I lurk over at Fisheaters every now and then. The poster there named "The Harlequin King" made a point the other day on a topic that has long been a cause of my own, namely, the restoration of the minor orders.
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I lurk over at Fisheaters every now and then. The poster there named "The Harlequin King" made a point the other day on a topic that has long been a cause of my own, namely, the restoration of the minor orders.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Holy Innocents, pray for us.
Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix has revoked a hospital's designation as "Catholic." That takes guts. You might have heard a while back about how he excommed the nun who ok'd the abortion there. From the looks of things, the hospital didn't know when to quit.
Citing numerous and ongoing violations of Catholic teaching, including an instance of abortion, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix has declared that St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center can no longer call itself a Catholic institution.
The bishop announced his decision in a press conference at diocesan headquarters Dec. 21. It follows months of negotiations with officials for St. Joseph’s and its parent company, Catholic Healthcare West.
These talks, aimed in part at getting the hospital to admit its ethical wrongdoing in performing the abortion, reached an impasse last month. The bishop had given officials a Dec. 17 deadline to reach an understanding. When that date passed, he extended the deadline to Dec. 21
From what we've seen, the hospital attempted to find a theologian who would back the legitimacy of the infanticide that took place. This was the standard practice of many modern whackjobs who figure they can make up their own magisterium by finding enough people to agree with them. Bishop Olmsted's response was entirely appropriate:
In a letter he wrote this past November that was leaked to the press on Dec. 15, Bishop Olmstead voiced frustration with the hospital’s continued justification of the abortion and its refusal to cooperate with him.
“In effect, you would have me believe that we will merely have to agree to disagree,” he told Catholic Health Care West president Lloyd Dean. “But this resolution is unacceptable, because it disregards my authority and responsibility to interpret the moral law and to teach the Catholic faith as a successor of the Apostles.”
The bishop had been insisting that St. Joseph’s admit to its ethics violation, commit to avoiding abortion under all circumstances, and retrain staff members through an institution of his choosing.
Ultimately, the negotiations failed and Bishop Olmstead said he had concluded that St. Joseph “is not committed to following the teaching of the Catholic Church [and] therefore, this hospital cannot be considered Catholic.”
This is a remarkable show of courage, and Bishop Olmsted will no doubt suffer for it. The social justice types will come out of the woodwork to condemn him. He will likely be cast as a misogynist. All the cries of "patriarchal" and so forth will be raised from all the usual suspects (or whores, in the case of dissident theologians). Of course, you'll also hear crap about the sexual abuse scandals, as though that has anything to do with this case or with Bishop Olmsted.
I think it would be a mistake to view this incident in isolation from the broader American Catholicism, though. This is a very public step by a bishop in putting his foot down against the crypt0 (and not so crypto) heretics that have infected the Mystical Body of Christ. Imagine what could happen if others are heartened by this and follow his example. It doesn't have to stop at Catholic hospitals. Why not Catholic schools and universities as well? Why not in parish catechetical and liturgical life? Maybe this will show bishops they can't be so afraid that they fail to do their jobs.
Anyways, one would think that the opposing party here would understand their position, as well as the authority of His Excellency over that position. Alas, no:
In a statement, St. Joseph’s president Linda Hunt said the hospital was “deeply disappointed” by the bishop’s actions. She again justified the abortion and said the hospital “will continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus."
Ah. I get it. We can carry out the healing ministry of Jesus by murdering kids then nursing our pride so that we can refuse to admit our wrong-doing and openly defy a Successor to the Apostles. Yeah, that makes sense.
This whole statement from the hospital can be translated in two words: Non serviam.
Thanks to Haskovec for sending this in from the Dallas Morning News report on Our Lady of Gaudalupe:
On Saturday and Sunday through cycles of Masses, hundreds of people brought roses – in hues of crimson, coral and cream. The offerings to the Virgin of Guadalupe kept church volunteers busy, as they trimmed stems and placed the flowers in rectangular vases.
The sweet scent filled the altar around Alma Rosales, who lifted flowers from plastic wrap. "It is so beautiful, and, every year, I come to help," she whispered.
Saturday night, so many flocked to the Ross Avenue cathedral that police closed off a portion of the street before 8 p.m. Crowds waited for midnight Mass to be recited by Bishop Kevin J. Farrell.
Not bad. While I don't sanction illegal immigration, I do wonder from time to time how much of the political uproar on the topic is attributable to the fact that most of these immigrants are Catholic. It's not like such a thing is unheard of:
I'm still looking for details on this, but apparently, the Belgium Court of Appeals has ruled that unborn children may, in some cases, have a right to be killed. How they can have this right, while lacking the right to live, is a mystery.
Per Zenit:
Abortion advocates have long argued for a woman's right to control her body and to be able to dispose of the unborn child if she wishes. In a bizarre decision, a Belgian court has extended that reasoning to say that a child has a right to be aborted.
A Belgian journal, "Revue Générale des Assurances et Responsabilités," has just published the decision handed down by the Brussels Court of Appeal on Sept. 21 regarding the case of a child born disabled after an erroneous prenatal diagnosis, according to the Gènéthique press review for Nov. 29-Dec. 3.
The court ruled that the child's parents could claim damages from the doctors who failed to detect the disability. They said that by making therapeutic abortion legal, the legislators intended to allow women to avoid giving birth to seriously handicapped children, "having regard not only to the interests of the mother, but also to those of the unborn child itself."
Thus, the judges considered that the child would have had the "right" to an abortion if his disability had been correctly diagnosed.
The report on the decision did not explain how the court could consider an unborn child to be able to be the subject of rights, and why that right was only one to be killed and not to live.
This is a remarkable step for the culture of death. To come right now and say what we've suspected all along, namely, that death is the ultimate marker of identity and liberty in a manner in direct opposition to basic logic is huge. Grossly evil, as well, but still huge.
New report shows prime-time TV trend of sexualizing underage girls
No freaking way! Has someone called the White House about this? Somebody get the Congressional Committees set up! Notify the UN!
A new study showing that teen girls are depicted sexually on prime-time TV more than adults has critics condemning the trend as a sinister fixation on underage young women...
While only 29 percent of adult characters were viewed in sexual incidents in these shows, 47 percent of the characters involved were underage females. Of the young girls that were depicted sexually, only five percent communicated any dislike or opposition to the situations they were in. Additionally, a whopping 98 percent of the time, sexual encounters involving the girls were shown as taking place outside of any form of a committed relationship.
I'm guessing this was probably true (sans any homosexual encounters involved) 10 years ago. Why it's being promoted as news now is a bit of a mystery, but it's been on Fox and ABC at least. I haven't seen much from anyone yet as to what the response to this as to why such treatment of girls is ok. Given how obvious it is, I'm not sure that we'll see one. Most of the world's problems are way out in the open. People know they exist. They just aren't all that interested in solving them.
I'm not sure if any of you watch the NBC program "Community." If you don't, you really should. It's one of the most consistently funny shows I've seen in a very long time. The Community Christmas special was a spoof of past stop-motion animated items. It was very well done, but it also had, in my opinion, a very profound message that speaks to modernity's abuse of Christmas and anything else that's sacred.
The whole point of this episode was that one of the characters, Abed, was attempting to discover the true meaning of Christmas. Yes, it is trite and cliche, that's the point. I'm not going to spoil things, so I'll skip to the chase. When Abed receives his epiphany, it is in the form of the following:
"I get it. The meaning of Christmas is . . . the idea that Christmas has meaning, and it can mean whatever we want."
This was sort of alluded to in the Glee Christmas special (yes, I know I watch too much TV), when every 4th line was "Christmas is about forgiveness/being thankful/spending time with friends/whatever." It's also alluded to in every other secularized bit of holiday claptrap.
What we have these days is a situation where the essence of things, what they really are, no longer matter. Our exaltation of ourselves and the attending elevation of our subjective opinions to the level of universal truths makes it really easy to just ramble off that kind of nonsense without even thinking about whether or not we might be wrong.
Sure, I suppose that life can be a whole lot easier when we just define things how we want and ignore reality. It leaves said life a bit vapid and empty, though, not to mention destructive to the soul and intellect. It reminds me of the exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
The weird part is that folks will laugh about this dialogue and acknowledge how ridiculous it is. Then they'll turn around and do the exact same thing whether it's with Christmas or even God Himself.
Kudos to shows like Community for demonstrating this absurdity to a contemporary audience. You can watch the episode for free on Hulu.
Iraqi Christians are beginning to understand that help isn't coming.
With Christmas fast approaching, Iraqi Christians are coming to the hard realization that there may be a day when there are no more Christians left in their homeland.
“Christians are being extinguished in Iraq, while Iraq remains Muslim,” said Father Georges Jahola, a Syro-Catholic priest from Mosul, Iraq currently studying in Rome.
Those who remain want to leave because they do not feel safe, he said. “They see that there is no longer a place for Christians in Iraq. Even for us as a Church, we cannot deny it.”
It's a wacky thing. The blood of the martyrs is seed. We know this. We also know that, at some point, things will cease to get better. We also know the modern track record for Islam is to exterminate or dhimmify everyone, without leaving anywhere for seed or anything else to grow. Just ask Lebanon. It remains staggering, though, that the birthplace of Christianity is to be without Christians.
It's also amazing that the world can find time to be outraged at threats to burn the Koran whilst carrying what appears to be a complete lack of concern for the current religious persecution against Christians, not just in the Middle East, but worldwide.
Fr. Jahola said that since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, every effort to protect Christians has failed. He criticized the walled compounds erected by the Iraqi government around church buildings as a sign of the government’s “incapacity” to keep the situation under control.
Meanwhile, the “decimation” of Christians continues, Fr. Jahola said. Their numbers have been more than cut in half from a population that 10 years ago was estimated around 1.5 million.
“It is alarming, that an ethnic people — a people who speak the ancient Aramaic language and have Christian roots — is being made extinct in the world. And no one intervenes,” he said.
And why is this the case? Why is there such concerted internation apathy?
To be continued...
Does this phrase strike you as the sort of thing that one says lightly? Considering that Mao's murderous reign wiped out far more people than Hitler even imagined to kill in the Holocaust, I would think anybody invoking the Chairman's spectre would do so with a fair amount of seriousness.
I had thought about this while writing the Russ Ford post from a few weeks back. Please read it in its entirety. It seemed a fitting story for today.
Do you agree with the following statement?
And if you don't know why he's a saint worth celebrating, re-visit our post here for a friendly reminder.
The NYT article is Catholics in Belgium Start Parishes of Their Own. It's good reading if you've swallowed poison and are in dire need of emesis. If you'd like to examine the mind of the enemy, though, check it out. It is a startling look into the willingness of people to displace God in favor of self-worship.
Here's another one of those stories bigger than the condom issue. The Chinese government conducting illicit consecrations of bishops. Religious freedom being such a buzz-phrase, I'm surprised there hasn't been a bit more concern over this. National churches are very much despised in America, and given the usual story told about our roots that's understandable (sort of, in that people know the story and not so much the facts). Here's Zenit with the story:
This one is from the Foxmanites who, despite the mountains of evidence from Jews and Gentiles alike, are absolutely obsessed with smearing the name of the Venerable Pope Pius XII.
We've spoken a bit about the non-Catholic "observers" who were invited to the Council. As you read through the ongoing (really, it is) series about Vatican II, I pull a lot from Robert McAffee Brown, who was one of those very guys.
The press is far too worried about trying to change Catholic teaching to talk about it, but you can see a few other quotes from Pope Benedict's interview with Seewald over at The Tablet.
Apparently, they were surprised when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected.
A. The continued dissolution of the Anglican Communion (Catholic ordinariate set up in January, five bishops converting already, current Anglican synod, etc.).
B. A comment made by the Pope about condoms.
C. Asia Bibi's death sentence in Pakistan for alleged blasphemy against Muhammed.
D. The continued wholesale liquidation of Christianity in the Middle East.
E. The persecution and murder of Christians in India.
F. The Dalai Lama's decision to abdicate his role as head of Tibet's government in exile.
Nobody saw that coming.
We've already reported on the five Anglican bishops who have announced their intentions to swim the Tiber. Well, we've got a few updates on the whole situation across the pond, and I figured what better day to post some of this than a day about English religious cast-offs overcoming barrenness and starvation for prosperity and bounty thanks to support from a group not their own.
Thanks to the Sanctus blog for pointing out this ditty from the Catholic World Report.
Not a whole lot if anybody really bothered to look at it. In an earlier post, I had referenced Bishop Vasa's comments on this topic as mirroring Bishop Martino's opinion that was expressed back during the presidential campaign.
Let's go ahead and get this out of the way now.
Remember that old song by The Scorpions? It was about the Fall of Communism in East Germany. That's not what this post is about.
I doubt anybody here has heard of him. He's currently serving a 25-year sentence in an Alabama penitentiary. I found out about him through dumb luck.