Category Archives: Catholic Church

by | August 19, 2013 · 10:34 am

Some thoughts on being an American Catholic

I am and always have been Catholic because I believe the doctrines and I am certain it is where God wants me to be. It hasn’t been easy maintaining affiliation with a church that, in far too many respects, has been a spiritual desert, but it’s where God put me, not only by birth but also by election.

One of the most distressing things for me has been the overly-long commitment of American Catholics to the Democrat Party. I understand the roots … when Catholic immigrants were flooding our shores, Republicans were Protestant and openly hostile. And of course there’s the not-so-saintly Kennedys.

But dang. Even after having been raised from birth to college in a devoutly Democrat environment, I managed to figure out before the Reagan years that Democrats were promoting abortion. I have tried to understand my Democrat Catholic friends. Some of them are legitimately devout. Yet they turn a blind eye to abortion because “social justice” … or something.

I just don’t get it. Never did.

If there’s been one thing I am grateful for about the Obama years, it is that so many Catholics have finally opened their eyes to just how anti-God and evil the Democrat Party really is. FINALLY, I’ve got leaders in my church that not only don’t make me cringe, but who actually teach and preach and walk the walk!

I just read a news report that Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, has announced he switched his party registration to Republican effective January 2013. He has been a Democrat since 1969, but after the 2012 Democrat Convention, he decided that he could no longer be associated with the party which was “just too pro-abortion.” During an interview about his decision, he called opposition to abortion “the linchpin, the foundation, around which all our discussion of human life has to be built.”

I just want to smack him upside the head and ask him, “HEY, CAPTAIN KOOLAID!! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING ALL THESE YEARS?!”

2012?! 2012?!?!?!

I registered Democrat in 1972 and figured out by 1976 that I had to leave because it was plain as the nose on my face that abortion was and is THE social justice issue of the century. This guy is a professional Christian and it took him from 1969 to 2012?! And they made him a Bishop?!

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

On the other side of the coin are two Catholic leaders I really admire and respect, Archbishop Chaput and Pope Francis. Here are quotes from them that I gleaned from the internet this week.

Archbishop Chaput on threats against religion

Pope Francis and frosting

Sources:

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Filed under Abortion, Barack Obama, Catholic Church, Christianity, Democrats, Pope Francis, Religious Liberty, Republicans

by | August 14, 2013 · 6:18 am

Do business owners have a right to conscience?

In the past, this would’ve been a no brainer for any American. Of course we do! But since the Rise of Obama, the rights of those on the right have been under attack. And that includes the rights of business owners who are refusing to pay for abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

Courts Reject Obama View That Businesses Don’t Have Religious Freedom

by Mark Rienzi | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 8/12/13

Can you make money and be religious? The Obama administration and a few courts have said no — at least in the context of forcing business owners to violate their religion by purchasing abortion-inducing drugs for their employees. Thankfully, most courts have rejected this view, leaving individuals and their businesses free to go to work without checking their conscience at the door.

The question is not about corporations. We know corporations can exercise religion because houses of worship and other religious organizations are corporations. The Supreme Court has repeatedly protected religious liberty for corporations. The question is really about money, and whether the government can force groups that earn money to single-mindedly pursue profits, without regard for any other value.

We regularly encounter businesses making decisions of conscience. Chipotle recently decided not to sponsor a Boy Scout event because the company disagreed with the Scouts’ policy on openly gay scoutmasters. It was “the right thing to do,” Chipotle said.

Starbucks has ethical standards for the coffee beans it buys. Vegan stores refuse to sell animal products because they believe doing so is immoral. Some businesses refuse to invest in sweatshops or pornography companies or polluters.

You can agree or disagree with the decisions of these businesses, but they are manifestly acts of conscience, both for the companies and the people who operate them. Our society is better because people and organizations remain free to have other values while earning a living. Does anyone really want a society filled with organizations that can only focus on profits and are barred from thinking of the greater good?

For many, their conscience is informed by religious views about activities they can or cannot participate in. Some Jewish store owners cannot sell leavened bread at certain times of the year. Some Muslim truck drivers cannot transport alcohol. Some Catholic prison workers cannot participate in executions.

If religious freedom means anything, it means that these people — just like Chipotle, Starbucks and everyone else in our society — are allowed to earn a living and run a business according to their values. In a tolerant society, we should just accept that our neighbors will have different beliefs, and that government-enforced conformity is rarely the best answer to this diversity.

Source @ http://www.lifenews.com/2013/08/12/courts-reject-obama-view-that-businesses-dont-have-religious-freedom/

Author Mark L. Rienzi is Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law professor at The Catholic University of America, and author of God and the Profits: Is There Religious Liberty for Money-Makers?

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Filed under Barack Obama, Catholic Church, First Amendment, Islam, Obamacare, Religious Liberty

by | July 28, 2013 · 4:23 pm

News Updates

Post-abortion syndrome

The Journal of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences published a summary of 31 studies comparing women’s psychological well-being after delivering the baby, having a miscarriage, or procuring an abortion.

The conclusion of the authors is that the risk of mental disorders (depression, PTSD, etc.) was highest for abortion and lowest for childbirth. This was true even when the pregnancy had been unplanned. In nine studies that compared just abortion and miscarriage, short-term anxiety and depression were higher in the miscarriage group, while long-term anxiety and depression were higher in the abortion group.

IOW, there’s no scientific evidence for the pro-abort claim that abortion has no psychological or psychiatric consequences. If the left cared about women for real, they’d insist that everyone considering abortion have this information before making a decision and those who choose to abort be provided with a list of symptoms to watch for and mental health numbers to call should help be needed.

Ariel Castro

After initially pleading not guilty to a 977-count indictment that includes charges related to kidnapping women and holding them in the basement of his home, where he raped them and assaulted them to the point of causing abortions, Ariel Castro has accepted a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. The plea means the victims and their families will be spared a long trial, having to endure the grisly details of Castro’s lengthy and horrific crimes.

Women deserve better than abortion

The North Carolina State Senate passed a bill 32-13 that would provide more to help pregnant women carry to term and end taxpayer financing of abortions. The governor says he’ll sign it into law.

2013_07 24 Father Lolo and Eucharistic Miracle

July 24, 2013: A Mexican priest, Father Jose Dolores Castellanos Gudino, is claiming that, after hearing the voice of God, the host which he had just consecrated began to bleed. The bloody host was available for adoration for some time at Mary Mother of the Church located in Colonia Jardines de la Paz (Guadalajara, Mexico). The Archbishop has ordered the Host to be reposed and for both it and Father Lolo (as he is known to his parishioners) to be examined.

INCREDIBLE crowd estimates at WYD

July 28, 2013: THREE MILLION! That is the number the Associated Press is reporting for the crowd that attended Pope Francis’ final Mass at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I went to Mass with 10,000 people once. It was overwhelming. I can’t begin to imagine what worshiping with 3,000,000 would be like! And these are YOUNG people from around the world … the very demographic for whom the Left claims the Catholic Church holds nothing of interest. Wow.

2013_07 28 WYD crowd beach for final Mass

July 27, 2013: Hundreds of thousands of young people gathered on Copacabana beach for a prayer vigil Saturday night. Many stayed and slept on the white sand in anticipation of Pope Francis’ final Mass in the morning.

2013_07 27 WYD prayer vigil on beach

Nearly the entire 2.5 mile crescent of the beach overflowed with people, some of them taking an early morning dip in the Atlantic and others tossing t-shirts, flags and soccer jerseys into the pontiff’s open-sided car as he drove by.

Francis worked the crowd, kissing babies, taking a sip of mate tea handed up to him and catching gifts on the fly. Even the normally stern-faced Vatican bodyguards let smiles slip as they jogged alongside his car, caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Those who brought sleeping bags are being encouraged to give them to the homeless before they leave. This is in keeping with the pontiff’s WYD message to go out and spread our faith “to the fringes of society,” to the poor and to those who seem the most indifferent.

Pope Francis himself journeyed into the poorest and most dangerous section of the city to walk the talk.

GOOD video report [5:33] from Fox News @ http://video.foxnews.com/v/2568003218001/what-we-have-learned-about-pope-francis-during-brazil-visit/

Sources:

5 Comments

Filed under Abortion, Catholic Church, Pope Francis

by | July 25, 2013 · 12:53 pm

Did April 2005 mark a turning point in history?

One of the prophecies that emerged from the Marian Apparitions at Garabandal, Spain, concerned the future of the Roman Catholic papacy.

The pope is the spiritual leader of more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide – about 70 million in the United States. He can have an enormous influence on the religious, ethical and political choices of a large percentage of the population.

The prophecy said, “After Pope John XXII there will be three more popes and then it will be the end of our times but not the end of the world. One of the popes will have a very short reign.”

The three popes after John XXII:

  1. Paul VI (1963-78);
  2. John Paul I (1978 – reigned only 33 days); and
  3. Blessed John Paul II (1978- died April 2, 2005).

Since then:

  1. Benedict XVI (elected April 19, 2005 – retired 2013);
  2. Francis (2013—).

If the prophecy is true, then April 2005 marked “the end of our times, but not the end of the world.”

Whatever that may mean.

I googled and made the following list of some of the world events of April 2005 that caught my eye:

  • The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a new set of rules designed to create a National Market System.
  • Three more countries moved toward joining currencies with the Euro.
  • New Zealand legalized same-sex marriage.
  • Connecticut became the second U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
  • A hemorrhagic fever outbreak caused by Marburg virus in Angola killed 227 of the 252 infected (90% fatal).
  • NASA reported a slowing of the Gulf Stream was slowing and predicted a colder climate that could cause serious problems in Northern Europe. (Al Gore apparently missed this interesting climate tidbit!)
  • Forty Christians were arrested in Saudi Arabia for violating Saudi law forbidding any religion but Islam.
  • Israel pulled settlers out of Gaza in response to Hamas bombings.
  • 400 Iranians respond to a fatwa by signing up for suicide missions in “occupied Islamic countries”, particularly Israel.
  • More than 100,000 Muslims in Indonesia took part in anti-Israeli and anti-American protests.
  • Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez ended military cooperation with USA.
  • YouTube was founded. (I’m including this, not as a joke, but because I believe it had a huge impact on the decline of the leftstream media’s control of what we see and hear.)

Sources:

4 Comments

Filed under Catholic Church

by | July 22, 2013 · 2:58 pm

World Youth Day

Pope Francis is on his way from Italy to World Youth Day 2013 which begins soon in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He carried his own bag on to the plane.

2013_07 22 Pope Francis carrying own luggage to World Youth Conf

World Youth Day is an international event for young Catholics that was initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1985 and has been celebrated internationally every two to three years since, at different locations around the world. Attentdance at the first (Rome, Italy) was approximately 300,000. In 2011 (Madrid, Spain), attendance was approximately 1,500,000.

Relevance

Sources:

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Filed under Catholic Church, Pope Francis

by | July 21, 2013 · 8:26 am

A Just War

Catholic Mass in War

The Catholic Catechism – The Use of Military Force

Section 2328 – The Church and human reason assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflicts. Practices deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes.

Criteria for a just war:

  1. Authorization by the competent authority;
  2. a just cause;
  3. a just purpose;
  4. war must be the last resort;
  5. the methods used must be proportionate;
  6. there must be a prospect of success.

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Filed under Armed Forces, Catholic Church

by | June 21, 2013 · 10:19 am

Priests for Life issues Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

If you go to http://www.priestsforlife.org/pelosi/, there is a button at the end of the letter to allow you to have an email sent to her office indicating that you, too, agree with the letter.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Dear Mrs. Pelosi,

Last Thursday, June 13, you were asked a question in a press briefing that you declined to answer. The question was, “What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth?”

Given the fact that the Gosnell case has been national news for months now, and that Congress, where you serve as House Democratic Leader, was about to have a vote on banning abortion after 20 weeks fetal age, this was a legitimate question.

Instead of even attempting to answer the question, you resorted to judgmental ad hominem attacks on the reporter who asked it, saying, “You obviously have an agenda. You’re not interested in having an answer.”

Mrs. Pelosi, the problem is that you’re not interested in giving an answer.

Your refusal to answer this question is consistent with your failure to provide an answer to a similar question from me and the members of my Priests for Life staff. Several years ago, we visited your office with the diagrams of dismemberment abortion at 23 weeks, and asked the simple question, “When you say the word ‘abortion,’ is this what you mean?” In response, nothing but silence has emanated from your office.

In what way is this refusal to address an issue of such national importance consistent with the leadership role you are supposed to be exercising? Public servants are supposed to be able to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public. Apparently, you can’t. Otherwise, you would have been able to explain the difference between a legal medical procedure that kills a baby inside the womb and an act of murder — for which Dr. Gosnell is now serving life sentences — for killing the same baby outside the womb.

Moreover, you stated at the press briefing on June 13, “As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.”

With this statement, you make a mockery of the Catholic faith and of the tens of millions of Americans who consider themselves “practicing and respectful Catholics” and who find the killing of children — whether inside or outside the womb — reprehensible.

You speak here of Catholic faith as if it is supposed to hide us from reality instead of lead us to face reality, as if it is supposed to confuse basic moral truths instead of clarify them, and as if it is supposed to help us escape the hard moral questions of life rather than help us confront them.

Whatever Catholic faith you claim to respect and practice, it is not the faith that the Catholic Church teaches. And I speak for countless Catholics when I say that it’s time for you to stop speaking as if it were.

Abortion is not sacred ground; it is sacrilegious ground. To imagine God giving the slightest approval to an act that dismembers a child he created is offensive to both faith and reason.

And to say that a question about the difference between a legal medical procedure and murder should not “have anything to do with politics” reveals a profound failure to understand your own political responsibilities, which start with the duty to secure the God-given right to life of every citizen.

Mrs. Pelosi, for decades you have gotten away with betraying and misrepresenting the Catholic faith as well as the responsibilities of public office. We have had enough of it. Either exercise your duties as a public servant and a Catholic, or have the honesty to formally renounce them.

Sincerely,

Fr. Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

The email option allows you to simply send the above or you can delete any or all of it and write your own. I doubt Mrs. Pelosi will ever see my email, but I wrote the text carefully anyway.

Subject line: Mrs. Pelosi, I am praying for your soul

When God calls you to your Final Judgment, He will not be interested in how you voted for food stamps so that other people could feed the poor (while you increased your personal fortune by millions).

What He will want to know is, “Where were you when I was in utero and people were pressuring my mom to have me aborted?”

I believe He will also want to know where you got off citing your Catholic faith and using the word “sacred” about your support for the cruel destruction of pain-capable and viable or near-viable fetuses.

Human life begins at conception and abortion is evil. The Catholic Church has taught this for millennia. Your support for abortion is bad enough; acting like you have a moral obligation to support it because you’re Catholic is pure sacrilege.

You’re past your four score and ten, ma’am. If I were you, I’d be thinking and praying hard about the rapidly approaching day when God Almighty will call you to account. All of your power and connections and millions are as filthy rags to Him. His judgment will be final and Heaven and Hell are eternal.

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Filed under Abortion, Catholic Church, Kermit Gosnell, Life Issues, Nancy Pelosi

by | June 14, 2013 · 10:50 pm

It’s about persons, not politics

2013_06 02 Pope Francis tweets

Ruth went to her mail box, and there was only one letter. She picked it up and looked at it before opening it, but then she looked at the letter again. There was no stamp, no postmark, only her name and address. She read the letter:

Dear Ruth,

I’m going to be in your neighborhood Saturday afternoon, and I’d like to stop by for a visit.

Love Always, Jesus

Her hands were shaking as she placed the letter on the table. “Why would the Lord want to visit me? I’m nobody special. I don’t have anything to offer.”

With that thought, Ruth remembered her empty kitchen cabinets. “Oh my goodness, I really don’t have anything to offer. I’ll have to run down to the store and buy something for dinner.” She reached for her purse and counted out its contents. Five dollars and forty cents. “Well! I can get some bread and cold cuts, at least.”

She threw on her coat and hurried out the door. A loaf of French bread, a half-pound of sliced turkey, and a carton of milk…leaving Ruth with grand total twelve cents to last her until Monday. Nonetheless, she felt good as she headed home, her meager offerings tucked under her arm.

“Hey lady, can you help us, lady?”

Ruth had been so absorbed in her dinner plans, she hadn’t even noticed two figures huddled in the alleyway. A man and a woman, both of them dressed in little more than rags.

“Look lady, I ain’t got a job, ya know, and my wife and I have been living out here on the street, and, well, now it’s getting cold, and we’re getting kinda hungry and, well, if you could help us, lady, we’d really appreciate it.”

Ruth looked at them both. They were dirty, they smelled bad, and frankly, she was certain that they could get some kind of work if they really wanted to.

“Sir, I’d like to help you, but I’m a poor woman myself. All I have is a few cold cuts and some bread, and I’m having an important guest for dinner tonight, and I was planning on serving that to Him.”

“Yeah, well, okay lady, I understand. Thanks anyway.” The man put his arm around the woman’s shoulders, turned, and headed back into the alley.

As she watched them leave, Ruth felt a familiar twinge in her heart. “Sir, wait!” The couple stopped and turned as she ran down the alley after them. “Look, why don’t you take this food. I’ll figure out something else to serve my guest.”

She handed the man her grocery bag. “Thank you lady. Thank you very much!”

“Yes, thank you!” It was the man’s wife, and Ruth could see now that she was shivering. “You know, I’ve got another coat at home. Here, why don’t you take this one.” Ruth unbuttoned her jacket and slipped it over the woman’s shoulders.

Ruth was chilled by the time she reached her front door and worried too. The Lord was coming to visit, and she didn’t have anything to offer Him. She fumbled through her purse for the door key. But as she did, she noticed another envelope in her mailbox.

“That’s odd. The mailman doesn’t usually come twice in one day.” She took the envelope out of the box and opened it.

Dear Ruth,

It was so good to see you again. Thank you for the lovely meal. And thank you, too, for the beautiful coat.

Love Always, Jesus

The air was still cold, but even without her coat, Ruth no longer noticed.

Matthew 25:31-35 God’s command to practice personal charity

Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

I want to call particular attention to a theme that runs through both the story and Jesus’ teaching. That theme is PERSONAL charity. This call is also present in Catholic teaching.

Excerpt from Section 27 of the Catholic Church’s teaching “Gaudium et Spes”

Promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965

In practical terms, the Church stresses that everyone consider his every neighbor without exception as another self and recognize the special obligation we each have to actively help our neighbor when he comes across our path. “As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me” (Matt. 25:40).

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html

I’ve got two quick thoughts on this. One, we are not called by God or Jesus or the Bible to redistribute wealth via punitive taxation, but to give person-to-person to those WHO CROSS OUR PATHS.

And two, we are called by GOD.  Not every open hand or guilt tripping charity mailing is a call from the Almighty. It’s in the story: “Ruth felt a familiar twinge in her heart.” This is one of those places where living in prayer is so important. It keeps you open to God’s tweaking of your heart strings not just in the quiet of your prayer time, but also in the midst of a worrisome day.

A priest once taught us that God calls us to give of our overflow, not of our substance. The line from his homily that stuck in my mind was, “Don’t throw peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at your family while you rush out the door with a steaming hot chicken dinner for your neighbor.”

I’ve used this concept so often to make hard decisions. Just one example. Attending Mass is a Catholic obligation that I took very seriously. But it got to the point where even going to the least attended (least perfume etc.) service of the week and hiding out in the cry room with my air filter was taking such a physical toll that I was spending Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in bed. I prayed about this and saw very clearly that my family needed me on my feet much more than God needed me in that pew. In other words, it was a peanut butter and jelly vs. hot chicken dinner situation, so I stopped going to Mass.

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Filed under Catholic Church, Christianity, Pope Francis

by | June 3, 2013 · 1:10 pm

Catholic teaching on conscience

  • Little else defines humanity than the gift of being able to personally distinguish good from evil and to choose between them.
  • The inner voice that moves us to do good under any circumstances and to avoid evil by all means is called conscience.
  • It is in the conscience that God speaks to us.
  • Anyone who overlooks the conscience of a person, ignores it and uses coercion, violates that person’s dignity.

Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (1776-1782) and other references:

http://www.catholiccrossreference.com/catechism/#!/search/1776-1782

Mother Teresa on Do it anyway

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Filed under Catholic Church, Mother Teresa

by | May 28, 2013 · 10:31 am

How can a person tell whether his action is good or bad?

CAT Don't ask just pay the bond

A person is capable of distinguishing good actions from bad ones because he possesses reason and a conscience, which enable him to make clear judgments.

The following guidelines make it easier to distinguish good actions from bad ones:

(1) What I do must be good; a good intention alone is not enough. Bank robbery is always bad, even if I commit that crime with the good intention of giving the money to poor people.

(2) Even when what I do is truly good, if I perform the good action with a bad intention, it makes the whole action bad. If I walk an elderly woman home and help her around the house, that is good. But if I do it while planning a later break-in, that makes the whole action something bad.

(3) The circumstances in which someone acts can diminish his responsibility, but they cannot change at all the good or bad character of an action. Hitting one’s mother is always bad, even if the mother has previously shown little love to the child.

May we do something bad so that good can result from it?

No, we may never deliberately do something evil or tolerate an evil so that good can result from it. Sometimes there is no other course of action but to tolerate a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil.

The end does not justify the means. It cannot be right to commit infidelity so as to stabilize one’s marriage. It is just as wrong to use embryos for stem cell research, even if one could thereby make medical breakthroughs. It is wrong to try to “help” a rape victim by aborting her child.

Dig Deeper: Catholic Catechism section (1749-1761) and other references @ http://www.catholiccrossreference.com/catechism/#!/search/1749-1761

My Source: I got this in a daily email I get about Catholic teachings. Okay, not the cat. That I added myself. 🙂

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Filed under Catholic Church, Christianity