold for a fraction of their actual value. Many were bankrupted by crusading.
          Others have claimed that crusading was mostly for younger sons who had no prospects for inheritance. It was the “land” part of the Holy Land that moved their hearts. Studies of the crusaders’ backgrounds, however, have indicated that the oldest sons were the most likely to participate. On the other hand, if the Crusades were really a thinly veiled land-grab by impecunious younger sons, the evidence does not support such a view. When the First Crusade ended, after venerating the Holy Sepulcher most of the remaining participants returned home.
          While the sections on preparation and motivation might be the most interesting parts of the book, the chapters on travel and warfare are enlightening on a number of issues. Gaining converts was a minimal concern for either side. Famine and disease were often more deadly than combat. The crusaders’ horses were extremely important. The Muslims understood their great military value and began targeting these animals. The Christian sources often indicate how crippling food shortages were for both the crusaders and their steeds and sometimes discuss casualties in terms of horses lost. An anecdote about a crusader lamenting having to ride a donkey (since all his horses had perished) is amusing, but also quite telling.
          Though it is published by an academic press, Fighting for the Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land is accessible to a general audience. Housley regularly incorporates quotations from contemporary sources, which, along with an assortment of maps, photographs and illustrations, further enhance the average reader’s understanding of different aspects of crusading. The book loses some momentum in the last chapter and ends somewhat abruptly. A more focused conclusion or summation would have been useful. Also, the subtitle of the book is slightly misleading, since three of the key expeditions that Housley considers had ultimately little to do with the Holy Land. The Fourth Crusade was permanently sidetracked to Constantinople, and the Fifth and Seventh Crusades were focused on Egypt. But as a title, “Crusading to the eastern Mediterranean” doesn’t have quite the same ring. Clearly, these minor shortcomings detract little from a study that succeeds in providing us with a better understanding of what the experience of crusading entailed.

by Vincent Ryan

10:18 AM 10/2/2008 - The last time we read the Gospel of the Golden rule I illustrated for you its practical aspects by describing the life of the early 20th century American, J. C. Penny, with whose department store chain we are all familiar. He lived the Golden Rule to an extent we might consider extreme, taking all of our Lord’s words very literally, even to the extent of not allowing his company to accept credit cards because he thought the practice violated our Lord’s words on usury.
          Today we focus on the Epistle taken from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, which is very bizarre at first hearing. It is very much a letter written in anger. Paul’s authority as an Apostle has been challenged in Corinth. But in the passage we just read he’s telling the Corinthians that he’s used to persecution for the sake of Christ -- which is a very stinging thing to say to fellow Christians; he even describes at the beginning of the passage how he’s endured persecutions far worse than what the Corinthians have dished out, describing how he escaped from the King of Damascus by being lowered down in a basket through a hole in the city walls, almost as if to say, “I’ve cracked tougher nuts than you.”
          The sarcasm of this passage would be amusing were it not for the fact that Paul is insulting the Corinthians in a very vicious and painful way. Paul started the Church in Corinth during his first missionary journey; but having moved on, he was followed by other Christians who claimed that Paul wasn’t a real Apostle because he wasn’t one of the twelve in the company of Our Lord. They then began to replace the true faith that he taught them with a more Jewish oriented version of Christianity that maintained all the Jewish rituals and dietary laws -- in fact, throughout many of Paul’s Epistles in the New Testament we see him returning again and again to this tension that existed in the early Church between the original Jewish Christians and the gentiles converted to Christ by Paul. So he sets out in this Epistle to defend his credentials as an Apostles, and insults the Corinthians by comparing the resistance they’ve shown him to the persecutions he suffered at the hands of the pagan king of Damascus. It’s twisting the knife just a bit, but justified in his mind since, as he tells us later on the Epistle, this will be the third time he’s had to go back there and straighten them out, taking him away from efforts better spent converting people in new cities.
          And because he regards their resistance to him a personal insult in itself, he gets very personal in this letter, and speaks about what he calls his “visions and revelations of the Lord,” since they represent the personal contact with our Lord that he believes qualifies him as an Apostle; but he does so in the third person, as if speaking about someone else, in an almost sarcastic sham of humility. “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago...” blah, blah, blah.... He’s talking about himself.
          Now, I’m not going to parse the vision he describes -- he doesn’t bother to interpret it himself in the letter -- and there’s no need to try to pull the veil back from it any more than he does himself. He’s mentioning it only because his opponents have come into town telling everyone what great and eminent Apostles they are and how they have had all these visions and mystical experiences that make them great Apostles; so he counters this by speaking of his own mystical experiences in the third person, alluding to the fact that a true Apostle of Jesus Christ speaks about Christ, not about himself:

For though I might desire to boast, I will not be a fool; for I will speak the truth. But I refrain, lest anyone should think of me above what he sees me to be or hears from me.

04:17 PM 10/1/2008 - I was purusing an excellent blog about all things Catholic called The Cross Reference, and just happened to come across this entry, dated July 6th:

Here are my reflections, reactions, and comments on the two Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgies I attended this past week (on Friday morning and Saturday evening). As "Roman" as I am (meaning, I love to kneel and genuflect in reverence during the liturgy), there is something I find attractive about standing (at attention, as it were) during the Divine Liturgy. Tired clichés aside -- "we're an Easter people!" -- it calls to mind the courage it takes to stand up for the true faith in God. It reminds me of the humble pride (not a contradiction) that the martyrs had, standing in the midst of trial and torture, not cowering to their oppressors. Clearly, the Church in her wisdom has retained the beauty of the Eastern and Western Rites because they supplement and complement each other so perfectly.
      The incense and the bells! The icons! The deliberate gestures! The profundity! Ahh, the Liturgy as an experience engaging all the senses. I am sure heaven will be infinitely more beautiful, but for now, I find myself content with the Mass and the Divine Liturgy.
      The constant chanting and singing. It takes a while to get used to it. I find that, for some reason, my throat gets tired and sore more quickly from chanting than from other singing... I don't know quite why, but I resolve to get it in line! The melodies used were sometimes tricky, and I can appreciate how a full choir would have supplied for the congregation's defect. (There was no choir, only a single cantor.) My sister and I were singing a lot, but softly usually... I don't know how much of the congregation was singing the Propers of the liturgy. But the simpler responses like "Lord have mercy" and "Amen" were sung by all, as far as I could tell.
      Ad orientem worship! It re-orients (pun intended) the celebration of the liturgy to the God who is beyond us, and yet makes Himself present in our midst. It points us to the future, not simply to the present. And of course, it is punctuated by the priest turning to us on several occasions when he is speaking directly to us, making the Sign of the Cross over us, praying for peace for us. I only wish there had been a deacon as well.
      Now, I will say I found the chanting of the readings a bit... well... silly. But only because they were in the vernacular. Hey, no offense, but you try chanting 1 Cor. 1! It sounded odd to hear the words of St. Paul, kind of rambling his way through the list of people he baptized, reporting what he heard from Chloe, sung. I now see the beauty and functionality of chanting the Scriptures in another language (be it Latin or Greek or Slavonic, etc.) and then simply reading them afterward, before the homily.
      Oh, precious and loving God, the homily! That was, without a doubt, the clearest and bluntest (and I say that in a good way) homily I have heard in a very long while! The Gospel reading was from Matthew's account of the feeding of the 5000. The priest came right out and said (paraphrased): "If you cannot tell that this Gospel passage is a prefiguring of the Eucharist, you are in need of some remedial catechesis." But then, gracious pastor that he is, he went on and provided to us that catechesis, linking the Scripture with our faith and the liturgy. It was everything a homily should be. I regret that I don't remember the whole of it in the same detail as I remember the exegesis of the Gospel passage, but I do not think I shall forget that opening salvo of unadulterated Catholic orthodoxy for a long, long time!
      Finally: Holy Communion. Before we received, we prayed something out loud that I wish God would inscribe in every single parish bulletin and missalette and songbook in the world. We announced our belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, asked that we receive not condemnation but healing, and cried out to the Lord for his mercy. And then, those of us who received walked up, took hold of the red cloth at the base of the chalice, held it under our chins, opened our mouths, and graciously and devoutly (I hope!) received the mingled Body and Blood of our Lord! This was the very first (and second) time I received by intinction... and under the form of leavened bread, at that!
      So, to the parish of St. Michael's in Allentown, PA, I say thank you. And I am especially grateful to their pastor, Fr. Michael, for two liturgies well-celebrated (despite a lingering cough), a poignant homily, and a reminder of the universality of the Catholic Church.

          If you're interested, the homily refered to above can be found in the 01:46 PM 7/8/2008 post below.

by Priestly Pugilist

07:06 PM 9/25/2008 - The readings presented to us on the Sunday following the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross are much like those for the Sunday before the Exaltation in that they have a bearing on the mystery of the Cross in our lives: “Whosoever will come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” And I would offer for your meditation today a very simple point taken from our Lord’s interesting choice of words: “...let him take up his cross...;” not just any cross, but his own cross. In other words, the cross we are to take up is not a cross of our own choosing, but one given especially for us.
          Now, this doesn’t require a whole lot of mental gymnastics to figure out. All we have to do is look at our lives and list all the things that cause us pain, and it’s very clear that we didn’t choose them for ourselves, whatever those problems may be. It could be some marital difficulty or problem with a child or something to do with money or some chronic physical illness, or anything at all; it’s a sure bet we didn’t choose it for ourselves. It’s not like some so-called cross that we choose for ourselves, either out of conviction or out of vanity, like the person who decides he or she is going to be a vegetarian: it’s not something someone imposed upon him; it’s something he chose for himself, either because he strongly believes something about something, or, as is more often the case, he wants to think of himself as someone who believes something about something; and letting everyone see that makes him feel good about himself. And it’s very easy -- and not totally unjustified -- for those of us with real problems to look a little disdainfully on those who choose vanity crosses for themselves, since we know that they wouldn’t choose a vanity cross if they actually had a real cross to vex them.
          But it is interesting to me that people without real problems in their lives still feel compelled to find some. Why is it, for example, that it’s only here, and in other parts of the industrialized world, that we have people embracing causes like protesting the government to tell the truth about UFOs, and railing against global warming or the destruction of the rain forest? You don’t see that in the poorest countries of the world, where people are concerned with where the next meal is coming from; they have real problems with which to contend; they don’t need to make them up. It’s almost as if there is something in the human psyche that requires suffering; and, if we don’t have a real problem to suffer, then we’ll make one up.
          Malcolm Muggerige summed it up very concisely. He was an atheist and a journalist who was assigned to cover the life and work of Mother Theresa; and in the course of doing so, he found the gift of faith and ended up entering the Catholic Church. He said that when people stop believing in God they don’t then believe in nothing; they make up something else to believe it. It could be a political agenda or a social agenda or some form of pagan mysticism; but everybody needs to give themselves to something; and they have to reinforce that they’ve given themselves to something by imposing on themselves some form of personal privation or performing some sort of counter-cultural feat. So, they’ll go on hunger strikes for this cause or that; they’ll march in protest against this, that or whatever; or they’ll latch onto some kind of far-eastern mysticism that promises enlightenment. And the only reason they do this is because either they don’t have any real problems in their lives, or the problems they have they’ve chosen to simply run away from.
          Those of us who have real problems and who face them are the ones who remain attached to a real God-given faith; because, even though we know that embracing the faith doesn’t solve our problems, it does give us a way to cope and keep things in perspective. That’s why we don’t run away from our problems, nor try to mask them with imaginary ones. We accept our crosses precisely because they are ours, and not someone else’s; and because embracing them is the path to salvation. Or, as our Lord put it in today’s Gospel: “...whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it.”

by Father Michael Venditti

11:27 AM 9/10/2008 - There were basically two things known about Sarah Palin when her name was announced on Aug. 29 and the mediasphere began to shudder and pulsate: She was a recently elected governor and the mother of five children including a handicapped infant. The scorn from the mainstream press and the left-leaning blog world was both intense and instantaneous. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic immediately began circulating rumors that Trig was not the governor's baby -- that she had engaged in a huge charade to cover up her teen daughter's illegitimate child. The New York Times reported on the front page that Palin had been a member of the Alaska Independence Party. Eleanor Clift of Newsweek described the reaction of most newsrooms to Palin's elevation as "literally laughter." US Weekly rushed out a cover story picturing Palin holding her baby son with the headline "Babies, Lies, & Scandal."
          And that was just the throat-clearing phase. NBC's Brian Williams wondered whether she could discharge her responsibilities with all those kids. Sally Quinn of the Washington Post asked, "Will she put her country first, or will she put her family first?" Mort Kondracke called her a "wacko right-winger."
          Now it hardly needs mentioning that Brian Williams and company would sew their own lips closed before ever uttering such heresy about a liberal woman candidate. Nor would it even occur to them to question any male candidate's fitness because of the number of children he had.
          How do the media poobahs explain it? They say (and to her credit, Sally Quinn has apologized for her comments) that it was Palin's inexperience that prompted their contempt. But aren't these the same people who had just the week before been defending Barack Obama's thin resume?
          Something about Sarah Palin set them off before their own politically correct impulses ("Must Avoid Sexism") could inhibit them. By the ferocity of the response, you might have thought Palin was a secret member of a polygamous cult or had forced her daughter to give birth after a rape. But no, she was just the mother of five, hunting, fishing, NRA member, and governor.
          I wonder if it was that baby.

[ The McCain's and the Palin's greeting Kurt and Margie Kondrich, along with their daughter, Chloe, at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. ]

          Sarah Palin is no ordinary pro-lifer. She is an attractive, intelligent, ambitious, successful woman who has actually lived her convictions. Told that the baby she was carrying would be handicapped with Down syndrome, she and her husband made the only decision their consciences would permit -- to welcome this child with the same love they would give to any other. That decision is comparatively rare in America. Fully 80 percent of parents who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome in their unborn children elect to abort. But it's not unusual at all among committed pro-lifers. I have met many in the course of speaking to pro-life audiences. And for every couple that has chosen life for a handicapped child, there are thousands and perhaps millions more who have abjured prenatal testing because under no circumstances would they abort their children. I cannot count the times I've amazed pro-choice people with the news that there are even waiting lists of couples who stand ready to adopt Down syndrome babies.
          The example of people living their principles by embarking on the undeniably difficult path of raising a handicapped child is a hard one to dismiss. In fact, it's hard not to admire. Don't most of us, deep down, really think that the most humane and honorable thing is to treat all life as sacred? Even if you are not religious or have no belief in God -- doesn't it appeal to an enlightened humanism to give support and love to the handicapped? In fact, most pro-choice people probably treat the handicapped with terrific compassion and care. They doubtless support civil rights legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act, additional school spending, and generous Social Security benefits. They'd be the first to hold the door for someone in a wheelchair, and they'd be friendly toward anyone with obvious mental retardation.
          But for themselves, they would abort. And there stands Sarah, Trig Palin in her arms, a beautiful ambassador for the path of humility, duty, honor, and grace. It's no wonder she was in their crosshairs from the get go.

by Mona Charen, RealClearPolitics.com

The single highlighted line in the above article is the tip of a very dirty iceburg: The vast majority of abortions performed in the United States are performed on married women who were trying to have children. The myths of the pregnant cheerleader who wants to finish school or the pre-teen who is raped by a drunken stepfather are largely that: myths. In the rest of the world, the demographic is bit different: the majority of abortions outside the United States are performed because the child in question is a girl. More about this phenomenon later.

by Priestly Pugilist

10:58 AM 9/10/2008 -

[Edwin O'Brien was your PP's rector in the seminary in New York. From there he became Archbishop of the Military Services before being appointed Archbishop of Baltimore. This is his most recent column from the Archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Review. --PP]

How the Cafeteria Opened

Last week’s column waded into the controversial territory of contraception, the Church’s firm, steady and – I would claim – infallible teaching on the openness to every marital act to both the unitive and procreative meaning that God wills for marital love. The occasion was the recent 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” in which the Holy Father addressed the crisis of marriage and the family in the modern world. The Church’s teaching is as true today as it was then, and as it was for almost two millennia before – even though it is said that more than 90 percent of Catholics disagree with that teaching. The question I would pose on this anniversary is whether the teaching of “Humanae Vitae” was understood before it was rejected. Why was there such confusion when, after many years of discussion, “Humanae Vitae” appeared 40 years ago?

1. Until the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church, all Christian denominations were united in condemning artificial contraception as contrary to the plan of God for marriage. The crack in what was once a solid ecumenical consensus led to expectations that the Catholic Church, too, would change its ancient teaching on the nature of marital love and its relationship to procreation.

2. The development of the contraception pill by Catholic medical professor Dr. John Rock led to discussion and debate within the Church as to whether this new technology would allow for a refinement or change in Church teaching.

3. During the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII removed the topic of contraception from conciliar debate and in 1963 appointed a small commission to study the matter. Soon after, Pope Paul VI expanded the commission to 72 members including an American married couple, bishops and theologians.

4. In April 1967, a “majority document” of the commission was leaked to the press, advocating a change in the teaching on certain forms of contraception. Baltimore’s Lawrence Cardinal Shehan voted with the majority.

5. On June 28, 1968, Pope Paul issued “Humanae Vitae,” acknowledging the commission’s recommendations and thanking them for their efforts, while insisting that nothing could relieve him as supreme teacher of the Church from the duty of making the final decision. After no little thought and prayer, the Pope came to the conclusion that the Church’s long-standing tradition was, in fact, true to both the laws of God and to the nature of human love: “It is necessary that each conjugal act remain ordained in itself to the procreation of human life.”

6. Even before receiving the text of the encyclical, 10 faculty members of The Catholic University of America circulated a “Statement of Dissent” which overnight gained signatures of 72 other Catholic theologians. Cardinal Shehan noted, later, that “ … never in the recorded history of the Church, has a solemn proclamation of a Pope been received with so much disrespect and contempt.” Despite his majority vote on the papal commission, once “Humanae Vitae” was issued, the Cardinal was a staunch promoter of the document’s teaching.

7. Cardinal Shehan was further shocked to read on Aug. 5, 1968, that 72 priests of the Baltimore area had signed the Statement of Dissent, including 2 Sulpicians, 15 Jesuits and 55 archdiocesan priests. Each was interviewed by his respective superior or the archbishop himself, resulting in agreements to adhere to “Humanae Vitae” in teaching, preaching and pastoral practice. The evidence seems to suggest that this agreement was not adhered to. As was the case across the country, and indeed throughout the Catholic world, very little effective catechesis of, or preaching on, “Humanae Vitae” took place, and the people of the Church were left to get their information and commentary from media sources not very sophisticated in theology. (A Baltimore native, Francis Cardinal Stafford, recently recorded his experiences during those days in graphic detail – see “Humane Vitae, The Year of the Peirasmos – 1968,” www.archbalt.org).

          The result of all this? That the turmoil took its toll.
          I remember it well. I was ordained in 1965, in the midst of all these developments. There is no doubt that during the five-year delay, from the formation of the papal commission in 1963 to the publication of the encyclical, theologians consistently faithful to the moral teaching of the Church began to waver on the issue of birth control. My moral theology professor in the seminary “held the line” until 1965, when, in the absence of an official papal clarification, he reluctantly concluded that individuals could properly make up their own minds, even to choose to contracept. Like Cardinal Shehan, with the encyclical’s publication, my moral theology professor firmly adhered to the Church’s clear teaching. Not so for many other moralists.
          In light of Rome’s delay, and the ensuing debate and the confusion, the Catholic and secular press understandably had a field day. Many Catholics disregarded the encyclical, the “sensus fidelium” (sense of the faithful) was misinterpreted and incorrectly applied, with many pastors and confessors erroneously advising personal conscience in opposition to Church teaching.
          The damage did not stop there. As a result of the debacle surrounding “Humanae Vitae,” “Cafeteria Catholicism” across the board has too often become the order of the day. Despite it all, I am so very impressed and inspired by so many of our faithful laity and clergy who, at significant sacrifice and sometimes facing opposition and ridicule, are studious in deepening their appreciation of the Church’s teachings and prayerfully successful in living them to the full.

by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien

08:15 AM 9/10/2008 -

[The following letter, by the smack-down tag-team of Archbishop Chaput and Bishop Conley, both of the Roman Archdiocese of Denver, is dated September 8th. On a personal note, Bishop Conley and your PP were in the seminary together in Kentucky a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We still communicate occasionally. --PP]

To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:
          When Catholics serve on the national stage, their actions and words impact the faith of Catholics around the country. As a result, they open themselves to legitimate scrutiny by local Catholics and local bishops on matters of Catholic belief. In 2008, although NBC probably didn’t intend it, Meet the Press has become a national window on the flawed moral reasoning of some Catholic public servants.
          On August 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, describing herself as an ardent, practicing Catholic, misrepresented the overwhelming body of Catholic teaching against abortion to the show’s nationwide audience, while defending her “pro-choice” abortion views. On September 7, Sen. Joseph Biden compounded the problem to the same Meet the Press audience.
          Sen. Biden is a man of distinguished public service. That doesn’t excuse poor logic or bad facts. Asked when life begins, Sen. Biden said that, "it’s a personal and private issue." But in reality, modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it. People might argue when human "personhood" begins – though that leads public policy in very dangerous directions – but no one can any longer claim that the beginning of life is a matter of religious opinion.
          Sen. Biden also confused the nature of pluralism. Real pluralism thrives on healthy, non-violent disagreement; it requires an environment where people of conviction will struggle respectfully but vigorously to advance their beliefs. In his interview, the senator observed that other people with strong religious views disagree with the Catholic approach to abortion. It’s certainly true that we need to acknowledge the views of other people and compromise whenever possible – but not at the expense of a developing child’s right to life. Abortion is a foundational issue; it is not an issue like housing policy or the price of foreign oil. It always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. If, as Sen. Biden said, "I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.
          As the senator said in his interview, he has opposed public funding for abortions. To his great credit, he also backed a successful ban on partial-birth abortions. But his strong support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the false "right" to abortion it enshrines, can’t be excused by any serious Catholic. Support for Roe and the "right to choose" an abortion simply masks what abortion is, and what abortion does. Roe is bad law. As long as it stands, it prevents returning the abortion issue to the states where it belongs, so that the American people can decide its future through fair debate and legislation.
          In his Meet the Press interview, Sen. Biden used a morally exhausted argument that American Catholics have been hearing for 40 years: i.e., that Catholics can’t "impose" their religiously based views on the rest of the country. But resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. And the senator knows very well as a lawmaker that all law involves the imposition of some people’s convictions on everyone else. That is the nature of the law. American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.
          If we claim to be Catholic, then American Catholics, including public officials who describe themselves as Catholic, need to act accordingly. We need to put an end to Roe and the industry of permissive abortion it enables. Otherwise all of us – from senators and members of Congress, to Catholic laypeople in the pews – fail not only as believers and disciples, but also as citizens.

+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver

+James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver

12:48 PM 9/9/2008 -

[Dr. Jeff Mirus is a Catholic layman and president of Trinity Communications, the parent company of CatholicCulture.org, which has acquired and now hosts the content from the former Catholic World News website. This article is dated September 5, 2008. --PP]

On Voting for Pro-Abortion Candidates

It’s election season again, and we should make one more attempt to convince our fellow citizens, our fellow Catholics and even some users of CatholicCulture.org that they cannot morally allow any issue to take precedence over abortion in their decision about how to vote in the U.S. presidential election. This statement may strike some readers as just another example of knee-jerk conservatism or, worse, sycophantic advocacy for the Republican Party. But it is neither. It is simply a moral fact of life. This time around, I’m taking the gloves off.

God’s Teaching and Man’s Statistics

          Church teaching could not be more clear on this point. The Magisterium has stated repeatedly that direct abortion is intrinsically evil under all circumstances, and that it is immoral to vote for a politician because he supports abortion. The Church has also taught that voting for a politician in spite of the fact that he supports abortion is at least remote cooperation with evil, and so can be justified only when there is a proportionate reason. I endorse this latter point entirely. But the problem, for those who wish to take advantage of this to support pro-abortion candidates, is that there is no issue on the contemporary American political scene that is even remotely proportionate to abortion. No issue exists that can be cited as a proportionately moral reason to support a candidate that favors abortion, especially in a Presidential election.
          Admittedly this is partly a prudential judgment, for it involves not only the nature of the evil involved but how widespread it is—how many people are impacted by it. The Church’s teaching authority can help us to discern that murder is a more serious evil than theft, but the Church can employ no special charism to determine how large a problem murder may be in a particular society at a particular time. If the murder rate is very low, and the theft rate high, one is certainly justified in voting for a politician who concentrates his attention on reducing theft. But abortion is not only in the most serious class of moral evils (the deliberate taking of an innocent human life), but it affects more people than any other comparably serious crime.
          The number of abortions reported in the United States is over one million per year. Since abortion is notoriously under-reported, the actual numbers are substantially higher. For the sake of argument, we will suggest that there are at least 1.5 million abortions annually in the United States. By contrast, there are about 17,000 other homicides per year in our country, a number two orders of magnitude lower. In fact, abortion is in roughly the same class as far less serious (but still significant) crimes such as burglary and domestic violence assaults, which numbered about 2.1 million each in 2005.
          When compared with the issues that are widely argued to be somehow proportionate, the lack of proportionality is even more astonishing. Thus, while abortion claims between one and two million lives per year in the United States, premature deaths due to inadequate health care are estimated at about 34,000 per year; the Iraq War has claimed a total of roughly 55,000 American and Iraqi lives since its beginning several years ago; and the death penalty claimed the lives of 42 persons in the United States last year, most of whom were presumably at least guilty of a serious crime. You can find all these statistics in about five minutes of research on the web. I submit, again, that no voter who is guided by reason can even begin to make the argument that there is an issue in the United States presidential election that is remotely proportionate to abortion.

False Assumptions

          The argument that there are legitimate reasons to support a pro-abortion candidate is weakened still further when two common but false assumptions are brought into play. The first false assumption is that there is a moral equivalence between a candidate who places his emphasis on other issues and a candidate who is actually in favor of abortion. I stated earlier that, if the murder rate were very low and the theft rate very high, one might well vote for a politician who advances a good program for reducing theft. But what if this same candidate is determined to protect the right to murder or even seeks to expand murder's “availability”? Surely this changes both the moral equation, and the potential consequences.
          The second false assumption is that abortion is so endemic to our culture that there isn’t likely to be much that any candidate can do about it; therefore, whether a President is pro-abortion or pro-life will make very little practical difference. While I would reject this assumption for symbolic reasons alone (what impact does it have on a culture to place in its highest office a person who publicly advocates murder?), the argument rests on so deep an ignorance of American political life as to be utterly ludicrous. The primary political reason abortion is both legal and extremely widespread in our culture is because we are increasingly ruled by an oligarchy of activist judges who wish to remake society in their own image. At the apex of this oligarchy is the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court justices are appointed for life by the President of the United States. Apart from all other considerations, this political fact is of capital importance in the selection of the next President, especially with the Court in many ways fairly evenly divided, and with an opportunity for the next President to appoint two or more justices.
          Moreover, in the culture wars overall, our nation is fairly evenly divided. The future of abortion (along with many related grave evils) will depend on relatively small shifts in American voting patterns. Yes, it is a difficult and long struggle, but it is hardly an irrelevant struggle or a struggle with no hope of success. Persons who are very much more pro-life than would be suggested by existing rulings and laws are not in a tiny minority. On the various related issues, they are always close to half of the population, and often more than half. The person who argues that there is nothing we can do about abortion, and therefore it is perfectly moral to vote based on other considerations, is simply denying—in the midst of hotly contested circumstances—that there is at least one very important thing he can do: He can refuse to vote for those who support abortion.

Thanks, But I’m Not Personally Affected

          I could go on at considerable length about the links between abortion and so much else that horribly afflicts the American people and their social fabric: the breakdown of the family, the objectification and abuse of women, contraception, rampant divorce, female poverty, ubiquitous pornography, experimentation on human persons, euthanasia and everything else that attends both irresponsible sex and increasing callousness toward the human person. But it should be enough to focus on the unmistakable fact that well over one million innocent persons are being willfully and directly murdered each year, and that this is happening not in a few inaccessible locations but all around us, in our local communities, as part of the fabric of our daily lives.
          The bottom line is that to most of us the unborn child is invisible. It is not as if we have to witness the fear, the screams of terror, the bloodshed, the grief and the devastation that accompanies the murder of older persons, whom we often encounter and sometimes come to know. No, abortion is rather a case of out of sight, out of mind, for a little baby that hardly anybody wanted anyway, and we find it very easy to go on with our lives, attending to the issues that affect us personally, hobnobbing with those we find congenial, feeling secure in being part of the status quo, and thankfully aware that we’re not foolish enough to rock the boat. Indeed, with respect to abortion, the commitment to resist is very seldom the result of an emotional process; it is very seldom governed by our feelings. Very few pro-lifers are moved by feelings of solidarity with pre-born children. How could they be?
          Instead, the pro-life moral and political commitment is a rational commitment: Abortion is a serious evil, it is an epidemic evil, and it is linked to a great many other evils in our culture. Therefore I will oppose it, root and branch, tooth and nail. Unfortunately, those who seek instead to justify with specious arguments their desire to vote for pro-abortion candidates make no such intellectual commitment. As we have seen, their arguments are utterly bankrupt. For where is their proportionate issue? Global warming? Tax revisions that might possibly benefit the poor? The price of gas? No, we are talking here about death, death immediately before us and on a grand scale. That is why those who justify voting for pro-abortion candidates are so obviously wrong, so seriously wrong and—let us tell the whole truth—so dangerously wrong.

by Dr. Jeff Mirus

04:31 PM 9/8/2008 - Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accepted the invitation for a confidential chat with Archbishop George Niederauer, AP reports. The archbishop had said that he wanted to have such a conversation because of Pelosi's outspoken public advocacy for unrestricted legal abortion.

Pelosi said in a letter to Archbishop George Niederauer that she'd "welcome the opportunity for our personal conversation and to go beyond our earlier most cordial exchange about immigration and needs of the poor to Church teaching on other significant matters."

With that letter to the archbishop, Pelosi -- whose political instincts are well tuned, to say the least -- is sending us a message as well. She has had conversations with Archbishop Niederauer in the past. They have spoken about immigration. They have spoken about "needs of the poor" (which, I'm guessing, might involve federal funding for the offices of Catholic Charities). They haven't, yet, got around to the question of slaughtering unborn children.
          Whose fault is that?
          You might be tempted to think that Pelosi is massaging the truth about her past conversations with the archbishop. She isn't -- according to no less an authority than the archbishop himself. Niederauer specifically mentions talking with the Speaker about immigration because, you see, that was a "hot-button issue" at the time.
          Notice that when the archbishop finally said that he did want to talk to Pelosi about abortion, she answered -- positively -- in less than 24 hours. Her response time is a lot more impressive than Niederauer's; it took him 2 weeks to crank out a public reply to the Speaker's gross misrepresentation of Church teaching on a crucial public issue.
          So now we're left wondering what might have happened if the Archbishop of San Francisco had summoned Nancy Pelosi for a conversation about abortion a month ago, or 5 years ago, or when she was first elected to Congress in 1987. For that matter, we're left wondering how many other American Catholic politicians are still waiting for their bishops to summon their courage, clear their throats, and raise the issue for the first time.

While Nancy Pelosi is waiting to dialogue with Archbishop Niederauer about whether or not he can still call himself a Catholic, Senator Joe Biden is discharging his duty to NARAL by singing the quadrennial "I can't impose my Catholicism on others" refrain. Back in 2004 it was John Kerry who led the chorus, insisting, "I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever." Joe Sobran's comments deserve repeating:

Notice that Kerry, nearly 60 years old, hasn't learned, or affects not to know, that Catholic teaching on abortion is not an "article of faith," that is, a revealed truth; it's a simple application of natural law, shared by many non-Catholics -- agnostics, atheists, Jews, Protestants, whatever. Even altar boys used to know the difference. And all the state laws on abortion struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court had been passed by Protestant legislatures.

Re-read that last sentence and let its political significance sink in. It's conveniently forgotten today that the Protestant denominations didn't break away from the Catholic Church over disagreements about morality, which was largely uncontroversial in content and acknowledged to be binding on all rational beings. The standard Protestant complaint was not that Catholic morals were erroneous but that Catholics scandalously failed to abide by them. It wasn't until the 20th century that liberal Protestants put classical sexual precepts into pawn in order to buy themselves approval from the cultural elites.
          Case in point: the 1879 law banning contraceptives struck down by Griswold vs Connecticut reflected common Yankee sentiment, not the clout of Catholic bishops, and if opposition to contraception is in our time regarded as a Catholic issue, that's simply because the overwhelming majority of Protestants (no different from squishy Catholics in this respect) have discarded their own moral patrimony and employed a kind of historical amnesia so as to pretend it was never common ground. The same is true of abortion today, and, thanks to our Catholic legislators and their shills, will almost certainly be true of sodomy and polygamy tomorrow.

by Diogenes at CatholicCulture.org

11:56 AM 9/8/2008 - Next Sunday we will celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Our Liturgy that day begins with the enthronement of the Cross, and ends with an opportunity to approach and venerate the Cross. And we prepare for it in advance with today’s celebration.
          And our preparation for the Feast of the Holy Cross begins with a Gospel verse with which we are all familiar: John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." ...The linchpin, if you will, of Protestant theology, so forcefully preached by the founder of the Methodists, John Wesley. He was an Anglican layman, born in England, who set out to reform the Church of England from within, but unintentionally ended up founding his own religion, which today is known as the Methodist Church. He died in the United States in 1792.
          Wesley’s particular contribution to the history of American Protestantism was an institution that continues to this day, called the Revival. You’ve seen them before on television. It can take various forms; but the one part of the revival which never changes is when everyone comes forward with their hands raised up declaring they are saved. And how can someone declare himself to be saved? Because, in John 3:16 Jesus says that all you have to do is believe in Him and you’re saved. Nothing else is required. No sacraments. No priests. No Eucharist. No confession. Nothing. Just declare your faith in Jesus, and you’re going to heaven. It’s a classic example of Protestants doing what they do best: taking an isolated verse of Scripture totally out of context, and turning it into a maxim of dogma all by itself; which, of course, it not how the Bible is meant to be read.
          So, what is our Lord trying to say, and why do we read it on the Sunday prior to the Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross? Well, if you look at the whole passage in which this central verse about faith is contained, Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus that the salvation of mankind will come about when the Son of Man, which is how our Lord refers to himself, is lifted up for all to see, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert. Our Lord is referring to an event which takes place in the Book of Exodus: When the Israelites were wandering in the desert, they were bitten by poisonous snakes. And God told Moses that if he made a bronze snake and lifted it up on a pole, anyone who looked at it would be saved. But our Lord points out that the snake that Moses lifted up could only cure the people of a physical illness. They still had to be cured of the spiritual illness of sin. And that is to be done not by lifting up a snake on a pole, but by lifting up a man on a poll -- a man who is also God. What our Lord is trying to explain to Nicodemus is that salvation will come from the cross. And this is the context of that famous verse about faith so loved by the Protestants, and yet so misunderstood by them:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life ... And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and avoids the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true steps into the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

And right after this discussion the Gospel says that Jesus and his disciples then went to Judea where Jesus is Baptized by John, thus beginning his journey to the cross. The cross is the focus; from the beginning until the end of our Lord’s public life, the cross is the focus. What does it mean to “believe” in the Son of man as our Lord describes it here? It means to believe in the cross. Just as the Israelites believed in the snake on a pole, so we believe in the God on the pole. To stand in the shadow of the cross means to stand in the light, with your deeds clearly exposed, with nothing to hide, because of a life lived with God.
          We are sometimes tempted to become Wesleyans or Methodists -- not in fact, of course, but in belief -- because we want to believe that saying it is enough. We show up on Sunday, sometimes; we go through the motions; we allow ourselves to be counted in some ecclesiastical head count. What more is required? Well, when we come forward at the end of the service to venerate the Holy Cross, we will see what more is required: not just saying it, but living it, like our Lord did when he gave his life.
          "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." And the world is saved through Him because he died on the cross to pay for our sins, so that we wouldn’t have to. But what that presupposes is that we’re now going to live as if we’ve been saved.

by Father Michael Venditti

03:55 PM 9/3/2008 - I think that the message of the Gospel lesson is pretty simple: we will be judged by God not according to how our lives compare to someone elses, but according to what we did with our lives with the resources which God has provided us. The fly in the ointment, of course, is that, while we may have a general idea of what gifts with which God has endowed us, we don’t know about anyone else.
          Sometimes we are very quick to point the finger at someone other than ourselves and catalog their faults -- it’s a very easy temptation. But I will never forget a lesson that was taught to me by my spiritual director in the seminary. I had gone to see him and had started to complain about another seminarian who had hurt me very severely, and whom I thought was just a social disaster. And he said to me, “You may think you know what makes a person tick, but you don’t. For all you know, he may be doing the very best he can with who he is.” Some years later I was talking to a bishop complaining about another priest with whom I was assigned at the time; and reflecting on the things I was saying about him you’d think this poor man couldn’t do a thing right. And the bishop said to me, “He did one thing right.” I said, “What was that?” He said, “He gave his life to the piresthood.” And I said, “Yes, he did.” And I never forgot that lesson since.
          You and I can look around our circle of friends and family and identify all the people whom we think our lives would be better off without. But if we actually had the ability to eliminate all those people, we’d have a very lonely life. You don’t know what makes that person tick. You don’t know what that person’s been through, what that person’s home life may be like, what that person suffers from others, aside from what you think you suffer from him or her. You don’t know. Maybe -- just maybe -- that person you dislike so much is doing the very best he or she can with what he or she has to work with. Then we have to ask ourselves if we’re doing the same, especially with regard to practicing the virtue of charity toward our neighbor. All of the servants described in the Gospel today were given a certain number of resources by their master according to their ability. And each one produced differently. One guy produced more than another guy; but it didn’t matter because each one did what he could with what he had to work with. The only one who failed was the guy who was given a little bit because of his own small ability, but didn’t even make that produce, because he didn’t even make an effort. And that’s exactly what we are like when we point our fingers in every direction except the right one, which is right back at ourselves.
          It might be a good exercise to practice, that everytime you’re tempted to think that the parish or the job or even the family might be better off without some particular person who annoys you, you should realize that, because you are the kind of person who thinks that way, there’s probably someone else who’s thinking the very same thing about you. The goal should be that none of us think that way about anyone.
          St. Gregory the Great, commenting on today’s Gospel lesson, said,

“It will be given to him who already has and he shall abound, for everyone who has the gift of charity receives other gifts besides. But he who has not the gift of charity will lose even those gifts which he seemed to have. So, it is necessary, brethren, that charity should be the motive of all your actions.”

11:33 AM 8/16/2008 - In the early centuries of the Church this Gospel lesson about the wedding feast was used more than any other by the Fathers of the Church to explain how God could desire the salvation of all men even though so many would not be saved. For them, those who were invited in the beginning -- but who failed to show up -- represented the Israelites, invited by Christ into the Kingdom of Heaven, but who turned down the invitation by rejecting the one who had invited them. And the others, who were dragged in from off the street, represent ourselves, the gentiles; but even among them there are two groups: those who are prepared and those who aren’t; and those who aren’t are cast out into eternal darkness. And it is one of the first examples in the Gospel of our Lord talking very directly about Hell.
          We don’t know much about Hell except what is revealed to us by Christ in the Scriptures and through His Church. In the Scriptures we know that Hell is a place, the final repository of the rebellious angels who are cast out of Heaven in the Book of Revelation, where there is complete separation from God, and from which there is no escape: as our Lord remarks in the parable of Joseph and the Rich Man, wherein Abraham says to the rich man in hell, "Between you and us there is an impassable gulf which no man can cross." The first real pronouncement about hell from the Church itself was a decree of Pope Benedict XII wherein we are informed that anyone who dies in a state of mortal sin must go there, and that there he will experience some from of punishment, the nature of which we are not sure, except that it will never end. And although we are not required to be believe in them, there have been several visions of Hell reported by various saints and mystics of the Church, all agreeing on one terrible point: that Hell is a crowded place; crowded, more often than not, with the souls of people who were well thought of in this world.
          I’ve found that people tend to react to this in one of three ways. Non-Christians will very likely simply deny it all: “There is no Hell because there is no sin, so there’s nothing much to worry about.” Christians, depending on how Christian they are, will probably consider themselves very faithful by saying, “Yes, I believe in the existence of Hell because it’s in the Bible, but I believe more in God’s infinite mercy; so I don’t believe anyone’s in Hell -- that no matter how badly one has lived on earth, God still loves us, so he’ll make it all turn out OK in the end.” And this is very common today because there are so many people living in habitual states of mortal sin: in any number of lifestyles or practices that separate them from God. It’s not unrealistic to suppose that half the people you meet today are living in what are Church would consider to be mortal sin, but who don’t think they are. So, there’s a basic lack of belief in the certainty of Hell as the final destination of those who die in mortal sin.
          But even for ourselves, who are believing Christians, there are problems. Our most common reaction might be simply to ask, “Why?” Why would God create man and his world in such a way that man could possibly merit eternal damnation? Why did he, and why does he, allow sin to exist? If God knew that Adam was going to bite the apple, and could have stopped him, why didn’t he?
          I remember seeing a movie a few years back on cable about this homely girl in high school who discovers, upon reaching her 16th birthday, that she has these magical powers, one of which is a spell that can make any boy she wants fall in love with her. So, naturally, she zeros in on the most popular guy in school and casts this spell on him so he can’t take his hands off her. And everything is OK for a while until it begins to sour. And it sours because she comes to realize that he doesn’t love her for herself, but only because of the spell; and this makes her feel even more rejected than before. It has a typical Hollywood ending: the spell is lifted, he loves her anyway, and they live happily ever. It’s not exactly a movie I would recommend, but it has a point: that without freedom of will, there is no good in anything. What is the point of being saved if there’s nothing to be saved from?
          When God created the universe, He could have made us all like robots, always doing the right thing and never being tempted to sin. But what would have been the point? Creation would have been a useless thing, unworthy of God. God didn’t created because he was bored; he created because he wanted to love and to be loved -- he didn’t need to be loved, but he wanted to be. And, ironically, the only thing that makes being loved such a good thing is the possibility of not being loved. When a man proposes marriage to a woman, and she accepts, it’s the happiest moment of his life precisely because she is free to reject him if she so chooses. Which is why being in love is the closest we can come to understanding something about the joy of being God. What does our Lord say: "There will be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over the 99 others who have no need of repentance."
          When the Protestant’s began their revolt against the Catholic Faith back in the 16th century, the very first dogma of the Church they attacked was the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin and Freedom of Will. Why? Because it is the key to understanding the world as the Catholic understands it. Without freedom of will, good acts are superfluous, virtue is meaningless, doctrine is pointless, salvation is arbitrary, and the Church is unnecessary. And what Luther and Calvin wanted more than anything else was to make the Church unnecessary. But the Church is necessary, not because we are slaves to her, but because we are free and we need to be taught the truth for ourselves. It is the master of slaves who refuses to teach because slaves have no choice about how they live. But a loving father teaches his children because he wants them to grow up and learn to choose the truth for themselves.
          St. John the Baptist, whose death we will commemorated with a feast at the end of the month, lost his head -- literally -- because he told the wrong people that if they didn’t change their ways they would -- what? -- go to hell. And we don’t find that message any more pleasant to listen to than King Herod did. But if there isn’t a hell, and if there isn’t a damnation from which we need to be saved, then there is also no need for Jesus. And we know that that’s not true; which is why the Fathers of the Church referred to the sin of Adam as that “happy fault.” Not happy in the sense that it was a good thing; but in the sense that it is the existence of evil, and our tendency to sin, that prompted our Lord to come to earth in the first place, to provide for our salvation by the shedding of his own blood. So, before you go about declaring that you don’t believe in hell, understand that if you don’t believe in hell then you can’t believe in heaven either; because the one doesn’t make sense without the other. It was because of hell that Jesus came to earth. And Jesus coming to earth is the very reason that we are here.

by Father Michael Venditti

01:20 PM 8/15/2008 -

[Dr. Warren Throckmorton is Associate Professor of Psychology at Grove City College and Fellow for Psychology and Public Policy at the Center for Vision and Values which is a part of Grove City College. For more information about Dr. Throckmorton, go to drthrockmorton.com. --PP]

Last week, the Eight Circuit court of appeals ruled that a South Dakota law which requires doctors to tell women seeking an abortion that “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” should be sent back to federal District Court to decide constitutionality. In the meantime, the state may begin enforcement of the law. According to an AP story, the court ruled on June 27...

that Planned Parenthood, which operates South Dakota’s only abortion clinic in Sioux Falls, has not provided enough evidence that it is likely to prevail.
     “The bottom line is if the state Legislature orders a professional to tell the truth, that’s not a violation of the First Amendment,” said South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long, who is defending the law in court.
     Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said such rulings generally take about three weeks to take effect. Long said it could take less time.

Predictably, reaction was mixed to the ruling:

Harold Cassidy, a lawyer representing two pregnancy counseling centers that support the abortion law, hailed the ruling.
     “We think it’s a big victory for the woman obviously to be given accurate information in order to make a decision not only for the child, but also for herself,” Cassidy said.
     Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, said the law would force doctors to read ideological language to women seeking abortions.
     “They are imposing compelled speech on doctors. It is not about providing information to women. It is about intruding in the doctor-patient relationship. It is unprecedented and extremely outrageous,” Stoesz said.

According to the AP story, the law also requires women to be told the potential mental health risks of abortion. I have addressed that informed consent issue in prior articles.
          Two points are at issue: prescribing professional speech and the accuracy of the prescribed speech. Professional disclosure is sometimes prescribed by law. For instance, many states required licensed psychotherapists to provide a disclosure statement to clients regarding services and means of handling complaints. The South Dakota statement is very specific and no doubt is intended to discourage abortions. The second issue is the accuracy of the information. Pro-life advocates are united that abortion ends a life, hence their opposition to abortion. But what do pro-choice doctors believe? To get this perspective, I consulted noted abortion doctor and friend of Hillary Clinton, Dr. William Harrison. I referred to Dr. Harrison via Dr. Paul Kengor’s book on the faith of Hillary Clinton in a former post, noting that Dr. Harrison was...

Hillary’s personal OB-GYN in the early 1970s in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has done about 20,000 abortions. He was interviewed at length for my book. He was quite candid, extremely open, and very generous with his time. He likewise is a Methodist. He says that he prays to God that Hillary will be our next president.

I emailed Dr. Harrison regarding the South Dakota law. While his prayers regarding Hillary have not been answered, he clearly does not support the Republican ticket due to his pro-choice position as will be clear from his responses to me. I asked him if the South Dakota statement was accurate, to which he replied:

Life is being terminated when a male wears a condom, or has a wet dream or “spills his seed of life on the ground” or in someone’s mouth or anus. Or when he ejaculates into the vagina of a women who isn’t ovulating or is post menopausal. The sperm are alive until they die. And the egg is alive until it dies. Each is a unique human life, etc.
     The only reason the S.Dakota leg passed that law was to either make a girl or woman who was not prepared to have a baby have that baby, or to make her suffer as much emotionally as they could.
     It is a piece of shit legislation, designed solely to increase human suffering. A few days ago I wrote a letter to our state and local newspapers. I will send you a copy which describes exactly what I think about this type of legislation.

I wrote back and asked for clarification regarding prevention of conception and ending of life. He then provided the copy of the letter to the editor he mentioned in the first email which makes his views even more clear. He gave permission to use both email replies. The Christian acquaintance referred to in this letter is my GCC colleague and author, Paul Kengor.

Letter to the editor:
     A few days ago I got a question from a Christian Pro-Life acquaintance. [What follows is a paraphrase of part of a letter I got from your friend and colleague. I sent him a somewhat longer reply. I also sent him a copy of my book, There is a Bomb In Gilead. Ask him to let you read it.]
     “I understand fully that you see your work as saving women from an unwanted pregnancy that might, if illegal, lead them to dangerous “back alley abortions,” doing them great harm or perhaps even killing them. I, as a prolife Christian, don’t want to see them hurt or killed. On the other hand, by doing an abortion, you are taking a life – an innocent one that has no say in the decision. I rarely hear pro-choicers lament that decision, the loss of the unborn.
     “Do you ever regret that part of the decision? How do you come to terms with that, or do you not see the fetus as a life or a person? I don’t want to see either one die, and would do my best to save both. But your work on the other hand, seeks the end of one of these lives. How do you justify that decision?”
     Here is my answer: Anyone who has delivered as many babies as I have, and has seen hundreds of living and dead embryos and fetuses being spontaneously aborted as have I, knows exactly what we are doing when we provide an elective abortion for our patient. We are ending the life of an embryo or a fetus. Not the life of a person, but certainly a creature that might have become a person under other circumstances. When I am asked this question, I always go back to two of the most insightful and beautiful verses of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khyyam.

Oh, if the world were but to recreate
That we might catch ere closed the Book of Fate
And make the Writer on a fairer leaf
Inscribe our names, or quite obliterate.

Better, oh, better cancel from the Scroll
Of universe one luckless Human Soul,
Than drop by drop enlarge the Flood that roars
Hoarser with Anguish as the ages roll.

     When Omar wrote his beautiful and treasured poem over a thousand years ago, mankind had no way of safely canceling “from the scroll of universe one luckless human soul” whose numbers make up that flood of howling anguish; at least, no way of canceling it without risking also the life of the woman carrying it. In this day of medical marvels and, hopefully, ever increasing social justice, we possess such a way.
     Embryos and fetuses spontaneously aborted - most, but not all of those “canceled” by “God” - are just such luckless human souls. But a few spontaneous abortions occur in desired pregnancies with no discernable abnormalities. For those girls and women and their families whose circumstances would make their babies “luckless human souls,” I “cancel” them before they become babies.
     Physicians who save wanted babies from being spontaneously aborted (and we can save a few now that God once seemed determined to abort), and we who cancel “luckless human souls” are doing God’s work.
     Want to increase Omar’s flood of anguish? Just vote to put John McCain in the White House and Pro-Lifers in your legislatures and the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Harrison places his views in the context of the current election. Clearly there is an ideological divide between Barack Obama and John McCain, the religious left and religious right on abortion. While Dr. Harrison does not like the South Dakota legislation, it does appear that if the wording was changed from “terminate a life” to “cancel a soul”, the law requires accurate disclosure. I am still reflecting on his response but I think he and I have different ideas of what preventing a life/soul is. For him, it appears that prevention ranges from preventing conception to preventing a birth, whereas, I see the fetus as a human soul, luckless or not.

by Dr. William Throckmorton

05:44 PM 8/14/2008 - On the feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord, 1928, in the very center of the period between the two great conflicts of the 20th Century, the Successor of Peter clearly exposed the perennial doctrine of the only Church of Christ "on fostering true religious unity". Pope Pius XI (that's "the eleventh") concluded his brief and solid encyclical, Mortalium Animos (you can read the whole thing here), with the expression of his heartfelt desire:

...We desire that Our children should also know, not only those who belong to the Catholic community, but also those who are separated from Us: if these latter humbly beg light from heaven, there is no doubt but that they will recognize the one true Church of Jesus Christ and will, at last, enter it, being united with us in perfect charity.

What a thorn Mortalium Animos is to many in the Church! - today as it was then: as the Baby in the Temple, a "sign of contradiction"; as the Instrument of Redemption, it is "scandal" to some, and "folly" to many others. It certainly is a difficult document for the modern age and one that, while an expression of the unchanging Faith of Holy Mother Church, has been carefully avoided in the Conciliar and post-Conciliar years. Of the major encyclicals of Pope Ratti, it is the only one that, even by indirect reference, is completely omitted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The last major ecclesiastical document to mention it, curiously enough, was the first encyclical of Pope Blessed John XXIII (Ad Petri Cathedram, 1959: "...this unity, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, must be solid, firm and sure, not transient, uncertain, or unstable. Though there is no such unity in other Christian communities, all who look carefully can see that it is present in the Catholic Church.")
          In the years before a "hermeneutic of continuity" was included in Papal discourse, Father Chad Ripperger, FSSP, introduced to the wider English-speaking Catholic audience the notion that the absence of such hermeneutics in the matters involved in the "extrinsic tradition" of the Church has necessarily led to confusion and worse (from his famous article "Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism", The Latin Mass, Spring 2001):

...in the document of Vatican II on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, there is not a single mention of the two previous documents that deal with the ecumenical movement and other religions: Leo XIII's Satis Cognitum and Pius XI's Mortalium Animos. The approach to ecumenism and other religions in these documents is fundamentally different from the approach of the Vatican II document or Ut Unum Sint by Pope John Paul II. While the current Magisterium can change a teaching that falls under non-infallible ordinary magisterial teaching, nevertheless, when the Magisterium makes a judgment in these cases, it has an obligation due to the requirements of the moral virtue of prudence to show how the previous teaching was wrong or is now to be understood differently by discussing the two different teachings. However, this is not what has happened. The Magisterium since Vatican II often ignores previous documents which may appear to be in opposition to the current teaching, leaving the faithful to figure out how the two are compatible, such as in the cases of Mortalium Animos and Ut Unum Sint. This leads to confusion and infighting within the Church as well as the appearance of contradicting previous Church teaching without explanation or reasoned justification.

          Such reasoned justification has never been put forward; even when trying to summarize the history of Catholic participation in "ecumenical dialogue", Cardinal Kasper, current President of Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity glosses over the radical change between both sets of documents:

The Catholic Church abstained [from ecumenical dialogue] at the beginning. The encyclical letters Satis cognitum of Leo XIII (1896) and Mortalium animos of Pius XI (1928) even condemned the ecumenical dialogue which seemed to relativise the claim of the Catholic Church to be the true Church of Jesus Christ. Yet Pius XII already paved the way to a more open attitude, albeit with caution, in an Instruction of the Holy Office of 1949. However, only the initiative of Pope John XXIII (+1963) and the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) brought a shift. The conciliar Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio stated that the ecumenical movement was a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit in our time (Unitatis redintegratio, 1), opening the way for the ecumenical movement and highlighting the importance of dialogue with separated brothers and sisters and with separated churches and church communities.

It is in fact quite devious to present the warning set forth in Mortalium Animos as a mere policy of "abstention" from ecumenical dialogue. Pius XI identified what seem to be clear errors in ecumenical dialogue:

All Christians, they add, should be as "one": for then they would be much more powerful in driving out the pest of irreligion, which like a serpent daily creeps further and becomes more widely spread, and prepares to rob the Gospel of its strength. ... in reality beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed.
     ...authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost without number, to bring forward these words of Christ: "That they all may be one.... And there shall be one fold and one shepherd," with this signification however: that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire and prayer, which still lacks its fulfillment. For they are of the opinion that the unity of faith and government, which is a note of the one true Church of Christ, has hardly up to the present time existed, and does not today exist....it is clear that the Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ. Shall We suffer, what would indeed be iniquitous, the truth, and a truth divinely revealed, to be made a subject for compromise?

          Therefore, one cannot even say that the "apparent contradiction" has not been properly explained, for it has actually been completely ignored. The Catholic faithful are left with documents which seem mutually contradictory - and it is certainly not the obligation of the lay faithful to test multifarious possibilities of interpretive harmonization.

by Priestly Pugilist

10:19 AM 8/13/2008 - Like so many of the things said by our Lord, the parable he speaks to us in this gospel lesson has more than one meaning. On the surface, our Lord has a very definite message for his listeners there in the Temple. He speaks of a vineyard which is leased out to others by it’s owner; he speaks of servants who are sent by the owner to collect the year’s harvest from the tenants, and how the servants are beaten and killed by the tenants who have forgotten that they don’t own the vineyard; and finally he speaks of a son who is sent and who is killed. The symbolism is almost too simple: the owner of the vineyard is, of course, God the Father, who has offered his covenant -- his vineyard -- to the Jewish people. And when his people go astray, he sends them his servants, the prophets, to remind them that they are not the owners, that they owe an accounting of their lives to God. But the servants -- the prophets -- are ignored, and some are killed, as we know frequently happened in the Old Testament. And in a final act of compassion and fatherly concern, the vineyard owner, God, sends his own Son; at which point we realize our Lord is speaking about himself. Isn’t it interesting that when our Lord speaks in the parable of how the son of the owner is killed because of the tenant’s greed, he is predicting his own death at the hands of his own people?
          The Pharisees and the Hebrew priests who were present in the Temple that day were not stupid; they knew our Lord was speaking about them; St. Matthew tells us as much. But what he does not tell us -- what he cannot tell us -- is what our Lord may be trying to say to us, today. Everything said by our Lord has a double meaning; and while the parable of the vineyard may be, to our Lord’s historical audience, an allegory about the history of the Jewish people and the role of Christ in salvation, it also must teach us something about ourselves, and something more than just a historical lesson.
          For the Lord has also entrusted to us a vineyard. He has given us new life through baptism. He has given us the Church and the sacraments as fountains of grace and life. He has given us the Gospel as a path to heaven. He has placed in our own hands the possibility of salvation and eternal life. He has sent us teachers to correct our faults, not only the prophets of old, but also the Fathers of the Church, the saints, the martyrs, the popes. Sometimes we listen, sometimes we don’t. And the day will come when he will ask for an account of how well we have harvested the seeds that he has provided. And if there is no fruit, that will not be his fault, but ours. For just as the vineyard owner sent his son to collect the harvest, just as the Father sent Christ our God to collect the harvest of the convenant from the Jewish people, so again the Father will send the Son as King and Judge of the world. And he will ask us to show him the lives of purity and virtue and holiness that we have reaped from the seeds of grace he has given us.
          In the Divine Liturgy we are thrust into the very presence of God. In receiving Holy Communion we are given more grace than was ever given to the prophets of old. But it is not magic. Even the act of being in the very presence of Christ our God in the Eucharist, even the act of taking him into our souls in Holy Communion, does not compel us to do good against our will. We have to make a decision that after we have received our Lord, and go forth from this Church back out into the world, that we will live as if Christ lives in us. We have to decide whether, when others see us act or hear us speak, they will be able to see Christ in us. And if, when they see us, they see nothing different than they saw before, then what was the point?
          This does not mean that coming to church is supposed to make us perfect. Far from it. St. Peter, remember, in his second Epistle, says quite candidly, “Anyone who says he is not a sinner is a liar.” But St. John Chrysostom explains how, even though all men are sinners, there is still a difference between the just and the unjust: he says that the just man, when it is pointed out that he has sinned, is contrite; but the wicked man, when his sin is exposed, becomes angry because he has been caught. How should we react when we examine our consciences and realize that we are not perfect? Christ, once again, will plant the seed of his grace into our souls today when we receive him in Holy Communion. Let us not allow that seed to wither and die in a parched, arid land. Let us water it with virtue, tend it with prayer, prune it with sacrifice and mortification, so that when the vineyard owner comes, we can return to him a rich harvest.

by Father Michael Venditti

02:32 PM 8/9/2008 - We might be tempted to view this Gospel lesson as a simple admonition not to seek after worldly goods. But I think there’s much more to it than that. The rich young man, after all, is not evil -- he is not like the Scribes and Pharisees whom our Lord often singles out for criticism; he is the one who seeks out Jesus, not the other way ‘round. He approaches our Lord asking what he must do to be saved. Those are not the actions of an evil or self-serving man. And our Lord does not ask the impossible. He tells him simply to keep the Commandments. Now, if the young man had stood up, thanked out Lord, and walked away, that would have been the end of the story, and the question about wealth would never have been raised; and Our Lord would not have had the occasion to ask him to sell his possessions and give them to the poor, and he would not have had to walk away sad. Why does he stay and press our Lord further? Why isn’t our Lord’s first answer to him sufficient?
          You might recall that this passage is very similar to the story of the good Samaritan. That Gospel lesson opens with a rabbi asking our Lord the very same question: What must I do to be saved? And our Lord gives him the very same answer as he does today: keep the Commandments. Now, on that occasion, the rabbi presses our Lord for further clarification because, as St. Luke says, he wanted to justify himself. And in the story our Lord tells in response about the good Samaritan he and those like him get it right between the eyes. But in the case of today’s Gospel lesson, the rich young man presses our Lord for more not because he’s trying to justify himself, but because he honestly and sincerely feels that he should do more. And St. Mark, in his account of this event, testifies to the sincerity of the young man by mentioning that Jesus looking upon him, loved him, because he saw the purity of his heart. And at that point, our Lord does something extraordinary: he extends to him the invitation to sell all he has, give the money to the poor, and follow him. And, in case you forgot, back in the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry, this was what was required of the Apostles. The young man is being invited to become an Apostle. Unfortunately, he refuses the invitation, which gives our Lord the occasion to say a few choice words about the importance of not letting material goods get in the way.
          But I think what we need to reflect upon here is the fact that our Lord was originally willing to let him off the hook. The young man asked our Lord what he should do to be saved, our Lord tells him to keep the Commandments which, the young man says, he has already been keeping since he was a boy, so he had nothing to worry about. And that could have been the end of it. But it’s the young man himself who wants to do more. And when our Lord sees that, he invites him to do more, and then we find out that the young man isn’t willing to make the sacrifices required to do more, and so he goes away sad.
          There is a place in the Gospel somewhere where our Lord says that from those to whom much has been given, much will be required, and this is a case in point. This young man had a generous heart; and, when our Lord saw that, he asked him for more. And this is how our Lord deals with people, including ourselves. As an experienced parish priest I know this is true. . . It isn’t the people who come around only once in a while whom you approach to do things; it’s the people who are around every time something is going on, who already volunteer for things -- who teach the ECF classes, or bake the bread for the festal anointing, or count the collection, or maintain the grounds, or clean the church or whatever. And it doesn’t seem fair sometimes that those who are willing to help end up being asked to do more and more while some people don’t do anything. But this is, in fact, how our Lord operated. And not without a purpose. When our Lord looked at the young man and saw his purity of heart -- saw the potential in him to do so much more -- he invited him to be an Apostle. And it’s unfortunate that the young man didn’t realize that in being asked to sacrifice all he had, he was in reality being offered more than he could imagine.
          There are a lot of times when we might feel that we’re being pressed for more like the rich young man. Some of us may have relatives or friends who are not very religious or maybe less devoted to their families, or don’t do for others the things that we end up doing. And sometimes we can look upon them with a sort of envy, and wonder why we even bother to do what we do when we could make our lives so much easier by just not getting so involved. And then we remember that much is required of those to whom much has been given. Our Lord asked the young man for more precisely because, as St. Mark says, our Lord loved him. And if we sometimes feel that God is asking us for more than our fair share of sacrifices, it’s because he knows that we are willing to make them. Jesus looks upon us as he did the rich young man, and asks us to sacrifice everything and follow him. The sacrifice part sounds not that pleasant, but we often forget the second part of that invitation: to follow the Lord. What sacrifice is too great for the privilege of walking along with Jesus?

by Father Michael Venditti

02:18 PM 8/9/2008 - Well, obviously the Gospel lesson today has to do with forgiveness, and is an illustration of that part of the Lord’s Prayer which reads, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us....” And it’s very easy to misunderstand because it gives the impression that one is the cause of the other: that God will forgive us because we have forgiven others. But the parable that we read today gives a very different explanation.
          When the servant refuses to forgive the debt of his fellow servant, and his employer comes down on him, why is the employer so upset? What business is it of his? Well, it’s his business because the servant whom he forgave of a much larger debt wouldn’t even be around to forgive anyone himself if the employer had treated him the same way. In other words, the forgiveness of the employer to the first servant should have been continued by the first servant to the second servant, but it wasn’t. It is a feature of Christian forgiveness that is found in no other religious system, and applies to the whole subject of grace as understood by the Christian religion.
          I use to listen sometimes to Dr. Laura on the radio. She’s this person who tries to give advice to people she doesn’t know -- you might have heard her sometimes. And she’s not a Christian, she’s a Jew. And her notion of forgiveness is a very classical Jewish notion. So, women will call her up, for example, and tell her that their husbands have been unfaithful or they caught them looking at dirty pictures on the Internet or something, or how some relative or other did something to hurt them, and they’ll ask if they should forgive them. And invariably she’ll respond by saying that forgiveness requires some kind of recompense: that you can’t forgive someone until they’ve made amends. It’s the classical Jewish point of view: an eye for an eye; forgiveness requires reciprocity. But the parable told by our Lord says something quite different, and I can only imagine how it must have shocked his Jewish audience. Because the employer in the story initially takes a classical Jewish point of view: he wants to put the servant in prison until his debt is paid off, and only after it’s paid off will he release him: “You owe me money; you haven't paid it; so, until you do, I’ll deprive you of your freedom.” According to the laws set down in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, it’s a perfectly just solution. But the employer doesn’t stick to it. He feels sorry for his servant; and, because the servant pleads with him for the sake of his family, he lets him off the hook completely, so much so that now he doesn’t have to pay the money back at all.
          Now, Dr. Laura would probably say that the employer is being a weenie; that there is no need for him to act this way; and if the servant is worried about his family: well, he should have thought of that before he defaulted on the loan. Our Lord, in telling this story, is taking a very deliberate swipe at the classical Jewish notion of justice and reciprocity. Later on in his public preaching he would do it even more directly: “If a man strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other.... If someone takes your coat, give him your shirt as well.... Love those who hate you, and do good to those who persecute you....” Clearly, our Lord is turning his back on traditional Old Testament teaching about justice and replacing it with something completely different. The question is, what is he replacing it with?
          To answer that, we have to look at the second part of the parable, in which the servant who has been forgiven is faced with a similar situation regarding something owed to him. When the second servant, who owes the first servant money, is unable to pay it, he’s put in prison. The first servant refuses to forgive him. He would have made Dr. Laura proud. According to the Old Testament, what he has done is completely justified. But the employer is furious. Why? Why is it any of his business? And here is the precise point where Christianity departs from Judaism. The employer is furious because the forgiveness that he gave the first servant, the first servant has failed to pass on to another. In other words, all grace, especially the grace of the forgiveness of our sins, comes from Christ, bought with the price of his blood upon the cross; and when we forgive others, we are not giving something of our own which is in our power to give; we are merely passing on the forgiveness of Christ which we have already received.
          When someone comes into the confessional and says to the priest, “Father, I committed adultery,” and the priest says, “Well, say four Our Fathers and Four Hail Marys,” does anyone really believe that those four Our Fathers and four Hail Marys make up for the sin of cheating on our spouse? Of course not. If the penance was supposed to be an actual retribution for the sin, then the priest would have to make you cut off a body part or something. The penance is just a symbol for our benefit so that we know, when we’ve sinned, that a retribution has been made. But that retribution is not the measly penance that you’re given; the retribution for your sin is Christ being nailed on a cross. That’s the consequence of your sin; that and any other consequences of sadness and heartache that might result.
          Sometimes you’ll hear people say that what they’re doing isn’t really a sin because it’s not hurting anyone -- it’s a very common notion today. But the reason Christians don’t accept that is because sin always has a victim. So, I can’t say, for example, that my wife never found out about that babe in Atlantic City, so it didn’t hurt anyone. Wrong! It did hurt someone. Being nailed to a cross hurts.
          The point, of course, that our Lord is trying to make in his parable is that when someone wrongs us, and we have an opportunity to either forgive them or not to forgive them, for the Christian it isn’t a question of justice or reciprocity, because the forgiveness we might offer them is not really ours to give or not to give. The forgiveness is Christ’s. We are simply passing it on. And if we refuse to pass it on, then we are rejecting it for ourselves. That’s why the servant in the parable, who had already been forgiven by his employer, when he refused to forgive his fellow servant, had it taken away from himself and was thrown into prison. He wasn’t simply refusing to give something that belonged to him; he was refusing to pass on what he had received freely as a gift.
          “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We pray it so many times every day. It doesn’t mean, “If I forgive others, then I will be forgiven.” It means, “I have been forgiven, therefore I must forgive others.”

by Father Michael Venditti

02:12 PM 7/20/2008 - Today we celebrate the feast of the prophet Elias, or, as he is more commonly called in the English speaking world, Elijah. And the churches of the Byzantine Rite, particularly those in the Middle East, hold his memory in particular honor. The Troparion for the feast calls him the “pillar of the prophets and their foundation stone, the precursor of Christ.”
          One of the things that distinguishes the churches of the East from the Roman Church is that the Roman Church does not celebrate any liturgical commemorations for the saints of the Old Testament. In the Eastern Churches, as you know, we have many such commemorations; and the feast of the prophet Elijah is one of the most important. And you might have noticed that the chants for the liturgical services of this day, particularly those of vespers the night before, call our attention to four episodes in his life which have a spiritual meaning for our own lives.
          First of all, this particular prophet had an extraordinary experience of the presence of God. In the First Book of Kings we find Elijah wandering around looking for God. He himself says he is “jealous for God” ... he wants to see God. But he’s looking for God in all the wrong places. He’s looking for God in the magnificence of nature, in all the grandeur of the desert around him. And he comes to a cave and goes inside, and there we read:

And behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: And after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: And after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle....

08:18 PM 7/8/2008 - Starbucks is the best example of a phony status symbol that means nothing, but people will still pay 10x as much for because there are French words all over the place. You want coffee in a coffee shop, that's 60 cents. But at Starbucks, Café Latte: $3.50. Cafe Cremier: $4.50. Cafe Suisse: $9.50. For each French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they'll give you all the cream you want until you're blue in the face. Forty million people are walking around in coffee shops with jars of cream: "Here's all the cream you want!" And it's still 60 cents. You know why? Because it's called "coffee." If it's Cafe Latte - $4.50.
          You want cinnamon in your coffee? Ask for cinnamon in a coffee shop; they'll give you all the cinnamon you want. Do they ask you for more money because it's cinnamon? It's the same price for cinnamon in your coffee as for coffee without cinnamon - 60 cents, that's it. But not in Starbucks. Over there, it's Cinnamonnier - $9.50.
          You want a refill in a regular coffee shop, they'll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you're 27 and keep drinking coffee until you're 98. And they'll start begging you: "Here, you want more coffee, you want more, you want more?" Do you know that you can't get a refill at Starbucks? A refill is a dollar fifty. Two refills, $4.50. Three refills, $19.50. So, for four cups of coffee - $350.
          And it's burnt coffee. It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot." But when it's burnt at Starbucks, they say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend. It's a special bean from Argentina....." The bean is in your head.
          And there're no chairs in those Starbucks. Instead, they have these high stools. You ever see these stools? You haven't been on a chair that high since you were two. Seventy-three year old Jews are climbing and climbing to get to the top of the chair. And when they get to the top, they can't even drink the coffee because there's 12 people around one little table, and everybody's saying, "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me....." Then they can't get off the chair. Old Jews are begging Gentiles, "Mister, could you get me off this?"
          Do you remember what a cafeteria was? In poor neighborhoods all over this country, they went to a cafeteria because there were no waiters and no service. And so poor people could save money on a tip. Cafeterias didn't have regular tables or chairs either. They gave coffee to you in a cardboard cup. So because of that you paid less for the coffee. You got less, so you paid less. It's all the same as Starbucks - no chairs, no service, a cardboard cup for your coffee - except in Starbucks, the less you get, the more it costs. By the time they give you nothing, it's worth four times as much. Am I exaggerating? Did you ever try to buy a cookie in Starbucks? Buy a cookie in a regular coffee shop. You can tear down a building with that cookie. And the whole cookie is 60 cents. At Starbucks, you're going to have to hire a detective to find that cookie, and it's $9.50. And you can't put butter on it because they want extra.
          Do you know that if you buy a bagel, you pay extra for cream cheese in Starbucks? Cream cheese, another 60 cents. A knife to put it on, 32 cents. If it reaches the bagel, 48 cents. That bagel costs you $312. And they don't give you the butter or the cream cheese. They don't give it to you. They tell you where it is. "Oh, you want butter? It's over there. Cream cheese? Over here. Sugar? Sugar is here." Now you become your own waiter. You walk around with a tray. "I'll take the cookie. Where's the butter? The butter's here. Where's the cream cheese? The cream cheese is there." You walked around for an hour and a half selecting items, and then the guy at the cash register has a glass in front of him that says "Tips." You're waiting on tables for an hour, and you owe him money.
          Then there's a sign that says please clean it up when you're finished. They don't give you a waiter or a busboy. Now you've become the janitor. Now you have to start cleaning up the place. Old Jews are walking around cleaning up Starbucks. "Oh, he's got dirt too? Wait, I'll clean this up." They clean up the place for an hour and a half. If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of a coffee shop. A whole new type. Instead of 60 cents for coffee I'll charge 2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no busboy, and you'll clean it up for 20 minutes after you're finished," Would you say to me, "that's the greatest idea for a business I ever heard! We can open a chain of these all over the world!" No, you would put me right into a sanitarium. Starbucks can only get away with it because they have French titles for everything,
          Nazi bastard sons-of-bitches. And I say this with the highest respect, because I don't like to talk about people.

by Jackie Mason

James Bowman, a columnist for The New Criterion, begins an interesting articile about the current presidential campaign with this gem:

On my occasional visits to Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee merchants, I try to refuse to use the private language the company has thoughtfully provided for the convenience of its patrons. Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect. Doubtless the marketing department in Seattle has tested it to a fare-thee-well and found that most people are not like me; most people are happy to use the special, European-sounding jargon—the Stargot, as we might call it—because it flatters them into the belief that, along with their coffee, they have purchased at a very reasonable price admission to an exclusive circle of coffee-drinkers who are socially a cut or two above those who drink from the caffeine-springs of Dunkin’ Donuts or Ma’s Diner, where they use ordinary English.

The dirty little secret that we white-trash real Americans (or, as Obama calls us, the "bitter clingers") keep to ourselves is that Dunkin' Donuts coffee is whole hell of alot better than Starbucks.

by Priestly Pugilist

02:02 PM 7/8/2008 -

[I was going to engage is cleaver, mind-boggling commentary here; but, instead, I'm just going to let these three stories from various sources speak for themselves. The first story is from a news organization, but the person who e-mailed it to me didn't include the by-line. --PP]

A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure. Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant. Percival's first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys — which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby — and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported.
          "I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant," Percival, 25, said. "Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby." A short time after the abortion, Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach. She went to the doctor for a scan and discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant. "I couldn't believe it,' Percival said. "This was the baby I thought I'd terminated. At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed. I wrote to the hospital, I couldn't believe that they had let me down like this. "They wrote back and apologized and said it was very rare," she added.
          Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing health editor for FOXNews.com, said Percival's situation is actually quite common. "Women that have early terminations in weeks six, seven and eight, many times the pregnancy is so small that doctors miss removing the baby," Alvarez said. "The danger is that the failed attempt can damage the baby. That is why these patients who get early terminations need follow-ups."
          Another scan a week later confirmed the baby also had kidney problems, but doctors told the couple the baby was likely to survive, so they decided he deserved another chance at life. In November, Finley was born three weeks premature. He had minor kidney damage but is expected to lead a normal life.

Tarnow, Jun. 12, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A Polish volleyball star who was buried on June 9 is being compared by local Catholics to Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla because of her heroic sacrifice for her unborn child.
          Agata Mroz, who was originally known for her athletic prowess, was buried in her hometown of Tarnow. Mroz was pregnant with her first child when doctors discovered she had a fatal case of leukemia. After consulting with her husband, Mroz delayed a bone-marrow transplant until after she gave birth to her daughter Liliana on April 4, 2008.
          Polish fans dubbed the national team which Mróz led the "Golden Girls," due to their looks and their successes in international competitions. The national team won the European women’s volleyball championship in 2003 and 2005.
          Auxiliary Bishop Marian Florczyk of Kielce, Poland has said that Mroz’s testimony is an example of “love of life, motherhood, the desire to give life, the heroic love of an unborn child.” On June 4, a few hours after Mroz’s death, Polish President Lech Kaczynski announced that she will be posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest awards for extraordinary and distinguished service.

Washington, Jun. 20, 2008 (CWNews.com) - In what is fast becoming known as the “abortion capital of the Europe,” Britain saw the number of abortions performed on girls under 14 rise by 21%, the American Life League (ALL) reports.
          The British government is considering legislation to increase the availability of contraceptives and sex education to solve the problem.? Yet ALL leaders see those policies as certain to produce still more abortions. Abortion in the United Kingdom is at a record high, reaching more than 200,000 preborn children killed in 2007, according to statistics released this week by the UK Department of Health. Abortion has been legal in the country since 1969.??
          “Britain’s odious abortion record is the natural product the UK’s complete disregard for the sanctity of human life,” said Judie Brown, president of ALL. “However," Brown continued, "tossing contraception and more abortion at the problem will only intensify the human pain and loss of life.”??
          Most disturbing among the findings is the increase in abortions performed on girls 14 and younger from 163 in 2007 to 135 in 2006.?Parliament’s response to what UK’s Guardian calls the failure of government sexual-health strategies is more contraception, suggested mandatory sex-education in the elementary schools and easier access to abortion.?“Today's data suggests the government's contraception and sexual health strategies are failing,” admits the Guardian.??
          The statistics have been made public just a month after Parliament rejected a motion to lower the time limit on abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks. “The insanity that says easier access to sex education and contraception will somehow reduce the number of abortions is based on a lie. It is in fact a recipe for disaster that will result in tragic loss of life for preborn children and agonizing regret and depression for young people,” Brown said. “The United States should see a grisly vision of its future if we continue along the same deadly path as England.”??

posted by Priestly Pugilist

01:46 PM 7/8/2008 - If you can not figure out that the miracle of the loaves and fish is a prefiguring of the Holy Eucharist, you need some sort of remedial class. It’s painfully obvious that this event of feeding 5000 people with five pieces of bread and two fish has little to do with hunger or magic tricks as it does with feeding the world with the Body and Blood of Christ.
          And there is symbolism of the Eucharist all over this passage. For example, when he gets out of the boat, the first thing he does is heal the sick. Why? Because in order to receive Holy Communion one must be free from sin. When our Lord commands the disciples to feed the people with the meager supplies on hand, they complain that it won’t be enough; but our Lord presses them on, reminding them that what they are going to accomplish will be done by his power, not their own. Then after he breaks the bread, he gives the bread and fish to the disciples to distribute to the people -- he doesn’t distribute it himself; that’s because Christ entrusts the Holy Eucharist to his Church, particularly his priests, without whom there could be no Eucharist. Then St. Matthew goes on to tell us that they all ate and were satisfied. Of course they were, because the body and blood of the Lord is not food in the conventional sense, but spiritual food -- the actual life of the risen Savior. No ordinary food could satisfy that completely. And it wasn’t just some who were satisfied, nor even most: St. Matthew says that all were satisfied, because the Eucharist is the remedy for all sin, for all people. And when it was all over, they took up twelve baskets of leftovers, in much the same way that we keep “leftover” particles of the Blessed Eucharist in our tabernacle here in church. And the baskets are left over because the Eucharist, once we partake of it, cannot remain dormant within us, but must be carried with us into the world, so that the life of Christ which we receive can be shared with everybody. And when the baskets are collected, Jesus and his disciples get back into the boat and move on, because the grace of the Eucharist must be spread to everyone. No one can attain heaven without it, as our Lord himself said in Ch. 6 of John’s Gospel, "Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall have no life in you."
          Of course, our Lord’s disciples were not thinking of these things when our Lord performed this miracle -- and he did it twice; they were probably thinking, “Gee, what a great trick. Wish I could do a trick like that.” Whether they remembered it on the night of the Last Supper we’ll never know. But they certainly remembered it later, and so did the Fathers of the Church. St. Jerome wrote,

The multiplication extended itself beyond that which was necessary, so that twelve baskets remained, one for each Apostle. The Apostles had not yet received the power to consecrate and distribute the Bread of Heaven, the Eucharist; yet Jesus, with a symbolic act, to nourish the hungry crowd, did not create new food, but took that which was in the hands of his disciples, and blessed it.

01:22 PM 7/8/2008 - Of course we had two sets of readings today, since the feast of Ss. Peter & Paul falls on a Sunday. I would like to focus our attention on the first of these, which is the Gospel for the Sunday. The two cures our Lord performs as recorded in this Gospel lesson are very curious, because the one is very different from the other.
          In the first case, our Lord is approached by two blind men; in fact, St. Matthew tells us that they were following Jesus and calling after him. And when he turns to address them, he asks them, Do you believe that I am able to do this?" He solicits from them an act of faith before he cures them. You may recall a few weeks ago, when we were discussing the centurion whose servant our Lord cured, and how our Lord remarks about how this man’s faith is greater than anyone else’s even though he is a pagan. And I had mentioned at that time how much our Lord wants us to need him, and how he will often allow us to suffer for a time until we are prepared to rely solely on him. So, this cure here of the two blind men would seem to fit this pattern quite nicely. They want to be cured, but he first requires them to make an act of faith. Once they make it, he cures them in short order.
          But then right away St. Matthew reports another cure: this time, it’s a fellow who’s possessed. Only this time, our Lord performs the cure without even conversing with the man; there is no act of faith required. So, we’re tempted to say, “Well, what’s the deal? Are we required to believe before God answers our prayers or not?” Well, I think there’s a very good and obvious answer to this question: the man is mute. He can’t talk; so, how can our Lord solicit an act of faith from him? How can the man be expected to declare his faith when he can’t declare anything? It reminds me of a bumper sticker that I saw once which made me laugh, which read, “Illiterate? Write for free help.”
          Now, there’s probably a lot we could glean from this particular Gospel passage; but the one thing that sticks out to me as I read of these two cures together as the Church presents them to us, is the fact that God does not require from us what we are unable to do. Of course, the question that must follow that observation is, “Who is it who is qualified to judge what we’re capable of and what we’re not capable of?” More often than not we believe that we are able to judge that for ourselves, hence the excuses we make for ourselves: “I can’t do that. It’s unfair for me to be required to do that because I’m not able.” But I would suggest that we ourselves are actually the least qualified to make a sincere judgment about what we able to do. Think back to your school days, to that one teacher that you remember more than any other, who had more of an influence on you than any other. Was it not the one who pushed you the hardest, who constantly rode you and drove you to do more than you thought you were able? And didn’t you surprise yourself by actually doing it? Maybe you failed along the way and had to start again, but eventually you succeeded because someone had enough faith in you to force you to push the envelop, to not give up when you wanted to surrender. And then you realized that if you had listened to yourself and stopped when you thought you had done all you could do, you never would have succeeded.
          So, what does all this mean? It means that, in our relationship with God, in our relationship with the Church, even in our relationships with others, there is a difference between knowing our limitations and becoming comfortable with them. Spiritually speaking, it might be a question of some habitual sin, or some obligation the Church imposes upon us; it may be something related to our marriage or family obligations; but, whatever it is, if we’re on the verge of telling ourselves that we’ve reached our limit and can’t go on, we may be selling ourselves short; and, if that judgment is being made solely by ourselves alone without any input from someone else, we probably are.
          In the Gospel lesson, our Lord didn’t require an act of faith from the mute man simply because he knew the man wasn’t capable; but he did require it of the two blind men because they were able, even if they themselves thought they were not. The bottom line is that it was our Lord who made that judgment, not the men themselves. Neither should we make that judgment for ourselves. Next month we celebrate the Dormition, and it presents us with a good opportunity to challenge our view of ourselves and our abilities. Mary, after all, did question the angel when he came to her: How is this to be since I have not known man. But he would not allow her to sell herself short. That’s why, at her Dormition, she was assumed body and soul into heaven; she lived up to what she was in spite of herself. So must we. Our Lord himself said it: "With God, all things are possible."

by Father Michael Venditti

01:12 PM 7/8/2008 - I would like to continue today with the exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans which we began last week, wherein St. Paul was snipping at the Christians in Rome because they weren’t adhering to the faith they had received from the Apostles, but were making up their own religion to suit their own fancies and calling it Christianity; something that a lot of people today like to do.
          Today, St. Paul delves a little deeper into what’s wrong with the Christian community is Rome, and lashes out at them about another common problem that is all to present even in the Church today: the notion that we all have to be the same. He’s describing how all of us have different gifts and abilities given to us in grace: some people are teachers, some are preachers, some are leaders, and so forth; and some people are not these things -- they have other gifts. We are not all equal. He’s writing this to the Christians in ancient Rome because, apparently, there was some jealously among them -- some backbiting and sniping and vying for position; and Paul, rightly so, thinks it’s unseemly for Christians to be behaving this way. He considers such behavior among Christians to be hypocrisy. That’s why he says in the Epistle: "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly and affectionate to one another, with brotherly love, giving preference in honor to one another; not lagging in diligence but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. Distribute to those in need, be hospitable, bless those who persecute you, and do not curse anyone." He lecturing them like a father would lecture his children, because that’s what they are by the way that they’re behaving; and he’s giving them an abject lesson in maturity. He’s telling them, basically, to grow up.
          But one point he makes toward the beginning of this reading is something that deserves to be meditated upon seriously. He says that those who show mercy should do so cheerfully. Now, we don’t often think of cheerfulness as a Christian virtue, but it is. And this is not the only place in the New Testament where he mentions this. As a matter of fact, our Lord, himself, mentions this. On Cheesefare Sunday, just before Lent, in his admonitions about fasting, our Lord says straight out: When you fast don’t walk about with a long face like the hypocrites do, saying, “Look how I’m suffering.” He says to comb your hair and wash your face, so that no one knows that you’re fasting. After all, who are you fasting for? Are you doing penance so that everyone can see you do penance; or are you doing penance for God? God knows the secrets of your heart; you don’t need to put on a display for someone else.
          St. Paul is saying basically the same thing, but he doesn’t localize it to the subject of fasting; he applies it to our whole lives as Christians. The Christian, for St. Paul, is not someone who walks around with a long face, all teary-eyed, beating his breast and saying, “Woe is me.” For St. Paul, the Christian is someone who, despite whatever personal problems he may have, is still filled with joy because of his faith. He is the kind of person who, no matter what befalls him, trusts our Lord to see him through. He’s not saying the Christian doesn’t have problems -- everybody has problems; but the Christian with a problem behaves differently than the pagan with a problem. The Christian with a problem doesn’t need to seek out the sympathy of others, because he doesn’t need it. He has our Lord. And even when our Lord is slow in responding, or responds in an unexpected way (which he often does), the Christian can deal with it because he knows that the grace of Christ will always be there so long as he always remains faithful.
          Now, being cheerful in the face of great personal difficulty is a hard thing to do; and, to be fair, in some circumstances it can be almost impossible. What is always possible, though, is prayer. Prayer is our direct link with Christ; it is our cell phone to God. And there are no peak hours or roaming charges. But even prayer needs to be done in a spirit of maturity. God is not a vending machine, and what we pray for we don’t always get just the way we want. Prayer is conversation; and, when you converse honestly with someone, you don’t always hear what you want to hear. When illustrating the way prayer works, I always like to refer to the story of the two little boys walking home from Sunday school, where they had just heard a lesson about prayer, and one turns to the other and says, “I don’t believe in prayer.”
          And his companion is a little shocked, and says, “What do you mean you don’t believe in prayer? What’s the matter with you?”
          And the first little boy says, “I don’t believe in prayer. I don’t believe it works, and I can prove it. Remember that X-Box you wanted for Christmas last year?”
          “Yes.”
          “Did you pray for it?”
          “Yes.”
          “Did you get it?”
          “No.”
          “There, you see? That’s why I don’t believe in prayer. God didn’t answer your prayer.”
          And his companion says, “Oh, yes he did. He said ‘No.’”
          Now we can pray to God ‘till we’re blue in the face about all our problems and say, “God, I need this” or “God, I need that.” And we might be tempted to become indignant when God doesn’t give us this or that, thinking that God, for some reason, has chosen to ignore us; when, in fact, God may be saying to us, “I know some things you need more that that: things maybe like patience, or perseverance, or faith.”
          Whatever it is that prays on our minds and makes life difficult from time to time, St. Paul is right, and so is our Lord. Our problems are ours, not anyone else’s; and there’s no reason for us to spread the misery. Because if we truly are people of faith (or, at least striving to be), there’s no misery to spread. Christ truly is, as St. Basil the Great says of him in his Liturgy, “a help to the helpless, a hope to the hopeless.”

by Father Michael Venditti

12:58 PM 7/8/2008 - Illness prevented regular posting; so, let's make up for lost time:

Brethren, my hearts desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

12:44 PM 6/1/2008 - The difficulty with finding a relevant meaning from some of these Gospel passages has a lot to do with the art of translation. Matthew’s Gospel is a problem in particular, because it’s the only book of the Bible written in what is now a dead language. The other Gospel’s were written in Greek; Matthew’s was written in Aramaic, the common Hebrew dialect spoken by our Lord.
          The word in question, which causes the difficulty in this passage, is the one which our own Gospel book has translated as “money;” the actual word is mammon; and while it’s almost always translated as “wealth” or “money,” it means something more than that. One of the frustrations in trying to learn some of these ancient languages is that there are so many different words which the Lexicon translates in the same way, because each of them connotes something unique. So, in your Bible the word reads as “money,” and in English money is money. But in Aramaic you may have 12 different words that mean money, and each one says something different about it or the person who owns it or uses it. Mammon is wealth or money, but with a certain quality of personification. When it’s used as the object of a sentence, it implies some kind of reciprocal human-like relationship to the subject of the sentence. So when one possesses mammon, one not only possesses money but is also possessed by it. And all of that is known simply by looking at the one word, mammon.
          Which kind of sums up our Lord’s whole point, doesn’t it? St. John Chrysostom explains for us exactly how the choice of this word defines the whole meaning of our Lord’s narrative. It’s not the possession of the wealth that’s the problem; it’s the possession that the wealth holds over us that’s the problem. The Greek and Aramaic languages give you the option of speaking about inanimate objects as persons because it is a fact of life that such objects can become virtual “persons” to those who desire them. Money becomes mammon when obtaining or preserving it becomes the focus of your life, a relationship which should exist only with another person. It’s all right to focus on your husband or your wife, it’s all right to focus on your children, it’s all right to focus on God; but to focus on something that is not a person is wrong. It robs all the other “persons” in your life of their humanity. You end up giving human dedication to something that is not human, thus making all the other people in your life less than human by subordinating them to an inanimate object.
          And this, I think, is a very good way to understand the point our Lord is making. There are all kinds of things we need to fulfill our obligations to the people whom we love. One of them is money. You can’t feed a family or put a roof over their heads without it. But every month you’re handed that pay check, it isn’t the number of digits on the check that should give you satisfaction; it’s what that number should represent to the person who has his life well-ordered: the meeting of his responsibilities to those who depend on him.
          The ancient Desert Fathers we remember as the supreme teachers of holiness. But in another sense we have to recognize that, spiritually speaking, they took the easy way out. By forsaking all material possessions and retreating into the solitude of the desert, they isolated themselves from everything that could possibly come between God and themselves. We don’t have that luxury. We depend on others and others depend on us, in marriage, in the priesthood, in any number of situations in which we may find ourselves. They were like alcoholics who completely gave up drink; we are more like compulsive overeaters who can’t give up food, but must try somehow to live with it in a modified and detached way; which, when you think about it, is a much more difficult thing.
          We can, therefore, presume that our Lord used the word that he used very deliberately. It isn’t a question of how much, but a question of why? When two people get married and look forward to a family, they’re concerned with creating a home and an environment in which a family can flourish. But as the years pass that focus can get lost. We become so immersed in the various activities that keep the check coming in, that we forget the reason for it all. Work and job, then, become foci in themselves, not that we consciously make them so; but that through years of going through the motions we have forgotten what it’s all for. And this is true not only in reference to our families but most especially in reference to God. After all, just as material wealth exists for the benefit of our families, so our families are really nothing more than a means to bring ourselves and others closer to Christ. That’s why marriage is a sacrament. It is a way to God. One gets married precisely because two souls seeking perfection have a much better chance of success than one soul alone, because they temper each other, and limit each other, and motivate each other to do what is right. Otherwise, she exists only to please me, and I exist only to please her, when the reality should be that we both exist to help one another please God. And this is self-evident: how many people are there in our own parish who would not be here except for the fact that, somewhere along the line, they married someone who went to church on Sunday? How many couples are there who honestly know that they would not be here were it not for the fact that they needed a baby baptized, or felt guilty about not raising a child in a religious environment. And while some might question the purity of such motives, the fact is that it’s exactly this sort of thing that marriage and family are for.
          The longer I live the more I’m convinced that everything we do has some kind of ulterior motive; but that’s OK just so long as that ulterior motive is a positive one, and not mammon. In the end, no matter what we do, no matter what reason we think we have for doing it, it must be something that will lead us to God. And it will be, as long as it’s not mammon, as long as we can see the will of God in every task of life. And that happens when we train ourselves to see, in everyone who depends on us, the face of Christ.

by Father Michael Venditti

11:17 AM 5/29/2008 -

[Do you recall the famous 3/1/07 post about global warming? If not, just use the link at the bottom of the page to go find it. It resulted in your Priestly Pugilist being quoted by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla) on the Minority page of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (you can read about that in the 4/04/07 post). Needless to say, your PP does not believe in man-made global warming. The hoax that man is killing the planet is perpetuated by socialists who, having seen the politcal wing of their movement die with the Soviet Union, have latched onto environmentalism as a new way to acquire power, control the lives of others, and attack the one thing in the universe they hate the most: freedom.
      But while most Americans have been suckered into the fraud -- ready and willing to give up their liberty to prevent a catastrophy that doesn't exist -- not everyone in the former Soviet block is a true believer, to wit Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic (pictured above). These exherpts from his speach two days ago at the National Press Club are pure gold! They're also pure truth! Keep in mind he speaks somewhat broken English.
      This is a transcript from the Rush Limbaugh Program taken from Rush's web site, and I've left Rush's comments in because they're good, too. --PP]

RUSH: You want to hear some conservatism? Vaclav Klaus, president, Czech Republic, yesterday, National Press Club, trying to warn everybody in America that we are being hoaxed with global warming and Algore. Here is first of several bites we have from the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

KLAUS: I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom, and I remember quite well, wanted to command, not only the people, but also the nature, to command wind and rain is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. In the past, it was in the name of the Marxist or the proletariat, this time in the name of the planet. Structurally, it is very similar. The current danger as I see it is environmentalism and especially its strongest version, climate alarmism.

RUSH: Vaclav Klaus, who grew up under communism, is telling us that he sees it all over again in the environmental movement. Here's the next bite.

KLAUS: We are now at the stage where the facts, reason, truth are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda. We have probably and regretfully already reached that stage. Now, the whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments. It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of manmade global warming. It is fodder in the hands of politicians who, through the manipulation of people, maximized the number of votes they seek to get from the electorate.

RUSH: And here he describes, Vaclav Klaus, president, Czech Republic, here he describes the real aim of the environmentalist movement.

KLAUS: The green movement is trying to dictate, control, regulate, mastermind our lives. This is what we see every day. They want to discuss how many children we can have because the man is a creature which damages the atmosphere because of breathing. They are dictating us what kind of cars we can use, how big the refrigerators we can have. I speak as someone who lived in a communist era and who knows what it means to eliminate freedom, as someone who knows what it means to eliminate the market economy, someone who knows what it means to regulate, to command, to mastermind the economy from above.

RUSH: A question: "Do you see any dangers to the environment out there, Mr. President?"

KLAUS: I don't believe that man is destroying the planet and environmentalism is based not on small issues of saving electricity here in the National Press Club or of greening one pond or lake or water. That's not environmentalism. Environmentalism is an ideology which wants to control the world.

RUSH: See, he's speaking on one level, and, "Well, is there any environmental damage? Don't you admit to any, Mr. President?" See, he's a reformed communist, and therefore he's the enemy to the National Press Club. The next question: "If you found yourself on an airplane sitting next to Algore, what do you think you'd talk about?"

KLAUS: I met him in the past many times, so there would be no special question. I many times tried to talk, to have a public exchange of views with him, and he is not too much willing to make such a conversation. I'm ready to do it.

12:01 PM 5/29/2008 - Somehow, I don't think that conversation is forthcoming. After all, Gore is on record as saying that discenting views about global warming should be against the law. So much for the First Ammendment -- and from a man who was almost President of the United States!

by Priestly Pugilist

10:50 AM 5/28/2008 -

[Robert Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report, a political newsletter he founded in 1967 with Rowland Evans. This column, originally published in April, is an excellent companion to the 10:03 AM 5/7/2008 and 09:36 PM 5/9/2008 posts on Archbishop Weurl's disobedience regarding the distribution of Holy Communion to pro-death politicians living and working in his diocese. Mr. Novak's columns are routinely available at HumanEvents.com. --PP]

In the aftermath of the visit by Pope Benedict XVI, a troublesome question is asked by traditional Catholics: Did American pro-choice politicians receiving Communion at the papal masses indicate a softening on the abortion question by the pope? The answer is that it did not. On the contrary, it reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington.
          House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy received Communion at Nationals Park in Washington, as did Rudolph Giuliani at Yankee Stadium in New York. They were present because they were invited to the masses by Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington and Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of New York. Given choice seats, they took Communion hosts as a matter of course.
          Vatican sources say the pope has not retreated from his long-held position that pro-choice politicians should be deprived of Communion, but the decisions in Washington and New York were not his. The effect was to dull messages of faith, obligation and compassion conveyed by Benedict. In his Yankee Stadium homily, he talked of "authority" and "obedience" -- acknowledging that "these are not easy words to speak nowadays." They surely are not for four former presidential candidates and two princes of the church, representing Catholics who defy their faith's doctrine on abortion.
          Benedict's position was unequivocal when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Asked in 2004 whether Kerry as Democratic presidential nominee should be allowed to take Communion, he replied, "The minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it."
          Ratzinger's demeanor necessarily has changed in his elevation from doctrinal enforcer to global pastor, but he has not altered his position on abortion-communion. When as Benedict he arrived in Brazil a year ago, he declared: "The killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going into Communion in the body of Christ."
          Benedict did not reiterate that position in Washington and New York, because a pope traveling abroad is influenced by the stance of local church authorities. American bishops are divided. Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis leads those who believe pro-choice politicians cannot receive Communion. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Wuerl's predecessor as archbishop of Washington, took a position opposite to Burke's. Blessed with charm and political finesse, McCarrick was not about to clash with his archdiocese's most famous parishioners.
          Wuerl is considered less political than McCarrick, but he is hardly less averse to colliding with powerful laymen. He could have avoided any confrontation at Nationals Park by simply not inviting the pro-choice politicians to a mass where there was no room for the vast majority of Catholics who wanted to attend. The five pro-choice Catholics took Communion from the hand of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the pope's representative to the United States as apostolic delegate.
          In New York, Giuliani receiving Communion was even more remarkable. Unlike Pelosi and Kennedy, who are regular Mass attendees, the former mayor of New York says he goes to church only "occasionally," usually for holidays or funerals. Abortion aside, Giuliani's third marriage would make him ineligible for Communion because his second marriage was not annulled by the church. But in New York, Cardinal Egan is no more apt than Cardinal McCarrick was to offend the powerful, and Giuliani was invited to the Mass.
          There are devout pro-life Catholics who oppose rejection of any worshiper at the Communion rail, but they believe bishops should publicly manifest disapproval of Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. The bishops of Washington and New York do not. During Wuerl's installation mass as archbishop of Washington in 2006, he shook hands with Kerry and Kennedy, seated side by side.
          At Yankee Stadium, Benedict spoke of the "inalienable dignity and rights" of "the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother's womb." In parishes across the country, the faithful hear their priests echo the Holy Father's words. Those professions ring hollow when pro-choice politicians are honored as they were during the pope's visit.

by Robert Novak

09:48 AM 5/27/2008 - What does it mean to follow Jesus? It certainly doesn't mean for us what it did for the future apostles we read about here. We're not expecting, surely, to be working at our jobs, like Simon and Andrew, encounter our Lord, and quit our jobs and leave everything behind to follow him, though once in a while you see it. I was in the seminary with a young man who was raised a Protestant, and who felt very strongly a call to the Catholic Faith. And when he was received into the Catholic Church he did so with the expectation that his parents would never speak to him again, since his family belonged to a sect which was very anti-Catholic. That is certainly a dramatic answer to a very direct calling. For those of us born into our faith, it's never so dramatic, and we might make the mistake of thinking that there is no call for us to follow. We may already be married, or priests, or whatever, and think that we've already answered our call. And that's a great mistake. For, as Simon Peter found out later, the call to follow our Lord cannot be answered in one moment. We answer it every minute of every day, until the end of our days. Peter answered the call that first day he met our Lord, as we just read; he failed to answer that same call on the day he betrayed our Lord three times; he answered it again on that day in Rome when he gave his life as a martyr for Christ.
          And this is something that most of us know from our own experience. Those of you who are married know that saying "I do" on the day of your wedding is not the end of the story. It's true that on that day you are giving a definitive answer to a call which you fully intend to be a lifetime commitment; but the choice is not made only on that day, the choice is made every day of your life that you have to live with that person. And every time the circumstances change, and every time there's some difficulty, and every time there's temptation -- every time something happens that causes you to wish you had not answered that call -- you have to make a choice. The experience of the Priesthood is no different.
          Now, when our Lord ran into Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, they didn't completely know what they were getting into. If they had known, do you think they would have followed in the first place? If Peter had known that his following this man would mean that he would end up murdered in a far away country, do you think he would have dropped his nets and walked off after Jesus? Probably not. And who would have blamed him? And yet, when the time came for him to bear witness in Rome, he counted it a privilege to shed his blood for Christ.
          And while you may not know it, as a priest I encounter people all the time who have just that kind of courage, people whom you would never suspect of possessing great heroism, people who secretly carry in their hearts the constant burden of sacrifice to remain faithful to a choice made in faith, whether to a spouse or to the Church or simply to life itself in the face of some painful illness or emotional suffering. Why do they remain faithful?
          Peter was not prepared to die for our Lord that first day he met Jesus. If he had seen the future, he wouldn't have followed our Lord, he'd have run for the hills. He followed precisely because he did not know what he was getting into. But when the time came, he made the supreme sacrifice for Christ. By that time, he was prepared: he had followed our Lord for three years, he had listened and learned, he had grown in his faith to the point that Jesus could entrust him with the care of the Church on earth, all of which graces he could never have received had he not said "Yes" that first day. It's the same in marriage: just because a young couple receives instruction from the priest or goes to some class doesn't mean they're prepared for married life. I meet with couples several time prior to their wedding day to make sure they understand what the Church expects of them in married life, but not with the idea that after talking to me they're going know what marriage is all about. I've never been married. I can't tell them how to react when married life throws them a curve ball. That's something they have to learn for themselves. And they learn to deal with that by making a choice every day to be faithful. The easiest time they make that choice is on their wedding day. And every time they face a difficulty, they have to make that choice again; and each time it gets harder because the challenges are greater. But every time they make that choice, they're stronger for it. And eventually they'll realize that the challenges they're conquering now are challenges they would have never been able to meet at the time they were married, challenges that would have scared them off had they known about them on the day of their wedding. And the same thing is true in the Holy Priesthood. You learn about the priesthood in the seminary; but you learn how to actually be a priest by being a priest. And with every challenge you meet with fidelity, you're that much more prepared for the next.
          "If you would be my disciple," said our Lord, "you must deny yourself, take up your cross EVERY DAY, and follow me." Every day. Not just once. And it's not true only for commitments like marriage or the Priesthood. In this day and age, just being a Christian is a struggle. The promises made for us by our parents and godparents on the day or our baptism we make again and again whenever we're faced with a moral choice. And it's easy to surrender. One can always find convincing reasons to choose self-preservation over sacrifice. But the Lord hasn't left us to face these choices alone. Grace is not a fairy tale. If it was, then a whole lot of martyrs died for nothing. Saint José Maria Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, used to say, "If you want to be happy, be faithful; if you want to be more happy, be more faithful; if you want to be very happy, be very faithful." Let us all pray that we will choose to be very happy by being very faithful to the choices we have made, and the choices we continue to make every day.

by Father Michael Venditti

01:27 PM 5/22/2008 - Rome, May. 20, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has affirmed that a policy barring homosexuals from admission to seminaries applies to all Catholic dioceses and religious orders.
          In a brief letter to the world's bishops, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, underlined that a November 2005 policy statement from the Congregation for Catholic Education is "valid for all formation houses for the priesthood," including those administered by religious orders, the Eastern Catholic churches, and missionary territories.
          Cardinal Bertone's letter -- which, he noted, was specifically approved by Pope Benedict XVI -- refers to the Instruction released by the Congregation for Catholic Education in November 2005, saying that neither active homosexuals nor celibate men with "profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" should be ordained to the priesthood or allowed to begin seminary training.
          That Vatican document, which has now been reinforced, instructed bishops and religious superiors to use "painstaking discernment" in appraising the candidates for priestly training. Candidates who are identifiably homosexual are not qualified for ordination, the Vatican said. "In the case of a serious doubt in this respect, they must not admit him to ordination," the document added.
          Since the release of the Instruction in November 2005, some bishops and religious superiors had questioned whether the policy was to be applied universally throughout the Church. Cardinal Bertone's letter, which he wrote to all the world's bishops and religious superiors in response "to numerous requests for clarification," answers those questions in the affirmative.

from Catholic World News

01:44 PM 5/22/2008 - The Vatican Secretary of State has issued a two-sentence statement concerning the interpretation of the 2005 Instruction on the non-admission of homosexual persons to Holy Orders. In response to "numerous requests for clarification," the Holy See made clear what was clear from the outset, that the force of the prohibitions extends to seminaries operated by religious orders, mission territorities, and Eastern rite Churches. Two or three years from now, in all probability, the Vatican will issue a further clarification affirming that the Instruction remains valid for Capricorns, redheads, and Edmonton Oilers fans. No one is fooled here. These are not good-faith doubts sent Romewards by genuinely perplexed ecclesiastics. The game is to stall implementation of unwelcome directives by finding textual ambiguities and feigning bewilderment, in the hope that, by the time the Church's cumbersome machinery of response has produced its answer, Pope Benedict will be dead and replaced by a man with a more enlightened view of the issues.
          It's no secret that the old line religious orders are the most fervid dissenters from the ban on homosexuals, and their superiors comprise a kind of Shadow Cabinet within the Church: hostile to the policy of the Holy See but outwardly deferential to its authority -- and, most importantly, incubating in their ranks a parallel government and parallel apparat in which the "alternative" policies are discreetly advanced. The Shadow Cabinet's own term for this genial subversion is Creative Fidelity, and any housewife whose husband protests he was "creatively faithful" to her during his Las Vegas business jaunt will be able to gauge the degree to which the Pope is reassured by the euphemism.
          Nor is the Vatican faultless as to its own responsibilities in the matter. Remember the much-ballyhooed "new and serious" Apostolic Visitation of U.S. seminaries launched in response to the clergy abuse crisis? The results of the investigation seem to have vanished into the ether. Those in charge managed to steer it to its conclusion without risk to any sitting bishop, and lay interest in reform has waned to the point where the findings can be safely entombed in a file cabinet until a new generation of prelates replaces those who were implicated. To put in the (curial favorite) future perfect tense: face will have been saved.
          In sum, it looks as if we're still stuck with the post-Conciliar truce: the Holy See holds fast, at least on paper, to the vera doctrina, while the clergy follows its own inclinations, pausing, when thwarted, to ponder what the meaning of "is" is. The faithful -- watching the gap widen between Roman teaching and the convictions of the men Rome provides as their ministers -- are presented with a distasteful choice between docility and orthodoxy. Those who wish to be sure of a welcome will decide that neither matters very much.

by Diogenes at Catholic World News

12:46 PM 5/22/2008 - Vatican, May. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The artistic heritage of the Church is a resource for Christians of all eras, Pope Benedict XVI said at his weekly public audience on May 21.
          "If faith is alive, Christian culture does not become a thing of the past," the Holy Father told his Wednesday audience. "Cathedrals are not medieval monuments, but places where we can meet God and one another. Great music -- Gregorian chants, Bach, Mozart -- are not things of the past." The Holy Father based his address on the life and work on Romanus the Melodist, a Syrian "theologian, poet, composer, and permanent deacon" of the 6th century. He said that Romanus belonged to "that sizeable group of theologians who transformed theology into poetry," along with St. Ambrose, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross among others."
          Romanus the Melodist taught the people through his music, the Pope continued; his hymns provided "a lively and original way of presenting the catechesis." Today those hymns provide insights into both the music and the theology of his generation. "This great poet and composer reminds us of all the wealth of Christian culture which was born of faith, born of hearts that encountered Christ," the Pope said.

          Among the important messages in the hymns of Romanus, the Pontiff mentioned the continuity between Christ and his apostles, ensured by the Holy Spirit, and the critical importance for each Christian to prepare for the Final Judgment.
          The May 21 papal audience was held in the Paul VI auditorium. Before meeting the crowd there, Pope Benedict met briefly with another group in the Vatican basilica, to greet those who were not able to attend the general audience because of the limited seating in the auditorium.

from Catholic World News

[St. Romanus is the figure in the bottom center of all icons of the Protection. He has no connection to the apparition of the Theotokos, but is included simply because his feast falls on the same day. --PP]

05:42 PM 5/18/2008 - It is one of the forgotten teachings of our faith is that everyone is called to be a saint. Of course, it was Our Lord who first said that. We don't respond to it because of the way we've mystified the saints. We romanticize their lives so much that we almost turn them into gods and goddesses to worship instead of examples to follow. But the message of the Gospel is that we are called to be saints. Holiness is for everyone: the father and husband as well as the priest, the wife and mother as well as the nun. There is no one who is not meant by God to be a saint.
          Not too many years ago our late Holy Father, John Paul II, canonized a man whom I think is one of our Church's greatest saints, Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of the lay organization Opus Dei, whom you’ve heard me quote several times. He was a priest, but he dedicated his life to showing lay people how to become saints. And it's a hard thing to do, because so many people think that in order to be holy you have to be stuffy, boring, grave, prudish, and basically strange. Even piety by itself has little to do with genuine sanctity ... people who spend their time beating their breasts, or pining away in front of icons, or praying endless Rosaries are not necessarily holier thereby. Those things can be aids to holiness, certainly; but holiness itself is something much more substantive. Living the Gospel, bearing witness to it by example ... prayer, yes; but not prayers rattled off by rote; prayer to achieve union with God, prayer that focuses on the Eucharist as the center of our lives. Most important of all, the realization that God wants us to perform the tasks of our state in life as a means of sanctifying the world.
          One of the greatest victories of the Devil in our time was convincing people who are inclined toward religiosity that they achieve holiness either by some sort of volunteerism or by persuing a psudo-clerical "ministry," as if good works by themselves constitute holiness. If we want to serve the Church in holiness it is by participating in it's mission to sanctify the world by fostering an interior life, by going to confession frequently, by learning to unite ourselves to our Lord in prayer, by constantly seeking out the Blessed Eucharist as a source of grace and an amour against imorality, and by fulfilling all the obligations of our state in life: by keeping a Christian home, by raising children in the faith, by becoming living examples of the Gospel at home, in the place where we work, among our friends. This is service to Christ and His Church, and this is holiness.
          So, let us approach this Sunday of All Saints with the realization that we, ultimately, are supposed to be one of them, always remembering that, while it is important to pray for the intercession of the saints, it is more important to follow their example.

by Father Michael Venditti

03:59 PM 5/16/2008 - Either the folks over at Reuters are incredibly stupid or ... actually, I don't think there's another option. First, the headline:

Pope restates gay marriage ban after California vote.
By Philip Pullella

I didn't know the Catholic Church had a "gay marriage ban," did you? I know that "gay marriage" is an oxymoron, given that the Holy Mystery of Matrimony can only be received by a man and a woman; but that's not a ban; it's just reality. The Holy Father couldn't "allow" gay marriage anymore than he could allow the sky to be green and the grass to be purple. He has no authority over the laws of nature. And that's just the headline. What about the story itself?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

Oh, really? Is that what he said? I don't think so. What he probably said was that only a union between a man and a woman can exist as a true marriage; but whether a marriage is "moral" would depend on the subjective exercise of the marital rights by the two parties in the marriage, in that they would act morally or immorally in a variety of different ways: tenderness vs. abuse, openness to life vs. contraception, kindness vs. cruelty, etc. Then there's that peculiar line, "...speaking a day after a California court ruled..." The presumption, I suppose, is that the Pope made his remark because of the ruling of the court. But how would Mr. Pullella know this without being able to read minds? Is the Holy Father forbidden to speak to the Catholic Faithful about Catholic sacraments unless occasioned by some current event on the mind of the journalist? Oh, but wait! There's more:

Benedict made no mention of the California decision in his speech to family groups from throughout Europe, but stressed the Church's position several times.

Translation: "The Pope may not have mentioned a court ruling that made news here half a world away, but -- gosh darn and damnit -- he should have, because that would have made for an even better story! But, since he didn't, let's pretend he did, because, after all, you all out there are so stupid that, if I make the connection, you'll believe it for sure."
          Now, this kind of psudo-journalism is nothing new, and we've explored it numerous times on this blog; but this particular story is a shining example of a brand of cut-and-paste journalism that is the result of laziness on the part of journos who find it much more convenient to look for their stories sitting at their computers rather than pounding the pavement like real journalists used to do -- back in the last century.
          Basically, what this story consists of is five -- count 'em, five -- unrelated news items spliced together in alternating stanzas so as to give the impression that they are somehow connected, thus creating the appearance of a new story. It's what a journo does when he needs to get some sort of story out there, but also has a reservation for lunch which he doesn't want to miss; so he does some slicing and dicing, exherting about as much effort as it took for him to tie his shoes that morning.
          Allow me to illustrate. Here's the rest of the story, as it was released by Reuters, with the various separate and distinct news items differentiated in different colors (keep in mind that what you're seeing here is exactly what Reuters released -- I have not re-organized any of it):

"The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions," he said. The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family, "founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life".
     On Thursday, the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriages in a major victory for gay rights advocates that will allow homosexual couples to marry in the most populous U.S. state.
     Last year, Italy's powerful Catholic Church successfully campaigned against a law proposed by the previous centre-left government that would have given more rights to gay and unmarried couples.
     The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not sinful but homosexual acts are, and is opposed to gays being allowed to adopt children.
     The California court found laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples are at odds with rights guaranteed by the state's constitution.
     U.S. President George W. Bush, who is opposed to gay marriage, prayed "for the family" with the pope at the White House last month during the pontiff's visit there.
     Last year, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, made headlines with comments that critics said equated homosexuality with incest and pedophilia. After he made the comments -- which Bagnasco said were misunderstood -- graffiti reading "Shame" and "Watch Out Bagnasco" appeared on the door of the cathedral in northern Genoa, where Bagnasco is archbishop. The pope, who backed Bagnasco, will visit Genoa this weekend.
     Opponents of gay marriage in the United States vowed to contest the ruling with a state-wide ballot measure for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.

Take the various colors and join them together and you can read five different stories very logically. In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if our low-effort Attakis, Mr. Pullella, didn't simply log into his company's news bite database, typed the words "gay marraige" into the search window, pulled some paragraphs at random from the first five stories that popped up, mixed 'em up, then called it a day.
          There is, of course, a more sinister explaination for this weird story, but it's based on the presumption that Mr. Pullella has a brain. But let's try it anyway just for fun. Let's assume he's got gray matter and there's a purpose here (other than filling a 300 word assignment). With regard to religion, Reuters works from the hypothosis that God does not exist, or, if he does, he must be treated as something of which Reuters has no direct experience (which I don't doubt). Stories about God and his "supporters" must be treated "objectively" (meaning from the outside looking in). This means eschewing the vocabulary of religion; since, to use their words would violate journalistic objectivity. So, if we can't use the vocabulary of believers to talk about religious things, we need to use someone else's. And who are the high priests in the journo's universe? Politicians! This is how we come up with odd sounding sentences such as, "The pope, who backed Bagnasco, will visit Genoa this weekend." When was the last time you heard of the Holy Father "backing" a Cardinal Archbishop? It's a political term artificially applied to a clearly non-political relationship.
          This use of a political lexicon to describe religious realities is, of course, meant to serve Reuter's agenda of projecting religion as "nothing special," by applying to it the same rules of engagement they apply to everything else, the goal being to "de-mystify" the mysterion and, hopefully, shock religious believers into scrutinizing their own faith the way Reuters would scrutinize a political theory. They, of course, would call it "putting it into context." Theoretically, any context will do, so long as it's a context which is purely secular in nature, since, to do otherwise, would violate "objectivity." The only problem is that the selection of a context -- any context -- is, by nature, an act of bias.
          They don't see it that way because, to them, we are the great unwashed; we are incapable of correctly understanding the world around us. That's why it's vitally important that we, the little people, not have direct access to the raw data of the day's events; we might draw the wrong conclusions and end up thinking incorrectly about them, resulting in horrible misunderstandings, such as the notion that there might be a God. This was, in fact, the essence of Dan Rather's comment, back when he got caught making up a story to try and sway an election, when he said that the reason the "blogosphere" was so dangerous was because it has "no filter", and it's facts are "not in context" -- his words, not mine -- meaning, of course, not passed through his filter and not in his context.
          What Reuters, Dan Rather and the rest of the drive-by media fail to grasp is that we, the great un-washed, have washed up behind our ears and no longer need their guidance. We can take the raw data and decide for ourselves what context it should be seen in, if any. We can draw our own conclusions, and no longer need the day's events boiled down to their least common denominator and re-packaged into convenient bite-sized pieces. But what they really don't understand is that they, themselves, created the blogosphere by failing to recognize that we, the miserable masses, were fed up having our news passed through anyone's filter but our own!
          All liberalism can be neatly summed up with the phrase: "You poor, poor thing. Here, let me help you." It has no facility to deal with people who neither need nor want it's help.

by Priestly Pugilist

07:40 PM 5/15/2008 -

[From Father Z's blog, comes another bomb dropped by a former Vatican employee, though this one is somewhat postive.
      Italian journalist Bruno Volpe, whose interview with Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige concerning the suggestion that the Roman Catholic practice of receiving Communion in the hand be abolished (which you can read in the 04:05 PM 2/22/2008 post below), has graced us with another scoop; this time, an interview with His Eminence Virgilio Card. Noè, [pronounced "No-eh"] former papal MC, the predecessor of Archbp. Piero Marini (whose childish rant against Pope Benedict you can read about beginning with the 10:19 AM 4/8/2008 post below). The full text of the Italian can be seen at the Petrus web site.
      This is an interesting interview on several fronts. For the "Ratzis" (fans of the current Holy Father), Pope Paul VI is often villified as the author of all that's gone wrong with in the liturgical life of the Latin Church since Vatican II. For the "Montinians" (fans of Paul VI), Papa Ratzinger is the interloper who is undoing everything their hero "gave his life" to accomplish by way of re-styling the liturgy of the Church so as to destroy the beariers to eventual union with the Protestants. In this interview, he candidly speaks about Pope Paul and what kind of man he was.
      But of most interest to us, I'm sure, will be his willingness to speak about Pope Paul's inflamatory comment, made in the later part of his life, that the "smoke of Satan" had entered the Church through the liturgical abuses that arose following the Council, a remark that has been cautiously avoided by everyone remotely connected with Papa Montini -- until now.
      Keep in mind that Cardinal Noè is old and ill, and Fr. Z has translated the interview word for word; so the grammer is not always perfect. --PP]

CITTA’ DEL VATICANO - He speaks with a thread of a voice and at times laboring for breath that it is so difficult he has to stop. But his mind is lucid and his heart is sound. The interview with Virgilio Card. Noè, 86, Master of Liturgical Ceremonies during the Pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II, once the Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Peter and Vicar of the Pope for Vatican City, showed himself to be at the same time both touching and engaging. The Cardinal, who has very much abandoned public life because of the infirmities of old age, helps us, taking us by the hand, better to know a Pontiff – wrongly forgotten in history’s haste: Giovan Battista Montini. He reveals for the first time what Paul VI was referring to precisely when in 1972 he denounced the presence of the smoke of Satan in the Church.

Volpe: "Your Eminence, who was Pope Paul VI?"

Noè: "A real gentleman, a saint. I remember still how he lived the Eucharistic Mystery, with passion and participation. When I think of him I tear up, but not in the way of a hypocrite. I am truly moved. I owe him a great deal, he taught me a lot, he lived and paid a great price for the Church."

Volpe: "You had the privilege to be Master of Liturgical Ceremonies precisely because of the assignment from Papa Montini in the time of the post-Conciliar reform. How do you remember those times?"

Noè: "Splendidly. Once the Holy Father said to me, personally, and in a very tender way, how the MC ought to carry out his role in that particular historical period. He came into the sacristy. I drew near and he said: "The MC must foresee everything and taken everything on himself, he has the task of making the Pope’s road smoother."

Volpe: "Did he add anything else?"

Noè: "He affirmed that the spirit of the MC must not be shaken up by anything, large or small, that may be his own personal problems. An MC, he stressed, must remain also the master of himself and be the Pope’s shield, so that Holy Mass can be celebrated in a dignified way, for the glory of God and His people."

Volpe: "How did the Holy Father take the liturgical reform desired by Vatican II?"

Noè: "With pleasure."

Volpe: "It is told that Paul VI was quite a sad man, true or legend?"

Noè: "A lie. He was a good and gentle father, a gentleman and a saint. At the same time, he was saddened by the fact of having been left alone by the Roman Curia. But I would prefer not to talk about that."

Volpe: "As a whole, against the historians, You, as one of his closest and trust collaborators, describe Papa Montini as a serene person.

Noè: "He was. Do you know why? Because he also affirmed that whoever serves the Lord cannot ever be sad. He served Him especially in the Sacrifice of the Mass."

Volpe: "Paul VI’s denunciation of the presence of the smoke of Satan in the Church is unforgettable. Still today, that discourse seems to be incredibly relevant."

Noè: "You from Petrus, have gotten a real scoop here, because I am in a position to reveal, for the first time, what Paul VI desired to denounce with that statement. Here it is. Papa Montini, for Satan, meant to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render worship to the Lord by celebrating badly (mal celebrando) Holy Mass because of an errant interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke of the smoke of Satan because he maintained that those priests who turned Holy Mass into dry straw in the name of creativity, in reality were possessed of the vainglory and the pride of the Evil One. So, the smoke of Satan was nothing other than the mentality which wanted to distort the traditional and liturgical canons of the Eucharistic ceremony."

Volpe: "It is thought that Paul VI was the real culprit as the cause of all the ills of post-Conciliar liturgy. But based on what you have revealed, Eminence, Montini compared the liturgical chaos, even if in a veiled way, actually to something hellish."

Noè: "He condemned craving to be in the limelight and the delirium of almighty power that they were following the Council at the liturgical level. Mass is a sacred ceremony, he often repeated, everything must be prepared and studied adequately, respecting the canons, no one is "dominus" [lord] of the Mass. Sadly, in many after Vatican II not many understood him and Paul VI suffered this, considering the phenomenon to be an attack of the Devil."

Volpe: "Your Eminence, in conclusion, what is true liturgy?"

Noè: "It renders glory to God. Liturgy must be carried out always and no matter what with decorum: even a sign of the Cross poorly made is synonymous with scorn and sloppiness. Alas, I repeat, after Vatican II it was believed that everything, or nearly, was permitted. Now it is necessary to recover, and in a hurry, the sense of the sacred in the ars celebrandi, before the smoke of Satan completely pervades the whole Church. Thanks be to God, we have Pope Benedict XVI: his Mass and his liturgical style are an example of correctness and dignity."

by Bruno Volpe

06:41 PM 5/12/2008 -

[The following joyful announcement is lifted from the Rorate Ceali blog. --PP]

The Chaldean Catholic Diocese of St. Peter and Paul has formally received into its fold, those members of the Assyrian Catholic Apostolic Diocese who, under the leadership of Mar Bawai Soro (pictured above), had asked to be reconciled with the Catholic Church last January 17, 2008.
          One bishop (Mar Bawai himself), six priests, 30+ deacons and subdeacons and an estimated 3,000 faithful were received into full communion during liturgical celebrations for the Feast of Pentecost.
          Mar Bawai Soro has long advocated the Primacy of the See of Rome. On November 2, 2005, he presented to the Synod of Bishops of the Assyrian Church of the East (of which he was a bishop at that time) a paper entitled "The Position of the Church of the East Theological Tradition on the Questions of Church Unity and Full Communion" in which, among other things, he stated that...

The Church of the East attributes a prominent role to Saint Peter and a significant place for the Church of Rome in her liturgical, canonical and Patristic thoughts. There are more than 50 liturgical, canonical and Patristic citations that explicitly express such a conviction. The question before us therefore is, why there must be a primacy attributed to Saint Peter in the Church? If there is no primacy in the universal church, we shall not be able to legitimize a primacy of all the Catholicos-Patriarchs in the other apostolic churches. If the patriarchs of the apostolic churches have legitimate authority over their own respective bishops it is so because there is a principle of primacy in the universal Church. If the principle of primacy is valid for a local Church (for example, the Assyrian Church of the East), it is so because it is already valid for the universal church. If there is no Peter for the universal church there could not be Peter for the local Church. If all the apostles are equal in authority by virtue of the gift of the Spirit, and if the bishops are the successors of the Apostles, based on what then one of these bishops (i.e., the Catholicos-Patriarchs) has authority over the other bishops?
      The Church of the East possesses a theological, liturgical and canonical tradition in which she clearly values the primacy of Peter among the rest of the Apostles and their churches and the relationship Peter has with his successors in the Church of Rome. The official organ of our Church of the East, Mar Abdisho of Soba, the last theologian in our Church before its fall, based himself on such an understanding when he collected his famous Nomocanon in which he clearly states the following: "To the Great Rome [authority] was given because the two pillars are laid [in the grave] there, Peter, I say, the head of the Apostles, and Paul, the teacher of the nations. [Rome] is the first see and the head of the patriarchs." (Memra 9; Risha 1) Furthermore, Abdisho asserts “...And as the patriarch has authority to do all he wishes in a fitting manner in such things as are beneath his authority, so the patriarch of Rome has authority over all patriarchs, like the blessed Peter over all the community, for he who is in Rome also keeps the office of Peter in all the church. He who transgresses against these things the ecumenical synod places under anathema." (Memra 9; Risha 8). I would like to ask here the following: who among us would dare to think that he or she is more learned than Abdisho of Soba, or that they are more sincere to the church of our forefather than Mar Abdisho himself? This is true especially since we the members of the Holy Synod have in 2004 affirmed Mar Abdisho’s List of Seven Sacraments as the official list of the Assyrian Church of the East. How much more then we ought to consider examining and receiving Abdisho’s Synodical legislation in his Nomocanon?

Five days later, Mar Bawai was suspended by the Holy Synod of the Assyrian Church. The story behind this, as well as the full text of the paper on papal primacy that Mar Bawai had presented to the Synod, can be found here. Following upon his suspension, Mar Bawai and the clergy and faithful who had remained loyal to him formed the Assyrian Catholic Apostolic Diocese, then proceeded to draw ever closer to the Catholic Church through the Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate. How fitting that they finally came home on Pentecost Sunday.

by Carlos Antonio Palad

Mar Bawai's diocese is headquartered in California. The Chaldean Catholic Patriarcate governs all Chaldean Catholics from the Patriarchal See in Iraq.
          After rejoicing in the good news, your PP paused to wonder how the various members of the Eastern Catholic press will treat this news. In recent years, some political correctness has crept into some publications, most notably, One magazine, with which Father Venditti exchanged some correspondence which you can read back in the posts for 5/16/2007 and 5/24/2007. According to Executive Editor Michael J. L. La Civita, there are only two forms of Christianity, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. When questioned on this by Fr. V, Mr. La Civita said he had a mandate from the Holy See to "act if is the Church is [already] one," though he failed to provide any documentation to support this odd claim.
          So, the betting pool is now officially open. I'm betting that One magazine doesn't report this story. But on a happier note, let's all join together in a prayer of thanksgiving and support for Bishop Bawai and the 3000+ priests, deacons and faithful he has brought into union with the See of Peter.
          As an added point of interest to the above, you might want to scroll down to the three-part post below, beginning with the 12:11 PM 4/12/2008 entry, about the decision of the Holy See to allow Chaldean Catholics to receive the Holy Eucharist from the Assyrian Church Mar Bawai and his flock have just left, which concerns the Holy See's decision that the anaphora (eucharistic prayer) used by that Church is valid in spite of the fact that it does not contain the words, "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood." It would be interesting to know whether Mar Bawai's flock, newly united to Rome as Chaldean Catholics, will continue to use this apostolic anaphora, or even if that previous decision had something to do with nudging Mar Bawai and his flock toward Catholicism.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:56 PM 5/11/2008 -

Heavenly King, Conforter, Spirit of Truth,
everywhere present and filling all things,
Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life,
Come and dwell within us, cleanse us of all stain,
and save our souls, O gracious One.

I’ve always found preaching on the Feast of Pentecost particularly difficult; and whenever that happens I usually just pull something out of my sermon file from past years and just repeat it; but I’ve only got one Pentecost homily in there, and you’ve heard it six times. You could probably recite it from memory. So, I thought I would focus instead on one particular curious thing that St. John mentions in his Gospel passage that we just read.
          He begins by telling us that it was the last day of the Great Feast, which alerts us to the fact that Pentecost was already a Jewish holiday long before it became a Christian one. It was, in fact, the last day of a 50 day celebration of the harvest of first fruits which begin at the end of Passover. The Christians, of course, asigned to it a new meaning based on the fact that it was on this Jewish feast that Jesus, having ascended to his Father, sent down the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and inaugurated their mission to establish his Church throughout the world; the account of which the cantor sang for us in the Apostlic reading. The events described by St. John in today’s Gospel also occurred on Pentecost, but one year earlier. Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the Temple of Solomon, and gives a speech. St. John records for us the speech, as well as the reactions of some of those listening. And this is what drew my attention.
          The speech our Lord gives is, of course, about the Spirit which he will send upon the Church once he has died and risen and ascended to heaven. He quotes the Old Testament Prophets, as he always does, referring to their reference to God sending streams of flowing water, which he indicates is actually a description of the grace of the Holy Spirit that will come down upon the Church after the Paschal Mystery is fuliflled, anticipating the sacrament of Baptism by which the Holy Spirit would be given to us as individuals. And buried in our Lord’s words is the truth that this Holy Spirit, once received, would enable the Christian to live a life of grace, and transcend the limitations of a fallen human nature. Thus, the person who receives this grace would become able to resist temptation and perform acts of great virtue, even though it is against his natural inclinations to do so.
          The reaction of some of his hearers is what’s interesting. Some of them are quite moved, and begin to wonder if Jesus is some reincarnation of John the Baptist. But there were some others there whom, as St. John describes it, didn’t quite like the message they were hearing, and started to make up some reasons why Jesus didn’t know what he was talking about. The chief objection seems to have been that Jesus comes from Galilee, whereas the prophets always spoke of the Christ coming from the city of David, which is Bethlehem. It’s confusing to us because we know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem; but they didn’t know that, because Jesus, although born in Bethlehem, was raised in Galilee; so most people thought he was a Galilen by birth, when he was, in fact, a Davidian by brith just as the prophets foretold.
          It’s a stupid argument anyway. Where someone is born does not effect whether what he says is true. The excuse they give for rejecting his message -- that he’s a Galilean -- is just that: an excuse, which they have invented to mask the real reason they reject his message, which is that they don’t like what his message is challenging them to do. The idea that God is going to send a supernatural gift of grace which will enable us to transcend our human nature, deny ourselves, and live lives free from sin regardless of the weekness of the body, is not a message that’s going to be well received by someone who is a slave to his passions. After all, when someone succumbs to temptation and sins, what is one of the first things he says in defense of himself? “It’s only natural.” Which is true. It is only natural. But the Christian is not confined to what is natural, which is exactly what Jesus is trying to explain here. The Christian who has received the grace of the Holy Spirit in Baptism has been given the ability to resist what is natural and do what is supernatural. He does not have to eat simply because he is hungry, he does not have to have sex simply because he’s aroused, he does not have to steal simply because he’s in need, he does not have to lie simply because the truth would do him harm; and we can go through all the Commandments if you want. The bottom line is that the Christian does not have to follow his natural appetites; he can resist them. The grace of the Holy Spirit makes it possible for him to live a life outside of the influence of his own human nature; and by so doing, to live a life in conformity to the Commandments of God and, thereby, make himself worthy of the kingdom of heaven.
          Now, that’s a lot to squeeze out of two sentences in today’s Gospel, but it doesn’t even stop there; because Jesus, having sent to us the Holy Spirit, which would be enough, gives us even more. The inspired word of God in the Scriptures, and the teachings of the Fathers of the Church, nourish our soul with truth; the Spirit likewise enlivens Christ’s Holy Church to teach us how to navigate the vicissitudes of an ever-changing world; the Holy Mystery of Matrimony gives us a way to focus our natural passions into creative ends; our own prayers bring Christ to us in friendship, just as he said, “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them;” and the gift of the Holy Priesthood makes the greatest helps of all available to us: the gift of Christ himself in the Blessed Eucharist, and the continual forgiveness of sins in confession. One is tempted to say, “All this, and the Holy Spirit, too.” With all this, how could one fail to reach heaven?
          But the fact is that some people do fail to reach heaven, not because they didn’t have what they needed, but because they refused to accept it. That’s why the resistance of some of the people in our Lord’s audience on the Feast of Pentecost is so disturbing. They had been told that they would be given the ability to save themselves, and were actively looking for a way not to believe it. For the rest of us, St. John Chrysostom preached on this passage, summing up the whole thing very nicely:

[T]he grace of the Holy Spirit, when it has entered into the mind and has been established, springs up [higher] than any fountain, does not fail, never becomes empty. Consider the wisdom of Stephen, the tongue of Peter, the vehemence of Paul: how nothing bore, nothing withstood them, not the anger of the multitudes, not the rising up of tyrants, not the plots of the devils, not [the] daily deaths [they suffered for the faith]; but as rivers borne long with a great rushing sound, so they went on their way. When he was about to send them [out], he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit...," and then they wrought miracles.

09:36 PM 5/9/2008 - Memo to Arch-Tame Wuerl: Yes, sir, it can be done!

Kansas, May. 9, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has announced that Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion because of her support for legal abortion.
      In a column appearing on May 9 in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Leaven, the archbishop said that Governor Sebelius has sent a "spiritually lethal message" by implying that she could remain a Catholic in good standing while supporting abortion on demand.
      The archbishop's column cited in particular the governor's veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which would have required abortionists to inform women about the effects of the procedure and alternatives to abortion.
      The governor's stand in favor of abortion is particularly painful, Archbishop Naumann wrote, because Sebelius is a Catholic. He reported that he had met with her "several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions." Because the governor has now rejected his pleas and her public stand constitutes a scandal to the faithful, the archbishop said that he has now directed her to refrain from receiving Communion. Archbishop Naumann reported that he has asked Governor Sebelius to accept this directive, so that she will "not require from me any additional pastoral actions."
      The governor will be welcomed back to Communion, the archbishop wrote, if she acknowledges her error, goes to Confession, and makes "a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion."

[ Archbishop Naumann leading a pro-life Rosary. ]

By the way, if you're wondering precisely what "spiritually leathal" means, it means you can go to hell if you don't repent. In light of the comparison between the Archbishop of Kansas City and the Archbishop of Washington, one can surely see the deadly -- leathal, shall we say -- irony in Cardinal Levada's understated comment about his "uneasiness about territorial morality." Now go back and read Mr. Akin's article again, especially the part about material cooperation.
          The bottom line is that there should be only one way a Catholic bishop should deal with pro-death public officials, and it isn't the Wuerl way. But the really pressing question is: What are the faithful to think? When two Archbishops of the Catholic Church respond to an acute moral question in two completely opposite ways, one of them has to be wrong, right? Our Lord told Peter three times to "feed my sheep." Which of these two do you think is a "good shepherd?" and which one, having led the "little ones astray," should have the "mill stone tied around his neck" and thrown into the abyss? It's not exactly rocket science, is it?
          I've never been there, myself; but I'm told the abyss is pretty dark. That Pepsodent Smile could come in handy.

by Priestly Pugilist

Another question just occured to me: When two Archbishops of the Catholic Church respond to an acute moral question in two completely opposite ways, there's something that's supposed to happen. It involves the Holy Father, who is successor to St. Peter ... you know, the guy who was told to "feed my sheep." I doubt if it will happen. But if His Tame-ness becomes a Cardinal simply because the capitol of the republic is located in his diocese, then the Holy Father has no right to complain that the herd is thinning.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:39 PM 5/9/2008 - Explaining Ratzinger’s "Proportionate Reasons."

[This article by Jim Akin is a good companion to the previous post about Arch-Tame Wuerl. Jim is director of apologetics and evangelization at "Catholic Answers" and is a contributing editor of This Rock. --PP]

Abortion Is the Black Hole of Moral Issues

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.

So wrote Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in a confidential memorandum entitled Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles that became public earlier this year. Many Catholics were at a loss to understand the cardinal’s statement. "Isn’t Ratzinger departing from sound Catholic theology?" some wondered. Others, including well-known dissidents, pounced on the statement as vindication for their cause and wrote newspaper columns trumpeting it as proof that in the Vatican’s view it is okay to vote for pro-abortion politicians as long as you don’t share their pro-abortion view. In other words, a voter can be "personally opposed but . . ."
          Both responses fail to do justice to the Cardinal’s remark. Contrary to the first response, he is not departing from the established principles of Catholic moral theology. In fact, he is emphasizing them. Contrary to the second response, he is not offering an easy pretext for voting for pro-abort politicians. Personally, I wish he had either not added this note to his memorandum or that he had elaborated the matter further to prevent the confusion that was sure to arise from it. But he was not writing for public consumption, and this may account for his writing on such a sensitive matter with such brevity.
          Let’s try to clear up the confusion.

Cooperation

Humans work together to achieve common goals. But cooperation is not always good, particularly when the goals being pursued or the means used to achieve them are evil. It is tempting to take a rigorist position and simply declare that all cooperation with evil is sinful, but a few moments reflection reveals problems with this position. Sometimes our own actions may be entirely innocent, yet they may be part of a chain of events that results in evil. For example, if you work in a bookstore you might sell someone an ink pen—an action innocent in and of itself—and be totally unaware that the person is planning to plunge it into someone else’s eyeball. By selling him the pen, you cooperated with and enabled the action of the attacker. Yet a well-formed conscience would not say that you did something wrong by selling him the pen under the conditions described above. Clearly, then, some forms of cooperation with evil in some circumstances are not sinful.
          Ignorance of the evil is not the only excuse here. Sometimes force is. Suppose you are in a convenience store when you encounter a man waving a gun. He points the gun at you and tells you to load up a bag with the money from the cash register. Doing so would involve cooperating with evil—the robbery of a convenience store—but is it licit to do so with a gun pointed at your head? The Catholic Church places a high value on private property, but neither the Church nor, in all probability, the convenience store owner would tell you that a few hundred dollars are worth your life and that you must refuse to put the loot in the bag.
          There are biblical examples of cooperation with evil being justified. When John the Baptist was preaching, Roman centurions and tax collectors came to him and asked what they must do. The Roman Empire was an institution that did all kinds of horrible things (including promoting emperor worship), but did John the Baptist tell them that they were morally required to quit their jobs because they were supporting an evil empire? No, he told them that they personally should do no evil, neither collecting more taxes than their due nor oppressing anybody or extorting money out of him. They should be content with their pay and do their jobs (cf. Luke 3:12–14). As long as they did this, the kind of cooperation they were giving the Roman Empire was morally licit in their circumstances.
          Situations such as this have forced the Church to examine what are licit and illicit forms of cooperation with the evil actions of others, and one fact that has emerged clearly from this reflection is that some forms of cooperation can be morally licit. In fact, since humans are sinners, the only way to avoid cooperating with the sinful actions of others would be to avoid cooperating with human beings entirely. That not only is impossible, but it would mean not doing the good that God commands us to do regarding others. On the scrupulous "never cooperate when evil may result" view, even saving a drowning man would be prohibited on the grounds that the man surely will go on to sin in some way. Yet God expects us to save him if we can. By withdrawing from human society to avoid cooperation with evil, we would trade perceived sins of commission for actual sins of omission.
          So we’re stuck. While we are in this life we have to cooperate with other humans, even knowing that they are sinners and that our cooperation will enable their sins in some circumstances. The question is not whether we should cooperate with others, but what kinds of cooperation with others are morally legitimate.
          Traditional Catholic moral theology has discerned several different forms of cooperation. We do not have space here to offer a complete list of all the different kinds that have been proposed by moral theologians, but let us focus on the two Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned.

Formal Cooperation

The first is formal cooperation, which occurs when we mentally assent to the act with which we are cooperating. For example, if someone is robbing a bank, and we help him, agreeing to the bank robbery (not because we are being forced into it), then we are formally cooperating with the heist. In such a case, we share in the moral character of the act.
          Ratzinger’s example concerns voting for a candidate for office "precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia." In such a case, by voting for him precisely because of his stand on these issues, we would be endorsing them, and thus we would be formally cooperating with abortion or euthanasia. For a Catholic to do this would result in him being "guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." But not all forms of cooperation with evil are of this sort, so let us look at the other form Ratzinger names.

Remote Material Cooperation

If one does not formally cooperate with evil, he may materially cooperate. This occurs when one does an action that is not sinful in and of itself and where he does not endorse the evil that his action facilitates. For example, in our pen-selling example, the action you performed (selling an ink pen) was not immoral in itself, nor did we consent to the evil that was to be done with it (attacking someone so as to blind him). Our cooperation in that case was material rather than formal.
          There is more than one type of material cooperation, as indicated by Ratzinger’s mention of remote material cooperation. The alternative is proximate material cooperation, and the difference is how directly involved our actions are in the event. Suppose in our pen-selling example that at the very moment you hand the pen to the attacker, he lunges for another customer and tries to blind him. You put the weapon in his hand immediately before he used it. In this case, your material involvement in what happened was proximate (near) to the commission of the evil act. But suppose you didn’t sell him the pen but only manufactured it. In this case, you didn’t put the weapon into the attacker’s hand. You simply made it and someone else handed it to the attacker. While your actions were still part of a chain of events leading to an evil act, they were much more remote from the attack and would be described as remote material cooperation. It should be obvious that it can be perfectly legitimate for us to have this kind of remote material involvement in what happened. If we are pen manufacturers, we need to make a living, and we can’t be expected to shut down operations simply because some people will misuse the pen points we make.
          We thus have a good reason for allowing the remote material cooperation. That reason, in the language of traditional Catholic moral theology, is said to be "proportionate." It is important to note that the mere use of the word proportionate does not mean that one is endorsing a dissident moral theology known as "proportionalism," which John Paul II condemned in Veritatis Splendor 75–6. This is what confused some people about the Cardinal’s note. They thought it sounded as if he was endorsing proportionalism, but he wasn’t. The word proportional may be involved, but that doesn’t result in proportional-ism.
          In essence, proportionalism makes the presence of a proportionate reason the sole criterion for whether an act is justifiable. In other words, you can do anything if you have a good enough reason. There are no actions that in principle can never be done. It is clear that this is not what Ratzinger is suggesting. In fact, quite the opposite: He recognizes that some actions (such as abortion and euthanasia) are intrinsically evil and can never be justified. What he is doing is discussing how far away—how remote—your actions have to be from these for you to be able to act in good conscience.
          In the case of voting for a pro-abortion politician, the act of voting is remote from the act of abortion. A person may vote for such a politician, but he usually will get elected only when this vote is combined with the votes of many others. Then, once he takes office, he has the ability to influence public policy regarding abortion, but he does not commit these actions himself (at least in his capacity as an elected official). He leaves that to doctors. The chain of human choices that interpose between one person’s act of voting and the end act of another person committing abortion show that the voter’s cooperation with abortion is remote. If he does not approve of abortion, it is also material rather than formal.

Proportionate Reasons

Traditional Catholic moral theology allows that remote material cooperation with an evil action may be justifiable in certain circumstances. In Ratzinger’s words it "can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons." Some may find this difficult to accept, but traditional Catholic moral theology is firm on the point.
          Consider a parallel: God does things that enable others to commit sins (e.g., giving them life, free will, the ability to act). He even continues to supply them with these things when they are in the very act of committing abortion and euthanasia. What the proportionate reasons are that justify God in doing this forms a major part of the problem of evil, but we do know that God is justified in all that he does. Thus Catholic moral theology is on firm ground in acknowledging that remote material cooperation with an evil can be justified when there are proportionate reasons.
          We might ask: What kind of reasons could there be to vote for a pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia politician? Here is a clear case: Suppose that in a given election either Candidate A or Candidate B is morally certain to win, but it is not clear which will win. Candidate A’s only policy is that he supports abortion, while Candidate B has two policies: He supports both abortion and euthanasia. In this case, more harm will be done to society by the election of Candidate B, and so based on principles touched on by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae 73, one may cast one’s vote in such a way as to limit the harm done to society.
          In such a situation, casting one’s vote for Candidate A does not amount to an endorsement of his policies. It represents an attempt to reign in the greater harm that otherwise will result. This is something many seem confused about. It often appears that people regard casting their votes as if they were swearing to a particular proposition, such as "I support all of the policies of this candidate." If that were the case, then one could never vote for a candidate with a less then 100-percent perfect set of social policy views.
          But voting does not entail this. Very likely votes are not to be understood as involving propositions at all, but to the extent that they can be translated into propositions, they would be something more limited, such as "Of the options available, I want this candidate to be elected this time." That doesn’t involve a personal endorsement of any of the candidate’s policies. In fact, one might oppose all of a candidate’s policies and vote for him purely to keep an even worse candidate out of office. This was the case with voting for Candidate A to prevent the election of the even worse Candidate B. Candidate A’s policy was evil, but Candidate B’s policies were even more evil.
          In the real world, the principle is more difficult to apply, because candidates rarely have entirely evil platforms. Many will have elements in their platforms, alongside support for abortion and euthanasia, that Catholics are permitted to support, and some will be tempted to support them for these reasons. Many suggested Cardinal Ratzinger was giving his blessing to voting for pro-aborts if there were enough other good things about them. But having a number of good points is not enough. As the Cardinal indicated, there must be counterbalancing reasons proportional to abortion.
          Such reasons are not easy to come up with, particularly for candidates seeking offices that have the ability to impact abortion law significantly. These include the presidents who nominate Supreme Court justices and the senators who confirm them. One wants to weed out pro-abort candidates on the lowest level possible so that they can’t use their political track record to get elected to higher office. But the more impact the office has on abortion policy, the more weighty a reason must be to allow a vote for them.
          What kind of reason would be needed to vote for a pro-abort candidate for president? Something unimaginably huge.

The Abortion Numbers

Consider: A million and a half new Americans are murdered every year by abortion. While particular historical circumstances increase or decrease the number of Supreme Court appointments a president gets to make (some presidents get many and some get none), if we average out the differences, it turns out that a pro-abort president on average could extend the abortion holocaust by four years equivalent to the four-year term he spends in office.
          At 1.5 million kids killed per year, that means that a pro-abort president would be responsible for extending the abortion holocaust to include six million additional murders. When one takes into account the fact that about half of the recent presidents have had second terms, that would mean a pro-abort president would be responsible for extending the abortion holocaust to include approximately nine million Americans.
          No other issue involves numbers that high. Nothing short of a full-scale nuclear or biological war between well-armed nation states would kill that many people, and we aren’t in imminent danger of having one of those. Not even terrorists with weapons of mass destruction could kill that many people. As vital as the issue of terrorism is, it does not get us up into the number of deaths caused by abortion. It would take three thousand 9/11-size events in a president’s average term of office (more than one a day) to rack up sufficient deaths to make terrorism proportionate to abortion. Al-Qa’eda simply does not have enough suicidal fanatics to make terrorism proportionate to abortion.
          Jobs? The economy? Taxes? Education? The environment? Immigration? Forget it. We do not have nine million people dying in a typical president’s term of office due to bad job programs, bad economic policies, bad taxes, bad education, bad environmental law, bad immigration rules—or even all of these combined. All of them together cannot provide a reason proportionate to the need to end abortion.
          Make no mistake: Abortion is the preeminent moral issue of our time. It is the black hole that out-masses every other issue. Presenting any other issues as if they were proportionate to it is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

by Jim Akin

10:03 AM 5/7/2008 - In an article reproduced in the 12:48 PM 4/30/2008 post here, Phil Lawler exposes a patern of behavior on the part of the U. S. bishops in responding to any kind of problem that could have a public relations impact. While some took his article the wrong way -- presuming that he was equating the seriousness of sexual abuse and liturgical abuse -- in reality he was simply pointing out that the bishops seem to have the same way of dealing with any problem; it's just that in most cases -- like liturgical abuse -- this defect of ability impacts innocent people to a lesser degree without ramifications in the secular press; whereas, in a case of sexual abuse, the same response results in shattered and destroyed lives. He concludes his article by saying: "If the sex-abuse crisis was 'sometimes very badly handled' [quoting Pope Benedict] -- not much debate on that -- and if liturgical abuse is now being handled the same way, it's time to recognize that there is an underlying disease."
          If there was any doubt that the desease is terminal, there is a new shining example, as reported in CWNews:

Washington, May. 2, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC, has responded to criticisms about allowing pro-abortion politicians to receive Communion. In a column that appears in this week's edition of the archdiocesan newspaper, Catholic Standard, the archbishop argues that any decision to bar prominent Catholics from receiving the Eucharist should be made by the bishop in their local dioceses. Archbishop Wuerl indicated that he would not bar a politician from receiving Communion unless the bishop of that politician's diocese had taken that step. He explained that he has "always respected the role of the local Church and the ministry of the individual bishop as shepherd of the Church entrusted to his care."

          If you watched the Pope on TV recently, you'll recognize Arbishop Wuerl as the bishop clinging to the Holy Father's arm with that plastic, ear-to-ear smile on his face. Your PP touched on the "Wuerl problem" over a year ago, in the 1/24/07 post abo