Maximilian Kolbe
Patron Saint of Journalism
St. Michael
Protect Us
The Holy Father sets the dissidents straight (Lifesite News)
“Paul wants the Christian faith have a ‘responsible’, an ‘adult faith,” said the Holy Father. “The word ‘adult faith’ has in recent decades become a popular slogan. It is often used to refer to the attitude of those who no longer adhere to the Church and her pastors, but choose for themselves what they want to believe and not believe – a kind of do-it-yourself faith.”
The following is an excerpt from Father Kevin Murphy’s column in the June 28 bulletin for St. Louis Church in Pittsford:
I know to raise the issue of women and married men to be considered as priests is unacceptable for some among us…not for me…I pray that wherever priests come from that we as God’s family would be open to allow people to serve…if you feel only male celibates should be ordained, fine, encourage and pray for that…wherever the vocations come from, let us just pray and accept them to serve.
From Phil Lawler at CatholicCulture.org:
More and more often, the charitable agencies run by American Catholic dioceses are doing business with the government, providing contract services to fill various social needs. The offices of Catholic Charities, at both the local and national levels, receive the lion’s share of their funding from government programs. They have become agencies of the welfare bureaucracy. The agencies themselves are no longer truly acting for the Church, carrying out the corporate charity of the faithful. They are now wards of the state.
From a press release by Judie Brown and the American Life League:
“Praise God! After months of tireless effort from American Life League and pro-life heroes in Boston and around the country to expose a potential scandal only days away from becoming a tragic betrayal of Catholicism’s unwavering commitment to the dignity of the human person, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has heard our voices and will end the joint venture with abortion-providing Centene Corp!
“Cardinal O’Malley has answered our call and beat the clock as the minutes ticked away until the July 1 launch of the new CeltiCare Health Plan and the Catholic Church’s participation in the intrinsic evil of abortion.
Virginian Judge Harvie Wilkinson on partial birth abortion (LifeNews):
“The fact is that we-civilized people-are retreating to the haven of our Constitution to justify dismembering a partly born child and crushing its skull,” Wilkinson wrote. “Surely centuries hence, people will look back on this gruesome practice done in the name of fundamental law by a society of high achievement. And they will shudder.”
From Robert Knight on the proposed “hate crime” legislation (Human Events):
The proposed federal hate crime law, like all hate crime laws, politicizes crime, leading to pressure on police and prosecutors to devote more of their limited resources to certain victims at the expense of others. For example, homosexual activist groups descended on Wyoming and created a media circus around the Matthew Shepard case, costing the state heavily for public relations. Meanwhile, the story of Kristin Lamb, an eight-year-old girl who a month before Shepard’s death was killed in Wyoming and her body thrown into a landfill, received virtually no news coverage or concerns about a possible “hate crime.”
From a press release by the American Life League:
American Life League executive director Shaun Kenney announced a new campaign to investigate whether young mothers will be referred for abortions by Caritas Christi, the Boston Archdiocese-affiliated health-care provider, after its joint venture with CeltiCare goes into effect July 1.
The latest from PETA (LifesiteNews article):
A spokesman for the organization(PETA) told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) in an interview that it is “loathsome” and “grotesquely hypocritical” that pro-lifers oppose abortion, but are unconcerned about the mistreatment of chickens and other animals used in the food industry.
Saying it “loathsome” that pro-lifers have “zero consciousness” on the issue of “animal abuse” in factories, Freidrich went on to say that “I would say to the pro-life movement, remove the log from your own eye, and then come after the speck in the eye of the animal protection movement. But until the pro-life movement does that, they have zero credibility in my book.”
From an article at Newsday.com:
Bishop William Murphy has publicly confronted Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi for the Democratic politician’s recent declaration that he supports gay marriage.
Suozzi, who is Catholic and attended Catholic schools, recently wrote in The New York Times that he has changed his views and now believes homosexuals should be permitted to legally marry. He previously supported civil unions between gays.
In a column published this week in the newspaper of the Rockville Centre Diocese, Murphy criticized Suozzi, saying his stances on gay marriage and abortion go against church teachings.
“There is a further consideration that, as his bishop, I have to raise to Mr. Suozzi because he publicly identifies himself as a practicing Catholic,” Murphy wrote. “By so doing, he certainly admits that he knows he is contradicting some basic moral teachings of his own faith.”
“This is not the first time he has done this,” Murphy continued. “He has already placed himself publicly in the category of ‘pro-choice’ on abortion. While homosexual orientation is a neutral reality on a moral level, homosexual acts are not morally neutral. They are wrong, and they are sinful. Abortion is wrong, and it is sinful.”
Locally, we have Catholic Assemblyman Joe Morelle who is a public proponent of abortion and gay marriage. He should be reprimanded in the same way that Suozzi was.
Bishop Clark has signed the NY Catholic Conference’s position letter against gay marriage. Censuring Morelle would make that signature far more meaningful.
Excerpt from Sarah Palin’s speech at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life banquet:
Palin said the challenges she faced during her pregnancy with her son Trig, who was born with Down syndrome, gave her an opportunity to live out her anti-abortion beliefs. She said she prayed often during her pregnancy, especially after tests revealed that her son would be born with the condition.
“The moment he was born, I knew that moment my prayers had been answered,” Palin said. “Trig is a miracle. He is the best thing that ever happened to me and I want other women to have that opportunity.”
She challenged the notion that children must be born perfect and that unplanned pregnancies are inconvenient and can be ended by abortion. “I know for sure my son is perfect just as he is, made in the image of God,” she said.
She asked the crowd to keep working for the “culture of life” in America.
“Life is ordained, life is precious,” she said.
It is good to have at least one politician who is actually passionate and forthright about the right to life for the unborn. We need more like her.
From Confessions of a Lapsed Atheist:
But Atheists aren’t content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they’ve come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.
The American Life League has produced a very effective pro-life video called Baby Steps. This video has been an especially useful tool for crisis pregnancy centers. Here is one testimonial from The Pregnancy Resource Center in Rosenberg, Texas:
“Mary Doe came to our center and she had made up her mind about having an abortion done since she was going through a situation with her baby’s father who is 30 years older than Mary. He was pushing her so hard to have an abortion. After Mary came and she had the chance to watch the DVD, she realized that what was inside of her was an angel sent by God. I am happy to say that her baby boy, now five months old, is the joy of her life! She tells me that she can’t picture her life without him.”
This DVD may be purchased from the American Life League through their Baby Steps website.
From Matt Abbott’s RenewAmerica column:
‘Since 1973, legal abortion has killed more African-Americans than AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and violent crime combined. Every week, more blacks die in American abortion clinics than were killed in the entire Vietnam War. And the largest chain of abortion clinics in the United States is operated by Planned Parenthood.’
Funny how the mainstream press keeps ignoring this story about black genocide. Be sure to read Matt Abbott’s entire post about this shameful practice of eugenics in the United States.
From LifesiteNews:
Catholic couples who undergo marriage preparation based on the teachings of the Church are drastically more likely to agree to abstain until marriage and use Natural Family Planning (NFP), suggests a survey of Catholic couples participating in an online preparation course.
While 90-95% of engaged Catholic couples are believed to be sexually active before marriage, 76% of couples who took the Catholic Marriage Prep Online course signed a pledge card to remain abstinent until marriage. 22% said they “want to discuss the matter further,” while only 2% said they would not abstain.
Also, 72% of couples said they would practice NFP, a natural method of spacing births, with 5% refusing outright. About 80% of all Catholic couples use artificial contraception, which is opposed to Church teaching.
The statistics cited above serve as a very strong indictment against the Catholic Church in the United States. Other than Colorado Springs, how many dioceses take the sexual revolution seriously? The estimate of 95% of engaged couples being sexually active should be setting of alarm bells for all our bishops.
The Most Reverend Patrick O’Donoghue had this to say about dissent within the Church (from Lifesite News):
“It’s now up to us to fully embrace the ‘true’ teaching and decisions of the Council,” he said, “and abandon the ‘fictions’ foisted on us by some clergy, religious and laity who are disobedient and arrogant in their will-to-power. So, I am calling for an enquiring fidelity to the teaching of the Council”.
The bishop called on the students to challenge the false teachers within the Church, no matter their stature. “If you hear any Catholic say or teach something that goes against the teaching and discipline of the Church, as safe-guarded by the Pope,” he said, “politely, but firmly, challenge them, be they a lay catechist, teacher, deacon, priest or even a bishop”.
Many lay people are under the false impression that we must blindly follow our clerical leaders. I’m happy to see that this good bishop has seen fit to set the record straight on dissenters, both clerical and lay.