Authors of Are There Closets in Heaven? A Catholic Father and Lesbian Daughter Share Their Story will be appearing at at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
A Faithful Rebel has details along with contact information for His Excellency Harry J. Flynn and others in the diocese.
You don’t often see headlines such as this one.
Catholic Church suspends gay priest whose cover was blown by office decor
There have been plenty of new stories about the Italian monsignor serving in the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy
Both his face and voice were disguised by the show’s producers, but watching Vatican officials recognised the room where the interview took place as the monsignor’s office.
During questioning, the priest said that he “did not feel it was wrong” to have sex with gay men.
John Allen Jr. has much better coverage of this with information not presented in other stories.
A monsignor in the Vatican�s Congregation for Clergy has been suspended after being caught on hidden camera in a recent Italian TV broadcast about gays in the priesthood, in which he and other priests made contact with a young man posing as a potential �date� in gay-oriented web sites and chat rooms, and then arranged for meetings the priests apparently believed would lead to sexual encounters.
In the wake of the disclosures, the Vatican official in question, Italian Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, claims that he was only pretending to be gay in order to uncover what he described as plots to damage the church by targeting vulnerable priests with homosexual tendencies.
… Yesterday, however, a statement from Stenico appeared on the Italian Catholic web site �Petrus,� where his commentaries appear regularly. Stenico, who holds a degree in psychology in addition to his theological training, said that after discussions with his spiritual director, he decided to become a �thief among thieves� to determine if there was an effort to damage the church through the weaknesses of gay priests.
�I discovered that there is,� Stenico wrote. �There�s a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists that single out priests.�
Stenico said that his aim in pretending to be gay was to understand this world, not to participate in it. Stenico also asserted that being caught on a hidden camera could be a form of retribution for having earlier complained to police about a young man who offered him sexual favors in exchange for his help in obtaining a job.
�I�ve lived my life as a priest persecuted by much calumny, envy and jealousy,� Stenico wrote.
Before his recent difficulties, Stenico appeared regularly on the Italian Catholic TV network Telepace and on Radio Maria, where he had a monthly program on �Evangelization, Catechesis and Catechists.�
In the �Exit� broadcast, Stenico meets the young man posing as his �date� in St. Peter�s Square, and the two get into the priest�s car and enter the Vatican through a parking garage. They enter a Vatican office, where Stenico talks at some length about the church and homosexuality, defending, for example, the church�s position that marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman, while conceding the possibility of other legal arrangements for same-sex couples. They also briefly discuss sado-masochism, with Stenico referring to it as �a choice within the psychological depths of a personality.�
At one point, the priest says to the young man �I�m waiting for you � come here,� and at another tells him �you�re very cute, you�re completely cute.� The young man then says, �You�re about to commit a sin with me before the eyes of God,� to which the priest responds, �No, I don�t feel that it�s a sin.� When the young man does not respond, the priest later identified as Stenico says it�s clear that the young man is feeling �conflicted.� The priest says he will put him on the elevator to leave, advising him not to say anything if someone approaches him.
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP has been asked by his province to study philosophy in Rome. If anybody can help him regarding information on the license/doctoral programs at the Gregorian, John Lateran, the Angelicum contact him at neripowell(at)yahoo(dot)com.
You know that we are Christian by our junk.
This MP3 player with Two Color LCD display, built in mic and speaker, and FM radio is available from ChinaVision in 1 to 4GB models.
Well I guess it could have been cheesier. It could have had a corpus on it where navigation was Reverse/Forward – Left/Right hand spike, Menu – Crown of Thorns, Feet spike – Stop, and Spear Wound – Play.
My question is could you bless it with Holy Water without voiding your warranty? Does it flash a sin error (or sintax error) if you load it with pirated music? What would Jesus have on his playlist?
Though I guess there are advantages. If you are fighting vampires you can have some appropriate mood music such as Gregorian Chant.
I also learned about the Blessed Virgin Mary USB stick that says "Oh Maria keep my data safe."
Via Engadget
Mark Shea has a column at Inside Catholic on The Gospel of Ann Coulter about her being on Donny Deutsch’s show The Big Idea. The list of political polemicists who can accurately do theology is quite small, and Ann Coulter isn’t on this list.
American Papist has the text of a column by Archbishop George H. "Mr. Magoo" Niederauer, to be published Oct. 19th in the Catholic San Francisco. His column is an apology for his action of giving Communion to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in that they were there as a provocative gesture. He says that he did not recognize them and we will leave it at that.
I would have been happier to see him explain why this was wrong in terms other than that this group should be denied Communion because of the "manner of dress" and that this is offensive to women’s religious. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence by his column are guilty only of "abuse of sacred things." No mention is made of the homosexual agenda of these mock sisters or that they promote "goddess worship, transcendental meditation, radical fairy-ism." Shouldn’t the priority be the worry about the souls of those in objectively grave sin receiving Communion? Instead this column is only about the scandal caused.
Though my real question is what is worse 1) A Catholic politician who is ardently pro-abortion and always votes that way or 2) A group with an offensive "manner of dress." If you are the Archbishop it is #2.
THE Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has stepped up his criticism of Catholics who support contraception, abortion and stem-cell research on the basis of their own moral conscience as proponents of a “Donald Duck heresy”.
In a compilation of 10 short essays to be published this week, Cardinal Pell also warns that the pill has created a “contraceptive” mentality with “evil consequences” for the world, including a plummeting fertility rate in which many children will one day know no siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.
He says a new approach is needed to combat unacceptably high levels of abortion, including the possibility of television advertisements to encourage women to proceed with a pregnancy by framing it as a means of regaining control of their lives, rather than it ruining them.
His treatise on religion politics and society came as Cardinal Pell avoided backing either side of politics for the election, saying they have “scarcely distinguishable” policies.
But Australia was “blessed” to have serious Christians leading both sides of politics, he told the National Press Club yesterday.
Asked how he rated the Howard Government on humanitarian issues such as the involvement in the Iraq invasion and treatment of asylum-seekers, he said both parties had policies that, from a Christian point of view, were imperfect.
…This argument lies at the heart of debate in the church over contraception and moral and ethical questions surrounding bioethics, euthanasia and abortion. It was aired recently when Cardinal Pell controversially called on state politicians to follow church teaching and not their conscience on issue of stem-cell research.
Referring to the work of the English historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Cardinal Pell said he was concerned about the consequences of support for a Donald Duck heresy.
“Too many Donald Ducks produce the feel-good society which works to remove personal guilt, anything that would make people feel uncomfortable so that complacent self-satisfaction becomes a virtue; confession is replaced by therapy and self-reproach by self-discovery.”
I always love Cardinal Pell, but I do wonder about calling contraception a Donald Duck heresy. At first it doesn’t seem really fair to connect Donald to contraception. Donald is unable to get involved in a contraceptive act considering his total lack of sexual organs having been neutered by artists. But Cardinal Pell knows his Donald Duck and surely knows that Donald once was involved in a Disney propaganda cartoon that encouraged families in the developing world to have few children. The cartoon "Planificacion Familiar" (Family Planning) was created by Disney for the U.S. Population Council.
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 Jay Anderson |
A reader sent me a link to something rather odd.
Why in the world is the John Jay College of Criminal Justice doing a survey among VOTF member on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests? Sure VOTF goes on and on about this as a way to further their agenda, but what exactly is there competence?
Though maybe they want an opinion on what not to do.
Being a steady listener to the Laura Ingraham show over the last four years or so I was quite happy to be sent a copy of her new book Power to the People
You can often run across books that points out all of the problems there are, but few books are as hopeful as this one is what we can do to address problems. Each chapter gives an accurate diagnosis of problems with litanies of actual cases, but like St. Thomas Aquinas’s Sed Contras – Laura describes positive example and steps that can be used to give people power in addressing problems. She often spells out real world examples when this type of power from the people has been used successfully.
What I really liked about this book is that the very first chapter addresses the family and the attacks on in by politics and culture. This is exactly the right chapter to start a book on this subject and is the right order from which to begin to address problems. The book also ends perfectly with a chapter on the importance of faith. Laura herself is a convert to the Catholic Church and came in during the Easter vigil in 2003.
Many of the topics of the book are what you expect such as national defense, judges, keeping it local (she needs to learn the term subsidiarity), public schools and universties, and a chapter on science and how any criticism of unlimited science gets your branded as a "flat earther." I really enjoy Laura Ingraham’s show because she frequently addresses the culture and has news stories that are normally just not covered in talk radio. People like Bill O’Reilly call themselves a cultural crusader while at the same time having a video roll run of scantily clad females for whatever the latest outrage is. A point that Laura Ingraham has made before about the O’Reilly Factor. One chapter is devoted to
"Saving our Pornified Culture" which is such an accurate term. Unfortunately the toxicity of the pornified culture gets very little attention even among many conservatives.
This book is not a Republican good – Democrat’s bad type of polemical read, but instead points out deficiencies regardless of political party. Though most of the great one liners throughout the book are mostly directed at individual Democrats. Even with the serious subjects taken on I quite enjoyed and had a lot of fun reading this book. Her writing style leads to this since it isn’t all doom and gloom, but a restatement of what the problems are and what we can do about them. All of the stories and examples made in the book are thoroughly documents and you can easily find the source of the information in the back of the book.
I highly recommend Power to the People as an excellent book on politics and the culture.