Non Tasarmi, Fratello!

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!” Hillaire Belloc

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Shadow Puppets


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Blase Cupich Denies Allegations He Is Sane

From Eye of the Tiber, of course... 





Cardinal Blase Cupich responded to an anonymous letter earlier today accusing him of being sane.
“To say that I am sane is insane,” the American cardinal said. “Yes, I admit it. What sane person would say that protecting the environment is a more important issue than the allegations levelled at the Pope? Seriously, what else would I have had to say to convince you that I’m a complete crackpot? Would I have needed to say that those who are asking the Pope to speak about recent allegations that he knew about the McCarrick situation were only doing so because he is a Latino?”
Cupich went on to say that allegations of him not being a nutbag must be an inside joke by friends, saying that “this is the type of thing they would do.”
“Ah, they’re always breaking my balls, these guys. They know I’m a head case, most of you all know I’m one, but now people are asking my opinion as though I’m all of a sudden gonna say something coherent, but I’m not. I’m not going down the rabbit hole of sanity. Not at this age. I’m gonna stay focused on the environment—I’m gonna stay focused on the redwoods. My high school girlfriend was a redwood.”

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Saturday, December 29, 2018

The Trouble With Jesuits (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Part 72




On Christmas Day, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) repeated the old liberal canard that because Jesus was a refugee, attempts to secure the U.S. border and limit illegal immigration are anti-Christmas. While Jesus was a refugee, Christmas has nothing to do with immigration policy. Furthermore, the very baby-killing event Jesus was fleeing has a tragic echo in abortion clinics today.
"Joy to the World! Merry Christmas everyone - here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love for all people (Including refugee babies in mangers + their parents.)," socialist darling Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

 The self-declared democratic socialist went on to share an article from Jesuit activist Fr. James Martin arguing that Jesus was indeed a refugee. She claimed this argument was "for all the anti-immigrant pundits uncomfortable with and denying that Christ’s family were refugees, too."

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Stop Quoting What He Said!

 From "First Things" an article by Charlotte Allen. Read the whole thing.

On November 15 the Italian Bishops’ Conference announced that it plans to change the wording of the Lord’s Prayer in the Mass liturgy. The bishops want the current Italian equivalent of “lead us not into temptation” to become “do not abandon us to temptation.”
The bishops have now petitioned the pope to approve this proposed alteration—a petition he is almost certain to grant. In a 2017 interview with an Italian Catholic television channel, the pontiff expressed his distress with the current Italian wording—non c’indurre in tentazione, a literal translation of the Latin ne nos inducas in tentationem that is part of the Lord’s Prayer in the Vulgate versions of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The Vulgate version is in turn a literal translation of words [the root verb is eisphero, “bring into”] that appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament—which means there’s a good chance the clause preserves the exact wording Jesus used when he proclaimed the prayer in his native Aramaic.) 


 It is always irritating when professional liturgists, theologians, and prelates deem ordinary Catholic laypeople mentally incapable of looking beyond the surface meaning of “lead us not into temptation” and understanding that the words might actually imply a subtle and nuanced understanding of God the Father’s providential concern for sinful humanity. It is especially irritating for English-speaking Catholics to face—possibly—the prospect of changing, on a whim of bishops or pressure from the pope, the deliberately archaic language of their own beloved Christian prayer that has included the words “lead into” as a translation of inducas since Anglo-Saxon times. Proposals to “modernize” the English Our Father have surfaced from time to time, but so far both clergy and faithful have rejected them.

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Islamic Outreach, Part CVII

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam."

MEANWHILE.....

.- A mass grave of 34 Ethiopian Christians executed by the so-called Islamic State group in 2015 has reportedly been unearthed in Libya.
The bodies have been exhumed and will be eventually repatriated to Ethiopia, the Libyan interior ministry says.
Libyan government authorities found the mass grave Dec. 23 after obtaining information from arrested Islamic State members. The grave appears to be located on a farm near the coastal city of Sirte, 170 miles southeast of Misrata.

 According to the Libyan Express newspaper, a propaganda video posted to social media in April 2015 appeared to show the Islamic State members shooting and beheading the Ethiopian Christians, who were all wearing orange jumpsuits, on a beach. The Christians were in Libya to seek work as migrant workers, according to International Christian Concern.
The 2015 incident happened just months after Islamic State members executed a group of nearly two dozen Coptic Christians; a mass grave containing their bodies was found last October.

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Monday, December 24, 2018

Celebrating Life, Funeral Style

The family went to the press, who didn't bother to even read the text of the sermon as far as I can tell.

A funeral should focus on the way an individual lived, rather than the way he died, Jeff and Linda Hullibarger said.
That’s why they’re upset at the way a local priest, the Rev. Don LaCuesta at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Temperance, Mich., handled the service for their 18-year-old son, Maison, who died on Dec. 4. The couple said the priest disregarded their requests for an uplifting homily and instead chose to sermonize on the morality of suicide.
“He basically called our son a sinner, instead of rejoicing in his life,” Ms. Hullibarger said.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...




“Pope Francis stresses the merciful God and the forgiving God,” said the Rev. Charles Rubey, founder and director of Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide. The organization is a ministry under Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago that supports those who have lost loved ones to suicide. “For a priest to even hint that the person might not be in heaven is grossly wrong.”

 Must have learned that from Bishop Cupich.

You can read the entire text of the homily here:

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/12/16/father.lacuesta.homily.maison.hullibarger.funeral.pdf

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How Amazon Started


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Looks Like I'll Never Make District Court

.- A judicial nominee faced questions from Senators this month about whether membership in the Knights of Columbus might impede his ability to judge federal cases fairly. The Knights of Columbus say that no candidate for public office should have to defend his membership in a Catholic service organization.
Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) raised concerns about membership in the Knights of Columbus while the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed the candidacy of Brian C. Buescher, an Omaha-based lawyer nominated by President Trump to sit on the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska.
Senators also asked whether belonging to the Catholic charitable organization could prevent judges from hearing cases “fairly and impartially.”

I'm in the last row of guys in tuxedos; center right. 4th degree ceremony...

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Lisa Madigan Approved!


Cura te Ipsum

The daughter of the most corrupt politician in the most corrupt state in the country is after the Church....

A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged.
The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.
The determination is part of a preliminary report made public Wednesday by Madigan’s office, which has been investigating Catholic clergy sexual abuse of minors following revelations during the summer of widespread abuse and cover-ups by Catholic officials in Pennsylvania. The report was critical of the six Catholic dioceses that govern parishes across Illinois for their lack of transparency and flawed investigations.


A SCATHING report? I'm sure she will do something about it, right?


Madigan stressed the findings issued in the report are based on a preliminary investigation, and it was too soon to say what, if any, action should be brought by her office. She said she would like to see her successor, Democrat Kwame Raoul, continue the inquiry next year.

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Tuesday, December 04, 2018

Finally...an Illinois Growth Industry That Has Nothing to do With Prisons!

 Thanks, Democrats!


Last year, 5,528 women traveled to Illinois from other states to terminate pregnancies, almost a thousand more than the 4,543 women who came from out of state in 2016. The total number of abortions statewide during the same period increased slightly, from 38,382 in 2016 to 39,329 in 2017, according to annual state reports. Of those, about 1,000 abortions each year were provided to women whose home states were marked “unknown.”



While the data doesn’t indicate the reason for out-of-state travel, Illinois is generally considered a reproductive rights haven amid the more restrictive Midwest, where women often face waiting periods, gestational limits, fewer clinics and other hurdles.
To Mary Kate Knorr, executive director of Illinois Right to Life, this status is a badge of dishonor.
“The increase in abortions performed on out-of-state women is indicative of how truly regressive we are when it comes to protecting pre-born children in our state,” she said. “Illinois is an outlier amongst our neighbors, whose legislatures have consulted science and found that discouraging abortions is in the best interest of their residents.”

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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Whitey Bulger and the Catholic Church

 Whitey Bulger was given a Catholic funeral in the Diocese of Boston recently.

Whitey, a notorious gangster, was murdered in prison recently.
 

 From Wikipedia:

Bulger's trial began on June 12, 2013. He was tried on 32 counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion, and weapons charges, including complicity in 19 murders. On August 12, Bulger was found guilty on 31 counts, including both racketeering charges, and was found to have been involved in 11 murders. On November 14, he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years for his crimes by U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper. Bulger was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary Coleman II in Sumterville, Florida.



Why? Canon Law says:


1983 CIC 1184. § 1. Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: 1º notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics; 2º those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith; 3º other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful. § 2. If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted, and his judgment must be followed.

 If Pope Francis wants to change the canon law forbidding ecclesiastical funeral rites for “manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without scandal” (1983 CIC 1184 § 1 n. 1) he can do so. Till then Church law forbidding such funerals, a law that dates back many centuries, remains in effect, and its apparent gross violation last week by clergy of the Archdiocese of Boston, who (seemingly with approval from the chancery), granted notorious mob murderer James “Whitey” Bulger a Catholic funeral Mass, hardly justifies granting Church funerals to other “manifest sinners” who do not give “some signs of repentance before death”—which no one claims Bulger gave—not that that fact gave James Martin, sj, any pause before tweeting Bulger’s funeral as preemptive justification for Church funerals for “LGBT person[s even though] they are married”.

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Not About Religion, But Too Funny Not to Post



FLORIDA—Broward County, which has had trouble meeting its legal deadlines in the counting of ballots, has now brought in a consultant to speed up the recount: counting expert Count von Count.
The Count wasted no time and immediately began counting as soon as he saw the ballots. He picked up one and said, “One vote for governor, eh eh eh.”

After that, he picked up a second ballot and said, “Two votes for governor, eh eh eh.”

Next, he picked up a third ballot and said, “Three votes for governor, eh eh eh.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Broward County official Stanley Collier. “He’s way faster than us!”

The Count continued his tabulation and within a minute was in double digits. “I always get confused once I reach the number nine,” said Brenda C. Snipes, the Supervisor of Elections for Broward County, “but he blew right through that.”

With the help of the Count, Broward County now expects to have an official total sometime in late 2019.

 If you don't know the Count, you never watched Sesame Street.




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Council Chairman Stamps Feet, Vows To Hold Breath Until He Turns Blue




.- As the bishops of the United States continued their fall general assembly in Baltimore Tuesday, the leaders of the National Advisory Council delivered a report to the conference, telling bishops of the “depth of anger” felt by the council members over recent scandals.
 
The council meets ahead of the annual sessions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to review and vote on the proposed action items to be put before the assembly, offering their opinion on the priorities of the conference.

The council chair, Fr. David Whitestone, delivered his report to the conference Nov. 13, telling them that the council session, held Sept. 6-9, came hard on the heels of the scandal of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and the release of the 11-page testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

It was, Whitestone said, a “unique” gathering, unlike any of their previous meetings.
“We are facing painful times as a Church, and this was reflected in our meeting,” he told the conference.

“The depth of anger, pain, and disappointment expressed by the members of the NAC cannot begin to be expressed adequately in words.”

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The Pope Protects the Countries Who Can't Figure Out How to Make Nuclear Weapons, Like Argentina

The Pope addressed the Plenary of the Pontifical Academy of Science recently. Here's some of what he said:


The possible fruits of this mission of service are countless: here I would like to mention only a few. First, there is the immense and ongoing crisis of climate change and the nuclear menace. Following in the footsteps of my predecessors, I reaffirm the fundamental importance of commitment to a world without nuclear arms (cf. Message to the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination, 23 March 2017), and I ask – as did Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II – that scientists actively cooperate to convince government leaders of the ethical unacceptability of such weaponry, because of the irreparable harm that it causes to humanity and to the planet. Consequently, I too reaffirm the need for a disarmament which today seems a subject less and less raised at the tables around which great decisions are made. May I be able to thank God, as did Saint John Paul II in his Testament, that in my Pontificate the world was spared the immense tragedy of an atomic war.



Global changes are increasingly influenced by human actions. Hence there is also a need for adequate responses aimed at protecting the health of the planet and its inhabitants, a health put at risk by all those human activities that employ fossil fuels and deforest the planet (cf. Laudato Si’, 23).  Just as the scientific community has made progress in identifying these risks, it is now called to propose workable solutions and to convince societies and their leaders to pursue them.

I had a lawn full of Global Warning this morning!

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Sunday, November 04, 2018

Certification? Censorship? Are They Synonomous?

Saturday, November 03, 2018

Taking Advise on Masculinity from a Frenchman Is Not Wise

From Father Longenecker:

The sight of Catholic cardinals scrambling over themselves to chase the spirit of the age is not only disconcerting–its ridiculous and sad.


In this headline Canada’s Cardinal Ouellet tells us that the Church “needs women to fight clericalism and extreme masculinity”
OK. Let us not jump to conclusions based on the headline.
In his address to the synod members Oct. 18, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said he agreed with the working document’s assertion that there sometimes is “an ecclesial inability to recognize, welcome and foster the creativity of the ‘feminine genius.'”
“The participation of authoritative women in the discussion has shown us that it is possible and necessary to accelerate the processes of struggle against the ‘machista’ culture and clericalism, to develop respect for women and the recognition of their charisms as well as their equal integration in the life of society and the church,” the cardinal said.
 Once again our prelates seem deaf to the real problem in the church and are taking the ostrich position.
Headlines are screaming about homosexual priests who have been abusing teens, cardinals jumping into bed with seminarians, a homosexual subculture in seminaries and religious houses, drug fueled gay orgies in the Vatican, a Vatican appointed communications guru who is a global advocate for active gay life, parishes with “LGBTQ ministries” that have socials at gay clubs, cardinals and archbishops endorsing dissident gay rights groups… and we have a problem of toxic masculinity in the priesthood?
Most of the priests I know are good guys, but I wouldn’t say they are exactly Reverend Rambo.

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Pope Francis Offers Mind-Blowing Deals On Indulgences For Reformation Day


VATICAN CITY—The Roman Catholic Church is celebrating Reformation Day in style, by offering thousands of hot deals on indulgences for the forgiveness of the temporal punishments for sin in purgatory.
A crazed-looking Pope Francis ran an infomercial throughout the day Tuesday, marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation by offering hourly lightning deals on high-quality, official indulgences granted by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Tetzel would be rolling in his grave if he could see the kinds of deals we have for you today!” Pope Francis said in the infomercial, which was rolling around the clock as the Pope broadcast from Vatican City. “We’ve got indulgences for gossip, we’ve got indulgences for lying—heck, we’ve even got indulgences for fornication! All at rock-bottom prices! And if you buy in bulk, you’re going to save, save, save!”
Pope Francis hawked the Roman Catholic wares all day long, enthusiastically pitching the indulgences as a great gift for birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter.
“But wait, there’s more!” Francis said later in the afternoon. “If you buy right now, you’ll get the value pack on indulgences, plus you’ll get a SECOND value pack—absolutely FREE! That’s right! So call now, don’t wait, we only have a few lines open so get your order placed right now!”
At publishing time, Pope Francis had begun a live demonstration of the indulgences, showing how he could commit a minor sin and immediately have its punishment removed through one of the official Catholic products.

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Migrant is a Synonym For Invader




.- Catholic agencies along the U.S.-Mexico border are bolstering refugee aid efforts as thousands of people in multiple migrant caravans continue to trek north through Mexico to the border.
Thousands of migrants, primarily from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, started multiple caravans to the United States border earlier this month in order to seek asylum. While the caravans are still weeks out, Catholic charities along the border are preparing for an increased influx of refugees.
Teresa Cavendish, director of operations for Catholic Community Services in Tucson, Arizona told CNA that while they are monitoring the caravans, the agency is accustomed to receiving and helping large numbers of migrants with food and clothing, and then connecting them to their family in the U.S.

 Cavendish said that CCS provides those in their care with information about their legal rights, as well as on resources 

In other words, provide those here illegally with information on how to steal form the American Taxpayer. Gee thanks.

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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

You Can't Fix Stupid

CNA).- The number of Americans who claim to be witches has increased dramatically over the past 30 years.

An estimated 1 to 1.5 million people say they practice Wicca or paganism, a rise from an estimated 8,000 Wiccans in 1990, and 340,000 in 2008.

In 2014, a Pew Research Center survey found about 0.4 percent of Americans identify themselves Pagan or Wiccan, a significant increase over prior years.

If accurate, the Pew data would suggest that there are more self-identified "witches" in the United States than members of some mainline Protestant denominations. For example, according to 2017 figures, there are 1.4 million practicing Presbyterians in the United States.

Wicca is a form of modern pagan witchcraft begun in the 1940s and 1950s in the United Kingdom. Those who practice Wicca often refer to themselves as “witches.” People who practice other forms of witchcraft may not identify with the "Wiccan" or "pagan" label, meaning that the number of self-identified witches in the United States might actually be higher than reported.


 

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The Patron Saint of Temporary Help

I somehow missed this from late last year:

.- The Vatican on Thursday announced that Albino Luciani – better know as Pope John Paul I – has moved forward on the path to sainthood, and can now officially be called “Venerable” by faithful around the world.
Announced in a Nov. 9 communique from the Vatican, the Pope's decision to green light the cause was made the day before, during a Nov. 8 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
With Francis' approval of his heroic virtue, “Papa Luciani,” who until now has held the title “Servant of God,” can be called “Venerable,” which is the step before beatification.

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THIS is the Kind of Thing We Should Be Reading from the Lectern on Sundays

 This article is written by Raymond Ibrahim for the PJMedia site. The link is HERE. Read the whole thing. 



A Catholic archbishop recently touched on an unspoken but highly subversive phenomenon: How anti-Christian forces exploit Christian teachings to empower those who seek to dismantle Christian civilization, Muslims being chief among them.
In an interview published last summer by the Italian outlet IlGionarle.it, Catholic Archbishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan said:
The phenomenon of so-called “immigration” is an orchestrated and long-prepared plan by international powers to radically change the Christian and national identity of the peoples of Europe. These powers use the enormous moral potential of the Church and their structures to achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European objective more effectively: To this end, the true concept of humanism and even the Christian commandment of charity are abused.

To understand how these forces exploit “the enormous moral potential of the Church to achieve their anti-Christian and anti-European objective,” one must first understand the symbiotic relationship between liberalism and Christianity.
It is often forgotten, but tolerance, human rights, a desire for peace, accommodating the other, and all similar concepts secular liberalism claims to champion did not develop in a civilizational vacuum. They developed from the singular teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Over the course of some two thousand years, these precepts have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society, and culture to the point that they are now taken for granted

 t some point, Western Christians came to believe that the entirety of their faith rested exclusively in those passive values -- particularly forgiveness and non-judgmentalism for the other, and introspection and accountability for oneself. These now manifest as blanket “tolerance” and self-guilt. Whereas Christ tolerated sinners but did not tolerate sin -- always calling on sinners to “repent,” and invoking the torments of hell more than any other biblical figure -- today most Western Christians believe they must tolerate (or “celebrate”) both sinner and sin. The latter, thanks to entrenched moral and cultural relativism, no longer even exists.
Such is the “Doormat Christianity©” that those who despise traditional Christianity embrace: Becoming the “useful idiot.” Muslims and other elements are persecuting innocents around the world? Show love and tolerance, turn the oth

The conclusion:
 
Why do Bible-thumpers everywhere fail to remember these Christian positions that at least balance out those on tolerance and forgiveness? Because they were born and bred on Doormat Christianity, an oxymoronic caricature developed to orchestrate Western civilization’s own suicide, including at the hands of jihad.

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Friday, October 26, 2018

Interesting, and Pertinent

 This is an interesting issue....Father Z explains.



From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Is there any church law which prevents sacramental records from being made public? I have seen church records used for online family trees that show living family members illegitimacy.
Interesting question.
The law says that parishes must keep sacramental records, for obvious reasons. They must be kept up to date, with accurate information. The law says that they are to be carefully preserved (can. 535§1). I think that in that “carefully preserved” we should include “confidential”. Most dioceses now have policies, particular law even, about allowing outside parties to view sacramental registers, especially Mormons, etc., doing genealogical research. Mormons want to “baptize” your ancestors, etc. Hey! They get planets! But we don’t cooperate with those things.

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Who Are You Going to Believe? Me, or Your Lyin' Eyes?

.- One day after he was removed as head of the Diocese of Memphis, Bishop Martin Holley told CNA that he wants to be transparent about the reasons for his removal.
He says the decision was not about mismanagement, or past allegations of sexual misconduct. Instead, he believes that he was removed at the behest of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, former Archbishop of Washington, who influenced or collaborated with apostolic nuncio Archbishop Christophe Pierre to excise him from episcopal ministry.


Bishop Holley says he has nothing to hide.
The bishop was removed by Pope Francis from the diocese Oct. 24, after a June Vatican investigation into Holley’s leadership in the diocese. That investigation was prompted by criticism of Holley’s 2017 decision to reassign up to two-thirds of the 60 active priests in the diocese, and his appointment of a Canadian priest, Fr. Clement Machado, as vicar general, moderator of the curia, and chancellor of the Diocese of Memphis.

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The Ever Expanding World of "Rights"

Speaking to 9,000 people associated with the medical missionary organization Doctors with Africa, Pope Francis said that “health is not a consumer good, but rather a universal right, and therefore access to health care services cannot be a privilege.”
“Health care, especially at the most basic level, is indeed denied in many parts of the world and many regions of Africa,” the Pope said on May 7 in Paul VI Audience Hall. “Access to health care services, treatment and medicines remains a mirage. The poorest are unable to pay and are excluded from hospital services, even the most essential primary care.”





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Thursday, October 25, 2018

The Shakesperean Feast of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian, October 25

You didn't think I would forget, did you?






Sunday, October 21, 2018

The Giant Bus

The Vatican said this past weekend that it had reached an agreement with China on the process of constructing the “largest, most biggest ever” bus to throw Chinese Catholics under.
The deal paves the way for bishops and laity who have been faithful to the Rome to be “royally screwed for their loyalty,” while rewarding bishops created without papal approval.
“For Pope Francis, the construction of the mega bus has been one of his most ambitious ventures to date,” says Ben Tammany, senior adviser to the Vatican. “It’s an effort to broaden the appeal of the Church no matter what the cost.”


Francis has drawn criticism from many Catholic opponents, who say the Church shouldn’t “screw over people who have been faithful to the Pope” with this joint venture with an atheist country that has targeted and harassed Catholics with surveillance and persecution. Others, though, say that it is of the utmost importance to Catholicism in the region to “screw over people who have been faithful to the Pope” with this joint venture with an atheist country that has targeted and harassed Catholics with surveillance and persecution.

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The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 71

.- Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, superior general of the Jesuits, said in an interview Monday that Pope Francis consciously calls himself the Bishop of Rome, instead of using grander titles.
"Very frequently we forget that the pope is not the chief of the Church, he's the Bishop of Rome," Fr. Sosa told EWTN in an interview Oct. 15.

"As the bishop of Rome, he has another service to do to the Church, that is, to try to [bring about] the communion of the whole Church."


By convoking the youth synod, taking place in Rome Oct. 3-28, Francis is exercising his role as pope by bringing together a group “of his own peers” to make a “contribution to the communion of the whole Church,” Sosa said.

“Fr. Sosa is certainly correct to say that the pope is the Bishop of Rome, but it would be a mistake to infer from that title that the Holy Father is merely ‘first among equals,’” Chad Pecknold, Associate Professor of Theology at the Catholic University of America, told CNA.
 
Pecknold told CNA that popes often and correctly speak of their “brother bishops,” but that the Petrine office is unique.

The pope “holds an office of supreme authority over every bishop in communion with him, and of course over the faithful too. It isn’t a charism of dominance but of paternal care - the popes traditionally use the title ‘servant of the servants of God.’”

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The Elizabeth Warren of Catholicism

Noted Theologian Nancy Pelosi

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Thursday, October 18, 2018

I Really Hope This is Photoshopped


A rainbow cross? What? Anybody? ANYBODY?

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The USCCB Zigs; Mexico Zags

In June 2004, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration and The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, INC. (CLINIC) Board of Directors resolved to make comprehensive immigration reform, with special emphasis on legalization, a major public policy priority within the Church. Many other national Catholic institutions have also made legalization a policy priority.



Meanwhile.....

CNA).- The Archdiocese of Tijuana in northern Mexico has confirmed the death of Fr. Ímar Arturo Orta, who was allegedly murdered on Oct. 12.

According to local press, the priest had been missing for three days when his body was found by authorities in an abandoned car with several bullet wounds.

An anonymous official from the state prosecutor's office who was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident has said that the priest’s death is being investigated as a homicide, according to the Associated Press.
 
Fr. Arturo is one of at least 26 priests who have been killed in Mexico since 2012, when President Enrique Pena Nieto first took office, and the seventh priest killed this year, according to reports from the Catholic Multimedia Center. Two priests in Mexico are also currently reported missing.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Bishop Chaput on the Youth Synod




From an interview with Bishop Chaput (PBUH):

What would you like the synod of bishops final document to say about sexual abuse in the Church?

 The continuing sex abuse crisis is extremely serious. Fortunately, both Pope Francis and the synod fathers understand this, and the final document will likely reflect their concerns. I’m less sure that the roots of the problem will be addressed.  Clericalism is clearly a factor in the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, but not the dominant one, and very few of the laypeople I know are satisfied with that explanation, especially parents.  In the mind of the lay faithful, homosexuality and its role in the crisis need to be dealt with, but it’s unclear whether the synod will be willing to include it in the final text.

Or as Father Longenecker writes:

 The fact is, from the very beginning all have been welcome. The only people who can’t be Catholic are the ones who don’t want to be Catholic.
I’m reminded of a gay activist who was interviewed about the church. He was yelling that he wanted the church to be more inclusive, then the interviewer said, “So if you felt the church was more inclusive which church would you attend every Sunday?”
The guy looked at the interviewer like he was a martian, “Not me. I’m not really a churchgoer.”
Correct. It seems the liberals who are unlocking the doors to empty churches are the ones crying out, “All are welcome!” but the churches aren’t empty because people are unwelcome, but because they don’t want to go to that kind of church.
The churches that are full, on the other hand, are the ones that actually preach the Christian gospel.
 

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Sunday, October 14, 2018

BOOM!



Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review is not happy about Pope Francis. Read the whole thing.

Here's a sample:

There is a type of churchman that Francis seems to favor: the morally compromised and the doctrinally suspect. The archbishop of Bruges, Jozef De Kesel, was known to promote the ordination of women and the making voluntary of priestly celibacy, and was credibly accused of knowingly appointing a pastor who had molested a child. Francis made him a cardinal. There was the archbishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, who ignored calls to investigate a pedophile priest for years. The victim was told to go see a therapist instead. Arborelius is sympathetic to the idea of creating a female version of the College of Cardinals. Francis made him a cardinal, and Arborelius speculated that his elevation was a way for the pope to honor Sweden’s commitment to refugees. There’s also Giovanni Becciu, who was working for the pope’s secretary of state. When the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers began uncovering financial fraud in the Church, Becciu suspended its audit. The auditor general from PwC later said he was forced out on trumped-up accusations; Becciu accused that accountant of being a spy. Francis then made Becciu a cardinal. Another cleric, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, is set to stand trial in France for his role in covering up a child-sex-abuse scandal in Lyon. Francis made him the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which adjudicates abuse cases.

 His conclusion:

What Francis is slowly instituting is a religion of presumption. A religion of “good enough,” where our misguided efforts put God in our debt. Communion becomes a participation trophy. And by freeing the Church from its preoccupation with outdated sins such as adultery, Francis can refocus the Church on the things he likes to denounce, such as the building of border walls, or air conditioning.
And no wonder, then, that the Vatican itself is filled with moral mediocrities, with men who are sexually and financially compromised. No wonder the Vatican investigates and inveighs against whistleblowers immediately but waits decades to investigate predator bishops. Believing in sin is now worse than sin itself. No wonder this church has a pope who refuses to wear red shoes. They symbolize martyrdom. That’s for heroic Christians, not for men like Pope Francis.

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Saturday, October 13, 2018

The Lunatics Are Running the Asylum

Reading through the Instrumentum Laboris (IL)—the working document for the Youth Synod—one gets the impression that the biggest challenge young people face in life is discovering their sexuality. Fortunately, the Synod Fathers stand ready to “accompany” youth on their journey of self-discovery wherever it may lead. The bishops have particular solicitude for LGBT youth who “face inequality and discrimination” because of “sexual orientation” (48).
Credit - CNA

Meanwhile, quite a few young Christians in Africa and elsewhere have other things to worry about than their sexual orientation. Not only do they face “inequality and discrimination,” they also face machetes and AK-47s. The day before the Synod opened, 17 Christians in Jos, Nigeria were slaughtered by Muslim jihadists. A week before that, 14 Christians, mostly women, were hacked to death by Islamic militants in the Central African Republic.
They were killed not because of their sexual orientation, but because of their faith—the faith that many of the synod bishops seem eager to water down to make it more palatable to youth. One suspects they also hope to make it more palatable to themselves. The language of the IL suggests that the framers of the working document favor “dialogue” over doctrine and non-judgmental flexibility over “unbending” judgment. It’s not surprising that the synod organizers would prefer a less judgmental Church since, as Julia Meloni documents in a recent Crisis piece, many of the key players at the Youth Synod are named in Archbishop Viganò’s testimony as being complicit in sex-abuse cover-ups.

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Friday, October 12, 2018

How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, a moment many victims of clerical abuse had hoped would demonstrate his commitment to holding bishops accountable for mismanaging cases of sexual misconduct.

But instead of making an example of Cardinal Wuerl, who was named in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that accused church leaders of covering up abuse, Francis held him up as a model for the future unity of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope cited Cardinal Wuerl’s “nobility” and announced that the 77-year-old prelate would stay on as the archdiocese’s caretaker until the appointment of his successor.
In an interview, Cardinal Wuerl said that he would continue to live in Washington and that he expected to keep his position in Vatican offices that exert great influence, including one that advises the pope on the appointment of bishops.

 Viganò 2 – Francis 0

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Monday, September 24, 2018

Just Don't Pick Cupich

@Pontifex @MassimoFaggioli @CardinalDolan since China can now choose their own bishops. I propose that Donald Trump now be able to chose bishops for the USA.

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I Can't Wait Until Nancy Pelosi Gets to Pick Bishops!

In four brief statements issued yesterday, the Vatican announced two developments with respect to the People’s Republic of China:
Beijing and the Holy See have signed an agreement on the protocol for the appointment of Catholic bishops in the PRC. The Vatican gave no information on what the protocol is.
Pope Francis “has decided to readmit to full ecclesial communion” eight bishops (one of them deceased) who had been approved by Beijing but not by Rome. That means that now all of China’s 75 (by my count) active bishops are in communion with the pope.


Fifteen of those 75 are “underground” bishops. That is, they’re not recognized by the Chinese government. It’s natural to speculate that Beijing will, in a quid pro quo, recognize them eventually. If it does, that might please the Vatican, but as for the bishops themselves, and for many of the faithful they pastor, Beijing’s “blessing” is exactly what they seek to avoid. They consider the government’s presence in the life of the Church to be pernicious.
The more plausible outcome for Chinese Catholics who reject government interference in the Church is that the “underground” character of their communities will be dissolved in a gradual, indirect manner, one that would be in the style of both the Vatican and the Chinese government. Already four of the underground bishops are well past the official retirement age of 75, and all 15 will have reached that milestone by 2038. As each one retires, Rome and Beijing can simply replace him with a bishop who belongs to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (PCA), the organization that was established, in the 1950s, as the legal, government-controlled alternative to the Church, which had been effectively banned after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Further on in  the article:
From speaking with Catholics who know the Church in China firsthand and, for the sake of Church unity, favor Vatican concessions to Beijing, I gather that they see underground diehards much as many mainstream Catholics in America regard Latin Mass traditionalists: as cranky and disagreeable, disruptive and dissident. Many Catholics who only want to build up the Church in the challenging environment that is the PRC consider the underground holdouts, not the Chinese government, to be the primary obstacle to their objective.
The last high-profile demonstration of underground resistance was in 2012, when Thaddeus Ma Daquin, whom both Rome and Beijing had approved as an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, renounced the PCA at his ordination. He was disappeared after the ceremony. Three years later, under house arrest, he recanted. For that he was praised, last year in La Civilità Cattolica, a Jesuit publication out of Rome, as “a Chinese bishop with a healthy realism. . . . Even if he is currently under house arrest, he is trying to engage positively with his government.”




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Sunday, September 23, 2018

Is the Paten a Sacred Vessel?

Father Z enlightens...

QUAERITUR:
Greetings in Christ. I hope this finds you well.
A good, holy, traditional priest in my home diocese has recently claimed in conversation that the Communion-plate is in fact a sacred vessel, hence why they have handles–the servers are not to touch the blessed, plate portion itself.
However this does not fit with my time as a server at ___. There we had plates which had no handles, but small lips on two opposite sides which we simply thumbed to hold the plates. Those Fathers are also very good, holy, and traditional–and if those plates had been sacred, I certainly think they would have told me about it.
I have looked into this myself, but I cannot find any clarity beyond which documents state the plates should be used. Do you know the answer, here?


The sacred vessels are any vessels that hold sacred things, things that have been consecrated. For example, the chalice and its paten hold the Eucharist. Hence, they are sacred vessels. They receive a special consecration. The monstrance, the ciborium, the pyx, the lunette. These, too, are sacred vessels. So rare as to hardly merit mention are the fistula and papal asterisk.  A tabernacle is a sacred vessel, too, as would have been the archaic Eucharistic dove.  Vessels that hold consecrated oils are sacred. The bucket for Holy Water is a little ambiguous, since Holy Water is only blessed. And we are encouraged to touch Holy Water with our hands.
However, the Communion paten or plate, which substitutes for the paten on the chalice, or a housling cloth, is intended to “hold the Eucharist”, should it fall. They are gilded. They are concave, like the chalice paten. If particles of the Host drop onto the paten, handle or not, they are born along. If the chalice’s paten is sacred, for it holds the Eucharist, then why not the Communion paten which does the same. The chalice’s paten and the Communion paten are designed for this purpose. They actually do function the way they are designed. A smaller amount of the sacred species is still just as much the Presence of Christ as a larger amount.
I come down on the side of the Communion plate or paten being a sacred vessel. They should be gilded and clean, just like the chalice paten. The handle eliminates a need for gloves, for those who are careful about touching sacred vessels with hands that haven’t been anointed. No handle, then it is better to use gloves when handling it.
I hope this helps.

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Friday, September 21, 2018

Islamic Outreach, Part CVI

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam."

Meanwhile...


Not the girl ... a gay guy being thrown by ISIS



BINISH PAUL is 18-years-old and a Christian. She attends public school in Pakistan. On Aug. 22, 2018, a young Muslim man, Taheer Abbas threw her from a second-storey roof: he was angry that Binish had refused to marry him and convert to Islam. The brutal act was another example of violence being used to force conversion, charged Binish Paul’s lawyer, Tabassum Yousaf.
Ms. Yousaf reported: “For months, Taheer had been putting pressure on Binish to convert to Islam. Over and over again, she refused. This culminated in the violent act, during which the young woman sustained severe fractures to her legs and spine”

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