Exactly a year ago, I will embroiled in a great controversy with prolifers who insisted that it is A OK to lie in a good cause.
A year later, we find somebody else learning the error of that moral theory again. Only because the cause is something a lot of conservatives don’t care about or actually disagree with, I think odds are good the lesson they will draw is not “Don’t lie” but “When you lie, make sure it’s in a good cause.”
Sin makes you stupid.
A reader writes:
I’m writing to ask that you and your readers storm the gates of heaven for our friends’ little baby, who is due to be born in July. A routine ultrasound has revealed possible health & developmental problems including a cyst on the brain, heart issues, and kidneys that are not working properly. This is their sixth and much-anticipated child. While it is possible that these could be imaging-related issues, rather than health-related, at this point there is much uncertainty and anxiety, given the lack of concrete knowledge. Please pray that, if these issues are real, God would work a healing miracle in His little one, and that such healing would bring others to Him. Please pray for wisdom, and for speed & clarity of direction in the next steps to be taken. Please pray for peace of heart, mind, and spirit for those who love this precious little baby.
Father, hear our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ. Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for this child, his family and their caregivers. Amen.
Another reader writes:
A few months ago I asked you and your readers to pray for a man who lost his job, has a failing heart and rebellious sons.
Praise God, he just recently got a good job that is close to home and easy on his heart. Some good news in this economy, for sure!
Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus!
Another reader writes:
Please pray for my nephew Mason and friend’s son Sebastian. Both are preborn and have a variety of health issues that will result in early births and surgeries. The coming days and weeks for their families are going to be very challenging, no matter what the outcomes are.
Father, hear our prayer for these children that they be healed, thrive, and grow into saints who will serve you long and well to the praise of your glory. Grant skill, wisdom and compassion to their caregivers and grace and peace to their families in this difficult time. Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for them all. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
…but I love Lent. Always have. I like the tonic of the thing. I love the reminder of death. I love the push toward facing our elemental weakness. I love the realism of it: “Remember, O Man, that you are dust and to dust you will return”.
Spoiler alert
Saw “Chronicle” the other night and really appreciated it. After endless superhero movies where the hero Finds His Strength Within Himself and Triumphs Over Evil, what I appreciated about Chronicle is that it is, in the final analysis, a tragedy in which a good but flawed young man is destroyed by hubris and the interior demons he cannot overcome with mere power. Our pop culture doesn’t go much for tragedy, because we don’t go much for facing sin. We prefer to be told that we can save ourselves by Our Goodness Within. Chronicle (and all good tragedies) remind us that this ain’t so. We require grace. A good solid message for Lent.
Here’s reality: Human beings, working together with good community organizers, and following the Wisdom of the Voters and the very best that popular piety, sound civic common sense, and the best of human wisdom have, time and again, shouted “Give us Barabbas!” and chosen to crucify the innocent Son of God. It’s what we do.
A fragment of the gospel of Mark that appears to date from the first century! If authenticated, this would be the oldest MSS of the NT in the world.
Here’s News for all you folks in Seattle and Milwaukee. First, for you Seattleites:
Dear Friends of the Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society,
The Seattle Chesterton Society proudly announces the next event in our Chesterton Speaker Series, coming up Thursday, February 23, at 7:30 PM at the UW Newman Center — an evening of discussion concerning Hilaire Belloc and the Incarnation.
Many of you will remember last year’s evening of discussion with Professor Michael Matriotti on the spirituality of Russian monastics, their tradition of spiritual direction, and its amazing legacy. If you were there, you know the level of intensity, interest, and depth of spiritual reflection that Prof. Matriotti brings to his subject. To listen to this speaker is not merely to be informed, but to have one’s heart kindled.
Please see below for full details. Please see also our full Events Calendar for more details pertaining to our 2011-2012 season.The UW Newman Center is located at 4502 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105. Please note that parking space at UW Newman Center is limited. Commuters may park in the nearby N5 lot at the University, accessible via the north gate at NE 45th and Memorial Way.
We hope to see you on the 23rd, and please bring a friend!
Yours faithfully,
The Seattle G. K. Chesterton SocietyThursday, February 23, 2012, at 7:30 PM, UW Newman Center
Hilaire Belloc:
How the Word Made Flesh
Vanquishes Barbarism, Servility, and Despair
Dr. Michael Matriotti
Seattle University
For Hilaire Belloc, the doctrine of the Incarnation was not an abstraction but a palpable historical event affecting the reality of all things. The Incarnation is the inspiration of the romanticism of the real so characteristic of Christian civilization. The loss of the sense of the reality of this historical event is destroying inevitably the ability to make traditions live anew, is bargaining away economic freedom, and is sapping the zest for life.
Dr. Michael Matriotti is an Assistant Professor in Matteo Ricci College at Seattle University and Head Cantor at St. John Chrysostom Catholic Church here in Seattle. Prof. Matriotti took his B.A. degree from St. Thomas Seminary in Kenmore, Washington, and his Doctorate in Theology degree from the Graduate Theological Union, at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was a study of “The Relation between Science and Religion Viewed in the Light of the Evolutionary Notions of Julian Huxley, Carl Jung, and Friedrick Wilhelm von Schelling.”
Second, for youse guys in Milwaukee:
Dale Ahlquist will be in Milwaukee on Saturday March 3rd for two speaking engagements. During the day he will have a presentation at the Men of Christ conference, and that evening he will be at an event sponsored by the Milwaukee Chesterton Society.
An Evening with G.K. Chesterton and Dale Ahlquist
Common Sense for the 21st Century: G. K. Chesterton, Complete Thinker and Complete Man as presented by Dale Ahlquist, EWTN host and President of the American Chesterton SocietyMo’s Irish Pub
Saturday March 3, 2012
7:00pm142 W. Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53203
(Located at the corner of Plankinton & Wisconsin Avenues)Dale Ahlquist is President of the American Chesterton Society, host of the EWTN series “G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense,” and Publisher of Gilbert Magazine. He has written three books on Chesterton, edited five more, and has written for over a dozen publications. He has lectured at major colleges and universities and other venues, including Yale, Columbia, Notre Dame, Oxford, the Vatican Forum in Rome, the Thomas More Centre in Melbourne, and at the House of Lords in London.
He is the co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a high school in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and the executive producer of Manalive, a film based on a novel by G.K. Chesterton, which will be released in 2012.
Dale received a B.A. from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and a M.A. from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He and his wife Laura have six children.
“Ahlquist on Chesterton is like Plato on Socrates, or Boswell on Johnson.” New Oxford Review.
Rick Brittnacher
Milwaukee Chesterton Society
which partly addresses some remarks I made about the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, basically making the case that it should not be administered to women in danger of miscarriage or struggling with fertility issues. One reader wonder if I’m somehow offended by his argument.
Nope. Why should I be? Arguments are the lifeblood of theology. And besides, I’m no expert on anointing. My piece was basically written out of experience of concrete pastoral situations where I’ve seen Anointing done. All I know is what I’ve seen at our parish: women who had multiple miscarriages now walking around with brand new healthy babies. Hard to argue with experience for this layman. But I appreciate Fr. Erlenbush bringing his perspective. So no offense taken at all. I wonder if this might not be an opportunity for the Church to revisit the question of the applicability of the sacrament? I see no particular reason why the Church couldn’t have a wider range of health needs under the rubric of sickness, including chronic miscarriage. And I suspect that at the pastoral level, a lot of priests anoint for this anyway—with what does look for all the world like the blessing of God. Such pastoral forces do, in part, drive the development of doctrine. But ultimately that’s going to be the business of theologians and bishops to work out.
A reader writes the following astute note:
I’ve been thinking about the mandate all week and I’m confused by something. How did we get to a point where contraception equaled an essential medical service to provide? And moreover that contraception was a limitless right higher than most other legal rights Americans have?
We live in a nation of laws that generally impose rights and duties. We often prioritize them but even the rights we hold dearest have limits. There is the age old example of the right of free speech being limited by the inability to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. I imagine a religion holding ritual human sacrifice as a central tenet would have a hard time finding cover under freedom of religion. And our freedom of press is limited by libel and slander.
But reproductive rights? They are the only rights where there are no limits. Suggest limiting abortions to legal adults? You hate women. Suggest that parents, who have to fill out forms in triplicate to get their minor children’s ears pierced or allow the school nurse to give them a Tylenol, also be notified if their minor child receives the invasive medical procedure that an abortion is? You hate women, and worse young women. Suggest that pharmacies – privately owned businesses – ought to decide whether or not they carry contraception? You hate women. How the hell did we get to a place where reproductive freedom is the only limitless freedom?
And moreover how did we get to hold this right as the cardinal one? The right that outweighs all others, including freedom of religion? And in the case of contraception, which again is not a medical necessity like chemotherapy or antibiotics which are courses of treatment for disease, but is instead a voluntarily chosen drug to be used to engage in voluntary sexual activity, how is this voluntary course of action a sacrosanct right? Especially when necessary things like food and housing aren’t?
I am beyond baffled, especially as it is clear to me that I can’t engage this issue with my liberal friends as they move immediately from “Well contraception is a right” to “Why does your Church hate women?” within somuch as a blink and I’ve yet to read any real legal chops on the subject that don’t do the same.
It is always a mistake to expect sin to make sense. Evil is, at the end of the day, a mystery. It has a bizarre “logic” to it in that, once you embrace the insane premise, your actions will proceed from that into the depths of stupidity and, depending in your pride, you can stay on that stupid course till perdition. But the underlying premise is always fundamentally mad because sin sets itself against Reality Himself. Sin can be rebuked or forgiven, but it can never make sense.
He’s the only one that’s eleeeeeeeeeectable! Pay no attention to those stupid veeeeeeeeets! Their job is to suffer and die fighting our wars of Empire for our Ruling Class and to be buried in landfills, not to have a voice in stopping the insanity or getting in the way of crony capitalism. Only Roooooooooommmmmmneeeeeey can save you! Only heeeeee is eleeeeeectable. You’re getting sleeeeeepy!
A reader writes:
I have a prayer request for my grandson, Sammy, who has had chronic intestinal motility problems since birth. He is continuing to lose weight, and so the doctors feel that it is necessary to feed him intravenously for awhile to give his general health a boost. The IV is to be started sometime this week. The only problem is that 100% of the times he has been fed IV in the past, he’s developed MRSA sepsis, and several times almost didn’t make it out alive. There is no reason to think that this time will be any different, so as you can see, it is a contest to see how much weight he can gain before the sepsis sets in. Please remember him and the family in your prayers.
Father, hear our prayer for Sammy that he make a full recovery and be completely healed. Grant grace, peace, and strength to his family and all who love him and give wisdom, skill, and compassion to his caregivers. Surround him with your angels and let no harm come to him. Mother Mary, St. Luke, Fr. Joseph Fulton and Abp. Fulton Sheen, pray for him! We ask this through Jesus Christ!
Another reader asks:
Please pray for Fr. _, who is transferring out of his parish early because of stress caused by the treatment he has received (hate mail and email, verbal abuse, threats). Fr. _ had to make some difficult but necessary decisions, and the resulting conflict has taken a toll on him.
Father, strengthen your servant and give him healing and consolation as he shares in the cross of your Son Jesus. Mother Mary, pray for him. We ask this in the Name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Another reader writes:
Please pray for my wife and our family. This year, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder; her first episode took an enormous toll on our family. Right now we’re working on finding the right kind/dosage of medication for her, as well as adjusting to a new phase in our life. It is particularly stressful when (as happened again today) she begins to exhibit the initial symptoms of an episode. Please pray that we can avoid another crisis of any sort, including but not limited to any sort of hospitalization or interruption of our family life and routine, especially this week and during those weeks when the symptoms return.
We are turning in prayer especially to St. Philomena, St. Dymphna, St. Andre Bessette, and of course Our Lady and St. Joseph.
Father, hear our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for this woman, her caregivers, and her family.
I give you the One Pound Fat Replica, courtesy of Amazon.com
I also write to rejoice because I have lost about 65 of these!
One thing diabetes does for you is inspire you to change your diet and get that two mile walk everyday. To paraphase Mr. Micawber, “Daily caloric intake 2000, daily caloric burn 1900. Result: Misery. Daily caloric intake 2000, daily caloric burn 2100. Result: Happiness.” I am now lighter than I have been in 20 years. Excelsior!
“Howdy! I am an enormous chunk of rock hurtling through space for now, but hoping for a chance to profoundly change the world for the better. I want to stop the partisan sniping and bickering of rivals that characterizes the political process. And I want you to never have to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again.
My platform: Death. To expunge. The annihilation of all life on Earth. Some say I am naive and doomed to failure, since bacteria, certain ocean creatures, and some insects will surely survive my planet-wracking onslaught. I concede that my critics may technically have a point.
But the truth is, I’ve always been a ‘half-a-loaf-of-bread-is-better-than-none’ kind of guy.”
SMOD: An End To Politics As Usual. Forever.
This Candidate Has Been Endorsed By The Sierra Club™
HT: Ace of Spades HQ
Ron Paul is quite right:
That’s because it’s not left vs. right anymore. It’s our ruling class vs. the rest of us.
“Robert Creamer–Democrat strategist, Obama 2008 campaign aide, and political architect of ObamaCare–argues that the new contraceptive mandate for Catholic institutions isn’t really about equality for women, or religious liberty. Rather, it is about population control.”
Of course it is. Just as the powers and principalities are lining up to force the Church to knuckle under to the glories of homosex, so they are trying to compel the Church to capitulate to the lefty urge to impose secular totalitarianism upon it. This is about spiritual warfare. Which means the weapons of our warfare are primarily spiritual too. Politics and media combat and so forth have their place. But the main fight will be conducted in the realm of prayer, sacrifice and through the Holy Eucharist. We wrestle not with flesh and blood here and we are fools if we think the Obama Administration is the main enemy here.
Digital App Encourages Rosary Reflection
New Tool Allows Shared Prayer via Social Networks
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Little i Apps, LLC, makers of Confession: A Roman Catholic App, is proud to announce their collaboration with Our Sunday Visitor in the development of The Rosary of the Hours, an app that helps Catholics pray the Rosary “around the clock,” whereby a decade, with its own special theme, may be prayed for each of the twenty-four hours of the day and prayers and intentions can then be shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Little i Apps developed The Rosary of the Hours to include the full, original text of the original devotional of the same name, as well as a convenient reminder system that can be customized to fit the users schedule. The app provides a simple and inspirational method of sanctifying every hour. Specially chosen prayers from the Psalms, beautiful meditations gleaned from the popes, and Scripture passages for further meditation are available to inspire and comfort, whatever the time, day or night. Users can even post to Facebook and Twitter about their prayers, intentions and devotions, allowing Catholics to pray both for and with the Universal Church in a new way.
“It was an incredible opportunity for Little i Apps to take part in this project with Our Sunday Visitor. We look forward to seeing the Catholic community embrace the meditation, prayer and social networking that the Rosary of the Hours encourages,” says Patrick Leinen, co-founder of Little i Apps. “Our Sunday Visitor has created an incredible tool for those seeking deeper prayer in the Rosary. We are excited to see Catholics open to combining technology and spirituality!”
The Rosary of the Hours is available for $.99 on the iTunes Store.
For more information, please visit Little iApps online at www.littleiapps.com or contact Patrick Leinen, developer and co-founder, at marketing@littleiapps.com or call (574) 303-8102.
Little i Apps is a mobile applications development start up with a Roman
Catholic twist.
Dain Ironfoot. (If you are not a Tolkien nerd, skip this).
economics or cost effectiveness. It’s also emphatically not about truth:
There would be no consideration of cost effectiveness.
That was the explicit condition that the Department of Health and Human Services imposed on the panel of health-care experts it commissioned to develop the “preventive services” mandate that will require virtually all health-insurance plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions.
The fact that HHS prohibited the panel from considering the cost effectiveness of the mandate it developed contradicts President Obama’s declaration at the White House last Friday that his administration had adopted the panel’s recommendations precisely because they will “make the overall cost of health care lower”
In short, even if the Mandates were counter-productive, our God King was bound and determined to push it through.
For the same reason, it’s also not about health (because pregnancy is not a disease and babies are not tumor). Nor is it about legitimate concern for the poor, or peace, or all the other stuff that Progressive pols yak about when they are suckering their base into supporting them. As Michael Sean Winters, one of the rare honest people on the Catholic Left to really confront Obama’s duplicity and hostility to the Church instead of folding like a cheap suit and kowtowing to him like Pharaoh says:
I confess I no longer understand Obama. He did not go to the mat to end the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich. He did not go to the mat for comprehensive immigration reform. He did not go to the mat to close Guantanamo Bay. He did not go to the mat for Card Check. He did not go to the mat for a public option in the health care reform. But, he went to the mat over the principle that a Catholic college or charity or hospital is not really religious.
The answer is not really that far to seek. But it requires abandoning a myth as cherished by lefties as by righties: that the issue is left vs. right and not our Ruling Class vs. the rest of us. The reason Obama only makes a show of caring about these issues so beloved by sincere Progressives is that he is as sincere about liberal shibboleths as Mitt Romney is about conservative ones. His real goal is to protect the interests of his class: the Ruling Class. And Public Enemy no. 1 for that class (and those who are brainwashed by it) is the Catholic Church, with its annoying advocacy of the unborn; its taking seriously of the alien, orphan and widow, not merely as useful tools, but as actual human beings; its insistence on human rights vs. leviathan, its tiresome function as a living argument against the proposition that all works of mercy are the province of the State, and, above all, it’s insistance that God is greater than Caesar. Caesar and Mammon are jealous gods. Of course, when push comes to shove, the overweening pride of Caesar will, with unerring aim, focus its *real” energy on trying to destroy the Church that acts as a permanent barrier to and enemy of the latest attempt to build Babel. In the end, you are with the secular totalitarian or against him–and the Church, by her nature, must be against him when he sets his face against God and demands that we deny Him. The question now is “How far is Caesar willing to go to try to crush the Church and how much damage is he willing to do to American–and ultimately himself–before he surrenders or is destroyed by his own folly?” Not that the Church can destroy him. We are as weak as Christ and may well share his Cross before this is over. But crucifixion can’t stop the gospel while human folly always destroys itself in the end. My prayer is that our people repent of that folly.
We’ll see.
…is fantastic:
It’s one of the odd ironies of history that we are just now, as the Church begins to really start feeling the consequences of decades of Woodstockized clergy, starting to get a lot of clergy who are orthodox and full of evangelical zeal and creativity. Go Fr. Leo!
Mark: Have you ever thought, “Screw America! Let it get what it deserves!” and then considered moving to a better country?
No. I am a patriot. You don’t leave your mother if she gets sick.
is a lie. But then anybody with mild common sense knew that.
…on the secular totalitarianism of Obama as the tribune of our Ruling Class. It’s fascinating to me how blind Americans can be to the fact that the law works by precedent. You saw it after Roe, when people imagined it would not lead to euthanasia. You saw it with no fault divorce when people imagined it would not lead to an assault on the institution of marriage. You saw it with the indefinite detention, torture and murder of foreigners, when people imagined it would not lead to the indefinite detention, torture and murder of citizens. And you are seeing it now, with people imagining this assault on the religious liberty of Catholics will not lead to an assault on the first amendment freedoms of all American–including not just freedom of religion but freedom of speech too. “It’s just about contraception and I like getting free contraception candy and making Catholics pay for it, so no big deal.”
We are a people begging for our chains.
…the Knights of Columbus bravely do battle with the next wave of oppression: the attempt to force the Church to pay for abortions.
Here’s what I’m up to this week!
February 23-24 6:00 PM St. Nicholas, Gig Harbor. Topic: This is My Body and The Family as the Icon of the Trinity. Contact: Don Evans.
See you there!
…that the reason Catholics oppose artificial contraception is not “because bishops are sexual retards with an irrational opposition to an obvious good” but because artificial contraception is to sex what the vomitorium is to eating: an unnatural and deranged assault on nature, love, and fruitfulness. It has been a poison and a cancer (both physically and spiritually) on our culture.
So the Church’s opposition to birth control is not that it is ritually wrong, like a Jew having to eat pork or a Muslim having to touch a dog, but morally wrong: something destructive to the human person regardless of religion, creed, or nationality. Even so, the Church does not go around trying to outlaw it for people who insist on damaging themselves. She merely says that she refuses to help underwrite it. And even that is not enough for the secular totalitarians of the Obama Administration.
2. The way to brighten your intellect is to use it and not merely worship it. If you need a quick tip on what this might look like, just listen to Richard Dawkins “think” about religion and then do the opposite.
3. Conversely, if you want to see somebody actually using the intellect properly, swallow your incandescent arrogance and take a gander at Fr. Robert Barron, talking about Dawkins and Co. with grace and aplomb:
The New Atheism, rather like the Latest Real Jesus, is remarkably reflective of the frivolous period of time in which we live. It is, to coin a phrase, deeply shallow. Fr. Barron is right: it’s an opiate.
So Rick Santorum does an interview with Hannity where he proudly declares that he votes to spend your dough on contraceptives and abortifacients (jump to the 9:05 mark).
Only he doesn’t say “abortifacients” because he tries to snow the audience that the Pill is not an abortifacient, only the “morning after” pill is. But, in fact, the Pill *is* an abortifacient. So Santorum has effectively voted to support abortion.
Meanwhile, that kerrrayyyzy Ron Paul strongly opposes federal funding for birth control. Why? Because it’s not the job of the Feds to provide birth control.
So we have a non-Catholic candidate who opposes compelling people to pay for what other people choose to do in the privacy of their bedroom, and we have a Catholic candidate who is “personally opposed” like Cuomo but who chooses to compel people (including Catholics) to pay for what other people do in the privacy of their bedroom, even when it includes abortifacients. He makes a show of opposing the morning after pill. But that’s not the only abortifacient.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Happily, Santorum is in the groove on the things that *really* matter to the GOP leadership–pre-emptive war, preserving the precious legacy of Bush era torture, and the sacred pre-eminence of corporate profits over the needs of human beings. So his private fetish about being semi-prolife is fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the real agenda. And since he’s already shown himself to be a good soldier when the party demanded he prostitute himself for Specter, we can be sure he won’t make a thing about abortion really. So he’ll be useful for suckering the prolifers back on to the reservation again.
I’m leaning back toward just voting third party and refusing to support either of these corrupt machines. Either way, Obama doesn’t get my vote, and I will not feel like I need a shower if I don’t vote GOP.
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