Punditry

One of my readers tipped me off to a interview on a St. Louis NPR affiliate that included Fr. Marek Bozed (excommunicated by Archbishop Burke), Frank Krebs (ex-priest with the Francis Ecumenical Catholic Community), and Patricia Fresen (ex-nun who who calls herself a Roman Catholic Bishop.)

The interview is available in MP3 or Windows Media. Though if you have ever listened to or read dissident Catholics you will hear nothing new here. The same regurgitation about how since Jesus ate with sinners that somehow all sin is now acceptable. They always miss the fact that Jesus came to us to invite us to a life of holiness and to repent of our sins so that we can live eternally with him. Jesus also ate with the Pharisees so how come progressives see things pharisitical as a bad thing? By their logic since he ate with them their actions are automatically elevated to being alright. Why do they try to paint anybody who wants the Mass to conform to liturgical documents as a Pharisee? Now the desire for liturgical norms is not in reality pharisitical. In fact the Pharisees were guilty of creating their own rules that trumped natural law and the commandments, something progressives should be familiar with in their own logic.

I also found is sadly funny how Patricia Fresen defended her "ordination." It seems funny to appeal to apostolic succession when that 2000 years of apostolic succession were all men. She talks about how her ordination was valid though not in conformance to canon law. When you make it up as you go why can’t you just ordain yourself if you feel called? Why be restricted by apostolic tradition in this matter when you can ignore it when it suits you.

One really silly part was when Frank Krebs appealed to St Teresa of Avila wanting to be a priest and said that since she is a Doctor of the Church this is a high teaching. This is really laughable since who he is actually referring to is what St Terese wrote in the Story of a Soul.

"If only I were a priest! How lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give. You to souls!" "Yet while wanting to be a priest, I admire St. Francis of Assisi and envy his humility, longing to imitate him in refusing this sublime dignity."

Yes the very model of demanding female ordination and willing to be excommunicated to do so – NOT. The disingenuous of progressives never ceases to amaze me. That they can take that quote and turn in into something that not only St. Terese never intended, but that no one until fairly recently ever twisted into a desire for female ordination directly opposing Church’s authority.

Though I guess I shouldn’t really care what a gang of dissidents talking about the Church matters anyway. Heterodoxy is just so boring with the same lame buzz words repeated until they get you into a stupor.

Reading MSM reports on the Pope is often interesting and funny to some extent in their all-out bias. Here is a common case in point with the headline "Pope slams gay marriage before vote." It starts with:

Pope Benedict, speaking just 10 days ahead of Italy’s national elections, lashed out against gay marriage and abortion on Thursday and said the Church had the right to speak out on thorny political issues.

So we have this big build up of "slam" and "lashed out" and so we should be prepared for the extreme verbal assault by the Holy Father.

He said the Church had a right and duty to defend "the recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage".

It would oppose "attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilisation", he added.

This being a Reuters story let us see how this lines up with their editorial policy.

We are committed to reporting the facts and in all situations avoid the use of emotive terms. The only exception is when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech.

I sent Reuters some feedback using their submission form asking if they though the article met their editorial guidelines. Frankly I am tired of the number of headlines that use slam and attack by almost all news organizations. Google reports 1,410 hits on the exact keywords of "pope slams" and another 703 on "Pope attacks." Though it always good to remember that the student is not greater than the master and that if they would persecute Christ that the same thing happening to the Pope and all christians is not exactly headline news but a confirmation.

I like Jimmy Akins term for these stories. He calls them a newsitorial.

Dawn Eden sent me this tip on Planned Parenthood’s Teenwire guide to choosing LGBTQ-Friendly college. Most of the time I blast PP for not only their immoral advocacy but how their advocacy always manages to be helpful for their bottom line. They stay in the black because of the red blood spilled being the largest abortion provider. So it is harder to see how their support of homosexuals helps them out substantially. I mean talk about fool proof contraception and zero chance of an "accidental" pregnancy. Only part of the LGPTQ equation is a source of income for them, though I guess STD and HIV testing is another income stream. Their advocacy though is pretty consistent. Encourage sex as being seen as nothing more than a heart-felt handshake across the board for almost any situation or combination of people and sure enough you will be drumming up business somewhere.

It seems that every time I see the latest alphabet soup they have added another letter to it. I thought that Q might have been a redundancy of of the first two letters, but it stands for questioning. Give it a couple more years and they would round up the rest of the letters with some niche sexual area. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ-Friendly though doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Looking at a list they linked to of the top 50 LGPTQ-Friendly schools I was happily surprised that only one Catholic universities made it to the list. DePaul University in Chicago has been working harder lately to earn such a dubious distinction. Some Jesuits might be upset that a Vincentian school made it to the list despite some of their efforts. Okay that was just a little Jesuit jab and not a full blown bash so don’t comment about the good Jesuits.

When San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution last week condemning the city’s former archbishop, now Cardinal William Levada, for a church policy barring adoptions by same-sex couples, the action drew widespread media attention.

But the news didn’t change plans for an official city delegation that traveled to the Vatican for Levada’s installation as cardinal and presented him Friday with a glass paperweight etched with the official seal of the city.

Now Supervisor Tom Ammiano, a gay Catholic who sponsored the Levada resolution, and other supervisors are wondering how such an apparent contravention of city policy could have occurred and whether any rules governing San Francisco’s seal were broken.

"I think it is a significant breach," Ammiano said Tuesday. "You can’t be cavalier about things like that."

…Newsom spokeswoman Darlene Chiu said the city’s official response to Levada’s appointment as cardinal was mapped out months before the controversy over same-sex adoptions erupted. Chiu said the gift presented by Veronese was produced by the city’s Office of Protocol, is typically given to visiting heads of state and should not be considered an official seal of the city.

Ammiano said Veronese certainly has the right to express his own feeling and opinions about Levada or anyone else.

"But this could be a breach of city policy," the supervisor said. "It’s going to be embarrassing for him as a commissioner. Are they going to ask for it back? Does the cardinal even care?"

It is good to hear that the city’s board of supervisors are concerning themselves over weighty matters such as a glass paperweight with the city’s seal on it being given to William Cardinal Lavada.

Though I find the following pretty ironic is that the city know for its anti-war activists that the motto on the seal says "oro en Paz, Fierro en Guerra" (Gold in Peace, Iron in War).

Why is it that there has been a much more fervent outcry about religious tolerance when it came to the Danish cartoons then in the case of Abdul Rahman who faces a possible death sentence for his conversion to Christianity in Afghanistan?

Update: He has been freed, at least for now. The cae was dismissed due to “problems with the evidence.” Which I guess brings up the old question about if you were arrested for being a Christian would they have any evidence to go on. In this case their obviously was, but it was a convenient excuse to bow to pressure.

The parents of two Catholic boys have been left disillusioned after they were told their children have not shown enough strength of faith to gain a place at their first choice of secondary school.

The explanation came as a shock to the parents of 11-year-old Hayden O’Connor and his cousin, Robert Fiddimore, who have both been regular churchgoers for their entire lives at St Elphege’s Church in Wallington and took their Holy Communion there in May 2003.

Hayden’s mother, Celia O’Connor, who lives in Wallington, said the John Fisher School in Purley should have said there were not enough places.

She said: "It was very judgmental of them to say the boys hadn’t shown enough strength of faith how can they prove that? They need to readdress their admissions criteria because they are pushing people away from their religion. My whole family are Catholics and I feel this is almost bordering on discrimination.

"I ticked nearly every box for the school’s criteria except my son is not an altar boy and he doesn’t attend Scouts."

I guess she should have taped a mustard seed on their applications.

She feels so strongly about her son’s rejection that she has written to the Pope explaining her concerns and said she feels the school’s explanation is a contradiction of the Bible, which states those who engage in prayer must not be seen as hypocrites.

Headteacher of the school, Pat Liddiard, said he could not comment on individual cases but explained the school had more applicants than places.

He added: "We are required to put into rank order the boys to whom we offer places. Quite rightly, academic ability cannot be considered and we have no means of gauging it.

Well maybe the family is better off. A school that has "no means of gauging academic ability" has something wrong with it. Do they send blank report cards home?

Just to prove my previous point that the whole Catholic Charities debacle is like a soap opera here comes the latest plot twist.

"It is an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city’s existing and established customs and traditions, such as the right of same-sex couples to adopt and care for children in need.”

Yes it is the dreaded "non-binding resolution" that strikes terror to all. Though as far as "established customs and traditions" goes it is funny to hear liberals use that one. A tradition in custom so old it is barely out of its diapers. With all of this worrying about foreign meddling I am sure the city’s board of supervisor next proclamation will be to condemn Supreme Court justices for appealing to foreign law.

One of the strangest parts of the whole Da Vinci Code phenomenon is that this is the only book I can think of that I know a lot about without ever having read it – a lapse that will never be remedied. It is quite fun though to hear it critiqued so thoroughly and to hear just how laughable the errors in it are. Though the unfunniest part of the whole thing is how so many people have bought into its premise in the first place. Add one part bad history, another part bad art history, get a whole bunch of facts wrong and mix that in with a silly plot with pedestrian writing and you get a mega-bestseller.

Of course with the movie coming out in May the efforts to counteract this direct attack on Jesus and his Church are in full swing. I just wish somebody else had made the movie to give it its proper justice. Ron Howard is a capable enough director and Tom Hanks is usually very good. Though with all of the circular arguments in the movie having an actress with the last name of Tautou as in tautology is pretty ironic. Why couldn’t they have gotten Kirk Cameron and the people who made the horrible Left Behind movies instead? Now that would have been justice.

Catholic Exchange developed Da Vinci Outreach to provide resources to help parishes answer the oncoming attacks and to help inform people to the truth. There is more information here on these resources from Jeffrey Schwehm on what to do to prepare Catholics.

Even the bishop’s conference got into the act with their Jesus Decoded site.

Recently Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel were on Catholic Answers in an interesting program covering the book Click to listen to MP3 (right-click to download) They also now have a The Da Vinci Hoax Blog which is operating in a target rich environment.

As Catholics we have become familiar with apologetics to counteract this misinformation. Too many will want to believe what it contains and it will only get worse with the paperback soon coming out, then the movie and lastly the DVD. We can take the Opus Dei approach of making lemons out of lemonade, unfortunately I think we are going to be neck deep in lemons pretty soon.

Though as a programmer I think the code in the Da Vinci Code is spaghetti code. This is a term of art to describe really bad written code that looks like a bowl of spaghetti, i.e. twisted and tangled.

It seems that all the stories on the various Catholic Charities could be made into a soap opera. First with all of the shenanigans in Boston’s Catholic Charities finally resulting in the right action we now turn our attention to San Francisco’s Catholic Charities. The other day Bishop Niederauer issued a mild statement that was interpreted by his spokesman to say "Catholic Charities will no longer place children with homosexual parents for adoption." This is one of the few recorded instances in recent history of a diocesan spokesman actually speaking clearly and rather strongly in accordance with Church teaching.

Now Valerie Schmalz has the latest on the twist and turns of the current story. Not exactly surprising for San Francisco

The chief administrative officer of San Francisco’s Catholic Charities is an openly gay man who has a daughter he adopted four years ago with his homosexual partner.

…San Francisco Catholic Charities board member Nanette Miller, a lesbian, told the Advocate about her support for gay adoptions: "Part of giving care to everyone is not being discriminatory. I firmly believe that being a qualified parent is not defined by sexual orientation."

Her article also reports:

However, in an interview published in the March 21st edition of the San Francisco Chronicle Catholic Charities executive director Brian Cahill disputed there is now a prohibition on gay adoptions at his agency. "This is an outright statement that is false," Cahill said of Healy’s assertion. "Mr. Healy is, A, mistaken, B, doesn’t speak for Catholic Charities and, frankly, it’s clear to me that he’s not speaking for the archbishop these days." The Chronicle also reported that a spokesman for the state attorney general did not know if funding would be withdrawn by California, as it was in Massachusetts when Boston Catholic Charities was forced to cease same sex adoptions.

So the Archbishop’s spokesman is not speaking for the bishop these days and I guess Mr. Cahill has stepped in for the job. When it comes to clear Catholic teaching and magisterial documents; Mr. Cahill is, A, mistaken, B, doesn’t speak for the Catholic Church and frankly it is clear to me he’s not speaking for the Archbishop of even for the faith these days.

We will just have to wait till the Archbishop returns from Rome for the installation of his predecessor Archbishop Levada’s as a cardinal to watch the next episode of "How Catholic Charities Turns" and "All my heretics."

Well one thing for sure Cardinal-designate Levada is not quite as capable as Cardinal Ratzinger was when he was the prefect of the CDF. Read these ten question Time magazine put to him and try to imagine then-Cardinal Ratzinger answering any of them like that. Here are just some of the examples that stick out.

The Roman Catholic Church is akin to an absolute monarchy. should the Vatican be more democratic? The question presumes that there is not open discussion in the Vatican. The Pope expects us to give him our best insights. You must remember that, yes, this is a monarchy, but the monarch is elected.

The Church is only a monarchy in the sense that Jesus is King and head of the Church. The Church is really a sacred hierarchy (rule by high priest) where of course Jesus is that high priest with Peter’s successor being the head of the episcopal college.

You raised the issue in the synod about whether politicians should be granted communion if they support policies counter to Church teachings. There are certain teachings that as Catholics we have to accept as part of Jesus’ Gospel. When you see Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights … you have to ask yourself how this person squares this with his personal faith. Catholic politicians need to take this seriously. Maybe they need to say I’m not able to practice my faith and be a public representative.

What you can’t practice your faith and be a public representative? All I can say is that I hope his replies were not written answers in response to questions. Maybe they called him before he had his first cup of coffee.