It’s beautiful to see a bishop step up to the plate and proclaim the Truth without compromise. Check out these powerful words by the Bishop of Fargo (North Dakota), Samuel J. Aquila, at the 10th Annual Symposium on the Spirituality and Identity of the Diocesan Priest.  Preach it, Bishop!

One must honestly ask, how many times and years may a Catholic politician vote for the so called “right to abortion”, “murder” in the words of John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (58), and still be able to receive Holy Communion?  The continual reception of Holy Communion by those who so visibly contradict and promote a grave evil, even more than simply dissent, only creates grave scandal, undermines the teaching and governing authority of the Church and can be interpreted by the faithful as indifference to the teaching of Christ and the Church on the part of those who have the responsibility to govern.  If we honestly pray with the Gospel we can see that hesitancy and non-accountability is not the way of Jesus Christ, but rather it is a failure in the exercise of governance. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday March 25^th:  Prayer Vigil for the Unborn 

Come and pray with us at the abortuary (65 Bank St. in Ottawa) on Friday March 25th, 2011, the Feast of the Annunciation and also the International Day for the Unborn Child (see also Argentina, and other locations, and HERE). We invite each parish and church group to provide a prayerful presence for one hour (or more) during that day (between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm) … visit: http://helpersottawa.org/en/Helpers_March25_2011.pdf.

This is an opportunity for a Lenten sacrifice that will help us grow closer to God by experiencing the mystery of His Cross. By denying ourselves comfort, we will better find out what Calvary is like. Praying for the unborn in this public way will also help us to clearly realize Christ’s personal love for each one of us, and know the joy of having responded to His call. In doing this, we also learn to pray, offer penances, abandon the  results of our labours to God, and recognize that it is God’s power and  love which will overcome the evil of abortion and soften the hearts of  those who participate. For more details, email: info@helpersottawa.org

In 2007, Pope Benedict issued an Apostolic Letter called Summorum Pontificum which granted greater freedom for the use of the Latin Mass. As I was doing some research on the web, I came across the reaction of Fr. Raymond Gravel. Not surprisingly, he was outraged (outré) by the announcement. He called it a concession to “integrists and traditionalists”.

What really caught my attention, however, was the way he disdainfully described the Latin Mass:

No, Father, the priest isn’t facing a wall. He’s facing the Tabernacle, in which dwells Jesus Christ, the God of the universe.

This is not the first time that Fr. Gravel makes statements that are suspect with respect to the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Please pray for him.

Read this interesting article on how the “social media” helped save Baby Joseph.

Thanks to all who worked for Baby Joseph. A few good people can make a difference. Even big players can be toppled when we work together!

Good piece by Rex Murphy on President Obama’s lack of leadership.

Well, it’s that time of year again when the Catholic bureaucracy in this country revs up the Share Lent machine to suck in all the donations from gullible Catholics.  Yes, folks, it’s that time again for “Social Justice” where much of our hard- earned money goes to really worthy causes of poverty and disaster relief financing anti-life and anti-Catholic groups who push for reproductive “health” and gender mainstreaming.

The machine took a big hit late last year in its direction and many of their partners were not “renewed“.   That we can’t deny. But none of us should be under any delusion that everything is OK. Far from it.  We need to keep the pressure on, remembering that these changes were not made without intense pressure from LifeSite and the Catholic blogosphere.

As Socon or Bust predicted, the job is only partially done. There’s still a big room for improvement.  In point of fact, there are still some big problems with Development & Peace. Read the rest of this entry »

These pressures are going to keep increasing.

A Mississauga Catholic high school’s decision to bar students from launching a gay-straight alliance doesn’t jibe with Ontario’s education policy on equity, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Monday.

“We are making it perfectly clear to all our school boards, all our schools, all our principals, all our teachers and all our students that it is unacceptable in Ontario to discriminate based on race, gender, religion or sexual orientation,” the Premier said in Question Period.

Mr. McGuinty stopped short of saying the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board was actually in violation of the ministry’s code on equity, saying that “boards can find different ways to ensure that they adhere to those policies.”

The Premier’s response comes after 16-year-old Leanne Iskander approached St. Joseph’s Catholic Secondary School principal Frances Jacques to start a gay-straight alliance recently and was flatly turned down. (Source)

First of all, kudos to St. Joseph’s school for taking a stand.

Notice how McGuinty takes ownership of all the schools, both public and Catholic. And he’s right. From a legal standpoint, the “Catholic” boards aren’t really much different from the public schools. The bottom line is that the government is paying for those schools, which gives them the legal right to enforce whatever policy they want. That’s the problem with taking government money.

The only solution for Catholics to have a genuinely Catholic education is to found private schools. It would be hard and costly, but it’s the only way. If a bishop were to undertake such an endeavour, I think he would find lots of support from the faithful. It’s very doable. If we work together, we can definitely pull it off. John has already founded one such school. I’m sure he’s game for a few more.  :-)

That’s what Socon or Bust has been saying for quite some time. Somebody please send the memo to the Canadian clergy.

Priests must not preach “Christianity ‘a la carte’” and should be willing to approach even uncomfortable aspects of the Gospel, Pope Benedict said in a meeting with priests this week.

(…)

The Pope also called on priests today not to shrink from proclaiming “the entire plan of God.”

“This is important,” said the Pope. “The Apostle does not preach Christianity ‘a la carte,’ according to his own tastes, he does not preach a Gospel according to his own preferred theological ideas; he does not take away from the commitment to announce the entire will of God, even when uncomfortable, nor the themes he may least like personally. (Source)

Pro-choicers are starting a feud among themselves.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the largest abortion provider in the United Kingdom, has “excommunicated” U.S. abortion philosopher Frances Kissling from the abortion movement, calling her a “former pro-choice advocate” because she is not defending a woman’s “right to choose” abortion from conception all the way to birth. (Source)

What is Kissling’s horrible crime, you ask? She wrote the following in a Washington Post column:

“We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at six weeks… We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in the most extreme cases.”

Sounds reasonable to me. But Furedi is a hardliner. Here’s what she thinks:

“Personally, I believe early and late abortions carry the same moral burden because I believe that all abortions end a potential human life. And further to that, I believe that the moral responsibility of decision-making, whatever the gestation, should rest with women and their doctors, because they most understand their circumstances and the results of their actions,” she said. “Others, Kissling and Saletan among them, seem to believe that early abortion is okay but late abortion is not because the early embryo is less of a human.”

Even though Kissling is the more moderate of the two, I think Furedi is more honest with herself when she says that “early and late abortions carry the same moral burden.” That’s what pro-lifers have been saying. Her mistake is to consider both early and late abortions to be acceptable because they only kill a “potential human life” rather than an actual one.

The feud doesn’t surprise me. As I’ve said before, people who are profoundly pro-choice are not to be trusted:

You see, anybody who consciously supports the killing of unborn babies and sick people to avoid inconvenience is not likely to be your strongest ally when things start going south for you. Their mentality is infected with a distorted individualism and utilitarianism that would go so far as to take an innocent life — even their own flesh and blood — to spare themselves sacrifice.  Don’t tell me that this mentality doesn’t manifest itself in other aspects of their lives.  So should we really be surprised that they turn on a friend?  Could you ever really trust them? (Source)

	17 Mar	17:18:06	IE 8.0	WinXP	1280×1024		Washington, District Of Columbia, United States	Executive Office Of The President Usa (198.137.241.3) [Label IP Address] Socon or Bust » Social Conservativism
	17 Mar	17:18:04	IE 8.0	WinXP	1280×1024		Washington, District Of Columbia, United States	Executive Office Of The President Usa (198.137.241.3) [Label IP Address] Socon or Bust » Blog Archive » Biography, John Pacheco www.socon.ca/?cat=11
	17 Mar	17:18:02	IE 8.0	WinXP	1280×1024		Washington, District Of Columbia, United States	Executive Office Of The President Usa (198.137.241.3) [Label IP Address] Socon or Bust » Social Conservativism

I hope he learned something.

This is so absurd. What’s the point of calling it “communion” if it doesn’t reflect a communion of faith among those who receive?

Yet, if you can give it to a dog, why not to unbaptized humans? I don’t suppose the dog was baptized?

The Anglican Church in Canada is flooring the accelerator as they approach the cliff. They haven’t understood that when you try so hard to be inclusive, to the point of compromising on almost everything you supposedly stand for, you end up standing for virtually nothing and become irrelevant. That’s why they’re disappearing.

In an interview, Rev. Nicolosi noted the Church is losing 13,000 members a year and that those who remain now have an average age of 60. He estimates that just 500,000 Anglicans are left in Canada, down from 1.3 million only a few decades ago.

At that rate, there will be none left in Canada in 38 years. Personally, I don’t think they’ll last that long.

The recent disaster in Japan has caused a lot of people to start talking about God again.  And many of the conversationalists are agnostics and atheists.  Apparently, God has become a source of conversation again now that natural disasters are back in the news.  It’s amusing, really, that our Godless friends somehow don’t see the need to bring up God in the good times, but have a healthy contempt and scorn for Him whenever bad things happen.  How can there be a “good” God when evil things happen like Genocide or Natural Disasters?  The answer, of course, is the same for both tragedies. 

Sin.

Read the rest of this entry »

First the Glics.

Now the Lutherans.

I always had a disdain for the modern approach to “ecumenical dialogue”.  In many respects, it was dishonest and goofy.

Good to see REAL unity – that is, Christians being united with the Pope – is starting to gain some traction.

One more example that the liberals are losing ground fast.

Here.

Fr. Rosica’s recent intervention with regard to thet Fr. Gravel lawsuit against LifeSiteNews and Campagne Québec-Vie is not surprising. It fits perfectly with his pattern displayed during the Development and Peace scandal and the Kennedy funeral fiasco. There at least two commonalities:

1. In all cases, Fr. Rosica has sought to deny anybody the right to criticize obstinate dissenters, especially clergymen, even when they commit huge and deliberate scandals in public. Of course, he reserves himself the right to criticize the people to whom he has denied the right of criticism.
2. Fr. Rosica chooses to excuse other people’s obstinate and unrepented sins by focusing exclusively on their better qualities.

Let look at each case briefly: Read the rest of this entry »

Another campus victory! We’re slowly gaining ground. Soon, they’ll be no stopping us.

The Catholic school board in Toronto is working on a new policy that doesn’t smell good. It’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions. Stay tuned.

The Holy Spirit is stirring in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East. Could the recent uprisings in this region also be part of His plan?

LifeSiteNews wrote a well-balanced piece here. Here’s a key excerpt:

But what becomes increasingly obvious as the article progresses, is that Fr. Rosica clearly believes that one of his “extremes” is rather more extreme than the other. While he carefully distances himself from Fr. Gravel’s more unorthodox positions, he urges us to remember that Fr. Gravel “remains a human being, and a Roman Catholic priest who has helped many people with their personal difficulties and crises,” and says that Gravel has “brought people to Christ” and even discouraged some women from obtaining abortions.

It is in good keeping with Christian charity to seek out and to emphasize the legitimate good that others, including our opponents, may have performed. But how strange it is that the Salt & Light CEO reserves no such kind words for LSN. Surely it is a curious form of “civility” that would rather take the side of one of Canada’s most prominent self-professed “pro-choice” priests in a potentially crippling lawsuit against a pro-life, pro-family news service that has done nothing but report what that priest has said and done during his highly public career.