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All Catholic commentary from April 2004
the churchlet of the self
Self-styled abbot, social worker, and Oakland-area scholar Donald Weeks has been accused of conducting affectivity education with an underage youth. Weeks has said he is an ordained priest of a branch of the Old Catholic Church, and is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. He...
Market research
The Quixote Center in Maryland proudly announces the completion of its project to render a translation of the entire Bible in inclusive language. Yes, folks; Volume II: The Prophets, will soon be available at your local bookstore. Well, actually you won't find it at most bookstores, but I'm...
... and have a nice day!
The Roman Pontifical of Benedict XIV (Malines [Belgium], 1862, p. 231) includes a liturgy for the consecration of virgins that features the following Anathema: By the authority of Almighty God and his apostles Peter and Paul, we firmly forbid, under threat of anathema, anyone to lead these...
MEETING A FELT NEED
Turns out the Bishop O'Brien hotline in Phoenix meets a felt need of the people. At least, of that portion of the people who need to yell at the...
Signs of slippage
When a special counsel appointed by the White House denied that homosexuality is a protected category under current federal civil-rights laws, gay activists howled in protest. Predictable, you say? Quite so. But it's not so predictable-- and much more troubling-- that the White House sided...
The April issue of Catholic World Report is out!
The April issue of Catholic World Report is now on newsstands and here's what you'll find inside:History? … Or Does The Scandal Continue?: A comprehensive report evoked different perspectives on the sex-abuse problem and the American bishops' response. Phil Lawler explains why the crisis still...
abhorrent?
A pro-choice woman who wants to “kick-start” the abortion debate has made a program showing the procedure and the dismembered baby. Britain's Channel 4 plans to broadcast it. My Foetus, to be screened at the end of this month, will show a woman who is four weeks pregnant having a 'vacuum pump'...
Planned Parenthood appears in the Gospel
During the reading of the Passion today, I was struck by this passage: Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that...
Wall-papering the Gulag
Bishop O'Brien is offering the Court the opportunity to moderate its Auschwitzian provisions for his probation. He wants 'travel time' deducted from his hours of community service. It seems to have escaped him that having his Excellency behind the wheel of a car can in no way be construed as...
John Kerry, theologian
After attending Palm Sunday services at an AME church in Boston (it's so hard to find a Catholic church in that city!), John Kerry instructed the New York Times on his moral responsibilities as a Catholic legislator: My oath privately between me and God was defined in the Catholic church by...
THE PASTOR RESIGNS
The Pastor of Saint Francis de Sales Church in NYC passed out a letter to his congregation last Sunday explaining why he had resigned his pastorate two days before. The letter is fascinating: undoubtedly we'll be hearing more of this story. But as Father Murr tells his side of the story, his...
CBS propaganda, unpacked
Last night's CBS News report on the controversy over whether John Kerry should receive communion stands as a model of inaccurate, selective-- should we say dishonest?-- reporting. Correspondent David Paul Kuhn found several Catholic "experts" to back Kerry's side of the controversy; somehow he...
Archbishop Burke has company
Another US bishop has stated explicitly that he would deny the Eucharist to Senator Kerry. When you find out who it is, you won't be surprised....
Homophobia-- expanded version
Which of the following is now deemed to constitute a form of abuse toward gays: physical violence verbal attacks moral censure suggesting that homosexuality can be altered in therapy If you answered "all of the above," you would be right. It’s now a form of abuse not only to sugget that...
NEWSDAY on Father Murr
NEWSDAY, the Long Island-based newspaper, has a story in tomorrow's edition about the resignation of Father Charles Murr as pastor of St Francis de Sales. One detail the story does not bring out is most disturbing: Fr Murr acted in consultation with the Archdiocese. His decision not to renew...
Clarifications of Kerry's marriage situation
An article by a Washington Times White House correspondent on John Kerry's marriage situation reveals some details. For one thing, it shows his proclivity to leech off rich women and use his personal romantic life as a means to further his political ambitions. More specifically for our purposes,...
Kerry Mass Watch
Since John Kerry is perhaps the highest profile lay Catholic in the US right now, and because he has such "creative" views on the Church's teachings, how he practices his faith is of some interest, especially the question of where and whether he goes to Mass (as opposed to his penchant for...
Free-lancing pastors?
In Boston, a clear picture is beginning to emerge: The new archbishop himself will follow the Vatican's instructions, but he won't require his pastors to do the same. First it was the question of Communion for John Kerry; the archdiocesan spokesman said pastors should make up their own minds....
voices from the past
National Review Board chairman Anne Burke is catching some flak for having failed to disclose her friendship with Thomas O’Gorman, a former Chicago priest put on waivers by Cardinal Bernardin in 1992 for molesting a Loyola Academy student whom he was mentoring in the techniques of social justice....
Hopping along the bunny trail
Last week, a Pennsylvania church was in the news for a Passion play that included an Easter bunny being whipped.A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children....
praeteritio
An old joke tells about the football player who gets four Fs and a D on his report card. When he shows it to his coach, the coach says, “Your problem is you’re putting all your effort into one subject.” In my newly polished post-Easter optimism, I will forbear to draw any connection between...
Kerry Mass Watch
A semi-regular new feature on Off the Record will be seeing what new and innovative ways presidential candidate John Kerry finds to practice his Catholic faith on Sunday. Will he receive Communion at the local Paulist center or is this a week where giving a political speech sprinkled with...
style is substance
The question was, “Should a Catholic politician follow the teachings of the church?” It would be nice to think the answer could have been, “Yes.” MCCARRICK: Well, as a Catholic, he [Kerry] certainly should follow the teachings of the church. “As a Catholic”? Everyone should follow the...
The Jesuit Approach -- or, Better Living Through Sodomy
Jesuits Edmund Campion, and Paul Miki, and Miguel Pro were martyred by anti-Catholic regimes because of their gutsy defense of the faith. How we’ve grown! "I'd like to think that religion is not a big factor these days. I think people will say whatever religion he has, that’s his," said Rev....
Another view on Kerry and Communion
The problem really isn't Kerry, writes Pat Buchanan; it's the US bishops: Rather than acting as a pride of lions defending Catholic truth, they have, with rare exception, acted like a rabbit warren. There's a lot more...
belief, unbelief, and bad faith
Last month, National Catholic Reporter contributor Chuck Colbert planted himself in a parish mass near Boston with the purpose of disrupting it by gay shock tactics. Off The Record questioned the propriety of his pretending to write as an objective reporter. To his credit, the NCR’s editor Tom...
"Would you like fresh ground pepper on your salad?"
“Hello, I am Ken and I am going to be your waiter.”-- M. Rev. Kenneth Untener’s greeting to the gathering following his installation as a bishop (“Last Words” quote from this week’s...
HELP IS ON THE WAY
A tip of the biretta to Father Bryce Sibley whose blogsite advises us that help is on the way: SMMMHDH or, if you will, The Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas, the twin reincarnations of Ray Repp. You could make a lot of money in Catholic music publishing...
Gaudium et Spes pay-per-view -- or, "I don't get no respect."
Well folks, we’ve sure moved beyond the “Dialogues of the Carmelites”-model of Catholic-based entertainment. Christopher Plummer has been cast as Cardinal Bernard Law in "Our Fathers," Showtime's TV movie about the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal.Plummer will bring "authority, humanity,...
Bashful peacekeepers
The next time someone (in Rome, perhaps?) suggests that UN forces should be in charge of worldwide peacekeeping efforts, let's remember that right now, Kofi Annan thinks that Iraq is too dangerous for a UN presence. Presumably the UN will be ready to move in and ensure peace-- as soon as peace is...
Abortion and the Catholic Factor
The Kerry Communion Capitulation has renewed discussion about the respective role of bishops, politicians, and lay voters in implementing Catholic teaching on abortion. It is all-too-commonly believed that the Supreme Court's Roe-v-Wade decision of January 1973 caught the Church by surprise, and...
CHAPUT FIRES FIRST VOLLEY ON PRO-ABORT POLS
The Archbishop of Denver has written an article admonishing politicians who claim to be Catholic while their votes dissent from Catholic teaching. Indications are this is just his first move in a forthcoming...
Wafer Watch -- or, The Faithful Citizenship Coloring Book
Ellen Goodman gives a synopsis of her monograph on Ecclesia de Eucharistia: What next? Will we have a political reporter to cover John Forbes Kerry at each Sunday Mass from now to November? Will there be a Holy Communion beat? A wafer watch? Dismissing concerns over political exploitation of...
"We are not amused."
Strong, swift, decisive administrative action at a Jesuit college. Uh-oh. The Aquinas, a student run newspaper at Scranton University was shut down last week after releasing an April Fools' Day Issue which parodied The Hoya. The newspaper was renamed The Hoya for the issue and contained...
The Mote-Plank Factor
Having vainly urged Boston auxiliary Bishop John McCormack, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, to notify parishes in which known abusers had worked, Sister Catherine Mulkerrin ruefully conceded, "I know I sound like a broken record." It's a distasteful task to keep sounding the same...
ain't love grand?
Last month OTR made the half-serious suggestion that nothing in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's same-sex marriage decision prevents two cellmates from being joined in holy matrimony and in the privileges thereunto appertaining. Now the other half of the seriousness has made its...
means & ends
I've read some thoughtful criticisms of OTR's approach to The Crisis, claiming we're naive in focusing so narrowly on the bishops as the pivotal issue. One reader suggested we're looking for a "quick fix," that we're the equivalent of those football fans who think all their team's problems would...
PP Celebrity?
...
newsmakers
A survey of more than 3,000 Los Angeles area pastoral leaders and Synod delegates shows that 68 percent rated Los Angeles archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahony's ministry as "good" or "excellent," according to the lead story in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's newspaper. Cardinal Mahony worked...
bygones
Kim Sue Lia Perkes, an avowed lesbian, was Bishop O'Brien's last press liaison. She joked in a recent interview that, "If it weren't for the gay clergy in Phoenix, there wouldn't be any clergy in Phoenix." Dom points us to a lengthy article in the Phoenix New Times giving striking (if somewhat...
Divino Afflante Spiritu and all that
A friar in dire need of a hard-drive reformat disses the story of Adam and Eve. I'd like to say a few words about the story of Adam and Eve. I believe the story of Adam and Eve is one of the most theologically and psychologically destructive stories ever written. Many of us were given our first...
is secrecy history too?
From the U.S. Bishops' Charter: In the past, secrecy has created an atmosphere that has inhibited the healing process and, in some cases, enabled sexually abusive behavior to be repeated. As bishops, we acknowledge our mistakes and our role in that suffering, and we apologize and take...
THE CATHOLIC CANDIDATE FROM MASSACHUSETTS
The ironic comment from Amy Welborn
back to the future
Many clergymen publish the sermons they've delivered. To my knowledge, Fr. Andrew Greeley ("Author, Priest, Sociologist," as he reminds us on his website) is unique in treating his flock to the homilies he has yet to give. Following are his reflections on next Sunday's Gospel (John 20:19ff,...
can't tell the players without a program
MEMRI lists a number of reactions to Gibson's Passion from the Arab world, some predictable, others not. In the latter category belongs this comment by Hani Naqshabandi, identified as the "editor of the Saudi family magazine Sayyidaty": The real irritation in the film is that it revealed a...
modesty forbids me
Anna Q gets weepy-eyed when she thinks of her journalistic responsibility toward the little people. A friend offers his hanky: Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchorman, remembers a young black woman who decided to march in the streets of Americus, Ga., during dangerous racial unrest there. "I'm often...
(demonstration model only: actual liturgy may vary)
Some comments of Cardinal Arinze at the press conference introducing the new disciplinary document on the Eucharist: Connected with the preceding point [the need to develop an interior spirit of worship, not just external conformity to norms] is a temptation that must be resisted, i.e., to...
Memo to Bishop Lynch
The Ordinary should diligently foster Eucharistic adoration, whether brief or prolonged or almost continuous, with the participation of the people. For in recent years in so many places “adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament is also an important daily practice and becomes an inexhaustible source of...
highlights
Redemptionis Sacramentum in a nutshell: No pita or Wonder bread. No consecration of carafes of wine. No breaking of the host at the consecration No intinction (dipping of the host into the chalice) by the communicant No jacking around with the words of the Mass No substitution of...
A worthy effort
Many CWN readers, I suspect, will be interested in knowing that there is a Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David...
Madam, may I strangle that newborn hope for you?
Feel any flickers of hope at today's publication of the document on celebrating the Eucharist? A rare twinge of satisfaction? Well, the NCR's John Allen will bring you back down to earth in no time. This from a talk he gave on "Five Myths about the Vatican" at Marquette University, reported in...
rumors of war
"On my honor I will do my best to discriminate against gays and atheists in the name of God's law; to hate people who are different at all times; to keep myself physically separate, mentally weak, and sexually straight." So runs the "oath" put into the mouth of a boy scout in a cartoon posted...
Give me liberty and give me death
"It's a crucial moment for the abortion rights movement. Don't blow it." urges William Saletan, coaching pro-abortion marchers to pull in their horns and sing some libertarian tunes (which appeal to swing voters) -- at least until the Supreme Court has been safely re-packed and the Final Solution...
a regrettable lapse
"We're very saddened by the whole experience," said the Rev. Michael Billian, Episcopal vicar of the Diocese of Toledo. "It certainly saddens the diocese that any one of its ministers would be in this situation."The human condition is sinful and priests are human, Father Billian said. Thanks,...
from the pastor's desk
Father Alan Phillip, C.P., heralds a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the form of married clergy, the 143rd such Rebirth of the Church announced in the pages of the U.S. Catholic: I believe a new Pentecost for the Catholic Church will soon be realized and a renewed excitement about human...
Kerry Communion watch
John Kerry received Communion at the Paulist Center in Boston on Saturday, one day after the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship said he shouldn't. A spokesman for the Paulists said that they were following directives from the Boston archdiocese. The Boston archdiocese said...
weaklings
Amy Welborn alerts us to the likelihood that Redemptionis Sacramentum will be put to eventual use in Indianapolis. Wrapping fish. In a statement issued Friday, Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein said he was asking priests, liturgy committees and the Archdiocese's Office of Worship to...
Forbes interview -- April 11, 2009
Meet Bill Gates, Chairman of the directors of Microsoft, a lawn care and live bait provider headquartered in Stuttgart, Arkansas. We asked him to tell us a little bit about what got him to where he is today. Q. Bill, is it true you instituted the Jesuit-inspired Heroic Leadership (HL) program...
feelings
Ellen Goodman loyally works all the NARAL talking points into her pre-march column, including the predictable lie from the studio of Josef Goebbels: After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions don't have to...
Roma locuta est
The USCCB website posts a document called "Thirty Questions on the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum for Diocesan Liturgy and Communications Personnel." Most of the 30 questions receive brief, reasonably lucid and straightforward answers. Then the episcopal training shows through. Q. 10....
Welborn on the abortion imposture
Amy Welborn links some important and disturbing posts on Sunday's pro-abortion march. Moreover, her comments of a year ago regarding the specious evasion-of-the-moment deserve re-reading. A sampling: Do you know the problem with the "personally-opposed to abortion, but we live in a...
REDEMPTIONIS SACRAMENTUM
"Father: What do you really think about the new liturgy guidelines? I assume you are aware of them. Are they good, will they work, will they make a difference. Of course, I know there are no liturgical abuses in the Diocese of Brooklyn, under your watchful eye, nor are there any in New York,...
Comparative theology
Perhaps someone could help me understand how a prominent public figure could be invited to share the Body and Blood of Christ, but barred from attending a roast-beef...
twilight
I can't share Mark Steyn's optimism in his current Spectator article (thanks to Otto-da-fe), but I think he makes a telling point in this paragraph: A few weeks back I was strolling along the Boulevard de Maisonneuve in Montreal when I saw a Muslim woman across the street, all in black, covered...
Is God Gender-Confused?
A certain class of modernist theologians have confused the issue of how we refer to God in family terms. Is God our father or our mother? In what terms do we refer to our Creator? Since theology depends on Revelation, without which it has no basis whatsoever, any "theologian" who sets...
at the core of the Church's mission
Witness: "I have not gotten to the stage where I'm comfortable in denying the Eucharist," Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C., said in an interview with The Associated Press. And, deep down, isn't the personal comfort of bishops what our Blessed Lord became man to...
March 1998: Washington is worth a Mass
The sacrament is an expression of the bond of communion both in its invisible dimension, which, in Christ and through the working of the Holy Spirit, unites us to the Father and among ourselves, and in its visible dimension, which entails communion in the teaching of the Apostles, in the...
A personal note...
... to readers who think we are presumptuous for admonishing bishops: Happy feast of St. Catherine of...
Test case
"It is not our policy to deny Communion to anyone." Anyone? Let's imagine a hypothetical test case. Imagine that Adolph Hitler is discovered alive. Let's say he escaped to Paraguay, where Nazi scientists had unlocked the secret of cryogenic storage, and he's just now been thawed out; he has...
Which sacraments?
MSNBC is conducting a poll on whether pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be denied the Eucharist. But the question is poorly worded; it asks whether these pols should be denied "the sacraments." Many of us would agree that they should be allowed to go to Confession. We'll conduct our...
CHECK OUT THE MASS
Here's something intriguing. Allegedly, the draft text of the next edition of the English language altar missal has been leaked to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Interesting text; I think it has a great deal to commend it. I can't predict how it will be received....
MASS -2-
Something is wrong with that link. Trying again ; otherwise, cut and...
Roman Holiday?
The egregious Bishop Thomas O'Brien succeeds in finding yet another way to visit humiliation on the Church in order to indulge his recreational needs. Maricopa County holds more authority over Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien than the pope these days. That became evident Tuesday when Judge Stephen...
Rome has spoken
When should a priest withhold the Eucharist from a Catholic who is an obstinate public sinner? And who should make the decision to refuse Communion: the parish priest? the local bishop? the bishops' conference? the Holy See? Those questions have been answered. It's up to the pastor. In...
the accidental pastor
I have a different take from Dom's on the suit against the Archdiocese of Boston brought by Lumbermens Mutual Casualty, which is claiming "There is no coverage for damages which were the proximate result of the intentional criminal conduct of priests who committed acts of sexual abuse against...
GAUDIUM ET SPES
Despite the dire tones of the doomsday prophets here and elsewhere who often seem fixated on the notion that Church and State are both going to hell in a handbasket, there actually are signs of the prophesied Renewal. A wave of Eucharistic piety is sweeping the ranks of the Congress of the United...
SENESCENT ADOLESCENCE
When the bishop falls in love. I don't know what appals me more: the thought of a wedding ceremony lasting two hours, or the thought of marrying a bishop. These two loons deserve each other; the article is worth a...
dialog
Today's is the Feast of the Patron of Nuanced and Mutually Enriching Church-State Relations. We do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of...
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