Fr. Z: It would still be wrong even if dead people in Chicago made it 105%

Relativism often rears it's ugly head in the form of opinion polls on morality. In other words, according to those believers who dissent from Scripture and the teachings of the Church, truth floats with popular opinion. Not!

Don't be fooled. One cannot bend the arrow on a compass to point south and still call that direction north. Jesus himself said he was the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). We also know that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).  Truth is timeless.

With that, I turn you over to Father Z who asks if this is the "stupidest question ever asked a bishop by a newsie?"

---

For interesting news items I don't have time to blog on, check out my Twitter Feed: @TeDeumBlog

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Anti-Catholic Bigotry at Grammys

Larry Busacca Getty Images

This photo of Nicki Minaj was taken at the Grammys in 2012.

I have one question: What if she had shown up with a man who painted his face and hands black?

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the media to call this out for the bigotry that it is. 

I really miss the days when people had enough decorum to not disrespect the world religions.  It was called tolerance.  Now, intolerance and bigotry rules, especially when it pertains to anything Catholic.

Update: Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has more:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on what happened last night at the Grammys:
Nicki Minaj, fresh off looking like a fool with Madonna at the Super Bowl, showed up last night on the red carpet at the Grammys with a guy dressed like the pope. This was just a prelude of what was to come.

Minaj’s performance began on stage with a mock confessional skit. This was followed by a taped video depicting a mock exorcism. With stained glass in the background, she appeared on stage again with choir boys and monks dancing.

Perhaps the most vulgar part was the sexual statement that showed a scantily clad female dancer stretching backwards while an altar boy knelt between her legs in prayer. Finally, “Come All Ye Faithful” was sung while a man posing as a bishop walked on stage; Minaj was shown levitating.

None of this was by accident, and all of it was approved by The Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammys. Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question, but what is not in doubt is the irresponsibility of The Recording Academy. Never would they allow an artist to insult Judaism or Islam.

It’s bad enough that Catholics have to fight for their rights vis-à-vis a hostile administration in Washington without also having to fend off attacks in the entertainment industry. The net effect, however, will only embolden Catholics, as well as their friends in other faith communities.

Contact Barb Dehgan, VP, Communications and Media Relations, The Recording Academy: barbd@grammy.com

---

For interesting news items I don't have time to blog on, check out my Twitter Feed: @TeDeumBlog

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Goofy CBS Video on Division among Catholics

I saw this video the other day and had a hard time holding my lunch down. It tries to paint a picture of division, blaming the division on the bishops, while giving a pass to people who dissent from Catholic teaching. So, who is really causing division?

Among the bishops targeted in this video, albeit very briefly, is Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit for his stand against the American Catholic Council, which held a dissent-fest here in Detroit this past summer. The ACC is an umbrella group for just about every dissident group you can think of. See my complete coverage and scroll here for several posts with news and commentary about the event, including links to diocesan communications.

With regards to the propaganda piece, just as with the ACC pictures and videos,  note the average age of those being interviewed, who are taking jabs at the Church.  Just once I wish the reporters would take a look at which kind of parishes all of the youth are going to and ask themselves where the real story is.  While parishes like Assumption Grotto in Detroit,  Ss Cyril & Methodius in Sterling Heights, Our Lady of Good Counsel in Plymouth, and Christ the King in Ann Arbor, and others with young demographics have some differences in spirituality, they are harmonious when it comes to a few common things:  They are Eucharistic, Marian,  love what the Holy Father is doing, feeding on sound catechesis offered by the priests as opposed to namby-pamby, go to Mass weekly, understand the power and grace of sacramental Confession, and hear robust homilies with the fullness of the truth.  I myself got just a little tired of hearing how much God loved me without anything substantive to guide me in loving Him back. 

Now, if you watch this video, be sure to chase it with the excellent analysis offered by Monsignor Charles Pope who blogs out of the Archdiocese of Washington.

---

For interesting news items I don't have time to blog on, check out my Twitter Feed: @TeDeumBlog

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

No, the Pope did not change the Church's teaching on condoms...

Secular journalists around the world have once again not taken the time to actually read what Pope Benedict XVI said and distortions abound on the web. It concerns a topic covered in a new book by Peter Seewald in which he interviewed Pope Benedict XVI: Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times.
I like part of Tom Peters' opening quote from his post: Condoms, Consistency, and the Vatican’s Crisis of (mis)Communication

Like clockwork, the mainstream media has smashed the pope’s nuanced comments through a sausage grinder of bias, ignorance, mistranslation, and agenda into headlines such as this: “Pope says condoms can be justified in some cases.”

Yeah.  that sums up how it happens.   Tom has a number of links in his article. 

Jimmy Akin has some good analysis, and links to others, as well in his post: The Pope said what about condoms?



Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Archbishop Dolan calls out the New York Times for anti-Catholic bigotry...

I'd say he told 'em off pretty good! 

Go to Archbishop Timothy Dolan's blog and read, "More from the Times"

Unlike the old days when the media was in full control of information, these days, you can't just shut a blogging bishop up by not presenting his views.  Of course, the NY Times, which advocates "tolerance" of every group except the Catholics it constantly persecutes, would never dismiss a rarely written letter of objection by the sitting archbishop.

Archbishop Dolan actually has a tag for the New York Times at his blog, so I'm sure it won't be the last time he takes them on.  But, as he pointed out previously, no one could keep up with the frequency with which they put out trashy, anti-Catholic stuff. 

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Untwisting the twisted falsehoods on Saint Mary MacKillop

You had to know that radical feminists, and dissident Catholics would distort things to suit their arguments.... as they so often do. But, once a floodlight is cast upon their words, their shear silliness is revealed.

I receive the Inside the Vatican email Newsletters put out by Dr. Robert Moynihan.  He sends out a newsflash, which you can sign up for at the ITV site (and I recommend). In his most recent report, he included a commentary by Australian correspondent for ITV, Andrew Rabel.  Many of you in the metro Detroit area will remember Andrew from his visit to Assumption Grotto last year. 

There has been a lot of confusion over now Saint Mary MacKillop, who was among six who were canonized yesterday.  Andrew works to offer clarity, and I have added a little more at the bottom.  Have  a read...

THE LEGACY OF MARY MACKILLOP

By Andrew Rabel

With the news that Australia was to have its first saint canonized on October 17, the normally secular country has erupted with joy.

But it seems that many are more interested in a false conception of Mary, and perhaps this is a reflection of attitudes that have prevailed following the Second Vatican Council.

Her fame has even spread to other countries.

For instance, looking on the website romancatholicwomenpriests.org, a blog by Bridget Mary says, Yes, but Mary Mackillop’s excommunication was lifted a few months later by the very bishop who performed the sentence, realizing he had been badly advised.

“Pope Benedict will canonize Mother Mary MacKillop, an excommunicated nun. Perhaps, this Pope is offering hope to the many thousands of Catholics who have been excommunicated, including women priests. Excommunication is not a barrier to canonization.”

Following the tensions that came in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, there has been the tendency for different factions in the Church to use a person like Mary MacKillop to bolster their own cause.

For instance, in the traditionalist publication, Catholic in Australia (at the complete other end of the ideological spectrum) after the excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and four bishops he consecrated in Econe, Switzerland, in an editorial written in 1988, mention was made of the sentence passed on MacKillop and the emergence of her cause for sainthood in the 20th century, saying that the same scenario may present itself in regard the French bishop.

Suffice to say that when the Holy See in January 2009 lifted the excommunications of the four bishops Lefebvre had consecrated, he and co-consecrator Antonio Castro de Mayer did not have this sentence lifted posthumously, in spite of the request of the Society of St Pius X. (This is not to say that one day Lefebvre won’t be rehabilitated, or that he will be. In 1965, Paul VI lifted the 1054 excommunication of Michael Cerularius which precipitated the schism with the East, but each case must be judged on its merits.)

But getting back to our subject, Mary MacKillop was far from being a rebel. She was a woman of deep fidelity and loyalty to the Catholic Church.

Prior to her beatification in 1995, the Major Religious Superiors of Australia signed a public document criticising John Paul II for issuing his statement Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, saying that women’s ordination is not to be part of any debate inside the Catholic Church. One of the signatories was Sr Mary Cresp RSJ, the Congregational Leader of the Josephite Sisters, founded by Mary MacKillop, at that time.

In an episode of Four Corners (a documentary series in Australia), Fr Peter Gumpel SJ, the Relator of MacKillop’s cause, soundly criticized such a position, and said the notion that she could ever have supported a position like ordaining women, would have been contrary to her Catholic sensibilities.

In 1873 when MacKillop met Blessed Pius IX at the Vatican, in an attempt to gain approval of her order by the Holy See, she recognized her lowliness in having been excommunicated (albeit falsely) and said that meeting the Holy Father was a day that was worth years of suffering.
One doesn’t find the Sr Joan Chittesters and Veronica Bradys (a well known Australian dissenting nun) speaking with that kind of reverence towards the Vicar of Christ.

Unfortunately, people today who resist Church authority in matters like women's ordination or contraception etc , or support a man like Archbishop Lefebvre in his decision to consecrate bishops without a pontifical mandate, use Mary MacKillop as an example to justify these actions. They say "She was disobedient and payed the price for that. Now the Church has made her a saint because of this".

For starters, Mary MacKillop founded her order of nuns to teach the Catholic faith to the poor children of Australia. She knew that in this emerging waspish country the faith was under attack by people of influence who wanted secular education only. Her resistance to Bishop Sheil's edict had nothing to with disobedience, as such. She had made religious vows to live her life in a certain manner, with the principle of self-government that he had agreed to. Suddenly when things had not gone to his liking, he had no authority to tell Mary to conduct her community differently, and this was the advice she had been given by her Jesuit confessors who had been trained in canon law. Bishop Sheil had limited knowledge of these areas.

The Holy See approved the rule, with a few modifications, but most importantly they gave approval to her principle of self-government, and they were to be supervised directly by the Holy See. Later on the successive bishop of Adelaide, Christopher Reynolds still tried to get the Sisters to follow him and when they wouldn't, banished Mary to Sydney. Fr Paul Gardiner SJ, a postulator of the Cause, always regarded this episode as worse than her excommunication, as it involved outright calumny. (A nun who falsely accused Mary to the bishop of being a drunkard, because of the brandy she was taking to deal with painful periods!) Bishop Reynolds had no right to do this, as the Rule now approved by Rome, stated they were not under the authority of the local bishop.

Regardless, the interest in Mary at this time is phenomenal. Geraldine Doogue, commentator on the TV show Compass that deals with religious affairs, says that after the clerical sex abuse crisis, the Catholic Church has finally come into its won with its decision to canonize Mary MacKillop. This Sunday night’s episode will be broadcast live from the Vatican, as a post mortem to the canonization. Most of the Catholic identities that appear on the show are normally of a progressive persuasion, but in its two decades of broadcasts, never has it had a live show from Rome.

Mary’s picture is everywhere, even on the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, and there are big festivities planned all around Australia on Sunday.

In the life of the Church following Vatican II, Catholic doctrines like the intercession of saints, and miracles perfomed through their intercession, took a severe battering. With the growth of the ecumenical movement, so often the new thinking was that when it came to prayer, all we needed to do is go straight to Jesus Christ. So this new interest in saints, among ordinary, disinterested people, is an interesting phenomenon.

The Australian government has intervened and stopped companies from using her name commercially. This exists for only one other Australian, the cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman.
But when all is said and done, the key to understanding Mary MacKillop is that she was a person of holiness.

One of the most prolific letter writers in Australia is Mildura physician, Dr Arnold Jago. In a recent post on his blog he had this to say of Mary:

“Even in her own lifetime, people tried to domesticate Blessed Mary and treat her as a 'pioneer' or something. Priests and others made so many demands on the Sisters that it threatened to interfere with their regular prayers. Mother Mary complained to one such: 'Are we not Religious first — Teachers second?'”

The original 'Rule' of the Josephite Order spelt out the proper priorities of the Sisters:

The same point was made by Pope John Paul II at Mother Mary’s beatification in 1995:

'Those persons who enter religion do so first of all for the salvation of their own souls.. the spirit of the Institute is a spirit of Poverty and Prayer.'

'Dear friends: Mary MacKillop cannot be understood without reference to her religious vocation... Mother Mary of the Cross did not just free people from ignorance through schooling, or alleviate their suffering through compassionate care. She worked to satisfy their deeper, though sometimes unconscious, longing for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ.'

Australians don’t need yet another 'pioneer' or 'celebrity' to fuss over.

They need somebody different — somebody whose mind was totally God-centered.

That’s what Blessed Mary MacKillop offers.

But will we ever hear about that from the modern-day Josephite Order?

They seem happy to trivialise her as a dinkum Aussie or some kind of glorified social worker." (end Dr. Jago's reflection)

Yes the canonization of Mary MacKillop is very sorely needed, because we don’t need another sports star or celebrity. We need a saint.

That ends Andrew Rabel's commentary.

Dr. Jago made another point in a different entry that I found posted yesterday after the canonization.  He reflects on Matthew 18:21-35 on the parable of the two servants, one whose debt was forgiven by his master, and the other whose much smaller debt was not by the same servant.

Dr. Jago writes on the now Saint Mary MacKillop:

Mother Mary MacKillop was the exact opposite to that servant.

Wronged repeatedly, she never harboured grudges.

Knowing about child-abusing priests, she didn’t turn against the Church – it made her even MORE determined to be loyal to the Church.

It wasn’t easy for her to be like that, but she knew what God wants, and she obeyed. Only by regular prayers and Mass-attendance was she able to live so well.

Obedience, prayer, the Mass . . . if an excellent person like Saint Mary MacKillop needed these in order to live well . . . .

Amen!


Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Bishop Morlino of Madison attacked in local paper

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.  If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God.  For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? And "If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?" Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator. (1 Peter 4:12-19)

It would seem that the Holy Spirit has come to rest on Bishop Morlino.

If you want to see what a biased, anti-Catholic newstory looks like, you won't have to go much further than Isthmus | the Daily Page.  This one of the worst hatchet jobs I've seen to date.  I don't know what is being taught in journalism school, but the author interviewed people of only one age group, and they were all dissidents - people who reject Church teaching because it doesn't mesh with their desired life choices.  In the body of the article are many theological errors, presented as "authentic" Catholic teaching.  Here is a sample (emphases mine in bold; comments bracketed in red).

"People my age," says the 71-year-old Beyers, "are referred to sometimes as Vatican II people." This gathering of bishops and cardinals from around the world, between 1962 and 1965, led to sweeping changes in church policy and practice , most aimed at making it more inclusive [one of the things you will often find is people making claims about Vatican II that simply can't be found in the documents of Vatican II.  In fact, it was one of the historical events that has probably been the most peverted by people with wishful thinking. People have distorted it in such a way that they believe it contains things that simply aren't there]. As Beyers puts it, Vatican II "opened the window to let fresh air in" by giving laity an important role in running the church [I wonder if he has ever read what Vatican II's, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium said about the laity? ]. But some within the church "have been trying to slam it shut ever since." [Actually, it is faithful Catholics - lay people,  theologians, priests, consecrated persons - all united with their bishops, who are united with the Holy Father (also something explained quite eloquently in LG) who are working to get Vatican II back from those who hi-jacked it)


Beyers thinks Morlino, who has been steeped in controversy since his arrival in Madison in 2003, is clearly in this camp [the real controversy is being created by those who want to create a designer religion out of Catholicism.  They want "truth" to be 10 different things at once, and they want it to function like a chameleon - changing colors to suit a given situation]. And he thinks the bishop should be replaced. "This is my church," [no, it is Christ's Church - he founded it, he set up the system ("he who hears you, hears me")] says Beyers. "They're definitely not going to drive me out of it [but if he rejects her teachings, he has effectively left by his own choice!]. I grew up in it, I'm comfortable in it, but the hierarchy lives in a bubble." [Our Lord didn't say the path would be easy and broad, he said it would be difficult and narrow.  Following Christ means to follow him right through to crucifixion.  That is, we die with Christ by dying to self.].


Madison resident Jim Green, a Catholic brother for eight years in the Divine Word Missionary, was in Rome during the last two years of Vatican II. For the past 40 years he's lived with his life partner, Bill Diederich. [we can pretty much guess that his beef with Bishop Morlino has to do with the fact that His Excellency isn't going to tell him that this is ok].  Both are Roman Catholics and members of Dignity USA, a Catholic support group for LGBTs and their allies. [You can read here about Dignity and contrast it with Courage Apostolate, which supports people with SSA to live a life of chastity, just as any heterosexual single person, such as myself, is called by God to live (Christ came to fulfill the Old Testament, not abolish it so the 10 commandments - specifically the 6th and the 9th, remain in effect)]


"When I speak of the church, I don't think of the institution, the pyramid with the laity at the bottom and the pope at the top," says Green, 71, a member of Call to Action. The documents that came out of Vatican II, he notes, spoke of a circular system with the laity's role as important as those of the priests, the bishops and the pope . It's a system in which everyone has a voice. [I have no doubt that this man has never read the documents of Vatican II, in particular Lumen Gentium.  It's not even that long of a read.]

The author, in classic biased fashion, interviewed disgruntled Catholics who are unhappy about the fact that the bishop is taking his teaching office seriously and trying to root out error in his diocese.  They want to hear that homosexual activity is accepted, that women can be ordained, and a segment of them are pro-choice on abortion.  These aren't people arguing for a fourth person of the Trinity. Rather, they want the Church (and Bishop Morlino) to change things that the Church has no authority to change because.... this is Christ's Church, not your Church, my Church, our Church - but Christ's Church. 

Each bishop has to function according to his conscience and like our conscience it must be formed with the mind of the Church.  Salvation of the flock has to come before feelings, which amounts to false charity.  Most things aimed at salvation will challenge our worldly desires.  We want to do as we please and the bishop's job as teacher in his diocese is to ensure that the Catholic faith is presented authentically, and fully aligned with the Magisterium. 

What you will find in the article is what is often referred to as a pseudo-magisterium.  That is, the mistaken impression that a body of theologians all agreeing on something, makes that something "true" or "authentic" with regards to Catholic teaching.  Democracy, in their mind, shapes "truth" which is why polls is often so important to this group.  This is not the case.  If 99 people in a room all agree that 2+2 = 5, it does not change the objective reality that the true answer is 4. 

The dissidence surrounding Humanae Vitae is a classic example  pseudo-"magisterium".  Yet, Pope Paul VI's words proved to be prophetic (read here, here and here). 

Now, read this about Bishop Morlino:

• Young Wisconsin Catholics Cheer Bishop Morlino for Welcoming Orthodox* Priests

 

We need to pray for our bishops, as well as for those whose eternal salvation they are working to save.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Note: The recommended links below are automatically generated by the tool, so they are not necessarily related content.

Law professor schools the NY Times over it's treatment of Pope Benedict XVI

This is from the blog of UK Telegraph journalist, Damien Thompson in a post entitled: You stitched up the Pope and this is how you did it, law professor tells New York Times.  It comes from the Just B16 blog where the author, John Coverdale,  posted it: The NY Times and the facts of the Kiesle case. 

Since the NY Times did not publish it, please make sure it gets around the blogosphere. This is very informative and Catholics, especially, should take notes.

Law professor John Coverdale wrote this letter to the New York Times. It has not been published.


"Like many other people, I have felt in recent weeks that some news outlets have unfairly targeted Pope Benedict XVI in connection with sexual abuse by priests.

In part this is a question of emphasis, with daily coverage of what may or may not have been minor mistakes in judgment decades ago and almost no attention to the major efforts Pope Benedict has made to remedy what is undeniably a horrible situation.

With some frequency, however, I have observed what strikes me as deliberate distortion of the facts in order to put Pope Benedict in a bad light. I would like to call your attention to what seems to me a clear example of this sort of partisan journalism: Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo’s article “Pope Put Off Move to Punish Abusive Priest” published on the front page of the New York Times on April 10, 2010. The story is so wrong that it is hard to believe it is not animated by the anti-Catholic animus that the New York Times and other media outlets deny harboring.

Canonical procedure punishes priests who have violated Church law in serious ways by “suspending” them from exercising their ministry. This is sometimes referred to as “defrocking.” (According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary to “defrock” is to deprive of the right to exercise the functions of an office. )

A priest who has been suspended may request that he be released from his vows of celibacy and other obligations as a priest. If granted, this petition to be “laicized” would leave the former priest free to marry. Laicization (which is altogether different from defrocking and which may apply to a priest who has committed no crime but simply wishes to leave the priesthood) is not further punishment. It is something a priest who has already been punished by being suspended might well desire, as do some priests who have committed no crime and who have not been suspended..

The priest who is the subject of the article had already been punished by being suspended long before his case reached Rome. He asked to be laicized. Cardinal Ratzinger delayed his laicization not his “defrocking” as the article incorrectly says. He had been defrocked years earlier when he was suspended from the ministry. All of this is clear without reference to outside sources to anyone who knows something about Church procedure and reads the article with sufficient care. It is anything but clear, however, to a normal reader.

My complaint here is not that the article misuses the word “defrock” but rather that by so doing it strongly suggests to readers that Cardinal Ratzinger delayed the priest’s removal from the ministry. Delaying laicization had nothing to do with allowing him to continue exercising the ministry, from which he had already been suspended.

Not only does the article fail to make these distinctions, it positively misstate the facts. Its title is “Pope Put off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.” [italics added] It describes Cardinal Ratzinger’s decision as involving whether the abusive priest “should be forced from the priesthood” [italics added]. Even a moderately careful journalist would have to notice that all of this is incompatible with the fact (reported in the second paragraph of the article) that the priest himself had asked for what Cardinal Ratziner delayed.

Had the facts been reported accurately, the article would have said that the priest was promptly punished by being removed from the ministry for his crimes, but that when he asked to be reduced to the lay state, which would have given him the right to marry within the Church, Cardinal Ratzinger delayed granting the petition. That, of course, would hardly have merited front page treatment, much less a headline accusing the Pope of “Putt[ing] off Move to Punish Abusive Priest.”

The second half of the article reports that the priest later worked as a volunteer in the youth ministry of his former parish. This is obviously regrettable and should not have happened, but he was not acting as a priest (youth ministers are laymen, not priests).

A careful reader who was not misled by the inaccuracies in the first part of the article would, of course, realize that his volunteering as a youth minister had no factual or legal connection with Cardinal Ratzinger’s delaying the grant of laicization. The article does not say in so many words that it did, but an average reader might well conclude that there was some connection when he is told that “while the bishop was pressing Cardinal Ratzinger to defrock Mr. Kiesle, the priest began volunteering in the youth ministry of one of his former parishes.”

Any one of these errors might be due to carelessness, but their cumulative effect, coupled with the decision to make this front page news accompanied by a two column photo of Cardinal Raztinger’s signature, strongly suggests to me that something worse than carelessness is involved. I urge you to look into whether some major news outlets have indeed been engaged in a campaign to vilify the Pope and into whether their desire to do so has caused them to slip below minimum standards of professional journalism"

John Coverdale is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law

In the article the professor makes  a distinction between suspending a priest from ministry, and  "defrocking" which the NY Times sees as punishment, and then explains laicization of priests.  This is good general knowledge for anyone to have if they discuss the issue of sexual abuse by priests, lest they come across as not having done their homework, as they NY Times has.

It is not that long of a read and I have saved the very strong ending for you to read at Damien's blog.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez captures it eloquently...

By Cartoonist Michael Ramirez. 

From all that we've seen the media fools would try to arrest Our Lord on his second coming. 

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Media Bias against the Pope; clerical sex abuse

This logo design must be the handy-work of the one

and only photoshopper extraordinaire - Vincenzo!

There are some very good posts and commentaries out there which discuss the media bashing of the Pope over clerical sexual abuse. 

I only have time to leave you with some links to great reads:

• Time for some fair and balanced reporting on clerical sex abuse (Fr. Z)
• Journalists abandon standards to attack the Pope (Phil Lawler)
• Catholic League’s full page ad in the New York Times (Fr. Z)
• Another ridiculous AP article deconstructed  (Fr. Z)
• Fr. Lombardi: For the love of truth (Sandro Magister)
• Kiesle case is no smoking gun (OSV)
• More shameful attacks on the Pope and the Catholic response (AmP)

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Jewish friend of Papal Household Preacher likens attacks against Church and Pope to anti-Semitism

Note:  This post was edited to include the full homily because of the fact that some media outlets were taking that which was quoted by Fr. Cantalamessa, from a Jewish friend, out of context.  How anyone can read that the attacks against the pope were being compared to the Holocaust is beyond me.  That's not what was said at all.  It's about stereotyping people and assigning collective guilt versus individual guilt.

Was it prudent to use the comparison? Father Z thinks not. Also, Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman has made a statement to say Father Cantalamessa was not speaking as a Vatican official, adding that such a comparison could "lead to misunderstandings and is not an official position of the Catholic Church".  I'm only seeing this in news reports, but have not seen any kind of press release.

The Good Friday homily of the Papal Household Preacher, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, was released and is available at Zenit in full.

Father Cantalamessa's Good Friday Homily


"We Have a Great High Priest"

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily delivered today by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, at the celebration of the Lord's passion in St. Peter's Basilica. The liturgy was presided over by Benedict XVI.

* * *

"We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God": Thus begins the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we heard in the second reading. In the Year for Priests, the liturgy for Good Friday enables us to go back to the historical source of the Christian priesthood. It is the source of both the realizations of the priesthood: the ministerial, of bishops and presbyters, and the universal of all the faithful. This one also, in fact, is founded on the sacrifice of Christ that, Revelation says, "loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father" (Revelation 1:5-6). Hence, it is of vital importance to understand the nature of the sacrifice and of the priesthood of Christ because it is from them that priests and laity, in a different way, must bear the stamp and seek to live the exigencies.

The Letter to the Hebrews explains in what the novelty and uniqueness of Christ's priesthood consists, not only in regard to the priesthood of the old Covenant, but as the history of religions teaches us today, in regard to every priestly institution also outside of the Bible. "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come [...] he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:11-14).

Every other priest offers something outside of himself, Christ offered himself; every other priest offers victims, Christ offered himself victim! Saint Augustine enclosed in a famous formula this new kind of priesthood in which priest and victim are the same thing: "Ideo sacerdos, quia sacrificium": priest because victim."[1]

* * *

In 1972 a famous French thinker launched the thesis according to which "violence is the heart and secret spirit of the sacred."[2] In fact, at the origin and center of every religion there is sacrifice, and sacrifice entails destruction and death. The newspaper "Le Monde" greeted the affirmation, saying that it made of that year "a year to mark with an asterisk in the annals of humanity." However, before this date, that scholar had come close again to Christianity and at Easter of 1959 he made public his "conversion," declaring himself a believer and returning to the Church.

This enabled him not to pause, in his subsequent studies, on the analysis of the mechanism of violence, but to point out also how to come out of it. Many, unfortunately, continue to quote René Girard as the one who denounced the alliance between the sacred and violence, but they do not speak of the Girard who pointed out in the paschal mystery of Christ the total and definitive break of such an alliance. According to him, Jesus unmasks and breaks the mechanism of the scapegoat that makes violence sacred, making himself, the victim of all violence.

The process that leads to the birth of religion is reversed, in regard to the explanation that Freud had given. In Christ, it is God who makes himself victim, not the victim (in Freud, the primordial father) that, once sacrificed, is successively raised to divine dignity (the Father of the Heavens). It is no longer man that offers sacrifices to God, but God who "sacrifices" himself for man, consigning for him to death his Only-begotten Son (cf. John 3:16). Sacrifice no longer serves to "placate" the divinity, but rather to placate man and to make him desist from his hostility toward God and his neighbor.

Christ did not come with another's blood but with his own. He did not put his sins on the shoulders of others -- men or animals -- he put others' sins on his own shoulders: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24).

Can one, then, continue to speak of sacrifice in regard to the death of Christ and hence of the Mass? For a long time the scholar mentioned rejected this concept, holding it too marked by the idea of violence, but then ended by admitting the possibility, on condition of seeing, in that of Christ, a new kind of sacrifice, and of seeing in this change of meaning "the central fact in the religious history of humanity."

* * *

Seen in this light, the sacrifice of Christ contains a formidable message for today's world. It cries out to the world that violence is an archaic residue, a regression to primitive stages and surmounted by human history and -- if it is a question of believers -- a culpable and scandalous delay in becoming aware of the leap in quality operated by Christ.

It reminds also that violence is losing. In almost all ancient myths the victim is the defeated and the executioner the victor.[3] Jesus changed the sign of victory. He inaugurated a new kind of victory that does not consist in making victims, but in making himself victim. "Victor quia victima!" victor because victim, thus Augustine describes the Jesus of the cross.[4]

The modern value of the defense of victims, of the weak and of threatened life is born on the terrain of Christianity, it is a later fruit of the revolution carried out by Christ. We have the counter-proof. As soon as the Christian vision is abandoned (as Nietzsche did) to bring the pagan back to life, this conquest is lost and one turns to exalt "the strong, the powerful, to its most exalted point, the superman," and the Christian is described as "a morality of slaves," fruit of the mean resentment of the weak against the strong.

Unfortunately, however, the same culture of today that condemns violence, on the other hand, favors and exalts it. Garments are torn in face of certain events of blood, but not being aware that the terrain is prepared for them with that which is shown in the next page of the newspaper or in the successive palimpsest of the television network. The pleasure with which one indulges in the description of violence and the competition of the one who is first and the most crude in describing it do no more than favor it. The result is not a catharsis of evil, but an incitement to it. It is disturbing that violence and blood have become one of the ingredients of greatest claim in films and video-games, that one is attracted to it and enjoys watching it.

The same scholar recalled above has unveiled the matrix that sparks the mechanism of violence: mimicry, that innate human inclination to consider desirable the things that others desire and, hence, to repeat the things that they see others do. The "heard" psychology is that which leads to the choice of the "scapegoat" to find, in the struggle against a common enemy -- in general, the weakest element, the different one -- a proper artificial and momentous cohesion.

We have an example in the recurrent violence of youth in the stadium, in the bullying in schools and in certain square manifestations that leave behind destruction and debris. A generation of youth that has had the very rare privilege of not knowing a real war and of never having been called to arms, amuses itself (because it is about a game, even if stupid and at times tragic) to invent little wars, driven by the same instinct that moved the primordial horde.

* * *

However there is a yet more grave and widespread violence than that of youth in stadiums and squares. I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here. I am speaking of violence to women. This is an occasion to make persons and institutions that fight against it understand that Christ is their best ally.

It is a violence all the more grave in as much as it is often carried out in the shelter of domestic walls, unknown to all, when it is not actually justified with pseudo-religious and cultural prejudices. The victims find themselves desperately alone and defenseless. Only today, thanks to the support and encouragement of so many associations and institutions, some find the strength to come out in the open and denounce the guilty.

Much of this violence has a sexual background. It is the male who thinks he can demonstrate his virility by inflicting himself on the woman, without realizing that he is only demonstrating his insecurity and baseness. Also in confrontations with the woman who has made a mistake, what a contrast between the conduct of Christ and that still going on in certain environments! Fanaticism calls for stoning; Christ responds to the men who have presented an adulteress to him saying: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). Adultery is a sin that is always committed by two, but for which only one has always been (and, in some parts of the world, still is) punished.

Violence against woman is never so odious as when it nestles where mutual respect and love should reign, in the relationship between husband and wife. It is true that violence is not always and wholly on the part of one, that one can be violent also with the tongue and not only with the hands, but no one can deny that in the vast majority of cases the victim is the woman.

There are families where the man still believes himself authorized to raise his voice and hands on the women of the house. Wife and children at times live under the constant threat of "Daddy's anger." To such as these it is necessary to say courteously: dear men colleagues, by creating you male, God did not intend to give you the right to be angry and to bang your fist on the table for the least thing. The word addressed to Eve after the fault: "He (the man) shall rule over you" (Genesis 3:16), was a bitter forecast, not an authorization.

John Paul II inaugurated the practice of the request for forgiveness for collective wrongs. One of these, among the most just and necessary, is the forgiveness that half of humanity must ask of the other half, men to women. It must not be generic or abstract. It must lead, especially in one who professes himself a Christian, to concrete gestures of conversion, to words of apology and reconciliation within families and in society.

* * *

The passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we heard continues saying: "In the days of his flesh, with loud cries and with tears he offered prayers and supplications to Him who could save him from death." Jesus felt in all its crudity the situation of the victims, the suffocated cries and silent tears. Truly, "we do not have a high priest who cannot suffer with us in our weaknesses." In every victim of violence Christ relives mysteriously his earthly experience. Also in regard to every one of these he says: "you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).

By a rare coincidence, this year our Easter falls on the same week of the Jewish Passover which is the ancestor and matrix within which it was formed. This pushes us to direct a thought to our Jewish brothers. They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms. I received in this week the letter of a Jewish friend and, with his permission, I share here a part of it.

He said: "I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism. Therefore I desire to express to you personally, to the Pope and to the whole Church my solidarity as Jew of dialogue and of all those that in the Jewish world (and there are many) share these sentiments of brotherhood. Our Passover and yours undoubtedly have different elements, but we both live with Messianic hope that surely will reunite us in the love of our common Father. I wish you and all Catholics a Good Easter."

And also we Catholics wish our Jewish brothers a Good Passover. We do so with the words of their ancient teacher Gamaliel, entered in the Jewish Passover Seder and from there passed into the most ancient Christian liturgy:

"He made us pass
From slavery to liberty,
From sadness to joy,
From mourning to celebration,
From darkness to light,
From servitude to redemption
Because of this before him we say: Alleluia."[5]

* * *

Notes

[1] St. Augustine, Confessions, 10, 43.
[2] Cf. R. Girard, La Violence et le Sacré, Grasset, Paris, 1972.
[3] Cf. R. Girard, Il sacrificio, Milano 2004, pp. 73 f.

[4] St. Augustine, Confessions, 10, 43.
[5] Pesachim, X, 5 e Meliton of Sardi, Easter Homily, 68 (SCh 123, p. 98).

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Cardinal Wm Levada takes on the NY Times hit piece on Pope, and more...

The unobjective and shoddy manner of journalism by so-called professional sources, has been too much to take.  I have not ceased subsriptions to newspapers and magazines because of the web.  I enjoy having a piece of paper in my hand.  There are places you just can't take a lap top (or shouldn't).  I don't know how else to say it, but many newspapers these days are better used as toilet paper and the NY Times is one of them.

There have been a number of hit pieces in the NY Times against the Holy Father which are seriously lacking in credibility.  A number of bishops and journalists have risen to the Pope's defense.  I've even seen a surprising number of people from the most unexpected places take on the NY Times piece.  I'll provide some links at the bottom for further reading on this subject. 

However, given that Cardinal Levada has taken the time to speak out on the NY Times shoddy journalism and editorial work, please take the time to read what he says in full.

In his introduction to the piece, Catholic journalist Rocco Palmo writes:

Over these last days, you've seen many responses by top clerics regarding Pope Benedict's actions as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, all criticizing the reporting of the record as produced by the New York Times.



Until now, though, you've seen nothing like this.


In the biggest underscore yet of the significance and seriousness which the Vatican has taken the 25 March Times piece laying out the Murphy Case, Catholic San Francisco features a rare intervention: an extensive commentary on the situation from the pontiff's successor at the CDF -- the city's former archbishop, now Cardinal William Levada

.Here is the beginning of Cardinal Levada's article.  He's just getting warmed up in these first two paragraphs:

By Cardinal William J. Levada
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith


In our melting pot of peoples, languages and backgrounds, Americans are not noted as examples of “high” culture. But we can take pride as a rule in our passion for fairness. In the Vatican where I currently work, my colleagues – whether fellow cardinals at meetings or officials in my office – come from many different countries, continents and cultures. As I write this response today (March 26, 2010) I have had to admit to them that I am not proud of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness.


I say this because today’s Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein, a senior columnist, headlined “Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest,” and an accompanying editorial entitled “The Pope and the Pedophilia Scandal,” in which the editors call the Goodstein article a disturbing report (emphasis in original) as a basis for their own charges against the Pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting.....

You can finish reading it in three places where it is in full, including the Vatican's website where it is now posted.  I recommend the first because Rocco offers many useful links for background.

• The "Holy Office" Speaks by Rocco Palmo
• The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI: how it looks to an American in the Vatican (vatican.va)
• Reconsider 'attack mode' against Pope Benedict at Catholic San Francisco

Related commentaries in recent days: 

• Abp Timothy Dolan receives extended applause after coming to Pope's defense at Palm Sunday Mass
• A Response to the New York Times by Fr. Raymond J de Souza
• Keeping the record straight on Benedict and the crisis  By John L Allen Jr (at Vatican Radio)
• Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy by Fr. Thomas Brudage, JCL (Judicial Vicar who presided over the actual canonical criminal case)
• Game Over: Benedict - 1. MSM - 0 (And how we can help the pope's numbers) AmP
• Archbishop Listecki: Milwaukee, not Rome at fault in Murphy abuse scandal (Catholic Culture)
• A Reasonably Fair Assessment of the Accusations Against the Pope in the NYT by Msgr. Charles Pope (Archdiocese of Washington)
• What the New York Times won't tell you by Deacon Greg Kandra
• The Pope and the New York Times by Kathryn Jean Lopez
• Praying for the Pope & All by The Anchoress
• Murphy Case: Judge never talked to NY Times by The Anchoress
• Cardinal Ratzinger and Evil Monster? by Jimmy Akin

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Abp Timothy Dolan talks about attacks on Pope Benedict XVI; additional resources

From Zenit:

Says Benedict XVI Is Leader in Purification, Reform and Renewal

NEW YORK, MARCH 29, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York brought hearty approval from a standing-room-only crowd at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Palm Sunday when he defended Benedict XVI against "unrelenting insinuations" in the scandals of sexual abuse.

The archbishop asked the congregation for a couple of minutes of patience at the end of the lengthy Mass, and then said the "somberness of Holy Week is intensified for Catholics this year" by a "tidal wave of headlines about abuse of minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a re-run of an old story from Wisconsin."

"What deepens the sadness now is the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself, as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate the man who, perhaps more than anyone else has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs," Archbishop Dolan stated.

The 60-year-old prelate suggested that Sunday Mass is "hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions," but it is "the time for Catholics to pray for Benedict our Pope."

According to the Associated Press report of the archbishop's words, the congregation responded with 20 seconds of applause.

Archbishop Dolan suggested that Benedict XVI is suffering "some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob, and scourging at the pillar, as did Jesus."

“No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the Church of the effects of this sickening sin than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI," he affirmed, asserting that the "dramatic progress" made by the Church in the United States "could never have happened without the insistence and support of the very man now being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo."

He continued: "Does the Church and her pastor, Pope Benedict XVI, need intense scrutiny and just criticism for tragic horrors long past?

“Yes! He himself has asked for it, encouraging complete honesty, at the same time expressing contrition, and urging a thorough cleansing.

“All we ask is that it be fair, and that the Catholic Church not be singled-out for a horror that has cursed every culture, religion, organization, institution, school, agency, and family in the world. [...]

“The Eucharist is the Sunday meal of the spiritual family we call the Church. At Sunday dinner we share both joys and sorrows. The father of our family, 'il papa,' needs our love, support, and prayers.”

Also, noteworthy is Vatican Radio's use of John Allen's defense of Pope Benedict XVI.  John Allen is the oddball out at the dissident rag, National Catholic Reporter.  Allen knows his faith well and shows it in his writings.  This is an excellent read:

• Keeping the record straight on Benedict and the crisis  By John L Allen Jr

See also:

• What the New York Times won't tell you by Deacon Greg Kandra
• Dare to Discipline by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
• The Pope and the New York Times by Kathryn Jean Lopez
• Praying for the Pope & All by The Anchoress
• Murphy Case: Judge never talked to NY Times by The Anchoress
• Cardinal Ratzinger and Evil Monster? by Jimmy Akin

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Fr. Ray Blake on the Natural Law

We have to hand the quote of the week to Fr. Ray Blake on the other side of the pond in the UK. The blogging priest is the pastor of Saint Mary Magdalen in Brighton.

He fisks some coverage in the secular news of Pope Benedict's blunt and to-the-point ad limina address to Britain's bishops. 

The newsagencies seem to have ignored, the idea of "natural law", perhaps because it is not a phrase upper most in the Ecclesdon Square vocabulary. Yet for anyone concerned with "justice and peace" issues, it obviously should be.


In what sense does Ms Harman's "Equalities Legislation", which incidently is Labour's only "big idea", violate the natural law?


It bases human rights on sexual orientation, the tendency is therefore to reduce human beings to being a set of genitals attached to a person, rather than seeing first and foremost a human being a mind, a soul who has a certain sexual orientation.

Do read the entire post, which is not that long if you want to see where we are headed here in the US.  What comes after the above is an account of a very disturbing practice taking place in nursing homes and Fr. Blake rightly asks, if 11 year olds will be next.

If you liked that post, you will probably also like his post on another part of the Pope's ad limina address in which he said the bishops must recognize dissent for what it is.  Below, fellow UK priest, "His Hermeneuticalness" - Fr. Tim Finigan, holds up a copy of the UK's leading dissident Catholic rag, The Tablet.  It has a "sister" paper here in the US called The National Catholic Reporter. It has come to be known by more popular names among faithful Catholics around the world familiar with it: "The Bitter Pill", "RU-486", and most appropriately, "The Suppository".  Fr. Finigan was the target of relentless attacks by The Bitter Pill for daring to offer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite - just one per Sunday - at his parish in Blackfen. As seen in the photo below, Fr. Finigan took it all in stride.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Tim Tebow to speak at National Prayer Breakfast

I've watched with interest the news about Tim Tebow's superbowl ad in which the story is told of how his mother chose not to abort him after doctors advised it.

Today, he is going to be speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast - an event at which President Barack Obama will also be speaking.

In the meanwhile, the feminists and pro-aborts are going into convulsions over the fact that CBS has permitted this to air.

As an aside, it's interesting to watch the ratings comparisons for news at the time slot between 5-11pm.  MSNBC is in cardiac arrest (flatlined in blue), and CNN has been receiving B-12 shots for anemia (green, with a bounce here in there), all the while Fox runs away with news viewers tired of the bias and leftist agenda.  Perhaps CBS has noticed. And, perhaps CBS has noticed that the majority of Americans are pro-life.

If MSNBC and CNN don't figure it out soon, they'll be making funeral arrangements for their networks.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

A Tall Tale by Amy Sullivan of TIME magazine in "A Tale of Two Priests"

A recent article in TIME magazine by Amy Sullivan - a Tale of Two Priests, pits Cardinal Sean O'Malley against Archbishop Raymond Burke (coming from a secular magazine you can imagine how +Burke was villified). 

Not surprisingly, key Catholics who were quoted/named in the article by Sullivan have released public statements rebuking distortions which altered their true positions. 

On November 7th, in "TIME Got it Wrong - Prof. George Opposed Grandiose Kennedy Funeral" at LSN:

Noted Princeton Professor Robert P. George says he is "not pleased" with TIME's Amy Sullivan's "selective" use of a quotation from him in her article "A Tale of Two Priests." As well, contrary to the impression given in Sullivan's article, George opposed the way the Kennedy funeral was done and strongly supports Archbishop Burke's emphasis that Canon 915 requires that pro-abortion politicians be denied communion...

[snip]

...George had given Sullivan additional relevant quotes for the story that in his opinion should have been included, especially regarding his views on Cardinal O'Malley's participation in the Kennedy funeral and other comments on Archbishops Burke's statement. He told LSN:

Here is what she did not include in the article, but readers should, I think, have been told: I said that I thought Archbishop Burke was right to deny pro-abortion politicians communion pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. I also said that I thought Cardinal O'Malley made an error of judgment in permitting a large public funeral for Teddy Kennedy and personally participating in it. The error was precisely in failing to see the scandal that would be given. I am disappointed that she omitted these points and mentioned only my surprise at learning (from her) that Archbishop Burke has taken the position that Kennedy should not have been given a Catholic funeral at all -- even a private one.

George says that at the time he was not aware that Burke had made the statement and that "it goes a step beyond where I would go on this issue." "At the same time," he adds "I did not suggest that the Archbishop’s position was unreasonable; and I acknowledged that it is certainly not my call to make. I am not a bishop or a canon lawyer. Raymond Burke is both."

Yesterday, Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing had this to say (my emphases in bold):

I'm told by reliable people that there are readers of The Catholic Thing still struggling with mainstream-media addictions. If so, some of you may have been surprised to find your humble editor-in-chief named in a recent Time magazine article by Amy Sullivan as allegedly having said that the Church’s funeral for Senator Edward Kennedy was a scandal “on a par” with the priestly pedophilia scandal. I never said any such thing, of course, as any fair reader can see here, and I find the equating of the two scandals both absurd and repugnant. I’ve demanded a correction from Time and will take legal action if one is not forthcoming.


But Ms. Sullivan was never really interested in accurate reporting. She brought me into the story merely to show that even other traditional Catholics, such as Princeton’s Robert George, disagree with a position I don’t hold. Professor George and I are old friends and have communicated to clarify this issue. His remarks, he has publicly confirmed, were deliberately taken out of context, which – for once – I myself would have preferred, since the view ascribed to me was made up from whole cloth. The manufactured disagreement between the two of us, however, was not the main point. Rather, Ms. Sullivan, who has done similar stories in the past few months, used the two of us as parallel proof for “A Tale of Two Priests,” which is to say the alleged feud between Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley (compassionate because he attended the Kennedy funeral) and (that evil conservative now resident in Rome) Archbishop Raymond Burke, who takes a harder line about Catholics who present grave and longstanding public scandal.

Continue reading Robert Royal's analysis of Amy Sullivan's article, and how some within the mainstream media can be anything but objective.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Mainstream media bias....

This really had me irritated today too as the words, "a woman's right to choose" were used over and again, as opposed to "pro-abortion". Ryan Sayre Patrico hits the nail on the head at the First Things blog...

If the mainstream media continues to insist—for the sake of objectivity and balance, I’m sure—on calling opponents of abortion “anti-abortionists,” you’d expect to see those in favor of abortion to be labeled “pro-abortionists.”

I won’t hold my breath. You shouldn’t either.

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!

Archbishop Chaput on "40 Years of American Catholic Complacency and Poor Formation"

I really wanted to attend this conference, but had a conflict with the date. It was held at nearby Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit where the Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, was the keynote speaker. Here is coverage from Catholic News Agency... (emphases mine in bold; comments in red)

Detroit, Mich., Mar 21, 2009 / 12:32 pm (CNA).- Archbishop of Denver Charles J. Chaput delivered a speech on Saturday reflecting on the significance of the November 2008 election. Warning that media “narratives” should not obscure truth, he blamed the indifference and complacency of many U.S. Catholics for the country’s failures on abortion, poverty and immigration issues.

He also advised Catholics to “master the language of popular culture” and to refuse to be afraid, saying “fear is the disease of our age.” [Sometimes the only thing we need to fear is the reaction or rejection of others, often close friends or family members. Compare that to the early Christians who DIED for the truth's of the faith. Also, there is another kind of "fear" involved. It is a false fear, guided by a false sense of charity. That is, not wanting to offend or hurt someone else's feelings by standing up for objective truth. What is lacking is the concern for God's "feelings".]

The archbishop’s comments were delivered in his keynote address at the Hands-On Conference Celebrating the Year of St. Paul, which was hosted at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

Having been asked to examine what November 2008 and its aftermath can teach Catholics about American culture, the state of American Catholicism and the kind of Pauline discipleship necessary today, Archbishop Chaput said:

“November showed us that 40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected. Or to put it more discreetly, the November elections confirmed a trend, rather than created a new moment, in American culture.” [This is not just poor formation of Catholics - we know catechesis has been watered down, lousy, and at times, downright heretical. There is the formation of priests and religious which was even worse. Many things were missing or outright perverted in order to support some other agenda. The Divinity of Christ is challenged (i.e., they claim the miracle of the loaves was not a miracle, but simply good people working hard to share what they had). Another example: If Adam and Eve were fictional as some alleged, then Original Sin could not be real. If Original Sin were not real, then there could be no concupiscence (fallen human nature which makes us gravitate toward's sinful choices, rather than virtuous). What comes next is that sin is not considered sin. And, there is no need for sacramental confession. This is often seen among dissidents who advance "strange teachings" contrary to basic, consistent Church teachings on things like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, homosexuality, women's ordination, etc].

Noting that there was no question about President Barack Obama’s views on abortion “rights,” embryonic stem cell research and other “problematic issues,” he commented:

“Some Catholics in both political parties are deeply troubled by these issues. But too many Catholics just don’t really care. That’s the truth of it. If they cared, our political environment would be different. If 65 million Catholics really cared about their faith and cared about what it teaches, neither political party could ignore what we believe about justice for the poor, or the homeless, or immigrants, or the unborn child. If 65 million American Catholics really understood their faith, we wouldn’t need to waste each other’s time arguing about whether the legalized killing of an unborn child is somehow ‘balanced out’ or excused by three other good social policies.”

Offering a sober evaluation of the state of American Catholicism, he added:

“We need to stop over-counting our numbers, our influence, our institutions and our resources, because they’re not real. We can’t talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we’ve allowed ourselves to become. We need to stop lying to each other, to ourselves and to God by claiming to ‘personally oppose’ some homicidal evil -- but then allowing it to be legal at the same time.” [Well said!]

Commenting on society’s attitude towards Catholic beliefs, Archbishop Chaput said, “we have to make ourselves stupid to believe some of the things American Catholics are now expected to accept.” [Yeah! Like the argument that "reducing abortions" is somehow helpful when it is actually a fallacy].

“There’s nothing more empty-headed in a pluralist democracy than telling citizens to keep quiet about their beliefs. A healthy democracy requires exactly the opposite.”

Noting the 2008 presidential campaign’s “revealing” focus upon the candidates’ “narratives,” he said the campaign seemed not to involve facts, but rather “story-telling.”

“Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with story-telling -- unless the press and other news media themselves become part of the story-telling syndicate; in other words, peddlers of narratives in which facts are not told because they’re true, but rather become ‘true’ because they’re told by those who have the power to create an absorbing narrative,” the archbishop explained. [great explanation of what is happening with the media]

In such a state, he warned, real power does not rest with the people but with those who “shape the structure of our information.” [Precisely! It is also why things like Catholic blogging, Catholic Radio, TV and Internet TV are so important]. He linked this situation with Pope Benedict’s critique of the “dictatorship of relativism.”

The archbishop also connected this relativistic spirit to St. Paul’s appearance at the Aeropagus, recounted in the Book of Acts. At the Areopagus, a prestigious place of debate for Greek philosophers, “Nearly anything was tolerated, so long as no one claimed to have an exclusive and binding claim on the truth,” the archbishop explained.

He then quoted Acts 17’s description of the Areopagite mindset: “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

“It’s worth paying attention to that description. There’s no mention of truth,” he commented, noting that when St. Paul preaches the truth “he’s mocked and despised and his preaching is a failure, at least in the short term.” [And, so it will be with bishops, priests, consecrated, and lay people who also speak the truth. Don't expect everyone to like you when you speak the truth, but it should always be done with great love and charity]

“Paul’s failure at the Areopagus is a good lesson for the times we face now in America,” the archbishop said. “When Catholics start leading their daily lives without a hunger for something higher than their own ambitions or appetites, or with the idea that they can create their own truth and then baptize it with an appeal to personal conscience, they become, in practice, agnostics in their personal lives, and Sophists in their public lives. In fact, people who openly reject God or dismiss Christianity as obsolete are sometimes far more honest and far less discouraging than Catholics who claim to be faithful to the Church but directly reject her guidance by their words and actions.” [leading this group are dissident Catholic politicians, educators and journalists]

Noting that Paul mastered the language of the popular urban culture of his time and used “every technical resource, tool and environment at his disposal,” Archbishop Chaput extensively quoted Pope John Paul II’s 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, which also discussed St. Paul at the Areopagus.

“If Paul felt so fiercely compelled to preach the Gospel -- whether ‘timely [or] untimely’ -- to a pagan world, then how should we feel today, preaching the Gospel to an apostate world?” he asked, answering that the love of Christ must “impel” Catholics forward.

[This is important....]“Catholics in America, at least the many good Catholics who yearn to live their faith honestly and deeply, can easily feel tempted to hopelessness,” he concluded. “It becomes very burdensome to watch so many persons who call themselves Catholic compromise their faith and submit their hearts and consciences to the Caesars of our day.”

But Archbishop Chaput closed by encouraging Christians to remember the words of Jesus:

“In this world you will have tribulation. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

This is one bishop who his using his talents very well. May God grace all of our bishops with talents that can be multiplied in the Mystical Body of Christ.

The Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church. We are headed in to hard times and must come out of our own personal complacency. Learn the faith! Live the faith!

As a reminder, we learned yesterday that Archbishop Chaput encouraged people at the seminar to write to Notre Dame President, John Jenkins to express disapproval at the university's decision to invite President Obama to speak at commencements. It is understood that he will be given an honorary degree, as well.

More: Outrageous: Notre Dame University to honor President Obama

Te Deum Laudamus! Home

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!