Two altar girls (19 and 20 years old) break into a punch-up fight about who would carry the censer. It is now going to court.
I guess they were incensed against each other and their behavior should be “censered”.
The news broke Friday that Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Healthcare Association (CHA) has broken with the Obama administration’s plan to force abortion drugs and contraception on religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals and universities that offer medical insurance.
The dramatic move was announced in a 5-page letter (PDF here) signed by Keehan and two CHA board members.
The move is momentous because Keehan famously broke with the U.S. bishops to endorse the original passage of the administration’s Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and then broke with them again to endorse the Department of Health and Human Services abortion drug and contraception mandate, providing political cover for the administration.Both acts were widely criticized, and it appeared to many that Sr. Keehan was a willing tool of the administration’s “divide and conquer” strategy for dealing with the Catholic community–playing the role of an alternative Catholic authority that could be pitted against and thus neutralize the voice of he bishops.
But she is not so willing today, it seems, and the new move must come across to the administration as an act of betrayal of it and its agenda.
Jimmy Akin goes on to give a history of what Sr. Keehan has said in the past along with an analysis of the current letter.
The letter from the CHA is certainly an improvement on what they have said in the past, but it certainly lacks some moral clarity in regards to cooperation with evil. In regards to this I refer to Jimmy Akin’s look at one of the sections.
It also brings up another question about broadening the current narrowly defined HHS mandate to be more in line with the religious exemption in the past. Likely if this had been done in the first place there would not have been the sustained outcry that resulted. It would have still been a forced violation of the conscience of some employers who did not fall into this category. In some ways it is a good thing the Obama Administration so overstep themselves in that it might go on to protect the consciences of this category also.
This article makes the same point: Hey CHA: Catholics who run non-religious businesses are people, too.
Now what I want to know is if Sr. Carol Keehan will return her Obamacaare signing pen to the Obama Administration. If so they could buy a potter field with it.
More attacks on the LCWR by the evil male hierarchy.
Oh with it’s the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan.
We, the physicians and future physicians of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, met on June 2, 2012, to articulate the vision of the call and contribution of religious women in the redemptive healing ministry of the Church. We also addressed statements issued by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), various news agencies, and other organizations which have created confusion, polarization, and false representations about the beliefs, activities, and priorities of a significant number of women religious in the United States.As religious women, our whole life is based in faith. Apart from faith, religious life has no meaning. The doctrinal assessment from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) regarding the LCWR is in the language of faith. The responses of opposition are being expressed using the language of politics. There is no basis for authentic dialogue between these two languages. The language of faith is rooted in Jesus Christ, His life and His mission, as well as the magisterial teaching of the Church. In addition, the language of faith does not contradict reason, but elevates it and secures its integrity. The language of politics arises from the social marketplace. The Sisters who use political language in their responses to the magisterial Church reflect the poverty of their education and formation in the faith.
The call to religious life, begun in Baptism, is lived through the practice of the evangelical counsels. A religious call is a gift from God, not a right. The charism of the religious community is given to enrich the Church, and its authenticity must be discerned by the hierarchy. A woman religious participates in the charism and cannot separate her work from the Church. As women religious physicians who uphold the teachings of the Church, we defend the dignity of each human person. This dignity is under attack, as evidenced by our government’s and social media’s use of the language of “women’s rights” to promote birth control, abortion and sterilization as benign health care services. This is a naïve position and demonstrates ignorance of the serious effects of these health care services on women’s physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being.
The Incarnational significance of God becoming man brings to a point of convergence the suffering of mankind and the mercy of God in His redemptive mission. This convergence within the call of the woman religious physician unites the profession of medicine to the transcendental reality of faith, drawing patients and our physician-colleagues into the redemptive mystery of suffering. The redemptive power of Jesus was most tangibly revealed in His ministry to the sick, and by His words, He frequently related a miracle of physical healing to the more profound healing of the spiritual wounds inflicted by sin.
We praise the generosity and service of religious women who have gone before us. We see great hope for the future of religious life within the Church and for a continuation of its health care mission in the service of all people. This hope lies in remaining within the deposit of faith and the hierarchical structure of the Church. We cannot separate ourselves from sacred Tradition or claim to advance beyond the Church. There will be new expressions of the faith to meet the needs of this present day, but these will be contained within and directed by the Magisterium of the Church. As Saint Augustine exclaims, “O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!”
Hat tip: Fr. Powell, O.P.
“Providing the Catechism in this particular electronic format will make this foundational resource even more accessible to people,” explained Bishop John Wester, chair of the USCCB Communications Committee. “It is free to anyone who has access to the Internet.”
Available through any Internet browser, the Catechism file displays and functions as an e-book. Users can bookmark or highlight areas, see footnotes in a “light box” without leaving the original page, and search within the Catechism, including by paragraph number.
…“The USCCB is wisely using technology to serve their constituents and they are raising the bar for engaging users,” said Dave Gallerizzo, CEO of Fig Leaf Software, the interactive Web agency that partnered with the USCCB to create the e-book. “There might be some e-book readers that have a few of these features, but I doubt you can find one that offers all of these features in a single application.”
OSV reported on this as Catechism now available in free e-book format which is not quite accurate since the actual ebook version in ePub format is $9.95. and they call it the “E-Catechism of the Catholic Church”, which is rather lame.
The online version is actually pretty good with a solid search and quick access to the index throughout. Judging from the url of the site they are using a viewer that translats the epub format for the browser. The epub format is actually a zipped file that contains html, css, images, etc. The functionally they mention of bookmarking and highlighting seems to be missing. I could find no way to do so and I tried it in a couple of browsers. You couldn’t even do a regular bookmark of a section since the url never changes as you navigate. The same goes for the footnotes which have links at the bottom of each section and simply link to the specific footnote using normal html navigation. Maybe I totally missed out how to do this?
For years the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church site has had an online catechism with search and has been quite useful. The USCCB online version of the Catechism is I think a more effective implementation and more usable. If they actually implement the features they say they listed it will be quite excellent, until then it is the best way to read the CCC online.
Update: Jeff Geerling also post on this and finds the usability on a mobile device to be rather poor. I had only looked at it on the iPad myself and of course on it’s screen size there is no problem. This is definitely a rather serious oversight and I recommend that you read what Jeff has to say.
The prolific Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong has a new book out 100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura
Now there is a certain irony in taking apart Sola Scriptura via the scriptures but you have to stay within a certain framework when dialoging with others. Jesus when talking to the Sadducees only quoted from the Pentateuch since this was all they accepted. So this apologetical pattern certainly applies here.
Now first off when discussing Sola Scriptura it is best to define terms first. How Catholics might define Sola Scriptura can be quite simplistic compared to how many Protestants would understand it. So Dave Armstrong starts the book by quoting prominent Protestants as to exactly how Sola Scriptura is defined.
Many of the arguments Dave Armstrong used are quite nuanced and interesting and go beyond some run-of-the-mill typical apologetics replies concerning the topic. In many ways Protestantism stands or falls on this since there must be some method of authority to answer questions. If you abandon the authority of a physical teaching Church than Sola Scriptura makes what appears as an acceptable fallback position. It is not enough to just refute Sola Scriptura though. Dave Armstrong as he methodically presents his arguments also sets the case for the understanding of authority presenting the three-legged stool of Scripture-Teaching Church-Sacred Tradition. He does this in a structured way discussing the authority of tradition, authority of the Church, and then answering common arguments used to defend Sola Scriptura.
Apologetics books of this type can be for dry reading, but I did not find that here as I was so interested by the arguments made and how they were presented. Certainly an excellent resource for the apologetic toolbox and one that goes in-depth on a fundamental topic.
From Amy Welborn
Okay, so I was thinking about all the virtual ink that’s been spilled, tears that have been shed and skin that’s been worn off hands because of all that wringing over the LCWR/Sr. Farley business, and I figures at some point soon, the columnists and bloggers are going to run out of material, and they just might need another example of a Religious Sister, Kept Down By The Men.
(Not a fake issue, historically speaking, by the way! Not kidding!)
So, I thought of one!
Here you go: the American religious sister who’s had more conflicts with more bishops than any other over the past few decades. Who’s gone head-to-head with a bishop or two, whose work has been supported by lay people, but who’s had bishops has her primary opponents, both overtly and covertly, who, up until various shifts and changes of the past 5-7 years, has had probably 80% of the American bishops strongly in opposition to her ministry.
Nun v. Male Bishops! For your next column, blog post, Colbert bit or #hashtag campaign! Ready?
Now this is an interesting comparison, but a comparison with a major difference. Mother Angelica certainly clashed with some bishops and in many ways it was a mirror image of the CDF/LCWR situation. There were certainly some bishops quite unhappy with EWTN especially in comparison the the Bishop conferences foray into cable television. You might ask “What Bishop’s conference cable show?” – well it was less than popular and not always exactly brimming with orthodoxy as I have heard told.
One of those things that nerved some bishops was EWTN’s televised Masses that dared to be devoid of all the experimentations that were so common and of course still exist. It must have been quite striking for some to see the difference between EWTN’s televised Mass that epitomized “Read the black, do the red” in contrast to “Read the black, ignore, the red, and make it up as you go.”
Specifically EWTN’s use of Ad Orientum with the priest facing East towards the Tabernacle really bothered some people. It did not matter that this is totally valid and it was only on that fictions list of “things done with at Vatican II.” Regardless their were complaints made to her bishop and ultimately her bishop ordered EWTN to not televise Masses conducted Ad Orientum. Now while EWTN was technically correct in having Masses this way, they still complied with their bishop. That is what obedience looks like. If you are obedient only when you agree with your bishop, than you are not obedient. Now EWTN still went on using Ad Orientum for Masses not televised and conducted at their temple, but did indeed comply with the specific restriction of their bishop.
This is the aspect of obedience that is almost totally missing among nuns/sisters who are among the media darlings for resting the “evillll” Vatican. There is a total lack of humility when it comes to clashes. There is no humble reply as the result of a CDF theological investigation – it is always cast into almost political lines where every dissident theologian is a martyr to the Vatican. The use of “leadership” in the initialism LCWR is a total misnomer since they have shown no real leadership. Instead of course correction and fulfilling their vows (especially obedience) they refused to clean up their own mess and after decades forcing the CDF to intervene. Then of course when the inevitable happens they are totally shocked. Not exactly leadership and certainly not obedience.
There will always be clashes between people and their bishops and between priest and religious and their bishops. In some of these cases the bishop will be handling something badly or even being totally wrong. But again if your obedience is dependent on how much the bishop is on the same page as you, it isn’t obedience.
As the start of Veritatis Splendor states:
- Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, “the true light that enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9), people become “light in the Lord” and “children of light” (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by “obedience to the truth” (1 Pet 1:22).
This obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging “the truth about God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself.
I haven’t been sucked into the Patheos Collective. Though while not being fully assimilated into Patheos I am contributing to the Happy Catholic Bookshelf where I join Julie of Happy Catholic in book related topics.
My first review there involves John Scalzi’s just released book Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
This is the 21th volume of The Weekly Benedict ebook which is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I pull from Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Benedict. This volume covers material released during the last week for 23 May – 2 June, 2012.
The ebook contains a table of contents and the material is arranged in sections such as Angelus, Speeches, etc in date order. The full index is listed on Jimmy’s site.
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 21 – ePub (supports most readers)
The Weekly Benedict – Volume 21 – Kindle
There is an archive for all of The Weekly Benedict eBook volumes. This page is available via the header of this blog or from [here][weeklybenedict].
The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report – a full two years behind the times – or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011.The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
Makes sense, otherwise they would have had to add the United States to the list.
…but I’m still puzzled by the fact that, after 40 years of pro-abort zealotry from the Democratic party, some Democrats are just now leaving the party–because of gay “marriage” and the HHS mandate. Those things are bad, of course. But it’s still weird to me that somebody could go for decades watching the spectacle of Dems passionately defending sticking scissors in a baby’s brain and then suddenly say, “But gay marriage? That’s crossing the line!” It makes me wonder how such people process information and make moral evaluations. Glad to see they are abandoning any organization committed to these “core values”. But it doesn’t fill me with too much confidence that they are necessarily going to bring moral wisdom to whatever political home they wind up in (assuming they wind up anywhere, since a lot of us are politically homeless and alienated from the worthless circus of American politics). (Mark Shea)
I had similar thoughts when I read some of these stories from those who left the Democrat Party. Considering all the moral straws that have been piling on the proverbial’s camel back you think this must have been one strong mutant camel with a backbone made of titanium. But with Mr. Shea I am happy to see them realize the truth and pray more do the same, especially as an ex-Democrat myself and one who also had a high-resistance to reality.