Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category:
It’s always a good day to start a novena. I ask for you to pray, in communion with me, this novena for all job seekers. We shall begin the novena February 5th and pray it daily through Feb. 13. Let us also pray that those of us who are so blessed with employment, and those granted favor by this petition always do God’s will in their work.
—
Joseph the Carpenter, Georges de La Tour
O glorious Saint Joseph, faithful follower of Jesus Christ, to you we raise our hearts and hands to ask your powerful intercession in obtaining from the compassionate heart of Jesus all the helps and graces necessary for our spiritual and temporal welfare, particularly the grace of a happy death, and the special grace for which we now ask.
(Mention your request)
O guardian of the Word Incarnate, we feel animated with confidence that your prayers for us will be graciously heard at the throne of God.
(The following is to be said seven times in honor of the seven joys and seven sorrows of Saint Joseph:)
O glorious Saint Joseph, through the love you bear for Jesus Christ, and for the glory of hs name, hear our prayers and grant our petitions.
Share on Facebook
I am currently reading “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life
” by Archbishop Chaput of Denver. I came across a very fitting two paragraphs, as they relate to events that are about to unfold in Washington D.C.
The Catholic Church has had many different relationships with many different states in many different eras. What we’ve learned is this: We will never build God’s kingdom here on earth. When people have messianic expectations about the state, when they ask politics to deliver more than it can, the story ends badly.
But neither will we ever be released from the duty to sanctify, humanize, and bring Jesus Christ to the public square in which we live. And it is precisely because of this duty that the American experiment is so hopeful—and so important. (emphasis in original)
Share on Facebook
40 Days for Life will be holding teleconference next Tuesday night at 9pm Eastern. Make sure to register here.
In the last 40 Days for Life campaign (just before the election), at least 614 lives were saved and 8 abortion workers quit their jobs and got out of the abortion business. Please continue to pray, fast, and partake in pro-life activities when you can. Lives depend on us.
Share on Facebook
Hail and blessed be the hour and moment
in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary,
at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.
In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God!
to hear my prayer and grant my desires,
through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and of His Blessed Mother.
Amen.
(It is piously believed that whoever recites the above prayer fifteen times a day
from the feast of St. Andrew, on November 30th, until Christmas will obtain what is asked.)
[Imprimatur: +MICHAEL AUGUSTINE, Archbishop of New York, New York, February 6, 1897.]
Share on Facebook
I have often pointed out that my own position on abortion — to be against it — is actually a scientific one. I do regard, as any true Catholic does, the Holy See, Sacred Scripture, and Sacred Tradition as authoritative. However, the case as it has been revealed to us in science is more powerful as what has been mandated by the church (something I don’t think is coincidence — God knows humans’ issues with believing that which we cannot see). Today, Lisa Miller in Newsweek reports that there was a small, but steady message coming from a seemingly strange pro-life group in response to one of her recent articles on abortion: atheists.
Just as pro-life Christians argue that life is sacred because it’s given by God, pro-life atheists insist that human life is intrinsically valuable without God’s help. “I think there is nothing beyond this life—but life in and of itself is unique and special,” explains Matt Wallace, a UPS package handler in North Carolina who started an online group for pro-life atheists in 1999.
Actually, as one of those pro-life Christians, my argument comes more from the atheistic point of view she describes. I’d even say most of the pro-life activists argue from that standpoint, too, so Miller may want to re-consider her generalizations. My strict conscience on voting, however, does come from my religion, and the authority from the Church that we should not cooperate materially with intrinsic evils or have to answer for it at the end of our life. Those are two distinct actions, though (opposing abortion and voting) — I use my vote as one of the “tools” to fight abortion and other intrinsic evil as Christians are morally obligated to do.
One of the points I think that is overlooked in this article, however, is that about the actual decision of Roe v. Wade. While Miller hits on it briefly as it relates to Christopher Hitchens, her article ignores the great number of people who don’t consider themselves pro-life or pro-choice, or even consider themselves pro-choice, yet oppose Roe v. Wade because of what it is: a poor decision made by an activist court. There is a large group of people who agree with the results brought on by Roe v. Wade who would rather see this brought about by legislation. They are, of course, unmotivated to try to bring about a change (due to indifference or actually preferring the current state of this debate), but still opposed to the decision.
All in all, there are many ways to become pro-life. Most often, without a miraculous conversion to faith, this is going to be brought about by science. Even this pro-lifer thinks that the case made by science is the most convincing (but I’m only human).
Share on Facebook
Pope Benedict, in 1985, predicted the global economy collapse we are in the midst of in his paper, “Market Economy and Ethics.” He also says that Marxism is not the answer.
The full extent of this question becomes even more apparent when we include the third element of economic and theoretical considerations characteristic of today’s situation: the Marxist world. In terms of the structure of its economic theory and praxis, the Marxist system as a centrally administered economy is a radical antithesis to the market economy. 6 Salvation is expected because there is no private control of the means of production, because supply and demand are not brought into harmony through market competition, because there is no place for private profit seeking, and because all regulations proceed from a central economic administration. Yet, in spite of this radical opposition in the concrete economic mechanisms, there are also points in common in the deeper philosophical presuppositions. The first of these consists in the fact that Marxism, too, is deterministic in nature and that it too promises a perfect liberation as the fruit of this determinism. For this reason, it is a fundamental error to suppose that a centralized economic system is a moral system in contrast to the mechanistic system of the market economy. This becomes clearly visible, for example, in Lenin’s acceptance of Sombart’s thesis that there is in Marxism no grain of ethics, but only economic laws. 7 Indeed, determinism is here far more radical and fundamental than in liberalism: for at least the latter recognizes the realm of the subjective and considers it as the place of the ethical. The former, on the other hand, totally reduces becoming and history to economy, and the delimitation of one’s own subjective realm appears as resistance to the laws of history, which alone are valid, and as a reaction against progress, which cannot be tolerated. Ethics is reduced to the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of history degenerates into party strategy.
My point is not that religion knows best (though Pope Benecict — then Cardinal Ratzinger — is a intellectual giant), but that God does. In every instance, when we lose sight of God and lose sight of the priority for loving our neighbor over ourselves, our most reliable systems fail.
Share on Facebook
Ron Paul, ever a champion for the pro-life cause (other than throwing his political support behind candidates who couldn’t win), has a unique viewpoint, as former practioner of medicine:
As a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies I am very disturbed by the continued efforts of those on the left to establish absolute rights to abortion. However, even more distressing is the notion that taxpayers should be forced to subsidize life-ending procedures such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
In addition to the news that those who will benefit from federally-funded stem cell research have seen an uptick in their financial position as a result of the election, comes news from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that many health care facilities under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church may be shut down as a result of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” for refusal to perform abortions.
Catholic/Christian hospitals are known across the country for providing great medical care. As has been pointed out by many of the bishops, it will not be sufficient for the Church to simply sell the hospitals to those who would perform abortions. The only viable option would be to shut the Catholic hospitals down.
Share on Facebook
There have been several news reports about the priest who told Obama voters they should not take communion. Turns out the priest also wrote the very best thing published in a church bulletin that Feast of St. John Lateran.
“Dear Friends in Christ,
We the People have spoken, and the 44th President of the United States will be
Barack Hussein Obama. This election ends a political process that started two
years ago and which has revealed deep and bitter divisions within the United
States and also within the Catholic Church in the United States. This division is
sometimes called a “Culture War,” by which is meant a heated clash between
two radically different and incompatible conceptions of how we should order our
common life together, the public life that constitutes civil society. And the chief
battleground in this culture war for the past 30 years has been abortion, which
one side regards as a murderous abomination that cries out to Heaven for
vengeance and the other side regards as a fundamental human right that must be
protected in laws enforced by the authority of the state. Between these two
visions of the use of lethal violence against the unborn there can be no
negotiation or conciliation, and now our nation has chosen for its chief executive
the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate
or to run for president. We must also take note of the fact that this election was
effectively decided by the votes of self-described (but not practicing) Catholics,
the majority of whom cast their ballots for President-elect Obama.
In response to this, I am obliged by my duty as your shepherd to make two
observations:
1. Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits
constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do
so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under
the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy
Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of
Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.
2. Barack Obama, although we must always and everywhere disagree with him
over abortion, has been duly elected the next President of the United States, and
after he takes the Oath of Office next January 20th, he will hold legitimate
authority in this nation. For this reason, we are obliged by Scriptural precept to
pray for him and to cooperate with him whenever conscience does not bind us
otherwise. Let us hope and pray that the responsibilities of the presidency and
the grace of God will awaken in the conscience of this extraordinarily gifted man
an awareness that the unholy slaughter of children in this nation is the greatest
threat to the peace and security of the United States and constitutes a clear and
present danger to the common good. In the time of President Obama’s service to
our country, let us pray for him in the words of a prayer found in the Roman
Missal:
God our Father, all earthly powers must serve you. Help our President-elect,
Barack Obama, to fulfill his responsibilities worthily and well. By honoring and
striving to please you at all times, may he secure peace and freedom for the
people entrusted to him. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.”
God bless this holy and brave priest.
Share on Facebook
S.C. priest tells parishioners to abstain from communion if they voted for Obama: A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”
Amen, and congratulations. People need to realize that they voted in favor of ideas worse than slavery. We need more lay people, priests, and bishops to stop worrying about offending people and tell them the truth.
Share on Facebook
Catholic Bishops are emboldening over abortion following Tuesday’s election: “I cannot have a vice president-elect coming to Scranton to say he’s learned his values there when those values are utterly against the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Martino said.
I think it is time the Church stop worrying about tax-exempt status and start telling people the way they should vote (or, at the very least, lay out exactly how they should NOT vote). It is a grave, mortal sin to support any candidate who supports abortion, and souls are much more valuable than any dollar figure.
Here’s to hoping that the next four years sees a continuation of a newfound political passion by our Catholic Bishops. Clearly, by the exit polling of Catholics, the message has not been getting through.
Share on Facebook
Older Posts »
