Washington, DC, January 5, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Archdiocese of San Francisco continue to support an organization that helped create and promote contraception, elective-abortion and sex-education programs for kids, the American Life League is reporting.
In November, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development issued “For the Record – The Truth about CCHD Funding” in response to criticism that the group funds organizations that support pro-abortion programs.
The document contains this defense of the San Francisco Organizing Project:
Archdiocese of San Francisco strongly supports the work of the SFOP to expand access to health care to children. Both Archbishop Levada and Archbishop Niederauer have spoken at SFOP events; SFOP has met regularly with [a]rchdiocesan staff to coordinate work on health care access and other issues that affect the poor and immigrant families.
Link to original...
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Bishop Yao Liang, 87, Imprisoned in China for Loyalty to the Vatican, Dies
This is another great article by the usually very Marxist New York Times. The new owner of the paper, or the largest shareholder, who kept the paper from bankruptcy might be pro-immigration, but he might also pushign this paper to be more favoreable to the Church as well. This article owns that the Chicoms are persecuting the Catholic Church and it owns the heroic resistance of a saintly Bishop. Here's a life worth celebrating.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Published: January 5, 2010
BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.
Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.
Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.
China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.
For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.
The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.
Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.
Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.
“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”
His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.
Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.
Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.
Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.
Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.
Rebel Priest James Kavanaugh Received Apostolic Pardon before Death
Father Z. Comments on the death of the rebellious Fr. James Kavanaugh who died recently. Before he died, Father James asked for Apostolic Pardon. This is all the more important, because Father James was a famous dissident priest who was opposed to clerical celibacy and thought the Church had to change to meet the times and not the other way around.
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
h/t: Comrade Ray at Stella Borealis
Remembering a Lasallian Missionary to Central America
Brother James Miller gave his life for God, and now the Roman Catholic Church has begun the process to make the Saint Mary's University graduate a saint.
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.
Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.
Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.
It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.
Passion for education
Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.
His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.
Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.
As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]
Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.
The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.
“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in
his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”
Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.
“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”
Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.
Trip back home, then a new assignment
Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.
“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.
In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.
“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”
This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.
Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.
Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.
“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”
As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.
And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.
“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”
Gunned down, with no justice for his death
Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.
Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.
Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.
The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.
Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.
“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”
Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.
“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”
Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”
Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward
Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”
Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.
“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.
“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”
The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.
“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.
“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”
Link to original...
h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis
Monday, January 4, 2010
Bishop Peric Regrets Cardinal Schönborn's Visit
Unfortunately, despite the praise or begrudging admission that there are good "fruits" with Medjugorje, there is actually a pre-existing shrine to which these mysteries of repentance and "good" fruits are attributable, but that's not discussed here. What is clear is that the Cardinal is not exactly a welcome visitor in town.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Catholic Culture
The bishop of the local Mostar-Duvno diocese has issued a statement expressing concern about statements issued by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn during a visit to Medjugorje last week and emphasizing that the cardinal’s visit “does not imply any recognition of the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ related to Medjugorje.”
Bishop Ratko Peric-- who has repeatedly warned against the dangers of “the Medjugorje phenomenon” and strongly discouraged confidence in the alleged apparitions—complained that the visit by Cardinal Schönborn had caused new pastoral problems for his diocese. Citing a list of conflicts and irregularities arising from the activities of the alleged seers and their supporters, Bishop Peric voiced “regret” that the Austrian cardinal’s appearance had lent new credibility to their claims.
Catholic Culture...
Kreuznet.de article...
Bishop Peric might be painfully aware of this series of scandalous events as well. He might as well be having a secular film personality to comment on Medjugorje in his Diocese.
Freezedried Hippie Priest Arrested Protesting Nuclear Weapons
This is so 1980s. First the UK Bishops are opposing Nuclear Weapons and now this sort of activity. This hasn't been in the news for a long time, perhaps the true masters of these men have urged them to renew their tired agendas again?
An Oblate priest who has long protested against America’s nuclear weapons arsenal was found guilty Dec. 21 of criminal mischief and trespassing on government property at the site of a nuclear missile silo in northern Colorado.
Father Carl Kabat, 76, was sentenced by Weld County Court Judge Dana Nichols to time served — 137 days — after his Aug. 6 arrest at the silo near New Raymer, Colo.
Nichols also imposed court costs totaling $254.50 and is allowing prosecutors to file a notice of restitution to Warren Air Force Base for damages. Father Kabat vowed not to pay either bill.
Testifying during the two-day trial, Father Kabat admitted he had cut a fence and entered the property, his most recent action to oppose the nation’s nuclear weapons policies. He had argued that his action was mandated by God’s law in order to oppose a greater evil. However, Nichols instructed jurors to limit their deliberations to whether the priest broke the law in entering the silo site.
The conviction was the 18th for Father Kabat in his prayerful quest to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He has served more than 17 years behind bars since his first protest in 1976.
The trial concluded in time for Father Kabat to return to the Catholic Worker house in St. Louis where he lives and spend the holidays with family and friends.
You can read an earlier post about his arrest here.
Filed under: CNS
Link here...
Fr. Kubat says that you have to put your actions and words together. His acts are strange enough, he likes to dress up as a clown and hammer on nuclear silos during the worst years of the Carter Administration. It's a sure sign of Marxist involvement and of course, he's assocated with the Catholic Worker, another Marxist front group.
Imemorial Mass of Ages to be Said at Rome Priest's Conference
CNS
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
ROME — Top officials from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments will be principal celebrants at Tridentine liturgies during a conference in Rome this week. The Tridentine rite, in use before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, is also called the extraordinary form of the liturgy.
U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Vatican congregation, will celebrate solemn pontifical vespers and benediction in the extraordinary form at the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians, located inside the Vatican walls, Jan. 6.
On Jan. 7, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the worship congregation, will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary form at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The conference is being co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy to mark the Year for Priests.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the church’s highest court, will be the main celebrant at the concluding liturgy of the conference Jan. 8. He will celebrate a solemn pontifical Mass in the ordinary — or new – form in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Archbishop Burke celebrated a Mass in the extraordinary form in St. Peter’s Basilica last October.
Link to original...
Sister Keehan is Destroying Catholic Hospitals
No doubt, Sr. Carol Keehan is running a multi-million dollar boondoggle of Catholic Healthcare (into the ground), got a firm talking to which forced her to reverse her initial and customarily unwavering support for leftist causes and pro-abort politicians like former Sen to South Dakota, Tom Daschle. If you have agents acting consistently against the stated goals and principles of an organization, pretty soon, it will seriously undermine that organization and event destroy it, but that's the idea. Her sole mission must be to preside over the disestablishment of Catholic Hospitals in the United States.
We remember when Archbishop Burke, formerly of St. Louis, took Catholic Hospitals to task just for this reason and shortly after was summoned to Rome for a "promotion" or a kick upstairs.
CHA president Sister Carol Keehan had issued a statement that said, “now that a public health insurance option is no longer on the table” in the Senate’s health care reform bill, the CHA is “increasingly confident” that a compromise formulated by Catholic Democratic Sen. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.”
Pro-life activists call Casey’s proposal phony. National Right to Life legislative director Douglas Johnson, for example, said the Casey language “apparently would make it the default position for the federal government to subsidize plans that cover abortion on demand, and then permit individual citizens to apply for conscientious objector status.”
A year ago, Keehan defended ill-fated Obama HHS nominee Tom Daschle and his choice for deputy health care director Jeanne Lambrew, both abortion rights supporters.
Most Catholic Americans wrongly assume that Catholic hospitals are dedicated to fighting abortion. In fact, many of the most important people running those hospital systems, and representing them before government, have spent fortunes supporting some of the most powerful pro-abortion politicians in America.
Link to original...
Tolerance for Diversity and Intolerance
Tiberias Haredi Jews want segregated bus lines so that "males and females may sit on seperate sides of the bus" and that they may be generally seperated from non-religious Jews. We like this. We hope the religious Jews beat the non-religious ones, as one interviewee feared would happen, on the head with the Torah.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Someone in Liberal Oregon can't understand, or appreciate cultural diversity, at least not the domesticated kind of diversity one might appreciate on a planned and disneyfied cruise and tour of Uganda. It irks him that somewhere, someone else's truth isn't the same as his for the Ugandan government is getting a democratic law passed which will punish homosexuals with death. It's not exactly the kind of democracy we had in mind though here at the epicenter of cultural niceness where some values are more equal than others.
Perhaps what we need is to get newly Knighted Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan on an away team to discuss tolerance and diversity to the Ugandan people, that is, even before economic sanctions hit and Ugandan children might starve in order that the 5-10% of our population that really values these things can feel less impotent than they usually do.
Then perhaps they will understand. Even the usually morally moribound Anglican Church is supporting this legislation which was once, more or less, a standard in European societies, at least until the French Revolution came along.
Uganda has banned radio adverts by witches but before you go around criticizing and getting all superior on the poor Ugandans, we do too, except we tend to call them psychics or palm readers.
Our enthusiasm for Uganda increases when we see that the government not only takes swindlers like fortune tellers to jail and prevents them from preying on ordinary people, but it even takes care of false versions of Catholicism, like the Brazilian Catholic Church, which permits its ministers to marry. Like the Old Catholics in Europe, they have quite a few problems with adult supervisions. By comparison, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, though considerably less corrupt than the cannibal conference of the United Nations, and all of the heresy we talk about that it does suffer from, is nothing.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Laotian Vocations Growing Slowly
BANGKOK (UCAN) -- Laotian seminarians face formidable challenges, but their enthusiasm and perseverance in their priestly studies helps them overcome obstacles, says their formator.
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
One major challenge is seminarians' "low level of education compared with those from other countries," said Thai Redemptorist Father Anthony Wiboon Limphanawooth. He is in charge of nine young men, aged 19-23, at St. Teresa Middle Seminary in Thakhek, central Laos.
Most of the students in their first year "can't read the Lao language fluently," he said.
Furthermore, all the seminarians come from farming families and are not used to following an academic routine. "They have to train themselves to follow the seminary timetable," said the priest.
Despite the challenges they face, the seminarians "are very enthusiastic about studying," said Father Wiboon. "They are slow but they give you 100 percent."
St. Teresa Middle Seminary is one of two intermediate seminaries in the country. The other is in Pakse, southern Laos.
Father Wiboon, 41, said that as there are no minor seminaries in the country, local nuns and catechists recommend high-school students who are active in church to be personally taught catechism and prayers by priests.
When these boys finish high school, they enter an intermediate seminary where they study the Bible, spirituality, catechism and English. They then proceed to St. John Vianney Major Seminary, the only major seminary in the country, also in Thakhek, for philosophy and theology studies.
Apart from teaching at St. Teresa's, Father Wiboon also instructs 18 other young men, the oldest of whom are in their late 20s, at the major seminary.
The seminarians' perseverance is manifested in the low drop-out rate. At St Teresa's, only two dropped out last year, and in the major seminary no one has left in the past year.
Father Wiboon says vocations are promoted "quietly" in Laos and the numbers are slowly increasing. Last year, he received three new seminarians at St. Teresa's. Of the nine in his care, five are with the Redemptorist congregation.
According to Father Wiboon, the country has fewer than 20 priests. Several are studying overseas.
The next priestly ordination is expected only in about two years' time, he said. "In Laos everything is done slowly."
Link....
Ven. Pius XII Defender of the Jews
If anything, Pius XII did too much for the Jews. This video made by a high-school student demonstrates the facts that big-name publications like New York Times keep getting wrong; but it was a Communist inspired disinformation campaign in the first place, thats well documented.
In repayment for his courage and generosity of spirit, many Jews have chosen to defame his name with their usual allies in print and broadcast media. It is truly a testament to their true spiritual bretheren Cane, Esau and the elder brothers of Joseph, that modern Jews persecute the only organization that stood by them in the Second World War.
In repayment for his courage and generosity of spirit, many Jews have chosen to defame his name with their usual allies in print and broadcast media. It is truly a testament to their true spiritual bretheren Cane, Esau and the elder brothers of Joseph, that modern Jews persecute the only organization that stood by them in the Second World War.
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
In case you missed it: Following their exchange in October, author Moyra Doorly and theologian Aidan Nichols discuss what true fidelity to Tradition consists of
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
h/t to: Against the Grain
We remain the Church of Tradition - Catholic Herald
h/t to: Against the Grain
Umberto Eco Laments the Ignorance of Catholic Religion
This article bemoans as enthusiastically as the decadent Southern European soul can, the gap in the education of young Italians toward understanding the patrimony of what enlightened people everywhere who flock to museums on Sunday's instead of Church call "great" masterpieces, created by a disinterest in religious subjects; never mind the actual cause, professore. Three of these students he finds to his discouragement, don't know who the Three Kings are.
It demonstrates something that is painfully apparent that religious faith might be an important part of history and worthwhile in order to understand the great souls who were forced for need of bread to depict those scenes on canvas, but believing in it, that's another story.
It brings to mind Paul VI's fashionable Milanese meetings he held which drew large crowds and spawned a famous book, a dialogue between he and Umberto Eco, called Belief and Unbelief. It is a kind of model for the engagement of the Church with the modern world, often well-attended, attracting even people who would otherwise not attend Church at all. For all of the talking, which approaches the kind of chatter of inter religious dialogue and neo-ecumenism today, it's hard to say what it has done for Intellectuals like Eco.
Well, in this recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, he seems to be very much the same. Advocating for the kinds of things one of the post-religious heroes his novels might have advocated, a kind of areligious, religious humanism. He really shouldn't lament it too much, it's a situation men like him have encouraged and helped to create.
His half-hearted attempt to keep himself out of the camp of Catholic (even non-believing) partizans by encouraging the study of world religions is almost doctrinaire neo-Marxism. Bravo professore!
New York Times
by Umberto Eco
Almost by chance I recently happened to witness two similar scenes: a 15-year-old girl who was engrossed in a book of art reproductions, and two 15-year-old boys who were enthralled to be visiting the Louvre.
The parents of all three were nonbelievers and the teens were raised in secular countries; that lack of religious background clearly affected their ability to appreciate the art they were viewing.
The teenagers could understand that the hapless individuals in Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” had just escaped a shipwreck. And they could recognize that the characters portrayed by Francesco Hayez in “The Kiss” were lovers.
Link to original...
h/t: Against the Grain
It demonstrates something that is painfully apparent that religious faith might be an important part of history and worthwhile in order to understand the great souls who were forced for need of bread to depict those scenes on canvas, but believing in it, that's another story.
It brings to mind Paul VI's fashionable Milanese meetings he held which drew large crowds and spawned a famous book, a dialogue between he and Umberto Eco, called Belief and Unbelief. It is a kind of model for the engagement of the Church with the modern world, often well-attended, attracting even people who would otherwise not attend Church at all. For all of the talking, which approaches the kind of chatter of inter religious dialogue and neo-ecumenism today, it's hard to say what it has done for Intellectuals like Eco.
Well, in this recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, he seems to be very much the same. Advocating for the kinds of things one of the post-religious heroes his novels might have advocated, a kind of areligious, religious humanism. He really shouldn't lament it too much, it's a situation men like him have encouraged and helped to create.
His half-hearted attempt to keep himself out of the camp of Catholic (even non-believing) partizans by encouraging the study of world religions is almost doctrinaire neo-Marxism. Bravo professore!
New York Times
by Umberto Eco
Almost by chance I recently happened to witness two similar scenes: a 15-year-old girl who was engrossed in a book of art reproductions, and two 15-year-old boys who were enthralled to be visiting the Louvre.
The parents of all three were nonbelievers and the teens were raised in secular countries; that lack of religious background clearly affected their ability to appreciate the art they were viewing.
The teenagers could understand that the hapless individuals in Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” had just escaped a shipwreck. And they could recognize that the characters portrayed by Francesco Hayez in “The Kiss” were lovers.
Link to original...
h/t: Against the Grain
Saturday, January 2, 2010
A Catholic Manhattan Declaration
We'll take Manhattan. The Declaration has a kind of exiting flavor to it when you name it after Manhattan.
Christopher Ferrara
(Posted 12/31/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Two months after World War I began, with Christmas approaching, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (1914), echoed the judgment of both of his immediate predecessors on the state of what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has rather mordantly described as “the new world of human liberty.” And Pope Benedict wanted to be clear that “it was not the present sanguinary strife alone” that had prompted him to continue in the line of papal pessimism about political modernity. “There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society,” he wrote, “a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war.”
Read the article here...
Christopher Ferrara
(Posted 12/31/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Two months after World War I began, with Christmas approaching, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (1914), echoed the judgment of both of his immediate predecessors on the state of what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has rather mordantly described as “the new world of human liberty.” And Pope Benedict wanted to be clear that “it was not the present sanguinary strife alone” that had prompted him to continue in the line of papal pessimism about political modernity. “There is another evil raging in the very inmost heart of human society,” he wrote, “a source of dread to all who really think, inasmuch as it has already brought, and will bring, many misfortunes upon nations, and may rightly be considered to be the root cause of the present awful war.”
Read the article here...
Turkey wants St Nick back [To put in a museum]
It's very clear that while the Turkish Government might understand tourism and museums, they have no concept of the sacramental character of St. Nicholas' relics, which have been venerated for centuries where they are in Bari. Furthermore, if they had been left in Bari, considering the record of Turkish governments of the past with regard to the frequent persecutions of Catholics, it's unlikely these relics would have seen the 21st Century in their Myrna.
Turkey wants St Nick back
ANKARA - TURKEY will ask for the return of the bones of Saint Nicholas, who Father Christmas is modelled on, from their display in Italy, local media reported on Friday.
Saint Nicholas, from the modern-day town of Demre on southern Turkey's Mediterranean coast, is, according to tradition, the ancestor of Father Christmas, but his remains were stolen by Italian pirates in the 11th century.
'These bones should be exposed here and not in a town of pirates' in Bari, said Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay, quoted in the newspaper Milliyet. 'If we build a museum in this town (Demre), naturally the first thing we will ask for are the remains of Father Christmas.'
Turkey wants St Nick back
ANKARA - TURKEY will ask for the return of the bones of Saint Nicholas, who Father Christmas is modelled on, from their display in Italy, local media reported on Friday.
Saint Nicholas, from the modern-day town of Demre on southern Turkey's Mediterranean coast, is, according to tradition, the ancestor of Father Christmas, but his remains were stolen by Italian pirates in the 11th century.
'These bones should be exposed here and not in a town of pirates' in Bari, said Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay, quoted in the newspaper Milliyet. 'If we build a museum in this town (Demre), naturally the first thing we will ask for are the remains of Father Christmas.'
Whithering Beatnik Nuns Devoted to Environmentalism not Vocations
The following article actually mentions something key that:
It's not a question of going into obsolescence, but it's a question of auto-leisionism, or self-destruction. These gnostico-pantheists ought to be sorted out, given severance packages and sent packing. These Religious orders are becoming irrelevant because no one believes they are anything more than social workers.
The loyalty of these Massachusets Sisters rests more with Marxist pet causes like environmentalism than it is to their founding principles and their interest in things like this will be inversely related to the numbers of vocations they receive, which is a fairly good indicator of success.
Shrinking religious orders take up land conservation [Surely, it couldn't be as important as teaching Catechism to the poor or making altar breads]
Looking over the wooded parcel her Catholic order sold in 1992, Sister Chris Loughlin stood with arms folded, the regret on her face plain to see.
But Loughlin and her fellow Dominican sisters in Plainville, Mass., about 30 miles southwest of Boston, have more than made up for the loss of 10 acres from the former orchard that was bequeathed to the order in 1949.
Gesturing to surrounding fields and forests, Loughlin explained: "Now we have these 42 acres, and 32 of them are in a conservation restriction. So no matter what happens at this point, at least the land is preserved."
The old orchard is now home to the Crystal Springs Earth Learning Center, and the rambling farmhouse is the unassuming headquarters of a remarkable land conservation initiative, the Religious Lands Conservancy.
Launched by Loughlin in 2002 with the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, the Religious Lands Conservancy has been instrumental in placing hundreds of acres owned by religious communities into conservation. With a faith-based mission to protect the Earth, Loughlin has approached congregations throughout the Northeast to broach the spiritual value of conservation.
It's not just a feel-good spiritual mission. During the past 40 years, the number of Catholic nuns has plummeted 66 percent, and the number of Catholic brothers by 60 percent. The financial strain of dwindling membership has resulted in lucrative -- and often attractive -- offers to sell the orders' land to developers.
Loughlin said that although religious orders are fading, their land could yet be a lasting legacy.
She is among a growing network of Catholic sisters who have reexamined their connection to the Earth in the context of their faith. Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor of environmental and religious studies at Yale University, said the increasing involvement of religious groups in preservation is not simply a trend but also "the rediscovery of ancient traditions." [Wow]
"All the rituals of world religions are very much nature-based," she said.
The green-sister revolution is rooted in the teachings of the Rev. Thomas Berry, who before his death in June fostered the idea that the environmental crisis must also be understood as a spiritual crisis. Sister Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican nun who has been at the forefront of the movement, said Berry's perspective shifted her work "quite radically" to encompass a respect for all life on Earth.
Ever since MacGillis helped found the 226-acre Genesis Farm and its Earth studies center in Blairstown, N.J., in 1980, Catholic sisters across the United States and Canada have woven environmental justice and community-supported agriculture into their religious vocation.
Living in Massachusetts -- the nation's third-most densely populated state -- the Dominican sisters of Plainville are helping to save a critical habitat, said Bob Wilber, director of land protection for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and their foresight has helped spark conversations with other orders.
Read further...
As religious orders took root across the United States in the 19th century, they built networks of schools, hospitals and orphanages to provide services to the poor and marginalized. The rise of government and private programs, however, made many of these institutions obsolete.
It's not a question of going into obsolescence, but it's a question of auto-leisionism, or self-destruction. These gnostico-pantheists ought to be sorted out, given severance packages and sent packing. These Religious orders are becoming irrelevant because no one believes they are anything more than social workers.
The loyalty of these Massachusets Sisters rests more with Marxist pet causes like environmentalism than it is to their founding principles and their interest in things like this will be inversely related to the numbers of vocations they receive, which is a fairly good indicator of success.
Shrinking religious orders take up land conservation [Surely, it couldn't be as important as teaching Catechism to the poor or making altar breads]
Looking over the wooded parcel her Catholic order sold in 1992, Sister Chris Loughlin stood with arms folded, the regret on her face plain to see.
But Loughlin and her fellow Dominican sisters in Plainville, Mass., about 30 miles southwest of Boston, have more than made up for the loss of 10 acres from the former orchard that was bequeathed to the order in 1949.
Gesturing to surrounding fields and forests, Loughlin explained: "Now we have these 42 acres, and 32 of them are in a conservation restriction. So no matter what happens at this point, at least the land is preserved."
The old orchard is now home to the Crystal Springs Earth Learning Center, and the rambling farmhouse is the unassuming headquarters of a remarkable land conservation initiative, the Religious Lands Conservancy.
Launched by Loughlin in 2002 with the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, the Religious Lands Conservancy has been instrumental in placing hundreds of acres owned by religious communities into conservation. With a faith-based mission to protect the Earth, Loughlin has approached congregations throughout the Northeast to broach the spiritual value of conservation.
It's not just a feel-good spiritual mission. During the past 40 years, the number of Catholic nuns has plummeted 66 percent, and the number of Catholic brothers by 60 percent. The financial strain of dwindling membership has resulted in lucrative -- and often attractive -- offers to sell the orders' land to developers.
Loughlin said that although religious orders are fading, their land could yet be a lasting legacy.
She is among a growing network of Catholic sisters who have reexamined their connection to the Earth in the context of their faith. Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor of environmental and religious studies at Yale University, said the increasing involvement of religious groups in preservation is not simply a trend but also "the rediscovery of ancient traditions." [Wow]
"All the rituals of world religions are very much nature-based," she said.
The green-sister revolution is rooted in the teachings of the Rev. Thomas Berry, who before his death in June fostered the idea that the environmental crisis must also be understood as a spiritual crisis. Sister Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican nun who has been at the forefront of the movement, said Berry's perspective shifted her work "quite radically" to encompass a respect for all life on Earth.
Ever since MacGillis helped found the 226-acre Genesis Farm and its Earth studies center in Blairstown, N.J., in 1980, Catholic sisters across the United States and Canada have woven environmental justice and community-supported agriculture into their religious vocation.
Living in Massachusetts -- the nation's third-most densely populated state -- the Dominican sisters of Plainville are helping to save a critical habitat, said Bob Wilber, director of land protection for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and their foresight has helped spark conversations with other orders.
Read further...
Laicization is the Heroin of Ecclesiastical Life
Lay involvement is like spiritual heroin for Catholic communities. It may address the pain, but not the disease and ultimately it impedes the recovery of the patient. We might point out which the following article also mentions that before Vatican II and the "Active Lay Participation" it called for, or was called for in its name, there was no vocations crisis. We almost had more priests in the early sixties than was good for us, and many of them fled (or in many cases, thrown out) in the cultural haze of the 60s to find sustainance where they could. You might say they were Aggionamentized (Bl. John XXIIIs word to describe what he was doing to the Church in 1963)
Lay involvement in Church life has been an increasing factor in the last few hundred years anyway, what with laymen getting positions teaching in Catholic Theology faculties and ultimately, taking over the running of Church-related businesses like the making of altar breads (once made exclusively by priests chanting the Psalms) presses and newspapers in the United States during the 30s, much, we might add, to the detriment of the latter.
While attending the New Mass, or seeing it on television, it's common to see a rather well-dressed layman or laywoman, doing the readings, approaching the tabernacle and handling the Sacred Species with an air of self-importance that's hard not to generally notice. Like a Nun working at an abortuary, they seem to understand that they don't belong their; but rebellion is in the air, even for the elderly as is often the case. They are generally indifferent to their surroundings and the importance of the things they're handling or of what they represent. This Ecclesistical Dictatorship of the Proletariat is conceived and impelled to demean the sacredness of holy places and events; there is a pedestrian feel to the whole thing, like going to listen to a sales meeting by Monks, getting married at the post-office or to purchase a new car in a church as Huysman's reports:
Laicization poses as a solution and is really part of the problem. Parishes which do not have these kinds of pseudo-clerical ministries, by the way, not only produce more vocations, but produce more children as well.
But we can't expect an author, educated no doubt, by a secular faculty with all kinds of false notions about philosophy and religion, to do anything else than perpetuate the propaganda now being levelled at the Irish Church by a bevy of vindictive journalists, washed up rock stars and laity, eagerly and so bravely joining in on the kicking of one who has momentarily fallen.
By 2015 Catholics will be familiar with lay people in priestly roles. [But the laity generally always have been familiar with those roles, which is why they were generally unwilling to usurp them, even at great need]
PATSY McGARRY
ANALYSIS: In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority [Is this wishful thinking or a guilty conscience?]
THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.
It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.
The three men made up the largest number to be ordained at once for the Redemptorist congregation in more than 10 years. They were Brian Nolan (31) from Limerick, Tony Rice (31) from Belfast, and Seán Duggan (30) from Galway.
They are no starry-eyed neophytes. Brian Nolan, a former electronics student at Limerick Institute of Technology, admitted that when he told people that he was in the religious life, “it can be a conversation stopper”. But still, he didn’t “feel the need to hold back from telling people what I’m doing”.
Tony Rice worked in a bank for four years. He said the difficulties in the church were symptomatic of a general lack of leadership in a number of areas in our society. “People have reason to be disappointed with several institutions right now – banks, politicians, the church and so many others . . . We need strong, just and accountable leadership to renew our vision and our hope in humanity,” he said.
Seán Duggan gave up corporate law to become a priest. “The choices I have made are not knee-jerk reactions. They have been thought about and talked about over a period of eight years’ training,” he said. “The questions that people throw to me such as celibacy, inept church leadership, married priests and more, are all questions that I’ve thought about myself. It’s not as if I live in a bubble cut off from reality,” he said.
On Sunday November 15th Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said.
Last April he said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin. It also emerged at the time that the number of priests in Tuam’s Catholic archdiocese will fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
Meanwhile, writing in the Furrow magazine last June, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age”.
He continued “the difficult truth is that priests will have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades”.
For people of a certain age the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is, truly, beyond imagination. This is not hard to understand. Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on November 13th the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class of 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. Vocations were so high then that between a third and a half of Irish priests went on the missions. [Then came the Vatican Council II]
But, almost 50 years later, all has changed. The number of priests in Ireland is in serious decline. The average age of the Irish Catholic priest today is put at 63. For those who are members of religious congregations the average age is in the early 70s.
Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!
At the end of September last there were 77 men training for the priesthood at Maynooth. Of that number, 36 entered this year, an increase of 12 on the 24 who entered in 2008.
It is believed to be a blip which won’t alter the downward trend. Meanwhile, for every 10 men who begin training for the priesthood, at Maynooth five or six become priests.
All of which means that the coming decade will see profound change in Catholic Church structures and practices on this island. It will also see the end of the clerical caste which has dominated Irish Catholicism since Victorian times. They will give way, of necessity, to a more lay-directed institution with fewer-but-bigger parishes in fewer-but-bigger dioceses.
An indication of what is to come was illustrated in the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore last June. That month saw the first ordination to the Catholic priesthood there in eight years when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest.
That same month in that same diocese sacristan Ken Hackett conducted a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary. The priest, Fr Robert Power, was away. Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the word and may do as he did according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies. [This is a symptom of a bigger problem with entitlement and feminism] The response to him from parishioners was “very, very good”, he told The Irish Times.
Catholic Ireland is embarking on a path others have already taken.
In one diocese in northern France there is only one priest to serve 27 parishes. It means the priest drops by on occasion in each parish to offer Mass and consecrate hosts. The rest of the time parishioners run their own church.
In 2001 the diocese of Nice had to reduce its 265 parishes to 47. The recently created parish there of Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance has five churches.
It had five priests; now there is one. Each church has an appointed lay person, the relais locale, whose duty is to run both church and parish, and perform almost all functions of a priest except celebrating the Eucharist and administering sacraments only a priest can.
A principal function of the relais is to conduct a Sunday Communion service in the absence of the priest, a “Mass” without the consecration. There is frequently no priest at funerals there any more.
Writing about this in The Irish Times on July 8th, former Dominican priest and author David Rice recalled how, at the Église Sacré Coeur in Beaulieu “I attended one such funeral, conducted by the relais locale for the church. She received the coffin. There were words of welcome, the singing of hymns, a short eulogy of the deceased, readings from scripture, a brief reflection by the relais, the lighting of candles beside the coffin, a blessing of the coffin with holy water, and prayers for the deceased. It lasted about half an hour. There was no Mass, as there was no priest.”
He spoke to a woman appointed there as general manager of the parish with its five churches. While her official title was économe, her job was more about administration than money. Unpaid herself, she managed a payroll for nine people, including cleaners, organists and two parish secretaries.
Other lay people – men and women – were active in priestly roles: parish visitation; counselling; pre-marriage instruction; attending the sick; chaplaincies to hospitals and retirement homes; to scout and youth groups. And it is lay people who, almost exclusively, impart the faith to children.
In 10 years, this way of things is likely to be very familiar to Ireland’s Catholic faithful. And that is believed to be likely even if both the mandatory celibacy rule is dropped and women are allowed become Catholic priests.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
Lay involvement in Church life has been an increasing factor in the last few hundred years anyway, what with laymen getting positions teaching in Catholic Theology faculties and ultimately, taking over the running of Church-related businesses like the making of altar breads (once made exclusively by priests chanting the Psalms) presses and newspapers in the United States during the 30s, much, we might add, to the detriment of the latter.
While attending the New Mass, or seeing it on television, it's common to see a rather well-dressed layman or laywoman, doing the readings, approaching the tabernacle and handling the Sacred Species with an air of self-importance that's hard not to generally notice. Like a Nun working at an abortuary, they seem to understand that they don't belong their; but rebellion is in the air, even for the elderly as is often the case. They are generally indifferent to their surroundings and the importance of the things they're handling or of what they represent. This Ecclesistical Dictatorship of the Proletariat is conceived and impelled to demean the sacredness of holy places and events; there is a pedestrian feel to the whole thing, like going to listen to a sales meeting by Monks, getting married at the post-office or to purchase a new car in a church as Huysman's reports:
Ah! far off was the time when Radegonda, Queen of France, had with her own hands prepared the bread destined for the altars, or the time when, after the customs of Cluny, three priests or deacons, fasting and garbed in alb and amice, washed their faces and hands and then picked out the wheat, grain by grain, grinding it under millstone, kneading the paste in a cold and pure water and themselves baking it under a clear fire, while chanting psalms.
Laicization poses as a solution and is really part of the problem. Parishes which do not have these kinds of pseudo-clerical ministries, by the way, not only produce more vocations, but produce more children as well.
But we can't expect an author, educated no doubt, by a secular faculty with all kinds of false notions about philosophy and religion, to do anything else than perpetuate the propaganda now being levelled at the Irish Church by a bevy of vindictive journalists, washed up rock stars and laity, eagerly and so bravely joining in on the kicking of one who has momentarily fallen.
By 2015 Catholics will be familiar with lay people in priestly roles. [But the laity generally always have been familiar with those roles, which is why they were generally unwilling to usurp them, even at great need]
PATSY McGARRY
ANALYSIS: In the second of our series looking at what things might be like five years hence, we consider the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, where ordinations have collapsed along with its moral authority [Is this wishful thinking or a guilty conscience?]
THERE WAS a poignancy in the air at the ordination of three men as Redemptorist priests in St Joseph’s Church, Dundalk, on Sunday December 6th. In the front pew a female relative of one of the men wept copiously as the ceremony progressed.
It was conducted by the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, who was clearly still reeling from the findings of the Murphy report, published on November 26th, while also attending to his duties. He seemed exhausted. In a momentary lapse he forgot the name of one of the young men. Then, remembering, he commented it was “Seán, the same name as my own”. There was a laugh from the congregation.
The three men made up the largest number to be ordained at once for the Redemptorist congregation in more than 10 years. They were Brian Nolan (31) from Limerick, Tony Rice (31) from Belfast, and Seán Duggan (30) from Galway.
They are no starry-eyed neophytes. Brian Nolan, a former electronics student at Limerick Institute of Technology, admitted that when he told people that he was in the religious life, “it can be a conversation stopper”. But still, he didn’t “feel the need to hold back from telling people what I’m doing”.
Tony Rice worked in a bank for four years. He said the difficulties in the church were symptomatic of a general lack of leadership in a number of areas in our society. “People have reason to be disappointed with several institutions right now – banks, politicians, the church and so many others . . . We need strong, just and accountable leadership to renew our vision and our hope in humanity,” he said.
Seán Duggan gave up corporate law to become a priest. “The choices I have made are not knee-jerk reactions. They have been thought about and talked about over a period of eight years’ training,” he said. “The questions that people throw to me such as celibacy, inept church leadership, married priests and more, are all questions that I’ve thought about myself. It’s not as if I live in a bubble cut off from reality,” he said.
On Sunday November 15th Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said his archdiocese will soon have barely enough priests to serve its 199 parishes. “We have 46 priests over 80 and only two less than 35 years of age. In a very short time we will just have the bare number of priests required to have one active priest for each of our 199 parishes,” he said.
Last April he said there were now 10 times more priests over 70 than under 40 in Dublin. It also emerged at the time that the number of priests in Tuam’s Catholic archdiocese will fall by 30 per cent over the next four years, leaving most parishes there with just one resident priest.
Meanwhile, writing in the Furrow magazine last June, Fr Brendan Hoban, parish priest at St Muredach’s Cathedral, in Ballina, Co Mayo, said of his own Killala diocese that “in 20 years’ time there will be around eight priests instead of the present 34, with probably two or three under 60 years of age”.
He continued “the difficult truth is that priests will have effectively disappeared in Ireland in two to three decades”.
For people of a certain age the very idea of an Ireland without Catholic priests is, truly, beyond imagination. This is not hard to understand. Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in Dublin on November 13th the Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, recalled that of the 50 students in his Leaving Cert class of 1952, 20 went on for the priesthood. Vocations were so high then that between a third and a half of Irish priests went on the missions. [Then came the Vatican Council II]
But, almost 50 years later, all has changed. The number of priests in Ireland is in serious decline. The average age of the Irish Catholic priest today is put at 63. For those who are members of religious congregations the average age is in the early 70s.
Each priest must retire at 75. As the Americans say, you do the math!
At the end of September last there were 77 men training for the priesthood at Maynooth. Of that number, 36 entered this year, an increase of 12 on the 24 who entered in 2008.
It is believed to be a blip which won’t alter the downward trend. Meanwhile, for every 10 men who begin training for the priesthood, at Maynooth five or six become priests.
All of which means that the coming decade will see profound change in Catholic Church structures and practices on this island. It will also see the end of the clerical caste which has dominated Irish Catholicism since Victorian times. They will give way, of necessity, to a more lay-directed institution with fewer-but-bigger parishes in fewer-but-bigger dioceses.
An indication of what is to come was illustrated in the Catholic diocese of Waterford and Lismore last June. That month saw the first ordination to the Catholic priesthood there in eight years when Fr Michael Toomey (39) became a priest.
That same month in that same diocese sacristan Ken Hackett conducted a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion instead of daily Mass at Ardfinnan parish in Co Tipperary. The priest, Fr Robert Power, was away. Mr Hackett is a minister of the Eucharist and a minister of the word and may do as he did according to Vatican norms published in the early 1970s. Women may also conduct such liturgies. [This is a symptom of a bigger problem with entitlement and feminism] The response to him from parishioners was “very, very good”, he told The Irish Times.
Catholic Ireland is embarking on a path others have already taken.
In one diocese in northern France there is only one priest to serve 27 parishes. It means the priest drops by on occasion in each parish to offer Mass and consecrate hosts. The rest of the time parishioners run their own church.
In 2001 the diocese of Nice had to reduce its 265 parishes to 47. The recently created parish there of Nôtre Dame de l’Espérance has five churches.
It had five priests; now there is one. Each church has an appointed lay person, the relais locale, whose duty is to run both church and parish, and perform almost all functions of a priest except celebrating the Eucharist and administering sacraments only a priest can.
A principal function of the relais is to conduct a Sunday Communion service in the absence of the priest, a “Mass” without the consecration. There is frequently no priest at funerals there any more.
Writing about this in The Irish Times on July 8th, former Dominican priest and author David Rice recalled how, at the Église Sacré Coeur in Beaulieu “I attended one such funeral, conducted by the relais locale for the church. She received the coffin. There were words of welcome, the singing of hymns, a short eulogy of the deceased, readings from scripture, a brief reflection by the relais, the lighting of candles beside the coffin, a blessing of the coffin with holy water, and prayers for the deceased. It lasted about half an hour. There was no Mass, as there was no priest.”
He spoke to a woman appointed there as general manager of the parish with its five churches. While her official title was économe, her job was more about administration than money. Unpaid herself, she managed a payroll for nine people, including cleaners, organists and two parish secretaries.
Other lay people – men and women – were active in priestly roles: parish visitation; counselling; pre-marriage instruction; attending the sick; chaplaincies to hospitals and retirement homes; to scout and youth groups. And it is lay people who, almost exclusively, impart the faith to children.
In 10 years, this way of things is likely to be very familiar to Ireland’s Catholic faithful. And that is believed to be likely even if both the mandatory celibacy rule is dropped and women are allowed become Catholic priests.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent
English Conservatives Lament that they have No Rush Limbaugh
One of the respondents to an Op-Ed piece, commenting with relief that Rush Limbaugh was recovering from his operation, in the Telegraph today focused on the lack of any conservative voice at all in the British Media. Despite a few writers on the staff at the Telegraph like Gerald Warner, the Media is completely dominated by Liberals there. It should remind Americans that they are fortunate to have at least one media segment not slavishly devoted to the party line. At the very least it should keep alive the fiction of free-speech.
Link to original...
And don't forget that the Left owned and operated USCCB was lobbying to have Rush investigated for some strange reason. If Soros isn't pulling the strings, then very likely it is someone controlled by him.
Well, where is our Rush Limbaugh? What media outlet in the UK caters to conservatives? I cannot find it, if there is one. The BBC (British State Television) is blatant propaganda, but the same ideas are retailed on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky – Sky is majoring on environmental issues at the moment. The newspapers are uniformly left-wing, including the Daily Telegraph, which makes a point of including some genuinely conservative content but ultimately always backing the centrist line of the likes of Cameron. What about those who want to withdraw from the EU? stop all immigration? End the global warming, health and safety and race relations nonsenses and their associated bureaucracies? Abolish income tax? Abolish the welfare state? The DT leader writers would have a heart attack. Even on these blogs it is noticeable that nearly all blogwriters are well to the left of their audience (Delingpole, Gerald Warner and a few others are exceptions for which I am indeed grateful!) YOu seem to be socialists and supporters of a big state who are trying to straddle a divide and keep the real conservatives on board somehow, although the main DT editorial line cannot be described as conservative. The Daily Mail? The same story – some support for conservatism while careful not to overstep the multiculti establishment’s red lines. Where is our press?
Link to original...
And don't forget that the Left owned and operated USCCB was lobbying to have Rush investigated for some strange reason. If Soros isn't pulling the strings, then very likely it is someone controlled by him.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Sandro Magister on Holland
Holland was once called the showcase of the Church and now, after almost half a century of the Vatican Council, the deleterious effects of the Jesuits and liberals within the Church, the Dutch Church is almost completely dead. Nothing underscores this more than the recent death of the Dominican, Fr. Schilebeeckx.
In Holland, There's No More Room for the Child Jesus. Or Then Again, There Is
ROME, December 30, 2009 – Until half a century ago, Dutch and Flemish Catholicism seemed to be in solid shape, strong in its traditions, active in mission. One of its symbols was Fr. Jozef Damiaan de Veuster (1840-1889), an apostle to the lepers on an island in the Pacific, who was proclaimed a saint by Benedict XVI last October 11.
A few days ago, just before Christmas, another great symbol of this Catholicism died at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, Flemish by birth, Dutch by choice.
However, this is a symbol not of the flourishing but of the astonishing deterioration that the Church of Flanders and of Holland has experienced over the past half century.
Schillebeeckx reflected this metamorphosis in his own life as a theologian. In the years of Vatican Council II and of the period immediately after the council, he was a star of worldwide impact, a champion of the new theology in step with the dominant culture. But then he was almost forgotten, even by the Catholics who had acclaimed him.
The disregard that fell over him went hand in hand with what was happening in the meantime in Dutch Catholicism, increasingly more forgetful of itself, increasingly secularized, increasingly in danger of disappearing.
The survey reproduced below is a snapshot of the current profile of the Catholic Church in Holland. A country in which today 41 percent of the population say that they have no religious faith, and 58 percent no longer know what Christmas is. A Church in which there are Dominicans and Jesuits who are theorizing and practicing Masses without priesthood or Christian sacrament, in which those present "consecrate" collectively, around a "table that is also open to people of different religious traditions."
All of this while at the same time, a city like Rotterdam has been thoroughly Islamized, as www.chiesa showed in a shocking article a few months ago.
The survey that follows is by Marina Corradi, and was published on December 23 in "Avvenire," the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops' conference. Its epicenter is Amsterdam.
The reportage is accompanied by an interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, archbishop emeritus of Utrecht.
_________
Read the remainder of the article with an interview by a Liberal Prelate at the end.
In Holland, There's No More Room for the Child Jesus. Or Then Again, There Is
ROME, December 30, 2009 – Until half a century ago, Dutch and Flemish Catholicism seemed to be in solid shape, strong in its traditions, active in mission. One of its symbols was Fr. Jozef Damiaan de Veuster (1840-1889), an apostle to the lepers on an island in the Pacific, who was proclaimed a saint by Benedict XVI last October 11.
A few days ago, just before Christmas, another great symbol of this Catholicism died at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, Flemish by birth, Dutch by choice.
However, this is a symbol not of the flourishing but of the astonishing deterioration that the Church of Flanders and of Holland has experienced over the past half century.
Schillebeeckx reflected this metamorphosis in his own life as a theologian. In the years of Vatican Council II and of the period immediately after the council, he was a star of worldwide impact, a champion of the new theology in step with the dominant culture. But then he was almost forgotten, even by the Catholics who had acclaimed him.
The disregard that fell over him went hand in hand with what was happening in the meantime in Dutch Catholicism, increasingly more forgetful of itself, increasingly secularized, increasingly in danger of disappearing.
The survey reproduced below is a snapshot of the current profile of the Catholic Church in Holland. A country in which today 41 percent of the population say that they have no religious faith, and 58 percent no longer know what Christmas is. A Church in which there are Dominicans and Jesuits who are theorizing and practicing Masses without priesthood or Christian sacrament, in which those present "consecrate" collectively, around a "table that is also open to people of different religious traditions."
All of this while at the same time, a city like Rotterdam has been thoroughly Islamized, as www.chiesa showed in a shocking article a few months ago.
The survey that follows is by Marina Corradi, and was published on December 23 in "Avvenire," the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops' conference. Its epicenter is Amsterdam.
The reportage is accompanied by an interview with Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, archbishop emeritus of Utrecht.
_________
Read the remainder of the article with an interview by a Liberal Prelate at the end.
The New Irish Blasphemy Laws will Displease Everyone
Even the atheists are right about this one. These laws will restrict even good intolerant speech about false religions and make it even harder for the Catholic Church in Ireland to do its job. This is yet another reason why the Irish Republic was a bad idea when it was first conceived and remains a bad idea today, but so much worse for its execution. It must make laws to appease the invisible authocracy of "consensus" but only does so in the name of a non-existent popular sovereignty.
Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.
The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).
It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".
Link to remainder of Guardian article...
Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.
The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).
It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".
Link to remainder of Guardian article...
Berkeley Communist Criticizes Vatican Visitation
Does this look like a Nun to you?
Some "Catholic" Religious Don't Look the Part
The National Catholic Reporter has been harping on the issue of the Vatican Investigation of US Women Religious for some time now. Now they're enabling this dysfunctional religious family, giving air to their delusions and presenting a Catholicism that is counterfeit; that's what the NCR does.
Sister Sandy herself teaches Scripture, the kind of scripture scholar who tried to tell you that the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes wasn't a real miracle, at the Jesuit School of Theololgy at Berkeley California, and attempts to derail the Visitation by suggesting that the problems facing women religious in the Unitied States isn't really a problem. If American religious were alchoholics, we might say that they were self-deceived.
CR Editor Tom Fox interviewed Schneiders, asking her about the purpose and timing of her five-part essay.
NCR: Why did you write this article, why now?
Schneiders: To begin with “why now,” because the Vatican investigation of U.S. women religious has created what the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” means, namely, a situation of danger and opportunity. Religious and their life are in danger from three directions.
•First, they do not know what the Vatican plans to do with whatever information it collects and, if those who suspect that the conclusions were reached before the investigation began are correct this danger is not illusory.[Note how she condescendingly refers to the more traditional young women who are no enthused by the religious life. The more conservative orders are the ones who are getting the vocations, not the liberal ones that this Berkeley radical envisions]
•Second, there is the danger that some religious will become so disgusted, discouraged, disheartened, even justifiably angered by this implied questioning of the integrity of their lives and the authenticity of their ministries, and by the clear signals that they are expected, if they want ecclesiastical approval, to get back “in the box” that defined their pre-conciliar lives, that they will simply give up, either on religious life itself or on their own vocations to it, or on a church which seems to be defined by a narrow, rigid, exclusively institutional ecclesiology. [This isn't such a bad thing. If you don't like being a Catholic religious, hit the road and become something else. Many of these religious are actually destroying the Church and their attempts to deny either that or that they are somehow coherent with Catholic thought, are becoming increasingly hard for them to deny.]
•Third, there is the danger that generous younger women who are intelligent, courageous, motivated not by medieval romanticism or elitism but by love of the world for which Christ died, and who feel called to the following of Jesus in ministerial religious life will decide that they do not want to spend their lives and energy struggling with a patriarchal institution which denies their full human and Christian personhood.
Read the article...
Link to US Women Religious: Dysfunctional Family Values...
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Persecution Against Christians Continues in Iraq
Mosul (AsiaNews) - Attacks continue against Christians to push them to flee from Iraq. Yesterday afternoon Zhaki Homo Bashir, a Christian deacon, was hit by gunfire from a group of unknown criminals. The man had just entered his shop located in the district of al Jadida. Seriously injured, he was transported to hospital. AsiaNews published the news yesterday of the kidnapping a college student from an Islamic group.
Asia News...
Asia News...
Cardinal Schönborn is Spying on Medjugorje
Catholic Culture is going to set us straight, but we heard that the Cardinal was bringing his clown makeup and some paintings by recently deceased Hrdlicka for altar settings.
Conflicting interpretations of Cardinal Schönborn's 'private' visit to Medjugorje
December 31, 2009
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has been in Medjugorje this week, on a visit to the site where the Virgin Mary has allegedly been appearing regularly since 1981. The cardinal met with some of the “seers” who claim to receive regular messages from the Virgin, and celebrated Mass at the Medjugorje parish church.
The Austrian cardinal has been careful to emphasize that he is making a “private” visit, not endorsing the authenticity of the reported apparitions nor violating the official Church policy that discourages pilgrimages to Medjugorje. Nevertheless Cardinal Schönborn’s visit has been viewed by supporters of the Medjugorje “seers” as a tacit endorsement—particularly when the cardinal said that it is impossible to deny the “good fruits” of the Medjugorje phenomenon and observed that some events defy a natural explanation.
It is possible to put an entirely different construction on the cardinal’s visit, however. Cardinal Schönborn is a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is reportedly studying the Medjugorje phenomenon, and may be collecting information to help form a definitive Vatican stand regarding the reported apparitions. Cardinal Schönborn has unquestioned influence at the Vatican; [source?] he is a former student and close ally of Pope Benedict, who chaired the editorial committee that prepared the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Link to original...
Milwaukee Sex Abuse Archbishop Has Center Named after Him
Sex Abuse Archbishop is retired but his legacy lives on in Milwaukee as professional Victims Make Demands of new Archbishop..
MILWAUKEE -- A local sex abuse survivors group is challenging Milwaukee's archbishop designate to make major changes during his first three months in the archdiocese.
The "Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests," or SNAP, said they want Bishop Jerome Listecki to chart a new course in the diocese.
The group is calling for the resignation or firing of auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba.
Snap said Sklba was instrumental in covering up several sex abuse cases in the Milwaukee diocese.
They also want bishop Listecki to rename the Weakland Center at the cathedral.
The building is named after former archbishop Rembert Weakland, who admitted to a homosexual affair several years ago.
"We're here today to say to Archbishop Listecki, 'take your first 100 days and do a couple things to get this Weakland-Sklba era behind us,'" said SNAP's Peter Isley.
Link to original...
His proclivities are not only connected with sexual abuse, but with vandalism as this Seattle Catholic report from several years ago indicates....
MILWAUKEE -- A local sex abuse survivors group is challenging Milwaukee's archbishop designate to make major changes during his first three months in the archdiocese.
The "Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests," or SNAP, said they want Bishop Jerome Listecki to chart a new course in the diocese.
The group is calling for the resignation or firing of auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba.
Snap said Sklba was instrumental in covering up several sex abuse cases in the Milwaukee diocese.
They also want bishop Listecki to rename the Weakland Center at the cathedral.
The building is named after former archbishop Rembert Weakland, who admitted to a homosexual affair several years ago.
"We're here today to say to Archbishop Listecki, 'take your first 100 days and do a couple things to get this Weakland-Sklba era behind us,'" said SNAP's Peter Isley.
Link to original...
His proclivities are not only connected with sexual abuse, but with vandalism as this Seattle Catholic report from several years ago indicates....
+Schönborn and Medjugorje go Together like Freemasonry and Lies
The Masonic Cardinal Schönborn makes a trip to Medjugorje, a town known for its booming devotional tourist business. Numerous pentecostal worshippers flock to the Croatian town every year to hear its message of religious indifferentism and "hope".
Link to Kath.net...
Link to Medjugorje blog...
Link to another Med blog...
Link to informative site about the problems with Medjugorje from Michael Davies, Bishop Peric and so much more. It's probably all you really need to confront the Medjagoogoo fanatic in your family.
Link to Kath.net...
Link to Medjugorje blog...
Link to another Med blog...
Link to informative site about the problems with Medjugorje from Michael Davies, Bishop Peric and so much more. It's probably all you really need to confront the Medjagoogoo fanatic in your family.
Chum's in the Water! Legal Sharks and Professional Victims Circle around Oregon Jesuit Province
Believe it or not, heresy is a greater crime than abusing children and one begets the other. The great crimes of the heretical Bogomils in the 13th Century were always accompanied by sexual depravity; but they weren't just performed in modern Europe but in ancient Sparta as well where among the pagans, it was not generally held as a crime. These crimes are not being committed by devoted Catholic priests, indeed, overall, even with the American Church's own struggle with heresy, leaves a child considerable safer in Her institutions when compared to other organizations like Hollywood, the Rabbinate of New York City or the Public School system. Ironically, the prohibition against the practices of abusing children were originated in Catholicism and pre-Christian Judaism.
Unfortunately, here in America, again, the problem with heresy, people aren't so much concerned about Justice, a Catholic virtue, but with money and ultimately, the destruction of the Catholic Faith in America.
Amid ads for condoms, dating sites, Planned Parenthood and with some heavy endorsement from gay-friendly David Cohessey, one side cuts while the other side holds as they attempt to dismember the Catholic Church. The Jesuits by their wilful and well planned program of promoting clerical homosexuals to positions of trust, and then you get the legal role played by advocacy organizations like SNAP who scoop the victims up as fodder for a political agenda far beyond mere justice. David Clohassey leaves little mystery as to where, or to whom, his allegiance lies and you can almost detect the spit and bile as he hatefully writes,
Pedophile's Paradise [courtesy of Oregon Province's Society of Jesus]
One spring afternoon in 1977, 15-year-old Rachel Mike tried to kill herself for the third time. An Alaska Native, Rachel was living in a tiny town called Stebbins on a remote island called St. Michael. She lived in a house with three bedrooms and nine siblings. Rachel was a drinker, depressed, and starving. "When my parents were drinking, we didn't eat right," she says. "I just wanted to get away from the drinking."
Rachel walked to the bathroom to fetch the family rifle, propped in the bathtub with the dirty laundry (the house didn't have running water). To make sure the gun worked, Rachel loaded a shell and blew a hole in her bedroom wall. Her father, passed out on his bed, didn't hear the shot. Rachel walked behind their small house. Her arms were too short to put the rifle to her head, so she shot herself in her right leg instead.
[cut]
The only reason Poole is not in jail, Roosa says, is the statute of limitations. And the reason he's still a priest, being cared for by the church?
"Jim Poole is elderly," answered Very Reverend Patrick J. Lee, head of the Northwest Jesuits, by e-mail. "He lives in a Jesuit community under an approved safety plan that includes 24-hour supervision." [The fox is indeed, guarding the roost here]
Roosa has another theory—that Poole knows too much. "They can't put him on the street and take away his reason for keeping quiet," Roosa says. "He knows all the secrets." [That's not necessarily true. Many others have left the priesthood and they haven't sung like canaries. Others have gone to prison and haven't mentioned a single word. Fortunately for Poole, and unfortunately for his victims, however, statute of limitations is exceeded. Perhaps a return to the Inquisition is in order?]
Father James Poole's story is not an isolated case in Alaska. On the morning of January 14 in Seattle, Ken Roosa and a small group Alaska Natives stood on the sidewalk outside Seattle University to announce a new lawsuit against the Jesuits, claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in isolated Native villages where they could abuse children off the radar.
"They did it because there was no money there, no power, no police," Roosa said to the assembled cameras and microphones. "It was a pedophile's paradise." He described a chain of poor Native villages where priests—many of them serial sex offenders—reigned supreme. "We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order."
Link to remaining article...
Related Articles:
Oregon Province Sexual Abuse Claims Reach 500 and that's almost more than what Cardinal Mahony has against him.
Losing's a Habit and the Jesuits are Losing...
Unfortunately, here in America, again, the problem with heresy, people aren't so much concerned about Justice, a Catholic virtue, but with money and ultimately, the destruction of the Catholic Faith in America.
Amid ads for condoms, dating sites, Planned Parenthood and with some heavy endorsement from gay-friendly David Cohessey, one side cuts while the other side holds as they attempt to dismember the Catholic Church. The Jesuits by their wilful and well planned program of promoting clerical homosexuals to positions of trust, and then you get the legal role played by advocacy organizations like SNAP who scoop the victims up as fodder for a political agenda far beyond mere justice. David Clohassey leaves little mystery as to where, or to whom, his allegiance lies and you can almost detect the spit and bile as he hatefully writes,
The church's actions clearly show that it is in touch with something other than the god the people expect or the god this failed religion speaks of. When perverted incomplete men such as these fail as they have and as they will blindly continue there is a need to see them exposed as the frauds they are. Gods representative?
Pedophile's Paradise [courtesy of Oregon Province's Society of Jesus]
One spring afternoon in 1977, 15-year-old Rachel Mike tried to kill herself for the third time. An Alaska Native, Rachel was living in a tiny town called Stebbins on a remote island called St. Michael. She lived in a house with three bedrooms and nine siblings. Rachel was a drinker, depressed, and starving. "When my parents were drinking, we didn't eat right," she says. "I just wanted to get away from the drinking."
Rachel walked to the bathroom to fetch the family rifle, propped in the bathtub with the dirty laundry (the house didn't have running water). To make sure the gun worked, Rachel loaded a shell and blew a hole in her bedroom wall. Her father, passed out on his bed, didn't hear the shot. Rachel walked behind their small house. Her arms were too short to put the rifle to her head, so she shot herself in her right leg instead.
[cut]
The only reason Poole is not in jail, Roosa says, is the statute of limitations. And the reason he's still a priest, being cared for by the church?
"Jim Poole is elderly," answered Very Reverend Patrick J. Lee, head of the Northwest Jesuits, by e-mail. "He lives in a Jesuit community under an approved safety plan that includes 24-hour supervision." [The fox is indeed, guarding the roost here]
Roosa has another theory—that Poole knows too much. "They can't put him on the street and take away his reason for keeping quiet," Roosa says. "He knows all the secrets." [That's not necessarily true. Many others have left the priesthood and they haven't sung like canaries. Others have gone to prison and haven't mentioned a single word. Fortunately for Poole, and unfortunately for his victims, however, statute of limitations is exceeded. Perhaps a return to the Inquisition is in order?]
Father James Poole's story is not an isolated case in Alaska. On the morning of January 14 in Seattle, Ken Roosa and a small group Alaska Natives stood on the sidewalk outside Seattle University to announce a new lawsuit against the Jesuits, claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in isolated Native villages where they could abuse children off the radar.
"They did it because there was no money there, no power, no police," Roosa said to the assembled cameras and microphones. "It was a pedophile's paradise." He described a chain of poor Native villages where priests—many of them serial sex offenders—reigned supreme. "We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order."
Link to remaining article...
Related Articles:
Oregon Province Sexual Abuse Claims Reach 500 and that's almost more than what Cardinal Mahony has against him.
Losing's a Habit and the Jesuits are Losing...
Pope Benedict's Message of Peace
On January 1, 2010, the Church commemorates the 43rd World Day of Peace. "If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation" is the theme of Pope Benedict's message for the day.
In his message for the 1st World Day of Peace, Pope Paul VI wrote, “We address Ourself to all men of good will to exhort them to celebrate ‘The Day of Peace,’ throughout the world, on the first day of the year, January 1, 1968. It is Our desire that then, every year, this commemoration be repeated as a hope and as a promise, at the beginning of the calendar which measures and outlines the path of human life in time, that Peace with its just and beneficent equilibrium may dominate the development of events to come.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses Catholic teaching on peace and just war in its treatment of the Fifth Commandment. Between 1914 and 1968, five popes wrote 21 encyclicals on peace. Since 1968, papal teaching on peace has primarily been expressed in the messages for the World Day of Peace.
Read further...
18 Priests killed Worldwide While on Mission
It's not the safest job in the world to be a missionary It's a manly response to be attracted to danger, so don't let your school guidance counsellor deter you from following in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier.
Where are Michael Rose's Detractors Now?
We knew a lot of Dominicans were estranged from good sense and lacked a certain gravitas but this is ridiculous. Rorate Caeli reports Fr. Bernard De Cock, O.P. at Louvaine University who blithely states, "homosexual love can be God's love".
We remember when certain detractors at Crisis Magazine of Michael Rose's book, Good Bye, Good Men, once said that Louvaine was a perfectly acceptable place for the formation of priests.
We remember when certain detractors at Crisis Magazine of Michael Rose's book, Good Bye, Good Men, once said that Louvaine was a perfectly acceptable place for the formation of priests.
Gonzaga University Hosts Planned Parenthood, Naral
NARAL, Planned Parenthood among ‘family services’ at web page on Gonzaga site
December 31, 2009
NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Votes! Washington, and the VOX (Voices for Planned Parenthood) are among the “family services” listed on a web page at Gonzaga University’s web site. Also listed is the DSHS North CSO Clinic, which provides abortion referrals.
The web page is located at figtree.gonzaga.edu. According to Gonzaga University’s student life office, The Fig Tree is
The Fig Tree maintains an office at Unity House on the Gonzaga University campus.
Founded in 1887 by the Jesuit Fathers, Gonzaga University has 7,272 students, 4,517 of whom are undergraduates.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
December 31, 2009
NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Votes! Washington, and the VOX (Voices for Planned Parenthood) are among the “family services” listed on a web page at Gonzaga University’s web site. Also listed is the DSHS North CSO Clinic, which provides abortion referrals.
The web page is located at figtree.gonzaga.edu. According to Gonzaga University’s student life office, The Fig Tree is
an independent, nonprofit media covering stories of people living their faith and values … The Fig Tree provides a crucial, alternative voice for these times … The Fig Tree’s newspaper, website and TV show inform, inspire and involve people to strengthen their caring, commitment and cooperative action. When people are aware of how others live their beliefs, they are heartened and motivated to take a step in faith, hope, love and unity.
The Fig Tree maintains an office at Unity House on the Gonzaga University campus.
Founded in 1887 by the Jesuit Fathers, Gonzaga University has 7,272 students, 4,517 of whom are undergraduates.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Artist of the Week: Anachoronistic Freezedried Los Angeles Beatnik-Priest
With a copy of a scandalous cartoon satire of Genesis displayed on his coffee table, this masculine priest has a prison youth ministry in Los Angeles and "paints", occasionally earning $5000 a canvas for his efforts.
POMONA, Calif. — There's no steeple out front, no rows of pews inside, not even so much as a crucifix on display.[Really says it all]
Still, this cramped little art studio in the middle of what, until not very long ago, was a street with as many broken dreams as it has potholes, is the closest thing to paradise Father Bill Moore has found. It's the place where the 60-year-old Catholic priest serves God by creating abstract paintings that he sells by the hundreds.
No ordinary preacher, Father Bill, as he's known throughout Pomona's fledgling arts district, long ago discarded his clerical collar in favour of a painter's smock. Only on Sundays does he trade it for holy vestments to deliver mass at a local church or one of several detention facilities for youthful offenders.
All other times Moore is head of the Ministry of the Arts for the West Coast branch of his religious order, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. His job is to serve God by painting whatever comes to mind.
"That's Bill's gift, his talent, and we have to support that," says Father Donal McCarthy, who is the order's West Coast provincial and Moore's superior. "When you've got a creative person, you shouldn't stifle that creativity."
Leaders of the order, founded more than 200 years ago in France, know of no other member whose only mission has been to paint. But then Moore, a child of the '60s who can quote the words of Jim Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Jesus Christ with equal facility, has been a barrier-breaker since he ignored his provincial's order his freshman year of college to study either philosophy or theology. He majored in art instead. [Willakers, it makes him peachy keen with the kids and stuff.]
"The next year, a letter came from the provincial saying all the students are now encouraged to major in subjects of their choice. I thought that was very cool," Moore recalls with a smile as he sits in the lobby of his modest studio sipping coffee. A copy of underground comic-book artist R. Crumb's "The Book of Genesis" sits on the coffee table and works by Japanese artist Kazumi Tanaka (a personal favourite) are displayed here and there.
Since early childhood, Moore says, he knew he had the calling - to be a painter. The call to be a priest came later.
"I was doing little abstract paintings when I was a little boy, like around eight, nine years old," Moore recalls.
"My grandmother would just think they were the greatest things," he continues with a laugh. "The rest of the members of my family, they were, ah, kind of more like art critics."
Not that the art world has been all that harsh on him. Moore's works, which are often compared to those of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, sell for more than $5,000 apiece, and he has been the subject of frequent shows at galleries throughout the Southwest. Any profits he makes from those shows go directly to his order.
"His work, as abstract as it is, has a definite spiritual quality to it," says Fenton Moore, who is curating a Moore exhibition that opened Dec. 24 at the Galerie Zuger in Santa Fe, N.M. "It could be that it comes more from his heart than what you feel from other abstract artists. Or it could also be because he's just a very religious person."
Although he once worked in a realistic style, doing figures and landscapes, Moore decided a dozen years ago that abstract expressionism would be his language.
That has caused some consternation among his order, like the time he was commissioned to do the stained-glass windows for St. Anne's Church in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and proposed a series of abstract works.
"The pastor there said, 'That's not going to happen,"' Moore recalled with a laugh. So he reverted to a traditional style for that work, as he did for a recent commissioned painting of Father Damien, patron saint of Hawaii, who was a member of Moore's order when he went to live among the lepers of Hawaii's Molokai island in the 1800s.
But when he works in his studio, Moore approaches each new project with no specific plan. Working with acrylic paints, he lets his ideas flow spontaneously onto canvas, then adds bits of metal, glass or other discarded, seemingly worthless materials to each painting. They represent redemption, a central theme in his order's belief that God's love is unconditional.
It's that approach, combined with his intricate brush skills, that makes his art so appealing, says fellow painter A.S. Ashley.
"I think the hard contrasts between the light areas and the coloured fields are very striking and they draw you in," Ashley says. "And then, as you get closer, you see not only the textures but also some of the intimate details that exist within them."
Moore, who was ordained in 1975, spent much of his career as a traditional Catholic priest who happened to paint. That changed in 1998 when his superiors created the Ministry of the Arts.
Soon he had moved into a studio in a century-old building in this hardscrabble town 50 kilometres east of Los Angeles. He secluded himself in a rundown industrial neighbourhood that was just beginning to reinvent itself as an arts district.
He still lives there, with his cat, in a cramped loft behind his work space. For entertainment he occasionally tunes in an ancient TV that requires hanging a coat hanger on its rabbit-ear antenna to pull in a local news channel.
But he doesn't mind.
"I don't know what it is to be really wealthy, but I feel so rich," he says, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. "I get up in the morning and I do what I love to do."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gar43IyQQNoeGqZxafHMY4EoZGNA
Another Critique of Liberation Theology
Not so Liberating: The Twilight of Liberation Theology
by Dr. Samuel Gregg Tue, Dec 29, 2009, 02:02 PM
It went almost unnoticed, but on December 5th, Benedict XVI articulated one of the most stinging rebukes that has ever been made by a pope of a particular theological school. Addressing a group of Brazilian bishops, Benedict followed some mild comments about Catholic education with some very sharp and deeply critical remarks about liberation theology and its effects upon the Catholic Church.
Apart from stressing how certain liberation theologians drew heavily upon Marxist concepts, the pope also described these ideas as “deceitful.” This is very strong language for a pope. But Benedict then underscored the damage that liberation theology did to the Catholic Church. “The more or less visible consequences,” he told the bishops, “of that approach - characterised by rebellion, division, dissent, offence and anarchy - still linger today, producing great suffering and a serious loss of vital energies in your diocesan communities.”
Today, even some of liberation theology’s most outspoken advocates freely admit that it has collapsed, including in Latin America. Once considered avant-garde, it is now generally confined to clergy and laity of a certain age who wield ever-decreasing influence within the Church. Nonetheless, Benedict XVI clearly believes it’s worth underscoring just how much harm it inflicted upon the Catholic Church.
For a start, there’s little question that liberation theology was a disaster for Catholic evangelization. There’s a saying in Latin America which sums this up: “The Church opted for the poor, and the poor opted for the Pentecostals.”
In short, while many Catholic clergy were preaching class-war, many of those on whose behalf the war was presumably being waged decided that they weren’t so interested in Marx or listening to a language of hate. They simply wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and his love for all people (regardless of economic status). They found this in many evangelical communities.
A second major impact was upon the formation of Catholic clergy in parts of Latin America. Instead of being immersed in the fullness of the Catholic faith’s intellectual richness, many Catholic seminarians in the 1970s and 1980s read Marx’s Das Capital and refused to peruse such “bourgeois” literature such Augustine’s City of God or Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.
Again, this undermined the Church’s ability to witness to Christ in Latin America, not least because some clergy reduced Christ to the status of a heroic-but-less-than-divine urban guerrilla and weren’t especially interested in explaining Catholicism’s tenets to their flocks.
Then there has been the effect upon the Church’s ability to engage the new Latin American economic world which emerged as the region opened itself to markets in the 1990s. Certainly much of this liberalization was poorly executed and marred by corruption. Nonetheless, as the Economist recently reported, countries like Brazil - once liberation theology’s epicenter - are emerging as global economic players and taking millions out of poverty in the process. The smartest thing that Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva ever did was to not dismantle most of his predecessor’s economic reforms.
Unfortunately, one legacy of liberation theology is some Catholic clergy’s inability to relate to people working in the business world. Ironically, business executives are far more likely to be practicing their Catholicism than many other Latin Americans. Yet liberation theology has left a residue of distrust of business leaders among some Catholic clergy - and vice-versa. Distrust is no basis for engagement, let alone evangelization.
The good news is that the Church in Latin America is more than halfway along the road to recovery. Anyone who talks to younger priests and seminarians in Latin America today quickly learns that they have absorbed the devastating critiques of liberation theology produced by the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 1980s. If anything, they tend to regard liberation theologians such as the ex-priest Leonardo Boff as heretical irrelevancies.
Indeed figures such as Boff must be dismayed that the Catholic Church has emerged as the most outspoken opponent of populist-leftists such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. As Michael Novak observed in Will it Liberate? (1986), liberation theologians were notoriously vague when it came to practical policy proposals. But if any group embodies the liberationists’ economic agenda, it is surely the populist-left who are currently providing us with case studies of how to drive economies into the ground faster than you can say “Fidel Castro.”
As time passes, liberation theology is well on its way to being consigned to the long list of Christian heterodoxies, ranging from Arianism to Hans-Küngism. But as Benedict XVI understands, ideas matter - including incoherent and destructive ideas such as liberation theology. Until the Catholic Church addresses the legacy of this defunct ideology - to give liberation theology its proper designation - its ability to speak to the Latin America of the future will be greatly impaired.
Dr. Samuel Gregg is Director of Research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (University Press of America, 2001) and On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society (Lexington Books, 2003).
Link to original...
by Dr. Samuel Gregg Tue, Dec 29, 2009, 02:02 PM
It went almost unnoticed, but on December 5th, Benedict XVI articulated one of the most stinging rebukes that has ever been made by a pope of a particular theological school. Addressing a group of Brazilian bishops, Benedict followed some mild comments about Catholic education with some very sharp and deeply critical remarks about liberation theology and its effects upon the Catholic Church.
Apart from stressing how certain liberation theologians drew heavily upon Marxist concepts, the pope also described these ideas as “deceitful.” This is very strong language for a pope. But Benedict then underscored the damage that liberation theology did to the Catholic Church. “The more or less visible consequences,” he told the bishops, “of that approach - characterised by rebellion, division, dissent, offence and anarchy - still linger today, producing great suffering and a serious loss of vital energies in your diocesan communities.”
Today, even some of liberation theology’s most outspoken advocates freely admit that it has collapsed, including in Latin America. Once considered avant-garde, it is now generally confined to clergy and laity of a certain age who wield ever-decreasing influence within the Church. Nonetheless, Benedict XVI clearly believes it’s worth underscoring just how much harm it inflicted upon the Catholic Church.
For a start, there’s little question that liberation theology was a disaster for Catholic evangelization. There’s a saying in Latin America which sums this up: “The Church opted for the poor, and the poor opted for the Pentecostals.”
In short, while many Catholic clergy were preaching class-war, many of those on whose behalf the war was presumably being waged decided that they weren’t so interested in Marx or listening to a language of hate. They simply wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and his love for all people (regardless of economic status). They found this in many evangelical communities.
A second major impact was upon the formation of Catholic clergy in parts of Latin America. Instead of being immersed in the fullness of the Catholic faith’s intellectual richness, many Catholic seminarians in the 1970s and 1980s read Marx’s Das Capital and refused to peruse such “bourgeois” literature such Augustine’s City of God or Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.
Again, this undermined the Church’s ability to witness to Christ in Latin America, not least because some clergy reduced Christ to the status of a heroic-but-less-than-divine urban guerrilla and weren’t especially interested in explaining Catholicism’s tenets to their flocks.
Then there has been the effect upon the Church’s ability to engage the new Latin American economic world which emerged as the region opened itself to markets in the 1990s. Certainly much of this liberalization was poorly executed and marred by corruption. Nonetheless, as the Economist recently reported, countries like Brazil - once liberation theology’s epicenter - are emerging as global economic players and taking millions out of poverty in the process. The smartest thing that Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva ever did was to not dismantle most of his predecessor’s economic reforms.
Unfortunately, one legacy of liberation theology is some Catholic clergy’s inability to relate to people working in the business world. Ironically, business executives are far more likely to be practicing their Catholicism than many other Latin Americans. Yet liberation theology has left a residue of distrust of business leaders among some Catholic clergy - and vice-versa. Distrust is no basis for engagement, let alone evangelization.
The good news is that the Church in Latin America is more than halfway along the road to recovery. Anyone who talks to younger priests and seminarians in Latin America today quickly learns that they have absorbed the devastating critiques of liberation theology produced by the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 1980s. If anything, they tend to regard liberation theologians such as the ex-priest Leonardo Boff as heretical irrelevancies.
Indeed figures such as Boff must be dismayed that the Catholic Church has emerged as the most outspoken opponent of populist-leftists such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. As Michael Novak observed in Will it Liberate? (1986), liberation theologians were notoriously vague when it came to practical policy proposals. But if any group embodies the liberationists’ economic agenda, it is surely the populist-left who are currently providing us with case studies of how to drive economies into the ground faster than you can say “Fidel Castro.”
As time passes, liberation theology is well on its way to being consigned to the long list of Christian heterodoxies, ranging from Arianism to Hans-Küngism. But as Benedict XVI understands, ideas matter - including incoherent and destructive ideas such as liberation theology. Until the Catholic Church addresses the legacy of this defunct ideology - to give liberation theology its proper designation - its ability to speak to the Latin America of the future will be greatly impaired.
Dr. Samuel Gregg is Director of Research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (University Press of America, 2001) and On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society (Lexington Books, 2003).
Link to original...
Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
Take heed of this, more of an indication of where we may be going.
EWTN.com - Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
VATICAN CITY, 30 DEC 2009 (VIS) - The Pope focused his catechesis during today's general audience, the last of 2009, on the theologian Peter Lombard, author of the "Book of Sentences" which was used as a standard text by schools of theology for many centuries.
Lombard, the son of a poor family, studied in Bologna, Reims and Paris where, in 1140, he became a professor at the prestigious school of Notre-Dame. In 1159, almost at the end of his life, he was appointed archbishop of Paris.
The Pope explained how this theologian's particular merit was that of having drawn not only on biblical texts but also on those of the great Church Fathers and of other important Christian thinkers, arranging them into "a systematic and harmonious framework.
"In fact", he added, "one of the characteristics of theology is that of organising the heritage of faith in a unitary and well-ordered fashion" so that "the individual truths of faith may illuminate one another" and thus "reveal the harmony of the plan of salvation of God and the centrality of the mystery of Christ".
Benedict XVI continued his remarks by inviting theologians and priests "always to bear in mind the entire vision of Christian doctrine, so as to guard against the modern-day risks of fragmentation and undervaluation of individual truths. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism, supply us with precisely this complete picture of Christian revelation", he said. In the same vein, he encouraged "each member of the faithful and Christian communities to draw profit from these instruments in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the contents of our faith".
Another fundamental aspect of Peter Lombard's work is his view of "the essence of the Sacraments" as being "the cause of grace and having the true capacity to communicate divine life. Later theologians never abandoned this view and utilised the distinction between material and formal elements introduced by the 'Master of the Sentences', as Peter Lombard was called", said the Holy Father.
And he explained: "The material element is visible sensory reality. The formal element are the words pronounced by the minister. Both are essential for a complete and valid celebration of the Sacraments".
"It is important to recognise how precious and how indispensable sacramental life is for each Christian", said the Holy Father. "In this Year for Priests, I exhort the clergy, especially those who minister to souls, to cultivate an intense sacramental life of their own in order to be able to help the faithful".
Pope Benedict expressed the hope that "the celebration of the Sacraments may be dignified and decorous, that it may favour personal prayer and community participation, the sense of the presence of God and missionary zeal.
"The Sacraments", he added in conclusion, "are the great treasure of the Church and it is up to each of us to celebrate them that they may bring forth spiritual fruit. In them, an ever new and surprising event touches our lives: Christ, through visible signs, comes to meet us, He purifies us, transforms us and allows us to participate in His divine friendship".
At the end of the audience, the Holy Father wished people a happy New Year, expressing the hope that the friendship of Jesus Christ may be a daily "light and guide" for everyone.
EWTN.com - Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
VATICAN CITY, 30 DEC 2009 (VIS) - The Pope focused his catechesis during today's general audience, the last of 2009, on the theologian Peter Lombard, author of the "Book of Sentences" which was used as a standard text by schools of theology for many centuries.
Lombard, the son of a poor family, studied in Bologna, Reims and Paris where, in 1140, he became a professor at the prestigious school of Notre-Dame. In 1159, almost at the end of his life, he was appointed archbishop of Paris.
The Pope explained how this theologian's particular merit was that of having drawn not only on biblical texts but also on those of the great Church Fathers and of other important Christian thinkers, arranging them into "a systematic and harmonious framework.
"In fact", he added, "one of the characteristics of theology is that of organising the heritage of faith in a unitary and well-ordered fashion" so that "the individual truths of faith may illuminate one another" and thus "reveal the harmony of the plan of salvation of God and the centrality of the mystery of Christ".
Benedict XVI continued his remarks by inviting theologians and priests "always to bear in mind the entire vision of Christian doctrine, so as to guard against the modern-day risks of fragmentation and undervaluation of individual truths. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism, supply us with precisely this complete picture of Christian revelation", he said. In the same vein, he encouraged "each member of the faithful and Christian communities to draw profit from these instruments in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the contents of our faith".
Another fundamental aspect of Peter Lombard's work is his view of "the essence of the Sacraments" as being "the cause of grace and having the true capacity to communicate divine life. Later theologians never abandoned this view and utilised the distinction between material and formal elements introduced by the 'Master of the Sentences', as Peter Lombard was called", said the Holy Father.
And he explained: "The material element is visible sensory reality. The formal element are the words pronounced by the minister. Both are essential for a complete and valid celebration of the Sacraments".
"It is important to recognise how precious and how indispensable sacramental life is for each Christian", said the Holy Father. "In this Year for Priests, I exhort the clergy, especially those who minister to souls, to cultivate an intense sacramental life of their own in order to be able to help the faithful".
Pope Benedict expressed the hope that "the celebration of the Sacraments may be dignified and decorous, that it may favour personal prayer and community participation, the sense of the presence of God and missionary zeal.
"The Sacraments", he added in conclusion, "are the great treasure of the Church and it is up to each of us to celebrate them that they may bring forth spiritual fruit. In them, an ever new and surprising event touches our lives: Christ, through visible signs, comes to meet us, He purifies us, transforms us and allows us to participate in His divine friendship".
At the end of the audience, the Holy Father wished people a happy New Year, expressing the hope that the friendship of Jesus Christ may be a daily "light and guide" for everyone.
Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
Take heed of this, more of an indication of where we may be going.
EWTN.com - Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
VATICAN CITY, 30 DEC 2009 (VIS) - The Pope focused his catechesis during today's general audience, the last of 2009, on the theologian Peter Lombard, author of the "Book of Sentences" which was used as a standard text by schools of theology for many centuries.
Lombard, the son of a poor family, studied in Bologna, Reims and Paris where, in 1140, he became a professor at the prestigious school of Notre-Dame. In 1159, almost at the end of his life, he was appointed archbishop of Paris.
The Pope explained how this theologian's particular merit was that of having drawn not only on biblical texts but also on those of the great Church Fathers and of other important Christian thinkers, arranging them into "a systematic and harmonious framework.
"In fact", he added, "one of the characteristics of theology is that of organising the heritage of faith in a unitary and well-ordered fashion" so that "the individual truths of faith may illuminate one another" and thus "reveal the harmony of the plan of salvation of God and the centrality of the mystery of Christ".
Benedict XVI continued his remarks by inviting theologians and priests "always to bear in mind the entire vision of Christian doctrine, so as to guard against the modern-day risks of fragmentation and undervaluation of individual truths. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism, supply us with precisely this complete picture of Christian revelation", he said. In the same vein, he encouraged "each member of the faithful and Christian communities to draw profit from these instruments in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the contents of our faith".
Another fundamental aspect of Peter Lombard's work is his view of "the essence of the Sacraments" as being "the cause of grace and having the true capacity to communicate divine life. Later theologians never abandoned this view and utilised the distinction between material and formal elements introduced by the 'Master of the Sentences', as Peter Lombard was called", said the Holy Father.
And he explained: "The material element is visible sensory reality. The formal element are the words pronounced by the minister. Both are essential for a complete and valid celebration of the Sacraments".
"It is important to recognise how precious and how indispensable sacramental life is for each Christian", said the Holy Father. "In this Year for Priests, I exhort the clergy, especially those who minister to souls, to cultivate an intense sacramental life of their own in order to be able to help the faithful".
Pope Benedict expressed the hope that "the celebration of the Sacraments may be dignified and decorous, that it may favour personal prayer and community participation, the sense of the presence of God and missionary zeal.
"The Sacraments", he added in conclusion, "are the great treasure of the Church and it is up to each of us to celebrate them that they may bring forth spiritual fruit. In them, an ever new and surprising event touches our lives: Christ, through visible signs, comes to meet us, He purifies us, transforms us and allows us to participate in His divine friendship".
At the end of the audience, the Holy Father wished people a happy New Year, expressing the hope that the friendship of Jesus Christ may be a daily "light and guide" for everyone.
EWTN.com - Wednesday Audience: Peter Lombard - A Complete Vision of Christian Doctrine
VATICAN CITY, 30 DEC 2009 (VIS) - The Pope focused his catechesis during today's general audience, the last of 2009, on the theologian Peter Lombard, author of the "Book of Sentences" which was used as a standard text by schools of theology for many centuries.
Lombard, the son of a poor family, studied in Bologna, Reims and Paris where, in 1140, he became a professor at the prestigious school of Notre-Dame. In 1159, almost at the end of his life, he was appointed archbishop of Paris.
The Pope explained how this theologian's particular merit was that of having drawn not only on biblical texts but also on those of the great Church Fathers and of other important Christian thinkers, arranging them into "a systematic and harmonious framework.
"In fact", he added, "one of the characteristics of theology is that of organising the heritage of faith in a unitary and well-ordered fashion" so that "the individual truths of faith may illuminate one another" and thus "reveal the harmony of the plan of salvation of God and the centrality of the mystery of Christ".
Benedict XVI continued his remarks by inviting theologians and priests "always to bear in mind the entire vision of Christian doctrine, so as to guard against the modern-day risks of fragmentation and undervaluation of individual truths. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism, supply us with precisely this complete picture of Christian revelation", he said. In the same vein, he encouraged "each member of the faithful and Christian communities to draw profit from these instruments in order to gain a deeper knowledge of the contents of our faith".
Another fundamental aspect of Peter Lombard's work is his view of "the essence of the Sacraments" as being "the cause of grace and having the true capacity to communicate divine life. Later theologians never abandoned this view and utilised the distinction between material and formal elements introduced by the 'Master of the Sentences', as Peter Lombard was called", said the Holy Father.
And he explained: "The material element is visible sensory reality. The formal element are the words pronounced by the minister. Both are essential for a complete and valid celebration of the Sacraments".
"It is important to recognise how precious and how indispensable sacramental life is for each Christian", said the Holy Father. "In this Year for Priests, I exhort the clergy, especially those who minister to souls, to cultivate an intense sacramental life of their own in order to be able to help the faithful".
Pope Benedict expressed the hope that "the celebration of the Sacraments may be dignified and decorous, that it may favour personal prayer and community participation, the sense of the presence of God and missionary zeal.
"The Sacraments", he added in conclusion, "are the great treasure of the Church and it is up to each of us to celebrate them that they may bring forth spiritual fruit. In them, an ever new and surprising event touches our lives: Christ, through visible signs, comes to meet us, He purifies us, transforms us and allows us to participate in His divine friendship".
At the end of the audience, the Holy Father wished people a happy New Year, expressing the hope that the friendship of Jesus Christ may be a daily "light and guide" for everyone.
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