Jeffrey Miller

…The Rev. Dean Dombroski felt differently, removing her from the choir loft just before Thanksgiving and gradually taking away other church duties. Servais can no longer take pictures during First Communion services or lead the committee planning St. Joseph’s annual late-summer picnic.

Dombroski said he couldn’t discuss the situation because it involves personnel. But in a letter to his rural congregation, he wrote: "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings. Because parish leaders are expected to model the teaching of our faith … she could stay on as the choir director/organist or she could continue to be a consultant but she could not do both."

The headline for the article was "Musician Canned for Focus on Wrong Organ."

The Pope continues his catecheses on leading figures of the early Church, turning his attention to Tertullian. He starts off by praising some of the many theological accomplishments of Terullian and then later turns to his later life and break with the Church.

"I often think of this great moral and intellectual figure, this man who made such a great contribution to Christian thought. It is clear that in the end he lacked the simplicity and humility to be part of the Church, to accept her weaknesses. When one sees only one’s own ideas, in all their greatness, in the end it is precisely this greatness that is lost. The essential characteristic of great theologians is the humility to remain with the Church, to accept her weaknesses and their own, because only God is truly holy. We, on the other hand, always have need of forgiveness."

A reminder to all of us.

Tim Drake interviews Francis Beckwith in a very interesting interview.

…Looking back, and knowing what I know now, I believe that the Church’s weakness was presenting the renewal movements as something new and not part of the Church’s theological traditions.

For someone like me, who was interested in both the spiritual and intellectual grounding of the Christian faith, I didn’t need the “folk Mass” with cute nuns and hip priests playing “Kumbaya” with guitars, tambourines and harmonicas. And it was all badly done.

After all, we listened to the Byrds, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and we knew the Church just couldn’t compete with them.

But that’s what the Church offered to the young people of my day: lousy pop music and a gutted Mass. If they were trying to make Catholicism unattractive to young and inquisitive Catholics, they were succeeding.

What I needed, and what many of us desired, were intelligent and winsome ambassadors for Christ who knew the intellectual basis for the Catholic faith, respected and understood the solemnity and theological truths behind the liturgy, and could explain the renewal movements in light of these.

It even made the Mass unattractive to young atheists. Going to Mass with my mother in the seventies I would never had guessed what the Mass represented or that the Church had any serious intellectual basis. I liked the music, but I could just as well sing along with the radio.

…What led you back to the Church?

There isn’t just one reason. One reason alone isn’t enough. That’s like someone asking, “Why do you love your wife?” There are 15 different reasons. It’s the whole package.

The whole interview is very interesting and it is no surprise that the Fathers of the Church were an important element and even reading the Council of Trent which was recommended to him in a negative way helped him to see how the Church was misrepresented.

	Jester Hat Tip:	Jimmy Akin

TORONTO, Canada, May 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation independently approved a recently-aired anti-Catholic comedy that offended Catholics by depicting the Communion host as snack food, according to a spokesperson for Canadian Television Fund.

CBC denied approving the controversial pilot show of The Altar Boy Gang that ran May 11, which mocked the Catholic sacraments of Holy Communion and Confession. A public outcry following the show’s airing led CBC Television’s executive vice-president Richard Stursberg to send a letter to the National Post defending the CBC, in response to an editorial in the paper condemning the anti-Catholic bias.

While saying the CBC agreed with the Post that The Altar Boy Gang was “unlikely to appeal to audiences,” Stursberg claimed the broadcaster was forced to run the pilot episode of the show.

“Unfortunately, because the pilot was financed with public funding, including tax credits and Canadian Television Fund (CTF) monies, we were required to put it on air,” Stursberg wrote.

“Had we decided to turn the pilot into a series, we would have followed the same process we did when developing Little Mosque on the Prairie and worked with a consultant to ensure religious practices were treated sensitively.”

CTF, however, said broadcasters were not required to air programs against their discretion. Communications director MaryBeth McKenzie said CBC would have been fully aware of what was in the program and would have approved the script prior to production, in an interview published on CanadianChristianity.ca.

	Jester Hat Tip:	Kathy Shaidle