12:00 PM 12/29/2009 — Before archiving all the posts from 2009 and starting anew, your Priestly Pugilist offers what we believe to be the commercial of the year:

by Priestly Pugilist

12:59 PM 12/27/2009 — 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 sof 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 on a fiery chariot, reminiscent of Elijah’s journey to heaven. 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 deliberately do not start families.
          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

10:21 AM 12/25/2009 — “She wrapped him is swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” I've often felt so sorry for that poor innkeeper. Little did he know that he was turning away God. Of course, we like to think that had he known, he would have rushed to throw somebody else out, to give the room to Mary and Joseph—or even, perhaps, give them his own room— something of which our Lord would not have approved, anyway.
          The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in Judea was about 3 or 4 days, over rough terrain; and, with Mary being 9 months pregnant, you can bet it was an uncomfortable trip. Perhaps, because of the bumpy ride, Mary was already in labor;—at the very least she must have been in tremendous discomfort—and, Joseph, being anxious to find some kind of shelter, decided to scope out the caves on the outskirts of town which some of Bethlehem's citizens had turned into stables for their livestock. At least there, he thought, there would be some straw to keep the baby and his mother warm for the night, and a roof to keep out the rain.
          What do you think of the innkeeper? Is he guilty of turning away God that first Christmas night? Most of us would probably say, "No. How could he be? How was he supposed to know that this scruffy-looking man and his pregnant wife, both of them covered with the dirt of the road, were the parents of the Messiah?" Wouldn't it be ironic if, 30 years later, that innkeeper was part of the crowd listening to our Lord tell the parable where the condemned say, "When did we see you hungry, Lord, and fail to feed you; thirsty, and refuse you drink; naked, and did not cloth you?" And the Lord replied, "Whenever you failed to do these things for the least of my brethren, you failed to do them for me."
          So, you see, it didn't matter much that Mary, with her husband, didn't look much like the door through which God was coming into the world. It certainly didn't matter much to Simeon. Some time later, when Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be circumcised, old Simeon snatched the baby out of Mary's arms, lifted him up toward heaven, and thanked God that he had been permitted to see the Messiah before he died. How did he know that? Did the child Jesus have the word "Messiah" tattooed on his forehead? I don't think so.
          Thirty years later, when Jesus was walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and he stumbled across Simon and Andrew who were fishermen, and he said, "Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men..." The Gospel says that they immediately dropped their nets and followed him; and they followed him for three years until his death and resurrection, and then they both died for him. Why? If you were sitting at work, doing your job, and some stranger comes up to you and says, "Forget all that, just come with me," are you gonna do it? Probably not, and chances are you would at least ask, "Who the heck are you?" But the Gospel doesn't say that Simon and Andrew asked any such question; it says, simply, "They immediately dropped their nets and followed him."
          So I ask you again, what about that innkeeper? Do you still want to maintain that it wasn't his fault because nobody told him that it was God knocking at his door? Nobody told Simeon. Nobody told Simon and Andrew, and they accepted Jesus. You see, the whole life of our Blessed Lord on Earth is a series of meetings with people, some of whom reject him and some of whom accept him. The first person God meets during his stay on earth is John the Baptist. When God was still in her whom, Mary went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who herself was pregnant with the future John the Baptist. And the Gospel says that as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby in her womb leapt for joy. Even as a fetus, John accepted Jesus as God, and rejoiced. The second person Jesus meets is the innkeeper, who rejects him. And so it goes throughout our Lord's life on earth. Many people encounter Jesus: some will accept him, some will reject him.
          What about you? What think you of Christ? Do you accept him or reject him? Now, I could walk up to each one of you in this church this morning and ask you that question, and without hesitation you would tell me that you accept the Son of God. But, then again, so would the innkeeper, had he recognized Christ. The point is, he didn't. Assuming he was a Jew, he was looking forward to the coming of the Messiah like everyone else. Only he didn't expect him to be born of a woman traveling with her husband from Nazareth. And when you read the Gospel through, you'll find that all the people who end up rejecting Jesus, do so because he wasn't what they expected.
          It is very easy, my friends, to come to church on Christmas Day, and except Christ as a baby lying in a manger. It's an image of God that doesn't repel us because it doesn't challenge us—so much easier to swallow than the image of the broken and bloody body of Christ hanging on the Cross, for example. There are no consequences to kneeling at the foot of the manger; there are dramatic consequences to kneeling at the foot of the Cross, because one who kneels at the foot of the Cross knows what the Gospel is all about. It is not about lights and trees and gifts and a throwback to memories of our childhood. It is about sacrifice and conversion and turning away from sin. It is about fidelity, especially when fidelity isn't easy: fidelity in one's marriage, fidelity in one's duties to Christ's Church, fidelity to the teaching of Christ as it comes to us through his Church.
          You see, the whole world is filled with people who would much rather kneel at the foot of the manger than at the foot of the Cross; and that's why they can't understand things like the moral teaching of the Church, or the obligations that are required of members of Christ’s Church. And they're equally as confused when you try to tell them about the martyrs, and explain why so many people, down through the centuries, were willing to give their lives for Christ. They can't understand these things, because the only image they have of God is of a baby lying in a manger. After that, they don't walk with Christ anymore. Those who walk with Christ all the way know that the manger is only the beginning, that the rejection of Christ by the innkeeper is just the first of many. They are the ones who walk with him to the end, even up the mountain of Calvary, to stand at the foot of the Cross. They are the true friends of Christ. Their image of Christ is different, and that's why they are able to understand what so many cannot.
          Before leaving Church today I would ask you to take a close look at the icon of the Nativity I've placed on the tetrapod. You should know by now that everything in an icon is significant;—nothing is just a decoration—but today I call your attention to only one thing: toward the bottom of the scene, in the center, there grows a small tree. It is the tree from which the cross would be made. In our Byzantine Tradition, the day after Nativity is celebrated as the Synaxis of the Mother of God; but I wonder how many can remember what feast is the day after that? It's the feast of the Archdeacon Stephen, the first martyr. His death is described in the Acts of the Apostles. It's so much like our Lord's own death: he prays for the forgiveness of those who are stoning him. Do you think that's all just a tremendous coincidence, or do you think that maybe there's a message in his feast being so close to the birthday of our Lord? Perhaps it's to remind us that this child who lies in the manger has not come to earth simply for us to adore, but he is here for us to follow as well; and, if we choose to follow him all the way, then we're going to end up marching up Calvary.
          That, my friends, is the paradox of Christmas. Today we rejoice with the Church at the foot of the manger. Let's us pray that none of us will be missing at the foot of the Cross.

by Father Michael Venditti

12:04 PM 12/21/2009 —

[In the face of a government run health care plan that would require Catholic doctors and hospitals to give up medicine to avoid violating the fundamentals of their faith, 55 Catholic Bishops have signed on to a promise of civil disobediance in defiance of the new law. Janice Shaw Crouse is director and senior fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America. Her column appeared in The Washington Times, dated today.
      Note to the Times: I did try the embed code you provided for my reprint permission, but couldn't get it to display in any browser other than Windows® Internet Explorer; but all six of my readers can view the original—along with all the advertisements you want them to see—by clicking here. —PP]

The recently released Manhattan Declaration is noteworthy because, unlike the signatories of other declarations that are long on rhetoric and short on calls to action, the more than 300,000 people who signed this declaration (including 55 Catholic bishops who have oversight of more than 600 of the nation's private hospitals) agree to engage in civil disobedience regarding laws that reject mainstream values.
          The declaration's signers commit to their "obligation" to "speak and act in defense" of biblical truths. Signers pledge "that no power on Earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence" on the sanctity of life, the divinely ordained nature of marriage, and religious liberty." Those truths, they agree, are open to neither compromise nor revision.
          They are, however, subject to public debate. Political and religious leaders are deliberating the significance and ramifications of statements like this: "We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriage or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."
          Rarely has a declaration issued such a rigorous claim on conscience or called for such a decisive confrontation with the forces of secularism in the general population and government. Since its release last month, the nearly 5,000-word Manhattan Declaration has given voice to the concerns of, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the 55 percent of Americans who are concerned and troubled by the "wrong direction" in which the nation is headed.
          The clear, bold and eloquent language of the declaration was drafted by Robert George, Timothy George and Chuck Colson. The original signatories of the declaration include a broad spectrum of religious leaders ranging from George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center to Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of Hope Christian Church in Washington, from Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List to Kay Arthur of Precept Ministries International, from Joseph Bottom of First Things journal to Gary Bauer of American Values and Campaign for Working Families.
          The Manhattan Declaration was prompted by the left's campaign to convince the public that biblical beliefs are a newly minted product of "right-wing extremism." The declaration points out that the fundamental principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition are a long-standing part of the fabric of our society. They constitute much of the everyday conventional wisdom and common values that help hold communities together, the foundation upon which Western civilization developed.
          While acknowledging that Christians have not always lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, the document declares that Christians have "worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family."
          Christians have been at the forefront in "seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering." To cite but a few examples: Christians such as William Wilberforce in England and Harriet Beecher Stowe in America led the fight against slavery; others were instrumental in challenging the divine rights of kings, promoting women's suffrage and advancing civil rights.
          Any honest accounting of history will show that those holding traditionally accepted moral values have been in the forefront of society's hard-won (and often bitterly contested) advances in terms of human dignity, decency and charity. They have been the backbone of society, not some lunatic fringe as the left would have it.
          The truth about which the secular left obscures and confuses the public is that Christians and others with deep religious convictions are at the forefront in working to end human trafficking, giving care to AIDS sufferers, caring for orphaned children, protecting "the intrinsic dignity of the human person" and standing for the common good.
          The signatories recognize the necessity of shining the light of truth into the darkness of today's false and divisive rhetoric and the blatant demagoguery used to mislead today's generation with its meager knowledge of America's true history. We recognize the poisonous distortions of basic Christian principles that must be countered in the public mind. We have reached a point where those who truly "honor justice and the common good" must take a stand and make known the truth that historical mainstream American values have their origins in our traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs.
          Together, people of faith and deep religious convictions will continue work to protect those who are most vulnerable, the unborn, the disabled, the aged. We will proclaim the truth about the sanctity of marriage and the necessity of religious freedom. The call to take a stand presented so forcefully in the Manhattan Declaration has the potential to re-establish the social values and behavior that shaped this nation.
          Without a doubt, the gauntlet laid out in the declaration is daunting:
          "We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."
          Nevertheless, that principle is the basis for liberty, justice and human rights; it is the very bulwark of freedom and democracy. If Americans lose sight of that principle, our moral foundation will disintegrate and this nation will cease to be a "shining city on a hill."

by Janice Shaw Crouse

[It would be interesting to know the names of the 55 Catholic bishops who signed the declaration—even more interesting to know the names of those who were asked but who did not sign. —PP]

2:03 PM 12/20/2009 — The Sunday of the Genealogy—also called the Sunday of the Holy Ancestors or the Sunday Before the Nativity—is always dreaded by priests because of the prospect of having to sing all those peculiar names which no one can pronounce, the Gospel lesson for this Sunday being the entire first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. And, as a priest, there is a great temptation to skip over all those names and go right to what can easily be considered the “meat” of the whole thing, which is the apparition of the angel to Joseph and his marriage to the Mother of God. It’s very tempting to suppose that the reading of the genealogy is of purely historical or documentary interest. What can hearing this list of names offer us that has any spiritual import?
          But each one of these names has a meaning. There is a story in the Old Testament about every one of these people. And if we believe that the Gospel is the inspired word of God (which I’m sure we do), then God wants us to keep these names in mind. Matthew mentions them because he’s writing his Gospel to a primarily Hebrew audience; he wanted to show the Jews that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament for which the Hebrew people had been waiting. We read these names today because these names mean something just as important to us. Read your Old Testament and look up some of these people, and you’ll find that the human ancestors of our Lord were not all just and holy men. Among these names are sinners: those who committed incest, adultery, murder, apostasy; the names of Judas, of Thamar, of David and Ruth are filled with intrigue and calumny and horrific acts of despotism. Just take the one name of King David, who had a man named Uriah, a soldier of some distinction, sent to the front lines of a battle unprotected with the intention that he would be killed, because David lusted after this man’s wife. These were the human ancestors of our Lord. Our Lord wanted men such as these as his human ancestors—that is the mystery of the Incarnation: he wanted, on the human level, to be linked with all the muck and mud of man. He wanted to clear a way for himself through the sins and crimes of humanity. After all, was that not the reason he came to earth as a man: to take upon his own back the sins of mankind?
          And here is where the genealogy of our Lord is significant for each of us; for it is the history of each one of us that he takes upon himself and overcomes. For each one of us has some of the features of our Lord’s less than sterling ancestors. In each one of us, either dormant or active, can be found the sins of the patriarchs and their children—there are never any new sins committed; only old sins with new faces. And just as Jesus once took upon himself the flesh of a man and came into this imperfect world in order to heal and save it, so he also comes into our flesh—in the Blessed Eucharist—to heal and save us.
          The danger, of course, is that we make the same mistake that our Lord’s own people made in failing to recognize that he is, indeed, who he claims to be. St. Matthew, no doubt, thought that by beginning his Gospel with our Lord’s human genealogy, everyone would be convinced—that Jesus fulfills everything that the prophets of the Old Testament required of the promised Messiah. He was wrong. They weren’t convinced. The question is: are we? Do we recognize that the Eucharist we celebrate and receive is our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ? Do we realize that our own happiness, both in this world and the next, depends upon following Jesus Christ as perfectly as we can? Are we put off the idea of trying to follow Jesus perfectly with the excuse that we’re not holy? Many of our Lord’s own human ancestors were not holy; that was the whole point. As our Lord himself said to the Pharisees who criticized his association with sinners, “It is not the healthy who need the physician.”

by Father Michael Venditti

1:41 PM 12/20/2009 — Ronald Regan's famous radio address on the dangers of government administered health care should be required listening for every American:

Click here to listen.

by Priestly Pugilist

2:23 PM 12/19/2009 — As regular readers of Priestly Pugilist know (all six of you), your PP loves to call attention to bishops of the Catholic Church who show backbone. Well, the man who is to become the new Bishop of Milwaukee seems to have a spine of steel. This story is from Life Site News:

MILWAUKEE, December 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The incoming Archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome Listecki, has responded to a campaign by "Young Catholics for Choice" to promote use of contraception and abortion among Catholic youth.
      Using media advertising the group is, says the Archbishop-Designate, "attempting to convey the message that Catholics can disregard Church teaching regarding contraception, abortion and human sexuality in general and remain Catholics in good standing." However, "Nothing could be further from the truth."
      "While people can call themselves whatever they want, it is my duty as a bishop to state clearly and unequivocally that by professing and disseminating views in grave contradiction to Catholic teaching, members of organizations like 'Young Catholics for Choice' in fact disown their Catholic heritage, tragically distancing themselves from that communion with the Church to which they are called," added the archbishop.
      Using language first employed by Catholic dissenters to Humanae Vitae, YCFC calls on Catholics to use an "informed conscience" to decide to use birth control and the morning-after-pill, also called "emergency contraception."
      Their ad campaign states: "Young Catholics are having sex. We are using contraception and condoms. We are having abortions. We are bisexual, gay, lesbian, straight and transgender. And none of this makes us any less Catholic than conservative Catholics who speak out against us.
      "The truth is, they don't represent what the majority of Catholics—especially those of us in our 20s and 30s—think about sex. It comes down to Catholic teaching on conscience. Basically, every individual has the right and responsibility to follow his or her own conscience—and respect others' right to do the same. With conscience and respect, good Catholic sex is not only possible, it's already happening. "
      The group, claiming to be a youth wing of "Catholics for Choice," admits that it's mandate is to "take action to counter the bishops' impact both in the United States and around the world"....

Unfortunately, the misconceptions under which the members of "Young Catholics for Choice" suffer are not restricted to young Catholics; they are the misconceptions of a majority of Catholics of any age in the United States—even so-called conservatives like Sean Hannity (check out this earlier post: Freedom of conscience? It depends who you voted for). For the sake of brevity (and because you might not bother), allow me to quote myself:

[Most American Catholics] believe that Vatican II introduced us to a previously unappreciated facet of the Holy Spirit which makes each one of us infallible in moral matters, called the "conscience." The misunderstanding is rampant even among conservatives. When Sean Hannity declared that the Church was "wrong" about birth control, he was called on the carpet by a priest—no bishop had the courage to do it—and all he could do was repeat the mantra, "...the primacy of conscience..." over and over again, followed by the non sequitor, "Judge not lest ye be judged"; proving that he hasn't cracked open a Bible since the Douay-Rheims version was published in 1582 (I don't routinely hear him opening his show with "Greetings, brethren. I welcometh ye to the program. Doth thou knowest we be loaded up today!") And why do American Catholics cling so dogmatically to this fairy tale called "conscience"? Because they're lazy. They were told that Vatican II declared the primacy of conscience; but, shove a paperback copy of the Documents of Vatican II or the Catechism of the Catholic Church in front of them and ask them to show you where this declaration is made, and they wouldn't have a clue where to begin.

Look closely at the YCFC's statement: "Young Catholics are having sex. We are using contraception and condoms. We are having abortions. We are bisexual, gay, lesbian, straight and transgender. And none of this makes us any less Catholic than conservative Catholics who speak out against us." Well, excuse me, but it most certainly does! How else we we to define a Catholic? As nothing more than someone who was baptized in a Catholic Church as a baby? Nothing else? Believe it or not, for most American Catholics today, that's all there is to it. You don't have to believe in anything in particular, and you certainly don't have to live in any particular way. It would be like me (or anyone else) registering as a contributing member of the NAACP, but including a note which reads: "I believe black people are monkeys. I spit whenever I see one. I like to attack them at night and beat their heads in. I would never hire one. But that doesn't make me any less a good NAACP member than you." To admit to sinful behavior out of simple human weakness is one thing;—one thing, in fact, to which every single one of us must admit—but to admit to committing sinful acts deliberately out of contempt for the Church which teaches them, while at the same time declaring yourself a true and faithful member of that Church, is...well, let's just say that it seems these "young Catholics" must have been playing hookey during Logic class.
          In the very next paragraph of their statement, the YCFC gives voice to what can only be called the "American Arch-heresy": the notion that truth is determined by a vote: "The truth is, [the teachings of the Catholic Church] don't represent what the majority of Catholics—especially those of us in our 20s and 30s—think about sex." So what? Did Moses submit to God a poll of the Hebrew people before he ascended Mt. Sinai? What's sad is that the religio-cultural climate that has allowed these young people to assume that popular opinion has a role to play in morals and ethics is the fault of the Church in this country itself, and it's retreat from dogma into the hands of pop-psychology and self-help therapy. "I don't go to Mass because I don't get anything out of it." Who suggested to you that you were supposed to get anything out of it??? We worship God because it is our duty to do so; whether we enjoy it is irrelevent as far as our religious obligations are concerned.
          Your PP was sent some material recently which I've been using to compose an essay to wit the vast majority of Catholics in this country are not, in fact, Catholics at all because they neither share the faith of the Church even in the most basic of theological truths, nor understand what it means to worhsip God liturgically in the true sense of the word. In the mean time, let it suffice to repeat (for the third time now) a portion of my March 3, 2006, letter to Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro:

The Catholic Church defines the conscience as a faculty of the intellect that alerts us as to whether our actions are in conformity with the truth. Whether the conscience can do this is determined by whether it really knows the truth. A conscience which has been misinformed, or is ignorant of the truth, cannot perform it's function and is therefore useless. For example, if a Catholic priest, for whatever reason, tells someone that they may steal money from work and that this is not wrong, the person does not sin in doing it, because their conscience has been misinformed. But that does not make the act right, nor make the conscience infallible. As soon as that person becomes aware of the truth, the excuse of conscience is no longer valid, since the conscience now has a new standard by which to judge. How one feels personally about the issue at hand has absolutely nothing to do with how the conscience operates.
     As I’m sure you know, this “common stock” misunderstanding of conscience is most acute when it comes to matters dealing with more personal and intimate moral questions. People who interpret conscience as "how I feel about it personally" will say that conscience excuses deviating from Catholic moral teaching because of the person's own personal conclusions. But this is not conscience. Conscience can only excuse such a deviation if the conscience is either ignorant of the law of God, or if it has been misinformed by "Father Friendly." In such a case, the conscience is wrong through no fault of it's own; and we are obliged to follow even an erroneous conscience provided that we don't know it's erroneous (and this is what is commonly mislabeled as “primacy of conscience”). But once the conscience has been informed as to the reality of what the Church teaches, then the excuse no longer exists, and one must now act in accord with the new standard the conscience has received.
     Moral theologians refer to this as “invincible ignorance,” that is, a conscience which is in error about the truth. It is only through invincible ignorance that a person's conscience can excuse from guilt in deviating from the moral order. A conscience that knows what the Church teaches can never be used as an excuse to do what the Church teaches is objectively evil.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:27 PM 12/14/2009 — One of the reasons Philip’s Fast is overlooked by many of us 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's Gospel 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.
          People for whom faith is a stumbling block like Christmas. Christmas presents to us a very non-threatening, non-demanding side of Christianity. A Baby in a 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

9:08 PM 12/5/2009 — During this time of Phillip’s Fast we celebrate the feasts of saints about whom we know a lot more than we do about Nicholas of Myra; saints whose service to the Church seems to have been far more outstanding than his: for example, the Apostle Phillip, after whom we have named this Little Lent, and his brother Andrew, about whom we read in the Gospels; or St. John of Damascus and St. Ambrose of Milan, whose theological writings helped to form and guide the early Church. And yet, their feast days are not celebrated with nearly as much solemnity as that of Our Holy Father Nicholas, about whom we know practically nothing for certain. Most of the stories we were taught as children connected with his life belong more to legend than to history; and even most of the history we know we can’t prove with any certainty. Historians over the centuries have posited that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that he took part in the Council of Nicaea, that he was imprisoned during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. And if we can’t be certain about even these innocuous sounding facts, then what are we to think of the hundreds of miracles and acts of charity attributed to him by popular legend, which is why he is called the Wonderworker. He’s credited with the setting free of captives, with saving schoolboys from death and young girls from dishonor. We all know the stories about how he supposedly distributed gifts to the poor and paid the dowries of girls so that they could marry and so avoid being sold into slavery. You might remember last year I put an icon on the tretrapod which showed him rescuing some sailors caught in a storm at sea, hence his title “Hope of Mariners,” which is just one title out of many. As early as the sixth century a church had been dedicated to him in Constantinople. So anxious were people to have relics of him that in 1087 merchants stole his body from Myra where he was bishop and brought it to the Italian city of Bari, where it remained until very recently; and where, we are told, he continued to work miracles. When Kaiser Otto II took a Greek woman as his empress, he brought not only her but also her devotion to St. Nicholas to Germany; which has the dubious distinction of having turned this popular saint into something called Santa Clause.
          Probably no other saint has been more portrayed both in western art and Eastern iconography; and many Eastern Catholic Churches, including our own Ruthenian Church, count St. Nicholas as their patron. We have more Churches dedicated to him than any other single saint; and every icon screen we have shows his image. And yet, in spite of all of this, there are only two facts we know about him for certain: that he was bishop of a town called Myra in Asia Minor, and that he died sometime around the middle of the fourth century.
          How these things happen is hard to say. Many of the legends connected with St. Nicholas probably have some basis in fact; but when a story is passed down over generations by word of mouth, it can’t help but be embellished and fancified. Lord only knows what St. Nicholas himself would think of some of the stories told of him over the centuries. But if every legend has some basis in fact, then there is some significance to the fact that most of those legends have to do with great acts of charity and help to others, as well as wise and prudent service as a bishop. Think, for a moment, of the Troparion of his feast with which we are so familiar: “The sincerity of your deeds has revealed you to your people as a teacher of moderation, a model of faith, and an example of virtue.” See, most of these other saints that we commemorate during Phillip’s Fast—Ambrose of Milan, John of Damascus, Clement of Rome, Gregory the Decapolite (you saw the names flash by in the bulletin on some particular week day)—they’re all remembered as great theologians and thinkers, great teachers and, in the case of St. Clement, a great pope. But St. Nicholas isn’t remembered for any of that. If he did preach great sermons like St. Ambrose, they were never written down; if he had been a great teacher and administrator like St. Clement, no one rememberd it; if he ever did write great volumes of theological works like St. John Damascene, no one knows what they were. What he’s remembered for—what all the legends about him, true or not, point to—is exactly what we sing about in the Troparion: “The sincerity of your deeds...”
          So, even if we were to play devil’s advocate and presume that all of the cute little stories about St. Nicholas are just bologna, any historian worth his salt would still have to agree that, if all those stories seem to paint a picture of the same kind of man, then, even if the stories themselves are not true, it must be because that was the kind of impression he left with those who remembered him, and who passed that on by word of mouth to others over a 1500 hundred year period.
          We’re all familiar with the cliché “actions speak louder than words.” Well, St. Nicholas is the living proof of that. When a man leaves absolutely no written record of himself behind, it’s almost a sure bet that a millennium and a half later he’s going to be forgotten. If he isn’t, it can only mean that the way he lived his life must really have made an impression! So many of the ancient Fathers of the Church we remember because they left behind great writings that survive and continue to nourish the Church today; if they hadn’t, they’d have been forgotten long ago. If St. Ambrose’s glorious sermons, which imspired St. Augustine to convert, had never been written down and preserved, we wouldn’t know his name today. If St. Clement had not written his famous Letter to the Corinthians about papal authority, who would have remembered him? If St. John Damascene hadn’t written so beautifully about the Mother of God and anticipated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, why would we have remembered him? And maybe this is the reason that St. Nicholas’ feast is a Holy Day while the other saints' feasts are not. There are a lot of saints who lived what they believed;—if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be saints—but there are very few, at least from that period, who are remembered for the example of their lives alone; and even fewer who’s lives continue to inspire devotion long after the actual events of their lives have been forgotten.
          But when you think about it, you don’t need to know the events of such a life; for all you have to do is open up the Gospel and read the life of Christ, and there you will find the life of every saint. For that is really what a saint is: someone who reproduces in his own life the life of Christ. Of couse, when you read the life of Christ you realize very quickly that this is exactly how Jesus is asking all of us to live. And as we prepare, during this Phillip’s fast, to celebrate the birth of our Savior, if we have not yet thought much about what we will say in confession, we might want to take that Troparion of St. Nicholas, and see how much of it could be said about us: do the sincerity of our deeds reveal us to others as teachers of moderation, models of faith and examples of virtue? And, if not, how can we change to make it so?

by Father Michael Venditti

6:33 PM 11/30/2009 — In his homily for Thanksgiving Day (which was actually preached the Sunday prior), Father Venditti, commenting on the role of religion in American life at the time of Abraham Lincoln, made the following remark: "Religion was a part of everything, including government—our constitutional right to worship as we please had not yet been twisted into the expulsion of God from the public square." This got me thinking, and I remembered something that I had heard some time ago.
          Your PP is an avid fan of old time radio (affectionately referred to by other fans as "OTR"), and has an impressive collection of old radio broadcasts in digital form—and when I say "impressive," I mean probably a little less than 5000 episodes of various radio broadcasts taking up a whole drive of my computer. That's small compared to the collections of some fellow fans I've corresponded with; though I excuse myself on the basis that I tend to restrict my collecting to detective and crime dramas. It was while listening to one of these that I came across something very curious.
          Long before he became a fixture of "B" horror movies, the velvety-voiced Vincent Price was a sought-after leading man on radio. His most prominent role was that of Simon Templar, a.k.a. "The Saint", on the weekly radio drama of the same name, which aired from 1947 through 1950 on NBC. It was while listening to an adventure of the Saint that I heard the following:

Click here to listen.

If you have 28 minutes to spare, why not listen to the entire episode?

Click here to listen to Vicent Price as the Saint in "Santa Claus Is No Saint," broadcast on Dec. 24th, 1950.

If you have another 28 minutes to spare, here's a BBC broadcast about the history of the colorful character known as the Saint, and about his even more colorful creator, Leslie Charteris, which was produced to help promote the first British series of Saint radio dramas, which aired on the BBC in 1995:

Click here to listen to "The History of the Saint."

by Priestly Pugilist

9:53 AM 11/28/2009 — The Gospel lesson of today’s Liturgy shows our Lord doing what he does on several occasions: he performs a cure. But in the context of this cure, because of the criticism of the Rabbi, he has the occasion to use this cure as a means to teach something, in this case, a lesson about true religion and self-serving religious practice. In fact, it is very interesting to note that in very few of our Lord’s miracles is he content to do a good deed then walk away. Always with Jesus there is some lesson to be taught, more often then not, a lesson about the true faith or the doctrine of suffering.
          The criticism that our Lord encounters in today’s Gospel, when he heals the crippled woman on the Sabbath, makes this point very well; and it’s important that we do not misinterpret our Lord’s intent here. It was not his intention to say that it is not important to keep the Sabbath; nor does he lash out at the rabbis at the synagogue because they keep the Sabbath. He takes a stand against them because their keeping of the Sabbath is not consistent: it’s hypocritical. They criticize our Lord for curing someone on the Sabbath; but they, themselves, do all kinds of things on the Sabbath, as our Lord points out, and so they contradict themselves. His point is not that it’s wrong to follow the rules; his point is that it’s wrong to condemn others for not following the rules when we don’t follow them ourselves.
          For the record, during the three years of his life that are recorded in the Gospel, Jesus did everything that was expected of a devout Jew. He prayed in the synagogue regularly; he kept all the holy days and feasts of the Jewish year; he and his disciples never failed to observe the Sabbath or the annual Passover; he went to the Temple in Jerusalem on the appointed days, and even castigated the woman he met at the well in Samaria for not praying in the Temple. In those few instances in which our Lord seems to be breaking the rules—such as today when he heals a woman on the Sabbath—he is in fact doing what the tradition of the Talmudic rabbis always said, which is to interpret the laws of Moses with the big picture in mind. The devout Jew follows the law of Moses because that’s how he remains faithful to the covenant, not simply to follow the rules because they are important in themselves. This was a point that the rabbis at the synagogue had forgotten; and, in pointing it out to them, our Lord is showing that his fidelity to the law is more perfect than theirs.
          We do the same thing all the time. We come to church, we sit there for an hour or so; but do we pray? Some of us do, certainly; but I think it’s safe to say that a lot us don’t. I’ve known priests who could celebrate divine services in church week after week without praying. Then what happens after church is over? We’ve all known people who could sit in church for an hour, even receive Holy Communion, but aren’t out the door fifty feet before they’re screaming at their spouse or their kids or complaining about someone or something they don’t like—we’ve all done this sort of thing from time to time; but when it’s a habit, then we have to start asking ourselves, “What’s the point?”
          As I’ve said before, the measure of the quality of what we do here in church is determined by what we do when we’re not here. How well we worship is reflected by how well we live. The rabbis missed that point. For them, keeping the rules became an end unto itself. They were not wrong because they were keeping all the rules. They were wrong because they had forgotten why? Let’s try not to make the same mistake ourselves.

by Father Michael Venditti

10:25 AM 11/27/2009 — Well, it seems the Bishop of ______¹ has faced his first crisis as a bishop, and reacted swiftly. The following is the official press release concerning the incident from his diocese's web site, dated ______ (the punctuation errors are theirs):

A priest of the Diocese of ______ has been removed from his assignments in ______ after the priest acknowledged an inappropriate relationship with an 18 year-old woman.
     The Bishop of ______ announced this to the parish at the 4 PM Saturday Mass.
     Father ______ ______, 40, has been pastor of ______ Church, ______ since 200_ and Chaplain of ______ High School, ______ since 200_.
     In keeping with Diocesan policy, Diocesan officials reported the matter to the appropriate authorities and are cooperating with those authorities. Father ______ will be going to a treatment facility outside the Diocese. He is not permitted to function publicly as a priest.
     Father ______ was ordained in ______. He served at St. ______ Church ______; St. ______ Church, ______; and St. ______ Church, ______ before his appointment as pastor at St. ______.

Now, before I comment, let me state unequivocally that your PP does not endorse the notion that priests should be having affairs with women (or anyone else, for that matter); it's a clear violation of a priest's promise of celibacy, not to mention a sin agaist chastity; and it is certainly appropriate that, in such a case, the priest's bishop would relieve him of his priestly duties and give him time to reflect on his vocation.
          That being said, may I be so bold as to ask two questions:

1. Precisely what warrants a notification to "the appropriate authorities"? The woman in question is not a minor; and, last time I checked, sex between consenting adults was not a crime in the eyes of civil authority. It's certainly a "crime" in the eyes of Our Lord when taking place between two people who are not married to each other; even more so when one of them is a priest. We have a word for that: it's called a sin. If it's the sin that the Bishop is worried about, then the "appropriate authority" would be the priest's own confessor; but that wouldn't be something you would announce in a press release since it's part of the internal forum.
        There is, of course, the possibility that the affair began while the girl was still a minor, in which case "appropriate authorities" might be interested; but there's no mention of that concern in the press release. Indeed, had the press release included the simple phrase, "...which may have begun while the woman was still a minor...," this whole post would have been avoided. Note that the press release refers to her as "an 18 year old woman." If someone was worried that the affair began when she was 15 or 14, the phrase probably would have read "an 18 year old girl." By the way, the age of consent in ______, if I'm not mistaken, is 16.

2. What is the particular illness for which Father ______ was sent to a "treatment facility?" For what, exactly, is he being treated (other than just being randy; and is there a treatment for that other than prayer and penance)? After all, he didn't have sex with a child, or a man, or a farm animal. He had sex with a women who had reached the age of majority;—albeit a lot younger than he is—but, if he were not a priest and had an affair with an adult woman half his age, you might talk about it behind their backs and say, "Tisk, tisk. How stupid is that?" but you wouldn't have them committed. [Insert here the second paragraph in #1 above, just so there's no misunderstanding.]

          It has always been assumed that what we call the "sex abuse crisis" was a crisis precisely because it involved children. That the "crisis mentality" it caused resulted in bishops being much more vigilant than they had been in the past is a good thing. Even if you realize that their new vigilance is motivated more out of concern for themselves and the bank accounts of their dioceses than for children, it's still a good thing. It's what Fr. Benedict Groeschel calls "sublimation," i.e., doing the right thing for an ulterior motive: Even if your intention is not pure, you're still doing the right thing; and that's better than doing the wrong thing.
          Your PP's concern is that this knee-jerk reaction to anything involving sex in the life of a priest may be doing violence to the whole concept of sin, penance and reconciliation as understood by the Catholic Church since the time of Christ. For example, at Pre-Cana programs we drill into the heads of engaged couples that marriage is a vocation which requires just as much a commitment as the vocation to the Holy Priesthood. We now talk about the dignity of the marriage covenant in much the same terms in which we've always talked about the dignity of the priesthood—good post-conciliar sacramental theology, we tell ourselves. Yet, when a man cheats on his wife with a prostitute at the sales convention in Atlantic City, then comes to church on Saturday afternoon to confess his sin, we don't demand he move out of the house and take away his marital rights, sending him for counseling and notifying the authorities. It's a sin; and you deal with a sexual sin the same way you deal with all sin: you look for true contrition, solicit a purpose of amendment, impose a penance and then absolve. Should it be any different for a priest? Do we suspend priests when they cheat on their taxes, steal pencils from the rectory office, drink too much, drive recklessly, swear and curse, talk about their relatives behind their backs? Don't misunderstand; I'm not suggesting that these things are just as serious as adultery; but I've lived with drunken priests, cheating priests, profane priests, gossipy priests, even violent priests. None of them were ever suspended. What is it about sins against the Sixth Commandment—we're talking about two adults here, not an adult and a minor—that causes us to treat them with so much more loathing, other than the paranoia that they could somehow embarrass the Church or cost the diocese money if made public?
          Bishop ______ was right to suspend Father ______'s faculties and remove him from his assignment. How long that suspension should be is a matter between Father ______ and his confessor (which, according to Canon Law, Bishop ______ cannot be). St. Peter says that "Any man who says he is not a sinner is a lair." Father ______ succumbed to temptation and committed a sin, as all men do from time to time. That his sin involved having sex with a woman makes him a bad priest; it doesn't make him a criminal nor call his sanity into question.
          Let me be perfectly clear: I am not suggesting that a sexual sin committed by a priest is not serious, because it is. I am not suggesting that it is not more serious because the sinner is a priest and not a lay person, because it is. The priest is held to a higher standard because he aspires to one and, in free will, accepted one; not to mention the grace of the Sacrament of Holy Orders which should sustain him in aspiring to one, particularly in times of temptation. Nevertheless, every priest is a sinner; otherwise Canon Law would not require and encourage priests to confess their sins frequently; but the fact that priests are rightly held to a higher moral standard does not mean that, everytime a priest goes to confession, a transcript should be published in the diocesan paper. Thus, I choose to see the fact the this particular incident is a matter of public scrutiny to be a byproduct of the sex abuse crisis, of which this particular incident is not a part by any stretch of the imagination.
          Oh, and let's once again insert the paragraph from #1: Indeed, had the press release included the simple phrase, "...which may have begun while the woman was still a minor...," this whole post would have been avoided. Or am I just being naive?

by Priestly Pugilist

10:04 PM 11/28/2009 - This post generated a lot of reaction—as I knew it would—from different quarters. Priests who know the super-secret e-mail address (which most of you will never know) are overwhelmingly in agreement with the sentiments expressed. That was to be expected.
          The reaction of lay people runs the gamut. Most are angry at the post, but it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re angry about. Some seem to be angry at the priest who fell from grace, and angry at me because they perceived the post to be a defense of him, which I don’t believe it was. As one respondent put it, “...he spat on the Heart and Face of Jesus and the Church”; but the rest of his rambling message seems to indicate that he either did not read the post carefully, or—if he did—he didn’t understand much of what he read. Another respondent reacted by speculating that your PP is, in fact, a Protestant impostor, bent on undermining the Latin Church’s discipline of celibacy. Another simply accused me of being anti-Catholic. That's the first time that's happened. An anti-clerical cleric I may be, but an anti-Catholic I am not.
          One response, however, requires an answer. It takes issue with my criticism of the notification to the authorities of the incident by the Bishop of ______, and the immediate shuffling off of the priest in question to a “treatment facility.” It suggests that this indicates that there is more to the story than meets the eye, and that there are things we don’t know. I would have thought that obvious; but the respondent clearly was under the impression that I was oblivious of this assumption. Obviously there are elements of this story we don’t know; but that’s actually the point, isn’t it? I shall try to explain as best I can.
          Back in June of this year, I was privledged to attend the annual meeting of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management. I am not a member of the Roundtalble group—most of them are bishops, vicars general, CEO’s of corporations that assist or do business with the Church, and staff members of the USCCB—but was asked to attend because the theme for this year was effective church communication (and I am somewhat versed on Internet type stuff). With so many bishops around, I was sure I would break out in hives; but ended up seated next to a very personable and friendly young bishop of a Southwestern diocese (who struck me as being much too normal to be the bishop of his own diocese). Speakers at the event included former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was a high-powered meeting of high-powered people (except for your PP), delving into high-powered topics. Naturally, the bishops’ response to the “sex abuse crisis” came up. The quote I remember most vividly from one of the high-powered corporate participants—I love rich and important lay people who are not afraid to lecture bishops—was, “The day of spin is over!”
          Truer words are rarely spoken, and almost never spoken in the presence of bishops. The thrust of the presentation, much to the chagrin of some of the participants, was that it is not only futile for a diocese to think that it can control the flow of information about an incident, but actually unwise to do so even if some pencil-neck in your chancery thinks it’s possible. The advice given to the bishops was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as soon as possible, in front of any camera or microphone you can find, and let the chips fall where they may. The notion that a diocese can somehow manage the information which is released about something is foolish, and leads to more problems than it seeks to avoid. “Crisis management” is no longer a viable theory. There is no room anymore for the notion that a diocese can mitigate the fallout of an unpleasant event by somehow controlling the flow of information, or stylizing the manner, language or speed with which it is released to the public.
          Let’s look at the ______ Diocese’s statement about Father ______ as an example. The press release referenced above gives us four basic facts: (1) that Father admitted to a sexual relationship "with an 18 year old womean," (2) that his faculties were suspended as a result, (3) that he has been sent outside the boundaries of the diocese for treatment of an unspecified nature, and (4) something about this incident—we know not what—was communicated to law enforcement. To my respondent I would say that it doesn’t take a genius to know that this isn’t everything. Duh.... And that is the problem with it. It is the quintessential example of a bad press release: i.e., the information it provides is overwhelmed and overshadowed by the sheer plethora of questions it leaves behind, questions that any person reading the statement would naturally ask: when did this affair start? how old was she when it started? did Father just pop out of the blue and publicly confess the whole thing unsolicited, or was he caught in the middle of something, and by whom? since having sex is usually not an “illness” for which there is a medical treatment, is he being treated for something else, like drug addiction or alcoholism or whatever? and, what is being implied in the phrase “an 18 year old woman”? Regarding that last question, it is clearly sexist;—I admit that—nevertheless, most normal people would find it awkward sounding, much more so than the more familiar sounding “an 18 year old girl”; it gives the impression that someone is trying to artificially pretend that the woman’s youth is not a factor here...which blatantly telegraphs the fact that—in someone’s mind—it clearly is an issue.
          Now, let me put myself in Bishop ______’s shoes and play Devil’s Advocate. I would then say that the information released is all the information that can legally and morally be revealed. Whatever is left unsaid cannot be disclosed because it would...oh, take your pick: violate someone’s privacy, disobey an instruction by some civil authority, be contrary to the advice of legal counsel, etc. I would respond to that by saying that if the only information you can release raises more questions than it answers, then it would have been better to say nothing. To be sure, saying nothing always raises questions, but still leaves no roots upon which rumors can be grafted. Whatever rumor or speculation then result from your silence have to be pure inventions on the part of those speculating, since you have said nothing. If, on the other hand, you fear even those kinds of rumors or speculations, then by all means say something; but then say everything so as to leave no room for questions. In other words, if you can’t say everything, then say nothing; if you can’t say nothing, then say everything; but don’t make the mistake of trying to say something based on some misguided notion that you must give an appearance of full disclosure, while clinging to the fantasy that your appearance of full disclosure need not fully disclose.
          No matter how you look at it, a bishop faced with this kind of situation is going to have to take some heat. If he dumps everything out there, he’s going to take heat, perhaps even of a legal or civil kind; if he keeps silent about it, he’s going to take heat from those who will accuse him of hiding something; but there is no way not to take the heat. In these difficult times, a man who is unwilling to take either one kind of heat or the other is a man who should think twice before accepting an anappointment as a bishop. A man who does accept such an appointment better "man-up" quick, and resign himself to being crucified. After all, he does stand in the place of Christ, does he not?
          The day of spin is over!

by Priestly Pugilist

---

¹ This post originally included the names and places found on the website of the diocese in question. I removed them because the points are made equally as well without them. This was done at my own initiative, and was not requested by anyone. Since the point of the post is that an injustice was done by making public something that belongs to the internal forum because of a paranoia steming from the "sex abuse crisis" to which this incident is not related, it would have compounded the problem to include identifying information, and participate in the violation of justice that the press release represents. —PP

9:47 AM 11/23/2009 — This Gospel lesson is one we’ve read many times. The foolish rich man has failed to realize that all the stuff he’s hoarding isn’t going to do him any good on the day of judgment. It’s an important message; but we’ve heard it before. So I thought it would be more helpful to focus on Thanksgiving instead, even though it isn’t a church feast;—it’s a purely civil observance—but it’s an observance that has deep religious overtones which in seems our society has forgotten.
          We typically associate Thanksgiving Day with stories about the pilgrims and some mythical meal they had with the Indians who welcomed them to the new world before we decided to heard them into reservations where they could open casinos and sell tax free cigarettes. But in reality the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated during the Civil War. President Lincoln signed the proclamation creating a National Day of Thanksgiving—I put a paragraph from it in your bulletin—during a time that was very bleak indeed. The war was not going well for the United States. Grant’s army had stalled to a stalemate outside of Petersburg, Sherman’s siege of Vicksburg hadn’t been successful, the Confederacy was embargoing all their cotton in an effort to pressure France and England to enter the war on their side; even the Republican Party had convinced itself that Lincoln couldn't be re-elected and that they needed to choose someone another candidate; and there was a real sense around the country that the unthinkable would happen and that the Union was actually going to lose the war. And it was during this period that Lincoln signed a proclamation that the last Thursday of November be observed as a National Day of Thanksgiving to God. Thanksgiving for what? The country was a little over 80 years old,—there were a few people still around who were living when the Declaration of Independence was signed—and it was already falling apart. The world’s great experiment in democracy was a failure as far as anyone could see; and all the people who had said in 1790 that it would fail because you can’t hold a country together without some kind of king, were about to be proven right.
          What Lincoln understood, I think, is something that we often miss in life: that it isn’t what we have or succeed at that defines us, but how well we keep faith in spite of our troubles that shows the measure of our character. We are, after all, talking about a deeply religious time in our country’s history. Religion was a part of everything, including government—our constitutional right to worship as we please had not yet been twisted into the expulsion of God from the public square. Unfortunately, that’s not true anymore, and may be the reason we seem so obsessed with what’s wrong with everything instead of what’s right. And as true as this may be in society in general, it’s even more true in our own private lives. There’s always something to get depressed about if what you want is to be depressed. It’s sounds silly to suggest; but don’t we all know people who seem to like being depressed? We all know people who are constantly reminding themselves—and everyone else around them—of everything in life that causes them pain. What is really at issue here is what the saints often refer to as Spiritual Maturity. A spiritually immature person is someone who acts like a child before God; not in the sense that our Lord talks about when he says to be childlike, but childish, if you can grasp the difference. A child is always focused on what he wants, and always screaming for what he doesn’t have that he thinks everyone else has, and always thinking that no one’s ever been deprived as he has been. And he hasn’t lived long enough to reflect on how life has treated him in the long run. We can understand and forgive it in children because children are supposed to be immature;—that’s what makes them children—but in an adult it is disproportionate. One psychologist, speaking in purely secular terms, said once that the primary function of maturity was the ability to take whatever life dishes out and keep on functioning. For us, who are—or at least trying to be—a religious people, we can translate that into spiritual terms by saying that the spiritually mature person is one who can receive the crosses given to him in life, not necessarily without hardship, not without difficulty or suffering, not even without complaining sometimes, but without any effect on the strength of his faith. It is said that the first sign of maturity in a child is when he first realizes that mom and dad do know better, not because he’s suddenly developed the wisdom of an adult, but because he understands that they are more experienced than he, and therefore understand things that he can’t yet. And that same thing is true in our relationship with God: we can say we are spiritually mature when we can realize that God’s ways are not our ways, and that it isn’t necessary to understand why this or that has happened, except to understand that God has a handle on it even if we don’t. It takes a lot of humility to reach that point in life; but humility is also a function of maturity.
          At the end of the Civil War, reflecting upon everything that had happened to the country during the previous four years, Lincoln said that God had had his own purposes in spite of the various issues that sparked and fueled the war as far as we were concerned, and that we may never truly understand in this life all that was happening; but that alone was cause enough to give thanks, that even when you can’t see the hand of God clearly, just to know by faith that it’s there is enough.

          I hope this Thanksgiving will be one of true thanksgiving to God for all of us; and, that if you’re not yet ready to give thanks for this or that, that you can at least give thanks for Him, for Christ who died for us, for the Church that nurtures us, for the faith that sustains us.

by Father Michael Venditti

10:15 AM 11/18/2009 —

[The following homily was preached at Ss. Peter & Paul Church only, as the Divine Liturgy at St. Michael was a baptismal liturgy at which a different Gospel was read. Last year, this Sunday began a six week series on confession; though elements of this homily can be found in last year's as well. —Fr V]

6:20 PM 11/10/2009 —

by Priestly Pugilist

5:11 PM 11/8/2009 — [St. Michael Church] We are particularly blessed today that the feast of our patron saint, the Glorious Archangel Michael, falls on a Sunday this year. So, I could preach today about the angels, or about the Gospel passage we just heard, which is familiar enough; but, as I was making my crab soup for today’s (tomorrow’s) luncheon—which I hope all of you will attend—I found myself reflecting upon our parish, which caused me to think back two years ago to our Centennial Celebration. And while the soup was in the pressure cooker bubbling away, I pulled out the remarks that I made at the banquet on that occasion, and dusted off my copy of our Centennial Book, which many of you received that day as well; and once again marveled at all the changes that had taken place here in the last 100 years. And I looked at the list of pastors in the front of the book, and realized that I’ve been pastor here for seven years. It’s the longest assignment I’ve had in 22 years of priesthood. So, naturally, my thoughts drifted to when I first arrived here, and all the changes that have taken place even in that relatively short time—short compared to one hundred years; not so short when I’m providing marriage instruction for people whom I regarded as little kids when I first came here.
          Every parish changes over the course of 102 years; and I think it’s a supreme arrogance on our part to think that most of those changes occurred in our own time. We think that because those are the changes which effected us; and, when we allow ourselves to think that way, we often find ourselves looking back on what we remember as the “good ol’ days,” and the present as something less. Most of that has to do with the times in which we live. For many Catholics today—if not for most—their parish is a convenience: a place where one’s obligations are fulfilled; something to be “fitted in” when possible amid a plethora of other duties and obligations; and usually the first to be sacrificed when there isn’t enough time for everything. How many times have we heard—or even said ourselves—all those things you hear said in every old parish: “We used to do this. We used to do that? We used to have to put chairs in the isles at Christmas. We used to have bake sales that made millions!” It’s too easy to look back on the history of a parish and say things like that. There’s a difference between remembering the past and trying to foolishly live in it; and those who do try to live in it are always going to be pessimistic about the present because the present is never the same as the past. Twenty years ago 90% of St. Michael’s parishioners lived within five or ten minutes of their church, many of them within walking distance. Today, we have one parishioner—other than me—who lives in this neighborhood; and, yet, here you are. Twenty years ago we didn’t have the majority of our parishioners commuting 20 or 30 miles or more to be here on Sunday; we didn’t have both parents working to keep the family afloat; our children didn’t have to be chauffeured to soccer on Monday, swimming on Wednesday and cheer leading on Friday. Times have changed. What’s more, there’s nothing wrong with that. It only becomes “wrong” when we succumb to the temptation of living in the past, then passing judgment on the present because of it.
          Take down your Centennial Book, dust it off and read it again. If you don’t have a Centennial Book, I brought a box of them over to the center; so, when you go over for our luncheon, you can buy one for a special, one-day-only discounted price. When you do read it, I would ask you to read it reflectively, in the hope that you will be struck by something that struck me. The people who founded this parish would not recognize it today, anymore than we would recognize their vision were we to go back in time and be a fly on the wall at that meeting in the home of Michael and Anna Hvizda on April 13, 1907. And yet, as you read through it, and are made dizzy by the changes that took place over the course of one hundred years, I hope that you will see what I saw: the one constant that never did change from that day until this: the unshakable faith of the people of this parish in our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
          So, today as we celebrate our patronal feast and our existence as a parish family, it’s important that we always remember the reason for the existence of any parish community: not culture or background or national origin, not activities or organizations, but Our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ! He is the only reason our parish was founded, and the only reason that should now draw us here again and again to worship. May the honorable and glorious Archangel Michael continue to bless our parish with many good things. May Christ continue to be the center of our parish’s life, and may we continue to worship him together at St. Michael’s Church for many years to come.

11:51 AM 11/5/2009 — In reading the following alert message from the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, please keep in mind President Obama's promise to veto any Health Care legislation which provides for the coverage of abortions. This message is dated today.

Health care reform should not be used as an opportunity to use federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Health reform should be an opportunity to protect human life—not end it.
     Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care does just that. On line 17, p. 110, section 222 under “Abortions for which Public Funding is Allowed” the Health and Human Services Secretary is given the authority to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. The Speaker’s plan also requires that at least one insurance plan offered in the Exchange covers abortions.
     What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run plan. It’s right there on line 16, page 96, section 213, under “Insurance Rating Rules.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account - and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.
     Section 213 describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run plan. The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month.
     A majority of Americans believe that health care plans should not be mandated to provide elective abortion coverage, and a majority of Americans do not believe government health care plans should include abortion coverage. Currently, federal appropriations bills include language known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, while another provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan.
     Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page health care monstrosity is an affront to the American people and drastically moves away from current policy. The American people deserve more from their government than being forced to pay for abortion.
     House Republicans are offering a common-sense, responsible solution that would reduce health care costs and expand access while protecting the dignity of all human life. The Republican plan, available at HealthCare.GOP.gov, would codify the Hyde Amendment and prohibit all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion. And under the Republican plan, any health plan that includes abortion coverage may not receive federal funds.

by John Beohner, Minority Leader, United States House of Representatives
Republican Leader's Blog

If Mr. Obama signs this bill into law, after having made the clear promise not to fund abortions with our money, then let our chant be, "OBAMA LIED, CHILDREND DIED!"

by Priestly Pugilist

11:08 AM 11/4/2009 —

[One of the dirty little secrets about abortion in the United States is that it's big business; and the truth that abortion proponents don't want you to know is that most of the people who provide abortions—doctors, health services organizations, hospitals—get into the business for the money, not social concern or "women's rights." Abortion is a billion $ a year enterprise which, in the right neighborhood and with the right demographics, can make you a lot of money—certainly a lot more than other social efforts that actually help people rather than kill them. This recent story is a good illustration.
     What does it tell you when Planned Parenthood—an almost comical misnomer since the last thing Planned Parenthood is planning on is parenthood—needs a retraining order to prevent its former director from telling what she knows because what she knows would do "irreparable harm" to the organization? Can you say, "Follow the money"? We've practically destroyed big tobacco, demonized big pharma, and convinced everyone to hate big oil, all because of social or environmental reasons. Why does "big abortion" get a pass? —PP]

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson's life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure. "I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Jonhson.
          She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years. According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion. "It seemed like maybe that's not what a lot of people were believing any more because that's not where the money was. The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.
          Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about. "I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."
          Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition's executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.
          On Friday both Johnson and the Coalition For Life were issued temporary restraining orders filed by Planned Parenthood. Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson issued the following statement: "We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff, however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary."
          The temporary restraining order contends that Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information, but does not bar Johnson or Coalition For Life volunteers from the premises. As of Sunday evening, neither Johnson nor Carney had seen the complaint filed against them that prompted the restraining order. A hearing about the order has been set for November 10.

by Ashlea Sigman of KBTX, College Station, Texas.

12:41 PM 11/1/2009 — In my homilies to you over the years, I’ve often spoke of our Catholic Faith, and sometimes of our Byzantine Tradition; but I have rarely spoken of the particular Church to which we belong, and of it’s history in Eastern Europe. Our Metropolitan Church is located entirely in the United States; and, the further you travel outside of Pennsylvania, the less you see of any ethnic identity among the members of our parishes; but, as you know, the ancestors of our Church’s original members came from an Orthodox Church which came into union with Rome in 1646 at the Union of Uzhorod, which today is the seat of it’s own Metropolitan Church. I mention this because today is the feast day of one of the first men ever beatified from this shared tradition of Ruthenian Catholicism; and I thought it would not be inappropriate to share with you his story.
          In the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, just before the Creed is sung, the priest blesses himself three times and silently says, “I will love you, O Lord, my strength the Lord is my rock and my refuge.” These words, taken from Psalm 18, were the ones chosen by Bishop Theodore G. Romzha as the motto for his episcopal ministry. At the age of 33, he faced the one of the most brutal and bloody persecutions of a Christian community in modern times.
          Theodore Romzha was born of humble parentage on April 14, 1911, in the heart of the colorful district of Maramorosh in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, a small country in between Slovakia and Ukraine which was created at the Treaty of Versailles. He was a pious and gifted young boy, and his only ambition was to become a priest. He received his secondary education in the city of Chust; and, due to his friendly disposition and scholastic achievements, he became one of the most popular students. His popularity increased even more when he proved himself as an all-around athlete, excelling in soccer. At his graduation, he took everybody by surprise when he announced his intention of becoming a priest; and he was sent to Rome for his priestly formation.
          He lived at the German-Hungarian College in Rome for the first two years of his studies; then, in 1932, he moved to the Russian Pontifical Seminary, known as the "Russicum," in order to prepare himself for missionary work in the Soviet Union. It was indeed a providential step; since at the "Russicum" he was expected to study communist atheism and its ideology; unwittingly preparing himself for the Soviet occupation of his native land. He was ordained to the priesthood in Rome on Christmas Day, 1936.
          In the summer of the following year he came home to celebrate his first Divine Liturgy in his own country with the intention of returning to finish his doctoral dissertation. But, in those days, the priesthood was not an exemption from military conscription; and, instead of returning to Rome, he was drafted into the army and sent to protect his country against the German invasion. To a friend in Rome he wrote: "I am going to the front with a deep conviction of doing the will of God. Therefore, I do not fear what will happen to me." After Father Romzha's discharge from the army in August, 1938, the danger of another approaching war remained. For this reason the bishop of Mukachevo, Alexander Stojka, did not permit him to leave the country, but appointed him to a forgotten parish in the countryside, where the young Father Romzha became a poor pastor among poor people. There were times when he could afford only one meal a day while donating from his own purse to help his needy parishioners. To a curious friend in Rome he wrote: "I live here as a pauper and yet I feel happy and satisfied." Father Romzha was a good and dedicated priest, teaching his parishioners to know and live their Faith by his own example.
          In March, 1939, the Hungarians occupied Subcarpathian Ruthenia by force, precipitating both political and ecclesiastical changes. Bishop Stojka was forced by the Hungarian government to reorganize the seminary; and in the fall of 1939, Father Romzha was appointed Spiritual Director and Professor of Philosophy at the Eparchial Seminary in Uzhorod. One of his students later recalled: "He was strict and demanding as a Professor, but as a Spiritual Director he was fatherly and kind. He knew how to inspire us and to bring out the best in us. Staying in close contact with us, his students, he was able to transplant into our hearts the main features of his strong priestly character: his dedication, genuine piety and generosity of heart."
          Even at the seminary, Father Romzha found time for pastoral work by assisting in neighboring parishes, and conducting missions and retreats for young students. Every penny he earned he generously distributed to the poor. To the mentioned friend in Rome he wrote: "I am living very unpretentiously, and yet my pockets are always empty. But I am not discouraged, since I am working not for the money but to please God." Bishop Stojka greatly appreciated the dedicated work of Father Romzha, and in 1942 elevated him to the rank of Archpriest. Even so, he remained a humble and dedicated priest, inspiring and winning the admiration and respect of all those who met him.
          On May 31, 1943, Bishop Stojka died. In view of the uncertainties of the time, the Holy See appointed Archpriest Romzha the Apostolic Administrator of Mukachevo; and his episcopal consecration took place in Uzhorod on September 24, 1944, just as Soviet tanks were rolling into the city. A month later, the entire territory of the Mukachevo Eparchy was occupied by the Red Army. Bishop Romzha was informed that Subcarpathian Ruthenia would be incorporated into postwar Czechoslovakia as an autonomous province; however, it soon became evident that the Soviets would not relinquish this politically strategic region. Consequently, on June 29, 1945, Subcarpathian Ruthenia was officially incorporated into Soviet Ukraine; and the young and inexperienced Bishop Romzha found himself and his flock under Soviet rule.
          At first, Bishop Romzha tried not to antagonize the Soviet authorities, in spite of abusive and violent actions committed by the Soviet soldiers against the clergy; but when the Soviet authorities started to expel priests from their parishes at random and confiscate church property, he was forced to protest. The Soviets had a ready answer: to ensure the continuance of his ministry and the safety of his clergy, Bishop Romzha must renounce all allegiance to the Pope, place himself under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow, and encourage his flock to do the same. Bishop Romzha immediately replied: "I would rather die than betray my Church!" Thus began the open persecution of the Byzantine Catholic Church in Subcarpathia. In the fall of 1945, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow appointed Bishop Nestor Sydoruk to head the Orthodox Eparchy of Mukachevo. Sydoruk was announced by the Soviet press to be the only legally appointed bishop in Ruthenia, and received full support from the Soviet authorities. Intimidation and imprisonment of Byzantine Catholic priests followed; and the official liquidation the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo was underway.
          Rather than flee, Bishop Romzha decided to fight. Although the Soviet authorities confiscated his car, he traveled long distances by horse and buggy, just to reassure his faithful and to encourage them to persevere until death, saying, "They are taking from us our own priests and churches, but they will never be able to take away our faith from us." During these extensive and dangerous visitations, Bishop Romzha tried to sustain the faith of the weak, to reassure the wavering, and to plead with those intimidated: "Faith is our greatest treasure on this earth,” he said. “To preserve our faith we must even be ready to lay down our life. If we must die, then let us die as true martyrs, defending our faith. One thing is sure: that we never will abandon our faith nor betray our Church." The faithful, supported by dedicated clergy, responded enthusiastically, and stood united behind their fearless shepherd. Even some Orthodox parishes, seeing the violence and injustice perpetrated by the Soviets, asked Bishop Romzha to accept them back into the Catholic fold.
          During these days of violence and open persecution Bishop Romzha offered his prayers and sufferings for the perseverance of his clergy and the faithful he risked so much to serve. He was sustained by his unshakable confidence in God's Providence; and down deep in his courageous heart he vividly felt the protection of the Theotokos, the Mother of God. There was no power that could shake his loyalty to the Holy See; in his mind there was only "one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church," established by our Lord on the rock of Peter, and governed by His Vicar on earth. For this truth Bishop Romzha was ready to sacrifice his own life.
          Unable to intimidate Bishop Romzha, the Soviets decided to assassinate him, and staged a highway accident. The horse drawn carriage in which the Bishop was returning home from the rededication of the parish church of Lavki, near Mukachevo, was rammed by a military truck. Soldiers dressed in civilian clothing then emerged and beat him; but, when another truck came by, they fled. Bishop Romzha was badly injured, but survived; and the driver of the second truck took him to the hospital in Mukachevo where, after a few days, he began to regain his strength. Then suddenly, early on the morning of November 1, 1947, he was found dead. The night before Bishop Romzha's death, the director of the hospital and a strange nurse, who had disappeared the next day, were seen entering the Bishop's room about midnight. The Soviet authorities announced that Bishop Romzha died from "injuries sustained in a traffic accident"; but a later investigation showed that he had, in fact, been poisoned.
          Bishop Romzha was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 27, 2001.¹ His relics are enshrined in the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Uzhorod.

by Father Michael Venditti

---

¹ At the time of Bishop Romzha's beatification, there was some controversy regarding whether he would be recognized as a martyr for the faith, since death by poison does not involve the shedding of blood. In reality, the controversy—behind closed doors—was whether his beatification would damage relations with the Orthodox. In the end, Bishop Romzha was designated a martyr; but it is disturbing to note that the very brief biography of Blessed Theodore Romzha which appeared at the time on the Holy See's web site emphasized his pastoral zeal, nearly glossed over his martyrdom, and made no mention at all of the persecution of his Eparchy at the hands of the Orthodox. This same pattern of denial can also be seen in the treatment of the Ukrainian Catholic saint and bishop, St. Josaphat, whose martyrdom is often attributed to political zealots, even though the evidence clearly shows that he was murdered by Orthodox zealots determined to stop his efforts to bring Orthodox Christians into union with Rome in an Eastern Catholic Church. Even in modern treatments of a Catholic saint as seminal as St. Thomas More, there seems a new reluctance to recognize anyone who gave his life specifically for the Papal Primacy. Consider Romzha's words: "...we never will abandon our faith nor betray our Church." Clearly, for him, as for Josaphat and More, the juridical and theological primacy of the Bishop of Rome was part of the deposit of faith. Hence, the derogatory practice of the Orthodox Churches to refer to anyone in union with Rome, even those who do not worship according to the Roman Rite, as "Roman Catholics." —PP

12:35 PM 10/26/2009 — The Gospel Book from which I read uses what is probably the most common translation of the Scriptures in use among Catholics in our country, called the New American Bible. In the Latin Church, it is the only translation allowed in public worship. As you know, there are a plethora of translations of the Bible into English; some are better than others. The New American Bible makes an attempt to translate the Scriptures into common American English, which is fine; but every once in a while you come across a subtlety in the original Greek or Hebrew which is lost in the attempt. Case in point: the opening verse of this passage we just heard, the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. What we heard was that the a rich man had a certain beggar laying at his gate. What it actually says, in fact, is “a certain beggar...was laid at his gate,” which implies that the beggar didn’t just show up one day; somebody put him there deliberately; and there was nothing the rich man could do about it; which, when you think about it, is crucial to understanding the meaning of the passage.
          The rich man, like most rich people, has 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 beggar, 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 literally step over him as whenever he walks into his house—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 remorseful for how he’s lived and for ignoring the beggar 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 judgment 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 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 theologian 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, lacking in compassion and being totally unconcerned about the state of his soul, 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 judgment.
          It is so easy for us, Sunday after Sunday to come to church, sing the songs, say the prayers and go home to all the other “important” things that occupy our lives, having fulfilled 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 truly 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

12:10 PM 10/19/2009 — Today’s Gospel lesson, it shouldn’t require much of an explanation, especially since our Lord explains the parable for us. The sower is Himself, the seed he sows is the word of God, and the earth into which the seed falls is ourselves; the message of the parable being that the word of God will only take root and bare fruit in us if we are prepared to receive it with a generous and well disposed heart. And our Lord even enumerates some of the things that can prevent that from happening: greed, lust, preoccupation with worldly things, and so forth.
          A lot of us, sometimes, tend to view the mysteries of our Church as some kind of magic, forgetting that grace needs a fertile soil in which to grow—even the grace of the sacraments. Take, baptism, for example. We all know someone who was turned away by a priest when they went to have a baby baptized because the parents were not practicing their faith. And what is it we always say when we hear of that? We say, “Why punish the baby for the sins of the parents?” And why do we think the baby is being punished when the priest refuses to do the baptism? Because we think the sacraments are magic; that when you go to heaven you’ve got a tattoo or something on your head that says you’re baptized so they let you in. As powerful as the sacraments are in their ability to give grace, they are powerless where there is no faith. That’s why it is the duty of the priest to baptize only those who give evidence of either living the faith or being raised in it. To baptize someone who doesn’t believe, or someone who will not be taught to believe, does nothing. There is no grace, because grace can only live in faith. A sacrament given to someone without faith is like a seed which is given no water or sunlight. It doesn’t grow just because you put it in the dirt; without these other necessary conditions, it just sits there and rots. The same is true of the Blessed Eucharist. You can drag someone into church on Sunday and make them march up to receive Communion, but if they don’t believe, they receive no grace. The Eucharist is real, certainly; but the grace the Eucharist promises us does not activate, because there is no faith to feed it. The same is true for someone who is not in the state of grace, or free from serious sin. Someone who is in an invalid marriage for example, or some other situation which excludes them from the sacraments.... These people are not being excluded from the sacraments because they’re being punished for something. And such people will often go to a church where they’re not known to receive Communion, because they think the Eucharist is a magic charm which will do something for them; but they receive nothing. The condition of their souls makes the transmission of grace from the Eucharist impossible. Communion then becomes a purely symbolic act which cannot bring one closer to God. The only thing that can bring such a person closer to God is to resolve the state of his soul, so that the grace of the sacraments can become active again.
          Every day the Lord sows His seed in our lives. When we come to church, He sows the seed of his grace in His word and in the Holy Mystery of his Body and Blood. Whether that grace does us any good depends entirely on what kind of soil we have provided in our hearts and in our lives.
          But what is true regarding our relationship to the Holy Mysteries of the Church—the Sacraments—is even more true regarding our relationship to God in prayer. Back when I was working as a hospital chaplain, there was this excitable nun who had gone to a workshop and decided that she was an expert in “spirituality.” And she announced one day to everyone that spirituality has nothing to do with religion; that even secular hospitals were now realizing the need to care for the “spiritual” needs of the patient. And, of course, what they mean by “spiritual” has nothing to do with faith. And, unfortunately, this idea is becoming alarmingly popular: there are people all over the place who don’t even believe in God who are claiming that they “meditate.” Well, excuse me, but I have no need for a spirituality that has nothing to do with faith, and neither should you. We are not here, after all, to contemplate our navels and get in touch with our inner children; we are here to worship God. And we worship God not because it satisfies us emotionally to do so, but because it is our duty to do so: because God deserves our worship whether we feel like it or not.
          As popular as this secular notion of spirituality is today (and I do not pretend to know a lot about it), the fact is that spirituality without religion is not spirituality at all. Spirituality without religion is nothing more than mysticism; and mysticism is just one step shy of circus side show magic. True spirituality has less to do with mysticism and more to do with asceticism. Asceticism does not deal with things like meditation, breathing techniques, getting in touch with our inner child, inventorying our emotions, or anything like that; it has to do with morality: how we live our lives, how we purge from our lives all the things that can and do distract us from God, how we nourish our relationship with God through authentic forms of prayer and frequent recourse to the sacraments of the Church.
          And this is exactly what our Lord is talking about in the parable. The seed is good. The soil is us. And the seed, in order to grow, not only has to fall into good soil, but it must then be watered and cultivated with care every day. Growing in our relationship with God is a daily effort. The seed must be watered with prayer and grace, and the plant that grows must be frequently pruned and trimmed with sacrifice so that it will grow strong and tall.

by Father Michael Venditti

3:09 PM 10/17/2009 — The evil Vatican II; what is one to do? Every morning I walk into church—two days a week it's every evening—to prepare for the Divine Liturgy, I thank my lucky stars I'm in an Eastern Church; for Vatican II told us to return to our traditions. Apparently it told the Latins to turn away from them; and they've been trying to pick up the pieces ever since.
          Here at Priestly Pugilist, we've chronicled some of the more noteworthy attempts, primarily because, while Vatican II was clear about the equality of the Churches, practically speaking that message has fallen on deaf ears; and, for the most part, the Latin Church still calls the shots. Thus, how goes the Latin Church, so goes everyone else. It began, as far as your PP can remember, with the very first post of last year, "Give me some tongue" about the return to Communion on the tongue in the Latin Church (I don't know how to link to posts on the other pages—I know it can be done, I just don't know how and I'm not going to find out right this minute—so you'll just have to go there and find it yourself); in fact, there's a whole lot of posts from the 2008 page touching on this subject. Last year's post, "Conversi ad Dominum," was the first of several on the movement for a return of the Eastern orientation of the priest during Mass, for example—a movement championed by the Pope, himself. Ironically, while Vatican II always saw the Eastern Catholic Churches as an ecumenical bridge to the Orthodox, it turns out that they are beginning to serve as sources of instruction for the Latin Church on how to renew yourself without throwing out the baby with the bath water.
          Looking at it another way, the "reform of the reform," as Pope Benedict likes to call it, is a mixed blessing for us; since the newest additions to the parish families of which I am pastor are all Roman Catholics looking for a sense of mystery and tradition which they can't find in the Latin Church. If the Latin Church were ever to finally get it's act together with regard to it's own rich tradition, that spigot of new blood will probably dry up. In fact, that effect has already taken place in a few cases: I had some students from a nearby university attending last year who have now disappeared because a parish nearer to them has decided to offer the Extraordinary Mass allowed by Pope Benedict. Darn it!
          But I try to be philosophical about it, and to rejoice as best I can with my friends in the Latin Church who find great hope in the attempts of their newer and younger bishops to correct the errors of the past. In that process, there is growing sentiment that it wasn't really Vatican II that was the problem, but what happened right after it; a theme that Pope Benedict has touched on in several of his remarks. To sum it up, the basic idea is that the reform that took place after the Council was over was not, in fact, the reform that the Council Fathers had asked for. The Mass that was produced, known as the Novus Ordo, was not a product of Vatican II at all; it was composed after the Council was over, by people who, themselves, were not even at the Council, and was described by the future Pope Benedict as "a manufactured product" completely devoid of any link to Catholic history.
          What is really happening is the latest—and one hopes the final—battle between two camps that arose after the Council: the authenticists, led by Cardinal Siri and, after his death, by Cardinal Ratzinger; and the "Bologna School," led by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti and professor Giuseppe Alberigo, founders of the Bologna Institute which produced the most widely read history of the Council, a massive five volume work called "The History of Vatican II," which appeared almost immediately after the Council, but which was only just completed in 2001.
          Giuseppe Card. Siri was Archbishop of Genoa during the Council, and Father Joseph Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI—was a professor of Theology in Munich who served as a peritis or "consulting theologian" to the Council Fathers. Both argued strenuously for a reform which built upon the past. Unfortunately, they didn't write a book, which gave the "Bologna-ites" a larger audience. The Bologna School argued that what the Council really did was completely reinvent the Catholic religion, so much so that even the documents of Vatican II themselves could be ignored. What was important about Vatican II, they argued, was not what was actually contained in the final documents, but the "spirit of Vatican II." They then set out to define what the "spirit of Vatican II" was; and it turned out to have nothing to do with what the Council Fathers actually said. So, for example, where Vatican II said that the vernacular language could be allowed by the local bishop in certain controlled situations, the Bologna School said that what the Council really meant was that any Mass in any language not understood by the people was not a valid form of worship. Where the Council said that religious institutes should return to an authentic interpretation of the spirituality of their founders, Bologna said that nuns should get out of those nasty habits and out of those schools and hospitals and start doing social work. Where the Council said that all Christians should recognize the priesthood of the faithful and collaborate with their priests in the evangelization of the world around them, Bologna blurred the line between clergy and laity, and spoke of the priesthood as a "role" rather than a sacrament. Where the Council said that our discussions with non-Catholics should begin by recognizing what we have in common with our separated brethren, Bologna said that all religions were now of equal merit and it was wrong to try to convert anyone.
          The Bologna Institute's approach was a gold mine for liberals who thought the Council just didn't go far enough. It gave them the ammunition they needed to begin the wholesale destruction of the Catholic religion with which most people were familiar. The Institutes book, "The History of Vatican II," began to replace the Council documents themselves in seminaries all over the world. And—perhaps most important of all—it was protégés of the Institute, under the guidance of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, Bologna's most famous son, who wrote the Novus Ordo. Paul VI, who was pope at the time, clearly considered the Bologna book to be the gospel.
          The election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope has now become the first hurdle in the Bologna School's attempt to hijack the Council, a hijacking that everyone in Bologna thought was a done deal; and, perhaps spurred on by the Holy Father's own occasional statements and actions, bishops all over the world are now beginning to poke their heads out of their foxholes; and new bishops are being appointed who are willing to take on Bologna head on. Here at Priestly Pugilist, we've tried to give some of these men a voice. One of them is the new bishop of Sioux City, Iowa, Bishop R. Walker Nickless. He's written what amounts to a declaration of war on Bologna, and not a moment too soon. He begins his first pastoral letter as Bishop of Sioux City by reflecting on his own personal commitment to the Council and what it intended to do (as opposed to what actually ended up happening):

My understanding begins with these personal reflections. I studied and was ordained a deacon and priest during the exciting, almost intoxicating, time of the Second Vatican Council. I am thoroughly a product of that momentous time, the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church in centuries. It has formed the context and culture of my entire ministerial life. Like Pope John Paul the Great, I have no other desire for my ministry than seeing the hopes and reforms of the Second Vatican Council fully implemented and brought to fruition. Like Pope Benedict XVI, I know that, while we have worked hard, there is still much work to do. My understanding of this work has grown and deepened over the past forty years. So it must be for all of us. The Church is always in need of renewal because it is made up of us, imperfect human beings. This is the deepest reason: as individuals and as a Church, we are always called to grow, change, deepen, repent, convert, improve, and learn from our successes and failures in the pursuit of holiness and fidelity to Jesus Christ and the mission He has given us. Moreover, we need to do this in the midst of an ever changing world, culture and society.
     I have experienced this as a priest and now, through the biggest change of all for me, as a bishop. Despite my own unworthiness, I have been blessed abundantly by the Lord Jesus Christ in his call to me, in the graces of my episcopal ordination, and in your support and cooperation. I am happy and blessed to be your bishop. Having been called by God and the Church, I want to do my part to fulfill His mission among you. Thus, we need serious reflection and evaluation of the current state and direction, challenges and opportunities, for faith and ministry in our Lord Jesus Christ in our Diocese.

What follows is probably one of the longest pastoral letters ever written by a residential bishop; and it's much too long to reproduce here. But here's the basic thrust of it, and reminds one of President Roosevelt speaking to Congress on the December 8th, 1941:

The question arises: Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult? Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or—as we would say today—on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarreled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.
     On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the “hermeneutic of reform,” of renewal in the continuity of the one subject—Church—which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
     The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council [...]
     It is crucial that we all grasp that the hermeneutic or interpretation of discontinuity or rupture, which many think is the settled and even official position, is not the true meaning of the Council. This interpretation sees the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church almost as two different churches. It sees the Second Vatican Council as a radical break with the past. There can be no split, however, between the Church and her faith before and after the Council. We must stop speaking of the “Pre-Vatican II” and “Post-Vatican II” Church, and stop seeing various characteristics of the Church as “pre” and “post” Vatican II. Instead, we must evaluate them according to their intrinsic value and pastoral effectiveness in this day and age [...]
     The so-called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.

Boom! The bomb has been dropped right on Bologna. He goes on to outline pastoral priorities for his diocese, urging priests to offer Mass with greater reverence, hear Confessions for more than one hour per week, and promote Eucharistic adoration, the Liturgy of the Hours, and Marian devotion. “The use of the vernacular has certainly opened up the treasures of the liturgy to all who take part, but this does not mean that the Latin language, and especially the chants which are so superbly adapted to the genius of the Roman Rite, should be wholly abandoned,” he adds.
          This is more than just a shot across the bow; this is all-out war! If Pope Benedict continues to promote men like this to the episcopacy, the battle is already won!
          Your PP highly recommends you read the whole of Bishop Nickless' letter, which you can find here on his diocesan web site. But don't tell your liberal friends. There's no need to ruin their day.

by Priestly Pugilist

11:08 AM 10/12/2009 — The two sets of readings we have today stem from the dual commemoration: the regular Sunday and the Sunday of the Council Fathers. You would have had to pay close attention to distinguish between them; because when we read more than one set of readings, only the first of the readings is announced, and any subsequent readings are chanted right afterwards as if they’re all one reading. The two Gospels are very familiar to us: the raising of the widow’s son at Naim is sung at the conclusion of every funeral; the priestly prayer of our Lord is read whenever we commemorate the Fathers of a particular ecumenical council.
          What I’d like to do today is 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 a pagan king. 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.

2:05 PM 10/4/2009 — Today’s Gospel lesson should be familiar to just about everyone. You don’t even have to be a Christian to be familiar with the “Golden Rule;” and many people have even forgotten that the Golden Rule comes from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
          There was a man, who died in the early ‘70’s, who was so obsesseed with the Golden Rule, that he made it not only the focus of his life, but also of his business; and while you may never have thought of him, most of you know his name and have probably done business with him at some point. His name was James Cash Penny, and back at the turn of the century he opened up a dry goods and clothing store in the midwest which he called the Golden Rule Store. His idea was to treat the customer exactly as he would want to be treated if he was the customer. He was, in fact, the first person to coin the phrase, “The customer is always right.”
          Rasied in a strict Christian home in the frontier tradition, Penny felt that it was his duty as a Christian to do whatever he could to encourage his fellow man to live a Christian life; and the worst sin a Christian could commit was to encourage someone else to do something wrong. And he carrried that idea so completely into his business, that many of his business partners thought he was a raving lunatic; for example, up until 1972—the year I gratuated grade school—the J. C. Penny Company still did not except credit cards because old man Penny took the Bible’s words about usury literally; he thought it was a sin to encourage people to spend money they did not have, and more of a sin to then charge them interest on it.
          Now, you and I can look at the example of Mr. Penny and say that he carried the Golden Rule to an extreme;—at least, until you sit down to pay your credit card bills, then you might think that old man Penny wasn’t so loony after all—but when you look at the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the whole thing is filled with extremes: “If I man strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left.” “If a man takes your coat, give him your shirt as well.” “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” “Any man who looks at a women lustfully has already committed adultery.” “If your right arm sins cut it off and throw it away.” These are all things said by our Lord, and they’re all extreme statements. There’s nothing moderate or middle of the road about them. We don’t question them. We read them in the Gospel; we hear them sung to us on Sunday; but how many of us, if someone walked up and struck us on the right side of the face, would show them the other side and say, “That was a good shot. Do it again.” Not many, I suppose.
          Nobody likes a fanatic; and, in this post 9/11 world, our society is a bit more sensitive to that then it used to be; and I don’t think any of you would disagree that this sensitivity has been used by the enemies of the faith to try and discredit religion and religious fervor altogether. Keep in mind that the journalistic mentality in particular tends to draw all of reality with very broad lines, and can’t express itself except by 60 second sound bites; so, it can’t make the distinction between religious fanaticism and religious fervor. But if what I believe doesn’t determine how I live my life, then what’s the point in believing it? Just so I’m able to say, “Well, I go to church on Sunday, so that makes me a good person?” It can’t be just that. It has to be more. What I believe has to determine how I live, or else it’s not worth believing. And the real test of how religious we are is not how well we sing the beautiful hymns to God here in church, but after church is over, how well we live what we’ve been singing about, among our families and friends, our coworkers, the people we meet every day; how we conduct the daily business of our lives; that’s the true test of how religous we are.
          J. C. Penny opened up his Bible one day and read the passage from the Gospel that we just read this morning, and just decided he was going to live it. And he did. And isn’t it a shame that we consider that unusual?
          Saint Josemaría Escrivá,the founder of Opus Dei whom I'm so found of quoting, once said that the most that can be said of any Christian would be that, when he meets people for the first time, they would think, “That person has read the life of Jesus Christ.” If, when people meet us for the first time, they don’t think that, then we have to ask ourselves why. When we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord in Holy Communion, then we go forth from this church back to our daily lives, carrying the Body and Blood of the Lord within us, what effect does that have on what we do, and what we say, and how we live? If it has no effect, then why do we bother. Is the Holy Eucharist just a magic charm that we come to church on Sunday to get, as if we’re collecting Green Stamps to buy our way into heaven? Or is the Eucharist something that is supposed to purify us and strengthen us with grace so we can then go out into the world and leave something of him behind with everyone we meet?
          J. C. Penny was not a Catholic, and, thus, did not possess the fullness of religious truth as we do. But he took what truth he had and lived it to an extent that few people in this age do. Thus, it would seem that we, who possess the faith of Christ in its fullness, should be even greater examples of what that faith means to the world.

by Father Michael Venditti

12:58 PM 10/3/2009 —

[We apologize for the lack of non-honiletic updates by me, your PP; but I do have a job, you know. So, to make up for it—the lack of updates, that is, not the job—I found this article interesting.
     Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc. —PP

I am delighted by the Roman Polanski controversy. Don’t get me wrong: I am horrified and disgusted by what the acclaimed director did — and admitted to — but there is an upside.
          Just to recap, Polanski drugged a child put in his care for the purposes of a photo shoot. He tried to bully her into sex. She said no. He raped her anyway. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse but fled the country before sentencing, allegedly for fear the judge wouldn’t keep his end of the plea bargain. He spent the subsequent three decades living the life of a revered celebrity in Europe. He never returned to America because there was a warrant for his arrest. In a bit of ironic justice, he was apprehended en route to Zurich to receive a lifetime-achievement award. That ceremony will apparently go on without him.
          So what do I like about the controversy? Well, for starters, that there is one at all. I think it is fascinating beyond words that this is open to “debate.”
          If Roman Polanksi were the name of the world’s greatest plumber or accountant, or even the director of Weekend at Bernie’s II, there would be no argument. Indeed, Polanski would have already paid his debt to society and would be a free man by now. No serious person can dispute this.
          Now of course, reasonable people can disagree about all sorts of stuff. What sort of punishment does Polanski deserve? If he’s sent back to the U.S., should the 76-year-old spend the rest of his life in jail? Does the fact that the understandably exhausted victim has forgiven him mitigate issues? How should we score allegations of judicial misconduct or the time Polanski already served in jail? All of these things are open to good-faith disagreement.
          But there are also a few things, by my lights, no reasonable person can dispute. The first is that child rape is a very bad thing and no amount of blame-shifting to the 13-year-old or her mother can absolve Polanski of his culpability.
          Giving a grown woman a “roofie” and having sex with her is a crime. How on earth can plying a 13-year-old with champagne and a Quaalude be seen as less heinous?
          A second point beyond dispute is that whatever your crime, be it tax fraud or tearing the tags off your mattress, our system of justice cannot tolerate anyone pleading guilty only to buy time to flee the jurisdiction. Even if Polanski were wholly innocent of the charges, it would be necessary for us to seek extradition.
          That brings us to the even more refreshing aspect of this controversy: It is not a Left-Right issue. I’m not normally one to celebrate bipartisan unity, but it’s nice to know there are some things political or ideological opponents can agree on. Some of the most ardent and clear voices on the Polanski issue have been on the Left.
          Go into a bar or union hall and ask whether fat-cat directors should get special treatment when they rape 13-year-old girls and you’ll discover that on this issue, the differences between “blue America” and “red America” are vanishingly small.
          And yet, there is a controversy. Many of the international community’s leading lights are rallying to the Free Polanski movement. A petition is circulating with such names as Harvey Weinstein, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen on it. (No surprise that Woody’s on board, given that he married his adopted daughter.) The arguments in Polanski’s defense range from lawyerly red herrings to intellectual piffle to horrendous affronts to human decency. Whoopi Goldberg (no relation) dismissed the allegations because she was sure whatever Polanski did, it didn’t amount to “rape rape.”
          It all boils down to the fact that Polanski is famous and talented and an Olympian artist, living above the world of mortals. Indeed, if he didn’t rape that girl—and he did—Polanski would still be considered a pig in most normal communities. This is the man who, after all, started dating Nastassja Kinski when she was only 15 and he was in his 40s. His taste for teenage girls is an established fact.
          His defenders don’t care. They are above and beyond bourgeois notions of morality, even legality.
          And that’s the main reason I am grateful for this controversy. It is a dye marker, “lighting up” a whole archipelago of morally wretched people. With their time, their money, and their craft, these very people routinely lecture America about what is right and wrong. It’s good to know that at the most fundamental level, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

by Jonah Goldberg

2:43 PM 9/26/2009 — This week we will celebrate the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos; and I thought it might make a fitting opportunity to reflect upon the life of the Mother of God. The feast itself commemorates an appearance of the Mother of God near Constantinople in the tenth century, during the siege of Constantnople by the Vandals. During services in the Church of Our Lady of the Waves in Blachernes, which was a seaside monastery on the outskirts of Constantinople, St. Andrew and his disciple, St. Epiphanius, saw the Mother of God approaching the ambo. She was supported by many saints. Here she knelt in prayer before the Holy Table, her face bathed in tears. After praying, she took off her veil and extended it over the people as a sign of her protection. In the popular icon of this event, the Theotokos is seen standing above the faithful, her arms outstretched in prayer and draped with a veil. St. Andrew and St. Epiphanius are shown along with many other saints. In the center of the church stands a young man, clothed in a deacon’s sticharion, and holding in his left hand an open scroll with the text of the Christmas Kontakion written on it. He is St. Romanos the Melodist, the famous hymnographer whose feast is also celebrated on October 1st, and who is responsible for having composed many of the troparia and kontakia that we sing in church. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, devoted one of his weekly audience addresses to the life and work of St. Romanos; and you may recall that I had reproduced that speech for you in your bulletin some time ago.¹ And because this feast occurs this week, I thought it would not be inappropriate to preach about the vocation of the Mother of God.
          Usually, when we hear the word "vocation," it causes us to think of vocations to the Holy Priesthood, how badly we need more of them, how we must continually pray for them;—which I'm sure we do—but, we don't often use the word in application to ourselves. But, as Christians, we must, each one of us, come to terms with the fact that we do have a vocation; that we are, each and every one of us, called by God to do something for him. It, of course, will be different for each of us: some of us have been called to bring children into the world and raise them in the faith, some of us have been called to the holy priesthood or the monastic life, some of us—many more than would like to admit it—have been called to assist in the salvation of souls and the sanctification of the world through some form of personal suffering, whether physical or emotional. And in this way we have something intimately in common with she who is our spiritual Mother, the ever-virgin Mother of God.
          Now, it's true, there are some crucial differences. We, after all, were not granted that special gift to be free from the sin of our first parents as Mary was;—we were not conceived immaculately—but keep in mind that Mary received that particular gift only because it was necessary in order for her to fulfill the vocation that the Father had chosen for her. So, in this sense, God has done for us what he did for Mary, for he does give us the graces we need to do what he has called us to do. The Father made Mary free from sin because she needed to be free from sin in order to bring God into the World as a man. And although we try time and again to deny it, we have to come to terms with the fact that God has, in fact, given us the grace to do what it is he calls us to do. So, on any particular day, I might find the exercise of my priestly duties burdensome and joyless and unappreciated. But, try as I might, I can't escape the fact that God has and does give me the grace to do what he has called me to do. That is what the sacrament of Ordination does.
          And this is true of everyone of us, because every one of us has a vocation to fulfill before the Lord. So, you who are married may very well get tired of living with the same person day in and day out, because the years have worn away your patience and exposed to each other your faults. But, like all sacraments, the Holy Mystery of Matrimony bestows grace; and believing that the grace is there to do what needs to be done before God is a basic teaching of our faith. You should remember this because we’ve discussed many times. We call it the Dogma of Sufficient Grace. Christ lays no burden upon us without the grace to carry it through; maybe not with ease, maybe not without struggle, maybe not in the way we would personally prefer; but it is never impossible.
          And we should, and must, take consolation in the fact that the Theotokos, even though free from sin, faced this same challenge. For the Gospel is quite clear: when she heard the angel's greeting she was “troubled in spirit.” "How can this be since I have not known man?" Do you think that Mary was unmindful of the fact that she was being asked to assume a role which would cause great misunderstanding to her family and her future husband? Thanks be to God that he disposed St. Joseph in a dream to accept Mary's pregnancy, but she had to have wondered what his reaction might be. Even though free from sin, she could not predict the future; and even while having a perfect faith in the mission of her divine Son, this didn't stop her from grieving at the foot of the cross, or as her Son's lifeless body was laid in the tomb. The gift of sufficient grace is not a guarantee that our lives will be problem free. Our Lord said that himself in our Gospel last week following on the Exaltation of the Cross: “If a man would be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me.” Those are not orders for the fainthearted. Sometimes life requires a leap of faith, like the one shown by St. Peter in today’s Gospel: “We’ve been fishing all night and have caught nothing; but because you say so, I will throw out the nets.” As the Spanish proverb says: "God owns the world, but he rents it out to the brave."
          Meditating on Mary's vocation, the Holy Doctor of the Church, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, said, "Heaven and earth await your 'Yes,' O most pure Virgin." But so do they await our "yes." "Yes" was Mary's answer, and so must it be ours. It does not guarantee a life without struggle, but it does promise a life which ends in heaven. Let us ask our Lord today, as we prepare to celebrate this great feast of His Mother, for a great and true desire to know God's will, and the strength of heart to always say "yes" to it. And in the midst of the trials and crosses that God allows to come our way, let us take our rest and consolation in the grace that the Father has promised us; and call out to God in the words of St. Ignatius: “Give me only your love and grace, O Lord; these are enough for me.”

by Father Michael Venditti

---

¹ See last year's post, "The Church is not a museum."

10:37 AM 9/21/2009 — 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

9:32 AM 9/14/2009 —

from BeltwayFollies

9:14 AM 9/14/2009 — Tomorrow 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

10:52 AM 9/12/2009 —

from HotAir.com

5:22 PM 9/8/2009 — One of the great national heroes of Spain is an 11th Century warrior general named Rodrigo Diaz, also known as El Cid. Living during a time that the Christians and the Moors were often vying for control of Spain, El Cid often found himself at the center of conflict. Where exactly truth and fiction meet in his biography is sometimes unclear but the most famous legend of El Cid concerns his final battle, (also depicted in the 1961 El Cid film starring Charlton Heston).
          The battle for the city of Valencia was not going well for the Christians, and when El Cid suffered a fatal wound, he withdrew from the fight to inside the walls of Valencia, and the Moors grew confident. After his death, his fellow Christian soldiers, the next morning, tied his dead body upright, in full armor, on his beautiful white stallion, Babieca, and opened the main city gate. When the Moors saw El Cid appear to be alive and well, and galloping towards them with his knights charging behind, they ran away in fear and the Christian city of Valencia was victorious.
          Well before President Obama took office, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been fighting over the health care issue, with the Democrats forever marching forward and beating their socialized health care drum. Over the years, one of the behind the scenes warrior generals and strategists for government run health care has been Senator Ted Kennedy, and with the arrival of President Barack Obama, the stage has been set, the plans implemented, and the battle begun.
          Recently, as we all know, despite receiving the best medical treatment available in the world, Senator Ted Kennedy passed away before the Democrats' health care reform victory was complete. In fact, as we all well know, just prior to the death of Senator Kennedy, the battle had not been going very well for the Democrats.
          So, in an untimely fashion, smack in the middle of this great Congressional conflict, Senator Ted Kennedy succumbed to illness and departed from the battlefield. Now that respects have been paid to this "Lion of the Senate," and his funeral is past, it is time to get back to the battle and the facts at hand contained in the 1,000-page health care bill. But the Democrats do not want to get back to the facts at hand. Their battle plan has always been one of smoke screens, camouflage, and trickery. Just to prove my point, they are beginning to talk about putting the "Ted Kennedy" name on the health care reform bill, that same bill that has been floundering for a multitude of reasons, one of which, the majority of Americans stand against it.
          If the Democrats attempt this ploy, they will be doing, metaphorically speaking, the same trick that the Christians pulled on the Moors 1,000 years ago. If they put Ted Kennedy's name on their health care reform bill, they may as well dig up El Teddy, superglue him erect upon a white steed, and ride him through the Congressional chambers with the hope that their opponents will quake in their boots, cry out "My Lord, El Teddy still lives!" and run away in fear.
          The more Americans find out what is in the health care bill, and the tricks the Democrats are willing to pull to get it passed, the more they dislike it. We are winning the battle against government run health care because we are attending town hall meetings, contacting our legislators, and speaking out in growing numbers, but the battle is not over. My fellow Americans, Republicans, and Blue Dogs, you must stand firm and keep fighting this bill.
          And when the bill next appears under new cover, remind yourselves the facts on the ground and the facts in the bill have not changed; El Teddy Health Care is just another Democrat trick, this time, dug up from 11th Century Spain.

by Harold Witkov at American Thinker

2:32 PM 9/8/2009 — It’s been a week since the Dead Kennedy Show aired on TV; and, since Father Venditti has already dealt with the canonical and spiritual aspects of the whole thing, your PP would like to reflect a little on what it might mean in the whole spectrum of the development of Catholicism in the United States.
          As distastefull and scandalous as we all know the Dead Kennedy Show was, it has, inadvertently, betrayed some rather encouraging signs. As little as thirty years ago, the outrage that exploded among ordinary Catholics in the wake of the Show would have been unthinkable. Fr. V. reports that he got several comments following his homily, all positive, all thanking him for addressing the issue. Not one complaint or expression of disagreement. And while web sites like Priestly Pugilist © can certainly be said to be “preaching to the choir,” the fact is that, thirty years ago, there wouldn’t have been a choir to preach to. Dr. Jeff Mirus, president of Trinity Communications, over at Catholic Culture, lists some recent pronouncements by American bishops:

• The bishops of New Jersey opposing gay marriage;

• the aging Archbishop of Santa Fe openly scolds his brother bishops who have criticized Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame;

• the Bishop of Sioux City warns his flock that a government monopoly of health care would result in medical rationing;

• the bishop of Providence reflects on the tenure of the retired out-of-the-closet gay Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Seattle, accusing him of imposing “his vision of the Church upon his own fiefdom";

• the Vatican approves a strengthening to the Catechism’s exposition of the mission to convert the Jews, at the request of the American bishops.

He then offers the following reflection:

What's still a little disconcerting is that only four of these statements and proposals represent comments that are supportive of Church teaching and edifying for the faithful. Still, a score as high as 80% would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.

And he’s right. There is no mistaking the fact that Bernadine-style “Catholicism-Lite” (less dogma, tastes great), identified by folk Masses, polyester vestments, prayers of the faithful taken right out of the platform of the Democratic National Committee, the reduction of Catholic dogma to the principles of social justice, priests in colored cardigans worn over tab shirts, and a deposit of faith indistinguishable from any mainline Protestant Church, is on the way out. The Dead Kennedy Show was Bernadine-style “Catholicism-Lite” on parade, of course; but it was it’s last hurrah; and the fact that it outraged “grunt Catholics” in pews across America was as significant as the spectacle of the show itself.
          There is no need to mourn for it, and it’s flailing death-throws can easily be tolerated if we recognize the end of certain things its terminal illness represents: chief of which being its sad devotion to “Casablanca Moral Theory.” You’ve all seen the film, “Casablanca”, haven’t you? After Ilsa spends the night with Rick in order to coax from him the letters of transit she and her resistance-leader husband need to escape the Nazis and leave Casablanca, Rick explains to him what happened:

Humphrey Bogart: “Your wife and I knew each other in Paris, but that was over long ago. For your sake, she wanted to pretend it wasn’t, and I let her pretend.”

Paul Heinreid: “I understand. Welcome back to the fight.”

Translation: “Maybe you rogered my wife all night, but it was all for the cause, so it’s okay.” In other words, morality has nothing to do with keeping it zipped, but is reduced to “correct politics.” Does this not explain the moral system of Bernadine-style “Catholicism-Lite”, and does it not perfectly illustrate Ted Kennedy’s relationship to the Catholic Church?
          Earlier this year, a dying Kennedy wrote a letter to Pope Benedict, in which he stated:

I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path. I want you to know Your Holiness that in my nearly 50 years of elective office I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I have worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war.

The Holy Father’s response said nothing, but simply promised prayers. That’s nice. But we should be grateful to Kennedy for having given us a clearly expressed exposition of the morality of Bernadine-style “Catholicism-Lite” for the archives: it has nothing to do with grace, with purity, with union with Christ, with concern for the final disposition of one's soul. The social doctrine of the Church isn’t simply a part of it: it’s all of it. In other words, slake whatever carnal desires you want, so long as you care about social justice. Fornicate, adulterate, contracept, abort, steal, cheat, lie, whatever; it’s all erased by an afternoon ladling out Campbell’s at the soap kitchen.
          One final thought: Fr. V., in his homily, mentioned how those controlling the sole video feed for the Dead Kennedy Show had made a deliberate decision not to show the Communion line, and speculated that this was to avoid showing us all the pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion in defiance of Pope Benedict’s clear directive. No doubt this is true. What’s disturbing is that, undoubtedly, the aging adherents to Beradine-style “Catholicism-Lite” believe that, in doing so, they’ve acted prudently and dodged a bullet. One day, one hopes, it won’t be considered enough to dodge the bullet, but to actually take the gun away by refusing Holy Communion to them, courageously and publicly, and so fulfill our Lord’s command to “feed my sheep."
          At least we have the Dead Kennedy show on tape so that, after “Catholicism-Lite” is dead, we can show it to our children and let them wonder how the once and now faithful Church in the United States had sunk so low in its attempt to kill itself. We can only pray.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:37 PM 9/6/2009 — This parable is really nothing more than a continuation of the moral lesson our Lord started to give us last Sunday: the tenants had forgotten that they didn’t own the vineyard. We spoke last week mostly about the Kennedy funeral, but we ended by interpreting our Lord’s parable to mean that life is something we have on loan from God for a while, not something we possess outright; and, when it is over, it must be returned to the owner with proof that we have used it as directed. Today’s parable is really very much the same, and gives the same warning: the danger of being unfaithful to the Divine Summons. 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.
          One of the drawbacks of living our our secularized, pragmatic society is that we tend to equate justice with fairness, even though they are far from the same thing; and there is, I’m sure, a part of us which wants to say that the King in our Lord’s parable is acting very unfairly. After all, he’s the one who commanded that strangers be dragged in from off the street when the invited guests didn’t come. How much sense does it make, then, for him to scold and punish someone for not being properly dressed? But remember it’s a parable, not a TV show; our Lord doesn’t tell us the story for our entertainment; he expects us to learn something. The king sincerely desires that all should come to his feast; but he expects his guests, once they’re there, to make use of the facilities he has labored to provide. A poor person, dragged in from off the street, is not expected to have a proper wedding garment when he first arrives; but, once he’s there, he can and must get hold of one.
          Because his own people rejected the invitation to new life and grace, the Lord has invited us. For those of us born into the faith, it is very much like we have been dragged in from off the street, we being too young to make the decision for ourselves. But once inside the Church, there are all kinds of facilities that our host has provided to help us make ourselves worthy of that call. The Holy Mysteries of the Church offer us the grace we need to do that. Baptism and Chrismation wipe the slate clean from the sin of our First Parents; Confession can wipe the slate clean again when we fall prey to temptation and sin; the Blessed Eucharist nourishes us with the life of Christ himself. And our host, the Lord Jesus, suffered and died to give us these things. So, we may have entered this feast improperly dressed; but there is little excuse for being improperly dressed now; and certainly little excuse for being improperly dressed when the feast is over, and it is time for us to surrender our lives back to God.
          God never expected any of us to to come to him on our own merits, because we have none. He brings us into his house, his Church, through his own grace and mercy, and opens to us opportunities for purification and communion with him. It is for us to make use of these opportunities and to prepare ourselves to take our place at his Holy Table.

by Father Michael Venditti

8:30 AM 8/30/2009 — Every once in a while something happens in current events that requires a conscientious priest to deviate from the Gospel lesson of the day; although it may be Divine Providence that the event I need to address with you relates very well not only to today’s Gospel lesson, but also the feast we just celebrated. I am speaking, of course, of the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and his very public funeral which was viewed by millions on television. The question you should have asked when you saw it was, “Should Ted Kennedy have been given a public funeral in a Catholic Church?” And you were right to ask it, because the answer is clearly, “No”, and this for a very important reason:
          Without presuming upon the state of anyone's soul before God, Mr. Kennedy fulfills all the requirements of Canon Law for what is called a "grave public sinner." This is, first of all, because of his very public stand on abortion. Were Mr. Kennedy a private person not in legislative office, without the ability to direct how our tax dollars are spent, his personal opinion regarding abortion would, most likely, not be an issue as pertains to whether he should be given Christian burial; after all, we don't investigate the private opinions of our parishioners when they die to see if we should bury them. But as a government official, Mr. Kennedy occupied a special category. The Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church is specific on this issue, and I would like to quote it for you:

Can. 1184 §1 Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they gave some signs of repentance before death:
      1° notorious apostates, heretics and schismatics;
      2° those who for anti-christian motives chose that their bodies be cremated;
      3° other manifest sinners to whom a Church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.

4:27 PM 8/23/2009 — This young man is an interesting case because he’s so completely human; and when he finally gets this chance to ask our Lord something face to face, he not surprisingly asks the most quintessential question a man can ask: “What must I do to be saved.” Our Lord’s answer is as simple and as complete as the question; and it doesn’t surprise us because we’ve seen him give this answer many times: “Keep the Commandments.” But he wants more than that. He wants to join our Lord and become a disciple. Our Lord gives him that chance, but first explains to him what he must give up to make that happen, as he would be obligated to do.
          You may recall that the last time we looked at this Gospel lesson about the rich young man, we compared him with the rabbi at the beginning of the parable of the Good Samaritan, how they both ask our Lord the same question, how they both get from our Lord the same simple answer.¹ Each of them reacts to our Lord’s answer differently because each one has a different movtive in asking the question. The rabbi wants to justify himself; the rich young man sincerely wants to do more out of the generosity of his heart. And you may recall that we recognized the fact that what our Lord asks of the young man—to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor—was what he asked of the original Twelve Apostles. The young man goes away sad because he’s not willing to do those things; and I think I understand what’s happened to him here.
          He’s obviously been following our Lord around for some time, and has been very much impressed. He’s got money, which means he’s probably lived a very sheltered life, and never been exposed to any kind of cause to which he might want to dedicate himself. Jesus comes along, and ignites in him a youthful vigor for something to give his life meaning; and he allows himself to be caught up emotionally. He sees the camaraderie between Jesus and his disciples, and he wants to be a part of it; but his emotional needs are not matched by the will to actually do what is required to fulfill them. His emotional attraction to the whole “Jesus thing” has blinded him to the fact that, in reality, he’s not ready for the kind of commitment that is needed for him to actually join Jesus and become one of his disciples.
          Some years ago, a young couple came to me to get married. They were both eighteen and had just graduated high school. Everyone they knew was opposed to this marriage, not because anyone had a problem with either of them, but simply because they were too young. The fly in the ointment was the fact that they were of age and didn’t legally need anyone’s permission to marry. And both families were very shocked and angry when I seemed to welcome them with enthusiasm and began to make plans with them for this grand wedding they wanted. What they didn’t realize was that Father wasn’t born yesterday. In the course of our marriage instruction, I began, very subtly, to focus their attention on some seemingly mundane and pragmatic things: like creating a home, what kind of meals to prepare for children at certain ages, when a child should be allowed to have his or her own room, how to choose a school, how you might have to take a job you don’t want because you have other people dependent on you, how to save for your children’s college education, how to create an environment of security that will enable children to grow up happy and well-adjusted—all the things that teenagers in love never think about. And it wasn’t two weeks before the girl came to me privately and said, “I’m not ready for this.” It’s usually the girl, because they’re the ones that do most of the thinking. Now, if I had taken the line that the families wanted me to take, and simply told them that they were too young and needed to wait, they probably would have stormed off angrily, gotten married before a Justice of the Peace, and made a mistake they might have regretted the rest of their lives. The reality of what they were asking me to do for them had finally caught up with the romantic emotions that brought them to me in the first place.
          A couple of weeks ago my mother sold the house where I grew up and moved into a retirement community. And when I went to see her this past week, she handed me a box of all kinds of junk that I had left in the house twenty years ago; and among this were yearbooks and photographs from my early seminary days in Kentucky. And as I paged through them, I realized that most of the people in those pictures never became priests. Every young man who enters the seminary gets attracted to the priesthood on an emotional level, probably inspired by a priest he knew growing up who had an impact on him. But it takes a numbef of years before reality catches up with the emotion. It wasn’t a mistake for them to go to the seminary;—if they had not gone there, they would have spent their whole lives wondering if they should have—but it wasn’t until they actually learned first hand what sacrifices are required that they were able to decide if that’s what God was really calling them to do. Their years in the seminary were far from wasted.
          When our Lord asked the rich young man to sell everything he had and follow him, he knew the young man wasn’t ready. He asked him anyway because he knew that it was the only way to force the young man to come face to face with the reality of his life. Unfortunatly, the Gospel passage ends with the young man walking away sad; but that doesn’t mean that he walked away for good. For all we know, he grew up to develop a whole new set of prioriies, and, after our Lord’s resurrection, may have become a passionate member of the early Church. The lesson for us here is that the sadness he felt as he walked away was not necessarily a bad thing. Pain makes us think. And when we encounter pain in our lives because we feel we’ve been denied something we want very badly, maybe it’s time to sit down and consider what it is that our Lord is asking us to think about.

by Father Michael Venditti

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¹ Cf. last year's post, "The Rich Young Man."

2:08 PM 8/16/2009 — Yesterday we celebrated the great feast of the Dormition or “falling asleep” of the Theotokos; and, because I don’t preach on Holy Days, I would like to say just a few words about it before diving into today’s Gospel lesson.
          The Dormition, of course, is a feast of the Mother of God. It commemorates her being taken up into heaven. If you grew up following the calendar of the Roman Church, like I did, you probably would have referred to it as the Assumption. It means basically the same thing. The difference, of course, lies in the fact that the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God was being celebrated in the Eastern Churches a thousand years before Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in 1950. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest that the Church in the West, too, celebrated the falling asleep of the Mother of God early on, but dropped the feast until the definition of the Dogma. And it’s meaning is relatively simple to understand.
          The Book of Genesis teaches us that mankind, because of the original sin he inherits from his first parents, is subject to mortal shortcomings despite the fact that he has an immortal soul; and one of these shortcomings is the death of the body. But the Mother of God, because of her Immaculate Conception, does not have original sin and, therefore, is not subject to the shortcomings which are the result of it. And so it is the faith of the Church that Mary, at which would have been the moment of her death, was spared the suffering of death—and the separation of soul and body which is the result of death—and instead was permitted to enter heaven complete, with both her body and soul intact. It’s an important dogma with lots of implications about what we believe as Christians about the end of our lives and what will happen to us when we pass from this world.
          But rather than go into all of that, I would like instead to focus our attention on the Gospel passage of this Sunday: our Lord’s parable about the servant who is forgiven but who refuses to forgive. It is an illustration of that part of the Lord’s Prayer in which we pray, “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 Catholic Churches.
          I use to listen sometimes to Dr. Laura on the radio. She’s was this person who would try to give advice to people she’s never met;—I’m not even sure if she’s still on the air—and she’s not a Christian, she’s a convert to the Jewish Faith. And her notion of forgiveness is a very classical Jewish notion. So, women would 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. And invariably she would 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 sell the servant and his family into slavery 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, this is what he is supposed to do. 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 of them both is furious. Why? Why is it any of his business? And here is the precise point where Christian social teaching 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, but 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 your spouse? Of course not. If the penance was supposed to be an actual retribution for the sin, then the priest would have to have you flogged in the public square. 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; not just the possible human consequences of embarrassment or betrayal that might result.
          Sometimes you’ll hear people say that what they’re doing—whatever it may be—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 woman I met 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

1:16 PM 8/12/2009 —

"There's your mildew! That's gonna smell."¹

Cf. also "Jobs, health care, gun control, economy, restoring image abroad: Hitler's 1933 campaign platform," and also "Freedom of conscience? It depends who you voted for."

by Priestly Pugilist

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¹ Photo credits: top left and bottom left courtesy of RushLimbaugh.com; top right courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov; bottom right courtesy of VinceOffer.net. Note that, since the similarity between the Health Care Recovery Act logo and the Nazi vexilla was noticed, the logo has disappeared from the White House web site. Pitchman Vince Offer was unavailable for comment, but released a statement saying, "We can't do this all day."

12:40 PM 8/8/2009 — The Gospel lessons for the past three weeks have spoken to us about cures and miracles: the paralytic in Galilee; the two blind men and the mute man possessed by a demon; the feeding of the five thousand on the hillside; last week’s Gospel in which the Lord walks on water and calms the sea; the Transfiguration of Our Lord on Mt. Tabor, which we just celebrated. And as we’ve journeyed along with these Gospel passages during these summer weeks, we’ve tried to see in them the lessons helpful for our interior life: the reality and purpose of suffering; the need for trust in God; the need to cultivate the virture of hope and abandonment to God’s holy will. And last week, when we read about our Lord walking on the water, we noticed how remarkable it was that, having witnessed all these other miracles and signs, the disciples still were so amazed and so disbelieving at what they saw on the water. During all of these previous events, the truth of our Lord’s divinity was practically forced down the disciples’ throats; and yet, when he walks on the water, they throw up their arms in absolute amazement, as if they had no idea he could do this. I gave you last week the example of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson; and how Holmes would make what is actually a rather simple but clever deduction, pulling out of a jumble of clues something that everyone else had missed; and how Watson would be absolutely beside himself in amazement and wonder, even though he’s seen it happen a hundred times. Why? Because he suffers from the same fault from which the disciples suffered, and from which we suffer: the inability to deal with the unexpected, the desire to have our lives fit neatly into the program we have charted for ourselves; and when a square peg comes along that doesn’t fit into the round hole we’ve carved into our lives, we pretend it isn’t there. Spiritual maturity means, more than anything else, the ability to work with the hand we’re dealt, not lament that we would like a better one.
          And all of that we’ve learned just by reading the Gospel lessons of the last four or five Sundays. Next week, of course, it all changes, and we leave the miracles behind and launch into the moral lessons of our Lord, starting with the parable of the wicked and slothful servant. And, boy, doesn’t that sound like a nail-biter? But before our Lord tells us how wicked and slothful we are, he wants to make sure we’ve gotten the point of these miracles, which is why he gives us one more in today’s Gospel lesson. And it’s a miracle which brings us full circle: for, just as we started out four weeks ago with the cure of a possessed man, so we end in the same way. This time, a possessed boy is brought by his father to the disciples, and we get to see if the disciples learned anything in the last four weeks; and apparently they didn’t because they couldn’t help the boy, which somehow doesn’t surprise us. So, they have to bring him to Jesus, and zim, bam, boom, he’s cured. But they do have the wisdom to ask him why they couldn’t do it; and in his answer to them, our Lord reveals the secret to the whole package: “This kind of demon,” he says, “can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.” And just to make sure they get the point, he predicts his own death by saying, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him.”
          That’s it. That’s what? The cross. Back at the beginning of this month we celebrated a little commemoration called The Procession of the Venerable and Life-giving Cross. The services on that day highlight some of the deep meanings that the Cross has for us as Christians, and what graces can be ours if only we are willing to accept the Cross in our lives. And although we try time and again to deny it, we have to come to terms with the fact that God has given us the grace to do what it is he calls us to do. So, on any particular day, I might find the exercise of my priestly duties burdensome and joyless, and I might wake up in the morning and say to myself, "Oh, God, not another day of this!" But, try as I might, I can't escape the fact that God has and does give me the graces to do what he has called me to do. If I choose to wallow in my own indifference and feel sorry for myself because I don't want to do what I'm supposed to do, that's not a lack on God's part, that's a deficiency in me.
          And this is true of everyone of us. So, you who are married may very well get tired of the tedium and routine that married life can sometimes become; and you may have to struggle to act with charity toward your spouse because the years have exposed to you his or her defects. But believing that the grace is there to do what needs to be done before God is a basic teaching of our faith. We call it the Dogma of Sufficient Grace. Christ lays no burden upon us without the grace to carry it through; maybe not with ease, maybe not without struggle, maybe not in the way we would personally prefer; but it is never impossible.
          That's why Mary's life, whose Holy Dormintion we will celebrate at the end of this week, is the perfect example for all of us. Just as it was for her, the circumstances of our lives are often not choices we make for ourselves; and we may very well doubt our ability to be faithful in the difficulties they present. But as our Lord said in St. John, “You have not chosen me; I have chosen you.” And because he has chosen us, he will not abandon us. We can pretend that he has, because we don't want to admit to our failures. But that's only because we forget that the gift of sufficient grace is not a guarantee that our lives will be problem free. Our Lord said that himself: “If you would be my disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross everyday, and follow me.”
          Now, those words may not sound particularly pleasant to us, but what the angel said to Mary at her Annunciation, he has also said to each one of us: he said it to me on the day I was ordained, he said it to you on the day you were married, he said it to each one of us on the day of our baptism: “Be not afraid.” That one simple sentence, spoken by God through all eternity, sums up the entire Gospel on the subject of grace. But so often we are afraid. We’re afraid of obligation. We’re afraid of sacrifice. And to overcome this fear we have to accept what we so often don't want to accept: that God has not abandoned us; and we must respond as Mary did: “Be it done unto me according to Thy word.” Saying that did not mean that Mary understood it all; and I think it is unreasonable to assume that she did, for she did not have clairvoyance. What she did have was faith. Faith enough to say, "I am not afraid." Just as we must say every single day: I am not afraid of following the Lord. I am not afraid of responsibility and obligation. I am not afraid of living with a sudden and unexpected loss. I am not afraid of marriage. I am not afraid of the priesthood. I am not afraid of the Gospel. I am not afraid of the cross. I am not afraid of things not going my way. I am not afraid of doing what is right, no matter what the consequences. I am not afraid of life.

And Jesus rebuked the demon, and he came out of him; and the boy was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast him out?" And Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains, and nothing would be impossible for you."

3:58 PM 8/5/2009 —

[The specticle of the recent "town hall meetings" has demontrated how upset the current administration can become when the citizenry is "too informed." It's reached the point where our law-makers are actually going on the main stream media to scold us for knowing too much about the proposed health care plan they're planning on imposing on us. Obviously, we're not supposed to know the facts; just trust them to do what's "for our own good." The "people's government" envisioned by our Founding Fathers is, I guess, just supposed to be a nice sounding platitude, not a reality. That's why a liberal's (read "statist's") greatest enemy is an informed electorate, and why they become so upset when they run into a crowd of Americans who have actually read the bills before both houses of Congress. We're just supposed to be poor little lambs who allow ourselves to be governed by them.
     Phil Lawler, over at CatholicCulture.org, provides the following essential facts about Obama's Health Care plan, facts that Obama and Congress would rather you not have. Phil candidly admits that this was not compiled by himself, but is the work of some of his "astute friends in Washington." The footnotes I've inserted are my own, not Phil's. Please give some attendtion, as well, to my own reflections at the end. —PP]

From the Latest Polls:

• 51% of Americans self-identify as pro-life (Gallup Poll, June 2009)

• 61% of Americans say abortion is an important issue and 52% think it is too easy to obtain an abortion in America (Rasmussen Survey, June 2009)

• 62% of Americans want more limitations placed on abortions and only 36% believe abortion should be generally available (CBS Poll, June 2009).61% of Americans say abortion is an important issue and 52% think it is too easy to obtain an abortion in America (Rasmussen Survey, June 2009)

• 62% of Americans want more limitations placed on abortions and only 36% believe abortion should be generally available (CBS Poll, June 2009).

Elections have consequences:

• One of President Obama's funding requests, the Financial Services Appropriations bill, allows publicly funded abortion in the District of Columbia. This overturns a 13-year ban on taxpayer-funded abortions in the nation's capital. Amendments to restore the ban were either blocked or defeated by the majority. Currently, over 41% of pregnancies in DC end in abortion, giving the capital city the highest abortion rate in the nation.

• Senator Durbin's amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill cleared the way for taxpayer-funded abortions through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which covers 8 million federal employees. The FEHBP has been repeatedly discussed as an example of what a government-run health care system could be.

• The House of Representatives voted against the Pence Amendment to the Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations bill. The amendment would have prevented Planned Parenthood or any business doing abortions from receiving taxpayer funds. Last year Planned Parenthood performed over 300,000 abortions. The Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, reports that abortions increase by 30% when taxpayers foot the bill.

• Through an amendment offered by Senator Lautenberg, the Senate has permanently reversed the Mexico City Policy, which banned taxpayer funds going to international agencies that perform or promote abortions. This gives the existing policy of funding international abortion services—set by President Obama's Executive Order on January 23—the force of law. Future presidents will be unable to re-establish the funding ban.

• Following President Obama's instructions, Congress has completely defunded abstinence education and has designated a minimum of $164 million for contraceptive-only comprehensive sex education. In addition, the Secretary of HHS has a $640 million fund which can be used for family-planning services, if pro-Planned Parenthood Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius so desires.¹ A Zogby poll found that 80% of parents want more abstinence education. Studies prove that abstinence education is more effective in delaying the onset of sexual activity in young people than is comprehensive sex education. CSE has demonstrated no effect on teen behavior. (And do you find that surprising?).

• President Obama is supporting the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which, through its affirmation of "sexual and reproductive health," recognizes an international right to abortion. He is urging the Senate to ratify the treaty, which sets up an international committee to decide whether the United States complies with the treaty's provisions. If ratified, the treaty would take precedence over all federal and state laws dealing with the disabled.² The Vatican objects to the inclusion of the phrase "sexual and reproductive health" because it "may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons." Like CEDAW (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which contains an international mandate for access to abortion services) and CRC (the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which interferes with parental rights over their children) which Obama also favors, this is a treaty that the United States should not ratify.

Heath-care reform:

• The House version of the health care bill creates an "Advance Care Planning Consultation" for Medicare patients to be counseled on end-of-life decisions. Such consultations would take place every five years, or more frequently if there was a significant change in the individual's health. Two pro-life Congressmen state that "This provision could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself."³

• Senator Mikulski (who identifies herself as a Catholic) offered an amendment to the Senate health-care bill that would provide for any service deemed "medically necessary or medically appropriate." When pressed by Senator Hatch, she admitted this would require the coverage of abortion services by health-insurance companies.

• As currently written, both the Senate and House health care bills would allow federal officials to require the inclusion of abortion coverage in virtually all health plans, as well as taxpayer funding of abortions, and would expand the number of abortion providers in most parts of the country. Abortion services have been defined by legislatures and courts as being included in the term "essential health care." Because abortion would be "essential," it would be necessary to provide access to abortion, thereby mandating subsidizing the practice with taxpayer monies and increasing the number of abortionists and opening more abortion facilities in areas of the country that now do not have them. Catholic health-care professionals would be required to participate in abortions or run the risk of being charged with "patient abandonment," which could mean the loss of their license to practice.

• The Capps Amendment to one of the health-care reform bills, presented as a compromise, is not: the government-run health plan offered in every region of the country will include whatever abortions are eligible for public funding and will include all abortions if so approved by the HHS Secretary.

• A provision of the health-care bills establishes the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality which would do comparative effectiveness research—that is, it would determine the most cost-effective treatment for a specific medical condition and would override the doctor's decision for his patient. A government bureaucracy dictating health care decisions has, in England, led to rationing of health care, selection of inappropriate or ineffective treatments for individual patients and premature deaths. When a pro-life Senator offered an amendment in committee to prevent rationing of health care services for the old, the infirm and the chronically ill, it was voted down by the majority. President Obama said recently that "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for 80% of the total health care bill."

• The health-care bills call for a new health-benefits advisory committee whose task it will be to define benefits for all health plans in the United States. As it will be an unelected committee named by the Secretary of HHS, there will be no accountability to the citizenry for what the committee determines will be the necessary components of health coverage.

• Under the current health-care reform bills, there is no conscience clause allowing an individual or an organization with a religious affiliation to opt out of health plans that include an abortion component. The Senate bill contains a very weak conscience clause for those religions that, as a tenet of their faith, do not seek medical care (they would not be required to carry insurance coverage). Catholic institutions and organizations with Catholic affiliations would be forced to offer abortion coverage in their employee health insurance package.⁴

• The Senate health care bill contains a hidden provision that matches the provisions of the Freedom of Choice Act; it would preempt any state law hindering a woman's access to "essential health services"—again, a phrase that includes abortion services. Federal health care legislation would overturn the following state laws:

• 42 states have physician-only laws that limit the practice of abortion;

• 32 states follow the funding limitations of the federal Hyde Amendment (no taxpayer funding of abortions);

• 27 states have abortion clinic regulations to protect the health of women;

• 30 states have informed-consent laws (women receive information about fetal development, fetal pain or the causal link between abortion and breast cancer; or are offered an ultrasound exam);

• 24 states require a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion;

• 36 states require some kind of parental involvement: either parental notice (11 states) or parental consent (25 states);

• at least 5 states have funded abortion alternatives (pregnancy centers, prenatal assistance, adoption promotion).

• The Hyde Amendment cannot take care of the abortion issue in the various health care bills. Abortion must be explicitly excluded from coverage. Access to abortion also must be explicitly excluded or taxpayer funds will be used to fund abortions and the expansion of abortion services and facilities. This means there must be language in the actual legislation that excludes abortion in "medically necessary or medically appropriate" and "essential" health care.⁵

• The health-care system in the United States accounts for 14% of our economy (It equals the size of Great Britain's entire economy). Any plan to revamp that large a piece of any economy requires thoughtful decision-making, not a rush-to-completion with a majority of the Congress not even reading the legislation. Congressman Conyers said: "What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you've read the bill?" It should be noted that lawyers make up 54% of the Senate and 36% of the House of Representatives.⁶

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¹ It is chilling to thinking that Secretary Sebelius calls herself a Catholic. It is more chilling to acknowledge that her bishop, after making some initial noise, has failed to respond in a public way to every denial of the Faith implied in almost every exersise of her public duty.

² This is an extremely important point. It is one of the little-known "secrets" of our Constitution that treaties signed by the President and subsequently ratified by the Senate have the force of irreverable law. It is a loop-hole—I imagine overlooked by our Founding Fathers—which provides for laws which effect the American people at the most intimate level, to become law without the consent of the governed. For example, had President Bush signed the "Kyoto Treaty," it would have required the US Government to control what kind of car you are allowed the buy, and how long you can burn the lights in your house. Other countries signed it because their constitutions don't require the government to impose the provisions contained in international treaties upon their citizens; but the US Constitution does. Thus, Japan could sign the Kyoto Treaty without worry because Tokyo has no power to compel the prefectural governers to obey it. Visit all the countries which signed Kyoto, and you'll find that none of them have actually reduced "green house" gasses.
     When applied to the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it would require the US government to ensure unrestricted abortion "rights" to everyone, everywhere, without a law being passed, without a ruling from any judge, without any imput from the American people.

³ That's right! And Dr. Jack Kavorkian, who spent years in prison for what he called "assisted suicide," would be vindicated, since what he was doing would become a constitutional right. I wonder if his family will sue for damages.

⁴ In recent years, we've seen Catholic parishioners band together to withhold donations because their bishop has closed parishes, or as a reaction to the mishandling of the sex abuse crisis. I wonder what they will do when the diocesan health care plan the government requires it to provide for its employees (paid for by you) requires it to pay for abortions.

⁵ Remember that stale old argument, "I'm opposed to abortion unless it's necessary to save the life of the women"? I'm still waiting for a health care professional to name just one medical condition in which an abortion is the only way to save someone. Are you aware that no such medical condition is known to medical science?

⁶ Sometimes I think the most important government reform we could have would be a draconian interpretation of the separation of powers which would prohibit lawyers from serving in legislative office. After all, the Framers conceived a government run by the people, didn't they? I'm certain they never envisioned such a thing as a "career politician."

Sometimes your PP browses the blogs of other priest-bloggers out there; and there are a quite a few who have fallen into that tired old habit, often used by "country club" Republicans, of objecting to what they perceive to be offensive in a bill, while surrendering to the essential premise on which the bill is based. For example: "We all agree that our health care system needs reform, but...," in much the same way that some would say, "We all agree that Global Warming is a problem, but..." or "We all agree that [insert liberal premise here], but...." They're right to object to the provisions in the two proposed bills that are offensive to Catholic moral teaching; but they lose the battle before the fight even begins by accepting the premise of the enemy. The simple fact is, our health care system is not in need of any reform! It is the best in the world ... right now! No one in this country is denied medical care because of lack of money. No one has ever died because they can't afford treatment. No other country in the world can make that claim.
          By contrast, in every country which has universal health care as a law—Japan, Great Britain, Sweden, China, Cuba)—people do die every day because the government, for one reason or another, has decided that it is not in the national interest (or, more properly, in the interest of the national treasury) to keep them alive. They're either too old, too sick, too many, or not of the right political persuasion for the government to justify the expense. And each one of these countries promised, in the beginning, that "That could never happen here." Only it does happen. It has to happen. It is the nature of governments to make value judgements based on what they can afford; and it is the nature of political parties to make value judgements based on what will keep them in the seat of power for as long as possible.
          It is not sufficient for us to play the conciliation game: to admit that some sort of reform of our health care system is needed, then nit-pick about the moral objections we might have about the details. Our stand must be more principled than that. It is not the particular provisions in the bills which are offensive. It is the very concept of government administered health care that is offensive. These United States do not need any health care reform!

by Priestly Pugilist

11:36 AM 8/3/2009 — Those of you who have had appointments with me in the rectory have, no doubt, seen my pipe rack containing all my Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. I read all of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories growing up; and, whenever there’s a new dramatization of one on TV or the movies, I always see it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve reread those stories with a more critical eye, and realized that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t as smart as I originally thought he was. After all, it’s no trick for a mystery writer like Doyle to make his detective seem brilliant when he’s made every other character in the story an idiot. Holmes always solves the case, but he does so amid an entourage of bumbling policemen and his own friend and biographer, Watson, who can’t seem to see the fog for the weather.
          And it occurs to me that I get that same feeling whenever I read this passage about our Lord walking on water and calming the sea. They’re all amazed at this feat; and it’s almost as if, up to this point, our Lord has given his disciples no indication that he is in any way Divine. Except that just prior to this, our Lord fed 5000 men on the hillside. Last Sunday we read that passage of our Lord feeding five thousand men with a handful of food. That’s a pretty good card trick. And it’s not the first time he’s done that. You would think that, by this time, our Lord’s disciples would understand that this Jesus fellow is different, and that they shouldn't really expect to be surprised by anything. And that passage ends, you’ll recall, with our Lord sending his disciples in the boat to the other side of the lake, while he stays behind to pray. That passage is repeated in the beginning of today’s Gospel, which recounts our Lord walking across the lake to them and calming the sea.
          So, why are they surprised to see our Lord commanding nature? Why haven't they gotten the message that Jesus is God, even in spite of our Lord continually showing them? And I think the answer might be a defect of our fallen nature which is shared by all of us: we resist accepting the reality of things which don’t fit our predetermined view of the world. And this can be a real hindrance in our interior life; because, if there’s anything that makes a barrier to spiritual growth and union with God, it’s the inability to deal with the unexpected. I don’t think you could find a priest ordained for any length of time who will tell you that the priesthood is exactly what he thought it would be when he was in the seminary. And you can judge for yourselves how accurate was your prediction of what marriage would be like when you were engaged. Not to suggest that how it turned out is bad, but I think you’ll admit that it’s certainly different in many ways. But our ability to adjust our expectation is what enables us to persevere in these vocations—and not only persevere, but make them even more special than we had imagined.
          In the interior life, if our hearts are not open to accepting whatever the Lord chooses to throw our way, we run the risk of ending up bitter and frustrated, and in danger of losing our faith. As a priest I see this pattern repeated in people’s lives again and again: the Church will teach something that pertains to what we must do or not do to be saved; and because it doesn’t fit our plan—because we view it as too much a burden—we just reject it, as if we, ourselves, are the measure of all things. Maybe we tried but failed, and we don’t like to think of ourselves as failures, so we declare that what the Church requires is wrong because we, after all, are perfect. But who is the person who tries something once then quits. We usually call that person a loser.
          Failure in our duties to Christ and his Church are certainly serious things, but they are not totally unexpected, which is why our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Confession. Confession would have no place in the Church were it not for the fact that a certain amount of failure is expected. What’s important is not that we never fail, but that our failures do not become occasions of bitterness and rejection of the truth, but rather of self-examination and improvement. Sherlock Holmes, if you remember from your childhood reading, failed in his very first case. If he had simply given up detection and become an accountant instead, that would have been the last story in the series, and a pretty lousy one at that. He chose, instead, to learn from his mistakes, and he never failed again. Peter, in the Gospel lesson, doubted our Lord and began to sink into the water; but, after our Lord bailed him out (no pun intended), he learned something, and made his confession of faith saying, “Truly, you are the son of God.” And even then, we can’t say that he never failed again, because he did fail when he denied our Lord three times on Good Friday. But even these repeated failures didn’t turn our Lord’s heart against him. And the Lord’s heart will never be turned against any of us, so long as we never stop trying.
          Maybe the Lord hasn’t dealt with us the way we thought he should. Maybe we’ve been surprised or even hurt by what we perceive to be the hand dealt to us by God. But the mind of God is not ours to know. The heart of God we know already; and, knowing that can make every obligation and burden for the sake of Christ possible.

by Father Michael Venditti

1:46 PM 7/31/2009 — Yesterday, Msgr. John O. Barres, STD, JCL, DD, was consecrated¹ fourth Roman Catholic Bishop of Allentown at the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Siena; and, for your PP, it was an emotional reunion of lots of old friends. Bishop Barres and I were briefly in the seminary together (just one year); but he graciously pretends that we had spent years together, recalling jokes that I have forgotten—until he mentions them. It was the same for all the old friends who descended on Allentown for the occasion: Archbishop O'Brien of Baltimore, who was our rector in the seminary, who saved my a__ more than once, and whose brilliant column on contraception graces last year's page; Bishop ____ ____, the bishop who ordained me to the Holy Priesthood, and whose frail health demands our prayers; Bishop ____ ____, whose solicitude and kindness allows me to minister in the Eastern Church I love so well; my own bishop, Bishop ____ ____, whose trust provides me the greatest joy of my life, that of caring for the souls of two of his parishes; Father Gerry Murray, esteemed Canon Lawyer, slayer of Cardinals and good friend from seminary days; Father Michael Jones of Bridgeport, whose quick wit can recall seminary adventures best forgotten; Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, whose classes on pastoral theology were sources of light; Father George Rutler, cartoon feature on EWTN, skiing partner and fellow moose hunter, whose words grace these pages more than once; Father Bob Connor of Opus Dei, spiritual guide, fellow blogger and dangerous lunatic; and Father "C.J." McCloskey of Opus Dei, whose retreat conferences are still fresh in my mind. In fact, Msgr. Barres was on a retreat being preached by C.J. at our "clubhouse" in Massachusetts where we gather sometimes to plot the overthrow of the Church, when he found out he had been appointed Bishop of Allentown.
          But the event was singular not because it was loaded with my old friends, but because it was a very rare occurrence: maybe once in your life you may have the opportunity to witness a normal person made a bishop of the Catholic Church. There wasn't one of us there who didn't wish, even for just a moment, that he could be a priest of the Diocese of Allentown. One wonders if his priests, who don't know him yet, realize how blessed they are.
          The event was singular also for the fact that, of all of us, Bishop Barres is the youngest. He is an exceedingly bright young man, brimming with ideas. That fact, ironically, occasioned the only dark moment of day for me. Another priest, remarking on the new Bishop's brilliance, offered the thought—probably shared by others—that Bishop Barres wouldn't be in Allentown long (he is, after all, still in his mid-40's), and suggested that Allentown would be a good "laboratory" for some of John's "great ideas" before moving on to bigger and better things. Set aside for a moment the insult in the suggestion that there are "better things" than Allentown. Call me old fashioned,—which I obviously am—but no diocese should be anyone's "laboratory." A bishop's responsibility before God is to the people and priests of the diocese entrusted to his care, not to some imaginary assignment he may or may not receive in the future; just as the responsibility of a pastor is to the people of his parish, and not to some desk job which is only available to him because he's a pastor. Thankfully, there's no chance that Bishop Barres would view his current assignment as just another rung on a ladder; and, if he does move on one day, it will be an act of obedience, not a desire to move on.
          There was a time—long before Vatican II—when residential bishops were almost always chosen from the ranks of parish priests. It wasn't all that uncommon for a holy priest that no one ever heard of, in some country parish in the middle of no-where, to suddenly find himself bishop of the diocese. It wasn't administrative skill or academic degrees, but personal holiness and wisdom in the care of souls that was important. That all changed with Pope Paul VI; he took the oversight role of the Holy Office and gave it to the Secretariat of State (diplomacy over dogma), and made bishops out of bureaucrats rather than pastors; and, suddenly, holiness of life and love of Christ and his Church became less important than who you knew. Pope John Paul II compounded the problem by expressing a preference for those with advanced degrees. I can understand his idea, since ignorance is a root cause of heresy; but since being allowed to pursue an advanced degree has become itself a exercise of "who-you-knowism" in most dioceses today ... well, you get the idea.
          Enough. John Barres has become the Bishop of Allentown. Like all bishops today, he did it because he had all the right contacts; but what those contacts don't understand is that he fooled them. He's not one of them; he only pretended to be. Won't they be surprised when he governs his diocese as a priest after the Heart of Jesus Christ. I, for one, am looking forward to the fireworks.

by Priestly Pugilist

---

¹ Being an Eastern Catholic priest, your PP prefers to use the language of "consecration" rather than "ordination" when referring to the making of a bishop, and the language of "enthronement" rather than "installation" when referring to the inauguration of his ministry in a particular diocese. This choice of vocabulary tends to annoy Vatican II types no end, since they suffer from the misconception that the Council "redefined" the making of a bishop as a participation in the sacrament of Holy Orders.
     Both Vatican II and the Council of Trent wrestled with the question of exactly what the making of a bishop was. Trent "taught" that it was not a sacrament and used the vocabulary of "consecration"; Vatican II "taught" that it was a sacrament and used the vocabulary of "ordination"; but a cursory reading of the précis of the councils clearly shows a deliberate decision by the fathers of both councils to avoid defining anything about this question. Simply put, neither council felt competent to settle the question, and left it open.
     Most Roman Catholics will vigorously deny this, citing numerous references, in both concilair and post-consiliar documents,—including the rite of "ordination" itself—to the bishop enjoying the "fullness of the priesthood"; but, as any competent theologian will tell you, a liturgical text, while certainly intending to reflect the faith of the Church, cannot define it. Yes, there is the laying on of hands; yes, there is a prayer which asks the Lord to "confer on this, your servant, the fullness of the priesthood"; but never in the history of Christendom has a liturgical rite been cited as a definition of dogma.
     The converse position, known as the "Bound Powers" theory, holds that the fullness of the priesthood rests in every priest, but that certain powers of that priesthood—principally the power to ordain—are held bound and made dormant by the authority of Christ in the institution of the Church, with those powers being released and made active by the consecration which sets a priest aside from others for service as a bishop. This was the majority opinion in the Church right up through the middle ages; and, since the Great Schism occurred during this time, the Eastern Churches cling to the language of "consecration" to this day, if not to the actual belief in it. The basis for the theory is Scripture, which speaks only of two ranks of ordained ministry: διακονος (deacon) and επισκοπος (variously translated as bishop, priest or elder). While the term πρεσβυτερος (priest) occurs in the New Testament, it is used interchangeably with επισκοπος, with no distinction between them (cf. Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Biblical Institute Press, Rome, 1981, p. 592). The first mention of three ranks in the clergy does not occur until St. Ignatius of Antioch, who writes of men being ordained to the "fullness of the priesthood" to assist the bishop. So, there!
     Your PP cites two important theological sources for maintaining that a Catholic may still believe in the Bound Powers theory in spite of the language used by Vatican II: (1) Msgr. James T. O'Connor, STD, your PP's own professor of Dogmatic Theology from St. Joseph Seminary, whose reputation is well known and whose text books are used widely, and (2) one Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, now happily reigning as Pope Benedict XVI. For a more detailed treatment of our Holy Father's thoughts on this question, go to last year's page (the link is way down below) and search for the post entitled "Pope Benedict vs. St. Thomas ~ the thrilla in Ostia", dated 3/1/2008.
     Of course, for those who continue to stubbornly insist that the language used at Vatican II settles the question once and for all, and that it's heresy to believe in the Bound Powers theory, you can be consoled by the fact that, according to "your" theology, any attempt to make your PP a bishop would be invalid, since—according to you—I would go to my "ordination" with a defective intention. But don't hold your breath for this drama to enfold ... so far, no one has made the suggestion.

12:36 PM 7/27/2009 —

[Fr. V. candidly admits that this is a repeat from a homily from last year. As he says, "It is a colosal conceit for me to believe that anyone listens closely enough to know he's heard it before." —PP]

3:07 PM 7/22/2009 — Like last week and the week before, I wish to offer a few words of reflection upon one of today’s Epistle lessons, of which there were two since this Sunday is actually two commemorations: the regular Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, and the Sunday of the Fathers of the first Six Ecumenical Councils. The Epistle for the Sunday of the Council Fathers is taken from the Letter to the Hebrews, which is rare, even though it contains some of the most powerful words in Scripture: “Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, and the same forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings; for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace, not by observances about food which do not benefit anyone.” No one is quite sure who the human author of this letter was; but, if it wasn’t St. Paul, certainly his theme is exactly the same as St. Paul’s in Romans which we had been looking at: that you can’t make up your own religion with your own rules and claim to be a Christian. Here, the occasion is the preaching of those in the Church who were insisting that all the Jewish regulations about Kosher food continue to be observed by the Christians; and his point is that it’s Christ that should be the focus of the Christian heart, and he alone is sufficient. The Gospel of Christ is the rule of the Christian’s life. The Sacraments of Christ are the sources of the Christian’s strength. The death of Christ is the salvation of the Christian soul. The resurrection of Christ is the reason for the Christian’s hope. The Eucharist of Christ is the very presence of Christ in the Christian. And unity with Christ in the interior life is the source of the Christian’s joy. If it is not so, then something is wrong.
          Of course, when the author of Hebrews speaks of strange teachings, he’s speaking immediately of the many special observances that the Jews of his time were practicing, which cannot save them, because they are not of Christ. But like all Scripture, he’s also writing to us. So, we must examine what “strange teachings” we sometimes use to replace Christ’s words as the guide for our lives. How many people are there, for example, who accept our Lord’s words on the indissolubility of marriage, until their own son or daughter gets divorced and wants to marry again, then all of a sudden the words of Christ don’t apply. Or those who accept our Lord’s words on the sanctity of life, until their own daughter becomes pregnant, then the words of Christ don’t apply. The teachings of Christ come to us as well through the Church which he himself established, and yet so many people today seem to favor a disingenuous kind of Christianity which claims to love the Savior, but not his Church, even though our Lord said quite clearly that they are one.
          “Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, and the same forever.” Christ does not change. We might be tempted to change what we believe because of the winds of popular fancy; but if we do, we leave Christ behind. Christ doesn’t change. The message he preached more than 2000 years ago is the same one he preaches today through the Church. And if that is not the guide of our lives on this earth, then we may think we’re living a Christian life, but we’re not. Our Eastern Church holds to many ancient Christian traditions which she received directly from the Apostles and their immediate successors, the Fathers of the Church. Some things have been added over the centuries, of course, but nothing that bears directly on the faith. Our Liturgy, our doctrine, our focus on Christ as the one true redeemer, the Gospel that we live and preach, the cross of death which brings eternal life, the love of the Mother of God.... All these things the true Christian treasures in his heart, because everything else is just window dressing.
          The Letter to the Hebrews was occasioned by the disturbing phenomenon of Christians beginning to replace their faith in Jesus Christ with all kinds of extra things that really had nothing to do with Christ. And although he speaks primarily of Jewish practices and customs, the message to us is just as clear. How can we claim to be guided by the words of Christ, when we’re complaining and moaning about that relative who offended us or that neighbor we don’t like, or how that person over there makes me so mad I could spit. And then we come into Church and pray as if Christ means something to us, when our own lives proclaim that we could care less. St. Paul said it best, when he encountered such things among the Christians: “As for me, I preach Christ, and him crucified.” Just as Christ said to Martha, “You are anxious and upset over many things; one thing only is necessary.”
          Our prayer should be that when we walk among our fellow men and women, those we know and those we don’t know, everyone we meet should be able to say of us, “There goes someone who has read the life of Jesus Christ.”

by Father Michael Venditti

2:50 PM 7/22/2009 —

[Ya know all those polls that show how 100% of all Catholics think the Church is wrong about artificial contraception? Perhaps you're one of them. So, how do you explain this? —PP]

Hue, Vietnam (Union of Catholic Asian News) — Catholic villagers in Thua Thien-Hue province say they have tried their best to follow Church teaching on the use of artificial birth control methods in the face of the government's two-child policy.
          Huong Toan villagers, just like Vietnamese elsewhere in the country, are required to have no more than two children per family since 1994, when village authorities launched a nationwide family planning program. Families with more than two children have to pay rice to the government as a fine.
          Many local Catholics say they have done their best to remain true to Church teaching but some have had to resort to using contraceptives later on as they could not afford the hefty fines. Catherine Pham Thi Thanh, 44, said that since 1996, she has been fined a total of 3,800 kilograms of rice for having six children.
          Thanh, who produces rice alcohol and raises pigs to support her family, said she was fined 300 kilograms for her third child, 600 kilograms for the fourth, 900 kilograms for the fifth and 2,000 kilograms of rice for the sixth. Her children range from two to 15 years. She pointed out that her family makes an annual profit of only 700 kilograms of rice from their 1,000 square-meter farmland the local government grants them.
          Thanh said that in 2007, she decided to use an intrauterine device to save her family from having to pay 3,800 kilograms of rice if she were to have a seventh child. Thanh, who has studied only until the first grade, said she knows about natural family planning methods accepted by the Church, but is unable to practice them.
          She recalled that in 2005, local village authorities confiscated the possessions of a family who could not afford to pay the fine for having more than two children. Another villager, Anna Pham Thi The, 50, said she has seven daughters aged 2-29 years. The, who produces rice alcohol and raises pigs, said she is willing to be fined for having more children because her husband wants a son.
          According to sources, local people who have two children have been asked to use artificial contraceptive or undergo vasectomies free of charge.
          Father Joseph Nguyen Van Chanh, Huong Toan parish priest, said 90 percent of his 1,200 parishioners have agreed to pay fines as a way to be faithful to Church teaching. Local Catholics are taught natural family planning methods during marriage preparation courses, he noted. Some local Catholics said Father Chanh is asking for donations from benefactors to support local people with large families. Huong Toan village has about 14,000 people.
          According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "'every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil."
          Meanwhile, local state media reported that Pham Ngoc Minh, executive director of Vietnam Airlines, was chided by the prime minister recently for having a third child.
          Vietnam, with a population close to 86 million, has an annual increase of 1.12 million people, according to media.

OK, so Father Chanh reports that 90% of his parishioners are willing to subject themselves and their families to poverty rather than violate Catholic teaching on artificial birth control. How much are you sacrificing to remain faithful to this particular dogma? Do you even know why the Church teaches what she does? Do you even care? Do you think that Father Chanh's parishioners can give a reasoned theological defense of Church teaching on contraception? I doubt it. So, why do they sacrifice so much to remain faithful to it?
          That last question is really the most important one; and, if you don't know the answer ... well, that, in a nutshell, explains everything, doesn't it?

by Priestly Pugilist

2:31 PM 7/13/2009 — 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 scolding 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 in 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 prophets, 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 seem almost impossible. What is always possible, though, is prayer. Prayer is our direct link with Christ; it is our cell phone to God. 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—which you’ve heard me tell you many times before—of the two little boys walking home from Sunday school where they had just endured a lesson on prayer; and one turns to the other and says, “I just don't buy this prayer stuff, do you?”
          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

7:53 PM 7/10/2009 — We all know—or ought to know, since the evidence is pentiful—that Margaret Sanger, the patron saint of Planned Parenthood, was a racist and eugenicist. She favored legal abortion as a means of controlling the growth of the racial groups she deemed inferior. But that's all ancient history now. We don't dredge up the distasteful facts about the origins of the population-control movement. ... Or do we? ... Maybe Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't get the memo. She told the New York Times:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.

OK. Wait. Stop. Reset. Let's read that sentence again.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.

Yup, that's what I thought she said.

by Diogenes at CatholicCulture.org

2:32 AM 7/4/2009 —

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. ¹

9:56 PM 7/1/2009 —

For more than a decade, thousands of older women undergoing in-vitro fertilization have relied on an expensive embryo-screening procedure to boost their chances of getting pregnant.

Thus begins a cautionary story in the Wall Street Journal. But soon you realize that the real problem is not only getting pregnant but staying pregnant—that is, 1) avoiding miscarriage and 2) having a pregnancy that the mother won't choose to abort. Read on:

Most medical experts agree that embryo screening can significantly reduce the risk of serious chromosome-related illnesses, such as Down syndrome.

There's no risk that the mother will contract Down syndrome. It's a chromosome disorder. The mother's chromosomes were set for life some years ago: back when she was an embryo. The Journal account doesn't quite explain who faces the risks of illness—it would be impolite to talk about the baby, at a time when the mother still might decide not to continue the pregnancy—but of course it's the embryo.
          For women, embryo screening has offered two benefits: it helps them determine whether they will be able to continue the pregnancy, and whether they want to continue the pregnancy. For embryos, the procedure never offered any benefits at all. Just risks. The risk of contracting a chromosome disorder that will cause miscarriage. The risk of contracting Down syndrome, which will cause a restricted life. And the risk of becoming unwanted.
          Now the doctors tell us that the screening process can help identify chromosome disorders in embryos, but it might also cause chromosome disorders in embryos. So it's not at all clear that there's any benefit to would-be mothers. For embryos, the cost-benefit analysis hasn't changed.

by Diogenes at CatholicCulture.org

3:18 PM 7/1/2009 — Sam Miller is a prominent Cleavland businessman. He is also Jewish. His essay was sent to me by a friend who didn't give any information about where he found it.

Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta on one of the most important institutions that we have today in the United States, namely the Catholic Church?
     Do you know—the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it's free.
     The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 700,000 students. The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people—not just Catholics—in the United States today.
     But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country. They have blamed the disease of pedophilia on the Catholic Church, which is as irresponsible as blaming adultery on the institution of marriage. Let me give you some figures that you as Catholics should know and remember. For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church; 41.8% of clergywomen reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen have been sexually harassed. Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic problem.
     A study of American priests showed that most are happy in the priesthood and find it even better than they had expected, and that most, if given the choice, would choose to be priests again in face of all this obnoxious PR the church has been receiving.
     The Catholic Church is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. The agony that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church. You have been hurt by a small number of wayward priests that have probably been totally weeded out by now.
     Walk with your shoulders high and your head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States. Then remember what Jeremiah said: "Stand by the roads, and look and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is and walk in it, and find rest for your souls." Be proud to speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what your Church does for all other religions. Be proud that you're a Catholic.

by Sam Miller

As to Mr. Miller's original question, your PP has his own theory about why the journos are out to stick it to the Church: orgasms. The supposed right to unrestricted sexual gratification in any way and with anyone one chooses explains everything. According to the Church, marriage is forever; sex is for the married only, and has as it's primary purpose the transmission of human life, and is available to two people of the opposite sex by God's design; and any diliberately persued sexual gratification outside of the married covenant, with oneself or another, is a disorder, as is any sexual gratification which excludes the possibility of the transmission of human life. How dare the Church tell me how to live! As one recent commercial for one of those penis enlargement pills recently stated: "Why would you want to compromise on one of the most important parts of life?" Why, indeed? As everyone knows, without a big penis that performs on demand, life just isn't worth living, is it? Pancriatic cancer kills more people than AIDS, but is entitled to only a fraction of the money spent to cure it because—obviously—no form of cancer is contracted by the persuit of orgasms, mankind's most basic human right.
          So, if you can catch a Catholic priest—who has dedicated his life so completely to a cause outside of himself to the extent that he sacrifices the comforts of family life and the gratification of his sexual desires—with his pants down, that's big news! It validates every nasty thing we've ever thought about Catholics: they're evil because they want to deny me my orgasms! And we can prove it because 1.7% of those weird priests abused a kid. The fact that nearly ten times that many married Protestant ministers have been caught suffering from the same moral weaknesses is not news because the Proestant Churches—for the most part—don't care how or where I get my orgasms.
          As long as the Catholic Church refuses to acknowledge that orgasm is a basic human right, it will always be evil; and anti-Catholicism will always be the last acceptable bigotry of the enlightened intellectual.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:43 PM 6/29/2009 — So, what have we learned in two millennia?...

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance (Cicero, 55 B.C.)

...Evidently, nothing.

by Priestly Pugilist

9:21 AM 6/29/2009 — "Not even in Israel have I found such faith!" With those striking words our Lord surely must have stunned his disciples. He, after all was a Jew, and all his followers were Jews, and those that believed in him surely believed him to be the the Messiah promised by the prophets, who were also Jews. Rome, remember, was the enemy; and this Roman, a worshiper of false gods and idols, an officer in the Roman Legion occupying Jerusalem, had more faith in our Lord than all of them combined, or so our Lord says. How is that possible?
          Well, it’s possible because faith is a gift. God can give it to whomever he chooses. To be sure, it was the leaders of our Lord’s own religion who delivered him over to death, not the Romans; Pilate, remember, wanted to let him go, and acquiesced only because he feared a riot instigated by the Synagogue leaders. And just to make sure that the lesson is not lost on his disciples, our Lord says it very bluntly: "Many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."
          “Many will come from East and West.” There is no geographical boundary to salvation. It is faith—not location, race, national origin, or political allegiance—which determines favor in God’s eyes. The centurion. after all, wasn’t a Jew or a Christian. He was just a man with a problem; and he took that problem to our Lord with faith and humility. He wore the uniform of Rome, and probably sacrificed to the Roman Gods; but it was in a moment of crisis—the pending death of someone close to him—that the truth of his character became apparent.
          The shame, of course, is that it had to come to that. So often it’s the case, isn’t it? It takes some kind of crisis to bring us to our spiritual senses. Of course, it means that the faith is there to begin with, but we hide it. Maybe we’re embarrassed; maybe we’re lazy; maybe we’re just having too much fun to pay much attention to our interior life or the obligations of our faith. In another parish where I was once pastor there was a young woman who’s husband passed away very young. They weren’t chruch goers. And it wasn’t until after her husband’s death that she started coming to church weekly, which is good. But why did it have to take a tragedy?
          What we have to be conscious of is the fact that the Lord wants us. And he’s not going to let us get away that easily. We’re always free to reject him if we want. But most of us don’t reject the Lord outright: we just put him on the back burner; we hold him in reserve until we need him. And when we do that it is almost certain that the Lord is going to arrange for us to need him, because he wants us. And whatever it takes for us to realize that we need him is really up to us. The harder the nut, the bigger the nut cracker. Take the case of Lazarus. Our Lord admits to his disciples that the reason he delayed to go to his friend Lazarus when he was sick was to bring people to the faith. Now, we can say that it’s cruel for him to have allowed his friend to die just so he could raise him from the dead and convert some people; but what price do you put, then, on faith?
          If we are people of faith, as surely we must be—otherwise, why are we here?—then we must place some kind of value on our faith. And when we face a crisis in our lives, and we don’t know the reason for it, it might be just that: that we have not yet learned to trust the Lord as we should. And some people can’t learn to trust the Lord until everything else they trust has been taken from them.
          Our goal, of course, should be to have a faith and a trust in Christ that doesn’t require a crisis to make it first in our lives. But if we should fall short in that regard, and a crisis does befall us, it is wise to remember that there is a reason for everything. It may not be the reason we think, and it may even be a reason that we refuse to see because it concerns a shortcoming in our lives that we’re not willing to admit;—it is, after all, common for people in a crisis to blame everything and everyone other than themselves—but it is for a reason that Christ sometimes calls us his children; and you often must force a child to do things he doesn’t want to do precisely because he doesn’t see the need to do them.
          It took a crisis for our Lord to bring the centurion to faith. But when he did, the faith of that centurion was greater than that of all his disciples. Let’s pray that it won’t take such a crisis to bring us to the realization of our faith; but, if it should happen, let’s also resolve that we won’t turn away from him in bitterness, but rather turn to him in gratitude and need. Faith, indeed, is a gift; and it’s such a great gift, that some people have to be forced to accept it. But there is nothing that we have and nothing that we love that is more important.

by Father Michael Venditti

2:56 PM 6/23/2009 — As you should know by now, here at Priestly Pugilist we not only like to expose the weaknesses of bishops who betray the faith by their constant apologies and promises to "work with" a manifestly anti-Christian government, but also like to blow the trumpet for those who know how to stand up to one. And one such man—it's always nice to know there are still some men in the episcopacy—is the young Bishop of Bayonne, Lescar and Oloron in the Basque region of France (I thought it was tough being pastor of two parishes. How would you like to be bishop of three dioceses?). Here is a letter His Excellency wrote to the Mayor of Biarritz prior to that city's "Gay Pride" event which occured recently:

Mr. Mayor,
     Having recently learned through families living in Biarritz of the forthcoming "Gay Pride" affair, I would just like to express my profound incredulity. It is yet another official offence aimed at the Catholic Church to believe the announced presence of the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” virulently displaying their anti-Christianity.
     I cannot even imagine how Muslims and Jews would react if the symbols of their religious traditions were used in this way....
     The disruptive protests made by groups who are for the most part outsiders in the city of Biarritz do not represent, by far, the deep conviction that homosexual persons feel. One need only read some of their particular testimonies to understand how these are suffering.
     Besides the fact that young people, particularly children, did not need to see these protests so aggressively displayed, such sexual license exposed on city streets can only have a negative effect on social morality and the common sense of the majority of our citizens.
     I wanted to share with you these few simple thoughts. You have, Mr. Mayor, the assurance of my prayers and my sentiments dedicated to Christ and his Church.

Before you read the Mayor's response, it's important to note what the Bishop does not say in his letter. He does not condemn homosexuality, nor even the idea of the "Gay Pride" event. In fact, he points out that one particular group invited by the city from outside to participate far from represents the "deep convictions" of the city's homosexual community;—with which, I repeat, the Bishop has not taken issue here—and refers to some explicit, anti-Catholic liturature published by it.
          Keeping that in mind, now enjoy the Mayor's response. It is the perfect example of someone responding to a letter which he has, obviously, not bothered to read:

Monsignor,
     I cannot hide the fact that I was ashamed to read your letter of June 18. It is obvious that you are not familiar with the laws of the Republic. That is unfortunate. As a politician I do not meddle in the affairs of the Church and I advise you to do the same concerning the affairs of City Hall. As for other things, we do not share the same concept of freedom, including that of speech and public demonstration. It is, nonetheless, a basic right in all democratic countries. Please accept, Monsignor, the assurance of my highest consideration.

Is it just me, or does anyone else question his "highest consideration" for the Bishop when he has obviously failed to even read the Bishop's letter before firing off a response to it? Then, again, as we've pointed out here many times, it is the particular penchant of liberals to accuse conservatives of doing exactly what they, themselves, do. He scolds the Bishop for "meddling" in the affairs of City Hall; but, when he invites to his city a group specificially known for their anti-Catholic demonstrations,—which include, among other things, the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament—does he seriously believe that he does "not meddle in the affairs of the Church"?
          Like any good liberal, he concludes by appealing to the Obamaesque non sequitors of democracy and free speech, the former he betrayed a long time ago when he decided to run for mayor of Biarritz as a Socialist, and the latter he is prepared to offer to anyone who agrees with him, but certainly not the Church; since, as everyone knows, the Catholic Church is evil.
          As for the Bishop's observation regarding how "Muslims and Jews would react if the symbols of their religious traditions were used in this way", the Mayor simply ignores it; since it's clearly a point against which no reasonable man could argue. Better to pretend it doesn't exist.
          The Bishop's carefully worded yet still forceful letter is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, even in an English translation; the Mayor's response...well...let's just say it isn't. But the Mayor gets away with it in the French press because—just like in the American press—anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry of the "enlightened" intelligencia.

by Priestly Pugilist

2:31 AM 6/22/2009 — 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 mamon; 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...all contained in the single word. 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

3:01 PM 6/15/2009 —

[Yes, it's been a slow week for updates. Not making an excuse. Just stating a fact. —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

12:38 PM 6/5/2009 —

"Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now...." (Barak Obama).

"Society in every state is a blessing; but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise" (Thomas Pain).

Knowing that June 4th was approaching, your PP knew he wanted to post something about this significant anniversary; but, it's an emotional commemoration for me due to the fact that I have personal acquaintance with a number of people directly or indirectly associated with the event. Regarding that latter point, I won't go into detail since maintaining the mirage of anonymity, lame and futile as it may be, continues to provide your PP with at least a fiction of plausible deniability. Suffice it to say, your PP is a true cosmopolitan, with personal ties much farther East than being a priest of an Eastern Catholic Church would suggest.
          During the time of the Beijing Olympics, when President Obama said he wanted the United States to emulate China, there may have been a smattering of gasps from some thinking people, but not nearly the public outcry there should have been. For most Americans, I fear that things like June 4th, and China's "one child" policy, are concepts they're unable to process mentally. After all, when American liberals latch on to fictions like over-population and global warming, meeting someone who left family and home and everything familiar to come here because she didn't want her baby aborted would be an event not easily processed.
          We Christians, of course, claim that family is important to us; but with the large percentage of Catholic married couples practicing artificial contraception, maybe meeing people who left their country for the right to have children—and the stories of those who died for it—might be instructive. Rather that pontificate further, I'll just get on with it.
          The following picture is probably the only image most Americans have of June 4th, 1989. China's state-run media shut down all foreign coverage after this point...;

...but, because the whim of chance threw your PP into personal friendship with people who were there, I have access to other images, some of which may be around on the internet, but most of which you'll not find anywhere. Some of these images are quite graphic. In selecting which of the many images provided to me, I decided to choose a few which seemed to me the most personal. If you are able, try to keep in mind that most of the people you're looking at are dead. Rather than just throw them up, I've included an AsiaNews story by Gianni Criveller about an interview with the former Archbishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen:

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) — “It is truly sad that 20 years have passed [since the Tiananmen massacre] and the tragedy still hasn’t been recognised by the government as an error and a crime.... Deng himself took full responsibility when in the days immediately after the massacre he went personally to congratulate the soldiers. He gave the order. But now Deng is long dead: is it really possible that years on justice still has not been served for fear of a person who died years ago?”.
          Card. Joseph Zen, Archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong, champion of democracy and religious freedom, expresses in these terms his displeasure and wonder at the Chinese government’s refusal to admit the error of Tiananmen. In an interview with AsiaNews—which will be published in full in coming days—he affirms that at the origins of this “rejection” is the Chinese dictatorial system, a system that it is time to change. “[The Chinese] system depends on one person. That person has been forward looking and intelligent on certain issues, but that person could not stand democracy, as he considered himself an emperor. Recently someone said: but how can we rehabilitate that movement [Tiananmen]? We would have to blame Deng Xiaoping! But that is impossible! So I ask: and why can we not blame Deng Xiaoping? He did something enormous. Mao was blamed for the cultural revolution, so why shouldn’t we blame Deng too? We must, absolutely, change this dictatorial, imperial system, which is the root cause of this vast tragedy”.

          The prelate—who twenty years ago was a simple priest—recalls the participation of the people of Hong Kong in the Tiananmen movement and their pain for the massacre. “That year [1989] gave birth to a new awareness and sensitivity among the people of Hong Kong: we are Chinese, we are part of this great nation. Up until that point we believed we were only people from Hong Kong. But on that occasion we all felt truly Chinese”. “At the time I was the religious director of the Salesian school of Aberdeen, superior of the community and school supervisor. Because the events took place on a Sunday, the following Monday, when we all gathered in the school, we spoke with tears in our eyes, because we felt Chinese and we shared in the emotions and fate of those young people who had the courage to come out and ask for a reform of their homeland. I remember in the aftermath of the massacre I made two speeches, and then we held a commemorative service for those heroes who died on that square and in the surrounding streets”.
          “In particular I remember the day of the great march when a million citizens here in Hong Kong took to the streets in prayer and song. It was a truly unique experience, something I will remember for the rest of my life”. From ‘89 on, every year in Hong Kong on June 4th, a great vigil is held to recall the dead of Tiananmen. Held in Victoria Park, thousands gather together. As bishop of Hong Kong, card. Zen always took part in the prayer vigil that preceded the gathering. “I remember a few years ago, during one of the prayer vigils I was asked if I would return the following year and I replied: next year I hope we will be here to celebrate a victory that is the recognition of the martyrs of Tiananmen as patriotic heroes and the government’s admission of its error in suppressing them”.

          “It is truly a sad thing that 20 years have gone by and the government still refuses to recognise its mistake and its great crime. But [for us], after 20 years nothing has changed, we still feel the profound ache of the loss of that youthful passion that was tragically wasted”.
          In recent days the Chief of the Hong Kong Executive, Donald Tsang, stated that the Tiananmen massacre had to be “left to history” and be forgotten, and he asked the people of Hong Kong to instead appreciate the “excellent economic results” achieved by Hong Kong and China in the aftermath of the massacre. Card. Zen replies: “That comment is not of his own making, it is simply official policy: by repressing that movement stability was gained and from it prosperity. But that is nonsense, pure nonsense. No-one can prove that stability grew from the repression of that movement, and in any case, success and prosperity can never, ever, justify such a terrible use of violence”.

[ In the aftermath of June 4th, the Red Army executed many of those who survived. Click here for a more graphic view of the above. ]

So, how far are we willing to go to fight for our freedom in the face of one man when, in the words of Cardinal Zen, "That person has been forward looking and intelligent on certain issues, but that person could not stand democracy, as he considered himself an emperor"? The young people slaughtered on June 4th, 1989, and those executed afterward, where never charged with treason; they were acused of attempting to deny to their fellow citizens the health care, economic prosperity and equality that the government provides. It should make us wonder: how many Americans regard Thomas Pain's words, "Give me liberty or give me death", as the words of a patriot, or the words of an extremist, right-wing kook?

by Priestly Pugilist

12:56 PM 5/11/2008 —

[Father Venditti indicates that this homily is essentially a repeat of last year's, but we include it here so that the cycle of his homilies remains unbroken.
     The icon of Pentecost shown here is typical; some icons of this event show the Mother of God present in the Upper Room, while others do not. The figure at the bottom of the icon does not represent anyone in particular, but a symbolic figure, dressed as a king, known as "Cosmos." King Cosmos, as his name suggests, represents all those who have placed their hopes in the comforts of this world. He holds in his hands a hamper or bag which contains his riches and worldly prossessions, all of which will be useless to him in the life to come. The void in which he finds himself is jet black because, having placed his faith in material concerns, the light of Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost cannot reach him. He grips his worldly possessions tightly, which is what holds him down in the void. Only by releasing his grasp on them can he ascend out of the void into the light of new life.
     More tidbits for the unenlightend: The liturgical color for Pentecost in the Byzantine Tradition is green, not the red that became popular in the Western Church in the Middle Ages. Green is the color of Spring and new life, just as the Church is infused with new life by the coming of the Spirit. It joins the Christian celebration of Pentecost to the Jewish feast of the same name, which concluded a 50 day celebration of the harvest that began at Passover. In fact, even in the West green was the color of Pentecost for centuries; a reminder of this remains in the Roman Church through the use of green during what is now called "Ordinary Time," which is actually a remnant of the old "Sundays after Pentecost" which are retained in the Byzantine Tradition today. While the use of green is prescribed only during the Octave of Pentecost, it has become customary in many parishes to continue to use it until the Feast of the Apostles Peter & Paul, or until the beginning of the Apostle Fast, during which the altar may be vested in red. —PP]

5:38 PM 6/1/2009 —

[Most of you have probably already read this article by Stanislav Mishin. Ir originally appeared on his blog, Mat Rodina, but was thrust into the public eye by being reprinted in the English language version of Pravda. The Drudge Report linked to it, and Rush Limbaugh read the first half of it out loud on his radio program.
     Your PP is reproducing it here simply because, even if one person not familiar with those sources sees it here, it will be worth it. Please give attention to my notes at the end of the article. —PP]

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
          True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
          Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
          First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
          Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. ¹ Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. ² Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America. ³
          The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
          These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
          These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
          Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
          So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
          Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
          So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
          The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
          The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

by Stanislav Mishin

---

¹ Can you say, "Notre Dame?" I knew you could. I'll bet you can say "Georgetown", too. Maybe even "Fordham". —PP

² Case in point, the USCCB, which has obfuscated any concern for spiritual realities in its struggle to attain a seat at the table in the making of secular policy, albeit about issues they claim touch on spiritual matters. Hence, the Conference sacrifices whole forests full of trees to churn out document after document on matters such as immigration reform, economic policy, health care reform, etc., etc., while church attendance dwindles into nothing, priests sit in empty confessionals, half of all Catholic marriages end in divorce and most married Catholics commit the mortal sin of artificial contraception (having been misled by the common-stock and erroneous notion of conscience that no single Catholic bishop in this country has ever corrected). On the other hand, a document by our bishops on something like birth control or confession might be worse than the lack of one, since it would be so full of apologies, mitigation, compromises, and so thoroughly outmaneuver itself to avoid offending anyone, that it would end up teaching nothing and inspiring no one.
     No one doubts that some of the issues the bishops do write about touch on Catholic moral and social principles;—that's not the problem—but when the bishops decide for the rest of us that it's wrong to deport illegal aliens and that universal health care is a good thing in principle, they are assuming an authority neither Christ nor His Church have bestowed on them. For example, as an American citizen, I believe anyone who commits the crime of entering this country without permission should spend a couple of years in chains picking up garbage off our nations highways before being sent back to where they came from; as a priest, I see no reason to address this issue one way or the other in the pulpit, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with the spiritual welfare of the souls entrusted to my care. That's they way I was trained back when we had real seminaries. What makes your PP angry is that the bishops of this country don't govern their tongues by the same ancient rule. They will argue that their office as bishops gives them a particular responsibility to teach the faithful in a way that an ordinary priest does not. This may be true as far as it goes, but begs the question what it is they should be persuing in their teaching: the reform of secular society or the salvation of souls? The Gospel and the lives of the saints teach us, without question, that there's no persuing both. —PP

³ I should like every Eastern Catholic priest who thinks he's being "Eastern" by emulating the laxity of the OCA regarding who can and cannot received Holy Communion to consider what Mr. Mishin says here. If you think the the OCA's liberal attitude toward oikonomia represents the traditions of Orthodoxy, think again. —PP

3:16 PM 5/29/2009 — Regular readers of Priestly Pugilist—all six of you—know that we don't just trash spineless bishops here, but go out of our way to praise those with onions who do the right thing. Today's I've-got-marbles award goes to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Miami, Most Rev. John C. Favalora, for his handling of—and statements concerning—the defection from the Catholic Church of Fr. Alberto Cutié.
          Father Cutié is—or was—a rather well known priest of the Archdiocese of Miami, who gained fame through his popular talk show on the Radio Paz Spanish language network, along with frequent appearances on Spanish language television programs. ...That is until he was caught canoodling—I've been dying to use that word again—with a half-naked woman on the beach. Or was it Father Cutié who was half-naked? I can't remember. Anyway, regardless of who was half-naked, it was pretty clear that they weren't there reading Plato's "Republic". As a result, Fr. Cutié was taken off the air and granted a temporary leave of absence from his priestly duties—at his own request—while he relfected and came to terms with his personal morals and obligations as a priest. Pretty generous on the Archbishop's part, I thought.
          What followed was a public outcry against priestly celibacy from the great unwashed, who knew only what the media chose to tell about the situation, and who have little—if any—appreciation for the whole concept of priestly celibacy in the Latin Church (that's the official name of the Roman Catholic Church for those of you west of the Rockies, not a reference to Latino Catholics).
          Now we find out that Father Alberto has decided to leave the Catholic Church and join the Episcopal Church. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise: thinking with the loins has been the number one reason for leaving the Catholic Church ever since King Henry VIII set the precedent in 1533. In his case, a whole plethora of theological fictions were invented to mask the fact that his lawfully wedded wife couldn't provide him with an heir while the prostitute he was canoodling with could (or so he thought, though it turned out that he couldn't provide himself with an heir). So, Father Alberto, faithful to a time-tested tradition, has suddently decided that the faith he preached for years on the radio and to which he had dedicated his life, is now all wrong; a theological revelation that came to him as a result of canoodling on a beach with a half-naked woman. So, once again we learn that, if Catholic devotion is born from the heart, Protestant devotion is born from the.... OK, we won't go there.
          The following story comes to us from the Catholic News Agency, and highlights brilliantly not only the patience of Archbishop Favalora and his love for his priests, but also his pastoral zeal and courage in finding a teachable moment in the most obtuse of circumstances.

Miami, Fla., May 28, 2009 / 05:42 pm (CNA) — Archbishop John C. Favalora of Miami made a statement on Thursday afternoon in which he revealed that he was kept in the dark about Fr. Alberto Cutié's decision to join the Episcopal Church. The archbishop also stressed that by his actions, Cutié has forfeited his rights as a cleric but is not dismissed from the promise of celibacy he freely made.
     “I am genuinely disappointed by the announcement made earlier this afternoon by Father Alberto Cutié that he is joining the Episcopal Church,” Archbishop Favalora began. The Archbishop of Miami then detailed the consequences of Fr. Cutié's action, saying that the priest had separated himself from the communion of the Roman Catholic Church “by professing erroneous faith and morals” and by “refusing submission to the Holy Father.” Father Cutié will no longer be allowed to legitimately celebrate the sacraments in the Archdiocese of Miami, and he cannot preach or teach on Catholic faith and morals. “His actions could lead to his dismissal from the clerical state,” the archbishop stated.
     Despite his decision to leave the Catholic Church, Archbishop Favalora pointed out that “Father Cutié is still bound by his promise to live a celibate life, which he freely embraced at ordination. Only the Holy Father can release him from that obligation,” he explained.
     The archbishop also addressed the impact of Fr. Cutié's actions on the faithful of the archdiocese. "Catholic faithful of Saint Francis de Sales Parish, Radio Paz and the entire Archdiocese of Miami, I again say that Father Cutié’s actions cannot be justified, despite his good works as a priest. This is all the more true in light of today’s announcement. Father Cutié may have abandoned the Catholic Church; he may have abandoned you. But I tell you that the Catholic Church will never abandon you; the Archdiocese of Miami is here for you. Father Cutié’s actions have caused grave scandal within the Catholic Church, harmed the Archdiocese of Miami—especially our priests—and led to division within the ecumenical community and the community at large. Today’s announcement only deepens those wounds,” said Archbishop Favalora.
     The head of the Catholic Church in Miami explained that when he met with Father Cutié on May 5th, “he requested and I granted a leave of absence from the exercise of the priesthood,” a request that was granted. However, since that meeting, the archbishop informed, “I have not heard from Father Cutié nor has he requested to meet with me. He has never told me that he was considering joining the Episcopal Church.”
     Adding salt to the wound was the fact that Episcopal Bishop Leo Frade of Southeast Florida also never spoke with Archbishop Favalora about the situation. “Bishop Frade has never spoken to me about his position on this delicate matter or what actions he was contemplating. I have only heard from him through the local media,” the Catholic prelate stated. The event has also caused a “serious setback for ecumenical relations and cooperation between the Catholic and Episcopal churches," Archbishop Favalora charged. He also noted that the “Archdiocese of Miami has never made a public display when for doctrinal reasons Episcopal priests have joined the Catholic Church and sought ordination. In fact, to do so would violate the principles of the Catholic Church governing ecumenical relations. I regret that Bishop Frade has not afforded me or the Catholic community the same courtesy and respect.”
     Referencing the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the archbishop told his fellow Catholics that, “If our brother comes home, let us celebrate with the Father.” The Archbishop of Miami finished by commending “the priests of the Archdiocese of Miami and all priests who faithfully live and fulfill their promise of celibacy. In our times so pre-occupied with sex, the gift of celibacy is all the more a sign of the Kingdom of Heaven where, as scripture says, there will be 'no marrying or giving in marriage.' I encourage all Catholics to pray for and support our dedicated priests,” he said.

The irony in this whole story, as your PP sees it, is that only one of the two clerics involved in this story is a man, and it's not the one with his fly unzipped. A real man, after all, is characterized by fidelity to his committments: to his faith, his family, his vocation (whether that be marriage or the priesthood or whatever). Any dog in the kennel can copulate with a bitch.
          It's no trick to get Catholic lay people to make a statement against celibacy in a pole question;—that is until they find out how much it will cost them—and there is no doubt that the former Father Alberto will continue his radio ministry; only now, instead of explaining the Catholic Faith he'll be enticing people away from it, inviting them to join, as he did, a Church that doesn't require it's members to believe in anything.
          As another priest I know recently put it, "When you think below the waist, all doctrine is fluid."

by Priestly Pugilist

6:48 PM 5/27/2009 — The following story is by Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times. Be advised that your PP never provides a link to the Times, Nor does he expend any effort to conform to the original source's rules for reproduction of material where the Times is concerned, since they don't deserve that kind of consideration.

Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, the former head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese who has stirred up new controversy with his soon-to-be-released memoir about his decades in church leadership, his homosexual orientation and the scandal that forced his retirement, said on Tuesday that he had decided not to retire to St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, N.J.
          Archbishop Weakland had been the worldwide leader of the Benedictine Order and then archbishop of Milwaukee for 25 years until 2002, when he resigned amid revelations that he had used church money to pay a $450,000 settlement to a man with whom he had had a relationship years earlier.
          The archbishop, who is 82 and now living in a retirement community in Milwaukee, had been invited by the monks in Morristown to live out his days in their abbey. But, he said in an interview Tuesday, “they were getting very worried about the situation because of what they thought would be negative publicity. So I withdrew my desire to go there.”
          The Benedictine monks at St. Mary’s Abbey administer the adjacent Delbarton School, a Roman Catholic preparatory school for boys, where last year’s tuition was nearly $25,000. Archbishop Weakland said he had been told that the school was in the middle of a fund-raising campaign and that there was concern from lay people on its board about his retiring at the abbey.
          The Rev. Giles Hayes, the abbot, said on Tuesday no one at the [school] asked or pressured Archbishop Weakland not to come. “He’s a real gentleman,” Abbot Hayes said, “and he wouldn’t have wanted to hurt us.” A trustee, Thomas J. Walsh, said he had heard of no pressure from board members or parents to withdraw the invitation.
          The archbishop said he planned to stay in his retirement community but move from a house into an apartment building where he would have “a bit more protection” from the weather and the television cameras.

Four questions come to mind:

1. I'm not sure what meteorological phobias plague the archbishop, but if he's truely seeking protection against television cameras, why is he giving interviews and writing books about his gay canoodlings?

2. If Father Abbot is telling the truth, and his only concern is "nagative publicity" during a fund-raising campaign, and not the safety of the boys of the Delbarton school with the prospect of a notorious and famous homosexual living in their midst, what does that say about Father Abbot's priorities?

3. If the quoted trustee is telling the truth, and there was no pressure from board members or parents expressed, than from where did Archbishop Canoodle get his information that someone was becoming "very worried"?

4. Given the fact that Abbot Hayes is head of an abbey that runs a ritzy school for rich little boys, I should like more information about his rather interesting notion of what constitutes a "gentleman," since it obviously has nothing to do with living a moral life.

by Priestly Pugilist

1:17 PM 5/24/2009 — If you think back to Easter Sunday, you may recall me telling you the story of when I left my job to go to the seminary, and how a Buddhist man who worked with me gave me a going-away gift consisting of a book about Jesus written by his local Lama; and I mentioned that the book, although very beautiful and well written, completely ignored the fact that Jesus is God and not just a social teacher or philosophical guru. I don’t have the book anymore, but I held on to it for a long time; and, as the years progressed through the seminary, I began to realize that what this lama was saying in this book was very much the same thing that was being said back in the third century, that the Bishops of the Church met in Nicea in the year 325 to discuss: is Jesus just a social teacher, or is he God?
          That was the question that preoccupied a priest in Alexandria named Arius. Like many priests of his time—perhaps even of our time—he was looking for a way to make Christianity more palatable to the pagans around him; and he concluded that, if the Church could only see her way clear to presenting Jesus in the same way the Greeks presented their philosophers—like a philosophical teacher without all this religion stuff getting in the way—people would be more inclined to accept the Church’s message. If we could just leave out all that stuff about morality, and sexual purity, and all these complicated rituals and liturgies, and just preach Christianity as a philosophy of brotherly love, then all kinds of people would flock to the Church. Needless to say, Arius became very popular; and, for a while, his heresy, which became known as Arianism, was so popular that, at one point, most of the world’s bishops and priests believed and were preaching it.
          And for a while it worked: all kinds of people joined the Church once they were taught that, as a Christian, you didn’t have to really do or believe anything in particular: all you had to do was love one another. It worked, that is, until the first imperial persecutions came along; then everyone left the Church and went back to being pagans again. After all, you need to believe in some kind of God in order to be a martyr; no one’s going to give his life for a mere philosophy—unless you’re Socrates. And when the persecutions were over, and a lot of these people wanted to come back and join the Church again, the Church had a big problem on its hands. You see, the Christians who had remained faithful, who believed in Jesus as God, who lived a moral life, who had accepted torture and death because they believed, were reluctant to have these people back who didn’t really believe in anything and had left the Church at the first sign of trouble; and it was ripping the Church apart. So, the Emperor Constantine, newly converted to Christianity himself, called this council of the world’s bishops at Nicea in 325 to decide once and for all whether Jesus was merely a social teacher who should be followed, or was in fact a God who should be worshipped.
          I don’t have to tell you how it turned out, because we’re going to be singing the words of the Council Fathers later on in this Divine Liturgy: the Creed that we sing at every Divine Liturgy is the document that those Fathers produced in response to the Arian heresy; and they decreed that anyone who would call himself a Christian would have to say those words and mean them: “I believe in God, Creator of Heaven and Earth...in one Lord Jesus Christ who is one in essence with the Father...that he was present with the Father at the creation of the world...that he came down from heaven as a man, that he suffered and died and rose from the dead, that he ascended into heaven and will come again to judge me according to my deeds.” In our Byzantine Tradition, the Creed is part of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, not of the word: we sing it at the beginning of the great Anaphora which transforms simple bread and wine into the real body and blood of Jesus—and not just on Sunday but at every Divine Liturgy—because I have no right to receive him—nay, even to look upon him in that form—unless I truly believe.
          The sad fact is that Arianism never really died with the First Council of Nicea; and you know just as well as I that there are still people, both inside and outside the Church, who think that Jesus is primarily worth something only as a social teacher, that true Christianity means soup kitchens and concern for the homeless and caring about the poor, and has little to do with going to Church or living a moral life. That book that my friend gave me just before I left for the seminary I can excuse, because it was written by someone who was not a Christian; but, the fact is, that many people who are Christians—or who claim to be—could read that book today and not find a single thing wrong with it. And that is the reason we celebrate this particular Sunday; because in celebrating a Sunday dedicated to these Council Fathers, we reject the idea that Christianity is a social philosophy, reaffirm our faith in Christ the God-made-man, and rededicate ourselves to the reality that our religion is not only one of doing good deeds, but of living a good and moral life, and worshipping Christ as the God he truly is.

by Father Michael Venditti

11:35 AM 5/21/2009 — Your PP didn't weigh in on the Obama/Notre Dame issue for two reasons: (1) I like to wait until everyone else is finished shooting from the hip, and (2) because the whole thing made me so mad that I couldn't organize my thoughts into any coherent form.
          Bishops have been bending over backward to denounce the President being invited and receiving an honorary degree; but if you're expecting your PP to praise them for it, think again. Let's take the local bishop, Bishop D’Arcy, as an example. He's been very outspoken in his opposition to Obama speaking at Notre Dame; so, you may ask, why isn't the PP praising him? Because it's just another example of the Bishops' Disease: a lot of talk but no action.
          Now, I know exactly what the casuistic Canon Lawyers will say: The Holy Cross Fathers are a religious society of Pontifical Rite; they don't depend on the local bishop for their faculties; so, Bishop D'Arcy wasn't really in a position to order Father Jenkins, President of Notre Dame, to do anything. From a strictly canonical point of view, this is true, but lacks imagination. The fact is, there was a lot that Bishop D'Arcy could have done. He could have issued a decree informing the priests of the Holy Cross that they are not able to fuction as priests outside the boundries of the university—most of them, including Father Jenkins, probably have weekend assignments in local parishes, which are all under the direct authority of the bishop. As bishop, he has absolute and immediate jurisdiction over the sacrament of matrimony everywhere in his diocese, including the campus of Notre Dame; and I'm certain that graduating seniors at Notre Dame—like at all other big universities—like to get married there; he could have forbidden all marriages. Ultimately, he could have slaped a liturgical interdict on the university, forbidding the celebration of the Eucharist on campus, basically shutting down campus ministry. Pontifical Rite or no, these are all things the bishop could have done, but didn't. As to the argument that such actions would have punished the wrong people—we're talking about a Catholic institution being perceived as fuzzy on the issue of murdering innocent people! How far is too far to go? If there's even the remotest possibility that someone could come away with the idea that abortion is an issue on which faithful Catholics can dialog, can there be such a thing as colateral damage?
          A lot has been made of the US Bishops instruction which "asks" Catholic universities not to give honors to those who manifestly oppose Catholic moral teaching, specifically about abortion; but no one seems to have referenced the Holy See's decree that they may not do so. Bishop D'Arcy could have informed the Superior General of the Holy Cross Fathers that, if he didn't excersise his authority to order Father Jenkins to withdraw the invitation or transfer Father Jenkins to a new assignment, then the Holy Cross Fathers would be expelled from the territorial boundries of his diocese—both the bishop and Father General have this authority. When the board of directors of the university expressed their support for Father Jenkins, the bishop could have instructed his own priests to deny them Holy Communion in their respective parishes. Indeed, Pope Benedict could have stopped Obama's speech with a phone call, since his authority over everyone concerned is absolute; but he didn't.
          It's too easy to say that some of these possible solutions would constitute overkill. The real reason for all these things that could have happened but didn't stems from the general queeziness that Catholic churchmen seem to have when confronting problems within the realm of high academia; but, when it comes to saving the lives of unborn children, is there such a thing as overkill? Can there ever be an excuse for treading lightly—or respecting "academic freedom", or "agreeing to disagree"—when over one million people are being murdered every year in clinics and hospitals across this country?
          George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., whose columns are distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver, among other places. He is also a member of your PP's native parish, which is why your PP gets a signed copy of every new book he writes. He was very kind to my father before he died, and took time out to attend the funeral. While he doesn't offer the kind of solutions your PP just did, he is the first major Catholic thinker to actually address the issue of Notre Dame's relationship to the local Church in which it finds itself, which is why I reproduce his column below. The original text can be found on the Archiocese of Denver's web site.
          We have become so accustomed to pluralism in our soceity, that we actually have fooled ourselves into believing that you actually have to do something to commit a sin. Doesn't it occur to anyone that by simply holding an incorrect opinion on a crucial moral issue, you can exclude yourself from the Kingdom of Heaven? Does Father Jenkins actually believe that, simply because he's never actually helped someone to have an abortion, he can go to heaven when he dies? Does Bishop D'Arcy believe that, because he said all the right things with righteous indignation, Christ is pleased with him? Indeed, does anyone in the Church believe in heaven and hell anymore?

by Priestly Pugilist

Of all the commentary I’ve read on Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to receive an honorary doctorate of laws as the university’s 2009 commencement speaker, the most disturbing came from Father Kenneth Himes of the Boston College theology department. In a Boston Globe story about Professor Mary Ann Glendon’s courageous (and correct) decision to decline Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal because the university had defied the U.S. bishops’ policy barring honors for pro-abortion politicians at Catholic events, Father Himes said this:

There are some well-meaning people who think Notre Dame has given away its Catholic identity, because they have been caught up in the gamesmanship of American higher education, bringing in a star commencement speaker even if that means sacrificing their values, and that accounts for some of this.... But one also has to say that there is a political game going on here, and part of that is that you demonize the people who disagree with you, you question their integrity, you challenge their character, and you brand these people as moral poison. Some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, and consequently, they have simply launched a crusade to bar anything from Catholic institutions that smacks of any sort of open conversation.

          I trust Father Himes is not referring here to Professor Glendon, or William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, or Father Wilson Miscamble, CSC, of the Notre Dame faculty, or me, or other serious critics of Notre Dame’s decision. For if Father Himes is suggesting that any of us has demonized the president, branded him “moral poison,” reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, or summoned a crusade to eliminate debate at Catholic colleges and universities, he is perilously close to committing calumny. Yes, there are self-serving nuts in the forest, some of whom have seized the Obama/Notre Dame issue for their own purposes. By why does Father Himes waste time bashing fringe crazies? Why not engage the arguments of the serious critics? Why not attempt a theologically coherent defense of what seems an incomprehensible decision—awarding an honorary doctorate of laws to a man determined to enshrine in law something the Catholic Church regards as a gross violation of justice?
          Another colleague (and Notre Dame grad), Professor Russell Hittinger, who holds the William K. Warren Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, clarified one key facet of this controversy in an e-mail. Notre Dame, he suggested, has adopted a “purely American low-church position of [institutional] autonomy,” by acting as if the local bishop, John D’Arcy, has nothing to say to which the university must pay serious attention—although Bishop D’Arcy, a longtime Notre Dame booster, was speaking for the settled position of the American episcopate in asking the university’s president, Father John Jenkins, CSC, to reconsider his decision to honor Obama. As Professor Hittinger continued, this fracas “has nothing to do with academic freedom nor with ecclesiastical supervision of routine academic procedures and judgments. It is ecclesiological all the way down—what Church is Notre Dame ‘in,’ if any? ... Notre Dame is speaking and acting as though it were not a member of the local Church, let alone Rome.”
          That’s exactly right. There’s also a high-stakes “political game” here, though not the one Father Himes suggests. The Obama administration is full of very smart political operators. Reading last November’s electoral entrails, they’ve sensed the possibility of driving a wedge through the Catholic community in America, dividing Catholics from their bishops and thus securing the majority Catholic vote Obama received in 2008. And they’ve shrewdly judged that the soft underbelly of Catholic resistance to the Obama administration’s radical agenda on the life issues is composed of Catholic intellectuals, their prestige institutions (like Notre Dame and Georgetown), and their opinion journals—the very people and opinion centers who claimed last year that Obama was the true pro-life candidate. It’s a clever move on the political chessboard, and barring extraordinary actions from the bishops, it will likely meet with considerable success.
          Politics aside, though, the crucial question remains this: just what Church are Notre Dame and its supporters “in,” anyway?

by George Weigel

1:47 PM 5/19/2009 — It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.
          This, Venerable Brethren, is the doctrine of the Church, which alone in the social as in all other fields can offer real light and assure salvation in the face of Communistic ideology. But this doctrine must be consistently reduced to practice in every-day life, according to the admonition of St. James the Apostle: "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."
          The most urgent need of the present day is therefore the energetic and timely application of remedies which will effectively ward off the catastrophe that daily grows more threatening. We cherish the firm hope that the fanaticism with which the sons of darkness work day and night at their materialistic and atheistic propaganda will at least serve the holy purpose of stimulating the sons of light to a like and even greater zeal for the honor of the Divine Majesty.
          Even in Catholic countries there are still too many who are Catholics hardly more than in name. There are too many who fulfill more or less faithfully the more essential obligations of the religion they boast of professing, but have no desire of knowing it better, of deepening their inward conviction, and still less of bringing into conformity with the external gloss the inner splendor of a right and unsullied conscience, that recognizes and performs all its duties under the eye of God.
          We know how much Our Divine Savior detested this empty pharisaic show, He Who wished that all should adore the Father "in spirit and in truth." The Catholic who does not live really and sincerely according to the Faith he professes will not long be master of himself in these days when the winds of strife and persecution blow so fiercely, but will be swept away defenseless in this new deluge which threatens the world. And thus, while he is preparing his own ruin, he is exposing to ridicule the very name of Christian.

from the encyclical, Divini Redemptoris, by Pope Pius XI

12:52 PM 4/26/2008 — When a person loses his sight late in life, or even sometime in childhood, he still retains in his memory images from the past. Even if it's been many years since he's been able to see, and his memory may be imperfect, there are still remnants of images locked in his mind: some memory which enables him to form some mental image of whatever may be described to him, even if it's just a shadow of what he once saw.
          But what about someone who has never seen;—someone born blind—how does that person comprehend what's described to him? If you know someone who has never seen, how would you describe to that person what a color is, for example? Here is something that doesn't change the shape or texture of a thing; and yet, it make's it, somehow, different. How would someone born blind conceive of that?
          Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand, in the introduction to her Philosophy of Religion, says that trying to explain faith to a person who has never had the experience of faith is like trying to explain color to a blind man: it's something one can't possibly know without experience.
          Our Lord knew that frustration. For three years he tried to free people from the blindness of sin. And this episode of the man born blind, so beautifully narrated by St. John, is full of the symbols of faith: the smearing of the clay on the man's eyes like the mud of sin which blinds us to the beauty of truth; then our Lord commanding the man to wash in a pool, the name of which means, "one who is sent." The waters of Saloam are like the waters of baptism and the cleansing wash of the Sacrament of confession, flushing away the clay of sin so that the eyes of faith can see clearly again.
          And then the persecution of the man after he's been cleansed. No one would accept him. They cast him out of the temple, all because the clarity of his sight revealed the beauty of what they have never seen. Such is the way for those of us who love and practice our faith, when so many of our friends and relatives may not. But it's just such as these that our Lord seeks out to be his special friends, just as he sought out the man who had been expelled from the temple and offered him his friendship as a reward for his truthfulness.
          I think that all of us, at some point in our lives, are that man born blind: those of us who practice our faith in the face of friends or even family members who don't understand, and who redicule those who do, sometimes asking questions impossible to answer. "If God is so good, as you say, why did he allow this to happen? Why did he allow that to happen?"
          "I don't know." Just like the man born blind: "I don't know who this Jesus person is; all I know is that I was once blind, and now I see." There will always be people in our lives who will try to pin us down because they cannot tolerate in us what they see lacking in themselves. This is the root behind the Pharisees' problem with the man born blind. He had been given a grace by God that these professional teachers of the law could only dream of; and they couldn't stand it. So they had to think up all kinds of stupid reasons why it wasn't what it seemed: "Well, maybe this isn't the guy, it just looks like him. Let's ask his parents. He did it on the sabbath so it doesn't really count."
          We must be convinced of what God has given us in our love for the Catholic faith and our Byzantine Tradition, and for the Eucharist which brings us here faithfully Sunday after Sunday: an intimacy with Christ which is beyond evaluation. Like all who have been baptized, we have been offered the love of Christ, and have responded by loving in return. And those among our friends or in our own families who may have chosen not to respond are always going to be jealous of us. They can either re-evaluate their lives, and take a new attitude; or they can respond by persecution.
          But there is a consolation here, as shown by St. John in this story. After the man born blind is thrown out of the temple, Jesus seeks him out and offers him his friendship. That doesn't make the man's life any easier, except that he knows that wherever he is, and in whatever he does, his divine friend will be with him. It's the same for us. Those who are still blind are there, taunting us with their laughter, saddening us with their rejection. But there is our Lord:

     "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"
     "Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?"
     "I who speak to you am he." And he worshiped him.

12:17 PM 5/14/2009 —

[President Obama's war against the Catholic Church in the US goes largely—actually, it's more like completely—unreported by the American media. His refusal to appoint an ambassador to the Holy See who is either a non-Catholic or a faithful Catholic, and his conviction that his new ambassador must be a lapsed Catholic who has rejected the Church's teaching on abortion, is a very deliberate symbol of his attitude toward the Catholic Church in this country. His Executive Order removing the protection of conscience for health care professionals who will not be involved in abortions, forcing them out of the medical profession if they choose to follow the teachings of the Church, was not at all symbolic.
     The following story is mild compared to what Obama has in store for Catholics in this country, but serves as a good illustration of what we have to look forward to. The original story is available from LiveSiteNews.com. Keep in mind that abortion was illegal in Colombia prior to the 2006 decision by the Colombian Supreme Court. —PP]

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Mary 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com)—The Colombian government has announced that it will fine a Catholic hospital for refusing to perform an abortion, according to local news reports.
          The Saint Ignatius University Hospital (Hospital Universitario San Ignacio), a Jesuit institution, was asked for an abortion in 2008 by a woman whose unborn child suffered from non-lethal defects, including hydrocephaly (an accumulation of water in the brain). They refused on grounds of "collective conscience." The woman, Yolima Bernal, ultimately received a late-term abortion in another hospital. After an investigation of the case launched last year, Colombia's health ministry has announced a fine equivalent to approximately $5,160.
          Monica Roa, a pro-abortion attorney who works with the UN-funded Women's Link Worldwide (WLW), praised the decision, stating that "it feels like a precedent for the country and makes it clear that conscientious objection in an institution is not permitted." Roa was the principal force behind the Supreme Court's 2006 decision striking down laws penalizing abortion in cases of rape or fetal deformity.
          Magaly Llaguno, Executive Director of Human Life International's Hispanic Division, told LifeSiteNews that, "It is shocking and a great cause for concern, that Colombia's Health Department considers the killing of an unborn child that has a serious medical problem, a 'service' that hospitals should be forced to provide." Regarding Monica Roa's statement that institutions should not be exempt for conscience reasons, Llaguno responded that, "In other words, like most abortion promoters, she supports 'the right to choose,' but only if you choose her way."
          Carlos Polo, Director of the Population Research Institute's Latin America Office, remarked that "it is clear that the Colombian government wants to coerce those who are able to show the fallacy of the arguments in favor of abortion in Colombia. A Catholic hospital with professional gynecologists could save both the mother and the child. That's why the government wants to impose itself on anything that might contrast with its pretended democratic image."
          Although Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe is reputed to be "conservative" because of his close relationship with former president George Bush, his administration has been threatening Catholic hospitals with reprisals for refusing to do abortions for the last year.
          The Catholic Church may soon face a similar conflict in the United States, where the Obama administration is reviewing regulations that exempt doctors in federally-funded hospitals from doing abortions on grounds of conscience.
          Approximately 219 abortions have been done in Bogota alone since the May 2006 Supreme Court decision.

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

4:00 PM 5/12/2009 —

[The following is reposted here with the kind permission of SodaHead.com, an online community dedicated to free speech and the sharing of ideas.
     David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington, D.C.; Albany, New York; and Dakar, Senegal. He attended Harvard University, graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a Ph.D. in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.
     He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Williams College and Harvard University. Kaiser’s latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press. The article reproduced here is entitled: "History Unfolding." —PP]

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
          Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
          We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
          We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
          We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
          We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
          We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
          Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about)—the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
          And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)
          Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?
          I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
          This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
          And that is only the beginning...
          As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In those times, the “savior” was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.
          And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did—regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand—the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course.
          How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media—did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and...change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
          If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It’s all there in the history books.
          So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.
          Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors...All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
          As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
          I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe—and why I believe it.
          I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

by David Kaiser
Jamestown, Rhode Island

2:38 PM 5/10/2009 — In previous years, on this Sunday of the Samaritan woman, I’ve focused on the conversation our Lord has with her, on his ability to see the wretchedness of her soul, and the rather stern lecture he gives her about the immorality of the life she is living.¹ While we don’t know if she, in fact, experienced a complete conversion as a result of her meeting with our Lord, we do know that she gave witness about him to the Samaritans, causing many others to be added to our Lord’s disciples.
          But what was left unsaid about this particular Sunday was why it exists on our calendar at this particular time in the middle of Pascha, where it seems to be out of place. After all, there is no miracle here related to our Lord’s resurrection; there’s nothing in this episode to link it, directly or indirectly, with Easter. There is, of course, a reason, which I probably avoided in the past because the moral lesson to be learned from it, which we’ve spoken about several times, is much more practical. But at the risk of being dry or didactic, I do wish to speak about it today, if for no other reason than to avoid repeating myself.
          The reason for this Sunday being placed at this time—and for this gospel being read—is one of remarkable liturgical subtlety: the Wednesday prior to this Sunday is that very unusual feast which we call Mid-Pentecost, which marks the exact halfway point between Pascha and Pentecost; and it’s more than just marking time. In Chapter 7 of John’s Gospel, we read about Jesus going up to the Temple in Jerusalem “in the middle of the feast.” The feast being referred to is the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a Jewish agricultural feast. In this same passage, which is read during the Liturgy on the day of Mid-Pentecost, we are told that “Jesus, on the last and greatest day of the feast, stood up in the Temple and cried out, ‘If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ But he spoke of the Spirit which those who believe in him were to receive.” And here is where the link to the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman occurs, because our Lord says the exact same thing to her: “He who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks of the water I shall give, will never thirst again; for the water I shall give will become in him a fountain, springing up into everlasting life.”
          This week of Mid-Pentecost, culminating in the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, leads us to Jacob’s Well, where Jesus announces for the first time the doctrine of Baptism, the sacrament of Water and the Spirit; which, incidentally, is what the whole Paschal cycle is about. Our Lord’s resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven—which we will celebrate next week—opened the gates of heaven and made salvation possible for us; and the feast of Pentecost, which ends the Paschal season, commemorates our Lord sending his Holy Spirit, which makes this sacrament of Baptism work in the first place. By receiving the Holy Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation, we receive the same Spirit that Jesus gave to the Apostles in the upper room in the form of tongues of fire. Hence, we become a part of the body of Christ and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.
          So there’s a lot of theological depth in this Sunday of the Samaritan Woman which goes a lot deeper than the scolding that our Lord gives the woman at the well because of her immoral life. But that is not totally unrelated to it. Remember, the last time we looked at this Gospel, we reflected on the political situation between Judea and Samaria, and how our Lord even tells his own disciples not to the preach to the Samaritans because they’re not worthy of it. Our Lord breaks his own rule here; as a result, the woman goes and tells other Samaritans about him; and the Gospel ends with many of them becoming converts to the faith. And next week, when we celebrate the Ascension, we will hear our Lord say what? “Go forth and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” thus giving the Church its missionary mandate. And this is where that rather awkward middle section of this Gospel comes into play: when the Apostles return from their shopping trip in town, they offer our Lord something to eat; and he refuses saying that his food is to do the will of his Father. What’s the will of his Father? To teach all the nations. They don’t understand what he’s talking about because they’re stupid; so he gives them this beautiful speech about how they will reap the bounties of what they did not sew, and gather a harvest they did not plant. They couldn’t have planted it because they didn’t die on the cross and rise from the dead; but they will, as the first bishops of the Church, gather the harvest of the countless souls who will be baptized and saved as a result.
          What does all this mean? It means that what we have received as Christians we must pass on to everyone we meet. Spreading the Gospel is not a choice, and baptism is not an option. The Church exists to spread the Gospel and extend itself to every nation on earth; because without the Gospel one does not know the truth, and without baptism one cannot be saved. That is very easy to forget in this age of celebrating diversity and respecting everyone’s religious sensibilities; and it seems, sometimes, that even priests and bishops and other leaders in the Church are just a little too anxious about not offending people who don’t share our faith. But the Gospel is quite clear; and our duty is quite plain. The old Latin maxim of the Fathers is still true, which is why it is still in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: extra ecclesia nulla salus—apart from the Church there is no salvation. That is not a statement of self-righteousness or arrogance, it is a warning; and it’s a warning not to non-Christians, but to us. If we do not teach all nations—if we do not baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—then we have failed to bring them the salvation that our Lord died on the cross to provide. We, then, become guilty of making our Lord’s death and resurrection irrelevant.
          Did our Lord insult the woman at the well and scold her for her immoral life because he wanted to offend her? No. Because he wanted to save her. Whether he succeeded we don’t know for sure. Probably he did; because we know she brought others to meet him, and they were converted; and we can be sure that counted in her favor. The question is, how many others have we brought to our Lord?

by Father Michael Venditti

---

¹ See last year's post, "The Woman at the Well."

5:12 PM 5/6/2009 — Is Rush Limbaugh a happy man? To some, the question may seem ridiculous, particularly to Rush; after all, this is the man who has everything. But to those of us who represent what can now only be referred to as the “old fashioned conservatives”—often misrepresented as “social conservatives” or “the religious right”—it is an obvious question; since it’s the person who has everything whom we instinctively recognize as having the most potential to be miserable.
          Who are we? We are the ones who have been married only once, and who had no sex before our wedding nights. We are the ones who believe everything our respective Churches teach us, not because we are not thinking people, but precisely because we are, and recognize that no one person can determine truth without some kind of Divine mandate. We are sinners who have frequently fallen and seen others fall; but who recognize in that nothing more than our common humanity, and don’t consider our faith discredited by the fact. We are the ones for whom frugality and simplicity of life are virtues in and of themselves, regardless of the economic circumstances. We are the ones who believe that the United States of America became a great nation because, for most of its history, most of its citizens were God-fearing people who lived their lives according to the Gospel, and who see its decline in fortunes directly related to the converse.
          And, perhaps most important of all, we are the ones who believe that “happiness”—however one chooses to define it—is the result of a well-ordered life lived in conformity with its own ultimate ends; which, for us, usually means the salvation of our own souls. So, I repeat the question: Is Rush Limbaugh a happy man?
          Yes, we love listening to Rush for the same reasons most people listen to Rush: because he gives voice to what we are usually thinking; but we have always had to hold our noses doing it. Yes, our hearts swell when Rush so accurately exposes how abortion is the seminal issue that has the potential to destroy that particular political party which typically represents our interests, how the “country club” set laments o