Sodano named dean of College of Cardinals

This isn't real important, I just find it interesting to see what moves are being made. It seems that my suspicion that the curial players will remain essentially the same, but just moved around a bit. AP Wire | 04/30/2005 | Sodano named dean of College of Cardinals

Associated Press

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, has been named dean of the College of Cardinals, the powerful position held by Pope Benedict XVI before his election as pope.

The Vatican said Saturday that the pope had given approval to Sodano's appointment, which was made by the cardinals. The Italian-born Sodano, 77, is also the Vatican's secretary of state, a position he has held since 1991.

The dean of the College of Cardinals has a prominent role inside the Vatican, and one that becomes especially important after the death of a pope. Among other things, the dean presides over the conclave of cardinals that elects the new pontiff.

When Pope John Paul II died April 2, it was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the current pontiff, who served as dean. He delivered the homily at John Paul's funeral as well as at a Mass at the opening of the conclave. He set the tone for the secret balloting that eventually elected him the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope More Popular in Poland Than Germany

An amuzing thought, and I wouldn't have even thought to consider it. In reality it isn't surprising. You could probably pick anything "Catholic" and say there is more of it in Poland than any other given country and I would believe it. Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Pope More Popular in Poland Than Germany

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI made a tiny slip in Polish when he thanked Poles ``with'' their kindness instead of ``for.'' No matter: the German pontiff found understanding in the homeland of John Paul II, and many hope that may offer some balm for German-Polish relations.

Poles have embraced Bavarian-born Benedict with noticeably more warmth than his fellow Germans, urging him to visit and commenting favorably on his devotion to John Paul during his years as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy.

Cardinal Pell speaks about Pope Benedict XVI

Benedict didn't want to be Pope: Pell - http://www.theage.com.au

Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell says Pope Benedict XVI did not want the Catholic Church's top job but was elected because he was the most qualified.

Cardinal Pell welcomed the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's appointment as the new pontiff in his first public appearance, since his return from Rome, at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney.

Cardinal Pell was a member of the conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger, 78, as its first new pope of the third millennium.

Having chosen to be known as Pope Benedict XVI, the new supreme leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics succeeds John Paul II, who died on April 2 at the age of 84.

Unveiling portraits of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI by Australian artist Charles Billich, Cardinal Pell told the crowd that the new Pope was a sincere man and well qualified to lead the Church.

"He knows how to listen, he is prepared to present the Christian viewpoint so that it can be discussed and taken up or ignored and rejected by the people of today," he said.

"He's a rather shy man but he is an exquisitely courteous man and has a very pleasant and friendly demeanour and I'm sure that, increasingly, as the years go ahead he will be ... deeply loved.

"(He was chosen) because very quickly the cardinals believed he was clearly the best man for the job.

"He didn't want the job. I'm quite convinced that that was genuine. He is a genuine man of the spirit ... he will clearly and consistently call up Christ, call up the loyalty within the Church and he'll do that in ways and tones that are new and interesting."

Cardinal Pell also paid tribute to Pope John Paul II in his speech and described his funeral in Vatican City as remarkable.

He said Pope Benedict XVI made an emotional return to his former congregation in Germany in the days after his appointment.

"I wasn't there but I believe that it was a deeply moving occasion because as a boss and to the people he worked with he was admired and loved and deeply revered," he said.

Cardinal Pell joked that Pope Benedict followed in the German tradition of good organisation and that it spoke well for the direction of the Catholic Church.

Gumbleton supports democracy?

…maybe not for poor Latin Americans, but when it comes to the Holy Roman Catholic Church he does. From the (People’s Socialist) Peace Pulpit at the NCReporter, we get Bishop Gumbleton’s homily from last Sunday, April 24, 2005 (mind you, this is on the heels of his return from sunny Cuba).

The homily is too long to post in its entirety, but you can view the whole thing here. For brevity’s sake I will comment on excerpts.

I think the readings today [primarily Acts 6:1-7, the complaints about widows not being cared for..the ordination of Stephen, Phillip, et al], in fact, help us to explore a bit on the question of what the church is, how the church functions, what the role of the pope is, and bishops and ministers and so on [Uh oh…here we go]. Because when there's a new pope it's like a crisis, which means there's always a danger side [orthodox choice], but also an opportunity side [yeah…right]. Well in the beginning of the church, as we heard in the first lesson today, there was a crisis. You may not have caught the sense of how severe the crisis was when the passage was read because Luke doesn't go into very much detail, but it was a severe crisis [much like the Sandinistas faced from the Contras?]. Remember earlier in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke had described how the whole community was really one [ warm, and fuzzy]. There was nobody in need in that community because everybody cared for everybody else [it was truly the Marxist paradise that comrade Lenin envisioned]. They were all one, gathered around their belief in Jesus and ready to follow him [but on whose terms, Bishop?].

But now suddenly that community is about ready to split apart. It's becoming polarized, because it has grown and new people have come in…
… There's discrimination, so the Greek-speaking Christians complain. They're upset, and again, it doesn't say in Acts, in Luke's record or writing about it, how deep the upset was, but you can imagine that it could be pretty grim because people tend to fight very quickly over material goods. [Gasp] Well what did they do? This is where you get a real clear understanding of what the church really is [according to comrade Gumbleton]. It is the whole community that is called together. [drum roll, please…..] It is not just Peter saying, "Okay, I'll decide how to handle this." [lol, of course it isn’t. he’s just so transparent] The whole community comes together. They wanted to develop what much later in theological terms we call the sensus fidelium [yepp…that was the intention, they called together a meeting of the politburo and said, “we need to develop a doctrine for the ‘people’s cause!’”] -- the common understanding of all the faithful, of the believing people.

Now he gets to the point. I can’t say that any one thing he says is really bad, but to me it seems like the classic example of twisting scripture to get the outcome you want. Decide for yourself.

Because everyone has insights, everyone is connected with Jesus, everyone who is baptized is a member of his body, Jesus lives in every member of that community, because of this they all have a right and responsibility to be listened to [a right and a responsibility to be listened to??? *sigh]. And so that's exactly what they do. They call the whole community together and they listen to various ones speak, and pretty soon there's a consensus as to what to do [I’ve got goose bumps already]. The community begins to resolve the crisis and they go even further. They need -- it's also in a sense a vocation crisis [because there are no women priests, no doubt] -- they need some more ministers in the church. There aren't enough people reaching out and doing the actual ministry. So they decide they need more. But who chooses them [ahhh..here we go again]? The whole community [!!!]. The community chooses who will be the ministers, the leaders [not some autocratic pope or his henchmen, the bishops…the community…ahhh, happy days]. Then Peter, or one of the other leaders of the whole community [nobody special, just one of those people who seemed to have risen to the top], lays hands on those new ministers and they are affirmed as the ministers in the community [affirmed as a minister, not ordained and ‘set aside by God for service’]. That's how they resolved the crisis in the early church, and it was based on very sound understanding of who the church is [a democracy! I see now.] -- the whole community of disciples. If you listen to what Peter spoke in his homily: "You are a chosen race, a community of priests, kings, a consecrated nation, a people God has made God's own to proclaim God's wonders through the whole community, share in the work of Jesus, the mission of Jesus, prophetic, priestly and royal." The whole community [the taste he left me with is that he is buying the Protestant notion of universal priesthood].

Now our hope, of course, is that our new pope understands all of this.

[I can imagine the how long the pause was before the previous sentence and the following one. How’s that for effect? Of course, what follows strikes me as patronizing] But I'm sure he does. He was very active at the Vatican Council. He wasn't a bishop at the time, but he was one of the theological experts helping write that very document. He was on the theological commission that wrote that document, so he knows it very well. But as always, within the church, there's a possibility that we don't live up to the ideal. That's such a beautiful picture of what the church is, and should be, but we don't live up to it sometimes and perhaps this pope will fall short in this area, but you know what? It's not just the pope who's responsible if we fall short. What we have to remember is that those words are spoken to every one of us. Every one of us has a genuine freedom, a profound dignity, a global responsibility, a sense of vocation, and a personal union with Christ. And so it's up to us to act as the church [rise up people!…the revolution is at hand…the time has come for The People’s Soviet Socialist Catholic Church!].
…
It's not only that the leaders of the church have to allow us to speak, and allow us to be heard. Sometimes we have to assert our responsibility to speak and to be heard in order that the sensus fidelium, the thinking and common understanding of the believing people, is brought forward and is used as the basis upon which decisions are made. That isn't easy to do and so I'm sure that many of us would sort of hesitate to think that it's even right to do [there ya go…he’s such a good subversive], but if we're really the church, if all those words that we've heard -- from Peter speaking to the first disciples and from the Vatican Council -- if they're true [as I, Comrade Gumbleton interpret them], well then we must make our voices heard. We are the church. We must take responsibility for what the church does. It starts here in this parish community but then it goes beyond into the archdiocese and beyond the archdiocese into the world. We have a responsibility, and as the council says, a global responsibility. We must choose to fulfill it.

He goes on to sing the Holy Father’s praises. because of the pope’s recent anti-war remarks. Of course, if the Holy Father discussed women’s ordination of homosexual marriage, he would not be getting the kudos.

Change of course for East and West? - Inside the Vatican Newsflash

Here is the link to the Latest Inside the Vatican Newsflash, unfortunatley the link will change later and will probably be here.

Change of Course?

- by Dr. Robert Moynihan, Inside the Vatican

VATICAN CITY, Wednesday, April 27, 2005 -- Will the "miracle" actually occur? Will the long-postponed dream of the late Pope John Paul II to improve relations with the Orthodox in order to allow Europe to "breathe with two lungs" (the Latin West and the Greek East) now become a reality after his death?

Vatican watchers are seriously pondering these questions following a series of dramatic statements from Russia, and from the Orthodox world in general, suggesting that the arrival on the scene of Pope Benedict XVI may be a catalyst for quick and real progress in the relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

The latest statements came from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi, who expressed willingness to meet with Benedict XVI.
Here are news reports from Russia on the latest developments.

8 different articles follow; all of which are very positive in tone. Whether this is just a honeymoon period or not is hard to say, but it sure seems to me that we are in that New Springtime of JPII.

Viva il Papa!

Why??? Sometimes, you just have to ask.

I often receive hits on this blog from google and yahoo searches. Usually, it is from people searching the words "unam sanctum". Often times it might be two names that have both been blogged in close proximity to each other like "Schiavo + Gumbleton" and occasionally the search makes no sense at all.

Last night I received a hit from one of those. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why anybody would search these two words together. "tettamanzi + frodo" Why??? What would anyone expect to find by searching the Cardinal of Milan, Italy with a fictional character from a fantasy novel? The absurdity of it makes me chuckle. Of course, I suppose that I am the absurd one for having posted something that would yield a hit from that search.

The search yielded a hit to Habemus Whatam, the list of papabiles that I had posted in which I had Cardinal Tettamanzi (sort of a hobbit looking fella) lobbing a gold ring (presumably to Frodo).

Whoever you are who performed that search, if you stop by again, please let me know what you were hoping to find. Oh...and I hope you found what you were looking for. ;)

She feels more hopeful about new pope than she expected

Marney Rich Keenan of the Detroit News ponders the Benedict XVI pontificate. She feels more hopeful about new pope than she expected - 04/27/05

It is unclear to me whether she is a dissenting Catholic or just a "tolerant" "concerned citizen" who whas no tolerance for a church to believe differently than her.

I wanted to welcome him, but I had my doubts, which were based on Cardinal Josef Ratzinger's earlier job as enforcer of the church's doctrinal purity.

Like many, I'd been pained by his condoning the practice of some bishops who denied communion to politicians who support abortion rights. I take issue with the church's position on the role of women, married priests, homosexuality and birth control, especially in the face of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

I'm sorry she is pained by the Church's teachings. Maybe if God was a little more "tolerant", people wouldn't have a conscience to keep them from doing whatever they wish.

But after much debate with many of my Catholic friends and some prayers, too, it is I who has begun to soften.

Now here's the reason I blogged this column:

In his homily at his installation Mass at St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI struck a different chord than I expected. He called for inclusion, rather than exclusion. He said he wished to reach out to Jews and believers and non believers alike. He prayed: "Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd. Do not allow your net to be torn. Help us to be servants of unity."

Worldview effects everything we consider. I know what the Holy Father means by that "one flock and one shepherd", because I am Catholic and accept all that the Church teaches. I suspect she comes away with something quite different than I do. I suspect that she doesn't have a clear thought about what is meant by "one flock, one shepherd", though I would imagine she received a warm and fuzzy feeling from the words.

Who wants to risk bursting her bubble by telling her that for there to be one flock and one shepherd the flock needs to follow the shepherd, and not the other way around?

He acknowledged the crucial challenges ahead, what he called "an enormous task." When he said his government plan was "not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas" but to "listen, together with the whole church, to the word and will of the Lord," he sounded open to working on the discord among many Catholics. More importantly, he did not condemn concerns as bad behavior or the wayward beliefs of straying Catholics.

Again, we have to ask how does she equate "listen, together with the whole church, to the word and will of the Lord," to being accpeting of dissenting thoughts and actions? The Holy Father did not anathematize anyone, but he is calling us to unity...on the Church's terms...which is God's terms.

To be sure, the new pope has before him an enormous task: appeal to modern men and yet be faithful to the word of Jesus Christ. So far, Pope Benedict has engendered from me prayerful respect and most importantly, hope.

This early in his tenure, feeling hopeful is more than I expected.

Go figure, now she wants the pope to be faithful to Christ, but earlier she stated that she would like to see the Church to abandon Christ in favor of sacrilegious communion, condoning homosexuality, "role of women" (ordaining women, no doubt), etc.

I agree with Ms. Keenan in this regard, I place a lot of hope in Pope Benedict XVI too. It just takes on a much different form.

Viva il Papa!

Una Voce America Rejoices Over New Pope - Pope Benedict XVI Long-time Supporter of the Traditional Latin Mass

Una Voce is so giddy over Pope Benedict XVI they issued a press release. I can't say that I blame them.

Una Voce America Rejoices Over New Pope - Pope Benedict XVI Long-time Supporter of the Traditional Latin Mass

(PRWEB) April 27, 2005 -- Throughout the world, you can hear the roar of approval from millions of Catholics overjoyed and grateful to hear that the new Pope is committed to Tradition. Tradition is the body of beliefs, writings, devotions, rituals, gestures – all things Roman Catholic – that has been passed down from generation to generation from the time of the Apostles until now. Amongst those cheering most loudly for Holy Father Benedictus XVI is Una Voce America.

There certainly is good reason to hope that Pope Benedict XVI is going to make an effort to deliver us from the unfortunate state of the liturgy. Check out this link to St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum provided by Amy Welborn or view just the highlights at Will Bloomfield’s.

I was going to spout off about the liturgy here, but I will spare you for now and address it in a later post.

Viva il Papa

Comrad Cardenal still has life and an audience

HT to Amy Welborn. The LA Times gives ear and voice to Comrad Father Ernesto Cardenal. I find it somewhat humorous the way the press has been resurrecting all of the disaffected Marxists since the death of Pope John Paul II. I don’t know what good they think it is doing anyone. They can’t really believe that there is now some hope for the “cause”, can they? My guess would be that right now the Church is newsworthy and nothing sells better than conflict, so the press will publish dissent wherever they can find it, even if it means digging up such thoroughly discredited malcontents as Cardenal.

Nevertheless, it is something to read if you have followed the revolutionary thug priests of Latin America.

Highlights:

— Cardenal believed that his duties as priest, poet and Sandinista were essentially one and the same.

Marxism, in Cardenal's view, was compatible with a God-given natural order — not the "dogmatic and metaphysical" Marxism of the Soviet Union, as he puts it in "The Lost Revolution," but the "flexible and pluralistic" Marxism of Nicaragua, which had grown organically from the heated soil of the country's volcanic inequalities.

...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI last week, was John Paul's point man on doctrine, denouncing liberation theology and working through his Vatican office to silence its leading practitioners.

Crossing Cardinal Nein - NY Times

The press is getting really redundant. This New York Times story is more of the same with the exception of this troubling statement (emphasized):

And yet one of his less known decisions was a 1998 joint declaration by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation affirming that the two churches had found common ground on the issue of "justification," the means by which a human being is made worthy of salvation; that dispute drove Martin Luther to set off the Protestant Reformation more than 500 years ago.

At the time, many of Cardinal Ratzinger's critics suspected that he would sabotage the declaration. Instead, the Cardinal, a longtime admirer of Martin Luther, was instrumental in rescuing an agreement when it was on the verge of collapse, according to John L. Allen Jr., a journalist for The National Catholic Reporter who wrote a 2001 biography of Cardinal Ratzinger. The signing took place on Oct. 31, 1999, the anniversary of the day Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

As was his wont, the future Pope Benedict did not go soft on what he deemed critical issues of doctrine. Disagreement between the two churches on issues like papal infallibility and the ordination of women still remain. Accordingly, Cardinal Ratzinger blocked German Catholics from sharing communion with their Lutheran brethren at a 2003 joint gathering.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that the Holy Father could have any admiration for Martin Luther. If anyone has any insight to the above statement and could clue me in on it, I would appreciate it.

Catholic politicians cautious on pope

I am posting this article from M. Charles Bakst of the Providence Journal, because it is of interest if you like to be reminded how ignorant and immoral our "Catholic" government officials can be.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's emergence as Pope Benedict XVI serves as a sharp reminder that the church has a set of strong views that Catholic politicians often find themselves at odds with.

Certainly this has been the case with the three Catholics -- all Democrats -- in Rhode Island's congressional delegation: Sen. Jack Reed, Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Rep. Jim Langevin.

See what these "Catholics" have to say here.

Nothing really

It was so cool hearing the name Benedict during the Eucharistic prayer. It literally brought a smile to my face.

Comrad Bishop Gumbleton in Cuba

Always up for a good laugh I checked in on Bishop Gumbleton’s latest homily from the “Peace Pulpit”. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one this week, because the good bishop is in Cuba of all places (no surprise to most of us). Fortunately, Bishop Gumbleton left us with some good material in his parish bulletin. I was able to find the initial draft as well as the published version. To allow for easy consumption I incorporated both versions into one. The redacted portions are in blue.

From the National Catholic Reporter

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton was not in Detroit on Sunday April 17, so we do not have a homily to reprint this week. Following is the announcement from St. Leo's parish bulletin:

Comrads, I am traveling to Cuba on a trip sponsored by the pro-Marxist group, Witness For Peace and partly arranged by Marxist Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, a comrad friend from Nicaragua and the former Foreign Minister of the Sandinista Nicaraguan government when that government was exploiting working for a major change on behalf of the poor. You may remember him as the man who claimed that that capitalist pig, Ronald Reagan, was possesed.

The following is a partial description of the plans for the trip as outlined by the Witness For Peace Polit Bureau leaders:

The group will arrive in the late hours of the evening on the 12th and on the morning of Wednesday, April 13th, we have planned a brief indoctrination orientation and a meeting with the Baptist minister who embraces Liberation Theology, and founder of the Martin Luther King Center, Comrad Raul Suarez. In the afternoon, we will go to a detention facility school for special-needs students and then on a city tour of Havana.

On Thursday, April 14th, in the morning, we will meet with the President of the Cuban Council of Churches and then visit the United States Interest Section here in Havana (the equivalent of the U.S. Embassy in Havana.)

On Friday, April 15th, the delegation will meet with a high level comrad Cuban official, members of the Catholic Church here in Cuba, and visit the Latin American Medical School (a special Cuban project to train medical students in abortion procedures from all over the hemisphere.)

Then on Saturday, April 16th, the delegation will visit special parts of the Cuban health system and then have a special meal and heretical prayer service ecumenical service with members of the Cuban irreligious community. On Saturday, the delegation has been asked to participate in a dedication of a gulag park in downtown Havana to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the United States Civil Rights struggle.

I am very very very very honored to be inivited to give the dedication at this ceremony for the propagation of all things socialist and void of genuine Catholic morality.

The Peace Pulpit: Homilies by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton will resume next week.

How will traditionalist deal with Catholic progressives? - desertnews.com

This deseretnews.com story cites the Ratzinger Fan Club and treads the familiar ground of what I will call the Catholic culture war (the differences of ideology within the Church).

The media may be modern, but the messenger is a man known for his traditionalism, the former head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His fans know him as a hard-liner, and they respect him for it. His online fan club wrote of his former position within the church: "As Grand Inquisitor for Mother Rome, Ratzinger kept himself busy in service to the truth: correcting theological error, silencing dissenting theologians, and stomping down heresy wherever it may rear its ugly head — and, consequently, had received somewhat of a notorious reputation among the liberal media and 'enlightened' intelligentsia of pseudo-Catholic universities."

I'm beginning to think that the label "traditionalist" has been applied so diversely that it is no longer a useful word whatsoever for characterizing a particular Catholic ideology.

Chris Blosser interviewed by the Globe - Pope's fans are found online

Chris Blosser from the Ratzinger Fan Club gets a nice write-up in the Boston Globe Congratulations Chris, and thank you for the Ratzinger Fan Club site.

Pope's fans are found online
Since 2000, site has offered praise for Ratzinger

By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | April 23, 2005

NEW YORK -- The moment Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger emerged from the Sistine Chapel as Pope Benedict XVI, his fan club website -- run by a bespectacled American who lives in Queens -- crashed because so many visitors went there.

The website received a total of 328,000 hits on Tuesday, about 300 times the number of visitors it had received two days earlier.

''It's still a bit wobbly, but I think people can get into it now," said Christopher Blosser, the 31-year-old webmaster of the site, Ratzingerfanclub.com.

Shy, soft-spoken, and intellectual, Blosser, who works as a Web designer in Manhattan, has read 15 books authored by the former cardinal and can name the titles of articles about or by him like some Red Sox fans can recite baseball stats. Blosser has never met Ratzinger, but he speaks of him as if he had.

''It's hard to separate the impressions one gets from the press portrayals, and to get beyond and read and learn about the man himself," said Blosser, who sports a ponytail, wears black, and loves hard-core rock music and Johnny Cash.

A former Protestant who converted to Catholicism, Blosser started the fan club in 2000, about the same time the church issued the ''Dominius Iesus." The controversial document, written by Ratzinger, said ''the church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church."

Blosser noted that Ratzinger was speaking in his role as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. ''He was basically given the job to preserve the Catholic doctrine. It was probably a job he wouldn't wish for himself, but he was handed the job by the pope, and he fulfilled it," Blosser said in an interview.

The document so angered Protestants and liberal Catholics that Ratzinger's image as ''God's Rottweiler," the Vatican's enforcer, was cemented, said Blosser. He found the reaction of Ratzinger's critics so absurdly hilarious that he decided to create a satire of the ''Grand Inquisitor," using baseball caps, coffee mugs, and pins with the smiling face of the cardinal.

''It was originally inspired as a satire to the reaction by some people who saw Ratzinger as this Darth Vader of the Catholic Church," said Blosser.

The website became a place for supporters of Ratzinger to meet and discuss their admiration. ''There are probably [more] Ratzinger fans that are inclined to come out of the closet now," said Blosser.

The website includes an explanation of Ratzinger's compulsory enrollment in the Hitler Youth and German military as a boy growing up in Bavaria. It opens with a prayer and shows the former cardinal signing autographs. The site includes positive and negative feedback: One writer congratulates Blosser for having the insight to start the fan club, but another one writes, ''This site is a joke. It's supporting what in effect is a form of extremism."

The small commission Blosser receives for the sale of the mugs and T-shirts is used to manage the website.

Blosser said religion has always been a big part of his life. His grandparents were missionaries in Japan and China. Blosser, the oldest of four children, was born in Japan but spent most of his childhood in Hickory, N.C. There, his family experienced a mixture of Protestant religions while attending a Southern Baptist church, an evangelical Protestant church, and one run by Mennonites. Blosser's father is a professor of philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, where Blosser earned bachelor's degrees in philosophy and theology.

''He grew up surrounded by books," said his father, Philip Blosser. ''Frankly, at his age, I wasn't reading half the books he's reading."

Blosser said in that college, he went through his existentialist phase and ''my Nietzche 'God is dead' phase." He became serious about his Christian faith during his junior year after rediscovering the writings of C.S. Lewis.

About that time, he also began to noticed he was far more impressed by the Catholic scholars he was studying than the Protestants. That was also about the time his father introduced him to the works of Cardinal Ratzinger.

''He must of been impressed by him and put up this website," said Philip Blosser, who converted to Catholicism in 1996, one year before his son. ''The former cardinal always had a reputation. Being a staunch conservative, the Catholics leaning to the left regarded him in derogative ways, and my son found this amusing and, so he began sporting mugs and trucker hats on the website . . . It was all tongue-in-cheek and it began to take off. He's always had a slightly twisted sense of humor, but you know, I am proud of the boy."

Merry Earth Day!

I forgot about Earth Day until I had seen Jeff Miller’s piece at The Curt Jester. I had already done some homework in preparation for this special day. By homework, I mean that I went to the IHM Sisters of Monroe, Michigan website last week to get some more insight into this year’s celebration. At their site you may not necessarily find sound Catholic theology, but you are guaranteed to find ‘Earth friendly’ theology.

If you are not familiar with the IHM’s you can check out an earlier post of mine, Reconcile yourself to God – Light a candle to a frog and/or browse their website. (In case you are wondering; yes, the IHMs are quite friendly with Bishop Gumbleton and share in the same causes.) In fact, if you live in southeast Michigan and there is a nuclear emergency, you can go to the IHM’s chapel (aka The Love Shack), where a sign proclaims that you have entered a Nuclear Free Zone! You no longer need a lead bomb shelter!

Here is their announcement from their homepage for this year’s festivities:

Earth Day - "Earth, Our Home" The Sisters are gearing up for another memorable Earth Day celebration. Join us on Saturday, April 23, 6:30 p.m. The Great Lakes Women of Gaia will bring song, dance, a multimedia show and theater to the Motherhouse Chapel.

What the The Great Lakes Women of Gaia are should be mentioned. From their website:

We are women of two countries--Canada and the United States--who share land, water, sky and song. The human-made borders between us do not divide, rather they give us different perspectives and gifts to share in peace and gratitude. We draw one another forth by supporting, challenging, creating and believing. The river that hugs both shores shows us how to embrace all aspects of our lives with integrity. We flow freely into sisterhood and song.

Unfortunately, this year the sisters must be too busy praying to a tree for a perpetual motion machine to have given us a reflection on Earth Day. However, we do have last year’s timeless piece:

Earth-Spring-Easter Celebrations

Here it is late April and the earth is beginning to burst with new life. With the jump start of two days of 86 degree weather, then a return to 49 and up and downs for a few weeks, we found our Earth Day celebrations happened in a beautiful ambience…a kind of gradual Spring happening.

The celebration of “Earth Day” was proposed way back in 1969 by John McConnell and it was he, at 88, who addressed the UN at its Earth Day ceremony this year. Here are some of his thoughts for our reflection:

We are at the point in History where we may discover better answers to basic questions that have puzzled the great minds of the past.
- What's the purpose of the vast Cosmos?
- Why are we here?
- Where are we going?
- Is there life on other planets?
- Are there other dimensions of reality?
We are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the mysteries.

In the present explosion of information and knowledge, from discovery in Space of immense black holes to finite quarks, the one thing that keeps coming back is the mystery of love. When we see a mother holding a baby, when in the most tragic things that happen, here and there we see individuals of compassion and love, the mystery strikes home to our heart.

While there are many unanswered questions, many scientists believe that love is a part of the Cosmos. It has been shown in an intriguing way how molecular and biological elements often come together, attracted to one another for mutual benefit and creation of something new. When we work together for mutual benefit we are building on the very nature of the Universe. Consciousness of this fact will enhance our efforts. Love of God and of (God's) creation lead to actions that bring personal and global benefit.

…we need to tap the power of prayer. Scientists as well as religious institutions have now documented evidences that prayer often gets results. Confidence, positive attitudes, heartfelt prayer have all demonstrated their benefit. Recognizing this can change the way we think and act…
We must keep going back to the meaning of love, defined and demonstrated by Jesus-and in varying degrees by many others throughout history.
-Our Cosmic Quest, John McConnell

Reflection:
How does the Earth, the Cosmos call you to prayer?
Can you see the mystery of Love at work in the Cosmos? How do McConnell's words stretch you this Spring and Easter season?

- Monica Stuhlreyer, IHM

Have a Merry Earth Day!

Benedict World!

Earlier I had posted an article regarding the conclave voting because I found it interesting even though it wasn't very in-depth. When I had seen that Amy Welborn posted a similar story it occurred to me that we now have enough information to create a graphical display of the conclave results.



Keeping with the American tradition of shameless commercialization, RickCo (R) is offering for a limited time only, these Custom designed T-Shirts. Let the world know that you support your pontiff. Show your colors!!!!

We have the following colors available:

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Cardinal Red: For those who have a flair for flash



Tiara Gold: For those who feel they should be pope.



Mourning Black: For those who already have one foot outside of the Church.



How much would you expect to pay for such high quality merchandise?
$300.00?
$200.00?
$159.99?

Normally you would be right, but in celebration of this momentous occasion, we are offering these must-have items for just 6 easy payments of 19.99. That’s right, for less than half the cost of a cup of coffee a day you can sport your colors!

Plus, for every order we receive we will make a generous donation to the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. They are in dire need of wood and matches for the upcoming inquisition. We believe in responsible citizenship!

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Order now by sending lots of money to RickCo (R).

Holy Father officially in the digital age

The Holy Father has an e-mail address. The Vatican has recently set him up with an account and released it to the public. His address is benedictxvi@vatican.va. I was fortunate enough to get advance notice on his account name and therefore was able to send Pope Benedict XVI his first pontifical e-mail! I have posted it below.

Sender: Alrick.M.Bwalugari
Recipient: benedictxvi@vatican.va
RE: I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE PLEASE

Dear Mr. XVI,

I am Alrick Mohammed Bwalugari, the son of the late Nigerian Los Angeles Head of Sacristans who died on the 6th of June 1999 while in active services. Following the sudden death of my father, Usher Bullem Shitika, the present Diocean Government has thrown my family and I into a state of utter confusion, frustration, and hopelessness, much like the state your detractors are in. I have been subjected to inhuman physical and physiological torture, like being forced to listen to the Protestant hymns and hippy folk tunes and being forced to view liturgical dancing girls. I’ve even been accosted by the hands of a roaming hoard of smiling chatters wishing me peace! I was only recently released from detention when a friend had successfully proven that it is not a capital offense to receive Communion of the tongue, yet I was still admonished not to kneel for Communion by the lady who doles out the Eucharist like a G I throws pieces of chocolate to children in occupied lands.

The incumbent diocean administration of Chief Oroger Omahoney has intensified his probe into my late father's devotions while in the office and he has frozen all our local and foreign accounts together with other tithes in support of his monstrosity of a cathedral as a retaliation for 2000 years of Catholic piety. As a matter of fact, we have been declared bankrupt and they are not relenting to make us poor for life, but when I complained to the authorities he pledged cooperation, yet has not released any relevant records.

As a man that is so traumatized, I have lost confidence with anybody within my diocese as all those who benefited immensely from the redemptive actions of Our Lord have openly abandoned the Faith.

MY REASONS FOR CONTACTING YOU.

I got your contacts through my personal research (blog hopping) and out of desperation decided to reach you through this medium.

You must have heard over the media reports and the Internet on the recovery of various huge sums of money tithed by my late father in different parishes and missions throughout the world. Some of these parishes and missions willingly gave-up/divulge their supporters and disclosed to the present civilian administration of Chief Oroger Omahoney and every other cause, all my family's cash tithes, so now I receive requests for money every single day!

Please my dear, I repose great confidence in you and I hope you will not betray my confidence in you. You have the power to make everything right.

I have secretly deposited a Peter’s Pence donation for the sum of $45,700,000.00 with a security firm whose name is withheld for now until we open communications. The money is contained in a metal box reliquary with a Parish Envelope Number.

I shall be grateful if you could receive this fund into your Bank account for safekeeping. This arrangement is known to you, my junior brother (Abigass) and my lawyer (Abiggerass) only. So I will deal directly with you. I am proposing a 30% share of the fund to you for your kind assistance. I shall provide for you all the documents of the fund deposit with the security firm, and raise a power of attorney to enable you claim and receive this fund into your bank account.

Also this transaction demands absolute confidentiality, my name must not be released or sold. I couldn’t mail enough envelopes in a lifetime to use up all of my free return address labels; even my young children won’t play with them anymore! On no condition must you disclose it to anybody irrespective of your relation with the person, not even your confessor! Remember, Loose lips sinks ship.

I am looking forward to your urgent and positive
response via this email (boscoe310@yahoo.com).

Best regards

Alrick Mohammed Bwalugari.


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Poor Benedict. This is just the beginning for him. ;)

A Passing Thought

Here is a passing thought that would not get published unless I do it commando style like I have here.

In the excitement and optimism over the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, the loss of our beloved John Paul seems nearly forgotten (in my mind anyway). In a way it is sad; I don’t want to forget what John Paul meant to me, but yet I am so thrilled about Benedict. In fact, I am of the opinion (yet to be substantiated) that our new Holy Father will do more things to endear himself to my heart than John Paul did. I am inclined to think that this (the time and papacy of Benedict) is the “new springtime” that John Paul promised.

John Paul the Great was remarkable. In my reversion to the Church (I returned as radtrad), I was opposed to JPII, because in my view of what a “true Catholic” would not do and say the things that JPII did. I eventually conformed my thinking to what is truly Catholic thought and therefore started to appreciate JPII more and more. There were things I didn’t like or understand, but I still allowed for the fact that maybe the Vicar of Christ might know a bit more about things than I do. [go figure]

John Paul’s radically different style, coupled with his orthodoxy was most likely just what the Church needed (I couldn’t see it before, but I do now). Better yet, it brought us to the threshold of hope that we are at now; the Benedict XVI papacy (yes, I am way premature characterizing this papacy as such, but I believe it will hold). Now I’m not trying to seem sacrilegious here, but I consider this situation analogous to St. John the Baptist preparing the way for Our Lord. A great saint, John Paul II has made clear the way for one greater than he, Benedict XVI.

You may consider me too giddy with excitement to think clearly, but I don’t believe that to be the case. Time may prove me terribly wrong, but I see the hand of God in so many things now. God has truly blessed us beyond our deserts; and let that be a testament to His loveable Divine Mercy.

Burke and Benny

Don't miss this interview with Archbishop Burke about Pope Benedict XVI. STLtoday

Here's a taste:

"We know each other and I am very grateful to him for his encouragement," said Burke in an interview Wednesday. "I have a great deal of respect for him and I can't say how happy I am that he's our new pope."

The bishop and new pope share the same views on many moral and theological issues. For instance, in June, when U.S. bishops released a statement saying lawmakers who consistently supported abortion rights or euthanasia were "cooperating in evil," and could be denied holy Communion - very much Burke's take on the topic - Ratzinger said the statement was "very much in harmony" with his view.

Benedict and Burke despise the creeping influence of secularism on the church, especially in their native continents of Europe and North America. Burke said he believes the re-evangelization of Europe, especially, was probably foremost in the cardinals' minds when they elected Ratzinger pope.

"We share a passion for the new evangelism," said Burke, "and a passion to address the secular frame of mind which also enters into the church."

Would both he and Benedict prefer a smaller, more orthodox church, rather than 1 billion Catholics, many of whom pick and choose which doctrine they follow?

"Cafeteria Catholics, or whatever you want to call it, have to be invited to examine the Catholic faith and make a decision whether to live it fully or move in that direction," he said. "Pope Benedict . . . wouldn't want anyone to leave the church. On the other hand, he would not want to compromise the faith for the benefit of anyone."

Ratzinger is well-known for saying, "Truth is not subject to a majority vote."

Burke added that he and the new pope also share an interest in teaching the faith and "a love of the sacred liturgy."

Groundswell Swept Ratzinger Into Office

This article from the LA Times is worth the read.

As Ratzinger gathered momentum during the conclave, some holdouts changed their votes "for the unity of the church," British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said. The fourth ballot resulted in victory Tuesday afternoon, a speedy outcome that seemed to awe the new pope.

Did they change their votes for the "unity of the Church", or because of the hard realization that they couldn’t stop a Ratzinger papacy from happening? The left (both secular and ecclesial) sings of altruism, but it is rarely ever something they practice in earnest. My guess would be that the holdouts changed their votes so as to not be perceived at odds with he who they knew would be pope.

"When the majority of 77 or 78 was reached, there was a gasp," Murphy-O'Connor said. "Everyone clapped. He had his head down. He must have said a prayer. I didn't see his face. He must have been aware this could happen, but when it does, it is a very special moment."

That would have been a thrill.

But an anticipated struggle between moderate (liberal) cardinals and the (orthodox) pro-Ratzinger forces never materialized. The moderates included Italians, other Europeans and Americans who went into the conclave allied with Tettamanzi (Bilbo) and his predecessor as archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Gumbleton on steroids), according to several accounts.

Several cardinals said voters were swayed by Ratzinger's intellect and a sense that his closeness to the late pope made him a logical successor.

It became clear during the voting Tuesday that Ratzinger had support from every region of the world.

"He had a consensus because firstly, he is someone capable of authority and always guided by truths," said Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland. "He was the dean of the College of Cardinals and he had reasons to become known…. He inspired admiration."

The shift in allegiance to Ratzinger included prominent members of the reformist camp aligned with Martini, according to several accounts. Marco Politi, the Vatican correspondent for the Rome daily La Repubblica, reported that Martini sealed the outcome when he acquiesced.

At midday Tuesday, "Ratzinger's position had become so strong that it was up to the other electors — if they did not want to give an impression of great disarray, disastrous for the church's international image — to take a step to give their votes to the most prestigious, and finally most unifying, candidate," Politi wrote. "That's what happened with the blessing of Martini."

After the decisive ballot Tuesday afternoon, the cardinals applauded Ratzinger. Sodano, the secretary of state, then asked the ritualistic question: "Do you accept your canonical election as supreme pontiff?"

"Yes, I accept," Ratzinger responded.

Ratzinger then told Sodano he had chosen the name Benedict XVI. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Germany said the new pope looked "a little forlorn" as he headed into the chapel's Room of Tears, a name that refers to popes who have wept as they donned white vestments.

Meisner himself did not remain dry-eyed.

"For me it was a miracle," (indeed) he told journalists Wednesday. "I burst out crying."

Amid the emotion and commotion, the new pope remembered that Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia turned 70 that day and took a moment to wish him a happy birthday.

"With all the things he had to think about, he had a very human touch," Rigali said.

Ratzinger invited his former peers to join him for a "convivial" dinner at St. Martha, Murphy-O'Connor said, describing it as a light-hearted, festive gathering.

"In he comes, all dressed up," Murphy-O'Connor said. "I often wondered what he felt, really. So anyway, we gave him a great clap. We had a very pleasant dinner with some Champagne to drink a toast. Then we tried some songs. It was very difficult when you have about a hundred languages to get one song…. And then he went to rest."

Homosexual Advocacy Group Criticizes New Pope

First we heard moans of agony from the CTA crowd. Then we heard the delusive demands from the pro-baby-killing crowd (‘Catholics’ for a Free Choice). Now, forced upon our weary ears comes the incessant whines from the homosexual crowd.

Homosexual Advocacy Group Criticizes New Pope

(CNSNews.com) - Not everyone had words of praise for the selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope.

A homosexual advocacy group expressed "concern" that Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, "does not present a hopeful vision of the future or inspire optimism for affirming language, policies or outreach."

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) noted that Ratzinger "authored a Vatican document condemning marriage and adoption by gay men and lesbians in July 2003."

The Washington Blade described the document as a "battle plan for Catholic politicians." (a tad hyperbolic?) According to PLFAG, the document calls on the Catholic Church to "reject gay and lesbian families on the basis of 'basic values.'"

"Religious leaders like Ratzinger cannot dictate to us what our family values must be, particularly when their idea of family values excludes all GLBT people and loved ones," said PFLAG's Executive Director Jody Huckaby, a homosexual former Catholic, in a statement. Why whine about it then?

"Our PFLAG families have values of love, respect and compassion -- perhaps the most distinguishing thing about those values is that they don't exclude anyone," said Huckaby, who urged "GLBT people and their families to confront bigotry" in the Catholic Church "and other faith traditions." I smell anti-Catholic bigotry. I dream of a day when I can choose to believe in a loving Creator who is all good, without having people castigate me and my beliefs.

"We cannot shy away from explaining how discrimination in organized religions can tear families apart. The fight for GLBT equality must include our willingness to challenge our religious leaders," Huckaby added.

PFLAG said the Catholic Church should be celebrated for its advocacy for the "marginalized and maligned people of the world -- the poor, the politically oppressed and those in war-torn countries."

"Ironically, however, the Church refuses to recognize the injustices it inflicts on its own families each time leaders like Cardinal Ratzinger vilify GLBT people. We hope that, as PFLAG families reach out to leaders of their faith, members of the clergy will realize the need for responsible religious rhetoric and the strength that comes from embracing all families," the group concluded.

The whole article smacks of heterophobia, ecclesiaphobia and deityphobia. Let's pray that Pope Benedict XVI can make this world safe for all people to believe in God, follow His commandments and make the world a better place.

Why They Ran - Peggy Noonan

Hat tip to Jay Anderson for this Peggy Noonan op-ed. Peggy echoes some of my thoughts; thoughts which I had been hoping to lay publish here as part of a more comprehensive piece. I found her particularly insightful regarding our desire for a spiritual father. Oh well, now you can enjoy it from a professional. lol

Why They Ran
The new pope speaks to the inner adult in all of us.

...
We want a spiritual father. We want someone who stands for what is difficult and right, what is impossible but true. Being human we don't always or necessarily want to live by the truth or be governed by it. But we are grateful when someone stands for it. We want him to be standing up there on the balcony. We want to aspire to it, reach to it, point to it and know that it is there.

...

Those who are pursuing John Paul II's canonization, please note: his first miracle is Benedict XVI.
…

We are living in a time of supernatural occurrences. The old pope gives us his suffering as a parting gift, says his final goodbye on Easter Sunday; dies on the vigil of Feast of the Divine Mercy, the day that marks the messages received by the Polish nun, now a saint, who had written that a spark out of Poland would light the world and lead the way to the coming of Christ. The mourning period for the old pope ends on the day that celebrates St. Stanislas, hero of Poland, whose name John Paul had thought about taking when he became pope. We learned this week from a former secretary that John Paul I, the good man who was pope just a month, had told everyone the day he was chosen that he wanted to be called John Paul I. You can't be called "the first" until there is a second, he was told. There will be a second soon, he replied.

It is an age of miracles and wonders, of sightings of Mary and warnings, of prophecy, graces and gifts.
…

The choosing of Benedict XVI, a man who is serious, deep and brave, is a gift. He has many enemies. They imagine themselves courageous and oppressed. What they are is agitated, aggressive, and well-connected.

They want to make sure his papacy begins with a battle. They want to make sure no one gets a chance to love him. Which is too bad because even his foes admit he is thoughtful, eager for dialogue, sensitive, honest.

They want to make sure that when he speaks and writes, the people of the world won't come running.

What to do to help? See his enemies for what they are, and see him for what he is. Read him--he is a writer, a natural communicator of and thinker upon challenging ideas. Listen to him. Consult your internal compass as you listen, and see if it isn't pointing true north.

Look at what he said at the beginning of the papal conclave: It is our special responsibility at this time to be mature, to believe as adults believe. "Being an 'adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties." Being an adult is loving what is true and standing with it.

This isn't radical, or archconservative. And the speaker isn't an enforcer, a cop or a rottweiler. He's a Catholic. Which one would think is a good thing to have as leader of the Catholic Church.

My hope and optimism seems to be redoubling daily; and it is such a beautiful thing!

"Catholics" for a Free Choice chimes in

Just when you thought the dissenters couldn’t get anymore pathetic, in walks the Kissling crowd. lol

The First One Hundred Days:
The Future Papacy, the Future Church

Catholics for a Free Choice Lays out a Schedule for the New Pope

WASHINGTON, DC—Catholics for a Free Choice is deeply concerned that the election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as pope is a strong indication of continued dissension (Get that...what nerve! lmao) within the church. The cardinal’s historic role as a disciplinarian means the tradition of the punitive father is maintained within the Roman Catholic church. so laughable

As we move into a new era for the church, we look to the election of a new pope as a starting point for the critical work that must be done to make this church a home for all Catholics, particularly those divided from the church during the last quarter century. lol...the whole thing is too painful and funny and painfully funny. I will try to refrain from comments.

Today, Pope Benedict XVI has both an opportunity and a mandate to set a tone for the future of his papacy and to redress wrongs done in the name of the Vatican. Simultaneously, he must span the divide widened during the last papacy between clergy and laity, men and women, north and south, right and left, gay and straight. As Pope John Paul II exemplified the spirit of reconciliation and relationship when he sat face to face with the man who shot him, the new pope should extend the same courtesies, coupled with a genuine spirit of invitation, to those who have been most hurt by church policies over the last years. Like us loyal and orthodox Catholics?

To this end, Catholics for a Free Choice has laid out a schedule for the next one hundred days. We offer these recommendations and requests in the spirit of moving toward a true engagement with the realities and suffering of our times and mindful of the challenges that lay before us as we seek to heal the fractures within our church.

The two most important issues the new pontiff must address are the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the most painful error of the 20th century within the church, and the church’s need to work with civil society to stem the tide of unnecessary deaths from HIV/AIDS.

Sorry, I tried to be quiet, but I can't help it. As you read the following paragraph about the sex abuse scandal, and the rest of the document, for that matter...remember that the person speaking supports the wholesale murder of babies in their mother's womb.

During the first one hundred days, the new pontiff should immediately meet with survivors of sexual abuse by the clergy. No child, no adult survivor and no nun who faced this most profound betrayal of faith were ever able to secure a meeting with the late pontiff. Now the Vatican should redress that wrong and sit down in a private meeting to hear the grief, the pain and the anger of those the church has most let down, including members of SNAP, nuns, young people and adult survivors who have all been abused by Catholic clergy. If the church ever needed a truth and reconciliation process, it is over the scandal of sexual abuse. The Vatican telecommunications office, with the full cooperation of the Vatican Congregation of Bishops, should schedule a televised series of encounters between bishops and victims in which the bishops will have the opportunity to tell the truth about their complicity in this scandal and apologize to the victims. The victims would have the opportunity to forgive these men and move on.

During the first one hundred days, the new pope should form a commission to study the current church policy on condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS. Under the watch of Pope John Paul II, Vatican officials and bishops spread misinformation and even staged condom burnings in AIDS-ravaged Africa. The new pope should immediately initiate an inquiry into the theological basis for permitting the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, including visits to regions particularly hard hit by the pandemic. However, people with and at risk of HIV/AIDS should not need to wait for the results of the commission to be able to protect themselves. The pope should lift the ban on condoms immediately in order to err on the side of life.

During the first one hundred days, the pope should establish the Pontifical Academy on Women's Rights in the Church. As a first step, the Academy would serve as a registry for qualified women candidates for positions that are already open to women. All Vatican officials and ambassadors will submit their resignation from office to the new pope. At least 50 percent of those resignations should be accepted and the posts filled with qualified women. LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is this little chickie for real?

During the first one hundred days, the Vatican should open a dialogue on opening the priesthood to married men. Under Pope John Paul II, married priests who longed to be both priests and husbands were sent the message that their desires for human relationships and love were not only unworthy of the priesthood, but also unworthy of even dispensation from the priesthood, rendering them to an ecclesiastical limbo—neither fully priest nor fully husbands. The future pope should commission a group to discuss the future and role of married priests with an eye toward returning them to ministry. Pension rights should be immediately restored to married priests.

These acts of justice within the church should be matched by an expansion of Pope John Paul II’s commitment to peace and his clarion call for debt forgiveness. It is time for a complete renunciation of capital punishment and a clear and binding opposition to the war in Iraq. Let us go one step further than the former pope and be clear that there is no possibility of a just war by a superpower. LMAO, so in other words, if North Korea nukes the US, the US should just roll over because it is a superpower!

None of these steps would change church teaching; all of them are consistent with current theological and disciplinary norms. None is radical. I'm in tears! I couldn't have written a parody this funny.

The first one hundred days should culminate with a reconciliation mass in St. Peter’s Square. After undertaking the above activities and others, the new pope should warmly welcome back Catholics to the church, with special recognition of and an specific invitation to the women, the gays and lesbians, the theologians and bishops punished and marginalized, the sexually abused and others who have felt excluded.

At the end of the first one hundred days, this pope should articulate a vision for the 21st century church that is inclusive, understanding, compassionate and just.

-end-

And think...this is just the beginning. Pope Benedict XVI hasn't even been sitting on the chair of Peter for 8 hours and look what is being launched at him. Thank God for this good and holy man as pontiff.

Official Call to Action Press Release - "Whaaaahhhh!"

Somebody, please! Put a tourniquet on my heart; it’s bleeding!

My comments are in red
The portions that were redacted from the first draft are in blue

Progressive Catholics apprehensive of a hard liner Ratzinger Papacy

“Progressive Catholics are closely watching the first actions of the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI the Great,” stated Linda Pieczynski, the national spokesperson for Call To Action (CTA), the nation’s largest progressive unCatholic reform group. She said, “The Spirit leads the church, which is the people of God, no matter who is Pope (I know, you thought the saying was “where Peter is, there is the Church” – Wrong again, Grasshoppah! It actually goes, “where ‘the people’ are, there is the church”). Some issues in the Church just won’t go away because we are obstinate in our heresy!. We still feel called to raise our issues even if the current Pope will not. Given our knowledge of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s prior positions as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the office of the notorious Holy Inquisition (that is our transparent and feeble attempt to scare you about what to expect from our ne pontiff – you see, we are banking on you being an illiterate moron who is prone to believing Protestant rhetoric about the nature of the Inquisition), we are guarded (like Fort Knox) in our expectation that he will address any of the important changes we have called for.”

Pieczynski continued, “Under Ratzinger’s leadership and with his approval, the discussion of women’s ordination has been forbidden (boo hoo); married priesthood is not under consideration (sniffle); people who have ministered to the gay and lesbian community have been silenced (ohhh, the agony); and theologians (heretics) who have written about the good (so called) in other religions (at the expense of the One True Faith) have been investigated. He is also personally responsible for derailing the canonical lawsuit filed by the (alleged) victims of Fr. Maciel, former head of the Legionaries of Christ, an alleged (operative word) serial pedophile (we support every form of abhorrent or deviant sexual behavior, but we draw the line at pedophilia, unless of course it is one of ours accused of it). Finally, he led an effort for two decades to disempower national conferences of bishops (heretofore, unsuccessfully...but give him time!), which conflicts with Vatican II’s principle of collegiality (ugh...that warm, fuzzy and disgusting word) .”

“He is known to believe a smaller church is preferable to the one that exists,” Pieczynski said (no need to comment...her words betray her). “We hope this is not the way he will address the priest shortage, by hoping progressive Catholics leave the church in enough numbers so not as many priests are needed (there will still be the same priest to parishioner ratio...he’ll get rid of the “progressive” priests too). This strategy of ‘tightening the ranks’ would seem to conflict with Jesus’ command to preach the good news to all people (Oh, please! lol). We pray that the Spirit leads him to understand that healing these divisions among us is what is called for, not further polarization (even if it means surgically removing the cancerous divisions?).”

“Pope Benedict XVI is not just the leader of those who agree with him; to be the leader of all of us, a Pope must bring all voices to the table (God’s democracy?), for that is precisely where the Spirit can be most effective (and where might we find that doctrine?). We believe that he must respect and welcome all Catholics (lol....that is choice!), no matter their agendas (even if that agenda be acceptance of pedophilia?), and exhibit the marks of a true servant leader,” added Pieczynski.

“We call on all Catholics to pray for the new Pope, as he takes on the difficult task of being the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. He will need the participation of all of us as he faces the many crises that still confront our Church, like our heretical asses. Our hope is that he will allow us to lighten his burden by calling upon the talents and gifts of all women and men (read ordain women, married men, and homosexuals) in the church to spread the Gospel to a world which is in such need of the Good News Jesus continues to bring us.”

NewsFlash! - Father McBrien still sucks! - More at eleven.

The idiot was on ABC news dogging the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI (wow...that has a beautiful ring to it, huh?) for Dominus Iesu.

I'm sure all of the other heretics are stewing in their juices right now too. I can even see Bishop Gumbleton kneeling in front of a bust of Marx with a knife to his abdomen. We should prepare ourselves for an all out assault on the Holy Father. The enemies of the Faith are sure to be incensed by this election and the MSM will be more than happy to accomadate them in their slander and dissent.

But I'll still be a smilin' :D

Habemus Papam! - Pope Benedict XVI

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI!



Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for this new shepherd!

Hey...isn't the name Benedict XVI in keeping with the alleged St Malachy prophesy?

A prayer in time of need

*Whatcha know about that; it worked! - If you would like me to pen one of my cool prayers for you too, just send me lots of money. I did the one below pro bono, because me and Benny XVI are pretty tight. lol

COME , Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy cardinals, and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.

V. Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be moved;
R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the conclave.

Let Us Pray

O God, Who hast instructed the hearts of the cardinals by the light of the Holy Ghost, grant that by the same Spirit they may be always truly wise, and unanimously vote for Cardinal Ratzinger. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

;)

Divine intervention?

To me, this story from an Inside the Vatican Newsflash reveals God’s hand in this conclave. Whether the implication is that Cardinal Martins is a papabile, or that his vote and/or influence will determine the next pope, I don’t know.

Interview with Portuguese journalist Aura Miguel about Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins of Portugal, who grew up in a small Portuguese village not far from Fatima, in a poor family, in a home with no running water. Aura spoke in English with Inside the Vatican on April 15, 2005:

Aura Miguel, you know Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins well. You were with him when he visited Sister Lucy of Fatima in her convent in Coimbra last year. And you say he was once nearly killed in an airplane crash....

AURA MIGUEL: Yes, he was traveling from Hong Kong to Italy. Someone took him to the airport. He checked in, so his luggage went onto the plane, but at a certain moment soon after, before getting on board himself, he said to himself, “I am not going.” He already had his ticket for the plane, and he cannot explain why but he gave up the flight. He came back by himself to the place he was staying, slept that night, got up the next morning, came to the airport and took the next plane. And that plane, in which he didn’t want to go, crashed. So everybody thought that he was dead. He cannot explain anything, he said he had a feeling he could not go on that plane. So when he arrived in Rome, everyone had received the notice that he died in the crash – because he had already done the check-in, and his bags were on the plane. And then he appeared in the room, and people looked at him as if he were a ghost. And they said: "You're alive!"

Getting to know you - Cardinals politicking

From John Allen at the National (un)Catholic Reporter.

The reality, according to these sources, is that there appears to be an inner core of cardinals, comprised of Italians, veterans of the Roman Curia, and other cardinals well-connected in Rome, who have been meeting over lunches, dinners, and informal get-togethers, presumably groping towards a sense of who they might be able to support as the next pope.

I am surprised, but yet I have no reason to be surprised. This conclave is starting out no different than any other conclave in history with Italians starting out with Plan A. Plan A is, “keep the battle within Italy.” If that fails they will go to Plan B, “anybody but the French”. I guess the Italians aren’t so bad after all. ;)

Another group of cardinals, however, including non-Italian speakers and pastoral figures from distant regions who do not know Rome or their brother cardinals very well, have not been much engaged in these conversations. Hence one “x factor” heading into the balloting is whether these “second-tier” cardinals will simply join whatever consensus seems to be emerging, or whether they will steer the voting in unexpected directions. Since many of these more disengaged cardinals seem to be from the global South, it’s possible that their swing votes could bring an interest geographic dimension to the election of the next pope.

“People who know each other have been getting together,” one cardinal said. “But larger groups have only had maybe one or two chances to talk with each other, to get a sense of what they need to know."

Actually, I think this group is going to be a big positive for Cardinal Ratzinger. Everybody knows Cardinal Ratzinger, and even if some of these unfamiliar cardinals think there might be someone yet unknown to them who they would rather vote for, they will vote for Ratzinger, because with him they know what they’re getting and it’s not bad at all.

Habemus Whatam?

Habemus Papam!

*Updated Again*

The comprehensive listing of the papabiles, their likely pontifical name and their first words as Holy Pontiff.

The Example:



"Be not afraid!"

Karol Cardinal Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II


The Contenders:





"Don't worry, be happy!"

Francis Cardinal Arinze becomes Pope Ziggy I





"Be not heterodox!"

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger becomes Pope Athanasius I




"Let them have condoms!"

Godfried Cardinal Daneels becomes Pope Feminus I




"Be like John Paul II!"

Camillo Cardinal Ruini becomes Pope John Paul III




"Be afraid, be very afraid!"

Carlo Cardinal Martini SJ becomes Pope Paul VII




"Be not an unresponsive bishop!"

Giovanni Cardinal Re becomes Pope Leo XIV




"Beware of Gollum, Frodo!"

Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi becomes Pope Bilbo I




"Be not unconcerned!"

Oscar Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga SDB becomes Pope Paradoxius I




"Be not like Cardinal Arns!"

Claudio Cardinal Hummes OFM becomes Pope Francis I




"Be all things to all people!"

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, O.P. becomes Pope Poserus I




"I fart in your general direction!"

Marc Cardinal Ouellet, P.S.S. becomes Pope Pierre I

If you get that one, that says something about you.
If you chuckled, that something must be true.
hehe


The Long Shots:



"Be not homophobic!"

Bishop Harry Flynn becomes Pope Brucie I




"Be not devout!"

Paulo Cardinal Arns OFM becomes Pope Dissentius I




"Whoa! Be not involved!!"

Bishop Robert Lynch becomes Pope Neglectius I




"Be not orthodox!"

Roger Cardinal Mahoney becomes Pope Heterodoxius I




"Be not a Capitalist Pig, Comrad!"

Auxilary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton becomes Pope Fidel I




"G'Eternity, mate! Be not a sheila!"

George Cardinal Pell becomes Pope Dundee I




"Be not a wuss!"

Archbishop Raymond Burke becomes Pope Pius XIII




"Be not veracious!"

Theodore Cardinal McCarrick becomes Pope Disingenuous I

And introducing the Cardinal in Pectore!



"Be not a self-deprecating dork!"

Rick Cardinal-In Pectore Lugari becomes Pope Asinus I

Do you know how many decades of the Holy Rosary I could have said in the amount of time it took me to do this? "Asinus" sure captures it, huh? lol

Vatican Is Rethinking Relations With Islam (washingtonpost.com)

HT to Rich Leonardi at Ten Reasons for this article.

I heartily agree with Rich's comment 'Apologize' for an attempt to retake Jerusalem, a city that had been Christian for 300 years before it and 2/3 of Christendom were conquered by Arab invaders? Keep waiting. to this:

But elsewhere, feelings toward the pope were less warm and, at times, openly hostile. One Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, said the pope had not apologized for the Crusades and that Muslims were waiting. Radical Islamic Web sites sometimes predict that Muslims will conquer Europe and set up headquarters in the Vatican.

I would like to add that this is the reason why Cardinal Ratzinger is just the man for the job.

None of the frequently mentioned papal candidates has called for ending dialogue, but they have taken different approaches to sustaining it. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was John Paul's chief guardian of Catholic doctrine, has placed a priority on shoring up faith among Catholics as a prerequisite for successful interfaith dialogue. In 2000, he wrote a declaration called Dominus Iesus, or Lord Jesus, stressing the superiority of Catholicism.

Amen, Holy Father elect. ;)

Catholic women still press for ordination

Yeah, I know....this is nothing new, especially since the MSM chorus has really been belting this out for the past 3 weeks. I just want to share this AP Wire story, "Catholic women still press for ordination", because it contains another example of incredible stupidity. Note, that I use the word 'stupidity', because this person cannot claim ignorance based on her position.

"I basically think the next generation will see the ordination of women," said Lisa Sowle Cahill, a theologian at Boston College and past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. "That change will not emanate from the top, but from the grass roots or local churches which the Vatican will then recognize."

It is the equivalent of this: “I think the next generation will see pigs fly, said Mr. Nutjob, UFOlogist and former president of the Area 51 Investigative Task Force. “That change will not emanate from anything biological, but from our celestial visitors which the government will no longer be able to keep secret.”

Amarillo Opinion: class, ignorant - Far-right Republicans overreach in Schiavo circus

Read this hack only if you want to get p*ssed off. amarillo.com | Opinion: Far-right Republicans overreach in Schiavo circus 04/15/05:

"Less loquacious, but also very much in evidence, was the Rev. Frank Pavone, also identified as an adviser to Terri Schiavo's parents. This is the founder of the very Catholic religious order that Amarillo's fervid, one-note bishop is sponsoring into the city. We may be safe to assume the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life don't envision a life for American women that includes access to safe abortion or, for that matter, contraception. Given the history of some of the company they are keeping, concern in Amarillo about the kind of fanaticism that these zealots can lure into our community hardly seems overstated."
...
Not a single Democratic senator formally objected to the pro forma voice vote that sent the Schiavo bill to the House. With the particular exception of Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Democrats in the house were nearly as compliant. Democrats once again proved themselves irrelevant, utterly neutered.

Observation: The supporters of Barney Frank always stand behind him. Why do you suppose that is? ;)

Ratzinger's papability discussed

Catholic World News (CWN) LINKS has a page with a number of links to articles discussing Cardinal Ratzinger' papability. Apparently there is a definite buzz around Rome. I love Cardinal Ratzinger and think he would be great follow-up to JPG even though I allow that the reality of a Ratzinger papacy might look much different than I imagine. I am still confident that whatever form it would take, it would be good for the Church. I am concerned about all this pre-conclave hype over him, though. Not to rehash the tired cliché about “the cardinal who enters the conclave a pope, comes out a cardinal”, but I can’t help but to keep that in mind and therefore, would rather he not be getting all this pre-conclave attention.

Three cardinals emphasize collegiality

Ok, here's a joke.

Three Cardinals walk into a bar. One is European, one American and one African, they sit down and talk to a reporter from the National (un)Catholic Reporter.

The North American cardinal said,

he is especially concerned about the issue of secularity, especially in Europe.

“I look at the church in northern Europe, and it seems like a mess,” he said. “Aside from pockets of life, especially among the young, it doesn’t look like we’ve succeeded in getting through to secularized culture. We’ve got to find someone who can dialogue with secularity, because in fits and starts it’s becoming the culture of the world.”

Of course, he didn't mention the state of the Church in North America and how easily his comment could be applied to home.

The European cardinal said,

"The challenge is to balance a strong papacy with a strong episcopacy."

I wonder if he would feel so strongly in favor of collegiality and a strong episcopacy if he were pope.

The African cardinal said,

“In recent years, the wheels have been coming loose in the curia,” he said. “The notion of collegiality needs to be more applied in the life of the church.”

Read that as, “In recent years, the curia has been crushing error and abuse," he said. "The notion of the curia clamping down on us wayward shepherds has been applied to some effect and we don't like it."

Yes, I know... It's not funny at all. It is sad that it has to be a joke in the first place.

Top Ten Conservative Catholic Pickup Lines

Thanks to Dianne Williams for e-mailing me this:


Top Ten Conservative Catholic Pickup Lines

10. May I offer you a light for that votive candle?

9. Hi there. My buddy and I were wondering if you would settle a dispute we're having. Do you think the word should be pronounced HOMEschooling, or homeSCHOOLing?

8. Sorry, but I couldn't help notice how cute you look in that ankle-length, shapeless, plaid jumper.

7. What's a nice girl like you doing at a First Saturday Rosary Cenacle like this?

6. You don't like the culture of death either? Wow! We have so much in common!

5. Let's get out of here. I know a much cozier little Catholic bookstore downtown.

4. I bet I can guess your confirmation name.

3. You've got stunning scapular-brown eyes.

2. Did you feel what I felt when we reached into the holy water font at the same time?

1. Confess here often?


Editor's note: The one I used to land my wife was, "Hey baby, your parish or mine?"

My heart is bleeding for those poor Marxist ex-priests out there

I was going to start this post with another apology for appearing to be a consummate whiner. However, I realized that what I expected would be happening soon, is already underway. The MSM’s “honeymoon of commiseration” has ended. Heretofore, the only real negatives we have had to put up with was the ignorance of the press and the temporarily restrained dissent of the McBriens and Drinans, etc. Now that the Holy Father’s body is resting in its tomb, the heretics and creeps will have an all too willing media to give them a voice.

Here the LA Times serves as a platform for the Liberation Theology Polit Bureau. I haven’t see this large of a piece on Liberation Theology in nearly 20 years. Below is some of the propaganda from our Marxist friends. Please note the adjective “former” describing most of the priests and religious.

Amaya charges that under the late pope, the church was too timid in its ministry to the needy, and maintains that John Paul's efforts to put the brakes on social activism cost the Latin American Catholic Church membership as well as momentum in the fight against poverty and injustice.

"The church has to come down from heaven to the reality on Earth," Amaya said. "It's not filling my spiritual needs, and I am looking for an alternative."

Former priest Miguel Ventura doesn't much mourn the pope's passing, either. The diocesan cleric left the church during El Salvador's 12-year civil war, in which he was captured and tortured by military forces because he had organized peasants to demand social justice.

"The arrival of Pope John Paul II was a step backward for El Salvador," said Ventura, who has married and now practices his own, unsanctioned brand of Catholicism as a pastor in poor eastern El Salvador. "He imposed the authoritarian model on the Latin American church and didn't have an open vision."
…
"The pope was listening to those who were portraying liberation theology in caricatures — priests with guns, Marxists — and they just weren't accurate," said Dean Brackley, a theology professor at the Jesuit-run Central American University in San Salvador.
…
In any case, the new pope soon moved to quash liberation theology's dynamics, without officially declaring it taboo. In Brazil, the pope fired Archbishop Helder Camara, the "red bishop," and replaced him with an archconservative in Brazil's needy northeast region. He curbed the influence of Sao Paulo Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, a strong proponent of base communities, by carving up his archdiocese in 1989.

"We were not understood," said Arns, 83 and now retired, adding that many Catholics became disaffected under the late pope. "A portion of the lay leadership was lost."
…
Maria Lopez Vigil, a former nun who is now a journalist in Nicaragua, accused the pope of taking "the side of the powerful" in the conflicts that convulsed Central America in the 1970s and 1980s.

"He cost the church members," she said, "but even worse, made hundreds of thousands of people uncomfortable with a God they thought was intolerant."
…
"The pope didn't understand the meaning of Romero," said former priest Ventura, now 59. "It indicated that Rome doesn't give aspects of the Salvadoran, the Latin American church, the attention it should."

Ventura says that at least 30 priests and nuns left the Salvadoran clergy after 1990 over disenchantment with Vatican policy. He said he knows of five other former clerics with untraditional pastorates like his in El Salvador.
…
"It is a seed that Latin America planted and that others are collecting the fruits of," retired Cardinal Arns said in a newspaper interview this year. Brazil's Roman Catholic Church is deeply involved with the Landless Movement, that country's biggest grass-roots force.

Discourse about the poor and downtrodden and the need to solve social problems is now embedded in Latin America's Catholic Church, analysts said, despite the Vatican's move to damp the impact of the theology that gave it that higher profile.

Theology professor Brackley said the Vatican could make enormous strides if the next pope adopted at least a few of liberation theology's features, such as decentralizing authority, adapting to local cultures and giving women a greater voice.

Father Alberto Parra of Jesuit Javieriana University in the Colombian capital, Bogota, said a resurgence of liberation theology was essential for the church to fulfill its pastoral responsibility.

"The church cannot continue to take refuge in religious elements," Parra said. "It has to deal with social problems."

Let the games begin!

Yet Another Gripe

If you had the good fortune of missing Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes last night, I'll give you a reminder of why you don't watch him. Mr. Folksy was examining the coverage of the Holy Father’s funeral. He is never able to mask his negative attitude toward Christianity, but his story bit wasn’t overtly disgusting until the end when he said:

People who aren't Catholic have been pretty good about honoring and respecting Pope John Paul. But, I think they probably had enough of this now.

One good thing, stories about Pope John Paul pushed Terri Schiavo off the front page. I mean, we didn't need any more of that.

After the show tonight, I'm just going to sit down with all these papers and look through the back pages for the comic strips.

Truly an A$$.

How's this for hate? - Not in my name, The Guardian Comment

There are those who are blind to the Divine Truth and those who just have their eyes closed. Here is an example of the latter. It’s not like Polly Toynbee hasn’t had exposure to holiness, she admittedly has, she just reviles it:

In 1971 I interviewed Mother Teresa and asked how she justified letting starving babies be born to die on Calcutta streets for lack of contraception. She said sublimely that every baby entering the world was another soul created in praise of God, even if it lived only a few hours. She was never keen on cures: suffering was a gift of God that enabled those who cared for the afflicted to demonstrate their love. She was beatified by John Paul II for their shared religious mania. Those who met them talk of an aura of love, power, listening and intensity. But goodness is in doing good; good intent is no excuse for murderous error.

The entire piece is full of contempt for the Holy Father, the Church and those who believe. Her venom seethes forth from virtually every word written, but reaches its climax in the last paragraph.

Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church's outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those "civilised" Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support. They are like the Bollinger Bolsheviks who defended the USSR and a murderous ideology that they could do much to change. For today, just remember what lies beneath all this magnificent display.

I am forever amazed at how the ungodly can mock and deny any moral absolutes, ridicule people of faith and attack the Church, yet they cite some moral outrage in order to condemn. Go figure.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Not in my name

The Peace Pulpit April 3, 2005

I don’t know why I’m blogging this, but the man just rubs against my grain. The National (un)Catholic Reporter publishes Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Gumbleton’s homilies. Why waste the valuable bandwidth of the Internet? I don’t know, but yet they do.

I know this is very petty of me, which is somewhat out of character, but I actually find the linked homily offensive. The problem is not so much what the bishop says (beyond the norm, anyway), as it is what he doesn’t say. The homily is for April 3, the great feast of Divine Mercy Sunday and the day after the Holy Father died. You would think that the homily would be on the Divine Mercy of Our Lord, or the great loss of our holy pontiff or both. Nope. Not a mention of either. However, he did manage to pay homage to Liberation Theology proponent Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King Jr.

Bishop Gumbleton did manage to mention Pope John Paul II's name, but only while citing a quote from the pope's Peace Day statement of 2002. *Sigh*

Here is the link to The Peace Pulpit April 3, 2005, but I've already given it more time than it deserves.

Tragic blindness of John Paul II?

After inadvertently having published a semi-rough draft and then getting locked out of blogger while editing it. I have rewritten this piece in order to be more concise.

There have been a number of items in the news and on various blogs over the past week that I’ve wanted to weigh in on. Time has been a difficult commodity for me to come by as of late, and when I am blessed with some of it, my pet issues no longer seem topical.

Thanks to Mark Shea at "Catholic and Enjoying It!" for bringing up this article by Rod Dreher on John Paul II’s governance of the Church. Rod states:

It is a sad but incontestable fact, though, that as governor of the church, John Paul was largely a failure. Far from being the harsh disciplinarian of media caricature, he was reluctant to confront bad bishops – most of them his appointees – and deal effectively with the liturgical, catechetical and pastoral rot throughout the church.

The sentiment of disappointment at the Holy Father for not running as tight of a ship as he should have (or could have) is one I can relate to, I would have rejoiced at measures being taken to stifle or excommunicate heretical clerics and religious orders. I know many other orthodox Catholics feel the same. Adding fuel to the fire is, as Rod eludes to, this pervasive view of the Catholic “left” and secular outsiders that John Paul was some sort of megalomaniac who would not settle for anything less than a fully autocratic papacy.

While on the surface I share Rod Dreher’s view, but in good conscience I have to dispute the idea that it is an incontrovertible fact that JPII was a failure at the governance of the church. In fact, I allow for the idea that I could be totally wrong in thinking that the best thing for John Paul II to have done was to start a full-scale purge of dissenters, etc.

I wish to offer some considerations that account for a much larger view of the matter.

First, is that as the Vicar of Christ, a pope is not just the pope of the Catholic Church, but pope to the whole world, regardless of whether the world chooses to accept him or not. He is ultimately responsible for bringing as many souls as possible to Our Lord.

Second, the pope receives a special charism to fulfill his office. It is entirely possible that John Paul was responding to God’s will by not burning some heretics (figuratively speaking, of course…err maybe). As a sinner who has proven himself to be less than totally loyal to God will, I can’t say that my will is more in conformity to God’s than our beloved pope’s.

Third, the Church that Pope John Paul II took reins of was a church near total fragmentation by schism and heresy. Things are no doubt better (from an orthodox standpoint), though there is still a long way to go. I would also point out that in the last few years the Holy Father and the Curia seem to have been focusing a lot of energy on firming things up.

Personally, I think that keeping the Church from splintering into a thousand pieces is John Paul the Great’s unsung miracle. He very well may have worked that miracle by doing exactly what he did do and didn’t do. What if when the story of salvation is finished we find out that many more souls were saved because JPII kept them in communion (even if in name only), in order to lead them into orthodoxy and salvation? Will we exclaim, “so what?…he was just too wimpy to kick some butt”.

Forth, which I touched on earlier, JPII is no doubt a saint; and not that saints can’t have some faults or shortcomings, or even simply fail to do God’s will on some matter, but I don’t care to take the chance that I was ridiculing the will of God by ridiculing his faithful servant. Nor do I want to be praying for help from Saint John Paul the Great while hanging onto the thought that I knew better than or would have been more virtuous than he.

I didn’t address Andrew Sullivan’s angle (which was cited on Mark Shea’s blog) because it doesn't stand to reason at all. Any reasonable and orthodox Catholic can appreciate Rod Dreher’s proposition, and it is quite accurate in most respects. I just don’t think regarding the harsh criticism, it is an appropriate position to maintain.

Updated...finally!

A Blogger FYI...when Blogger locks you out, try deleting all of your Blogger cookies.

A Bishop According to John Paul's Heart?

HT to Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

An Inside the Vatican Newsflash reports on a rumor floating around Rome:

That John Paul II, in his testament, names the man he believes would make a worthy successor for him, and, that the name mentioned is that of an Italian bishop.

I will not speculate further on what this might mean; it will be soon enough for such meditations, tomorrow afternoon...

This same source said that the testament contains the name of a mystery cardinal "in pectore," but that, without the two written witnesses to confirm this name, the name will not be accepted.

'We Want God' - Peggy Noonan

This OpinionJournal column by Peggy Noonan is a poignant reflection on John Paul the Great's first salvo against communism in Poland.

So it was a redeclaration of the Polish spirit, which is a free spirit. And those who were there went home a different people, a people who saw themselves differently, not as victims of history but as strugglers for Christ.

The Ecclesiastical Infoblog

Please check out The Ecclesiastical Infoblog and see what you think. If you like the idea and want to participate or recommend participation to someone else, let me know.

Saints Alive - Another JPII Eulogy

I have had a difficult time dealing with the passing of Pope John Paul II. By difficult, I mean an uncharacteristically emotional response void of the sweet consolations that are derived from the holy hope of eternal life that I am confident he has entered into. I do harbor those hopes intellectually; in fact, I am quite convinced that God has indicated such (that’s a topic I hope to address at another time). Yet, I have still suffered much, and for a reason that wasn’t readily apparent or understandable.

Let me share some thoughts.

To many, St. Francis is a favorite saint, and justifiably so. This humble man of small physical stature exuded such confidence and love that he had become a living legend in his own day. People from every level of society sought out his counsel and his example. St. Francis knew how not to be afraid; whether he was standing down a wolf or trying to convert the sultan while on a crusade, he never wavered. I had never been as moved by St. Francis as I was when I saw a picture of his humble robe.

To this day I can study its every detail and reflect on the wondrous virtue of humble little Francis and his massive heart. If only I could have lived in that time and place to have loved, venerated and learned from him in person. For a grace like that I would be eternally grateful to God, as well I should.

St. Peter’s example gives me much hope. He had a number of personal faults, yet he still found much favor with Our Lord. Peter spoke and taught with authority. Those listening to him had no doubt about the veracity of what he was saying or from whom he derived his authority. He was the shepherd of Our Lord’s flock. He holds a special place with me not just because he and his successors stand in for Christ in a special way, but because I have such sympathy for his contrition at denying Our Lord.

St. Paul had incredible zeal. How else could he have traveled so broadly proclaiming the good news of Our Lord? St. Paul spoke out to everyone within earshot. He wanted nothing more than to obtain souls for Our Lord. It did not matter what race or region they were from or what their beliefs had previously been. What’s also interesting about Paul is the affection that Protestants have for him in particular. Keep that in mind as we move on.

St. Louis de Montfort is special to me. He helped to inflame my love for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Through him I learned the shortcut to Heaven. St Louis traveled France spreading devotion to Our Lady and her rosary. He tirelessly and at great personal peril fought the heresy of Jansenism. He was the subject of numerous assassination attempts.

St. Alphonsus Liguori is another personal favorite. He is a Doctor of the Church and deservedly so. Two things about him have great impact on me. Foremost would be the depth of his love and understanding of Our Heavenly Mother. The other would be his example of persistently working for Our Lord and promoting devotion to Our Lady while under tremendous pain. He suffered from rheumatism and debilitating headaches, his body deforming so severly that his head was bent so far forward he could only drink through a straw. Yet he went about his duties and at every free moment he could muster, he would write. Often times he held a piece of marble up to his head in an attempt to alleviate the pain while he wrote. He is truly an example of someone carrying a heavy cross valiantly.

St. Joseph is my patron saint. As such he is extra-special, or perhaps I have chosen him for my patron because he is extra-special. Either way, he is the model that I choose to follow, but consistently fail at. St. Joseph was a father and a husband, like myself. He was profoundly devoted to the Blessed Virgin and a most loyal servant to Our Lord. He no doubt was special to Our Lord by virtue of his mission, not to mention his meriting to die in the arms of Jesus and Mary. What this man had to endure physically and emotionally is beyond me. I often have terrible difficulty discerning God’s will for myself, yet I have the benefit of Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection, the Church with Her treasury of graces, 2000 years of teaching, etc. St. Joseph did not have the same merciful supports that are available to me. I know he merited many graces in order to fulfill his mission, but let's face it, God's grace was much harder to come by back then. What's more is that St. Joseph was responsible for God Himself, and His Holy Mother. I have charge of some souls that while precious to me and to God, they are still much less important than St. Joseph’s charges. St. Joseph will always be THE patriarch and you can always rely on his fatherly care.

What does this feeble attempt at hagiography have to do with Pope John Paul the Great? I will explain.

While reflecting on John Paul’s life, it became apparent to me why his passing was a bigger loss for me than I ever dreamed it would be. At one time, upon my return to the Church (as a radtrad) I didn’t think very highly of him (mea maxima culpa). However, by grace and humility I was led completely into the fold, where I found my shepherd to be quite admirable. I had even stated on numerous occasions that I believed he was a living saint. I have even speculated that he might be a mystic who has apparitions of Our Lord and/or the Blessed Virgin, and that after his death we might hear incredible tales of these things or of miracles performed.

While mourning during Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday (shame on me, I know) and pondering the life of John Paul, especially his last few years, I see in him some of the above saints. In the case of St. Joseph I see in John Paul II a mere reflection (appropriately so), but regarding the others I see an amplification of their virtues in him.

The love John Paul exuded seems to me to be on par with St. Francis. JPII had a different calling, but it was carried out in such charity for God and man that I see St. Francis in him. John Paul's first words as pontiff were "Do not be afraid". Like St. Francis, John Paul lived his life without fear in total resignation to the Divine Will.

John Paul fulfilled Peter’s office in such a manner that I believe Peter would be proud of. No doubt John Paul had the wits, vision and authoritative manner to successfully shepherd the flock from the Chair of Peter.

Who has had as much zeal in reaching for souls as St. Paul? A few saints come close, like St. Francis Xavier. However, missionary work is what he signed up for. John Paul, was a secular priest with a desire to be a contemplative. Yet John Paul’s zeal as Holy Father took him around the world, touching every society. He was sowing Catholic seeds wherever he went by his example, and as is the case with St. Paul, the Protetsants have taken notice. I am confident that soon enough, Our Lord will reap the harvest of souls from the seeds sown by John Paul the Great. In a way, JP was actually able to “out-Paul” Paul by taking advantage of the world we live in, where travel and mass communication is no logistical matter to speak of. St. Paul, must be impressed.

I mentioned above that through St. Louis de Montefort I learned the shortcut to Heaven. The shortcut is this: “To Jesus through Mary”. Sound familiar? It should, John Paul the Great said it often. JPG’s moto was “Totus Tuus” (Totally Yours, referring to Our Mother). I know that our late Holy Father had read St. Louis’ True Devotion to Mary multiple times, as I have done too. One cannot read that book and not come away desiring to give everything to Mary with childlike abandon. Like St. Louis, John Paul spread devotion to Mary wherever he went. Once more, the times and circumstances surrounding John Paul II lent themselves toward him being able to “out-Louis” Louis.

If my young children remember John Paul II at all, it will be a vision of this elderly, patriarchal looking figure in a window trying to shoo a dove away or being hunched over and clutching his head either from pain or in prayer.

I will remember him in the images of his elder years too, because in that vision I see a saint demonstrating to us how to share in Our Lord’s passion. Like St. Alphonsus, John Paul continued to work tirelessly under great physical adversity and pain.

We can’t minimize the import of this example. We all have to suffer from time to time, and most people suffer in the waning years of their life. John Paul’s suffering was somewhat significant, but many others have suffered more (that’s providing Our Lord didn’t heap extra pain on him like as with a victim soul which he very well may have been). What is significant is how he did not complain and kept working, and working hard! The only time he stopped was when his illness stopped him. How many of us, if stricken like JP was, would have kept pushing on like he had?

Pope John Paul was truly our Papa. One only need to view his interaction with people of all walks of life and in particularly with the young, to see that paternal love. You could see the love in his eyes when he engaged with a youngster. That love was evident right down to some of his final words when he said regarding the youth, “I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you”. I am of the mindset that nobody could be the father that St. Joseph was, but John Paul certainly followed his example of paternal care.

I offer some other comparisons that didn’t occur to me earlier. John Paul is much like St. Pius X, in that he had exceptional devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and worked to promote frequent Holy Communion and adoration of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. St. Pius X attempted to purge the Modernists from the Church, but many just went underground, so to speak. Their errors still exist among clergy to this day as well as a general relativism. John Paul has made great strides in bringing the flock to orthodoxy. Sure, there are still some holdouts like Bishop Gumbleton, et al, but they are a dying breed. There is a new springtime dawning, just as Pope John Paul II promised.

I would also liken JPII to Pope St. Gregory the Great, a Doctor of the Church. He was brilliant and very forward thinking. One could easily argue that the world as we know it would be drastically different if it weren’t for Gregory the Great. He essentially defined the Christianity of the Middle Ages and set the stage for a glorious Christendom.

Therein lies the source of my pain. Who wouldn’t have sought after St. Francis in his day? Who wouldn’t have desired to crawl through St. Peter’s shadow? Who wouldn’t have loved to pray the rosary with St. Louis? Who wouldn’t have followed or even asked St. Paul’s advice on how to become holy? Who wouldn’t have even asked St. Alphonsus to bless their rosary? I know that if the circumstances were to have made it a possibility I would have done all those things….or would I have?

God put me on Earth at the same time as one of His greatest saints, and in a world where that saint was quite accessible to all, and yet this idiot was blind to that grace until it was taken from him. Make no doubt about it, it is one thing for someone like myself to respect and admire John Paul, even proclaiming his sanctity, but another thing to have the heart and intellect to see him as the great grace he was. Had I understood what I understand now, I would have been with those dear souls who traveled, waited in line for, and pushed their way through crowds just to be near him, let alone to touch or hug him lovingly.

I hope to post some other thoughts I have regarding John Paul the Great. That is, of course, if anybody cares to read more of me after reading the above testimonial to my stupidity. ;)

Totus Tuus – Eternally

With sorrow I post that our dear Holy Father has left us. With faith I trust that he is in the arms of our Mother. With love and gratitude I thank our Lord for Pope John Paul II and his example. With hope I look to take that example to the same reward.

In the coming days eulogies will abound in the flames of love and the purging of pain. Who in our lifetime could have touched more lives? We are truly blessed to have been in this world at the same time as this saint, John Paul the Great.



More needs to be written; and it surely will be. Are any readers of this blog familiar with St. Don Bosco's dream of the two pillars? I can't help but to think of our Papa as that heroic captain steering the ship between the pillar of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and that of the Holy Eucharist. What do you think?

Eternal Rest grant unto him O Lord and let the perpetual light shine upon him, and may he rest in peace.

Papa said to be in and out of consciousness

I am only posting this AP story because it is newsworthy in itself. As hungry as I am for information, I would still rather they not feel that they has to supply us with something, no matter how trivial or irrelevant. It seems to me that just as accurate would have been to report, "The pope is still cognitive and is resting well. He falls asleep, but when spoken too he wakes up.” CNN reported the same kind of non-information, which in all fairness to the news distorters reporters it was the Vatican that released the non-issue while using the word “consciousness”.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II showed the first signs of losing consciousness at dawn on Saturday, the Vatican said, as priests around the world prepared the Roman Catholic faithful for his passing.

"Since dawn this morning there have been first signs that consciousness is being affected," he said.

"Sometimes it seems as if he were resting with his eyes closed, but when you speak to him, he opens his eyes," Navarro-Valls said.

St. Joseph, patron saint of the dying, who was blessed to die in the arms of our Lord Jesus and His Holy Mother, Mary; come to and grant that our beloved pontiff have the privilege to die in the arms of the Holy Family. Amen

It's clear, we will soon have a new saint.

Update from Vatican soon.

Holy Father names new bishops - accepts resignations

CNN just reported (approx. 10:00AM EST) that the Vatican had released a list of 19(?) new bishops and accepted the resignation of a some others. Pray, that the first resignation he accepted was Bishop Gumbleton's. More to come as available.

Bishops react to Terri's execution

Below are excerpts of statements from various bishops. The portion of the statements that I chose to quote are those directed at the real issue. That of the injustice and societal guilt, etc. associated with Terri’s execution. I did it in this manner because I believe the issue is important, but also to contrast Bishop Lynch’s statement.

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke
"My sadness at the death of Terri Schiavo is also sadness for our nation, in which the most basic care, that is nutrition and hydration, was denied to a citizen with special needs, not because she was dying, but because the 'quality' of her life was judged by us not to be sufficient to merit our care. She who had the first title to our care was left to die by our premeditated and deliberate failure to provide her food and water. To cause the death of an innocent human being by denying nutrition and hydration is contrary to the natural moral law and a barbaric act."

Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla
"We are all diminished by this woman's death, a death that speaks to the moral confusion we face today. Ours is a culture in which human life is increasingly devalued and violated, especially where that life is most weak and fragile.

"We pray this human tragedy will lead our nation to a greater commitment to protect helpless patients and all the weakest among us.

Cardinal William Keeler, chairman of the U.S. Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities
"Any man's death diminishes me," said the poet John Donne, "because I am involved in mankind." We are all diminished by this woman's death, a death that speaks to the moral confusion we face today. Ours is a culture in which human life is increasingly devalued and violated, especially where that life is most weak and fragile.

We pray this human tragedy will lead our nation to a greater commitment to protect helpless patients and all the weakest among us. "Yes, every man is his 'brother's keeper,'" as the Holy Father teaches "because God entrusts us to one another" (The Gospel of Life, 19).

Greensburg Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt
"At her weakest and most vulnerable, her suffering sent a very strong message -- all life, even the broken and diminished -- has dignity and a sacredness, which should be respected," he said.

La Crosse Bishop Jerome Listecki
"Most troubling is the fact that our courts, supported by some, did not make the presumption in favor of the dignity of human life," Bishop Jerome E. Listecki said in a news release that drew a parallel between the Florida woman's death 13 days after her feeding tube was removed and the fact the ailing Pope John Paul II had a feeding tube inserted Wednesday.

"This is yet another negative step against the culture of life in our society," he said.

Youngstown Bishop Thomas Tobin
"I think it's a moral disaster, not just for Terri and her family, but for our country," he said.

Buffalo Bishop Edward Kmiec
“We are deeply saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo. Even though she was not on life support, the numerous courts that approved and upheld the removal of her feeding tube needlessly sentenced her to death by starvation. Because of this deliberate act to end her life, we will never know if Terri’s condition would have one day improved. But even if her condition remained unchanged, she would still have been loved and cherished, despite her disability.

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput
"Terri Schiavo's death is a tragedy. We need to pray first for Ms. Schiavo, that God will welcome her into eternal life; and then for her family, that God will grant them consolation and strength. We also need to reflect very carefully on the circumstances that led to this moment, the means we use to measure the sanctity of human life, and what kind of future we're choosing for our culture as we struggle with similar cases in the years ahead."

Colorado Springs Roman Catholic Bishop Michael Sheridan called Schiavo's death "a protracted act of murder" and "another sad chapter in the annals of the culture of death."

Sheridan expressed concern about disabled people or others judged not to have sufficient "quality of life."

"Once we see that Terri's death is not an act of mercy, but rather the direct taking of an innocent life, perhaps there will be a renewed effort to build a culture of life in our country," Sheridan said.

St. Petersburg Bishop Robert Lynch
"There are a number of significant issues that have been highlighted by Terri's health problems and her death. A number of people have mentioned to me that they now see a necessity to have a formal conversation with their family members about their personal desires regarding health care in the event that they become incapacitated."

Poor Terri, she suffered from a most unfortunate condition, which would have been bad enough. Her husband showed himself to be an unfaithful and murderous cad, etc. The people who loved her couldn't help her. A judge decided that she should die. Her God-given shepherd did not shepherd; he even disallowed any priests to minister to her and her family. Judge after judge decided that her life was not a life worth living, if it was a life at all. Strangers even delighted in her execution.

Considering the big picture, think about this; just what sort of fate is that finds this poor child in what is quite possibly the only place and heretofore the only time in this country where what has happened to her could have happened? As far gone as we are as a society, I can’t imagine these turns of events happening anywhere else in this country. It just couldn’t have happened, anywhere else, something at some point would have halted the depravity. Now that this abomination has come to fruition, and knowing that the “law idolaters” sacrifice justice on the altar of deference and morality on the altar of precedence, these civil executions will become business as usual.

Lord have mercy.

Vatican: Pope Has Suffered Heart Failure

Our Lady of Fatima, care for your son John Paul II.

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II suffered heart failure during treatment for a urinary tract infection and was in "very serious" condition on Friday, the Vatican said.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement that the pope, who was being treated at the Vatican, was given cardio-respiratory assistance after his heart failed Thursday afternoon.

"This morning the condition of the Holy Father is very serious," the statement said.

However, it said that the pope had participated in a 6 a.m. Mass Friday and was "conscious, lucid, and serene."

The 84-year-old pontiff's health declined sharply after he developed a high fever Thursday brought on by the infection. He wished to remain at the Vatican, Navarro-Valls said.

The statement confirmed previous reports that the pope had received the sacrament for the sick and dying on Thursday evening.

St. Peter's Square was quiet Friday morning with a few tourists and pilgrims stopping to look up at the pontiff's third floor window. As always Swiss guards in the colorful uniforms stood by at the open bronze door, which by tradition is closed upon the death of a pontiff. ...

The Vatican's attitude to the chronically ill has been apparent in its bitter condemnation of a judge's order two weeks ago to remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged American woman who died Thursday.

Vatican Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, reacting to Schiavo's death, denounced the removal of her feeding tube as "an attack against God."

Although different, some see parallels in the two cases.

Under John Paul, Vatican teaching on the final stages of life includes a firm rejection of euthanasia, insistence on treatments that help people bear ailments with dignity and encouragement of research to enhance and prolong life.

A 1980 Vatican document makes the distinction between "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means of prolonging life. While it gives room for refusal of some forms of aggressive medical intervention for terminally ill patients, it insists that "normal care" must not be interrupted.

John Paul set down exactly what that meant in a speech last year to an international conference on treatments for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.

"I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory."