Baltimore Archdiocese Celebrates Same-Sex Marriage

Edit: Baltimore Archdiocese has a lot of problems, a poorly catechized canon lawyer, a laity in whose hearts the Catholic Faith in this once Catholic capital has faded. Here's the report from Rorate:

Crisis of Bishops: Archdiocese of Baltimore allows (fake) same-sex "marriage" announcement

We have chronicled the sacrilegious "liturgies" that have taken place over the years at Calvert Hall College High School. What's different with this report, if the brother in question was telling the truth, is that the Archdiocese of Baltimore has tacitly approved fake same-sex "marriages" by formally approving of their announcement in Catholic publications.

A report below, from a reader: Link to Rorate...

New Archbishop of Baltimore Talks About Fearless Witness

‘We must be loyal Americans by being bold and courageous Catholics,’ he states, as the U.S. bishops formally rejected Obama’s proposed ‘accommodation’ to the HHS mandate.

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND 05/17/2012

National Catholic Register

BALTIMORE — During an installation replete with striking pageantry, sounding trumpets and an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000, Archbishop William Lori passionately defended the cause of religious freedom as a defining issue for the American people and the Catholic faithful.

“We do not seek to defend religious liberty for partisan purposes, as some have suggested; we do this because we are lovers of a human dignity that was fashioned and imparted not by the government, but by the Creator,” Archbishop Lori said in a May 16 homily designed to bring the campaign from Capitol Hill to the parishes of Baltimore.

Addressing the congregation from the pulpit at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in north Baltimore, the cathedral church of the oldest Catholic diocese in the nation, the archbishop linked the U.S. bishops’ urgent First Amendment battle to the legacy of the city’s first bishop. He addressed a congregation that included his predecessor, Cardinal Edwin O’Brien; the papal nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano; a host of Church leaders; family members; local Catholics and a Knights of Columbus honor guard.

Installed at Baltimore’s Cathedral, Archbishop Lori Draws Line in Sand for Courageous Faith

Baltimore Archdiocese Apparently Makes no Provisions to Protect Spiritual Legacy

 (Baltimore Sun photo by Kim…)

Edit: St. Peter the Apostle Church in the decaying Archdiocese of Baltimore  has been closed.   It was built over 170 yeas ago.   Now that it's been closed, there are serious concerns about integrity and oversight since it seems there is no coherent policy in place with respect to sacred objects of churches within the diocese which have been and are to be closed in futre.  Diocesan representatives are completely unaware of or at least uninterested in revealing what plans they have for disposing of a parish's res pretiosa.

It is legitimately feared that these objects will fall into the hands of those who have no respect for them. Especially since calls to the Diocese reveal that the staff has very little understanding of either the significance of sacred objects or their proper disposal and sale.  We'll quote again the appropriate canon: [cf. Western Catholic Reporter]

The law of the Church (canon 1171) indicates that blessed objects and those used for worship should not be put to inappropriate use, even if privately owned. These objects should be transferred to the diocesan offices where they may be given to another parish or otherwise properly disposed of. 

In the seventies, there was a lot of church building  and not so helpful renovation.  Now, after years of abortion on demand and a birthrate barely above replacement, Catholic institutions are being closed down and sold off.  Of course, the abuse-hoax doesn't help.   Also, many churches were denuded of much of their sacral character in this time period, as a new vogue of trendy ritualistic minimalism and a spirit of experimentation and curiosity took over the scene.

It needs to be said that no other institution, religious or otherwise, has had to bear the legal burdens the Catholic Church has.  Sex abuse scandals against public schools just don't get the attention, for obvious reasons.  Apparently, even the large publicly owned school districts can become targets for such litigation.

Litigation aside, Catholic Diocese are selling their properties and along with them, the sacred objects.  Unfortunately, these are not likely to be disposed of properly.  They are likely to be sold to secular parties who likely as no are eager to use the objects for disrespectful, indeed, sacrilegious purposes.

This was the case in Baltimore recently, where for the last seven years, a bar  called Ale Mary's has appeared which features Catholic sacred objects such as chalices, a monstrance, a holy water font which are used in a kind of faux-church setting where patrons often mock Catholic rituals, objects and personalities.

Anti-Catholic Baltimore Sun "Weighs" in on Blasphemous Bar

Many Will be as Shocked as Belshazzar Was

Definition Hypocrisy: The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense. 

Edit: most of the world isn't going to understand the significance of the Mass, that it's the unbloody commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, the most sacred event a Catholic can experience in this life. What is a sacrilege? A sacrilege is a deliberate, or otherwise, confusion of divine and profane categories. At a bar in Baltimore, the rituals, ministers and symbols of Catholicism are offered as accompaniments to carousing and boozing.

Disgraceful!

The owner doesn't plan on honoring the concerns of Catholics who do object to this sacrilege, and the anti-Clerical Baltimore Sun has written an article sympathetic of those who have no respect for Catholicism, and despite spending their lives being educated in Catholic schools have almost no understanding of the importance of the symbols that they hold in contempt.

   
In all fairness, we must also mention that these objects are no longer conseecrated, most likely, although they may have been purchased as part of a sacrilege from E-BAY.

 In any event, what gets lost in the shuffle is that Catholic rituals and Catholic beliefs are held up to ridicule here. That owner insists that he intends no disrespect, but the lie is given to that in his public comments and the rude way he treats those who call with concerns about his blasphemy.

His patrons share his contempt for Catholic things, and they can be seen in blogs and comment boxes, building on to the offense which is this bar.

 They refer to those who hold revere these symbols and don't want to see them manifestly disrespected (as they clearly are in the personal testimonies on the site and in the comments section on the first article we featured on this place) as "nut balls".  Anti-Catholic paper writes:

Tom and Mary Rivers, who opened Ale Mary's about seven years ago, say they've gotten about a dozen angry phone calls and about the same number of emails in the last week or so. And, as both of them were raised Catholic in Baltimore, [Are Baltimore Catholics less Catholic than elsewhere?  Being raised Catholic doesn't guarantee respect for others beliefs, apparently]  they still can't believe anyone would have a problem with what they consider fun decor. "With the exception of these nut balls I've had one person in seven years say this is kind of in bad taste," Tom Rivers said. "And that person still comes in here." The couple  says that all of their religious items were donated by customers, including the monstrance behind the bar.

Kiddish Cup

Despite the disrespectful photograph which appears in the article, the journalist in question who wrote it after appearing on the FB group "500,000 Against "Ale Mary's" Abuse of the Sacred and the Sublime", she is blissfully unaware of the strident hypocrisy.

 Clearly, the owners of the bar and many of its patrons wouldn't be too happy if the things they find sacred or important were denigrated and held to ridicule in such ways. Imagine if a similar bar were in existence which featured and ridiculed Jews or Muslims. It's unlikely that a bar of this type would get insurance coverage, and would certain face closure.

 In normal societies, like Singapore, for example,  such disrespectful behavior toward Catholicism isn't tolerated, actually, like Singapore, for example. Imagine if a bar were build around a Jewish house of worship, complete with mezuzah's, satirical pictures of respected Rabbis hanging on the wall? Imagine too if the beginning of Colt's games were signaled at the bar with a shofar horn? Or instead of chalices, imagine if patrons drank from kiddush cups?  How about a game of strip dreddle?  Two can play at that game!

Shofar Horn

Obviously, if you insult Jews or Muslims, it may not only be physically dangerous to do so, but you can also lose your liquor license and find yourself out of business for offending such as they. Since the state of journalism is so poor at the anti-Clerical paper, we've sought to augment it by our own contribution.