Religion News Service’s Dan Burke reports that next week’s much-awaited public discussion among the bishops on political support for abortion was struck from the agenda this afternoon: [source]
Somehow I have the strange compunction to sing the Sir Robin song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the bishops.
Update: Still on the agenda after all.
Our Sunday Visitor has once again put together a book containing Pope Benedict XVI’s Wednesday Audience catechesis. This time around we have the period of audiences that dealt with the Apostolic Fathers up to St. Augustine. Via the media we get bits and pieces of his catechesis and it is so nice to hava a volume containing the full text with a good translation. The Pope covers the Fathers in his wonderful style that is not just biography but a look at their lives and their importance and contributions they made to the Church. He writes about all of them as if he personally knew them and really gets to the heart of who they were along with examining their writings. It really is amazing how much information he is able to pass along in a Wednesday Audience. Of course some of the Fathers were covered in multiple Audiences. It is no surprise that the last chapter on St. Augustine is the longest considering that Pope Benedict is a scholar of this saint. Considering this saints contributions it is not just scholars bias and I so enjoyed the insights the Pope had into St. Augustine. But really the same goes for all of the Fathers he covered including some of the lesser known ones. His coverage of Tertullian and Origen were especially interesting and he addressed their major contributions while also going into where they went wrong.
But really when it comes to any book or compilation of writing from Pope Benedict you really don’t need a review, just a pointer that it is available so that you can get it.
This review was written as part of the Catholic book Reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on The Fathers.
The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic.
…Archbishop Gregory said that the next time cardinals gathered to elect a Pope they could "in their wisdom" choose an African pontiff. "My own election as head of the US Bishops Conference was an important signal. In 2001 the American bishops elected someone they respected regardless of his race, and the same thing could happen with the election of a Pope."
I agree with everything that American Papist had to say in reaction. No doubt the article was written through a specific lens, but I still find some of the quotes to be problematic.
For one thing is he saying that his election was really an important signal. That before that time I guess we had prejudiced Catholic bishops unwilling to elect a Bishop who happened to be black? It is the newspaper that implied that "The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of the first black Pope." Though if the Bishop actually implied such a thing it would be rather silly to suggest that Catholic Cardinals were prejudiced and somehow resistant to electing a black Pope even if they thought he was the right man for the times. That we have many saints who happened to be black, but we would draw the line at making one pope. Besides Cardinal Arinze was certainly one of the papabiles last time around and it certainly didn’t take an American election to guide them in such a consideration. The Catholic Church has long been on the forefront in fighting racism including excommunications of slave owners.
Besides isn’t the Jesuit General known as the Black Pope? Or is that like Bill Clinton being the first black President?
Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things pass away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices. — Saint Teresa of Avila
“God does not call us to be successful. He calls us to be faithful.” — Blessed Mother Teresa.
For the last month I have been preparing myself for a Sen. Obama win. I am by nature a pessimistic-optimist. I am though much more calm than I expected I would be in the aftermath of President-Elect Obama. It is much easier to remember today that my trust is in Jesus. Though I am also in mourning for the unborn who will die as a result of an Obama Presidency. They will never get to vote in an election, much less get healthcare or participate in the economy. The economy goes up and down. Dead babies stay dead.
Maybe we need to pray for the health of Supreme Court members so that they stay healthy another four years and have no desire to retire. Yeah I am only saying this jokingly, but no doubt some will retire and have a replacement named by a President Obama and another generation of children will be killed with the permission of the court. One thing you can say about Democrats is that they never pick a nominee that “grows” in office – they are reliably strict deconstructionists who will find a foreign law that matches their biases or grab a penumbra in a pinch.
Being thankful for little things the Democratic Senate does not have 60 seats so I hope this will keep the misnamed Freedom of Choice Act from being able to be signed into law. At least I hope that it is not able to be passed. Unfortunately the Mexico City policy will be history in an Obama administration. Plus I can only imagine the type of people that will be sent to represent us in the U.N. Say hello to CEDAW and the United Nations efforts to make abortion a universal “right.” Plus President Bush’s restrictions on Federal funding of embryonic stem-cells will be gone and surely the taxpayers will be funding destructive embryonic research regardless of the progress of ethical sources of stem-cells. Federal money will be used for cloning research and yet more embryos will die at the hands of scientists killing in order to preserve life.
This is the affirmative action presidency. Affirmative action is notorious for placing skin color above qualification and the electorate decided accordingly. There was hardly a dimes worth of difference between any of the Democratic presidential wannabees other than varying levels of experience. Obama’s main qualification was that his father was from Kenya and he was capable with a teleprompter. Though once he became the nominee he had a cascade of forces historically helpful for a Democrat to take the office this time around.
Though at least now we know how many racists there are in the United States. Those 56,280,668+ that voted for Sen. McCain are obvious racists for not voting for “The One.” And just because you might have voted for Alan Keyes – well you’re racist too for not voting for Obama. The idea that the election of Sen. Obama is going to heal race relations I think is laughable. The media will frame every opposition to a President Obama’s policies as racially tinged just as they did during the election.
As far as the media goes I don’t know which I liked worse. The media that use to pretend to have some objectivity or the one that simply became campaign operatives. Media bias is nothing new and selective reporting has been with us for quite a time. The editing of the Palin interview to make her look worse and the L.A. Times withholding of a video tape are just some of the egregious examples this time around. The media can determine what the Palin family ate the night before by inspecting their garbage can, but could find nothing worthy to investigate on Sen. Obama. Gee remember the media trying to pin cocaine use on President Bush, yet Obama’s biographies detailing drug use get a yawn. I hear that the Main Stream Media is going to be elevated to a cabinet position by President Obama because of the good work they did for him. No longer will dissent be patriotic as the media said during the Bush years.
Now we will also have a culture of death Catholic Vice President who will be putting the vice into Vice President with his support of many forms of abortion. I bet the media can hardly wait to snap a picture of him receiving Communion to gloat. The USCCB meets soon to discuss “practical and pastoral implications of political support for abortion.” Will the scandal of Sen. Biden be addressed? Probably not, but I would love to be wrong.
I hear that Sen. Obama will be FedExing 30 pieces of silver to Doug Kmiec. Moloch is quite happy with all of the Catholics that voted for Sen. Obama. According to Catholic Culture “Among Catholic voters who attend Mass weekly, McCain won majority support: 54- 45%. Among those who do not attend weekly Mass, the margin for Obama was an overwhelming 61- 37%. Thus Obama drew his support from inactive Catholics.” So 45 percent of Mass going Catholics supported the most extreme supporter of abortion ever in a Presidential race. The unborn chopped up via scalpels will be glad to hear about hope and change.
I also hear that Gov. Palin will be stepping down so that she can get some experience by becoming a community organizer.
I find it strange that all of the pro-life measures lost and that all of the anti-same-sex marriage measures won. Somehow their is still some idea of what marriage means, but the preciousness of life is another story. Washington State now has doctor assisted suicide like Oregon. So all we need to do is have California join in and we can call it the Kevorkian Coast or simply the Death Coast. In Michigan voters approved ESCR (supported by a Catholic Governor Jennifer Granholm). Modern liberalism means more dead people. If you don’t get them at the beginning of life you can always catch them when they get old or sick. The endless pursuit to make the distance from cradle to grave to be zero. Modern feminism says “Give me liberty and give them death”
Oh and by the way thanks a lot Jack Ryan (the Senator and not Tom Clancy character) whose divorce papers led to him withdrawing and giving us a Senator Obama in the first place. What a maroon.
But like many American I will be praying for a President Obama. May his campaign promises be typical campaign promises that never come into fruition. I pray that he realizes the definition of life is not “beyond his paygrade” and the the protection of life and liberty includes those who have been conceived. That he will realize his mother choose life in a situation that so commonly leads to abortion. The law is a teacher and as long as abortion is legal there will be many abortions but as this story works out we can still work to save lives on a personal level.
The Paragraph Farmer on Single Issue Voting.
Charcoal Fire offers Election Primer for Catholics and An Obama Supporter comes to the door
I updated my Voticon post from two years ago.
With the impending election coming there is much talk about the selection of candidates. In some races you think of the phrase "choosing the lesser of two evils." A phrase I really don’t like. Even in cases where you a choosing between two candidates that might have views you don’t like; you are really choosing to limit evil and are not choosing evil but a good.
Some have spoken of sending a message by sitting out the election or voting third party instead. Well to be sarcastic – all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to vote third party or to sit out the election. Kevin Miller had a very good post on this subject today. If because people sit out and a Supreme Court nominee that could overturn Roe v. Wade doesn’t make it through the process – that will really send a message.
Unfortunately it is rarely the case that you pull the lever on a candidate and think wow this person is the perfect moral candidate. Unfortunately in are present system when you vote for someone there is no really good public way to mark your displeasure or that you are voting for them with reservations.
I do have a solution though to this problem. When you read message boards and some blogs you can see the use of emoticons for people to be able to mark the related emotion to what they are saying.
With the advent of so many LCD touch screens in the voting booth just how hard would it be to able to add emoticons with each of your votes? When the emoticons are tabulated politicians would see exactly what you really think of them. Right now a vote appears to them to be an 100 percent vote of approval. It would be great for their humility to get a 80 percent "yawning" and a 10 percent "grossed out’ along with other ratings.
Though the standard emoticons are really not expressive enough. I suggest a new category for voting machines – Voticons. Here are some possible Voticons.
Holding my nose while voting for you
You were the lesser of two devils
After voting for you I think I am gonna spew
I am embarrassed to have voted for you but you sucked less than the other person.
I voted pro-life, please don’t disappoint me
Used for politicians where you are "split" between liking him one day and hating him the next.
Remember this is my wallet not yours, please vote accordingly.
I am only voting for you because ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’
I suspect that you will not rob me like a pirate as much as the other guy.
I vote pro-life and you are less murderous than the other guy.
Now in some situations I guess you could actually use one of the normal smiley emoticons, for example if you actually get to vote for someone like Sen. Sam Brownback
And here is one last one:
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." G.K. Chesterton
Four years ago strong statements by bishops on voting were as rare as hen’s teeth. This time around we have had a pethora of excellent statements including this one a reader sent me issued by Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of the Diocese of Lexington.
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In the months preceding Election Day, we have witnessed several elected officials who are Catholics publicly address the Church’s teaching on the grave matters of conscience formation, the inviolability of innocent human life and voting. Several of these Catholic politicians have cited the document of our United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, entitled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” in a way that misrepresents the intent of the document and the authentic teaching of our Catholic Church – misrepresentations that warrant clarification.
For many people in our increasingly secularized culture, conscience is erroneously reduced to a collection of personal preferences that are thoroughly subjective and relative. In this wrong understanding of conscience, every individual opinion is assigned moral correctness and the existence of objective truth is denied. Yet, the very mission of the Church as a teacher of right and wrong rests on the existence of objective truth and the conviction that this truth can be known by us.
In our Catholic moral tradition, conscience is not an inclination inside of us that allows us to justify doing whatever we want. It is not a mere feeling about what we should or should not do. Conscience is the voice of God in the human heart, revealing the truth to us and calling us to do what is good while shunning what is evil.
Before following our conscience, we are obliged to form our conscience. A well-formed conscience requires that we have a sincere openness to embrace goodness and truth. We must be students and learners, shaped and challenged by the Word of God and the teachings of the Church, rather than embracing a partisan position and then stretching for ways to justify it.
Conscience formation requires that we examine the facts and the background information on issues. Conscience formation requires that we evaluate each candidate’s past record on issues and the general direction each candidate would give to the issues. In forming our conscience then it is critical that we see beyond party affiliation, analyze campaign rhetoric carefully and choose according to moral principles rather than self-interest.
Finally, since a well-formed conscience seeks always and everywhere to discern the will of God in some matter, prayerful reflection is essential.
In summary, rigorous study, moral reflection and prayerful consideration are the primary elements in forming one’s conscience. When our Church takes a position on some moral issue, you can absolutely trust that these three elements have been vigorously involved.
Catholic moral teaching is not a hodge-podge of competing and equally valid opinions.
Granted that there are many and complex issues that are in our hearts and on our minds as we go to the polls on November 4th. For that matter, Catholics and all people of good will can arrive at different opinions and various solutions for such issues as the delivery of health care, the revitalization of the economy, the use of military force, taxation policies, and the many other issues that face voters in the upcoming election.
However, we must be aware that not all political issues carry the same moral weight and that there is a serious moral obligation on all of us to oppose in conscience and in action those issues that are intrinsically evil. We are not free to choose whether or not we shall oppose those things which in and of themselves are always and everywhere morally evil.
From this, it is clear that the defense of the sacredness of human life from the very moment of conception to natural death is THE paramount issue of our time. Abortion, euthanasia, human cloning and embryonic stem cell research are intrinsic evils – actions that are always and everywhere wrong and no circumstance can justify their use. Each is a direct attack on innocent human life. The fact is that since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, every medical and genetic discovery has underscored the human personhood of the unborn from conception.
We have all heard fellow Catholics say that “I can not be a single issue voter.” Fair enough – there are many issues on all of our minds. But consider this. If someone were to break into your home – your place of security and well-being – and hold a scalpel to your throat with the intent to kill you, I suspect that you would in that moment become a single issue person. In that instant, everything would focus on the one question: What must I do to survive?” Everything else immediately becomes secondary. Many of the unborn are precisely in that situation. They cannot act in their own defense. You and I must.
Throughout the United States Catholic parishes have been praying The Novena for the Election, seeking God’s direction for our nation as Election Day approaches. In these final hours study, read, pray. As a faithful citizen, cast your vote. May the Holy Spirit guide all of us to act on consciences conformed to the will of God.
VATICAN CITY — Telecommunications technology of the early 21st century has produced a phenomenon known as “phone hell”: an audio inferno where callers are tormented either by mechanized voices or human ones with less soul than the machines.
But the opposite exists. It can be found here in a simply furnished second-floor room where multilingual nuns in gray habits answer phones with a sweet-voiced greeting: “Pronto, Vaticano” (Hello, Vatican).
For 50 years, the nuns of the order of the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master have operated the Vatican switchboard. They are the gatekeepers of the Holy See.
Hearing the faithful
The sisters field half a million calls a year. They assist the friendly, the loud and the troubled. They help the faithful negotiate a Roman Catholic Church bureaucracy whose instincts tend toward discretion, if not mystery.
Sister Maria Clara, the 55-year-old chief operator, is gentle and bespectacled, her Italian tinged with her native Korean. After 11 years on the switchboard, she sees her job as a blessed calling.
“People ask us: ‘So you really work on Christmas? You work on Easter?’ ” she said. “Of course we do. The church is a mystic body. I feel that we are the heart of the church. And the heart never stops.”
Love that.
At least once a day, someone insists on speaking, urgently and directly, with Pope Benedict XVI. The sisters respond with tact and prudence. They never say an outright “No.” Instead they try to learn more and see if a priest, the Vatican media room or a church official can help.
“Sometimes they won’t be satisfied with even a bishop — their problem can only be solved by the pope,” Sister Maria Grazia said.
Some callers cross the line between tormented and deranged, between lonely and abusive. Most of those calls, however, take place during the midnight shift when a skeleton crew of male operators– civilians, not priests — takes over.
The sisters work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They recognize and tolerate certain regulars. One frequent caller identifies himself as Saint John the Baptist. He’s harmless, although he gets touchy if they don’t address him as “Saint John.”
“He asks me to pray with him, and I do,” Sister Maria Clara said earnestly. “Sometimes I have to put him on hold to take other calls. But he waits.”
A poster near her desk depicts Don Giacomo Alberione, the founder of the 94-year-old Pious Society of Saint Paul to which the sisters’ order belongs. Alberione’s image is juxtaposed against telecom towers emitting waves and the word “Evangelism.
Good thing I am not on the Vatican’s switchboard. I would be tempted to ask “St. John the Baptist how he managed to dial with his head separated from his body.
Alberione’s life work focused on the church’s communications activities: books, radio, film, the media. In the 1950s, Pope Pius XII gave him the mission of modernizing the Vatican’s phone system.
“And because he was also a visionary when it came to the equality of women, he decided that the sisters should be the ones to staff the switchboard,” Mellini said.
The Vatican has accepted modernization; the sisters will get some state-of-the-art pointers soon during a seminar with an outside expert.
But the sisters are determined that some things will never change.
“At least when they call us they don’t hear a machine; they hear a voice,” Sister Maria Grazia said. “There is always a voice.”
One of my readers sent me this video he created. I went to a Maronite Divine Liturgy once and it was quite beautiful. Just hearing the liturgy in Aramaic is quite cool. The Maronites also have always been in union with the Pope.