God Is Good Flash Mob – Vancouver, Canada from yabbadabbadoo on GodTube.

Ancient Path Seminar Coming To Ottawa.  Apr.19-21, St. Ignatius Church. Contact Edna for more details.

Life has a uncanny knack to implement poetic justice. It must be Divine Providence at work.

The Development and Peace fiasco has been boiling for three years now. Think about it: the bishops had three long years to fix the problems. Plenty of time. But they didn’t. Now they have to manage a crisis because the government cut their funding.

So as the bishops express their disappointment and wring their hands about the lost money, they have only themselves to blame. Can’t say they weren’t warned. Read the rest of this entry »

Good ol’ time religion.  Scapular.

Repost from April, 2010:

Many Catholics have been rightly shaken by the allegations about the Pope and his handling of the child sexual abuse.   Contrary to media reports, however, the actual facts of the cases that have been dug up to smear the Holy Father have only showed how courageously and efficiently he has acted throughout the whole sordid affair.  The latest attack from the Associated Press is also laden with amateur errors and blunders.  In fact, it shows a frightening hatred for the Pope that seasoned journalists would distort, manipulate, and ignore basic rules of journalism to smear the Pope and stop his house-cleaning of the Catholic Church.  As the Catholic League has pointed out in a recent ad in the New York Times:  it’s not about “the children”; it’s all about the moral teachings of the Catholic Church and how the sexual voyeurism is going to take a major hit under Benedict’s watch.

But what about the substance of the question regarding child sexual abuse? How did it happen?  Some people say it’s celibacy. But that doesn’t explain why child sexual abuse is exponentially much higher outside of the Catholic Church, does it?  No, it does not.

So what is the cause of this plague that has attacked the Church and Society these past forty years?  Well, it’s actually not that complicated at all, but it does require some explanation. 

The problem is rooted in the understanding of sex. When sex is a sacrifice and it has meaning for a culture, there is very little abuse of it.  This is because it retains its nobility and purpose, as well as its mystery and transcendence.  Sex is supposed to be a language of love, but our current culture has made it a language of war. 

Today, sex is also rather meaningless. Because of contraception, sex has been stripped of its natural connection to procreation. So it’s no longer about sacrifice. It’s about entertainment.  For a large portion of society, it’s about orgasm only. That’s why the West’s birth rates are suicidal and why it is on the edge of demographic collapse.  Sex was also once considered a remote participation in the economy of God.  But today, we’re into sexual idolatry instead.

Let me repeat:  Sex is predominantly understood today as entertainment.  And if it’s about entertainment, then it cannot really be that meaningful.  If it’s just a “little fun”; if it’s just “casual”; if it’s really not “all that serious”; if it truly is about entertainment, then what can be wrong with a little bit of sexual voyeurism? And where do you suppose this voyeurism will lead, if not to children?  After all, entertainment is not serious. Entertainment doesn’t harm anyone, does it?  Remember, folks, there is little meaning to sex in our age.  And if there is little meaning to it, then why are so many people upset that children are being asked to engage in the entertainment?  If sex is not serious, then why is its abuse being taken so seriously?

Clearing Benedict’s Good Name: The New York Times Must Retract Its False Reporting — SIGN THE DEMAND FOR RETRACTION

The New York Times does respond to pressure. It happened before. It can happen again.  This is not a lost cause. Keep praying. Keep up the pressure. Don’t take your eye off the ball!

INDEX PAGE

We must never lose sight that Jesus’ death on the cross was for each one of us personally. We need to see His sacrifice, not only for all of humanity for all time, but for each one of us, individually and exclusively (if that were possible).  We must view it as if He died for each one us, even if each one of us was the only human person ever to live. 

Tell me, what would you do, if someone gave his life freely for  you?  Would you not feel indebted?

In the coming years, you will see the Catholic Church being the only “denomination” still standing.  All the other Christian denominations of any substance and size will be blown away like dust.  And then, shortly after that, it will be One Church vs. the Leviathan. One battle. Winner takes all.

And the great thing is…we know who wins.  The good Book tells us so.

A distinction must be made among sinners: some are secret; others are notorious, either from evidence of the fact, as public usurers, or public robbers, or from being denounced as evil men by some ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Therefore Holy Communion ought not to be given to open sinners when they ask for it. Hence Cyprian writes to someone (Ep. lxi): “You were so kind as to consider that I ought to be consulted regarding actors, [and] that magician who continues to practice his disgraceful arts among you; as to whether I thought that Holy Communion ought to be given to such with the other Christians. I think that it is beseeming neither the Divine majesty, nor Christian discipline, for the Church’s modesty and honor to be defiled by such shameful and infamous contagion.”

But if they be not open sinners, but occult, the Holy Communion should not be denied them if they ask for it. For since every Christian, from the fact that he is baptized, is admitted to the Lord’s table, he may not be robbed of his right, except from some open cause. Hence on 1 Corinthians 5:11, “If he who is called a brother among you,” etc., Augustine’s gloss remarks: “We cannot inhibit any person from Communion, except he has openly confessed, or has been named and convicted by some ecclesiastical or lay tribunal.” Nevertheless a priest who has knowledge of the crime can privately warn the secret sinner, or warn all openly in public, from approaching the Lord’s table, until they have repented of their sins and have been reconciled to the Church; because after repentance and reconciliation, Communion must not be refused even to public sinners, especially in the hour of death. Hence in the (3rd) Council of Carthage (Can. xxxv) we read: “Reconciliation is not to be denied to stage-players or actors, or others of the sort, or to apostates, after their conversion to God.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

H/T Big Blue Wave

Jesus never had a very good opinion of most lawyers because they had a narrow view of the law and thought it was the beginning and the end of all that mattered.  He frequently went BEYOND and OUTSIDE of the law in His teachings to the heart of what God really wanted.

Canon law is not the Gospel.  Many elements of it are subject to the culture in which we live and can (and should) be changed.  Canon lawyers like Ed Peters need to start to recognize this fact and stop treating Canon Law like the Gospel.  In the case of the Lesbian Buddhist, it’s not Fr. Guarnizo that has to change, it’s Canon Law and therefore Ed Peters.

At the rally, Father Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press told the crowd that when Obama was elected, “some people thought they were voting for a Messiah.” ”Last month, he performed a true miracle,” Fessio said. “He united all of the Catholic bishops in the U.S.”

Badaboo-badabing!

Brian Lilley exposes Development & Peace’s blather!  Lilley really nails it at the 4:00 minute mark when he cites a Canadian bishop who told him: 

“I’m worried that they’re funding…Left Wing activists in Montreal to go overseas to fund Left Wing activists in other countries.” 

That’s a bishop saying that!  This is very hopeful. Keep fighting everyone. We’re winning!

Even if you don’t agree with the mountain of evidence showing that D&P is funding groups that oppose Church teaching – or if you simply don’t think it matters - there are still other major issues that would require any rational donor to think twice about donating. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test. Read the rest of this entry »

“The CCCB is extremely disappointed with this decision which will greatly curtail CCODP’s good work.”

Good work? Please…let’s get serious.  Development & Peace tolerates and enables the most heinous destruction of human life and the eradication of the family, and you have the audacity to call their work “good”?

Stop enabling abortion pimps.  That’s not good work.

“…Bishop Henry has in the past maintained that it is acceptable for D&P to fund projects run by “pro-choice” groups….“CCODP is not supporting abortion but a project to help the poor and their partners also happen to [be] pro-choice,” the bishop wrote in an e-mail to concerned pro-lifers in 2009. “There is an important difference between the two….Lifesite’s position seems to suggest that before we cooperate with anyone or any organization in supporting a good action, our opening question must be: ‘What is your stance on abortion?’ and that as the litmus test should override everything else. I don’t think that this would be the starting point of Jesus.”..(Source)

The problem here is that + Fred is a supporter of the Winnipeg Statement, sadly.  It explains why he takes this approach.  And that’s why he and the rest of the proportionalists in the Episcopacy really do need our fervent prayers.

I have a question: Would Bishop Henry or any Catholic Bishop be caught dead supporting any organization that advocated for child porn? Human trafficking? or Denial of global warming?

No, you say?

What?…No cumbaya dance with the modern day slave owners? No understanding for these poor dears?  Did I mention that they do other good work?  Isn’t that enough?  It’s all about proportions, right?  Why be so hung up on kiddie diddlers, for an act which is essentially about entertainment and pleasure? Why such a draconian litmus test?

/sarcasm

Well, folks….there you have your answer about how serious Bishop Henry and the Catholic bishops are about abortion.  When they start to associate abortion with real crimes (like they should), then that will be the moment that their funding of these pro-abort groups will end. But not a minute sooner.

…Therefore, we who have been blessed by God with the gift of the Catholic Faith can have no doubt about the immorality of artificial contraception. The Catholic Church clearly teaches that the use of artificial contraception in all its forms, including direct sterilization, is gravely immoral, is intrinsically evil, is contrary to the law of nature and nature’s God. This is and always has been the uninterrupted teaching of the Catholic Church from the beginning. The ban on contraception is not a disciplinary law of the Church, like abstinence on Friday which the Church can enact and which the Church can change and from which the Church can dispense for good reasons. Rather, it is a Divine Law which the Church cannot change any more than it can change the law of God forbidding murder. Artificial contraception is wrong, not because the Church says it is wrong (It was wrong before Christ established the Church); it is wrong because God Himself, through the revelation of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ has declared it to be wrong. Because artificial contraception is intrinsically evil, it may never be practiced for any reason, no matter how good and urgent. A good end never justifies the use of an evil means.

The ban on contraception is not a disciplinary law of the Church, like abstinence on Friday which the Church can enact and which the Church can change and from which the Church can dispense for good reasons. Rather, it is a Divine Law which the Church cannot change any more than it can change the law of God forbidding murder. Artificial contraception is wrong, not because the Church says it is wrong (It was wrong before Christ established the Church); it is wrong because God Himself, through the revelation of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ has declared it to be wrong. Because artificial contraception is intrinsically evil, it may never be practiced for any reason, no matter how good and urgent. A good end never justifies the use of an evil means….

+GIennon P. Flavin
Bishop of Lincoln Nebraska

October 11,1991

Source

As already reported, Papa Benedict and Cardinal Ouellet have done the Church a great service by elevating a faithful priest to the rank of Archbishop of Montreal.

There’s a double blessing at work here. Not only will Canada’s second largest diocese be led by a man entirely in line with Church teaching, but his nomination further confirms that the criteria for selecting bishops have radically changed. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this follow-up article over at Embassy magazine.  It gives us the official skinny on why Development & Peace got their funding cut. Read the rest of this entry »

In February 2011, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Gerald Lacroix the new archbishop of Quebec City, succeeding Ouellet. Lacroix had only been an auxiliary bishop of Quebec City for less than two years.
• In July 2011, Thomas Dowd was announced as an auxiliary bishop of Montreal, to be ordained at the same time as Lépine. Dowd was 40 at the time — an almost unprecedented age to be made a bishop in Canada.
• In October 2011, Bishop Paul-André Durocher of Cornwall, Ont., was appointed archbishop of Gatineau. Originally from Timmins, the Holy See reached outside the circle of the Quebec clergy to appoint an Ontario francophone to a Quebec archbishopric.
• Last month, Bishop Paul Lortie was named bishop of Mont-Laurier. He had previously been an auxiliary bishop of Quebec City, ordained by Ouellet himself less than three years ago.
• Also last month, the Holy See reached outside Quebec for a second time, appointing Bishop Luc Bouchard as chief shepherd of Trois-Rivieres. A priest of Cornwall, he had been bishop of St. Paul in Alberta for 10 years.

Young bishops, novice bishops, bishops from outside of Quebec — all this is a significant departure from the norm. Ouellet evidently decided that the norm in Quebec needed changing, and so has advised the Holy Father to change it — emphatically. (Source)

Fr. Raymond is trying to reassure the Faithful, “Hold on, boys, for just a little bit longer.  The Calvary – she’s ‘a comin’.”

I’ve got a big grin on my face right now.  I feel like that guy from the old Ever-Ready Battery commercial.

Catholic Chaplain pulling no punches.  In future, I don’t see him or any faithful Catholic priest being invited to Government prayer functions.

And frankly, that’s the way it should be in this culture of death.

We’re not your religious lap-dogs, mouthing feel-good, cumbaya platitudes.  We’re here to deliver the straight goods.

…The Habsburg Empire for which Grandpa Santorum fought is dust, and, according to the Vienna Institute of Demography, by mid-century a majority of Austrians under the age of 15 will be Muslim. As I wrote here last year: Salzburg, 1938 — singing nuns, Julie Andrews, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Salzburg 2038 — How do you solve a problem like sharia?

…

Our fiscal crisis is not some unfortunate bookkeeping accident that a bit of recalibration by a savvy technocrat can fix. In the United States as in Greece, it is a reflection of the character of a people. The problem isn’t that Rick Santorum’s weird, but that a government of record-breaking brokeness already busting through its newest debt-ceiling increase even as it announces bazillions in new spending is entirely normal. (Source)

Exactly.  What’s fair is foul and what’s foul is fair.

H/T Concerned for Life

Movie site here:

http://www.octoberbabymovie.net/

If you’ve had an abortion, please know that there is mercy and forgiveness for you.

On this side of the aisle, know that we love you. Come over. We’re waiting for you.