Cardinal Christoph Schonborn came to Benedictine College yesterday and gave two masterful addresses (a homily which Jack Smith addresses here and a lecture). The Archbishop of Vienna and President of the Austrian Bishops’ conference is too deep a thinker to do justice to in a blog post. But he did say some startling things. So herewith, I attempt only to give you my personal top five revelations from his lecture.
Williamson has noticed female fans wearing even shorter skirts. "Aren't there are any men left who tell their daughters, sisters, wives or mothers that this sort of outfit is only meant for the eyes of their own husbands?"
Two new reports have been published today on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).
Rob Gaspar at Bellarmine Veritas Ministry has dug more deeply into the CCHD relationship to the Center for Community Change (CCC).
In "Sleeping with the Enemy," Michael Hichborn at the American Life League has also uncovered more disturbing facts about CCC. Hichborn also chronicles the personal involvement of the USCCB's John Carr, Executive Secretary of Justice, Peace, and Human Development. Carr oversees the CCHD.
Washington, DC, February 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A national group that promotes abortion and homosexual rights has deep ties with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, according to a report released Monday.
Top USCCB executive John Carr held simultaneous leadership roles, creating a conflict of interest, with the USCCB and the radical Center for Community Change.
"The closer we look at the Bishops Conference [staff and programs], the more we find a systemic pattern of cooperation with evil," said Michael Hichborn, American Life League's lead researcher into the USCCB scandal. "The CCC has lodged itself into the highest places of power in the USCCB while working to promote abortion and homosexuality."
In a remarkable interfaith gesture, Carmelite nuns and well-known Hindu statesman Rajan Zed prayed together in Reno (Nevada, USA) today for making the "world a better place".
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, prayed from Rig-Veda, the oldest scripture of the world still in common use, dated from around 1,500 BCE [wow, man, inclusive], with lines from Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita (Song of the Lord), both ancient Hindu scriptures. The nuns prayed from Songs of David and Intercessions, and read from Gospel of Luke in New Testament.
According to Sr. Susan Weber, Prioress of Carmel of Our Lady of the Mountains Monastery, where the prayers and dialogue was held, it was always nice to share the prayers and have dialogue. It was second year of such joint session of Carmelite-Hindu prayers in the Monastery. Sr. Rosey Klupfel led the prayers.
Douglas Farrow of Catholic Civil Rights League: The Québec policy against homophobia was released in December with introductory fanfare from Premier Jean Charest and Justice Minister Kathleen Weil, who is officially “the minister responsible for the fight against homophobia.” It diagrams a full-scale assault, to be coordinated by an inter-departmental committee, against “homophobic attitudes and behaviour patterns” and “sets out the government’s goal of removing all the obstacles” to full recognition of LGBT interests and modes of life. What is thus promulgated is no ordinary policy document, for it aims at the conversion, not merely of this or that piece of public infrastructure, but of the psychological and moral and sexual infrastructure of a generation. It is not directed at creating a situation of legal equality – that, it proudly proclaims, has already been accomplished – but at creating “a society free of prejudice with regard to sexual diversity.”
Paul McHugh, a Roman Catholic and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that scientific research has not established any genetic causation for homosexual orientation. When asked if his paper might appear in "The American Journal of Psychiatry", he smiled and said, "No." Americans, he said, have become such victims of the "politics of deviance" that objective scholarship is brushed aside in favor of what is deemed to be politically correct.
Human beings being what they are, we all know that someone will fail again, but I hope it will not be because the institution protected that or hid that."
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100131/FEATURES10/1310326/New-Owensboro-bishop-played-role-in-re-assigning-priests-accused-of-sexual-abuse
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Dear Fr Aidan,
Thank you for your reply to my previous letter on the concept of Tradition, a subject we can't leave behind just yet, since we're shadowing the agenda for the discussions between the SSPX and Rome, and our topic now is the interpretation of Vatican II in continuity with Catholic doctrinal tradition.
First of all, though, I wasn't suggesting that the sufferings of the SSPX - ostracisation and exile, not to mention the pain of excommunication - constitute a martyrdom. Neither was I comparing the persecution of Christians across the world with the distress of those who watched the religious life that sustained them being dismantled. It's just sad to think of priests who refused to accept the reforms being driven from their parishes and dying of broken hearts, as Archbishop Lefebvre claims happened in A Bishop Speaks.
But were they attached to Tradition or to a particular tradition of expressing Tradition, to borrow your distinction between "Revelation as transmitted in the Church's life" and "the ways in which the Church presents it"?
By Phil Lawler | January 29, 2010 5:57 PM
Ralph McInerny, one of the most memorable figures on the American Catholic scene, died this morning in South Bend at the age of 80, after a long illness. He will be sorely missed.
For more than 50 years he taught philosophy at Notre Dame, and he ranked among the world's leading Thomists. (It is fitting that he was able to celebrate the feast of St. Thomas, to whom he was so devoted, once last time on the day before his death.) But anyone who expected Ralph to be a dry, detached, ivory-tower scholar was due for a surprise upon meeting him. He was friendly, urbane, and gracious. He moved easily across international boundaries, spending vacations in Italy and giving speeches all across Europe. And he moved with equal ease into the spheres of politics and polemics, literature and the arts. A genuine renaissance man.
