So, it’s been over three years now since the Development & Peace scandal broke.  If you missed it, you can catch my round-up here.  I’d like to say that I’m satisfied with the progress made thus far, but the hard realityis that the progress we’ve made has been either incidental or minor. 

Now it’s true that Development & Peace has suffered a huge setback with CIDA’s recent funding cut, and it’s true the Catholic blogosphere and LifeSite News might have had a small part to play in that.  And it’s also true that we’ve had a grudging admission of the problem.  I say “grudging” because, as Archbishop Richard Smith said, the problems are with a few groups.   (A few groups?  Over four dozen is a “few”, your Grace?).  We’ve also had more bureaucracy setup by the CCCB to handle the those pesky “inquiries” which Catholics may have about Development & Peace’s perpetual pro-abort partners. Read the rest of this entry »

…“I have to say to the bishops: ‘You’re not allowed to do that anymore,’” said Murray, an open homosexual who serves as McGuinty’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, according to the Hansard transcript.  I’m not allowed to say to the Catholics—nor should I—or to other Christians or Muslims or Jews, that because of your faith you’re intrinsically disordered,” he continued.  “I would never say to you that anything that goes on in your family with the person you love—can you imagine me describing a husband-and-wife relationship as inherently depraved?” he added….(Source)

You’ve got that wrong, Mr. Murray. You can tell us that we’re intrinsically disordered.  You have that right as a free citizen. 

You just won’t because it might cost you, politically.

So you do the next best thing:  since you won’t tell us what you really think of us, you demand that we stop calling out your totalitarianism and a disordered condition which you are trying to shove down the throats of our children.

Dalton McGuinty, as far as I know, is still (officially) a Catholic in good standing.  He can receive Communion and call himself a Catholic with no opposition whatsoever from the Episcopacy in this Province.  It’s the infamous “pastoral” approach which the Bishops have adopted these past 40 years.   So, your Graces, how’s that workin’ for ya? 

This “Vatican II” approach to dealing with dissent and error has been a complete disaster.  We just keep retreating and retreating.  It’s like a train wreck you can see coming a mile away.  Underlying all this is an almost complete and total collapse of our doctrine of bishop as father.

This is a great rebuttal to Ed Peter and Fr. MacDonald.  It’s great to see Catholics rise to challenge the past 40 years of deadwood in the Church.  Those who are…too afraid to confront the culture…too afraid to rock the Chancery Boat….too afraid not to be company men…too afraid to call out the BS in the Catholic Church and in its hierarchy, frankly. Read the rest of this entry »

Any questions?

…which is a real basket case, by the way.

Not a big surprise, considering…

The Faithful should get another perspective from a canon lawyer on the Fr. Guanizo controversy.

Ed Peters has been getting just a bit too much attention.

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 »

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!

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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!

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 »

St. Paul public ethics student Vincent Boies said the free condoms will prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy.

“People should be taking bags of them,” he said.

The issue is also theological, he said. “Some priests are saying now the Catholic religion has to now have a revolution in two manners, to accept women to be priests and a sexual revolution. A lot of priests are more understanding than we may think at this school.” (Source)

Which kind of explains why we have the Episcopacy we have today.

….This latest episode isn’t even a close call. If Cardinal Wuerl doesn’t have the guts to deny Communion to an agitprop lesbian Buddhist, he should just close up shop and hand the keys to his chancery over to Obama….(Source)

Right on.

This poll is from the Wall Street Journal and NBC.

When asked whether employers overall should be required to offer free birth control, Journal/NBC poll respondents favored the rule by 53% to 33%. Approval was slightly higher among women, 58% to 28%.

But when asked whether the government should mandate that Roman Catholic and other religiously affiliated hospitals and colleges offer birth control paid for by the institutions’ insurance companies—as required by the rule—Americans were opposed by 45% to 38%. Women split evenly, with 40% in favor and 40% opposed.

…The betrayal of Father Guarnizo sends a chilling message to every priest in Washington: that if he is zealous in defending the Eucharist, he cannot count on support from the archdiocese. Since other radical activists will no doubt follow Barbara Johnson’s example, we can expect another test case soon. Let’s hope and pray that the next time, the archdiocese will show at least as much solicitude for the Eucharist (not to mention the accused priest) as for the critics of the Church….(Source)

Precisely.

From the New York Times, no less!

(CNSNews.com) – A significant majority – 57 percent — of Americans believe religiously-affiliated employers such as universities or hospitals should be able to opt out of the Obama administration’s mandate to cover the cost of contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization for female employees, according to aNew York Times/CBS News pollreleased Tuesday.

Fifty-one percent believe all employers should be able to opt out. (Source)

 

It is important for us right-wing Catholics to remember a few things in this fight.

1. Pray for Bishops -  That they repent and convert their hearts fully to defending and teaching the Catholic faith entrusted to them.   God has eternity to punish the unrepentant. That’s why He allows so much time for their repentance on this earth.  There was once an old saying that if you work for the Church, you’ll lose the Faith.  That was because you got to see all the garbage first hand. With the age of the internet, we all work for the Church.

Ed Peters, a canon lawyer, has been offering his views about the whole Fr. Guarnizo dustup.  Readers who are unfamiliar with the imbroglio can read about it here.  Basically, it’s about a priest who denied Communion to a Lesbian who had announced to him her active lesbianism (and introduced her “partner”) before Mass. 

In his judgement which you can read here, Ed thinks that the priest is in need of “correction”.  Did you get that?  The priest is in need of correction for not following the letter of the law.

Before making a few remarks on his assessment of this scandalous treatment of the Holy Eucharist, I would like to make this observation.  Read the rest of this entry »

Washington D.C., Mar 14, 2012 / 01:25 pm (CNA).- In an extensive statement provided to CNA, Father Marcel Guarnizo insists that the reasons the Archdiocese of Washington placed him on leave “have everything to do” with his recent decision to withhold communion from Barbara Johnson.

Fr. Guarnizo explains that he decided to issue the detailed March 14 statement because of the questions his parishioners and the public are asking about the recent incident.

His response, which is published below, offers corrections to previous news reports, responds to canonical arguments and gives information about where the allegations of intimidation came from.

Fr. Marcel Guarnizo’s Response to the Eucharistic Incident…

Read the rest of this entry »

Exactly:  “Now, the very concept of a benevolent church coexisting with a benevolent government — a concept their paralysis was designed to protect — is under attack, and they have no idea what to do about it. Is it any wonder why?”