Here is a headline I never expected to see.
Especially since the “story ripped from the headlines” was the murder of George Tiller. Apparently this episode actually presented pro-life arguments and not the strawmen arguments usually presented.
When I posted on Sr. Quinn acting as an abortion escort the other day some had commented concerning excommunication. Canonist Ed Peters goes over three Canons concerning this case and for a mandatory dismissal from religious state.
As Ed Peters and other have noted Sr. Quinn probably will not actually face any consequences. Her Prioress made excuses for her. Though maybe if there is enough of an outcry something could happen.
Meet the anti-Mother Teresa
Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois
by Kathleen Gilbert
Lifesite News– A Dominican nun has been seen frequenting an abortion facility in Illinois recently – but not, as one might expect, to pray for an end to abortion or to counsel women seeking abortions, but to volunteer as a clinic escort.
Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.
Yikes! Though I am only surprised we haven’t seen a article written by her condemning the Vatican investigation of American religious orders in Commonweal or the National Catholic Reporter.
The most shocking part is she is from Chicago. Wow, there are hardly any pro-abortion advocates in Chicago. Maybe Catholic Progressives can get their “pro-life” President Obama from Chicago to talk to her.
Update via Diogenes
Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn’s Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as “accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there.” Though Sr. Mulcahey claimed that her sisters “support the teachings of the Catholic Church,” she declined to comment on Quinn’s public protest of Catholic Church teaching.
More proof there is absolutely no reason for the Vatican’s visitation.
This is kind of a water is wet story. A Kennedy says something stupid about the Church.
(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I) told CNSNews.com that the Catholic Church is doing nothing but fanning “the flames of dissent and discord” by taking the position that it will oppose the health-care reform bill under consideration in Congress unless it is amended to explicitly prohibit funding of abortion.
“I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time, where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person–that right now we have 50 million people who are uninsured,” Kennedy told CNSNews.com when asked about a letter the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had sent to members of Congress stating the bishops’ position on abortion funding in the health-care bill.
“You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life saving health care? I thought they were pro-life?” said Kennedy. “If the church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are going to keep people alive. So this is an absolute red herring and I don’t think that it does anything but to fan the flames of dissent and discord and I don’t think it’s productive at all.”
Though it is nice to have a comment from Bishop Thomas Tobin who is Mr. Kennedy’s bishop.
“Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s statement about the Catholic Church’s position on health care reform is irresponsible and ignorant of the facts. But the Congressman is correct in stating that “he can’t understand.” He got that part right.
As I wrote to Congressman Kennedy and other members of the Rhode Island Congressional Delegation recently, the Bishops of the United States are indeed in favor of comprehensive health care reform and have been for many years. But we are adamantly opposed to health care legislation that threatens the life of unborn children, requires taxpayers to pay for abortion, rations health care, or compromises the conscience of individuals.
Congressman Kennedy continues to be a disappointment to the Catholic Church and to the citizens of the State of Rhode Island. I believe the Congressman owes us an apology for his irresponsible comments. It is my fervent hope and prayer that he will find a way to provide more effective and morally responsible leadership for our state.”
Tip to Jay Anderson/Creative Minority Report
Solid statement by the Bishop. Way too often Kennedy’s and so many other pro-abortion politicians have spouted off all kinds of garbage with hardly a public grumble by their bishop.
Via Diogenes
Anglican Bishop Anthony Provenzano of Long Island has engaged the Catholic Church in respectful dialogue:
At the heart of all of this is the reality that the Roman Church is willing to welcome angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people.
Well in that case the he really should be happier that the Anglicans got rid of so many “angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people.” In fact the Catholic Church is now just like the lettering on the Statue of liberty kind of, “Give us your angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people. Your huddled masses yearning to have their liberties curtailed under a dogmatic male hierarchy.”
From Father Z.
Proselytize is a bad word these days.
A lot off people are rushing to say that the Holy Father’s Anglican Provisions is not a matter of sheep stealing or, as Card. Kaspar put it “fishing in the Anglican lake”.
Card. Kaspar was stupendously conspicuous at the press conference yesterday – by his absence.
Archbishop Nichols of Westminster said: “This is a response and not an initiative.”
I respond saying: If we open up the door, hang up the open sign, and turn on the lights, we are inviting people to come in.
No doubt there is a form of proselytizing that is unethical. I just don’t understand how proselytizing has come to have such ominous overtones. I don’t like the fact that many Protestant churches are made up of a large segment of ex-Catholics. But if you believe in Protestant theology and don’t go after Catholics than something is seriously wrong.
This seeming truce called ecumenism is often so pointless. In England it seems that the Anglican-Catholic dialog just meanders along. That it is Rome and not the local Bishops that seemed to be mostly involved with bringing the TAC to full communion with the CHurch. I am Catholic simply because I believe the faith to be true. I want all people to enjoy the fullness of truth and to be able to withdraw from the immense spiritual treasury of the Church.
Proselytizing has been a touch issue with the Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church has been pretty sensitive to this. I can at least understand this since Orthodox churches are true churches in the Catholic theological understanding. They have retained Apostolic succession and can validly celebrate all the sacraments. The Anglican church is a totally different situations since they have lost Apostolic succession and only have the two sacraments that all Protestant churches have. This idea of fishing in the Anglican lake is idiotic unless you don’t think you are bringing people to the fullness of the truth. It seems rather uncharitable to leave people alone just because they are in some Protestant denomination and you don’t want to be seen as poaching.
Though it seems that Catholics have often sucked at evangelization and reaching out. We needed the help of Our Lady of Guadalupe to get things rolling and of course it was the Holy Spirit that moved things along on Pentecost. Though this is true for all evangelization. It is this tippy-toe approach worried about everything except actual evangelizations that annoys me. We should be fishing in any pond where the fish are willing to bite if we are going to be fishers of men.
Now my first reaction to “freethinker” is “well, you get what you pay for,”
Now that is a funny line. One of my favorite SF writers goes on to demolish a essay written by atheist. The writer tries to deny that Christianity gave birth the scientific method an area that Michael Flynn knows a great deal about.
So how does Michael Sean Winters at America Magazine react to the good news of the Traditional Anglican Communion comning into full communion with the Church?
There are members of the Anglican Church who have come to question the catholicity of their communion, and like John Henry Newman before them, their questioning is leading them to turn to Rome.
It is a fair question – and one that I worry these new structures are designed to obfuscate – why now? Were they not disturbed by their communion’s indifference to papal primacy all these years? When John Paul II sought some way to establish the validity of Anglican orders, but came up empty because the apostolic succession was clearly broken, why did they not seek incorporation into the Church of Rome then? I am sure that many of those who are now motivated to seek communion with Rome do so now primarily because the fractured nature of their own communion has become so manifest.
No doubt that is indeed part of the reason since it is rather hard to maintain the three branch theory with one of the branches branching off into so many other branches. Also glad to see that he recognizes that apostolic succession was clearly broken.
But, I worry, too, that some of these newcomers will also be nostalgists, anti-feminists, and anti-gay bigots. The ordaining of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire is not something I would have advised, but after all these centuries of schism, I am not sure why that should have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Yikes!!! Though I get the felling that is how Michael Sean Winters looks at many people who are actually faithful to the magisterium and the full range of Catholic thought. The word nostalgia has been tossed around a lot in reference to the TLM, regardless to the fact that many of us were never raised on it. Catholic truth never changes and you can never be nostalgic to what is an ever-present reality. Anti-gay bigot of course means anybody who actually think that homosexual activity is gravely immoral and anti-feminists are those who actually agree with the constant teaching of the Church that women can’t be ordained. Certainly Mr. Winters if he would have thought about it longer would find a way to see the newcomers as racist also just like he was able to discern the reason for the 9-12 Teaparty protests.
Maybe Mr. Winters can screen these converts to the Church for his brand of ideological purity. That they may be one – unless of course they actually believe in all the Church teaches. Though after he manages to worry about some of these newcomers he manages to say “It is a big church and there is room for everybody as I never tire of saying.”
The first email I received this morning was from a Jewish friend who saw this aspect of the development when he wrote: “Do you think Pope B- might set up a Jewish rite if we asked him? We could call it Judaism. He could call it unity with church. Everyone’s happy.”
What? I am not sure what this is suppose to mean?
Father Z catches this tweet from the National Catholic Reporter.
Pope okays new structures to absorb disgruntled Anglican conservatives
I guess ecumenism that actually leads to union with the Church is not the right approach. We must endlessly dialog and talk and never get anywhere. We can’t have ecumenism with an actually end to union.
Though it is rather ironic that the dissident National Catholic Reporter which is nothing but angry and dissatisfied when it comes to the Church would have this complaint of others.
Yes the Church is under A TAC once again. Thanks be to God this time it is the Traditional Anglican Communion coming to full communion with the Church. Te Deum!!!
“In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.”
More at Creative Minority Report/
On October 15th, Day 23 of the 40 Days for Life campaign, a pro-choice woman shouted obscenities at 40 Days volunteers in Fresno, CA, before attempting to break the event security camera and assaulting Victor Fierro, director of Latinos4Life. The attacker cut Fierro’s arm with an unknown object, drawing blood, and then stormed back to her car and fled the scene. Much of the encounter took place right behind the camera, but the audio was all captured, as well as her face and license plate number. [Via Al Kresta]
Of course there are no bubble zone laws to protect pro-life protesters from violent pro-abortion supporters. This seems to be a growing trend that gets no media attention. With the advent of cell phone cameras I believe we will see more and more of these events documented.