Just as Bishop Holly was mysteriously removed as the Bishop of Memphis (no real transparency here from anyone in Rome, which is the cause of so many scandals in the Church) now the EWTN interview with Bishop Holley has been removed too by EWTN but I am sure out of obedience to higher-ups.
This is the Press’s happy All Saints Day to Catholics in Belleville! Not only is this report stupid and an intentional exercise in obsessive compulsive disorder as it concerns priests and bishops, but an intentional effort at undermining the Church for ridiculous reasons!
It also shows that we have snowflake Catholics! And we are to believe 5th and 6th graders still believe in Santa Claus???? Letting that age child to persist in believing in Santa is like child abuse!
Parents angry after Illinois bishop tells Catholic school kids that Santa isn't real
Mary CooleyBelleville News-Democrat
The bishop of the Belleville Diocese in southern Illinois apparently had two very different visits to Catholic schools this week.
At Our Lady Queen of Peace in Belleville, he told fifth- and sixth-grade students that there is no Santa Claus and they should not celebrate Halloween, according to parents. At Blessed Sacrament School, he answered students’ questions about clergy sex abuse and famous people he had met, and asked what they would dress as for Halloween, the principal said.
Bishop Edward Braxton's office did not offer any comment to messages left on Wednesday afternoon. The Queen of Peace School office confirmed the bishop had been at the school Tuesday but had no further comment.
“It was something that shouldn't have been said,” one parent said Wednesday of the bishop's remarks to the fifth- and sixth-graders.
Boyd Ahlers, father of a fifth-grade boy and sixth-grade girl, said his son had believed in Santa.
“He doesn't believe now,” Ahlers said. “I told (my son). It was something that shouldn't have been said. (Santa Claus) was something that was done for the child, the joy of the child to experience Christmas the spirit of Christmas, and eventually he would have learned.”
Parents and others took to Facebook on Wednesday to express their anger and frustration over Braxton's remarks, with many saying he ruined the holiday and the spirit behind it for little children. Several contacted the Belleville News-Democrat to confirm their children reported he said Santa was not real, but declined to speak on the record.
Another parent of a sixth-grade boy remained angry Wednesday afternoon that his parental responsibility had been usurped by Braxton.
“It's my job to tell (my son), not his,” said Ray Schott, who also has a daughter in kindergarten. He and his wife hope to keep the news from their daughter.
“These kids are exposed to so much, so early. (Santa) is the last pure thing in a child's life. It hurts. He had no right to do any of that,” Schott said.
His son had tears in his eyes after school Tuesday, Schott said, and told his family that his heart was broken.
When I was vocation director, I often visited parishes in the Diocese to preach at their Sunday Masses.
One of my memes was that as vocation director I was looking for young men who wanted to be married and have children and be a husband to his wife and a good father to his children.
These kinds of men would make the best candidates for the priesthood. However, they had to recognize they also had a call or the gift of grace to assist them in the sacrifice of forgoing marriage and fatherhood to be married to the Church and a father to those in their parish or ministry.
This is what Pope Francis said today at his Wednesday audience which was a continuation of his catechesis on the 6th Commandment (the Catholic 6th, not the Protestant 6th):
Priests should be those called to serve their people as a father in a
family and not include men simply “aspiring” to the “role," Pope
Francis told the crowd during the Wednesday General Audience.
“They do not serve, and it's better that they stay at home,” he said of those who could be described as ‘wannabe’ priests.
Instead, the Pope explained, the Church needs “men to whom the Holy
Spirit touches the heart with an unconditional love for the Bride of
Christ” and that through “the priesthood we love the people of God with
all the fatherhood, tenderness and strength of a husband and a father.”
The Holy Father's description of those who should become priests is the best anthropological/theological and dogmatic reason why women cannot be priests for as Divine Law orders, only a man can marry a bride who must be a woman and only a man can be a husband to his bride and only a man can father a child. A woman cannot be a husband nor can she be a father .
Halloween seems to have had a resurgence in popularity over the years especially with adults in arrested development.
I have always loved Halloween and thought it a unique American experiment. We know that fundamentalist Protestants detest the popery of it all though especially Catholic worship of the cult of the saints. They think we are a cult.
However, several years ago I was in Rome on All Hallows Eve, Halloween for the vulgar, and there were Italian children trick or treating. How cool and ghoulish is that!
In Augusta, the Alleluia Community does not allow their children to wear horror costumes, but rather they are to dress up as saints and martyrs. Part of their rationale is that we as Catholics should not dabble in the occult aspects of the secular observance of All Hallows Eve, Halloween for you vulgar.
What do you think? Should Catholic children and their arrested in development parents and older adults dress as saints or goblins?
I copy this from Praytell. While they don't indicate their disdain about either candidate, the facts they do indicate about these two candidates for chairman of Divine Worship would seem to go against their prejudicial animus, but I might be wrong, but I doubt it. Not to denigrate the other candidate, I vote for Ricken! Can you blame me?
At the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
taking place this November 12-14 in Baltimore, a chairman-elect of the
Committee on Divine Worship will be elected, along with chairs of other committees of the conference. The two candidates for the Divine Worship position are Archbishop Leonard Blair of Hartford and Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay.
Archbishop Leonard Blair was named auxiliary bishop of Detroit in 1999, bishop of Toledo in 2003, and archbishop of Hartford in 2013. Blair was
part of the controversial doctrinal investigation of the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious under Pope Benedict which led to a
five-year visitation (which was wound down ahead of schedule by Pope Francis). Blair criticized Network,
the lobbying organization which has Sister Simone Campbell as its
director, for not sufficiently emphasizing opposition to abortion and
same-sex marriage. He also attracted national attention by attempting to
convince Catholics not to donate to the Komen Foundation for cancer
research and prevention because they funded mammograms at a variety of
health clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Blair was a
member of a committee of the International Commission on English in the
Liturgy (ICEL) involved in the production of the 2011 Roman Missal, which received mixed reviews.
Bishop David Ricken
was appointed coadjutor Bishop of Cheyenne in 1999, and bishop of Green
Bay in 2008. Ricken is a 2009 inductee in the Catholic Education
Foundation’s Hall of Fame. As
bishop of Cheyenne, he co-founded the very conservative Wyoming
Catholic College. In his 2011 pastoral letter on priorities for parishes
and the diocese, “Called to be Holy, Fully Engaged, Fully Alive,” he
wrote, “We renew our commitment to teach and preach
about the importance of Sunday Mass and, the obligatory nature
and privilege of honoring God in this way every Sunday in our parishes.
We invite everyone to come to love the day of the Lord and the Sunday
Eucharist as the source and summit of our lives as Catholic Christians.”
He called for “excellent homilies and beautiful sacred music which will
greatly enhance our Sunday celebration of the Eucharist (Mass).”
At my parish of St. Anne, we have begun an every Tuesday evening EF Low Mass. In addition we'll have our first ever in the new church EF Requiem for All Souls Friday night.
When I introduce this Mass to people who may never have experienced it or to older Catholics who don't remember quite as well as they thought they would the ethos and spirituality of this Mass, I feel that I need to offer some catechisis on how to actually participate in this Mass.
The word I use is that the EF Mass is more like "adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament" during Solemn Exposition. The actual participation is more like adoration.
Then it dawned on me that adoration is another word for worship which is another word for sacrifice which indeed means worship.
The Ordinary Form of the Mass, while sacrifice and thus worship seems to omit adoration which is really synonymous with worship/sacrifice.
The OF Mass is more like a classroom instruction rather than adoration. Thus everything has to be understood as in a classroom subject. The vernacular, the priest facing the people, seeing the unconsecrated bread and wine on the altar.
Adoration is the key to worship which is sacrifice. It needs to be recovered in the OF Mass which should more closely resemble the 1962 Missal in ethos and style.
This is an interesting back and forth at Praytell:
Jack Waynesays:
I like how the document mentions adoration and popular piety being of value. I would also say that the continued use of the 1962 Missal is implicitly reaffirmed.
Where is 1962 implicit?
I was gonna try and pick out a few quotes, but realized it was pretty much the whole thing…
As I have written before, Pope Francis has returned us to 1970's Catholic confusion and chaos. What is different this time are the new media platforms and instant communication and the ability of polarized factions to network and lobby.
What Pope Francis has done is to show almost two generations of Catholics who don't really remember the confusion and chaos of the 1970's what progressive Catholicism does to the Church.
What is unique this time is that the institution of the papacy is being weakened by this liberal, progressive conversion. Thus what was once the source of unity for the Church after the Council of Trent and up until the Second Vatican, an extremely orthodox regal papacy teaching very clearly the Deposit of Faith and upholding rigid Catholic discipline in an authoritative way, is collasping under Pope Francis as he converts the papacy to the Archbishop of Canterbury model and the Church to a loose confederation of churches with widely diverse beliefs and morals, regionally based.
Out of all this arises a great reformer somewhat similar to Martin Luther, who the pope of Martin Luther called the Great Accuser, which the current pope refers to this new Great Reformer by the same name used for Martin Luther!
This new Martin Luther is Archbishop Vigano! That is what an ABC commentary calls him.
Are we at a new Reformation and will the new protesting Church be called the Viganoran Church?
Even for an institution that measures its milestones by the millennium, the Roman Catholic Church is now wrestling with an urgent, some would say epochal, moment of truth.
It’s an existential crisis brought on by two threats from within: the worldwide sexual abuse scandal and deep internal divisions over the core message of the faith. The last time the Vatican faced a crisis this big, according to some respected church scholars, was 500 years ago during the Protestant Reformation.
The battle lines in the church mirror the divisions of Trump’s America. The partisan infighting, just as bitter. And what makes it more than just the standard squabbling among the curia is the larger sexual abuse scandal looming in the background. This is what reformation looks like in the #MeToo era.
The Martin Luther of the new rebellion is the archbishop who dared to call on the pope to resign for turning a blind eye to the sexual misconduct of an American cardinal. Archbishop Carlo Vigano, former papal nuncio to the U.S., has faced serious pushback from the pope’s defenders for calling out Francis over his handling of disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Vigano is in hiding, saying he fears for his life. But he’s not backing down.
Vigano’s new letter denounces what he calls the "scourge of homosexuality" in the clergy which he now flat-out claims is to blame for the broader sexual abuse scandal rocking the church Vigano urges his fellow bishops to back him up.
I think I have finally discovered the reason for the Cardinal's halting speech pattern. It appears he has a device to help him with a stuttering issue. When it arises His Eminence closes his eyes to prevent the stutter and move forward.
This interview is in English with Polish subtitles:
We the Synod Fathers now address you, young people of the world, with a word of hope, trust and consolation. In these days, we have gathered together to hear the voice of Jesus, “the eternally young Christ”, and to recognize in Him your many voices, your shouts of exultation, your cries, and your moments of silence.
We are familiar with your inner searching, the joys and hopes, the pain and anguish that make up your longings. Now we want you to hear a word from us: we wish to be sharers in your joy, so that your expectations may come to life. We are certain that with your enthusiasm for life, you will be ready to get involved so that your dreams may be realized and take shape in your history.
Our weaknesses should not deter you; our frailties and sins must not be an obstacle for your trust. The Church is your mother; she does not abandon you; she is ready to accompany you on new roads, on higher paths where the winds of the Spirit blow stronger – sweeping away the mists of indifference, superficiality and discouragement.
When the world that God so loved, that he gave us his only Son, Jesus, is focused on material things, on short-term successes, on pleasures, and when the world crushes the weakest, you must help it to rise up again and to turn its gaze towards love, beauty, truth and justice once more.
For a month, we have walked together with some of you and with many others who have been united to us through prayer and affection. We wish to continue the journey now in every part of the earth where the Lord Jesus sends us as missionary disciples.
The Church and the world urgently need your enthusiasm. Be sure to make the most fragile people, the poor and those wounded by life your traveling companions.
You are the present; be a brighter future.
[Original text: Italian] [Translation by the Vatican]
Pope Francis preaches the homily during the final Mass of the Synod on Youth (Vatican Media)
Pope Francis: Homily at the final Mass of the Synod - Full text
In his homily during the concluding Mass for the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis speaks about three fundamental stesps on the journey of faith.
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
Final Mass of the Synod 28 October 2018
(My brief comments embedded in red.)
The account we have just heard is the last of those that the evangelist Mark relates about the itinerant ministry of Jesus, who is about to enter Jerusalem to die and to rise. Bartimaeus is thus the last of those who follow Jesus along the way: from a beggar along the road to Jericho, he becomes a disciple who walks alongside the others on the way to Jerusalem. We too have walked alongside one another; we have been a “synod”. This Gospel seals three fundamental steps on the journey of faith.
First, let us consider Bartimaeus. His name means “son of Timaeus”. That is how the Gospel describes him: “Bartimaeus son of Timaeus” (Mk 10:46). Yet, oddly, his father is nowhere to be found. Bartimaeus lies alone on the roadside, far from home and fatherless. He is not loved, but abandoned. He is blind and has no one to listen to him. Jesus hears his plea. When he goes to him, he lets him speak. It was not hard to guess what Bartimaeus wanted: clearly, a blind person wants to see or regain his sight. But Jesus takes his time; he takes time to listen. This is the first step in helping the journey of faith: listening. It is the apostolate of the ear: listening before speaking.
Instead, many of those with Jesus ordered Bartimaeus to be quiet (cf. v. 48). For such disciples, a person in need was a nuisance along the way, unexpected and unplanned. They preferred their own timetable above that of the Master, their own talking over listening to others. They were following Jesus, but they had their own plans in mind. This is a risk constantly to guard against. Yet, for Jesus, the cry of those pleading for help is not a nuisance but a challenge. How important it is for us to listen to life! The children of the heavenly Father are concerned with their brothers and sisters, not with useless chatter, but with the needs of their neighbours. They listen patiently and lovingly, just as God does to us and to our prayers, however repetitive they may be. God never grows tired; he is always happy when we seek him. May we too ask for the grace of a heart that listens. I would like to say to the young people, in the name of all of us adults: forgive us if often we have not listened to you, if, instead of opening our hearts, we have filled your ears. As Christ’s Church, we want to listen to you with love, certain of two things: that your lives are precious in God’s eyes, because God is young and loves young people, and that your lives are precious in our eyes too, and indeed necessary for moving forward.
After listening, a second step on the journey of faith is to be a neighbour. Let us look at Jesus: he does not delegate someone from the “large crowd” following him, but goes personally to meet Bartimaeus. He asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51). What do you want… – Jesus is completely taken up with Bartimaeus; he does not try to sidestep him. …me to do – not simply to speak, but to do something. …for you – not according to my own preconceived ideas, but for you, in your particular situation. That is how God operates. He gets personally involved with preferential love for every person. By his actions, he already communicates his message. Faith thus flowers in life.
Faith passes through life. When faith is concerned purely with doctrinal formulae, it risks speaking only to the head without touching the heart. And when it is concerned with activity alone, it risks turning into mere moralizing and social work. Faith, instead, is life: it is living in the love of God who has changed our lives. We cannot choose between doctrine and activism. (This is excellent, Faith and Good Works is a very traditional explanation as it concerns our salvation!) We are called to carry out God’s work in God’s own way: in closeness, by cleaving to him, in communion with one another, alongside our brothers and sisters. Closeness: that is the secret to communicating the heart of the faith, and not a secondary aspect.
Being a neighbour means bringing the newness of God into the lives of our brothers and sisters. It serves as an antidote to the temptation of easy answers and fast fixes. Let us ask ourselves whether, as Christians, we are capable of becoming neighbours, stepping out of our circles and embracing those who are not “one of us”, those whom God ardently seeks. A temptation so often found in the Scriptures will always be there: the temptation to wash our hands. That is what the crowd does in today’s Gospel. It is what Cain did with Abel, and Pilate with Jesus: they washed their hands. But we want to imitate Jesus and, like him, to dirty our hands. He is the way (cf. Jn 14:6), who stopped on the road for Bartimaeus. He is the light of the world (cf. Jn 9:5), who bent down to help a blind man. Let us realize that the Lord has dirtied his hands for each one of us. Let us look at the cross, start from there and remember that God became my neighbour in sin and death. He became my neighbour: it all starts from there. And when, out of love of him, we too become neighbours, we become bringers of new life. Not teachers of everyone, not specialists in the sacred, but witnesses of the love that saves.
The third step is to bear witness. Let us consider the disciples who, at Jesus’ request, called out to Bartimaeus. They do not approach a beggar with a coin to shut him up, or to dispense advice. They go in Jesus’ name. Indeed, they only say three words to him, and all three are words of Jesus: “Take heart; get up, he is calling you” (v. 49). Everywhere else in the Gospel, Jesus alone says, “Take heart”, for he alone “heartens” those who heed him. In the Gospel, Jesus alone says, “Get up”, and heals in spirit and body. Jesus alone calls, transforming the lives of those who follow him, helping raise up the fallen, bringing God’s light to the darkness of life. So many children, so many young people, like Bartimaeus, are looking for light in their lives. They are looking for true love. And like Bartimaeus who in the midst of that large crowd called out to Jesus alone, they too seek life, but often find only empty promises and few people who really care.
It is not Christian to expect that our brothers and sisters who are seekers should have to knock on our doors; we ought to go out to them, bringing not ourselves but Jesus.(This is also true of the manner in which we celebrate the Mass and other Sacraments, it isn't about the human priest or the congregation, an enclosed circle.) He sends us, like those disciples, to encourage others and to raise them up in his name. He sends us forth to say to each person: “God is asking you to let yourself be loved by him”. How often, instead of this liberating message of salvation, have we brought ourselves, our own “recipes” and “labels” into the Church! How often, instead of making the Lord’s words our own, have we peddled our own ideas as his word! How often do people feel the weight of our institutions more than the friendly presence of Jesus! In these cases, we act more like an NGO, a state-controlled agency, and not the community of the saved who dwell in the joy of the Lord.
To listen, to be a neighbour, to bear witness. The journey of faith in today’s Gospel ends in a beautiful and surprising way when Jesus says “Go; your faith has made you well” (v. 52). Yet Bartimaeus had made no profession of faith or done any good work; he had only begged for mercy. To feel oneself in need of salvation is the beginning of faith. It is the direct path to encountering Jesus. The faith that saved Bartimaeus did not have to do with his having clear ideas about God, but in his seeking him and longing to encounter him. Faith has to do with encounter, not theory. In encounter, Jesus passes by; in encounter, the heart of the Church beats. Then, not our preaching, but our witness of life will prove effective.
To all of you who have taken part in this “journey together”, I say “thank you” for your witness. We have worked in communion, with frankness and the desire to serve God’s people. May the Lord bless our steps, so that we can listen to young people, be their neighbours, and bear witness before them to Jesus, the joy of our lives.
(I would say that this youth Mass is a good template for parish Masses!)
Congregation Mickve Israel leaders say they refuse to let hatred deter their celebration of diversity at Sunday’s Shalom Y’all Jewish Festival.
“We are praying for those in Pittsburgh,” said Bubba Rosenthal, president of Congregation Mickve Israel, which hosts the festival. “This is not only an affront to the Jewish community but an affront to anyone who loves freedom and religious diversity. We will not let this affect us. We will persevere and continue.”
Police say around 1 p.m. Saturday Robert Bowers opened fire during a baby-naming ceremony at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. The shooting is being investigated as federal hate crime.
Savannah organizers say they won't let the act of violence keep them from engaging with the community.
Congregation Mickve Israel is slated to host the 30th annual food festival from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday in Monterey Square. The event is free to attend.
Temple Mickve Israel in Savannah [PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS]
“We will be having the festival,” Rosenthal said. “There will be additional security. We already have security ever year but we added more. We will not let an anti-Semite affect what we are doing in our community. We encourage people to come out.”
This is Praytell’s English translation of the Italian.
Is this good or, well, bad or more of the same?
The desire for a living liturgy
51. In diverse contexts young Catholics seek proposals for prayer and sacramental experiences capable of breaking open [intercettare] their daily life, in a fresh, authentic and joyful liturgy. In many parts of the world, liturgical experience is the main resource for Christian identity and witnesses broad and confident participation. The young recognize a privileged moment of experience of God and of the community of the church, and a starting point for mission. Elsewhere, there is a certain falling away from the sacraments and Sunday Eucharist, perceived more as a moral precept than a happy encounter with the Risen Lord and the community. In general it is noted that even where catechesis on the sacraments is offered, educational accompaniment is weak for living the celebration in depth, to enter into the mysterious wealth [ricchezza misterica] of its symbols and rites.
The centrality of the liturgy
134. The Eucharistic celebration is generative of the life of the community and of the synodality of the Church. It is a place for the transmission of faith and formation for mission, in which it is evident that the community lives by grace and not by the work of its own hands. In the words of the Eastern tradition we can affirm that the liturgy is meeting with the Divine Servant who binds our wounds and prepares for us the Easter banquet, sending us to do the same for our brothers and sisters. It must therefore be clearly reaffirmed that the commitment to celebrate with noble simplicity and with the involvement of the various lay ministries constitutes an essential moment in the missionary conversion of the Church. Young people have shown that they are able to appreciate and live intensely authentic celebrations in which the beauty of the signs, the preaching and community involvement really speak of God. Therefore we must encourage their active participation, but keeping alive wonder for the Mystery; to reach out to their musical and artistic sensibility, but to help them understand that the liturgy is not purely an expression of oneself, but an action of Christ and the Church. Equally important is to accompany young people to discover the value of Eucharistic adoration as an extension of the celebration, in which to live out contemplation and silent prayer.
135. The practice of the sacrament of Reconciliation is very important in the journey of faith. Young people need to feel loved, forgiven, and reconciled, and they have a secret longing for the Father’s merciful embrace. This is why it is essential that priests generously make available the celebration of this sacrament. Communal penance services help young people to approach individual confession and make the ecclesial dimension of the sacrament more explicit.
136. In many contexts, popular piety plays an important role in young people’s access to the life of faith in a practical, sensitive and immediate way. Valuing the language of the body and affective participation, popular piety brings with it the desire to come into contact with the God who saves, often through the mediation of the Mother of God and the saints. For the young, pilgrimage is an experience of journey that becomes a metaphor for life and the Church: contemplating the beauty of creation and art, living the fraternity and joining the Lord in prayer thus bring about the best conditions for discernment.
We condemn antisemitism and violence of all kinds. Our prayers for the dead and injured in the Tree of Life Synagogue are offered and will be included in our Universal Prayer at our Sunday Mass.
Apart from mental illness and the compromised being radicalized by ideological and political hatred, one must question other aspects of our modern world that has made so many so violent and contemptible of human life.
1. The legal killing of unborn children even to the horror of partial birth abortion
2. The spreading legalization of euthanasia
3. Media glorification of violence in movies, television, video games and the like
4. Uncensored images of death and destruction in media coverage of violence and death
5. The sale or easy acquisition of assault weapons used in war
And I save the last as the root of it all:
6. The loss of faith in God, with the ideology of godless secularism, ultra individualism replacing true religion and spirituality to the detriment of law and Order, concern for the common good and the Golden Rule.
This is from the National Chismatic Reporter, NCR, but a decent summary although with its heretical biases. You can read the whole article by pressing the title below. But here is the best sound bite:
The synod text also retreats on the issue of the church's ministry to gay people, both refraining from repeating the Vatican's earlier first use of the acronym LGBT and replacing the first draft's condemnation of violence based on "sexual orientation" with one against "sexually-based violence."
"The synod reaffirms that God loves every person and so does the church, renewing its commitment against every discrimination and sexually-based violence," states the final document.
"Equally reaffirmed is the determinative anthropological importance of the difference and reciprocity between man and woman and it is held to be reductive to define a person's identity only by their 'sexual orientation,'" it states, citing a 1986 document from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
As you will note in this Rorate Caeli article, both the 1917 and 1983 canon laws of the Church are very explicit in terms of what bishops are to do with clergy who abuse minors. But Canon Law for the most part was not followed. Thus we are at the point of the Church burning down around us because of ecclesiastical malpractice.
I can't speak about what happened in the pre-Vatican II Church, but after Vatican II in the 1960's and 70's there developed a great disdain for the law. Yes, we studied at my seminary in the 1970's the way the Pharisees used the law. We were taught they were "doctors of the Law" and this was not a compliment but a derogatory statement about legalism and inflexibility when it came to people's sins or foibles. It wasn't pastoral and it wouldn't lead to healing.
It is interesting that Pope Francis and his nostalgia for the 1970's mentality as it concerns the immediate post Vatican II period, has returned us to the very same language I was taught about the law. I would humbly recommend that Pope Francis and anyone of his mentality should repent of this type of language. It has devastated the Church and it devastates society too when laws are disregarded for some sort of bleeding heart liberalism.
In the light of new revelations about sexual abuse in the Church,
many Catholics are asking how the situation that these revelations have
disclosed can possibly have come about. The first question that occurs, a
question of long standing, is; why did bishops deal with sexual abusers by
concealing their offences and moving them to new assignments, rather than by
removing them from ministry? No sufficient answer has yet been given to this
question. It has now been made more pointed by a further question; how did
Theodore McCarrick get appointed as Archbishop of Washington and Cardinal, and
even become a principal drafter of the American bishops’ policy on sexual abuse
in 2002, when his own involvement in sexual abuse was widely known in clerical
circles and had been made known to the Holy See?
These things did not happen because of the
law of the Church. Until November 27, 1983, the law in force in the Latin
Church was the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Canon 2359 §2 of this code decreed that
if clerics commit an offense against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue
with minors under sixteen years of age, they are to be suspended, declared
infamous, deprived of every office, benefice, dignity, or position that they
may hold, and in the most grievous cases deposed.
This canon was replaced by
Canon 1395, §2 in the 1983 Code, which states that 'a cleric who in any other
way has committed an offence against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, …
with a minor below the age of sixteen years, is to be punished with just penalties,
not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants.’ The
1983 Code addressed offences of the kind committed by Cardinal McCarrick with
Canon 1395 §2, which states that ‘A cleric who in another way has
committed an offense against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, if the
delict was committed by force or threats or publicly or with a minor below the
age of sixteen years, is to be punished with just penalties, not excluding
dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants.’ These canons do not
present these punishments as options; they require that such offences be
punished by ecclesiastical authority. So our question now becomes; why did
ecclesiastical authorities break the law by not enforcing these canons?
You can read this incredibly angry article by pressing the title. While it isn’t an official tool of the Vatican it does indicate Pope Francis’ “inner court’s” besieged mentality and perhaps that of the pope’s. It indicates their animosity toward the Church in the USA. I am afraid it indicates a mental, paranoid breakdown.
The clerical-media maneuvers built around Viganò’s statements are a sign that influential and well-fed ecclesial sectors now consider the papacy and the Church as private property, in a sort of attempt to transforming them into structures of power in need of a certain ideological legitimacy. Their hybris – foolish arrogance - triggers and feeds in the ecclesial dynamisms the seed of self-destruction. As always, in the history of the Church, the only persecutions that are truly without remedy are those that Christians inflict on themselves. At the same time, the global mediatized mainstream does not focus on the destructive scope of the new clerical pride. It focuses on chasing stories that tell of a Church besieged by sexual and financial scandals, sins and crimes of priests, bishops and cardinals. And it suggests connecting this state of affairs with the responsibilities, shortcomings and failures of Pope Francis himself.
Former disappointed fans and hardened denigrators of Pope Francis chant in chorus the mantra of the “Fragile Pope”. Recording the decline of consensus in the polls, they reproach announced reforms which came out botched, and errors in the management of dossiers. Inconsistent choices. Bungled solutions. Former lovers of the false rhetoric of the “superstar” Pope, now they raise their eyebrows before the “disappointing” Pope. While the professional bashers of the pontificate do not miss a single opportunity to bill the Bishop of Rome for every glitch and every trace of illness in the ecclesial structure, excited as a pack of dogs on a fox hunting day. From St Peter’s - who denied Jesus - until today, it is not the human limitations of the Popes that are endangering the Church, but the clerical corpses that treat the ecclesial body as a joint-stock company, and plan lobbying media operations to push the Bishop of Rome to resign, treating him like any “managing director” of a company.
A mother who says she was lectured by a nun for breastfeeding her child at a doctor’s office is suing the practice for harassment.
On Thursday, while waiting to see her doctor at Mount St. Mary’s Neighborhood Health Center
in Niagara Falls, N.Y., Nolah Carter, 24, nursed her 1-year-old
daughter, Nature. Carter, a mother of two, had already asked the
receptionist repeatedly if there was a private area to breastfeed, but
feeling “brushed off,” and at the mercy of her hungry infant, she threw
on a nursing cover and fed her child.
Thirty minutes into the feeding, Carter says an employee named Sister Nora burst into the waiting room. “She said, ‘That’s inappropriate — you can’t do that in here,'” Carter tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “She had pure hate in her eyes.”
According to Carter, the woman instructed her to nurse in either the
sick area, a room where ill children wait for their appointments, or
outside in the cold weather.
Embarrassed, Carter turned to leave and says Sister Nora yelled after her, “And I’m canceling your appointment!”
On Friday, Carter went to the police station and filed a harassment
report against the health clinic. She’s also seeking legal
representation. “This has happened before — one time I nursed my
daughter in that waiting room and the receptionist kept skipping over me
and delaying my appointment,” says Carter.
A representative of Mount St.
Mary’s Neighborhood Health Center did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s
request for comment. The practice sent a statement to Buffalo news
station WKBW that
read: “Mount St. Mary’s respects the right of all patients to
breastfeed their children and encourages breastfeeding in its hospital
and health centers. We have been recognized for our efforts to promote
breastfeeding, offering special programs, services, and accommodations
to support breastfeeding mothers. The hospital’s Neighborhood Health
Center offers a variety of services to patients of all ages. To create a
more comfortable environment for a mom who was breastfeeding in the
center’s waiting room, and other patients who were waiting for their
appointments, we offered the mom a private room to feed her baby. When
she declined the offer, she was politely asked to cover up. At no time
was she asked to leave the center.”
Expanding PA Probe, Feds Warn US Church: "All Your Files Are Belong To Us"
(...) over the last 48 hours, many of you have had Memphis
on your lips given Wednesday's striking removal of Bishop Martin Holley –
given his refusal to resign, the first such Roman move on a US prelate
in living memory – followed quickly by the deposed prelate's even more breathtaking self-immolation in an interview published late Thursday by Catholic News Agency.
Well-placed as that focus might've been yesterday, now, something even bigger's come to pass....
Again.
A week since initial word emerged of the US Department of Justice's most sweeping investigation to date
into abuse and its cover-up, as an extension into the Feds' nascent
grand-jury probe of the dioceses of Pennsylvania, every last Stateside
Chancery has now received an effective nationwide order "to not destroy,
discard, dispose of, delete, or alter" a host of records pertaining to
personnel in general, and abuse – and its related claims – in
particular.
Dated October 9th – the same day the FBI swooped in with subpoenas for
the clerical files of Pennsylvania's eight Latin-church dioceses and two
Eastern archeparchies – the letter was privately circulated to the
nation's hierarchy by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday,
23 October, and has duly spread since among internal counsels and
personnel-chiefs across the Stateside church's 198 jurisdictions.
Addressed to the bench's president, Houston's Cardinal Daniel DiNardo,
the "requested" national "hold" of documents was signed by William
McSwain, the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania, whose Philadelphia-based office has launched the historic
investigation – believed to be the first such inquest
seeking to put the church under the microscope of the Federal "RICO"
laws: the racketeering statutes usually reserved for organized crime.
While Whispers has obtained and confirmed the full document –
which includes a sprawling, 20-point addendum citing specific instances
in Canon Law – to avoid what's become an increasingly casual and common
plagiarism of these pages' work by other entities, here's the first page
of McSwain's letter:
Originally slated for Wednesday of this week, house ops report that the
first appearance of the Pennsylvania bishops before the Federal panel
has been slightly delayed.
Meanwhile, given the lack of civil or canonical jurisdiction the DC
Mothership has over the dioceses – an issue likewise relevant to the
coming debates over prelates' accountability apart from the oversight of
the Holy See – it bears noting that legal disputes over the force of
any request to the USCCB have already flared up anew in the dioceses.
Nonetheless, as it's the Feds calling, to an unprecedented degree, the
warning is served.
Keeping with the Justice Department's usual practice, the US Attorney's
Office in Philadelphia routinely refuses to "confirm or deny" the
existence of the Pennsylvania investigation, its explicit communication
on the case only to occur if and when indictments are produced.
We know from the Kavanaugh hearings that democrat mobs have tried to intimidate Republicans and others who disagree with them. We know too that these mobs have publicly threatened Republicans and others at restaurants and other places. All of this quite threatening.
Is it possible, now two weeks from midterm elections, that a democratic operative making it look like right wing fanatics made and sent these bombs which the press says did not have trigger devices.
What I found interesting is how CNN and other democrat media immediately started using talking points blaming President Trump.
I don’t support any political party instigating violence, but most recently it has been the left wing. I won’t put it past them to do what I suggest.
