Pope Benedict XVI has again shown just how necessary and effective it can be to speak out in the face of unjust legislation against the Church.
The British government today backed down from pursuing parts of its Equality Bill, legislation which would have removed the Church’s right to refuse employing certain lay staff including, for instance, the right of a Catholic school to employ a Catholic as a head teacher. The government’s decision came after a furore in Britain following the Holy Father’s remarks to the bishops of England and Wales over such legislation.
According to The Times newspaper: “Ministers were astonished on Monday when the Pope said that the Bill violated “natural justice” and urged bishops to fight it. But that attack, along with the strength of opposition in the Lords and the limited time left to get Bills passed before the election, has sapped the Government’s enthusiasm to continue the fight.”
The Times also reports that although Harriet Harman, the minister responsible for the legislation, made no mention of the Pope’s visit to Britain this year, “it is understood that the Government did not want the dispute to overshadow preparations.”
On Monday, the Pope told the bishops that the Bill and other types of similar legislation would “impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.” The Pope added: “I urge you as Pastors to ensure that the Church’s moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended.” [reference]
More details on the CCHD scandal from Deal Hudson.
CCC’s executive director, Deepak Bhargava, states that they are fighting for "lifting restrictions on women’s access to health services." (Bhargava was also a featured speaker hosted by the USCCB at a three-day conference
CCC joined the "Stop Stupak" coalition through its "Campaign for Community Change" arm, explaining, "Of course, no issue is more critical to women’s economic opportunity than the ability to choose when and under what personal circumstances to raise children.
CCC is a member of the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR). NCIWR requires all members to sign an agreement supporting, among other things, "Reproductive health care coverage financed through public funds provided to all immigrant women regardless of legal and economic status," as well as "equitable access to confidential and non-coercive family planning services and contraceptive equity."
Sean Thomas-Brietfield, Director of CCC’s Taproots Project, wrote an article promoting consensual "polyamory," or "relationships where there is no expectation of fidelity."
CCC developed leaders for same-sex marriage advocacy and homosexual activists through its Generation Change program. In 2008, CCC received a $50,000 grant for leadership training from one of the chief funders of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) causes, the Gill Foundation.
Ralph McCloud, the current Director of the CCHD, participated in a December 2008 event cosponsored by CCC and the Gamaliel Foundation "Realizing the Promise Forum," celebrating the election of Barack Obama. McCloud is reported to have proclaimed, "Very soon we will see a New Jerusalem." The conference video suggests the CCC is engaged in "partisan political activity" in violation of the CCHD grant guidelines.
This is the second round of incriminating evidence presented by ALL and BVM about the CCC. Three months ago, they issued a press release and supporting researchregarding 31 CCHD grantees with a relationship to CCC — all of which was ignored by the USCCB.
As ALL’s Michael Hichborn points out, these reports have "revealed no less than fifty organizations (one fifth of all CCHD grantees from 2009) that are, in some capacity, engaged in pro-abortion or pro-homosexual causes (www.all.org/cchd). The sad thing, however, is that these recent revelations manifest a pattern of cooperation stretching back for decades."
John Carr’s excuse about what is going on at CCC sound more and more like “I am shocked that gambling is going on here.”
In a related story Bishop Hubbard of Albany and head of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the USCCB has authorized Catholic Charities in his diocese to distribute needles to drug users. When I first saw the story this weekend the excuse reminded me of the condom argument – they are going to do it anyway so let us make it safe. No word yet if Catholic Charities will be issuing cars with large bumpers to protect drunk drivers. I can’t see how this is allowable considering Catholic moral teaching and Canonist Ed Peters is of the same opinion and has a good post on the subject.
In other crappy news. Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s The World Over had torture apologist Marc Thiessen on to explain why torture is not torture. I was tortured by his logic when I first heard the program. I had wondered why Raymond Arroyo hadn’t corrected and taught his friend Laura Ingraham about the Catholic teaching on torture – now I know – he doesn’t seem to know it either. Defining waterboarding as not torture is just like saying the fetus is not a human person.
Remember when Bishop Roger P. Morin of Biloxi, Miss called numerous concerns about CCHD “outrageous claims” and he said CCHD does “not ever grant funds to any group that is specifically involved in any activity contrary to church teaching” and furthermore, it has “zero tolerance” for groups that receive funds and then become involved in “any activity contrary to the church’s social or moral teaching.”
Well guess what? Outside groups continue to do the work that the USCCB should have done in the first place in looking at groups that receive money from CCHD. It continues to be obvious that those involved in CCHD at the USCCB have not done their due diligence in making sure groups receiving money were not problematic. It took me very little research to find groups that were still receiving money from the USCCB involved in providing contraception. The websites of CCHD supported organizations are not exactly secret.
Rob Gaspar at Bellarmine Veritas Ministry has dug more deeply into the CCHD relationship to the Center for Community Change (CCC).
In “Sleeping with the Enemy,” Michael Hichborn at the American Life League has also uncovered more disturbing facts about CCC. Hichborn also chronicles the personal involvement of the USCCB’s John Carr, Executive Director of Justice, Peace, and Human Development. Carr oversees the CCHD.
OSV has a response:
In response to my questions, Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of the U.S. bishops’ media relations office has:
1. CONFIRMED the American Life League’s assertion that the bishop’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development gave $150,000 to CCC in 2001. But it CLARIFIED that during the time he served on the CCC board, his office at the bishops’ conference did not then have jurisdiction over CCHD (contrary to American Life League’s claim about conflict of interest). And it says CCC has not received any funding since.
2. CLARIFIED that Carr left the CCC board in 2005 (American Life League said 2006). It said his previous work for CCC was “a few months” after leaving the Carter administration, which ended in 1981. He was part of a group trying to work with block grants. “He then went to work for the Archdiocese of Washington as Cardinal Hickey’s secretary for social concerns.”
3. NOTED that the pro-abortion and pro-gay-rights “activities highlighted in ALL e-mail campaign took place long after” Carr left the CCC board.
So it looks like the conflict of interest charges are false. But much more important is that enter for Community Change is still being promoted on the USCCB site and CCC partners are still receiving money. There can be little doubt that these groups supported providing abortion in the health care plan and there is also a lot of support for the radical LGBT agenda.
It is sad that so-called social justice groups serve one small aspect of social justice while promoting intrinsic evils in the guise of social justice. That people working at the USCCB have supported these groups is much worse. This is formal material cooperation with evil. The issue about Carr is just a side-line and not what is really important in this story.
Letter & Spirit is a journal of Catholic Biblical Study put out by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology started by Scot Hahn. It appears that they release a new volume annually and are currently on their fifth volume. I have not read the previous volumes, but judging by this one I will have to rectify that situation.
What this journal provides is the latest in solid Catholic Scriptural study with submissions from multiple authors. This journal is put out as a paperback book which is a good format for it. This volume has as its theme Liturgy & Empire and concentrates on the liturgy through the ages and the effect on society from Old Testament times on. While this is certainly a professional journal I think that even those newbies to scripture study such as myself can learn a lot from it.
Scott Hahn is always an engaging writer and his first essay on the view of the writer of 1-2 Chronicles is no exception. But I found something fruitful from every single essay in this volume as you might expect when you have Catholic Biblical scholars the like of Brant Pitre included. Scott Hahn has written many books that address liturgy and how integral and important it is in scripture. But there is a lot of there there and this volume only scratches the surface on this topic as it covers specific books in the bible.
As good as these article are there are also additional notes such as the excellent coverage of scriptural interpretations by Robert Barron and the Liturgical intersection with Social Justice and the vision of Virgil Michel.
But wait there’s more… Yes also included is a new translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on 2 Thessalonians. Louis Boyer covers Satan and Christ in scripture and the early Church. Last but not least is homily by Cardinal Ratzinger on Faith and Politics that takes its anchor from a letter of Peter and presents this subject in quite an intriguing way.
So if you are interested in the latest in Catholic Scriptural Studies along with some classic thought on this subject, then this series and the latest volume is for you. Their mission is to foster deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture and I say they succeed quite well.
Letter & Spirit, Vol. 5 – Liturgy and Empire
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 Letter & Spirit, Vol. 5 – Liturgy and Empire .
Fox News) – An atheist organization is blasting the U.S. Postal Service for its plan to honor Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp, saying it violates postal regulations against honoring “individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings,” Fox News reported Thursday.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is urging its supporters to boycott the stamp — and also to engage in a letter-writing campaign to spread the word about what it calls the “darker side” of Mother Teresa.
The stamp — set to be released on Aug. 26, which would have been Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday — will recognize the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her humanitarian work, the Postal Service announced last month.[reference]
Hey where were they when Rev. Martin Luther King was honored. The Civil Rights movement was predicated on the fact that men are created in the image of God. That all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. I mean a Reverend forcing his viewpoint on us and causing the passage of the Civil Rights act by the government surely spells “THEOCRACY!!!”
As an ex-atheist I find it rather funny that people whose basic creed is “Survival of the Fittest” whine about a stamp. Yep Darwinian Evolution leads to being upset about a picture on a stamp.
Atheists are often prickly about the idea that atheists can’t be good people even if they can’t define good in a non-relativistic matter. While atheists can certainly have the natural virtues and even holiness to the extent that they participate in God’s grace – it is often the case that they put up blockages to that grace as I know from my own life. The holiness of Blessed Mother Teresa is really quite shocking to the sensibilities of the atheist. This total pouring out of yourself for others is beyond their ken for the most part. Though by their logic if we can be good totally on our own then it was just Mother Teresa’s decision to be good that made her good and had nothing to do with her being a nun. It was just a matter of her will so why should she annoy them?
Now as to Mother Teresa’s Dark Side I would guess they are not referring to her long time Dark Night of the Soul. Though it is rather interesting that Blessed Mother Teresa lived totally by faith for about 50 years with no consolations from God at all. Atheists also live with no seeming consolations from God and if anything Mother Teresa would totally understand the feelings of atheists. I guess the idea of living totally by faith without being able to feel God at all is what is so offensive to atheists. Then again I doubt if they realize this part of her life. Christopher Hitchens is one of those haters of this saint and wrote a short book without footnotes and couldn’t even get the name of one of the figures involved correct.
Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy
The issue of church architecture in modern times has been quite contentious as pundits and people from the pews wonder why their church is ugly or that it is inseparable from a large Pizza Hut or meeting hall. But this book is not a rant on the influences of modern architecture in any way. The pictures used are almost all positive examples with a minimum of negative ones such as the Cathedral in Los Angeles. Instead this is really a textbook on architecture, beauty, and the liturgy.
What I loved about this book is how instructive it was in explaining what makes a church, it’s church-ness, and why so many people are uneasy with so much of modern architecture. This book gives you the vocabulary to understand what beauty is in the first place and its relation to truth. I found it very interesting that the statement “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a bad translation of what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote which had no such subjective connotation. We hear this phrase a lot when it comes to sacred music and architecture, yet people go on vacations to beautiful parks and waterfalls and no one vacations outside of a garbage dump. Mr. MacNamara explains this very well in talking about the components of beauty. The first chapters concentrates on the theology of architecture and he presents St. Thomas Aquinas description of beauty requiring Integritas, Claritas, and Consonantia and explains and uses these terms throughout the book. This presentation of architectural theology and its teleology made so much sense to me to be able to more fully understand both the purpose of sacred architecture and why I am more drawn to its classical usages. Relativism has infected so much within society and the church and it is so nice to such a well done explanation concerning sacred architecture.
As the book continues on it addresses the scriptural foundations of sacred architecture, the Classical Tradition, Iconic imagery, and then an introduction to the 20th Century. Throughout the book provides both a solid introduction to the subject and at the same times goes much deeper. Discovering the differences between decoration and ornamentation was eye-opening and I look at churches now with a new eye in this regard. But that is pretty much true with so much I learned from this book as it draws from Church documents and the history of church architecture.
The chapter on the 20th Century discusses the liturgical movement, the documents of Vatican II, and so-called “Modern” churches. Like I said earlier this book is no rant, but by addressing the theology and the basic things you have a much better understanding of why so much modern architecture fails in it basic purpose and ontology of a church building. The author of the book certainly does not fall in the camp of “copyism” where we must just repeat the architectural forms of the past and that certainly modern elements can be grafted on in a true development that does not divorce itself from the past. I have seen more modern structures that successfully build on the past while at the same time introducing modern elements consistent with church-ness and beauty. Though in my own diocese I can only think of one example of this and that for the most part churches built in the last 40 years are sadly lacking in fully portraying their purpose. They are usually mundane, striking, interesting, just not being actually beautiful. With the Church it is almost always the case of both/and and that you make a mistake in restricting to any specific time of church architecture whether modern or classic, but ontologically it must fulfill its purpose or it is not sacred architecture.
The book unfortunately is a bit pricey, but I would say it would be money well spent. It is certainly a book I will keep on hand for further reference and reflection.
Today is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case legalizing abortion, and droves of women are prepared to face rainy weather to support their positions during the annual Washington, D.C., demonstrations. But there will be one major difference with the demonstration route this year–it’s shorter.
“The organizers are getting older, and it’s more difficult for them to walk a long distance,” says Stanley Radzilowski, an officer in the planning unit for the Washington, D.C., police department. A majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case, he says.
So this raises the question: where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions? Likely, they’re at home. “Young women are still concerned about these issues, but they’re not trained to go out and protest,” says Kristy Maddux, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, who specializes in historical feminism.[reference]
Well forget the can’t find any young women there comment for the time being. The March for Life was a actually 3 blocks longer. Though the length of a march is a new metric I was not aware of. I guess we have to get ready for the March for Life Marathon next year if we are to be taken seriously.
Also kind of funny is that this feminist professor is that she thinks women have to be trained first to be able to protest against abortion. If sign holding and chanting was so hard there would be no liberal protesters.
Pro-abortion Washington Post columnist Roberty McCartney apparently at a totally different March for Life observed the following.
I went to the March for Life rally Friday on the Mall expecting to write about its irrelevance. Isn’t it quaint, I thought, that these abortion protesters show up each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, even though the decision still stands after 37 years. What’s more, with a Democrat in the White House likely to appoint justices who support abortion rights, surely the Supreme Court isn’t going to overturn Roe in the foreseeable future.
How wrong I was. The antiabortion movement feels it’s gaining strength, even if it’s not yet ready to predict ultimate triumph, and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous…
I was especially struck by the large number of young people among the tens of thousands at the march. It suggests that the battle over abortion will endure for a long time to come.
Actually we really need to pass health care now. Obviously Newsweek is not providing any money for optometrist care. Their poor reporters having to write nearly blind and all. In fact if this Newsweek reporter were to look at this page of pictures she could find no “vibrant young women”, though she sucks at Where’s Waldo? also.
Today we recognize the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which affirms every woman’s fundamental constitutional right to choose whether to have an abortion, as well as each American’s right to privacy from government intrusion. I have, and continue to, support these constitutional rights.
I also remain committed to working with people of good will to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and families, and strengthen the adoption system.
Today and every day, we must strive to ensure that all women have limitless opportunities to fulfill their dreams.
All women except the ones terminated in the womb.
So we have a right to privacy to kill our children, but conscience protection – not so much. With abortion rates skyrocketing in his home state of Illinois we know exactly what the second statement of his paragraph means – nothing.
As a top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, outfielder Grant Desme might’ve gotten the call every minor leaguer wants this spring.
Instead, he believed he had another, higher calling.
Desme announced Friday that he was leaving baseball to enter the priesthood, walking away after a breakout season in which he became MVP of the Arizona Fall League.
“I was doing well at ball. But I really had to get down to the bottom of things,” the 23-year-old Desme said. “I wasn’t at peace with where I was at.”
A lifelong Catholic, Desme thought about becoming a priest for about a year and a half. He kept his path quiet within the sports world, and his plan to enter a seminary this summer startled the A’s when he told them Thursday night.
General manager Billy Beane “was understanding and supportive,” Desme said, but the decision “sort of knocked him off his horse.” After the talk, Desme felt “a great amount of peace.”
“I love the game, but I aspire to higher things,” he said. “I know I have no regrets. [reference]
He hit a Rome Run!