Sounds Easy Enough

Father Z posted this photo of a coffee mug:

Are Jesuits Really Catholic? Hard to say...

Former Vice President Joe Biden was not allowed to participate in communion at the Saint Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina on Sunday. Father Robert Morey told the Florence Morning News he denied Biden, a lifelong Catholic, from participating in the Holy Communion because of his stance on abortion.

“Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden,” Morey told the Florence Morning News. “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”

Didn't receive Communion, but got a swell ice cream cone instead. It's all the same to me!

 Let's see what the Jesuits have to say...


What remains unclear is whether other priests might take a cue from Morey when it comes to Biden’s stance on abortion, which the Catholic Church counts as a sin. Pope Francis has asserted church opposition against abortion, equating it to “hiring a hit man” to resolve a problem, but also suggested that communion should not be withheld from practicing Catholics based on a specific belief.

“The Eucharist … is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak,” Francis wrote in 2013.

John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, said that “it’s a big loss for our faith and for our church, either way, when the Eucharist becomes a source of division instead of unity.”

“In my view, denying communion to people for their public stances is bad theology, bad pastoral practice and bad politics,” added Carr, who spent two decades as an adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Evil Spirits Who Prowl The World Seeking the Ruin of Souls"

Quebec City, Canada, Oct 25, 2019 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- The Cathedral Basilica of Notre Dame de Quebec in Quebec City is working to replace relics of Canadian saints that were stolen after a break-in last month.

Monsignor Denis Bélanger told CNA that on the night of Sept. 11, someone broke into the cathedral by breaking a window. 

The money had already been collected for the day from the church’s donation boxes, so the still-unknown person stole a large reliquary containing relics of Canadian saints as well as some items from the church’s gift shop.

 Some of the native Canadian saints whose relics were contained in the stolen reliquary include St. François de Laval, Saint André of Montreal, St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The reliquary also contained relics from three of the eight North American martyrs - Fr.  Jean de Brébeuf, Fr. Charles Garnier, and Fr. Gabriel Lalemant - French Jesuit missionaries killed by tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy.

“We have relics only from three of them because the bodies of the five others were never recovered,” Bélanger said.

Remember this as you read about how hard it is to be a missionary in the Amazon:


John de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were finally captured, tortured and martyred in the most appalling manner. Both priests were tied to stakes. Mocking baptism, the Iroquois poured boiling water over their heads to scald them. They then cut off the nose, ears, lips, and other body parts of de Brebeuf, smashed his teeth with a club, put red hot hatchet blades on his shoulders, put hot coals on top of his head, and then smashed his skull with a tomahawk. They pulled out the eyes of Lalemant and forced hot coals into the sockets, they sliced open his thighs in the form of a cross and then burned him at the stake. Both priests prayed as long as they could and proclaimed their love and forgiveness for their torturers. (The account of their martyrdom was made public by some of the Indians who had witnessed it and later were converted to the Catholic Faith.) Because de Brebeuf died so stoically without crying out, something the Indians greatly admired, they cut out his heart and liver after his death and ate them raw, and drank his blood so they could, in their belief, obtain his kind of courage and ability to endure pain.
St John deBrebeuf and St Gabriel Lalemant, ora pro nobis.

I'd Make a Crappy Bishop....Too Catholic

 

You tell he's a Bishop by his attire. Looks like a homeless guy.

 

Bishop Evaristo Pascoal Spengle

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2019 / 10:20 am (CNA).- A Brazilian bishop has called for the ordination of women to the diaconate for service in the Amazon region. The bishop said that 2009 revisions to canon law could allow for the ordination of women deacons, but a leading canon lawyer in the Vatican has disputed that idea.

Bishop Evaristo Pascoal Spengler, OFM leads the territorial prelature of Marajó in Brazil and is participating as a member of the Synod on the Pan-Amazonian region in Rome.

During a press conference on Oct. 25, Spengler said that “there is a path that is open for the ordination of women,” citing a 2009 document from Pope Benedict XVI.

While referencing the role of women leaders, saints, and teachers in the history of the Church in making, Spengler did not account for the theological and sacramental impediments to such a development.

Pope Francis Comes Down on the Side of Idolatry

 Cardinal Burke for Pope.

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2019 / 10:43 am (CNA).- After controversial statues were thrown into Rome’s Tiber River, Pope Francis has issued an apology during Friday’s afternoon session of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.

“As bishop of this diocese,” Pope Francis, who is Bishop of Rome, said, “I ask forgiveness from those who have been offended by this gesture.”

Pope Francis also reported that the statues had been recovered from the river, are not damaged, and are being kept in the offices of the head of Italy's national police.

The statues, which were identical carved images of a naked pregnant Amazonian woman, had been displayed in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, close to the Vatican, and used in several events, rituals, and expression of spirituality taking place during the Oct. 6-27 Amazonian synod.

The pope said they had been displayed in the church “without idolatrous intentions,” according to a transcript provided by the Vatican press office. (He's lying).

The statues were thrown into the river Oct. 21; a video released on YouTube showed two men entering the Church, leaving with the statues, and then throwing them off a nearby bridge.
The figures have become symbols of controversy during the synod of bishops, which is a meeting held to discuss the Church’s life and pastoral ministry in the Amazonian region of South America. They first appeared at an Oct. 4 tree-planting ceremony in the Vatican gardens, attended by Pope Francis, at which they were in the center of a collection of figurines around which attendees processed.

According to the transcript provided by the Vatican, the pope referred to the statues as "Pachamama," the name traditionally given to an Andean fertility goddess, which can be roughly translated as "Mother Earth."

October 25th Tradition

St. Crispin's Day!

The Blessing of the Bats

 You'd think he would be a Cardinal fan....

Washington D.C., Oct 22, 2019 / 11:53 am (CNA).- A professional baseball clubhouse might not be considered a particularly religious place today, but one chaplain says the Catholic priesthood is needed—and desired—as much as ever there.

“When I walk in the [clubhouse], they kind of light up a little bit,” Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a chaplain to the Washington Nationals professional baseball team, told CNA. “It’s not me,” he clarified, “it’s that they see a Catholic priest.”

“I think that the priesthood continues to be a sign that God is with us,” he said. “You see ‘okay, despite how secular this world is, there is a need in all of us to have God as part of our lives’.”
Monsignor Rossetti, who is also a research associate professor at The Catholic University of America’s School of Theology and Religious Studies and former president of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, said he has been a chaplain to the Washington Nationals for 10 years.

Somebody Tell the Pope

In Honor of Illinois' New Policy Posted Previously, A Training Film

Only the Positive Contributions? That Seems Unbalanced.

Beginning next year, Illinois schools will be required to include the positive contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in their history curriculum. 

Under a bill signed last week by Governor J.B. Pritzker, public schools in the state must include LGBT individuals in history lessons, and use textbooks that include the roles of people protected under the state’s Human Rights Act. The new law takes effect July 1, 2020. 

Illinois is the fifth state to pass such a measure, according to advocates for the legislation.

State Rep. Heather Steans, a Chicago Democrat, said she worked for two years to pass the legislation. Steans said she believes the legislation will help LGBT youth feel safe and supported in school.
“My oldest child is trans herself. And it’s definitely a challenge,” Steans said. “And feeling accepted and seeing yourself in the history books just makes a difference to your own self esteem. I’m very pleased we were able to get this done.”

By "herself", what does Rep. Steans mean? Is it a guy who thinks he's a girl or the other way around?

The Mad Hatter

 

At Least She Wore Her Second Best Pair of Blue Jeans

From Father Z:


During his address to the Synod, Francis actually said this.   He said that he heard a light remark about someone bringing gifts to the altar with feathers on his head (never mind that it’s in St Peter’s, not a jungle) and that made him “sad”.

NOW Francis is “sad” if some makes fun of a headdress when HE did exactly that on more than one occasion.

Then he went on.

“[W]hat is the difference between this headdress, and the biretta used by officials of this dicastery?”

And those sycophantic bishops applauded.

I am NOT making this up.  Video with audio translation,  HERE.   Ooops, wrong video… HERE!
Those members were chosen for a reason.  It’s like the Supreme Pueblo’s Assembly.
If they don’t know the difference between a pagan headdress and a biretta, then there is little hope for them.

There are “issues” here, my friends.  “Issues” underlying this obsession to ridicule our heritage.

Pope Francis is a confused man.

Wishing Don't Make It So

October 3, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican’s former head of the congregation tasked with preserving the Catholic Church’s doctrine from error has stated that it’s an infallible teaching of the Church that must be held by all the faithful that women cannot receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders in each of its three degrees – deacon, priest, bishop.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that it’s an “error” for anyone who claims to be Catholic to “demand” from the upcoming Amazon Synod (beginning in Rome on Sunday, Oct. 6) that it “must rule that the Sacrament of Holy Orders – in its first degree, the diaconate – may also be validly administered to women.”

The Cardinal, in a statement to LifeSiteNews (published in full below), said that it is “certainly without doubt” that Saint John Paul II’s 1994 teaching on the impossibility of women receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders in each of the three degrees is a “dogma” of the Faith of the Catholic Church.

John Paul II declared in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that the Church has “no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”

Stated Cardinal Müller: “It is certainly without doubt, however, that this definitive decision from Pope John Paul II is indeed a dogma of the Faith of the Catholic Church and that this was of course the case already before this Pope defined this truth as contained in Revelation in the year 1994.”
“The impossibility that a woman validly receives the Sacrament of Holy Orders in each of the three degrees is a truth contained in Revelation and it is thus infallibly confirmed by the Church's Magisterium and presented as to be believed,” he added. 

Cardinal Müller made this comment in reaction to a recent claim made by Bishop Erwin Kräutler, one of the key organizers of the Amazon Synod, that John Paul II's teaching about the impossibility of female priests was “not a dogma.”

Nothing To See Here...Move Along

 

Stella Creaasy

 London, England, Oct 7, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA)- An advertising company has apologized for displaying a pro-life billboard in the United Kingdom, saying it is removing the ad and will make a donation to a pro-abortion charity.

The billboard was erected in Walthamstow, East London, as part of the #StopStella campaign. The campaign is in reference to local Labour MP Stella Creasy, the leader of a movement to force legal abortion on Northern Ireland later this month. Creasy is now pushing to fully legalize abortion throughout the United Kingdom via amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill. 

The organization the Centre for Bioethical Reform UK paid for the 20-foot billboard, which featured a picture of Creasy next to an image of a baby who was aborted at 24-weeks gestation. The billboard read “Your MP is working hard…. To make this a human right.”  

Clear Channel, the company that produced the billboard, issued an apology and pledged to donate the money they were paid for the advertisement to Abortion Support Network. The apology followed a series of tweets by Creasy about a seperate billboard from the same campaign which appeared overnight Sept. 30. 

From Webster's Dictionary, the definition of CHUTZPAH:

 In addition to calling out the company, the MP asked to Metropoliitan police to investigate the ads as "harassment."
 

Things in Motion Tend to Stay in Motion

Macau, China, Oct 4, 2019 / 07:01 pm (CNA).- A diocese in southern China expressed disappointment Wednesday regarding a patriotic light-show that had been projected on the remains of a famous Catholic church.

For three consecutive nights beginning Sept. 29, the Macau Government Tourism Office projected government principles and symbols onto the Ruins of St. Paul’s, located at Freguesia de Santo António on the western side of the Macau peninsula.

The event was named the “Glorious Splendor in Celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.” It projected pro-government statements, including Macau’s integration into China 20 years ago, and Chinese symbols, such as the country’s flag. 

Boy, I bet the Pope is angry about this! Oh...wait...

Pritzker Has Found a New Growth Industry! Thanks, Governor!

 I wonder if the Bishop is aware of this...


Belleville, Ill., Oct 2, 2019 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- Planned Parenthood announced Wednesday the opening of an 18,000 square foot, $7 million “mega” abortion clinic in southern Illinois, just a dozen miles from Missouri’s last remaining Planned Parenthood clinic.
Mary Kate Knorr, Illinois Right to Life Executive Director, said Oct. 2 the facility is a “money-making venture” for Planned Parenthood in what she calls the “most abortion-friendly state in the country.” Knorr has previously called Illinois the “abortion capital of the Midwest.”
“Make no mistake – this new mega-facility is not a response to an increased demand, nor is it a gesture of care for women. This facility was created to fill the gaping hole they’re seeing in their bottom line,” Knorr said.

“The construction of this new facility was a strategic business move – certainly not a defense of women.”

The abortion giant had for over a year been constructing the facility in secret in Fairview Heights, Ill., just 5 miles north of Belleville, using a shell company and leaving no public trace that the facility would become one of the nation’s largest abortion clinics, CBS News reports.

Even several construction workers whom the St. Louis Post-Dispatch interviewed were unaware the building they were helping to construct, codenamed “Alaska,” was an abortion clinic.
The clinic expects to begin taking patients later this month and will perform abortions up to 24 weeks.

The St. Louis Planned Parenthood facility, just across the Mississippi River, is the last clinic in Missouri currently performing abortions, though its ability to perform abortions may end soon, as its license with the state has lapsed.

Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told CBS News that abortion facilies in other areas had faced public outcry and protest during their contruction, hence their decision to build the clinic in secret.
“The truth is that our patients want easier access, and for some, the 13 mile drive from our St. Louis clinic to this Illinois clinic is an opportunity for them to get that care with less judgement, with less restriction, and with far fewer hoops to jump through,” she told CBS News.

The number of women from Missouri crossing the border into Illinois for an abortion has doubled since 2017, according to data compiled by the Associated Press, which reported that the number of abortions performed in Illinois on out-of-state women doubled from 2012 to 2017 to nearly 17%.
A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood said the clinic will have the ability to see 11,000 patients a year.

Great! So we can kill the equivalent of the entire population of Union County in less than 18 months!

 Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois in June signed legislation to expand vastly access to abortion in that state.

Good Luck With Your Queer Studies Degree, Audrey

South Bend, Ind., Oct 2, 2019 / 04:11 pm (CNA).- Students and observers are reacting to a hand-painted sign, posted outside an academic hall at the University of Notre Dame, bearing the words “There is Queer Blood on Homophobic Hands.” The sign implicates Catholic student journalists, faculty, and alumni for the deaths of people who identify as queer.

According to the Irish Rover, the sign appeared outside DeBartolo Hall, close to the football stadium, the week of Sept. 19. Campus police have since removed it.

The walk-out when Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at UND

 In addition to its message painted in blood red, the sign includes pasted articles clipped from The Irish Rover and the Observer, two student publications, that reflect Catholic doctrine on human sexuality, along with pictures of people nationwide who identify as queer and have been killed or committed suicide.

The names of the student journalists, as well as the names of other students, faculty, and alumni of Notre Dame are circled in red paint. 

Though the sign itself was anonymous, the Observer newspaper on Sept. 30 published an op-ed by Audrey Lindemann, a Notre Dame junior who, in the form of a poem, said the Catholic student publication’s “ivory tower theology slit my loved ones’ throats.”

Well, At Least There's No Lead in the Water

Lansing, Mich., Oct 1, 2019 / 06:34 pm (CNA).- Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has line-item vetoed from the state’s budget $700,000 in funding for the Michigan Pregnancy and Parenting Support Services Program, to the consternation of the Michigan Catholic Conference and a pro-life group active in the state.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer

“The process that led to these vetoes has been disappointing,” said Tom Hickson, Michigan Catholic Conference (MCC) vice president for public policy.

“It is the hope of this organization that in forthcoming negotiations the Governor and legislature can work together to restore this critical funding.”

The funding in the Michigan budget for pregnancy and parenting support went to Real Alternatives, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that has since 1996 provided counseling for pregnant woman on alternatives to abortion, as well as material help such as baby formula and diapers to mothers up to 12 months after they give birth.

The program expanded its operations to Michigan beginning in June 2014, working mainly through local Catholic Charities affiliates, with the backing of the Michigan Catholic Conference.

According to Real Alternatives’ estimates, the Michigan program has served 8,240 women at 31,958 support visits since 2014. The state has appropriated $3.3 million to the program since its inception.

“This year the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania allocated $7.3 million in funding for the same program in that state; Governor Whitmer’s line-item veto of a meager $700,000 will have a negative impact on low-income women in Michigan and should have been avoided,” said MCC’s Policy Advocate Rebecca Mastee.

“Women deserve better than this veto, and we look forward to working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to reinsert this funding into the state budget.”

I Will Allow You to Travel, As Long as You Put Your Fingers in Your ears and say, 'LALALALALA! I Can't Hear You!"

Springfield, Ill., Sep 30, 2019 / 01:15 pm (CNA).- An Illinois state representative has introduced legislation to prevent government employees from traveling to states which have enacted pro-life legislation. The Illinois state Catholic conference told CNA the bill is "absurd."

The bill, introduced last week by Rep. Daniel Didech (D-Buffalo Grove), would ban any Illinois state agency from requiring or approving travel by any of its employees or officers to states with laws that prohibited abortion at 8 weeks of pregnancy or upon the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

The bill would also ban state-sponsored travel to jurisdictions that do not have exemptions in abortion laws for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or that require an investigation in the cause of a miscarriage.

Didech filed HB 3901 Sept. 26, saying the measures is intended to protect Illinois employees.
“What these other states are doing is, to me, very dangerous. To a large extent, yes, abortion is a big part of it, but it’s not entirely about abortion,” Didech told the State Journal-Register. 

“As a member of the legislature, I have the responsibility to protect our state employees.”

Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Conference, which serves as the public policy voice for the state’s six Catholic dioceses, called the bill “absurd.”

“Where does this thinking begin and end?” he said to CNA Sept. 30.

“There are states that have weaker gun laws, different speed limits out West, different smoking laws - why don’t we protect our state employees when they travel to other states when they may not have the same laws as Illinois on these issues?” he asked.

“The obvious point is: why does this always have to come back to abortion?” 

 “I think we should have a list of all states with weaker air pollution laws, water laws, driving laws, gun laws, and we shouldn’t be sending people to those areas either,” Gilligan told CNA.

Illinois is basically a sanctuary state.  We should boycott states that aren't (this statement brought to you by the USSCB).

The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 79

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2019 / 09:20 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Monday with Fr. James Martin, SJ, in a private audience in the apostolic palace inside the Vatican.

Meeting Called!

 
Martin said on Twitter Sept. 30, that his meeting with Pope Francis lasted 30 minutes, and that he shared with him “the joys and hopes, and the griefs and anxieties, of LGBT Catholics and LGBT people worldwide.”


Martin is the author of “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity,” and speaks frequently on issues pertaining to homosexuality and Catholicism.

Earlier this month, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia urged caution about Martin’s message after the priest spoke at a Philadelphia university.

“Father Martin has sought in a dedicated way to accompany and support people with same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria. Many of his efforts have been laudable, and we need to join him in stressing the dignity of persons in such situations,” Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in a Sept. 19 column published on his archdiocesan website.

“At the same time, a pattern of ambiguity in his teachings tends to undermine his stated aims, alienating people from the very support they need for authentic human flourishing. Due to the confusion caused by his statements and activities regarding same-sex related (LGBT) issues, I find it necessary to emphasize that Father Martin does not speak with authority on behalf of the Church, and to caution the faithful about some of his claims,” Chaput added.