Whatever You Do, Don't Drop a Nuke on a Prostitute!

Bangkok (AFP) - Pope Francis led an impassioned mass for tens of thousands of emotional worshippers at a packed Bangkok stadium Thursday, urging respect for prostitutes and trafficking victims in a part of the world where sex work is rampant.

The remarks came at the end of a whirlwind day of meetings for Pope Francis, who is on his first trip to Buddhist-majority Thailand where he is carrying a message of religious harmony and peace.

He heads to Japan next, visiting the twin atomic bombs sites of Nagasaki and Hiroshima where he will seek a ban on "immoral" nuclear weapons.

The 82-year-old arrived at the stadium in a golden robe woven for him from Thai silk, greeting crowds of flag-waving faithful, some wiping tears from their faces at the sight of the leader of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics.

"Drawing Bright Lines"

READ THE WHOLE THING.

I’m an old man, and though I hope, and on certain days even go so far as to expect, that the Catholic Church in America will eventually recover from the very bad slump it has been in for the past few decades, I fear that I won’t live long enough to see this recovery.

When I’m on my deathbed (a piece of furniture I hope to avoid for at least a few more years), in order that I may die with a smile on my face, I will ask my grandchildren to bring me news of any signs of Catholic recovery.  “Report to me,” I’ll ask them, “any bishop who has been brave enough to excommunicate a Catholic pro-abortion politician.  And tell me about any diocese in which it has been discovered that there is not a single example of a homosexual priest.”

Just to make sure they understand the nature of this latter request, I will make it clear that I’m not interested in learning about a diocese in which all priests have abstained from the crime of sexually molesting underage boys.  I’m always happy, of course, to learn that priests are not committing sexual crimes, just as I’m happy to learn that they are not committing crimes of embezzlement and bank robbery.  But abstention from sexual crimes, while in itself a good thing, is hardly proof that we have a generally chaste priesthood.  Perhaps the opposite.

When Church authorities focus on the prevention of sexual abuse, I suspect they are doing this, at least in part, to draw attention away from the homosexual rot that is ruining the Church.  It’s as if they are saying, “We are absolutely determined that our priests will never again be guilty of sexual abuse – but we’re not really troubled if they happen to have consensual relationships with adult men.”

 THERE'S A LOT MORE AT THE LINK TO "THE CATHOLIC THING".

This Just In...Japan Has Bombed Pearl Harbor!

Vatican City, Nov 18, 2019 / 05:01 am (CNA).- In a video message to the country of Japan Nov. 18, Pope Francis said he prays that the power of nuclear weapons will never again be used in the world.

Japan “is very aware of the suffering caused by war,” the pope said in his native Spanish. “Together with you, I pray that the destructive power of nuclear weapons will never be unleashed again in human history. Using nuclear weapons is immoral.”
Pope Francis will be in Japan Nov. 23-26, part of a six-day trip which will begin in Bangkok, Thailand. 

In addition to Tokyo, the pope will travel to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where he is expected to speak about peace and against the use of nuclear weapons at memorials to the victims of the 1946 atomic bombings.

I'm Not Catholic Enough to be A Bishop

Baltimore, Md., Nov 14, 2019 / 05:45 pm (CNA).- On Tuesday, 69 U.S. bishops voted against the inclusion of a paragraph in a letter they plan to soon publish. Within hours, a conservative social media figure said those bishops “are not Catholic,” and ignited an online firestorm. Here’s how that happened:

The bishops were at the fall meeting of their episcopal conference, discussing proposed amendments to a short letter they intend to issue, as a supplement to “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” their 2015 document on voting and public life.

On Monday Nov. 11, the bishops had been given the opportunity to review a draft text of the letter and propose changes. They had several hours to submit written amendments, which would be debated Nov. 12, before a vote on the entire letter.

Cardinal Blase Cupich proposed an amendment.

 Cupich proposed to add into the letter paragraph 101 of Pope Francis’ 2018 Gaudete ex esultate. The paragraph cautions against those who would relativize “the social engagement of others,” or act as if “the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend.”


As the debate began, Bishop Robert McElroy rose to speak first. He said he supported Cardinal Cupich’s amendment for the reasons already stated, and because of his objection to a line in the bishops’ letter which said “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself.”

McElroy called that line “at least discordant” with the pope’s teachings, though he did not explain himself directly, or address repeated condemnations of abortion from Pope Francis.
The “preeminent quote,” McElroy did say, would be used to undermine what he understood the pope’s point to be in the paragraph suggested by Cupich.

 
“So either we should get rid of ‘preeminent,’ or, if we’re going to keep ‘preeminent’ in there, let’s at least give the pope a fighting chance with his view, to keep that whole paragraph in there, because that’s where he articulates his vision of this very controversial question.”

“It is not Catholic that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face as a world in Catholic social teaching. It is not. For us to say that, particularly when we omit the pope’s articulation of this question, I think is a grave disservice of our people...so either we shouldn’t have preeminent in there, or we should have the pope’s full paragraph where he lays out his vision of this same question, delicately balancing all of it in the words he does,” McElroy said.

The leader of San Diego’s Catholic Diocese announced he is in support of ordaining women as deacons, a controversial opinion that if realized would reverse thousands of years of religious doctrine.

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy’s comments come after the Pan-Amazon Synod, an international meeting of bishops. McElroy was among only three American bishops in attendance.

Pope Francis - Putting the MENTAL in Environmental

Speaking to a group of lawyers on Friday, Pope Francis said that the Catholic Church is contemplating the introduction of “ecological sin” to the compendium of Church teaching.
“We have to introduce, we are thinking about it, in the catechism of the Catholic Church, the sin against ecology, the sin against our common home, because it’s a duty,” he said.

The pope’s words came just weeks after the conclusion of a bishops’ summit on the Amazon focused on the environmental threat to the region.

Francis was speaking to the 20^th world congress of the International Association of Penal Law, held in Rome Nov. 13-16, under the scope of “Criminal Justice and Corporate Business.”

He also said that the culture of waste, combined with other widespread phenomena in welfare societies, is showing the “serious tendency to degenerate into a culture of hatred.”

“It is no coincidence that in these times, emblems and actions typical of Nazism reappear, which, with its persecutions against Jews, gypsies and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model par excellence of a culture of waste and hatred,” Francis said.

The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 80... Another James Martin Edition

James Martin, SJ‏Verified account @JamesMartinSJ

 

 Denying Communion to politicians, Democrat or Republican, is a bad idea. If you deny the sacrament to those who support abortion, then you must also deny it to those who support the death penalty. How about those who don't help the poor? How about "Laudato Si"? Where does it end?

Besides, a priest has no idea what the state of a person's soul is when the person presents himself or herself in the Communion line. As we were taught in theology studies, the person may have repented of any sins and gone to confession immediately before Mass. You have no idea.

Over to you, Father Z.


Leaving aside the dopey string of moral equivalences the Jesuit draws in the first part, and focusing on the second part, we have to conclude that either a) his formation was so bad that he doesn’t understand the simplest distinctions to be made about this Communion scenario, or b) he is purposely trying to deceive people.

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I’ll go with option a).   Therefore, let’s explain the situation to him in basic terms.

Denial of Communion to a person under can. 915 is NOT based on a Communion minister’s estimation of the state of a person’s soul!

As I wrote to a commentator here the other day, a priest cannot know with certainty the state of the soul of another.  I suppose one might make a really good guess if the person is in the act of committing a grave sin while he is standing there waiting for Communion. Even then it might be hard to say what the person’s state is.

However,…

… can. 915 does not pertain to the state of soul of the person.

Can. 915 has to do with what is manifest and it has to do with scandal.

If a person has manifestly been committing grave sins, obstinately, in public (such as a politician who actively promotes abortion even though he has been instructed not to) then there is an open, public, manifest problem that must be openly and manifestly corrected before he can receive Communion.  He publicly committed scandal and that scandal must be redressed.

A priest doesn’t have to know the state of soul of the public person in front of him. If he knows that that public person, well known, has been doing very bad things without any move to correct the harm he caused, the priest, by can. 915, must deny him Communion.

On the other hand, there is can. 916 which pertains not to the priest but to the communicant.
Any person who knows himself to be in the state of sin is admonished by the Church not to present himself for Communion in the first place.

In short, can. 915 pertains to the minister of Communion and can. 916 pertains to the communicant. The priest judges open, public actions people know about at the time of Communion. The communicant judges his own state of soul, which is invisible to others.
The keys to reading the canon are the elements of obstinacy, perseverance, manifest character, gravity, and sinfulness.  Biden checked all those boxes.

I hope that clears it up for the Jesuit.

The God of Surprises

The Intellectual and Scientific Wattage to Be Bishops

Baltimore, Md., Nov 6, 2019 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Catholic Relief Services, the official charitable arm of the U.S. bishops, is expressing strong opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

“With the planet warming at an alarming rate and the poorest of the poor left to withstand the consequences, there will undoubtedly be more global instability, forced migration and conflict,” said Bill O’Keefe, CRS’ executive vice president of Mission, Mobilization and Advocacy.

“It is not too late to take meaningful steps to care for creation and mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change, which is why we hope our government reconsiders this misguided decision.”

Bill O'Keefe must know his science, huh?

Mr. O'Keefe holds a B.S. from Yale and a master's in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

You think it's hot here, consider this...

 

Too Catholic to be a Bishop

 From "The Catholic Thing". Read the whole thing.

The political season, alas, we always have with us now, but last week it took a turn in earnest.
Father Robert E. Morey, a courageous priest in South Carolina, denied former Vice-President Joe Biden Holy Communion owing to the longstanding public scandal of his support for unlimited abortion. To my mind when Biden, as vice-president, performed the wedding ceremony for two gay White House staffers, it was a cynical move for LGBT support, but far more importantly another brazen scandal demanding a response from the Church. He has been essentially defying the American bishops for decades, knowing that it’s highly likely they won’t dare put him on the spot.
Reactions to that priest’s act fell, as always happens, along the usual political lines. But this is not a political matter. It’s a question of whether the Church, as it claims, takes seriously the most serious things, namely the nature of the Eucharist and what it means for someone to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.

There have been various dodges from the Church hierarchy on this matter. New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, for example, remarked that he would never judge the state of someone else’s soul. But that’s not what is involved in the Biden case and many others like it. The question is whether to allow someone who has publicly adopted positions – and acted on them – that are directly contrary to the teachings of the Church and constitute grave scandal – to go along just like any other Catholic.

Scandal does not mean, as it does in the tabloids, that you’ve done something spectacularly wrong. In Catholicism, it means a public stumbling block that confuses people, Catholic and not, about grave matters like abortion and God’s intentions in creating the two sexes.

God's Plan

One Believes in Something, One Does Not

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York has responded to questions about the denial of Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden last Sunday.

During an Oct. 31 interview with Fox News, Cardinal Dolan said that he thought the incident was a good teaching moment about the Eucharist and the seriousness of denying Church teaching, but that he would not himself deny anyone reception of the Eucharist.

“So whether that prudential judgment was wise, I don’t want to judge him either,” Cardinal Dolan said of Father Robert Morey, who denied Holy Communion to Biden. “I wouldn’t do it.”

“Sometimes a public figure will come and talk to me about it. And I would advise them, and I think that priest [Morey] had a good point: You are publicly at odds with an issue of substance, critical substance, we’re talking about life and death and the Church,” Cardinal Dolan said.

Receiving the Eucharist “implies that you’re in union with all the Church believes and stands for. If, you know, you’re not, well, integrity would say, ‘Uh oh, I better not approach Holy Communion.’ That’s always preferable than to make a split-second decision and denying somebody,” Cardinal Dolan added.

Mustn't be judgemental, right Cardinal?