Just Don't Pick Cupich

Catholic Foot Soldier@AngryBob7

@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.

12:05 PM - Sep 23, 2018

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.”

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.

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”

Bishop Cupich and the Elephant in the Room

September 19, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Chicago priest and his parishioners have burned a rainbow flag that was once displayed at the parish, in an act that the priest has called an “exorcism,” in apparent defiance of the Archdiocese of Chicago, led by pro-LGBT Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Although a spokeswoman for the archdiocese told the Windy City Times that “the pastor has agreed not to move forward with these activities,” after Fr. Paul Kalchik of Chicago’s Resurrection Parish said he would burn the flag publicly, the priest went ahead with the event in private, joined by several members of the parish. They reportedly prayed prayers of exorcism as well.

Kalchik told the Chicago Sun-Times that he was the victim of homosexual sex abuse by a neighbor as a child, and defended his actions as a response to homosexualist “propaganda” in the Catholic Church.

“That banner and what it stood for doesn’t belong to the Archdiocese or Cardinal Cupich. It belongs to the people of this parish who paid for it,” Kalchik told the newspaper. “What have we done wrong other than destroy a piece of propaganda that was used to put out a message other than what the church is about?”

“The people of this parish have been pretty resilient and put up with a lot of B.S.” Kalchik told the Sun-Times. “And it was just by accident that this banner that was made to celebrate all things gay … did not get destroyed when I first got here.”

It is not clear if the priest also burned donation pledge cards as he had planned to do, in likely response to corruption in the archdiocese revealed in recent scandals involving Cardinal Cupich.

The burning was carried out in “a private way, a quiet way, so as not to bring the ire of the gay community down upon this parish,” Kalchik told NBC News on Monday. “It’s our full right to destroy it, and we did so privately because the archdiocese was breathing on our back.”

Kalchik told NBC News that the flag was a “profane” symbol because it mixed the LGBT rainbow with a cross, and said that using the cross as anything other than a “reminder of our Lord’s passion and death . . . is what we consider a sacrilege.”

Speaking of Benedictines....

 Father Z tells us what they have been up to...


Over the years, I’ve written often of the great Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, MO near Kansas City.   They record wonderful music discs.  They make vestments. They, above all, pray for priests and bishops.   This is a traditional Benedictine community, using the traditional Roman Rite.  They have so many postulants that they will soon have to found daughter houses.
Tomorrow, Sunday 9 September and Monday the 10th mark great days for this faithful Benedictine community of nuns and for the whole Church.
On Sunday, their new monastic church will be solemnly consecrated using the traditional Pontificale Romanum.
On Monday, their superior Mother Cecilia, will be consecrated as their community’s first Abbess!

Buy a Nun a Book Day, September 17!

The Benedictines would like to remind you....

International Buy a Nun a Book Day, on 17 September, the feast of St Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church and Benedictine polymath. The idea behind the day is simple. Nuns and Sisters (especially missionaries) often don’t have the opportunity to choose a book for themselves. They have to rely on what is already in the monastery/convent library, if they have one, or on what they are given (which is why you will often find lots of lives of St John Paul II on religious bookshelves!).
This is YOUR chance to show a nun or sister that you value her by delighting her with a book. So,

• find a nun or sister
• ask her what book or ebook she would like
• present her with a copy on 17 September
• pray for her.

I Guess There Are Now 11 Lost Tribes

 Maybe Bishop Braxton can recruit him!

Pope Francis backed down Monday and accepted the resignation of Nigerian bishop who had been rejected for years by the priests of his diocese, setting a precedent that could have repercussions in Chile and elsewhere when papal authority is challenged.
The announcement came after Francis in June issued a harsh ultimatum to the priests of Nigeria’s southern Ahiara diocese, warning they would lose their jobs if they didn’t obey him and accept Monsignor Peter Okpaleke as their bishop. Francis gave each priest 30 days to pledge their obedience.
The Vatican said Monday that 200 priests obeyed, but some still expressed problems in working with Okpaleke.
Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Okpaleke to Ahiara in 2012, but the local clergy rejected him. Ahiara is in the Mbaise region, and its faithful objected to the appointment of an outsider from the Anambra region to lead them. In protest, the Mbaise blocked access to the cathedral when Okpaleke was to be formally installed, and he was installed outside the diocese.

Hopefully, It's Satire

 Pope to Purge Priests Who Drink from Plastic Straws

(2018-09-02) — On the heels of a boldly urgent sermon decrying plastic waste in the world’s oceans, Pope Francis I today announced “zero tolerance for priests who drink through plastic straws, and those in the church hierarchy who cover up these filthy acts.”
“The Lord sees and will judge those in His church who take advantage of the helpless little ones — the baby fishes, precious anemones and even the tiny plankton — by defiling marine habitat with their plastic straws,” the Pontiff wrote in an official decree from the Vatican.
The Vicar of Christ made clear that the Roman Catholic Church is complicit if it shields such sinners from consequences.
“Be assured,” Francis wrote, “that if a Bishop or a Cardinal, or even the Holy Father himself, knows that a fellow priest has committed this mortal sin, and he conceals the matter, he is no better than a man who personally casts a straw into the sea.”

The First Rosary

Pants on Fire

 During the Mass on the 21st Ordinary Sunday, I read a 4-page letter from the Pope that was kinda sorta about the current sexual abuse report from Pennsylvania. I have some personal disagreements with it, but he is still the Pope.

I would not, ever, read anything from Bishop Cupich from the sanctuary. I read the transcript of what he said.


 Cardinal Blase Cupich has instructed Chicago-area priests to deliver a statement at Mass this weekend slamming a local TV news report that he calls “misleading,” saying it was edited to suggest he and Pope Francis were downplaying the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.

Statement of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich on Misleading NBC Chicago Report August 29, 2018
An NBC Chicago TV report that aired Monday night was edited in such a way that gave the false impression that Pope Francis and I consider the protection of children to be less important than other issues, such as the environment or immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A review of the unedited footage of that interview shows that I was referring to the recent letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, not the terrible crime of clergy sexual abuse. I said that it was not appropriate, or even possible for Pope Francis to respond to the letter’s many undocumented allegations, and I endorsed his request that journalists determine their veracity.
I was then asked whether there should be an independent investigation of the Archbishop Theodore McCarrick case, and I endorsed the call of Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for a thorough investigation.
The edited report created the false impression that my comment that the pope should not “go down the rabbit hole” of the allegations in the Viganò letter was about sexual abuse. As the unedited footage shows, it was not.

They Don't Require Math in Journalism School

In 2018, the highly retrospective nature of most of the allegations still gets lost in the deserved and appropriate public wrath at each new wave of revelations. Those revelations are about sexual abuse that hundreds and perhaps thousands of priests in the United States committed over a long period but overwhelmingly in the 1960s through the 1980s. Gray notes that, in the John Jay report of 2004,

the most common decade of birth for alleged abusers was the 1930s and the most common decade of ordination was the 1960s. This profile has not changed in allegations that emerged in the 14 years that have followed — including the recent [Pennsylvania] grand jury report. No new wave of abuse has emerged in the United States.

“Wave,” of course, doesn’t mean “incidence.” CARA counts 22 cases of abuse that priests in the United States are alleged to have committed in 2015–17. That’s an average of about seven cases per year. Still too many. For perspective, however, compare that with the annual average of 271 cases of abuse that, since 2004 alone, has been alleged to have been committed by priests during the 1970s. Are the figures for the past few years so dramatically lower because accusers tend to come forward only many years after an incident? Will we have to wait until 2050 to have an adequate picture of what the rate of abuse might be now? Probably not, according to Gray...

SEVEN per year. Meanwhile in the Chicago Public School System....

They were top athletes and honor-roll students, children struggling to read and teenagers seeking guidance.
But then they became prey, among the many students raped or sexually abused during the last decade by trusted adults working in the Chicago Public Schools as district officials repeated obvious child-protection mistakes.

 To better quantify the frequency of abuse in Chicago’s schools, reporters obtained and analyzed Chicago police data on such crimes from 2008 through 2017. Police investigated 523 reports that children were sexually assaulted or abused inside city public schools during that 10-year period, or an average of one report each week, the data show.

 In all, the Tribune closely examined 108 cases and identified 72 school employees as alleged perpetrators in the last decade. The rest were student-on-student sexual attacks.


FYI -there are over 13,000 school districts in the United States.