Catholic bishops begin postcard campaign for immigration reform - San Bernardino County Sun
Yes my Master. George Soros and company are working their magic charms on the USCCB.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Catholic bishops begin postcard campaign for immigration reform - San Bernardino County Sun
Catholic bishops begin postcard campaign for immigration reform - San Bernardino County Sun
Yes my Master. George Soros and company are working their magic charms on the USCCB.
A Tale of Two Bishops
Two Bishops have made the news over the last few weeks. Sex Abuse Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee who paid half a million dollars in hush money to his boyfriend is going to further outrage the citizens of Milwaukee by appearing at a Mass alongside retired Archbishop Pilarczyk and incoming Archbishop Listeki; and Pro-Gay Marriage Cardinal Fideles is being silent about the "Gay Marriage" issue that is up in the Portuguese Parliament and became rather persnickety when a journalist pressed him as to why, according to Lifesite:
The meeting in Milwaukee of Catholic luminaries should provide adaquate fodder for those clamouring for more "transparency" and "democracy" in the Roman Catholic Church, hoping, who really knows why, that the Church will change her doctrines on Birth Control and Clerical Celibacy. If it's hard to see why people get worked up about it, perhaps it's because that, apart from a coterie of elitist scribblers at the big newspapers, most people don't really care. We think they'd rather that their local Bishops were the good men they are often portrayed to be. We think they'd rather, perhaps against the corrupt expectations of the liberal press corp, that the Catholic Church really were the organization it's portrayed as being in those old Bing Crosby movies.
Unfortunately, Archishop Listeki has really lost a golden opportunity to stand up against the tyrany of evil and to date, it seems that most Bishops would prefer to spend their treasure on their Public Image at the expense of their eternal souls.
On the other hand, in Portugal, the government, ever Masonic in its general lack of principles, is promoting Gay Marriage. Like the previous example-- there's what Noam Chomsky calls some manufactured going on-- most people don't approve of the Catholic Church harboring sex predators like Archbishop Weakland, and most of the Portuguese people despise the idea of gay marriage.
Here's a news story on the Bronzed Sex Abuse Archbishop and you can really read in the comments that they are angry that something they cherish has been tarnished by a vile predatory, homosexual Bishop.
And then there's an obituary for a recently deceased Anglican Bishop, who pounded on the door to the Catholic Church, sorry, we're not interested in converts was the reply, he was actually refused by the local Nuncio, but persisted till he was finally let in. Despite becoming a Catholic, he remained sceptical about the leadership (we wonder why), and wrote, according to Catholic Culture:
This really does give more lie to the leftists in the media who can only harp about same-sex marriage, married priests and other pet issues, when their criticisms are actually held by a small number of elitists in the Church, but are really quite irrelevant.
The cardinal, who openly supports legal privileges for same-sex couples in conflict with Vatican teaching, is also a close confidant of Portugal's socialist prime minister, Jose Socrates.
The meeting in Milwaukee of Catholic luminaries should provide adaquate fodder for those clamouring for more "transparency" and "democracy" in the Roman Catholic Church, hoping, who really knows why, that the Church will change her doctrines on Birth Control and Clerical Celibacy. If it's hard to see why people get worked up about it, perhaps it's because that, apart from a coterie of elitist scribblers at the big newspapers, most people don't really care. We think they'd rather that their local Bishops were the good men they are often portrayed to be. We think they'd rather, perhaps against the corrupt expectations of the liberal press corp, that the Catholic Church really were the organization it's portrayed as being in those old Bing Crosby movies.
Unfortunately, Archishop Listeki has really lost a golden opportunity to stand up against the tyrany of evil and to date, it seems that most Bishops would prefer to spend their treasure on their Public Image at the expense of their eternal souls.
On the other hand, in Portugal, the government, ever Masonic in its general lack of principles, is promoting Gay Marriage. Like the previous example-- there's what Noam Chomsky calls some manufactured going on-- most people don't approve of the Catholic Church harboring sex predators like Archbishop Weakland, and most of the Portuguese people despise the idea of gay marriage.
Here's a news story on the Bronzed Sex Abuse Archbishop and you can really read in the comments that they are angry that something they cherish has been tarnished by a vile predatory, homosexual Bishop.
And then there's an obituary for a recently deceased Anglican Bishop, who pounded on the door to the Catholic Church, sorry, we're not interested in converts was the reply, he was actually refused by the local Nuncio, but persisted till he was finally let in. Despite becoming a Catholic, he remained sceptical about the leadership (we wonder why), and wrote, according to Catholic Culture:
While certain that he had made the right decision in moving to Rome, he remained uneasy about the lack of rigour shown by the Catholic bishops on a range of issues, particularly their approach to ecumenicism.
This really does give more lie to the leftists in the media who can only harp about same-sex marriage, married priests and other pet issues, when their criticisms are actually held by a small number of elitists in the Church, but are really quite irrelevant.
Coalition of American Assyrians and Maronites Rebukes Arab American Institute
The Coalition of American Assyrians and Maronites (CAAM), which includes seven Assyrian and Maronite Organizations, has sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute, asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs. CAAM represents over 2.2 million Assyrians and Maronites in the United States. The letter was also sent to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, all twelve Cabinet members, all members of the House and Senate, The Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine and Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia.
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The World of GK Chesterton And What's Wrong With It
Guardian
This year is the centenary of one of Chesterton's oddest, but most intriguing, booksRenewal of interest in the work of GK Chesterton continues apace. The writer whose career began when he dictated his first story to his aunt Rose at the age of three started early and aimed high, and his intellectual development was among the more conspicuously interesting of the Edwardian age. His Orthodoxy of 1908 has become a sort of touchstone text during the present vogue for philosophical theology, much cited by the likes of Slavoj Zizek and the radical theologian John Milbank, while oddball novels such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) retain the power to entertain and bemuse in equal measure.This year, however, sees the centenary of one of his rather less high-profile publications. What's Wrong with the World represents an extrapolation of Chesterton's original response to a query posed in so many words by the Times to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers of the day. "Dear Sirs," ran GK's succinct rejoinder, "I am". The publication of the book suggested that, on reflection, there might have been more to say on the subject.The Chesterton offered us by his latter-day biographers and critics is a lost proto-radical, if we could but make him out as such. Along with his close friend Hilaire Belloc, he was the proponent of a species of Third Way politics avant la lettre, a plague-on-both-your-houses confutation of capitalism and socialism known as distributism. Drastically simplified, the vision was of an atomised entrepreneurialism in which as many individuals as possible pursued the goal of profit, so as to wrest capital accumulation from both a few vastly powerful interests (such as "Jewish banking families") and a monolithic socialist state.What's Wrong with the World opens with an analysis of the predicament of modern humanity, too obsessed in the great age of political idealism with visions of the future. Has the Enlightenment ideal of continual social progress been a reality, or has it all been a piece of western myth-making? "Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them?" he wonders. But then again, "Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared?"What it does contain is the wreckage of half-realised ideals. There is a lack of conviction in attempts to enact the radical doctrines of Christianity or of political justice, and too often the espousal of great causes results in panic at the consequences of one's own actions. Where national leaders paid lip-service to such humanist ideals as egalitarianism, they came to rue their faith in humanity. "Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did."Much in the section on women would take a lot of swallowing today. Woman is naturally thrifty, as against the prodigality of man, "the aim of the good woman [being] to rummage in the dustbin". This is cognate with her moral inclination to chastity in the face of masculine concupiscence. There is scarcely any point in female suffrage (the burning question of the day) where it is so little wanted. The saving grace of not having the vote is that it allows a woman to remain above the level of the baying mob. What she really needs is liberation from drudgery. A paradise of domestic labour-saving devices will spread more spiritual freedom than would the vote. Where many saw the constitutional equality of the sexes as an ideal, meanwhile, Chesterton suspected only the urge to "plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation" of the male by the female. "Boys play football, why shouldn't girls play football … boys go to Oxford, why shouldn't girls go to Oxford – in short, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn't girls grow mustaches[?]"The cumulative impact of the book is a little like reading a supremely elegant, aphoristic Nietzsche, but one domesticated for the English gentleman's study. There is the same vertiginous thrill at lurching from exemplary declarations of universalist ethics ("Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it") to the flared-nostrilled defence of Edwardian privilege, such as public schools. But for its sober humanism, as much as its infuriating patrician conservatism, it deserves to be read.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/08/gk-chesterton-world-whats-wrong
This year is the centenary of one of Chesterton's oddest, but most intriguing, booksRenewal of interest in the work of GK Chesterton continues apace. The writer whose career began when he dictated his first story to his aunt Rose at the age of three started early and aimed high, and his intellectual development was among the more conspicuously interesting of the Edwardian age. His Orthodoxy of 1908 has become a sort of touchstone text during the present vogue for philosophical theology, much cited by the likes of Slavoj Zizek and the radical theologian John Milbank, while oddball novels such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) retain the power to entertain and bemuse in equal measure.This year, however, sees the centenary of one of his rather less high-profile publications. What's Wrong with the World represents an extrapolation of Chesterton's original response to a query posed in so many words by the Times to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers of the day. "Dear Sirs," ran GK's succinct rejoinder, "I am". The publication of the book suggested that, on reflection, there might have been more to say on the subject.The Chesterton offered us by his latter-day biographers and critics is a lost proto-radical, if we could but make him out as such. Along with his close friend Hilaire Belloc, he was the proponent of a species of Third Way politics avant la lettre, a plague-on-both-your-houses confutation of capitalism and socialism known as distributism. Drastically simplified, the vision was of an atomised entrepreneurialism in which as many individuals as possible pursued the goal of profit, so as to wrest capital accumulation from both a few vastly powerful interests (such as "Jewish banking families") and a monolithic socialist state.What's Wrong with the World opens with an analysis of the predicament of modern humanity, too obsessed in the great age of political idealism with visions of the future. Has the Enlightenment ideal of continual social progress been a reality, or has it all been a piece of western myth-making? "Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them?" he wonders. But then again, "Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared?"What it does contain is the wreckage of half-realised ideals. There is a lack of conviction in attempts to enact the radical doctrines of Christianity or of political justice, and too often the espousal of great causes results in panic at the consequences of one's own actions. Where national leaders paid lip-service to such humanist ideals as egalitarianism, they came to rue their faith in humanity. "Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia quite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that the people did."Much in the section on women would take a lot of swallowing today. Woman is naturally thrifty, as against the prodigality of man, "the aim of the good woman [being] to rummage in the dustbin". This is cognate with her moral inclination to chastity in the face of masculine concupiscence. There is scarcely any point in female suffrage (the burning question of the day) where it is so little wanted. The saving grace of not having the vote is that it allows a woman to remain above the level of the baying mob. What she really needs is liberation from drudgery. A paradise of domestic labour-saving devices will spread more spiritual freedom than would the vote. Where many saw the constitutional equality of the sexes as an ideal, meanwhile, Chesterton suspected only the urge to "plodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation" of the male by the female. "Boys play football, why shouldn't girls play football … boys go to Oxford, why shouldn't girls go to Oxford – in short, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn't girls grow mustaches[?]"The cumulative impact of the book is a little like reading a supremely elegant, aphoristic Nietzsche, but one domesticated for the English gentleman's study. There is the same vertiginous thrill at lurching from exemplary declarations of universalist ethics ("Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it") to the flared-nostrilled defence of Edwardian privilege, such as public schools. But for its sober humanism, as much as its infuriating patrician conservatism, it deserves to be read.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/08/gk-chesterton-world-whats-wrong
Friday, January 8, 2010
Bombing In Thailand: Analysis of Islamist Presence There
By Martin Petty
BANGKOK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Bombs killed one security officer and wounded another in Thailand's restive deep South on Thursday during a visit by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to promote an economic stimulus programme aimed at restoring peace.
The bombings underlined the failure of successive governments to tackle a separatist insurgency in the Malay Muslim-dominated region, which entered its sixth year on Monday with a death toll of nearly 4,000.
WHO IS BEHIND THE INSURGENCY?
No group has publicly come forward but most analysts believe the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate is running the show, possibly in cooperation with remnants of the Patani United Liberation Front (PULO).
BRN is said to be a military offshoot of the Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, a political movement established in the 1960s to seek independence, or at least autonomy, for the region's ethnic Malay Muslims.
The current leaders are unknown. The government believes they may be hiding in Malaysia, Indonesia or Europe. The authorities have long suspected prominent local politicians, religious leaders and Islamic teachers of involvement.
Link to original....
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/01/07/qa-whats-fuelling-insurgency-in-thailands-malay-muslim-south/
BANGKOK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Bombs killed one security officer and wounded another in Thailand's restive deep South on Thursday during a visit by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to promote an economic stimulus programme aimed at restoring peace.
The bombings underlined the failure of successive governments to tackle a separatist insurgency in the Malay Muslim-dominated region, which entered its sixth year on Monday with a death toll of nearly 4,000.
WHO IS BEHIND THE INSURGENCY?
No group has publicly come forward but most analysts believe the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate is running the show, possibly in cooperation with remnants of the Patani United Liberation Front (PULO).
BRN is said to be a military offshoot of the Patani Malay National Revolutionary Front, a political movement established in the 1960s to seek independence, or at least autonomy, for the region's ethnic Malay Muslims.
The current leaders are unknown. The government believes they may be hiding in Malaysia, Indonesia or Europe. The authorities have long suspected prominent local politicians, religious leaders and Islamic teachers of involvement.
Link to original....
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/01/07/qa-whats-fuelling-insurgency-in-thailands-malay-muslim-south/
He Knows His Neoconservative Bootlickers
Welcome to Vienna: If Cardinal Christoph Schönborn participates in the unrest of a foreign Diocese, then other Bishops may do the same in Vienna.
Kreuz.de Commentary
While photos are being published of the Vienese Cardinal in Medjugorje, there was a protest in Vienna.
It was directed against the honouring of a notorious child slaughterhouse by the unscrupulous Viennese blood-mayor.
The old liberal and politically devious Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn did everything in order to put stones in the way of the Catholic supervisors of the demonstration.
He even forbade admitting Salzburg's Bishop Andreas Laun to participate in the demonstration against the infamous commemoration.
In a private discussion the Cardinal explained himself in this way: „I won't permit in any event a bishop to drive here from three hundred kilometers away into my Diocese and blame the mayor.“
The Bishop obeyed.
Why, however, does Cardinal Schönborn travel 800 kilometers, in order to incite unrest in another Diocese: was it clear from the beginning that it would stir a wasp's nest?
The answer is found fast.
A goal of this exercise of the old liberal of a Cardinal was to pull disappointed neoconservative Catholics over the table.
Because in the meantime the most naive neoconservative truth denier must have recognized that Cardinal Schönborn works against the Church.
In December 2004 he stabbed the pro-life organization `Youth for Life' in the back, when it demonstrated against the introduction of the child slaughter at the Salzburg national hospital.
In October 2005 the sacrilegious pancake Consecration was effected by the Cardinal followed during one of his youth fairs.
In February 2006 Cardinal Schönborn permitted a homo-perverse mating in his Cathedral blessing.
In the December of the same year he defended deprivation of fluids and sustenance for the terminally ill.
When Catholics demonstrated in February 2007 before a child slaughterhouse in a Viennese shopping center, Cardinal Schönborn as expected, stabbed them into the back.
Then the inexpressible exhibition in the Viennese Cathedral museum in March 2008, which showed the Apostles as homo-perverse piglets and Christ as bound masochist with an erection.
Despite world-wide protests the Cardinal did not stop this outrage.
Besides he denied the Church's mission to convert the Jews in April 2008.
The award of the Papal Gregorian Medal followed to the baby-murdering, Viennese Ideologue, Comrade Renate Brown in June 2008.
As a Pope Benedikt XVI, highly regarded priest of Windischgarten, Mons. Gerhard Wagner, appointed to Linz Diocese, found Cardinal Schönborn in prominent place busily preventing his appointment.
In May 2009 the honoring of the Viennese Martyr Sister Restituta Kafka followed. You Cardinal, seemed to miss the demonic and bare breasted representation, which got the name in Vienna of "Prostituta".
But the Cardinal is smart enough, in order to know that its neoconservative bootlickers have a short memory and are stupid.
It is sufficient to throw to them a Medjugorje bone at his feet so that they forget the old liberal changes of the church in Austria, he has made.
After his Medjugorje journey the Viennese Cardinal can turn, therefore, again unimpaired to the cocktail parties with comrades and abortion politicians and work on the next plot against Catholics.
Because the neoconservative dullards are for a further seven years in the seventh Medjugorje heaven.
However, the resounding slap, which the Cardinal received after his Medjugorje visit from bishop Ratko Perić from Mostar Duvno, neither will resound for long:
"I regret it that the Cardinal with its visit, his appearance and his explanations added the present suffering of the local Church anew, which does not contribute to the necessary peace and to the Diocese.“
Cardinal Schoenborn plans to return to Medjugorje.
Despite actual Vatican condemnation of the priest chiefly associatd with this "Apparition", the Cardinal actually intends on creating quite a bit of a fuss. The Catholic Online report reads:
The Catholic Review Online, the Baltimore Diocesan Newpaper has this interesting piece of information to add to the rest, despite going on a bit about the good things that are attributed to the shrine, which may, it is not reported, have more to do with the intention of the pilgrims and the pre-existing shrine than the things that Fr. Vlasic and the Seers are up to.
Kreuz.de Commentary
While photos are being published of the Vienese Cardinal in Medjugorje, there was a protest in Vienna.
It was directed against the honouring of a notorious child slaughterhouse by the unscrupulous Viennese blood-mayor.
The old liberal and politically devious Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn did everything in order to put stones in the way of the Catholic supervisors of the demonstration.
He even forbade admitting Salzburg's Bishop Andreas Laun to participate in the demonstration against the infamous commemoration.
In a private discussion the Cardinal explained himself in this way: „I won't permit in any event a bishop to drive here from three hundred kilometers away into my Diocese and blame the mayor.“
The Bishop obeyed.
Why, however, does Cardinal Schönborn travel 800 kilometers, in order to incite unrest in another Diocese: was it clear from the beginning that it would stir a wasp's nest?
The answer is found fast.
A goal of this exercise of the old liberal of a Cardinal was to pull disappointed neoconservative Catholics over the table.
Because in the meantime the most naive neoconservative truth denier must have recognized that Cardinal Schönborn works against the Church.
In December 2004 he stabbed the pro-life organization `Youth for Life' in the back, when it demonstrated against the introduction of the child slaughter at the Salzburg national hospital.
In October 2005 the sacrilegious pancake Consecration was effected by the Cardinal followed during one of his youth fairs.
In February 2006 Cardinal Schönborn permitted a homo-perverse mating in his Cathedral blessing.
In the December of the same year he defended deprivation of fluids and sustenance for the terminally ill.
When Catholics demonstrated in February 2007 before a child slaughterhouse in a Viennese shopping center, Cardinal Schönborn as expected, stabbed them into the back.
Then the inexpressible exhibition in the Viennese Cathedral museum in March 2008, which showed the Apostles as homo-perverse piglets and Christ as bound masochist with an erection.
Despite world-wide protests the Cardinal did not stop this outrage.
Besides he denied the Church's mission to convert the Jews in April 2008.
The award of the Papal Gregorian Medal followed to the baby-murdering, Viennese Ideologue, Comrade Renate Brown in June 2008.
As a Pope Benedikt XVI, highly regarded priest of Windischgarten, Mons. Gerhard Wagner, appointed to Linz Diocese, found Cardinal Schönborn in prominent place busily preventing his appointment.
In May 2009 the honoring of the Viennese Martyr Sister Restituta Kafka followed. You Cardinal, seemed to miss the demonic and bare breasted representation, which got the name in Vienna of "Prostituta".
But the Cardinal is smart enough, in order to know that its neoconservative bootlickers have a short memory and are stupid.
It is sufficient to throw to them a Medjugorje bone at his feet so that they forget the old liberal changes of the church in Austria, he has made.
After his Medjugorje journey the Viennese Cardinal can turn, therefore, again unimpaired to the cocktail parties with comrades and abortion politicians and work on the next plot against Catholics.
Because the neoconservative dullards are for a further seven years in the seventh Medjugorje heaven.
However, the resounding slap, which the Cardinal received after his Medjugorje visit from bishop Ratko Perić from Mostar Duvno, neither will resound for long:
"I regret it that the Cardinal with its visit, his appearance and his explanations added the present suffering of the local Church anew, which does not contribute to the necessary peace and to the Diocese.“
Cardinal Schoenborn plans to return to Medjugorje.
Despite actual Vatican condemnation of the priest chiefly associatd with this "Apparition", the Cardinal actually intends on creating quite a bit of a fuss. The Catholic Online report reads:
In a statement posted on the website of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno, Bishop Peric explained that Fr Vlasic has been reported to the CDF "for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders", and accusations of sexual immorality.
The Catholic Review Online, the Baltimore Diocesan Newpaper has this interesting piece of information to add to the rest, despite going on a bit about the good things that are attributed to the shrine, which may, it is not reported, have more to do with the intention of the pilgrims and the pre-existing shrine than the things that Fr. Vlasic and the Seers are up to.
Bishop Peric, who repeatedly has questioned the authenticity of the apparitions and struggled to limit the influence of religious living in the diocese without permission, issued a statement Jan. 2 saying that while he recognized the right of a cardinal to celebrate Mass anywhere in the world, “there also exists a certain etiquette in the church” that encourages a visiting cardinal to discuss a visit with the local bishop. He said neither the cardinal nor anyone from his office contacted him.
In addition, Cardinal Schonborn’s visits to unauthorized religious communities “could be interpreted as supportive,” Bishop Peric said.
Boston College Feminist Dies
Mary Daly was a force for changing attitudes and diminishing the importance of the Catholic Faith at this Jesuit school. The editorial remarks about her contribution to the "vibrant debate". It's difficult to surmise from reading the article or assessing some of her positions just how her contribution was "vibrant", but the article is correct in that it identifies her presence as a sign that Boston College is a liberal institution. How it is that a woman whose very presence championed the normalization of homosexuality at a Catholic institution is a very curious indicator, but that she did it is still further proof that this allegedly Catholic and Jesuit institution is far removed from the namesakes that inspired the brick and mortar to house generations of the surrounding flower of youth the Irish-Catholic community of Boston had to offer.
One Jesuit commenter, "aidan01" wrote:
It's hard to take seriously the author's previous statements about Daly being a "joke of a human being" and then going on to praise her for her talent as a scholar and her contribution, but it highlights the point of confusion. No doubt, despite the Jesuit's contention that Boston College did not damage his faith, he seems to suffer from that lack of integrity which comes as a result of not really believing in anything with any conviction. His attitude plays into the rationale that the presence of instructors like Daly enrich the experience in a spirited dialogue when most of the students graduating from Boston College don't have the fundamentals to know the Catholic Faith which is supposed to be the reason behind the College's existence in the first place.
Saying she was right about things doesn't address whether she should have been at a Catholic College in the first place, or whether or not she helps the students do anything more than realize the pure vanity of religion in the first place. The only thing we suspect she was right about was her opposition to the evils of co-education.
Requiem for a feminist - The Boston Globe
One Jesuit commenter, "aidan01" wrote:
As a male seminarian taking classes at B.C. in the eighties I recall that men were banned from Daly's class. Of course none of us were interested in trying to set up a private tutorial with her. We all thought Daly was a joke of a human being, and that B.C. had been corrupted by liberals and didn't have the spheres to boot her to the curb. Mary Daly was a sign of the decline of Boston College's standing in the Catholic World.
Years later, as a cynical move to impress a radical feminist professor, I cited one of Daly's works in a paper. To make sure the Prof. questioned my motives I also cited Mary Ann Glendon, the very conservative Harvard Professor, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Interestingly, Daly and Glendon agreed completely in their blisteringly negative critiques of Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree", but Glendon was particularly cutting, and sounded even more "feminist" than Daly. Even the Professor was surprised by that. But, imagine my surprise when I couldn't put Daly's book down, even after writing the paper.
As strange and alienating as Mary Day was to many, she was a serious thinker and her ideas are worthy of consideration. [Really?] While reading her work did not push me to abandon my own thinking, or my faith, it did bring to light for me a perspective on the Church and Society that was illuminative and insightful. She was a very accomplished scholar, somewhat off the deep end, but she had insights that cannot be dismissed lightly, and she conveyed them with a wicked sense of humor. Mary was very funny, and when I think about her I have to smile because, although it kills me to admit it, her work contributed something significant and meaningful to my life.
It's hard to take seriously the author's previous statements about Daly being a "joke of a human being" and then going on to praise her for her talent as a scholar and her contribution, but it highlights the point of confusion. No doubt, despite the Jesuit's contention that Boston College did not damage his faith, he seems to suffer from that lack of integrity which comes as a result of not really believing in anything with any conviction. His attitude plays into the rationale that the presence of instructors like Daly enrich the experience in a spirited dialogue when most of the students graduating from Boston College don't have the fundamentals to know the Catholic Faith which is supposed to be the reason behind the College's existence in the first place.
Saying she was right about things doesn't address whether she should have been at a Catholic College in the first place, or whether or not she helps the students do anything more than realize the pure vanity of religion in the first place. The only thing we suspect she was right about was her opposition to the evils of co-education.
Requiem for a feminist - The Boston Globe
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
A new book by Elena Maria Vida tells the story of the war against the Cathars.
The modern vampire fascination as with much else in Catharism also includes a radical connection to the dark and anarchic associations of witchcraft which have haunted Europe even before Simon Magus challenged St. Peter, the Priests of Baal tried to vie with Elija, or Moses set the power of God against the vain sorcery of Pharoh's priests. It's not suprising, as Tea at Trianon reports that there is a strange kind of fascination for the Cathars of the Languedoc who don't know the consolations of the Faith, but only the restless curiositas of frenetic modernity.
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
The modern vampire fascination as with much else in Catharism also includes a radical connection to the dark and anarchic associations of witchcraft which have haunted Europe even before Simon Magus challenged St. Peter, the Priests of Baal tried to vie with Elija, or Moses set the power of God against the vain sorcery of Pharoh's priests. It's not suprising, as Tea at Trianon reports that there is a strange kind of fascination for the Cathars of the Languedoc who don't know the consolations of the Faith, but only the restless curiositas of frenetic modernity.
Tea at Trianon: Cathar Country
Come All Ye Faithful: Benedict's Counter-Reformation
William S. Lind is a doctrinaire sort of man with his own axe to grind. His prose resembles the stiff powder blue suit of an Evangelical protestant going door-to-door. We couldn't even finish reading his article, but made comments before we started to fall into a torpor of sleep by the protestantic contempt for the First Vatican Council which many Bishops and Cardinals, even those who resisted, backe with their lives, like the Cardinal of Paris who was murdered by the spiritual descendants of the Protestants, the Communists in the 1870 Commune. This periodical isn't conservative, it's dead.
When my mother was a young woman, in the 1930s, Cousin Lily, then in her 80s, gave her some sound advice: “Wherever you go, join the Episcopal Church and you will meet all the best people in town.” “Best” in this instance referred not to the Book of Life but the Social Register. The staid, proper, elevated Episcopal Church, the Republican Party at prayer, was respectability’s keep.
Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion. Not surprisingly, this apostasy fractured both the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion. The upshot has been a variety of continuing churches that maintain historic ties to Anglicanism, multiple movements within the Episcopal Church to restore orthodoxy, and the breaking away of many Anglican churches in the Third World, where most Anglicans now live.
On Oct. 20, Rome parachuted into this dogfight like a division of Fallschirmjager. [Yes, we wrote "Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg"] In a move that stunned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism’s titular leader, Pope Benedict XVI, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s door to Anglicans as Anglicans. He invited them to move in—individuals, parishes, whole dioceses—while retaining their Anglican identity. They could keep their Book of Common Prayer, their liturgies, their priests—even married ones.
Importantly, Anglican parishes affiliating with Rome would not come under the authority of local Roman Catholic bishops. In the U.S. and UK, most of those bishops are liberals. They dislike traditional Anglicans as much as they dislike traditional Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass. Given the chance, they would simply close down any Anglican parish that swam the Tiber, telling the congregation to go to Roman Catholic churches. This would leave most former Anglicans unchurched, as few could stomach the snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass. To Anglicans, no sin is more grievous than bad taste.
Not to worry: Anglicans rallying to Rome will stay under their own bishops, or priests acting as bishops, known as “ordinaries.” Pope Benedict knows his American and British bishops all too well. His whole package is neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas in an Apostolic Constitution, the most definitive form of papal legislation. The rough American equivalent would be a constitutional amendment. It’s not just a bon-bon.
How Anglicans will react to Rome’s offer has yet to be seen. [Rome already knew how they would react, since there were many letters asking for this, and it was well known in the news that Liberal Prelatistas in the Magic Circle hated the idea that these people were coming. Anglican Bishop Ebbsfleet himself threatened to swim the Tiber and has yet to do so, although he said something last time about Advent.] Many details remain unclear. One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, [Not really, where do you people come from?] a 19th-century Roman innovation. [Is this really a conservative publication?] The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” [Many of them already do] This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail. [Wishful thinking on your part, no doubt.]
But should it succeed, Rome’s offer has implications far beyond Anglicanism. Pope Benedict just might have taken the first step toward a second Counter-Reformation. The split within Anglicanism between those who believe the Christian faith was revealed and is to be received and those who think you just make it up to accord with the temper of the times is duplicated within virtually every other denomination. [Yes, that was the problem in the first place]
The root cause is the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, [You'll probably never appreciate just how much the Frankfurt School is indebted to the Protestant Revolt] commonly known as political correctness. Following Antonio Gramsci’s plan for a “long march through the institutions,” cultural Marxists have penetrated every mainline church. Their driving force is political ideology, not theology. They view the church as just one more venue for radical politics.
Their goal is Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” where the old sins become virtues and the old virtues, sins. In churches where they take power, the Holy Trinity is replaced by a trio of bogeymen: racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every denomination so afflicted is bitterly split between remaining Christians and the politically correct. (No, you can’t be both, as Marxists would agree.)
What is now happening, and what Rome may have discerned, is that the people on each side of this division find they have more in common with those in other denominations who share their basic faith, Christianity or cultural Marxism, than with the people on the other side of that divide within their own churches. A potential is emerging for a vast realignment, one transcending the divisions that came out of the Reformation. [Uh, Protestant Revolt] That realignment, in which the remaining Christians in every church would gather in a single, new (small “c”) catholic church, needs a leader. Who better than Rome? Indeed, who other than Rome could possibly pull it off? [No one]
Seen in that light, the Pope’s offer to the Anglicans takes on broader meaning. Some observers have seen a parallel with the arrangement a number of Eastern Catholic Churches have had with Rome since 1595. Those Churches recognize their own liturgical rites, systems of canon law, and procedures for ordination. Immediately after the announcement of the constitution—before the document was published—Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican now Roman Catholic priest, wrote on the Inside Catholic website:
He is willing to take risks to welcome those who follow the historic Christian faith, although separated from full communion with Rome. On the other hand, he sees those who prefer the modern gospel of relativism, sexual license, and a denial of the historic Christian faith that have taken over the mainstream Protestant churches. He knows there are plenty of them in the Catholic Church, and to them Benedict is quietly saying, “There’s the door.”
Yet what the Apostolic Constitution actually offers Anglicans is substantially less accommodating than Rome’s deal with the Eastern Rite churches. While Anglicans could keep their historic liturgical rite, Anglican churches affiliating with Rome would come under what are in effect non-geographical dioceses. That is a long way from the independence of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. [I'm not getting the relevance or truth value of this statement?]
Here we come to the crux of the matter: is Rome’s offer final, or is it negotiable, an opening gambit? If it is final, it is not likely to draw many Anglicans and would have virtually no appeal to other Protestants. Papal infallibility alone might doom it, and as a vehicle for Christian unity, it would prove, well, fallible. But let us hopefully assume that the Apostolic Constitution is not Rome’s last offer, that something closer to the arrangement given to the Eastern Rite churches could prove acceptable to Rome.
What then? It is possible to visualize not only Anglicans but all Protestants, in a new Counter-Reformation, leaving behind the cultural Marxists in the husks of their denominational institutions and joining in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. They could do so while remaining what they are—Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even some evangelicals—just as Greek Catholics remain in their Eastern rite. To Rome, they would give formal allegiance, recognizing the Pope as the titular and symbolic head of the Church. What both would gain would be a reunion of Christendom in the West in a church free of cultural Marxism—no small thing.
It is obvious that we are talking about a big leap for the Protestants. While few still speak openly of the “tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,” that attitude has shaped their histories. [Much to the diminishment of European Civilization and involving the loss of many souls.] Interestingly, however, one of the more enthusiastic responses to the constitution came from the Methodists. A senior official told the Methodist Recorder that “[the constitution] may open up ways in which Methodism, whose origins were as a movement in the Church rather than a separate denomination, may find its place in future, as a Church, alongside others within the universal Church.”
Protestants’ usual Sunday services would have to alter little, if at all, except for communion services, which are infrequent. Less obvious, perhaps, is the height of the wall the Roman Catholic Church would have to vault. That barrier is built largely of beliefs that, in the Ultramontane years of the 19th century, were turned into formal doctrines. [These dogmas were defined because the world needed to understand them, things that Christians had always and everywhere believed] Neither Anglicans nor Protestants are likely to swear to any of them, although they ought to be willing to accept them as what they were before the 1800s, long-standing traditions that were widely believed. (Papal infallibility is an exception; it was an invention rammed through Vatican I in 1870.) [What's with this guy?]
For Rome, there is a possible way around this wall rather than over it: status quo ante. Anglican and Protestant congregations and jurisdictions joining in full communion with Rome would not be required to accept as doctrine anything postdating their split from Rome. The Catholic Church would lead a second Counter-Reformation by backing away from some of the first.
Before the Council of Trent (1545-63), which begat the Counter-Reformation, Rome’s hand rested lightly on national churches. For example, we think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a single rite, after Trent the Tridentine Rite and following Vatican II the sad and dispiriting Novus Ordo. Before Trent, Rome allowed a vast variety of rites, as she would again. England alone had three major rites and a host of minor ones in a country of 4 million people. Rome saw no problem as long as the rites for communion services followed what Dom Gregory Dix called “the shape of the liturgy.” Anglicans might again chant in the litany, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
Pre-Trent, the same decentralization reigned in other matters as well. Kings generally had a good deal of say in who became a bishop. The Church might “volunteer” to pay some form of tax to a needy monarch. (After all, Church lands might make up a third of his kingdom.) When, occasionally, a Pope would overreach, king and bishops would come together to oppose him.
If Rome’s ambitions for a reunited Western Church go beyond Anglicans, and the Vatican is willing to bend beyond what the Apostolic Constitution currently offers, it may be time for Vatican III. The goal of such a council would be twofold: to sweep away obstacles to Christian unity stemming from the Council of Trent and Vatican I and reverse the disastrous consequences of Vatican II, including the vandalizing of the liturgy and abandonment of practices (such as fish on Friday) that buttressed Roman Catholic identity among laymen. Ultramontane doctrinal innovations would all have to be on the table; they might remain for Roman Catholics but would not be required of others seeking full communion with Rome.
Is all this just wishful thinking? The division between Christians and cultural Marxists in every denomination is certainly real: it screams from the religion page of every newspaper. With that division comes the potential for realignment and Christian reunion. Understanding the mind of the Curia is more difficult than penetrating North Korea, but Rome’s offer to the Anglicans suggests that Pope Benedict XVI is looking beyond the usual games. The ice has cracked, and a new spring may be coming.
Pope Benedict is a good German. Perhaps the question he could put to himself is this: who do I want to be, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Bismarck? Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bright and well-intentioned fellow. He was almost always right in what he wanted to do (including not going to war in 1914). But over and over he deferred to his advisers, who were almost always wrong. Bismarck, in contrast, knew exactly what he wanted—the reunification of Germany—and was both opportunistic and ruthless in making it happen. He brooked no opposition. As Kaiser Wilhem I once said, “Sometimes it is a hard thing, being a Kaiser under Bismarck.”
Now there’s a vision to gladden the heart: a German Pope proclaiming the reunion of the Western Church in the hall of mirrors at Versailles. Be a Bismarck, Benedict, be a Bismarck.
__________________________________________
William S. Lind is author, with Paul Weyrich, of The Next Conservatism.
The American Conservative...
When my mother was a young woman, in the 1930s, Cousin Lily, then in her 80s, gave her some sound advice: “Wherever you go, join the Episcopal Church and you will meet all the best people in town.” “Best” in this instance referred not to the Book of Life but the Social Register. The staid, proper, elevated Episcopal Church, the Republican Party at prayer, was respectability’s keep.
Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion. Not surprisingly, this apostasy fractured both the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion. The upshot has been a variety of continuing churches that maintain historic ties to Anglicanism, multiple movements within the Episcopal Church to restore orthodoxy, and the breaking away of many Anglican churches in the Third World, where most Anglicans now live.
On Oct. 20, Rome parachuted into this dogfight like a division of Fallschirmjager. [Yes, we wrote "Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg"] In a move that stunned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism’s titular leader, Pope Benedict XVI, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s door to Anglicans as Anglicans. He invited them to move in—individuals, parishes, whole dioceses—while retaining their Anglican identity. They could keep their Book of Common Prayer, their liturgies, their priests—even married ones.
Importantly, Anglican parishes affiliating with Rome would not come under the authority of local Roman Catholic bishops. In the U.S. and UK, most of those bishops are liberals. They dislike traditional Anglicans as much as they dislike traditional Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass. Given the chance, they would simply close down any Anglican parish that swam the Tiber, telling the congregation to go to Roman Catholic churches. This would leave most former Anglicans unchurched, as few could stomach the snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass. To Anglicans, no sin is more grievous than bad taste.
Not to worry: Anglicans rallying to Rome will stay under their own bishops, or priests acting as bishops, known as “ordinaries.” Pope Benedict knows his American and British bishops all too well. His whole package is neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas in an Apostolic Constitution, the most definitive form of papal legislation. The rough American equivalent would be a constitutional amendment. It’s not just a bon-bon.
How Anglicans will react to Rome’s offer has yet to be seen. [Rome already knew how they would react, since there were many letters asking for this, and it was well known in the news that Liberal Prelatistas in the Magic Circle hated the idea that these people were coming. Anglican Bishop Ebbsfleet himself threatened to swim the Tiber and has yet to do so, although he said something last time about Advent.] Many details remain unclear. One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, [Not really, where do you people come from?] a 19th-century Roman innovation. [Is this really a conservative publication?] The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” [Many of them already do] This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail. [Wishful thinking on your part, no doubt.]
But should it succeed, Rome’s offer has implications far beyond Anglicanism. Pope Benedict just might have taken the first step toward a second Counter-Reformation. The split within Anglicanism between those who believe the Christian faith was revealed and is to be received and those who think you just make it up to accord with the temper of the times is duplicated within virtually every other denomination. [Yes, that was the problem in the first place]
The root cause is the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, [You'll probably never appreciate just how much the Frankfurt School is indebted to the Protestant Revolt] commonly known as political correctness. Following Antonio Gramsci’s plan for a “long march through the institutions,” cultural Marxists have penetrated every mainline church. Their driving force is political ideology, not theology. They view the church as just one more venue for radical politics.
Their goal is Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” where the old sins become virtues and the old virtues, sins. In churches where they take power, the Holy Trinity is replaced by a trio of bogeymen: racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every denomination so afflicted is bitterly split between remaining Christians and the politically correct. (No, you can’t be both, as Marxists would agree.)
What is now happening, and what Rome may have discerned, is that the people on each side of this division find they have more in common with those in other denominations who share their basic faith, Christianity or cultural Marxism, than with the people on the other side of that divide within their own churches. A potential is emerging for a vast realignment, one transcending the divisions that came out of the Reformation. [Uh, Protestant Revolt] That realignment, in which the remaining Christians in every church would gather in a single, new (small “c”) catholic church, needs a leader. Who better than Rome? Indeed, who other than Rome could possibly pull it off? [No one]
Seen in that light, the Pope’s offer to the Anglicans takes on broader meaning. Some observers have seen a parallel with the arrangement a number of Eastern Catholic Churches have had with Rome since 1595. Those Churches recognize their own liturgical rites, systems of canon law, and procedures for ordination. Immediately after the announcement of the constitution—before the document was published—Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican now Roman Catholic priest, wrote on the Inside Catholic website:
It has always been Benedict’s view that the way forward ecumenically is to replicate the existing structures that the Eastern Rite churches enjoy, and that this can be done with new flexibility and creativity.
He is willing to take risks to welcome those who follow the historic Christian faith, although separated from full communion with Rome. On the other hand, he sees those who prefer the modern gospel of relativism, sexual license, and a denial of the historic Christian faith that have taken over the mainstream Protestant churches. He knows there are plenty of them in the Catholic Church, and to them Benedict is quietly saying, “There’s the door.”
Yet what the Apostolic Constitution actually offers Anglicans is substantially less accommodating than Rome’s deal with the Eastern Rite churches. While Anglicans could keep their historic liturgical rite, Anglican churches affiliating with Rome would come under what are in effect non-geographical dioceses. That is a long way from the independence of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. [I'm not getting the relevance or truth value of this statement?]
Here we come to the crux of the matter: is Rome’s offer final, or is it negotiable, an opening gambit? If it is final, it is not likely to draw many Anglicans and would have virtually no appeal to other Protestants. Papal infallibility alone might doom it, and as a vehicle for Christian unity, it would prove, well, fallible. But let us hopefully assume that the Apostolic Constitution is not Rome’s last offer, that something closer to the arrangement given to the Eastern Rite churches could prove acceptable to Rome.
What then? It is possible to visualize not only Anglicans but all Protestants, in a new Counter-Reformation, leaving behind the cultural Marxists in the husks of their denominational institutions and joining in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. They could do so while remaining what they are—Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even some evangelicals—just as Greek Catholics remain in their Eastern rite. To Rome, they would give formal allegiance, recognizing the Pope as the titular and symbolic head of the Church. What both would gain would be a reunion of Christendom in the West in a church free of cultural Marxism—no small thing.
It is obvious that we are talking about a big leap for the Protestants. While few still speak openly of the “tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,” that attitude has shaped their histories. [Much to the diminishment of European Civilization and involving the loss of many souls.] Interestingly, however, one of the more enthusiastic responses to the constitution came from the Methodists. A senior official told the Methodist Recorder that “[the constitution] may open up ways in which Methodism, whose origins were as a movement in the Church rather than a separate denomination, may find its place in future, as a Church, alongside others within the universal Church.”
Protestants’ usual Sunday services would have to alter little, if at all, except for communion services, which are infrequent. Less obvious, perhaps, is the height of the wall the Roman Catholic Church would have to vault. That barrier is built largely of beliefs that, in the Ultramontane years of the 19th century, were turned into formal doctrines. [These dogmas were defined because the world needed to understand them, things that Christians had always and everywhere believed] Neither Anglicans nor Protestants are likely to swear to any of them, although they ought to be willing to accept them as what they were before the 1800s, long-standing traditions that were widely believed. (Papal infallibility is an exception; it was an invention rammed through Vatican I in 1870.) [What's with this guy?]
For Rome, there is a possible way around this wall rather than over it: status quo ante. Anglican and Protestant congregations and jurisdictions joining in full communion with Rome would not be required to accept as doctrine anything postdating their split from Rome. The Catholic Church would lead a second Counter-Reformation by backing away from some of the first.
Before the Council of Trent (1545-63), which begat the Counter-Reformation, Rome’s hand rested lightly on national churches. For example, we think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a single rite, after Trent the Tridentine Rite and following Vatican II the sad and dispiriting Novus Ordo. Before Trent, Rome allowed a vast variety of rites, as she would again. England alone had three major rites and a host of minor ones in a country of 4 million people. Rome saw no problem as long as the rites for communion services followed what Dom Gregory Dix called “the shape of the liturgy.” Anglicans might again chant in the litany, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
Pre-Trent, the same decentralization reigned in other matters as well. Kings generally had a good deal of say in who became a bishop. The Church might “volunteer” to pay some form of tax to a needy monarch. (After all, Church lands might make up a third of his kingdom.) When, occasionally, a Pope would overreach, king and bishops would come together to oppose him.
If Rome’s ambitions for a reunited Western Church go beyond Anglicans, and the Vatican is willing to bend beyond what the Apostolic Constitution currently offers, it may be time for Vatican III. The goal of such a council would be twofold: to sweep away obstacles to Christian unity stemming from the Council of Trent and Vatican I and reverse the disastrous consequences of Vatican II, including the vandalizing of the liturgy and abandonment of practices (such as fish on Friday) that buttressed Roman Catholic identity among laymen. Ultramontane doctrinal innovations would all have to be on the table; they might remain for Roman Catholics but would not be required of others seeking full communion with Rome.
Is all this just wishful thinking? The division between Christians and cultural Marxists in every denomination is certainly real: it screams from the religion page of every newspaper. With that division comes the potential for realignment and Christian reunion. Understanding the mind of the Curia is more difficult than penetrating North Korea, but Rome’s offer to the Anglicans suggests that Pope Benedict XVI is looking beyond the usual games. The ice has cracked, and a new spring may be coming.
Pope Benedict is a good German. Perhaps the question he could put to himself is this: who do I want to be, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Bismarck? Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bright and well-intentioned fellow. He was almost always right in what he wanted to do (including not going to war in 1914). But over and over he deferred to his advisers, who were almost always wrong. Bismarck, in contrast, knew exactly what he wanted—the reunification of Germany—and was both opportunistic and ruthless in making it happen. He brooked no opposition. As Kaiser Wilhem I once said, “Sometimes it is a hard thing, being a Kaiser under Bismarck.”
Now there’s a vision to gladden the heart: a German Pope proclaiming the reunion of the Western Church in the hall of mirrors at Versailles. Be a Bismarck, Benedict, be a Bismarck.
__________________________________________
William S. Lind is author, with Paul Weyrich, of The Next Conservatism.
The American Conservative...
San Francisco Archdiocese Reinvestigates, Approves Pro-Abortion CCHD Grantee
by Katie Walker
Released January 4, 2010
Washington, D.C. (04 January 2010) – The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, American Life League has learned.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
The initial investigation conducted by the Reform CCHD Now campaign (of which American Life League is a member) revealed the SFOP’s strong support for health care facilities that provide family planning and “emergency” contraception.
Further investigation reveals the SFOP was instrumental in establishing the Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco insurance programs. Covering the full range of birth control, from drugs to devices, and elective abortion, SFOP worked to launch Healthy Kids, enrolling over 2,000 children through the San Francisco Health Plan. SFOP not only engaged in public campaigns to get Healthy San Francisco, which also covers birth control and elective abortion, passed, but a member of SFOP served on the Healthy San Francisco Advisory Board, which provided expert consultation on "implementation of employer spending mandate, membership, benefits, provider network, utilization, costs, and evaluation."
“The SFOP was cleared for funding after a reinvestigation – how could the Archdiocese of San Francisco not know about SFOP’s involvement in Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco?” asked Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher on the CCHD.
In August, Bellermine Veritas Ministry, another participant in the Reform CCHD Now campaign, released its first report on the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the CCHD, showing that the CCHD-funded organizations "Young Workers United" and the "Chinese Progressive Association" issued 2008 voter guides advocating abortion, homosexual marriage and decriminalized prostitution. The report prompted the CCHD to defund them.
“Given that the CCHD and the Archdiocese of San Francisco have a history of clearing pro-abortion groups for funding, a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge,” said Hichborn. “Bishop Roger Morin (chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the CCHD) called our charges against the CCHD ‘outrageous.’ In light of the latest revelations, he and Archbishop Niederauer owe Catholics across the country an explanation,” Hichborn said.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•American Life League: CCHD http://www.all.org/cchd
•Reform CCHD Now: http://reformcchdnow.com/
•Bellarmine Veritas Ministry: CCHD
http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/campaigns/cchd/
Released January 4, 2010
Washington, D.C. (04 January 2010) – The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, American Life League has learned.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
The initial investigation conducted by the Reform CCHD Now campaign (of which American Life League is a member) revealed the SFOP’s strong support for health care facilities that provide family planning and “emergency” contraception.
Further investigation reveals the SFOP was instrumental in establishing the Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco insurance programs. Covering the full range of birth control, from drugs to devices, and elective abortion, SFOP worked to launch Healthy Kids, enrolling over 2,000 children through the San Francisco Health Plan. SFOP not only engaged in public campaigns to get Healthy San Francisco, which also covers birth control and elective abortion, passed, but a member of SFOP served on the Healthy San Francisco Advisory Board, which provided expert consultation on "implementation of employer spending mandate, membership, benefits, provider network, utilization, costs, and evaluation."
“The SFOP was cleared for funding after a reinvestigation – how could the Archdiocese of San Francisco not know about SFOP’s involvement in Healthy Kids and Healthy San Francisco?” asked Michael Hichborn, American Life League’s lead researcher on the CCHD.
In August, Bellermine Veritas Ministry, another participant in the Reform CCHD Now campaign, released its first report on the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the CCHD, showing that the CCHD-funded organizations "Young Workers United" and the "Chinese Progressive Association" issued 2008 voter guides advocating abortion, homosexual marriage and decriminalized prostitution. The report prompted the CCHD to defund them.
“Given that the CCHD and the Archdiocese of San Francisco have a history of clearing pro-abortion groups for funding, a disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge,” said Hichborn. “Bishop Roger Morin (chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the CCHD) called our charges against the CCHD ‘outrageous.’ In light of the latest revelations, he and Archbishop Niederauer owe Catholics across the country an explanation,” Hichborn said.
American Life League was cofounded in 1979 by Judie Brown. It is the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States and is committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to natural death. For more information or press inquiries, please contact Katie Walker at 540.659.4942.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
•American Life League: CCHD http://www.all.org/cchd
•Reform CCHD Now: http://reformcchdnow.com/
•Bellarmine Veritas Ministry: CCHD
http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/campaigns/cchd/
Monarchy, Versailles, Museums, Jesuits and Mystery Science 2000
Catholic Caveman has found an article by California Catholic on the most recent foray of the Society of Jesus into art, scandal and sacrilege. The Jesuits in California are doing scary things while turning sacred space into a cultural venue for fascinating multi-cultural goings on, as if the originators of the event had taken a page from Harvey Cox's Secular City.
We thought the above pictured pagan idol reminded us a lot of Crow from Mystery Science 2000.
It may be true that museum goers need not have a religious bent to enjoy sacred art, but we wonder whether these California Jesuits at St. Ignatius Church in San Franciso have a properly formed sensus catholicus. No doubt, their desire to shock and break with tradition have all but completely overwhelmed their stated purpose of doing everything for the glory of God.
In a related event at Versailles, France, a similar kind of artistic, cultural terrorism is happening, which may afright and confuse those of us who are accustomed to a more or less conventional experience. It really is a tribute in a way to the revolutionary nature of Museums in the first place, which were really designed according to an Enlightenment idea that the public could be educated by herding them into large public buildings to view art, apart from their privileged and aristocratic associations.
The Measure
In his New York Times decade-in-art retrospective, Holland Cotter singled out the Jeff Koons exhibition at Versailles as the most significant exhibition of the aughts, and next fall Japanese Pop art star Takashi Murakami (pictured) will have an opportunity to set the tone for the 2010s. (The other contemporary artist to have a show at Versailles, French conceptualist Xavier Veilhan, was featured there in 2009.) Agence France Presse reported yesterday that the Murakami retrospective that was first announced last summer will open on September 12, 2010 and run for three months at the palace outside Paris.
Sadly, [happily for us] because the French have a serious complex about the former seat of their dearly departed monarchy, the art shown therein must be as tame as possible. Or, as AFP puts it:
the palace, a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy, is being careful to avoid displaying works with pornographic or morbid connotations that might offend some visitors.
Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' | National Catholic Reporter
Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' | National Catholic Reporter
The fun part is reading all of the whinging from the local leftist yokels who are happy with praise and worship at the peace pulpit.
The fun part is reading all of the whinging from the local leftist yokels who are happy with praise and worship at the peace pulpit.
Copts Clash with Egyptian Police
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Modernism is a dragon that must be relentlessly pursued and destroyed. Its many heads rear up to attack the Church and its allies are many. Father Roy Bourgeois, another freeze dried hippie priest left over from radical days is being honored by another increasingly elderly and soon to be non-existent group, the Quakers. Why anyone would want a Nobel Prize and sit in the same company with Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arrafat and Obama is beyond us. The Nobel Prize is more of a target than a honor.
We'd like you to see a confluence between various cultural and political attacks resulting in the cultural and political decline of society at large abetted by Catholic priests of a radical stripe who ordinarily receive such uncritical praise from the main news organs that it's difficult for many people to disassociate them in their minds from an authentic Catholic identity. Father Bourgeois is, not surprisingly, a proponent of women's ordination.
Fortunately, he was excommunicated for his pains, but unfortunately, there are quite a few more like him posing as Catholic Priests and we dare say it, Bishops as well to say nothing of all aspects of Catholic social work and education where a Catholic professor or healthcare provider is often the exception rather than the rule. We hope you bear that in mind before you send your children there to have their innocense destroyed and their abillity to think critically seriously undermined, or send your money to causes which are Catholic in name only.
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
We'd like you to see a confluence between various cultural and political attacks resulting in the cultural and political decline of society at large abetted by Catholic priests of a radical stripe who ordinarily receive such uncritical praise from the main news organs that it's difficult for many people to disassociate them in their minds from an authentic Catholic identity. Father Bourgeois is, not surprisingly, a proponent of women's ordination.
Fortunately, he was excommunicated for his pains, but unfortunately, there are quite a few more like him posing as Catholic Priests and we dare say it, Bishops as well to say nothing of all aspects of Catholic social work and education where a Catholic professor or healthcare provider is often the exception rather than the rule. We hope you bear that in mind before you send your children there to have their innocense destroyed and their abillity to think critically seriously undermined, or send your money to causes which are Catholic in name only.
Quaker group nominates excommunicated priest for Nobel Peace Prize :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Copts Clash with Egyptian Police
At last, there's wider recognition of this problem.
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
CAIRO — Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village gathered to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct late on Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
Read further...
US Bishops Seeking Immigration Reform in '10
More Immigration "Reform" being pushed by the usual suspects at the USCCB.
WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 6, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops are seeking legislation to reform immigration policy in 2010, saying migration should be a choice, not a necessity.
The bishops' conference announced today the beginning of a postcard campaign and two Web sites to help build momentum in the effort to bring reform to immigration laws this year.
Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, Utah, chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration, and Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, chairman of the bishops' International Policy Committee, made the announcement. The campaign comes as National Migration Week is under way through Saturday, focused on "Renewing Hope, Seeking Justice."
"It is our view, and that of others, that the American public, including the Catholic and other faith communities, want a humane and comprehensive solution to the problems which beset our immigration system, and they want Congress to address this issue,” said Bishop Wester.
Read further...
h/t Saint Paul TODAY, here.
USCCB, Immigration Reform, a failure of Imagination.
WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 6, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops are seeking legislation to reform immigration policy in 2010, saying migration should be a choice, not a necessity.
The bishops' conference announced today the beginning of a postcard campaign and two Web sites to help build momentum in the effort to bring reform to immigration laws this year.
Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, Utah, chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration, and Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, chairman of the bishops' International Policy Committee, made the announcement. The campaign comes as National Migration Week is under way through Saturday, focused on "Renewing Hope, Seeking Justice."
"It is our view, and that of others, that the American public, including the Catholic and other faith communities, want a humane and comprehensive solution to the problems which beset our immigration system, and they want Congress to address this issue,” said Bishop Wester.
Read further...
h/t Saint Paul TODAY, here.
USCCB, Immigration Reform, a failure of Imagination.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
"Pray, Tell", Collegeville's Answer to Liturgical Restoration
The good folks at Commonweal are talking about a campy new blog from Collegeville and Liturgical Press called, "Pray, Tell". Perhaps it should be "Prey".
The Jesuit editor of America, Father James Martin SJ, thinks it's worth a look. He goes more deeply, if less revealingly than he ought, to discuss the blog's connection with Worship:
The blog chiefs quote from the first issue of Orate, Fratres, one of the great liturgical magazines (now Worship) that helped foster the liturgical renewal that led to the Second Vatican Council's document Sacrosanctum Concilium. "Our general aim is develop a better understanding of the spiritual import of the liturgy. … [We hope] that many persons may find in the liturgy the first answer to the intimate need of their souls for a closer contact and union with the spiritual and the divine.” The new blog, the progeny of Orate, Fratres, is nothing if not candid
The New Liturgical Movement reports on it as well, and is less enthusiastic, some of the commenters note the unwillingness of the moderator to allow dissent, despite the Blog's claims of "openness".
What NLM doesn't tell you, and what Father Martin above omits to say is the connection of the Blog's print publication, Worship (Previously Orate Fratres when it was founded by Fr. Virgil Michel in 1929 at St. John's Abbey in Minnesota), to one of its editors, a credibly accused homosexual Fr. Dunstan Moorse, or one of the notorious and early collaborators who designed the cover art for the first issue of the magazine, Eric Gill, whose own revolutionary liturgical efforts are no less suspicious than the current sponsors of "Prey, Tell".
Deal Says the USCCB Had to Keep Stupak on Task
From tomorrow's New York Times comes a story by Jodi Kantor about Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI).
It contains the following very interesting tidbit:
The parenthesis are from the original story. Why are they there? Perhaps Kantor did not know what a bombshell this statement from Stupak would be among many Catholics.
It makes you wonder what Stupak thought the USCCB should be tougher about? The abortion issue? Or abortion and other issues as well? And did Stupak mean the USCCB should be tougher behind the scenes or in the public eye?
But if Stupak feels he is hanging tougher than the USCCB then how do you make sense of all those stories about lobbyists from the USCCB keeping Stupak on message?
Certainly the USCCB has studiously avoided a tough public stance, preferring not to risk their internal negotiating position.
I wish Kantor explored Stupak's meaning here -- perhaps Stupak went off the record at this point, and Kantor had to call the USCCB and National Right to Life for comment.
That the USCCB did not return her call is surprising given the prominence of the NYT and the importance of the issue raised by Stupak.
Link to original Inside Catholic...
It contains the following very interesting tidbit:
Mr. Stupak says he urged the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to toughen its stance on the legislation; representatives from the conference and the National Right to Life Committee did not return calls
The parenthesis are from the original story. Why are they there? Perhaps Kantor did not know what a bombshell this statement from Stupak would be among many Catholics.
It makes you wonder what Stupak thought the USCCB should be tougher about? The abortion issue? Or abortion and other issues as well? And did Stupak mean the USCCB should be tougher behind the scenes or in the public eye?
But if Stupak feels he is hanging tougher than the USCCB then how do you make sense of all those stories about lobbyists from the USCCB keeping Stupak on message?
Certainly the USCCB has studiously avoided a tough public stance, preferring not to risk their internal negotiating position.
I wish Kantor explored Stupak's meaning here -- perhaps Stupak went off the record at this point, and Kantor had to call the USCCB and National Right to Life for comment.
That the USCCB did not return her call is surprising given the prominence of the NYT and the importance of the issue raised by Stupak.
Link to original Inside Catholic...
A Few Anesthetized Souls Plan to Celebrate Archbishop Weakland's Defense of Children in Milwaukee
If Flannery O'Connor or Evelyn Waugh had been as hostile to the Catholic Church as they were to the world around it, they would have written a story like that of Archbishop Weakland. The Irony of him speaking at the unveiling of his own bronze image in a cathedral he virtually destroyed might give some hope to many of you who are morally attuned enough to realize the insanity of the situation. Enjoy the irony we say for God's vengeance can't be far behind in this story.
Link to story, and photos showing the artwork commissioned by Blessed Rembert who is depicted giving shelter to innocent children. It nearly rivals Ferdinand Marcos' own memorial which features Mozart's Requiem being played day and night for eternity.
We suspect that these are the signs of the depravity accompanying the death of Faith in the West when men no longer fear God and worship false idols.
Link to story, and photos showing the artwork commissioned by Blessed Rembert who is depicted giving shelter to innocent children. It nearly rivals Ferdinand Marcos' own memorial which features Mozart's Requiem being played day and night for eternity.
We suspect that these are the signs of the depravity accompanying the death of Faith in the West when men no longer fear God and worship false idols.
Anglican Church in Crisis
Roger Gray / KETK News
December 11, 2009 - 10:18pm
The Episcopal Church is in a crisis. The election of a second gay bishop has many wondering about the future of the denomination…
More US Presidents have been Episcopalians than any other faith, but the modern church us splintering fast.
I’ll confess upfront, I am what is known as a cradle Episcopalian. And I like many Anglicans, wonder where the church is going…
In 2003, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire selected an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and ignited a firestorm in a denomination formed from the old Church of England right after the revolution.
h/t: Virtue Online
Read further...
December 11, 2009 - 10:18pm
The Episcopal Church is in a crisis. The election of a second gay bishop has many wondering about the future of the denomination…
More US Presidents have been Episcopalians than any other faith, but the modern church us splintering fast.
I’ll confess upfront, I am what is known as a cradle Episcopalian. And I like many Anglicans, wonder where the church is going…
In 2003, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire selected an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and ignited a firestorm in a denomination formed from the old Church of England right after the revolution.
h/t: Virtue Online
Read further...
Bishop Hits Hidden Agenda [Philippines]
INQUIRER Politics
MANILA, Philippines—Moves in the House of Representatives to set the election of delegates to a convention in October to amend the Constitution confirm the “hidden agenda” behind President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s decision to run for a congressional seat, according to a Catholic bishop.
MANILA, Philippines—Moves in the House of Representatives to set the election of delegates to a convention in October to amend the Constitution confirm the “hidden agenda” behind President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s decision to run for a congressional seat, according to a Catholic bishop.
Czech cardinal warns: Muslims are conquering Europe
It might help also if you pointed out that we don't just have to contend with the pagan culture on the outside, but the modernist, neo-Marxist culture within the Church, which derides, mocks and ridicules everything the Church has ever steadfastly defended in the past.
January 06, 2010
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims-- which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”
The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.
Link to original, Catholic Culture...
January 06, 2010
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn't change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims-- which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”
The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.
Link to original, Catholic Culture...
The Anglo-Catholic reflects on the events Thiberville
The response to the usual ecclesiastical bullying on the part of modernist ordinaries at places like Thiberville has precedent in history. At some point people get fed up and decide to do something against the effrontery of a class of sneering ecclesiastics who wish merely to subvert and destroy. Their sly jibes, administrative demotion of actual Catholicism, petty persecution of its exponents is designed to make Catholicism go away while they wed what remains of its physical plant to the predominant secular vision; it would explain why so many of them are so keen on advocating the same sorts of things throughout the world, as if a mock magisterium were giving some order to their efforts on behalf of the religion of man. Again, it's the part of Catholics to resist these things.
It reminds us of that time when the SSPX stormed and took over a church not so long ago. This is a response they don't expect.
The Anglo-Catholic
The events of Thiberville have provoked me to a reflection about the pastoral ministry in the diocese and the parish. I find parishes and pastoral matters as fascinating as theology and liturgy. I think this issue is highly relevant in our present Anglican communities and the future Ordinariates we hope to become in the near future. I have touched upon the issue of Thiberville, which is not that of the traditionalist reaction, but rather a conflict between two ecclesiologies and pastoral visions. We are moving towards the communion of the Catholic Church and must be open-eyed about what this means, both at the level of the Universal Church and the local diocesan Churches.
We know that what is distinctly Catholic about the Church is the liturgical and sacramental life that owes everything to the Apostolic Priesthood. If there were no priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no community or communion. This Catholic notion of the Church is founded upon the presence of the incarnate Christ in the Church on earth.
[cut]
This is the war, the battle, the real enemy we have to fight with spiritual weapons. That is why the Pope needs traditional Anglicans as much as he needs traditional Catholics and the Orthodox. All hands on deck!
Read entire article...
Related Stories:
Arm in Arm in France, Norman townsfolk block Bishop from entering sanctuary, here.
More response on the event in Thiberville here.
It reminds us of that time when the SSPX stormed and took over a church not so long ago. This is a response they don't expect.
The Anglo-Catholic
The events of Thiberville have provoked me to a reflection about the pastoral ministry in the diocese and the parish. I find parishes and pastoral matters as fascinating as theology and liturgy. I think this issue is highly relevant in our present Anglican communities and the future Ordinariates we hope to become in the near future. I have touched upon the issue of Thiberville, which is not that of the traditionalist reaction, but rather a conflict between two ecclesiologies and pastoral visions. We are moving towards the communion of the Catholic Church and must be open-eyed about what this means, both at the level of the Universal Church and the local diocesan Churches.
We know that what is distinctly Catholic about the Church is the liturgical and sacramental life that owes everything to the Apostolic Priesthood. If there were no priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no community or communion. This Catholic notion of the Church is founded upon the presence of the incarnate Christ in the Church on earth.
[cut]
This is the war, the battle, the real enemy we have to fight with spiritual weapons. That is why the Pope needs traditional Anglicans as much as he needs traditional Catholics and the Orthodox. All hands on deck!
Read entire article...
Related Stories:
Arm in Arm in France, Norman townsfolk block Bishop from entering sanctuary, here.
More response on the event in Thiberville here.
1.7 Million Attended Papal Audiences Last year
It's interesting stuff, but doesn't begin to compare in numbers with Sr. Joan Chittister's audiences of hundreds.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Women priests will no longer be contained
Priestess Jeaney gets some help from Rip Taylor at a Bacchanalian celebration, where young men, if there are any present, may be sacrificed. Perhaps young men fear the women dominated Church because they fear being subject to the fate of Pentheus?Using spurious scholarship to support their claims, these women on a mission officiate at ceremonies where journalists often outnumber participants. A small number of people really want this to happen, but it's a sure-fire way to empty a church as most of America's main-line denominations are discovering as they sink into irrelevance; unfortunately for them, sneaky PR gadjetry often enhances the hilarity of their position rather than lead them to consciousness of the problem. That's what makes satire so wonderful, is the blissful ignorance of a man, or in this case a woman, about to step into a casm of well-deserved ridicule. Of course, the practice of allowing women on the altar at all is often confusing; as much as we might revere particular women, they don't belong up there any more than the elderly Knights of Columbus guys who insist on "doing" the readings on Sundays in somber colored suit and tie to the deafening tedium of the scant "massgoers" who endure it all, again. From an aesthetic standpoint, it demeans the liturgy, it's part of an overall programme to mashe everything down to the level of pablum which most men don't find very necessary or enervating.
The overweening presence of women in parish life, in liturgical functions is simply more evidence, certainly stronger evidence then their archaeological "evidence" of wymyn Bishops, that there is a common causality between low participation in Church by marriageable adult males. It's an opportunity to take a nap or stay in bed on Sundays.
Archbishop calls priests to holiness and orthodoxy :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Archbishop calls priests to holiness and orthodoxy :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
“The People of God have the right to hear the complete Word from the lips of their priests...They also have the right to receive genuine doctrine from us, without reducing it, in close communion with the Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops."
“The People of God have the right to hear the complete Word from the lips of their priests...They also have the right to receive genuine doctrine from us, without reducing it, in close communion with the Magisterium of the Pope and the bishops."
Vietnamese Communists Threaten Redemptorists
Remember when we were told by George Weigel and Francis Fukuyama that Communism was dead and that we were entering into a new golden age? Don't you believe it.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued a statement in which it slammed the city's Redemptorist community for going against "the Party's policies and the nation's laws". Catholics now fear more anti-priest violence. Signed by the Committee's chairman Pham Ngoc Huu, the statement was released on 28 December and published by all state media.
The statement accused the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is located on the south side of the city, of organising mass prayer vigils "with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions of the country without the permission of local authorities in order to distort, falsely accuse and criticise the government."
The press release also said that the Redemptorists used the church bulletin board to "post articles and images leading believers to misunderstand the Party's policies and the nation's laws".
In the last two years, the Redemptorists' church has indeed held a number of prayer vigils in support of its sister church in Thai Ha (Hanoi), which has been fighting to regain its land, unfairly seized by the city.
Since then the Church and the faithful of Our Lady of Perpetual Help have been under close surveillance by uniformed and plain clothes police, who tape and take picture of those who take part in their activities.
Local authorities have also installed loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to disrupt the church's services, including the vigils.
The statement singled out the vigil of 27 July, which was held for two priests brutally beaten up in Dong Hoi (cf J.B. An Dang, "Priest beaten into a coma by police. Catholics Protest throughout Vietnam," in AsiaNews.it, 28 July 2009).
Similarly, People's Committee Chairman Huu singled out Fr Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known local pro-life activist, for giving "a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "
Father Le Quang was equally accused of “taking advantage of his role in leading prayer vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam," which in turn gave him an opportunity to "denounce the government for human rights violations” and thus "undermine national unity.”
In the last few months, the clergyman also criticised the government for allowing bauxite mining in areas in central Vietnam inhabited by Montagnards. For this reason, he was attacked by state media, which called for his conviction on charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison (see J.B. An Dang, "Redemptorist priest could be accused of plotting to overthrow Vietnam’s Communist regime," in AsiaNews.it, 2 July 2009).
More broadly, Huu has accused the Redemptorists of failing to heed the Pope's instructions. During an ad limina visit by Vietnamese bishops, Benedict XVI had in fact said that "a good Catholic is a good citizen."
A Redemptorist spokesman, Fr Peter Nguyen Van Khai, responded by accusing the authorities of distorting the sense of the Pope's words, because the Holy Father had also called for "a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.” Unfortunately, the government seems unwilling to accept such collaboration.
For many Catholics, the authorities seem more likely to resort to violence and the campaign against the Redemptorists appears to be but the start of a new anti-priest campaign.
Link to original...
h/t: Pewsitter
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued a statement in which it slammed the city's Redemptorist community for going against "the Party's policies and the nation's laws". Catholics now fear more anti-priest violence. Signed by the Committee's chairman Pham Ngoc Huu, the statement was released on 28 December and published by all state media.
The statement accused the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is located on the south side of the city, of organising mass prayer vigils "with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions of the country without the permission of local authorities in order to distort, falsely accuse and criticise the government."
The press release also said that the Redemptorists used the church bulletin board to "post articles and images leading believers to misunderstand the Party's policies and the nation's laws".
In the last two years, the Redemptorists' church has indeed held a number of prayer vigils in support of its sister church in Thai Ha (Hanoi), which has been fighting to regain its land, unfairly seized by the city.
Since then the Church and the faithful of Our Lady of Perpetual Help have been under close surveillance by uniformed and plain clothes police, who tape and take picture of those who take part in their activities.
Local authorities have also installed loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to disrupt the church's services, including the vigils.
The statement singled out the vigil of 27 July, which was held for two priests brutally beaten up in Dong Hoi (cf J.B. An Dang, "Priest beaten into a coma by police. Catholics Protest throughout Vietnam," in AsiaNews.it, 28 July 2009).
Similarly, People's Committee Chairman Huu singled out Fr Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known local pro-life activist, for giving "a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "
Father Le Quang was equally accused of “taking advantage of his role in leading prayer vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam," which in turn gave him an opportunity to "denounce the government for human rights violations” and thus "undermine national unity.”
In the last few months, the clergyman also criticised the government for allowing bauxite mining in areas in central Vietnam inhabited by Montagnards. For this reason, he was attacked by state media, which called for his conviction on charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison (see J.B. An Dang, "Redemptorist priest could be accused of plotting to overthrow Vietnam’s Communist regime," in AsiaNews.it, 2 July 2009).
More broadly, Huu has accused the Redemptorists of failing to heed the Pope's instructions. During an ad limina visit by Vietnamese bishops, Benedict XVI had in fact said that "a good Catholic is a good citizen."
A Redemptorist spokesman, Fr Peter Nguyen Van Khai, responded by accusing the authorities of distorting the sense of the Pope's words, because the Holy Father had also called for "a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.” Unfortunately, the government seems unwilling to accept such collaboration.
For many Catholics, the authorities seem more likely to resort to violence and the campaign against the Redemptorists appears to be but the start of a new anti-priest campaign.
Link to original...
h/t: Pewsitter
Archbishop of San Francisco supports Pro-Abort CCHD Program
Washington, DC, January 5, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, the American Life League is reporting.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
Link to original...
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
Link to original...
Bishop Yao Liang, 87, Imprisoned in China for Loyalty to the Vatican, Dies
This is another great article by the usually very Marxist New York Times. The new owner of the paper, or the largest shareholder, who kept the paper from bankruptcy might be pro-immigration, but he might also pushign this paper to be more favoreable to the Church as well. This article owns that the Chicoms are persecuting the Catholic Church and it owns the heroic resistance of a saintly Bishop. Here's a life worth celebrating.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Rebel Priest James Kavanaugh Received Apostolic Pardon before Death
Father Z. Comments on the death of the rebellious Fr. James Kavanaugh who died recently. Before he died, Father James asked for Apostolic Pardon. This is all the more important, because Father James was a famous dissident priest who was opposed to clerical celibacy and thought the Church had to change to meet the times and not the other way around.
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
Remembering a Lasallian Missionary to Central America
Brother James Miller gave his life for God, and now the Roman Catholic Church has begun the process to make the Saint Mary's University graduate a saint.
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Monday, January 4, 2010
Bishop Peric Regrets Cardinal Schönborn's Visit
Unfortunately, despite the praise or begrudging admission that there are good "fruits" with Medjugorje, there is actually a pre-existing shrine to which these mysteries of repentance and "good" fruits are attributable, but that's not discussed here. What is clear is that the Cardinal is not exactly a welcome visitor in town.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Freezedried Hippie Priest Arrested Protesting Nuclear Weapons
This is so 1980s. First the UK Bishops are opposing Nuclear Weapons and now this sort of activity. This hasn't been in the news for a long time, perhaps the true masters of these men have urged them to renew their tired agendas again?
An Oblate priest who has long protested against America’s nuclear weapons arsenal was found guilty Dec. 21 of criminal mischief and trespassing on government property at the site of a nuclear missile silo in northern Colorado.
Father Carl Kabat, 76, was sentenced by Weld County Court Judge Dana Nichols to time served — 137 days — after his Aug. 6 arrest at the silo near New Raymer, Colo.
Nichols also imposed court costs totaling $254.50 and is allowing prosecutors to file a notice of restitution to Warren Air Force Base for damages. Father Kabat vowed not to pay either bill.
Testifying during the two-day trial, Father Kabat admitted he had cut a fence and entered the property, his most recent action to oppose the nation’s nuclear weapons policies. He had argued that his action was mandated by God’s law in order to oppose a greater evil. However, Nichols instructed jurors to limit their deliberations to whether the priest broke the law in entering the silo site.
The conviction was the 18th for Father Kabat in his prayerful quest to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He has served more than 17 years behind bars since his first protest in 1976.
The trial concluded in time for Father Kabat to return to the Catholic Worker house in St. Louis where he lives and spend the holidays with family and friends.
You can read an earlier post about his arrest here.
Filed under: CNS
Link here...
Fr. Kubat says that you have to put your actions and words together. His acts are strange enough, he likes to dress up as a clown and hammer on nuclear silos during the worst years of the Carter Administration. It's a sure sign of Marxist involvement and of course, he's assocated with the Catholic Worker, another Marxist front group.
Imemorial Mass of Ages to be Said at Rome Priest's Conference
CNS
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
Sister Keehan is Destroying Catholic Hospitals
No doubt, Sr. Carol Keehan is running a multi-million dollar boondoggle of Catholic Healthcare (into the ground), got a firm talking to which forced her to reverse her initial and customarily unwavering support for leftist causes and pro-abort politicians like former Sen to South Dakota, Tom Daschle. If you have agents acting consistently against the stated goals and principles of an organization, pretty soon, it will seriously undermine that organization and event destroy it, but that's the idea. Her sole mission must be to preside over the disestablishment of Catholic Hospitals in the United States.
We remember when Archbishop Burke, formerly of St. Louis, took Catholic Hospitals to task just for this reason and shortly after was summoned to Rome for a "promotion" or a kick upstairs.
CHA president Sister Carol Keehan had issued a statement that said, “now that a public health insurance option is no longer on the table” in the Senate’s health care reform bill, the CHA is “increasingly confident” that a compromise formulated by Catholic Democratic Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.”
Pro-life activists call Casey’s proposal phony. National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson, for example, said the Casey language “apparently would make it the default position for the federal government to subsidize plans that cover abortion on demand, and then permit individual citizens to apply for conscientious objector status.”
A year ago, Keehan defended ill-fated Obama HHS nominee Tom Daschle and his choice for deputy health care director Jeanne Lambrew, both abortion rights supporters.
Most Catholic Americans wrongly assume that Catholic hospitals are dedicated to fighting abortion. In fact, many of the most important people running those hospital systems, and representing them before government, have spent fortunes supporting some of the most powerful pro-abortion politicians in America.
Link to original...
Tolerance for Diversity and Intolerance
Tiberias Haredi Jews want segregated bus lines so that "males and females may sit on seperate sides of the bus" and that they may be generally seperated from non-religious Jews. We like this. We hope the religious Jews beat the non-religious ones, as one interviewee feared would happen, on the head with the Torah.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Laotian Vocations Growing Slowly
BANGKOK (UCAN) -- Laotian seminarians face formidable challenges, but their enthusiasm and perseverance in their priestly studies helps them overcome obstacles, says their formator.
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
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