Archbishop Samuel Aquila on Changing the Church

Raising Kaine on the Centrality of Faith in Public Life

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) was picked by Democrat Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (D-NY) partly because he could appeal to some progressive Catholics who are drawn to his social justice warrior background.


 During the campaign, Kaine has claimed that he was a Pope Francis Catholic. During the Vice Presidential debate, Senator Kaine tried to do the typical CINO (Catholic-In-Name-Only) two step in which he claims to personally be a practicing Catholic but does not impose his views on others.

Even though Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin is not a Jesuit, he applied an Ignatian principle of discernment to Senator Kaine's contention that faith is central to his life. 

Perhaps between campaign stops, it would be fruitful for Senator Kaine to read Bishop Tobin's books Effective Faith: Faith that Makes a Difference (2009) and Without a Doubt (2001) to discern how the faithful can effectively form minds, change hearts and enlighten the world in which we live.

Cardinal Robert Sarah on the Battle for the Soul of America

Shouting It Aloud: The 2016 National Day of Prayer

The theme for the 65th annual National Day of Prayer is Isaiah 58 - a call to prayer and fasting for our peoples' transgressions.

In a nation that not only continues to countenance Planned Parenthood kill unborning children but profiting from the sale of baby body parts, such a call is apt. To add injury to insult, some governments are prosecuting the whistle blowers in lieu of the abortionists who are engaged in prima facia illegal practices. 

The Supreme Court broke with 5,000 years of human civilization and legalized same sex so called marriage, but forced it upon all states with a dubious application of the 14th Amendment and a fuzzy "Right to Dignity".

And over the last year, progressive LGBTQQ? activists have been fighting to break down privacy barriers to allow people claiming gender dysphoria to use bathrooms opposite to their biological designation, which opens the door for perverts (non-transvestites citing gender fluidity) easy access to public facilities.  But if one points out that there are only two sexes (as shown through chromosomes), social justice warriors will unmercifully attack and isolate the individual not speaking the politically correct shibboleth.

Thus is seems apt to focus on asking the Lord for forgiveness and seeking to fast.

Alas, even fasting is a facet for this culture to mock.  Recently, Glenn Beck called for his audience to fast for America as it was on the precipice of choosing the major party candidates for press.  Yet even some right wing media outlets like Breitbart and the Drudge Report (both of which have been heavily skewed for supporting Donald Trump), found this clarion call a moment for mockery.

Some may cynically question if a call to prayer will matter. Bible believers should recall the walls came tumbling down in Jericho by those humbling themselves and following divine will.  Many attribute the stop of Islamic incursions into Europe during the 16th century in the Battle of Lepanto because of the call by Pope Pius V to pray the Rosary via the intervention of Our Lady of Victory (now called Our Lady of the Rosary).  The American Revolution was bolstered by the first Great Revival and the prayful action of the Black Robe Regiment.

The 2016 National Day of Prayer will have 47,000 separate events. This is the time to shout it out loud. 

Fr. Tom Reese on Same Sex Marriage

Archbishop Gustavo Rodriguez Vega on Same Sex Marriage

Traditional Marriage is under assault not only in the United States.  Recently, the Mexican Supreme Court has sought to impose Same Sex Marriage.  

Nuevo Lordeo Archbishop Gustavo Rodriguez Vega considered this court ruling a call for faithful Catholics to the ramparts.  This is in a country which fought La cristiada, a widespread rebellion against the secularist, anti-Catholic government of President Plutarco Elías Calle to enforce anti-clerical laws in the Mexican Constitution of 1917.  This struggle was depicted in "For Greater Glory" (2012) starring Andy Garcia. 

Sadly, the risk of martyrdom to defend one's Christian faith is no longer a far fetched prospect in America. 

Barry Lynn on Religious Liberty

Archpriest Victor Patapov on Same Sex Marriage

H/T: WND

Cardinal Donald Wuerl on Same Sex Marriage Ruling

Michael Voris on the Church Militant

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz on Marriage

Bishop Michael Jarrell on Marriage

 

 In reacting to the  Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) decision in which a 5 to 4 Supreme Court majority imposed same sex marriage throughout the United States, Bishop Michael Jarrell of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana gave forthright instructions to his faithful.

Bishop Jarrell enjoined his clergy from participation in same-sex "marriage" ceremonies, forbade the use of Catholic facilities or properties (e.g. churches, meeting halls, Catholic educational health or charitable institutions) from being used in a solemnization of same sex marriages.

 This decision comes down during the fourth Fortnight for Freedom, a 14 day campaign by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops to educate America about our fundamental first Constitutional right, the freedom of religion (not worship) and to defend religious liberty.

    

Alas, Catholics will need to take to heart the examples of St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher and the English Martyrs who suffered for adherence to their faith.

h/t: Church Militant

Pope Francis on Gender Theory

 Pope Francis has been expressing his faith based perspectives on Gender Theory and the basis of a covenantal sacramental marriage.

 



These pronouncements may cause a media metanoia tamping down euphoric expectations of alternative lifestyle advocates for the October 2015 Synod on the Family. Moreover, it would seem that The Advocate may rue naming Pope Francis the person of the year in 2013.

Archbishop Charles Chaput on the Meaning of Christianity and the Family

Even though Archbishop Charles Chaput was not a participant in the Extraordinary Synod on the Family at the Vatican, the Archbishop of Philadelphia certainly had some strong opinions about the Synod.  After delivering a lecture titled  "Strangers in a Strange Land" at a First Things symposium in Manhattan, Archbishop Chaput was asked the Extraordinary Synod.

Archbishop Chaput opined:  “I was very disturbed by what happened [at the synod]. I think confusion is of the devil, and I think the public image that came across was one of confusion".   The National Catholic Reporter mocked Chaput's confusion and denied that there was disunity at the Synod.  But the NRC's denials are about as credible as endangered Democrat Senators denying their support of President Obama.  

Archbishop Chaput was not adverse to the vigorous discussion on difficult issues for families on communion for divorced and remarried Catholics and how to treat same sex marriage.  In fact, Cardinal Chaput mused: “We also need to thank God for the gift of this present, difficult moment,because conflict always does two things: It purifies the church, and it clarifies the character of the enemies who hate her."

The Archbishop of Philadelphia has been a strong voice in support traditional marriage.  Archbishop Chaput felt that the original midterm relatio caused confusion within the Church and among the secular media.  Chaput felt that the final synod report was an improvement but still did not clearly restate Church teaching on marriage and homosexuality.This theological viewpoint was supported by Cardinal Burke and the vast majority of Synod Fathers, who insisted on correcting the skewed relatio.

Archbishop is expected to host Pope Francis when he visits Philadelphia in September 2015 for the global World Meeting of Families.  The Catechesis for the World Meeting of Families thesis is "Love is the mission" for families, but that  the power of procreation in a sacramentally committed husband and wife shares in the dignity of being created in the image of God so we need to live accordingly, And that marriage is a sacrament in which love is fruitful and offered without reservation that is the image of Jesus' faithfulness to the Church.

This World Meeting of Families catechesis mirrors why Archbishop Chaput rejected some of the interpolated accommodations in the relatio which created such confusion. 

h/t:  Religious News Service 

Cardinal Schoenborn on the Nature of Same Sex Relationships

Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George on a Civil Creed

Vicky Gene Robinson Splits Again-- Amicably

Vicky "Gene" Robinson, the retired Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, has created controversy again by splitting from his current "spouse".

Robinson married his Isabella "Boo" Martin  in 1972 when he was a seminarian chaplain at the University of Vermont before he was ordained.  Isabella bore him two daughters.  As Gene Robinson mused about marriage:

"[T]hat is inextricably tied up with having children. And since I cannot imagine my life without Jamee and Ella, it's just a completely irrelevant question for me. And I don't regret having been married to Boo, either, even if there had not been children. It's just a part of my journey, and why would I possibly regret that?"

However after receiving counseling in 1985, Robinson came in touch with his homosexual identity. So then Vicky Gene he dumped his wife of 13 years literally before the altar, while promising to raise their daughters together. Robinson rationalized with Isabella: [I]n order to live up to our vow to honor one another in the name of God, that we would let each other go."

Robinson had been elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.   He was the first openly gay priest who was consecrated bishop (although Bishop Otis Charles of Utah divorced his wife in 1993 after he retired to "marry" his homosexual partner in California, who he survived).

Robinson became a cause celebre in the LGBTQQ community and wrote a couple of books, an autobiography "The Eye of the Storm" (2008) and "God Believes in Love: Straight Talk about Gay Marriage" (2012).  Robinson was prominently featured in the Sundance festival film "For the Bible Tells Me So" (2007) on the perceived conflict between homosexuality and Christianity.  Moreover, a documentary "Love Free or Die", chronicled Robinson's  conflict to love God and his partner Mark Andrew.



Mark Andrew, Robinson's new love interest came on the scene in 1987 while vacationing in St. Croix.
In 1988, the former bishop of New Hampshire Douglas Theuner blessed their home, which Robinson considered a license by the Episcopal Church as a formal recognition of their "life together".  Andrews and Robinson "lived in sin" for 13 years.  Robinson said: "I always wanted to be a June bride", so Andrews and Robinson tied the knot in a civil ceremony on June 7, 2008 and  and having their "legal union" blessed at a religious ceremony at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Concord, New Hampshire.

Alas, honoring one's wife by divorcing her, shacking up with another guy as bishop and then becoming a June bride while deeply dividing the Anglican Communion is not the end of the  New Age fairy-book tale of faithfully following one's heart. Now retired Bishop  Gene Robinson announced that he is divorcing his partner of 25 years Mark Andrew.  Once again, Robinson has nothing but nice things to say about the spouse whom he is jilting.  In addition, Robinson has the temerity to claim: "Love can endure, even if the marriage cannot."  What poppycock!

Before Robinson retired in 2012, he complained about then intense scrutiny that he has endured. OK he walked away from his wife, shacked up with another guy for 25 years, was elected bishop, regaled in the Homosexual community honoring his example and then wrote books about marriage. Robinson was tapped by then President-elect Obama to give the invocation for his 2009 Inaugural Kick Off Event on the Steps of the Lincoln Memorial.   To top it off, Robinson, who now works for the George Soros funded Center for American Progress.  Hence, it was unsurprising that President Obama "spontaneously" asked Robinson to perform the closing prayer.

In these gay old times, it is not news that President Obama now embraces Same-Sex Marriage.  Nor is it earth-shattering that the Episcopal Church in America seeks to normalize such unions and incorporate them into the Anglican Communion.  What is worth reflection is the meaning of marriage based upon Vicky Gene Robinson's own terms.

This is the second marriage from which Robinson has walked away.  The first marriage was because Robinson chose to identify with his homosexual inclinations and abandoned his bride of 13 years. Now Robinson is parting with his husband Mark Andrew nearly seven years (and "living in sin" for another 13 years).  Robinson is not citing abuse or adultery charges in his public statements, so civilly it might understood as "irreconciliable differences" as New Hampshire has no fault divorce.

In the Deuteronomic Law, Moses allowed divorce as a concession to the stiff necked Israelites. As Jesus Christ shared the New Covenant, the messiah reaffirmed the covenant nature of nuptials bringing together one man and one woman to create a new life through love and establish a home church.  Catholics have tried to keep a covenental nature to marriage by making the annulment process arduous in establishing that marital parties did not have the proper capacity (or understand) of entering into the sacrament.  


Per the Book of Common Prayer, sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace."  Matrimony is included as one off these sacraments.  But these words seem like window dressing as Episcopalians countenance and glorify a bishop who has twice abandoned his beloved spouses, each for spurious reasons.  But, at least Vicky Gene Robinson can split again amicably.

Franklin Graham on Same Sex Marriage

Tardy Jesuitical Discernment

Bert Thelen,  (ex) S.J.

Bert Thelen, S.J., an eighty year old Jesuit who had spent the last 14 years at  Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska has petitioned to become laicized.  Thelen announced his intention to abandon his vows in an open letter to friends and colleagues that was also published in The National Catholic Reporter. In his apologia, Thelen professed to renounce his ordination as well as leaving the Society of Jesus is to protest what he describes as a patriarchal church which refuses to allow for priestesses and permitting homosexual so called marriage.

Although it is lamentable that it took  Thelen 45 years of service to the Church to discern his objections to the Magisterium about the vocation of Holy Orders and Marriage, but the manner which he chose to “self-defrock” was troubling.  Rather than  showing some  semblance of personal integrity by conducting his change in spiritual status in private, Thelen chose to publically score some  partisan political points. Hence it is only fair to scrutinize Thelen’s conduct and consequences of the spiritual change of status which he seeks.

Jesuits take twenty years to take their final vows.   Part of Thelen’s indictment of the Church is that its patriarchal clericalism prompted him to abandon ordained ministry.  There have been male priests for over 1600 years.  So why could not Thelen discern his objection to an “all boys club”.  Pope Blessed John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacramentalis (1994)  which reaffirmed the teaching that since there is no scriptural basis for the ordination of women, the Catholic Church does not have this power.  This was several years before Thelen claimed that his lovers quarrel with the Church began.

Those who accept the calling and take the sacrament of Holy Orders in the Roman Catholic Church typically take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  Jesuits take an additional vow of obedience to the Pope (regarding their mission).  Upon Thelen’s taking leave of his priestly faculties, he was still listed as “faculty ally” of Creighton’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance.  It is dubious whether Thelen carried out this mission in an orthodox manner.

Thelen chose to trumpet his belief in same-sex marriages as precipitating his new call to be part of liberally inspired laity. Obviously, Natural Law and thousands of years of tradition mean nothing to an ideologically incensed ordained priest.  Of course, the logic of Pope Venerable Paul VI’s Humanite Vitae (1968) reaffirming the primacy of procreation in marital sexual relations is passe. More recently, Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI used his Christmas message in 2012 to denounce same-sex “marriage” and adoption as an attack on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and child.   Perhaps Thelen’s prophetic protest of renouncing his vows was precipitated by Pope Francis and Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI’s encyclical Lumen Fidei (2013), which asserted that:  

[Marriage should be the] stable union of man and woman...This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation.

So since even the liberal new Pontiff does not follow the progressive trend of blessing same-sex unions so Thelen decided to abandon his ordinational obligations.


Although ordaining women and gay marriage were the polemic flash points for Thelen’s new calling, he also had condemnation of his order of the last 45 years which he connected to his aspiration of religion without pedestals.  He condemns the general practices of Jesuits:

Make no mistake about it: the Society of Jesus shares in and benefits from this patriarchal and clerical way of proceeding. We still regard ourselves as the shepherds and those to whom and with whom we minister as sheep. I discovered this painfully when the Society of Jesus decided against having Associate members. We are not prepared for co-membership or even, it seems at times, for collaboration, though we pay lip service to it. "Father knows best" remains the hallmark of our way of proceeding. I can no longer, in conscience, do that. But I still honor and love my fellow Jesuits who work from that model of power over. It is still where we all are as a company, a Society, a community of vowed religious in the Roman Catholic church.

So after bad mouthing his brothers,  octogenarian Bert Thelen will set off on his new calling.  While I know of an 80 year old Jesuit who recently celebrated his 50th year of being a Jesuit and is active being a spiritual director and Christian Life Community facilitator, these wonderful ministries would not pay the bills.   It is dubious that the prophetic protestor will earn his keep so he will live off of the largess of the Society of Jesus as provisions need to be made for a laicized priest. That’s rich in irony.

Catholics have the appreciation that our spiritual vocations, namely Marriage and Holy Orders, not only reflect states of living but that sacramentally mark us.  This is why Catholics seek to ensure that one is sacramentally understand their vows (and annulments take so long to adjudicate).  Similarly, the Church believes that once a priest, always a priest like the order of Melchizedek.  But because of political pique, Thelen wants to walk away from his vows and be a useful idiot for those who rail against the Church’s teachings.

Reading the rhetoric in Thelen’s open letter, one wonders if there is much of a loss.  With phrases like: “Biocide is even more devastating than genocide” and the “survival and well being of ALL earthlings” Thelen’s views may be more welcomed amongst secular humanists and activist atheists rather than in an ecclesiastical environment.  But I am scandalized by Thelen’s assertion that through his new calling, he as lived and died as a Jesuit but now is free from being shackled by a  judicial, institutional, clerical, hierarchical system.   Thelen’s fickle commitment and sui generis understanding of death to me shows the shallowness of his sacred professions.  Moreover, the emphasis of Earthlings (sic) preventing biocide, egalitarianism which obliterates authority and championing secular humanist trends intimates what Thelen holds in deep esteem.

Rather than respecting his polemic philippic, I find this apologia to be a tardy Jesuitical discernment.  It is a pity that years of serving the People of God is marred by a cheap political stunt.

A PC DOD is FUBAR

Last Thursday, President Obama posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, to Korean War Army Chaplain Emil Kapaun for his heroic bravery.  It is sad to think so soon afterwards  that we need to consider how the Department of Defense fervently seems to battle the military chaplaincy and traditional religiosity to evangelize for faith in politcal correctness. Recently, the U.S. Army proffered Equal Opportunity training for Pennsylvania Reserve Troops that included this helpful poster on “extremist groups”.  

The Army presentation stipulates that extremism is a complex phenomenon present in many religions when "some followers that believe that their beliefs, customs and traditions are the only 'right way' and that all others are practicing their faith the 'wrong way,' seeing and believing that their faith/religion superior to all others."

 It is fascinating to see how Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and Catholics were lumped in with Al Quaeda (spelled incorrectly in official Army materials), the Ku Klux Klan and Hamas as dangerous extremist groups. And being leery of the spread of Sharia over secular democratic civil lawyer is also defined as a hate group "Islamophobia".

  The American Family Association postulates that the Army relied upon propaganda from the Southern Poverty Law Center to label Catholics and Evangelicals as extremist because of this scriptural stances considering  homosexual relations sinful and opposing same-sex so called marriage.  The danger of the state imposing laws for same sex marriage is that the force of government makes opposing views anathematic, even if it is a tradition that has ordered Western society for thousands of years and is deeply held spiritual beliefs. 

 There is the fear that non-profits and churches which dissent from the state stampede of same sex marriage may lose their tax exempt status, especially based upon charters for many charity organizations which stipulate following the societal law.  ***

Lest anyone think that the PC DOD is all about hot button societal moral issues, consider the way the Obama Administration has used America’s military to advance his political agenda with little regard to national security. 

***

It is frightening to think that as we live in an increasingly dangerous world that a PC DOD is more concerned about making political points that it is about defending our nations interests.  If that is the case then it is not SNAFU but FUBAR.

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