Clergy sexual abuse and homosexuality...

See here.

The problem of homosexual priests needs to be addressed.  See here.

Archbishop Chaput and the U.S. Bishops are challenging us: How shall we respond?

In a homily delivered at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception that brought the U.S. bishops' "fortnight for freedom" to a close, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput stressed that defending religious liberty is part of the bigger struggle to "convert our own hearts" and to "live for God completely."  See here.

This struggle to convert our own hearts and to live for God completely encompasses a battle against Satan and his demonic forces.  Satan does not want the follower of Jesus to live in peace and harmony.  He wants to seduce the followers of the Lord away from God.  How easy it is to lose sight of this reality.  Just recently, I noted how the Profession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, was omitted during Holy Mass at Saint Joseph's Parish in Fitchburg.  A parishioner named Jan left a comment at this Blog telling me that if I have a problem with such liturgical abuse, I shouldn't attend Mass there.  I was told that Jan is most likely the parish secretary at Saint Joseph's, the same woman with an internet profile photograph depicting herself in a state of undress and sporting devil's horns.  See photo.  Readers of this Blog know that Saint Joseph's Parish has had its share of difficulties.  Last year, one of the priests attached to the parish, Father Lowe Dongor, was found to have been downloading child pornography and fled the country to avoid prosecution.

This is the same parish which excluded me from participating in ministry because of my orthodoxy.

In order to live our lives completely for God, we have to struggle against the principalities and powers of this world.  So many Catholics today refuse to acknowledge this truth.  For such people, belief in evil spirits is a matter of "superstition."  Pope Paul VI, in a general audience on November 15, 1972, refuted this notion saying, "What are the Church's greatest needs at the present time?  Don't be surprised at our answer and don't write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: one of the Church's greatest needs is to be defended against the evil which we call the Devil...Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others....It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the Devil's existence...or to explain the Devil as a pseudoreality, a conceptual, fanciful, personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes...St. Paul calls him the 'god of this world,' and warns us of the struggle we Christians must carry on in the dark, not only against one Devil, but against a frightening multiplicity of them.."

Our spiritual struggle, then, is against a host of evil spirits.  And these evil spirits are extremely cunning.  Although they are fallen angels, they are still far more intelligent than us because of their angelic natures.  Pope Paul VI, during the same audience, stressed that the Devil, "..undermines man's moral equilibrium with his sophistry.  He is the malign, clever seducer who knows how to make his way into us through the senses, the imagination and the libido, through utopian logic, or through disordered social contacts in the give and take of our social activities, so that he can bring in us deviations that are all the more harmful because they seem to conform to our physical or mental make-up, or to our profound, instinctive aspirations....The matter of the Devil and of the influence he can exert on individuals as well as on communities, entire societies or events, is a very important chapter of Catholic doctrine which should be studied again, although it is given little attention today.."

Forty years later, we can still say the same.  Little if any attention is paid to this critical aspect of Catholic doctrine.  Mostly, I think, because we believe (in our arrogance) that we can solve all problems and difficulties ourselves.  We forget Jesus' warning that some spirits can only be driven out through much prayer and fasting.

Jesus gives us power and authority over demonic forces.  The demons were subject to the seventy disciples (Luke 10: 17-20).  They were subject to Saint Paul and the first Christians.  And they are subject to us as present-day followers of the Lord Jesus.  But in order to use this power over the evil spirits, those of us who profess to be Christian must grow and develop in our spiritual lives.  This means that we must strive to "live for God completely" as Archbishop Chaput reminded us.  We must attend Holy Mass faithfully (and reverently), pray daily - the Rosary is a spiritual weapon which Satan fears, and spend time with Sacred Scripture - God's Holy Word.

As Christians, we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS through the shed Blood of Jesus Christ (Romans 8: 37-39).  Let's live our lives accordingly.  This means listening to the Magisterium of the Church with docility and submitting our minds and wills to that teaching authority which has been established by Jesus Himself.  Without such obedience, how can we expect the evil spirits to obey our command - in the name of Jesus - to depart?  Disobedience and sin will not drive out the demons.  Only a life of faith lived in humility, taking the Virgin Mother of God as our model.

What are we waiting for? And whom shall we take as our model: Our Lady and the Saints who lived for God completely or the devils who reject God's saving plan?

The answer to that question will determine whether we re-evangelize our culture or come to resemble the demons whose doctrines we follow.

Father J. Bryan Hehir is out of step with the U.S. Bishops...

As reported here, Father J. Bryan Hehir, Secretary for Healthcare and Social Services for the Archdiocese of Boston, has argued that, “We [Catholics] could, on the basis of living in a pluralistic society, remain silent on the contraception question in the public policy area while upholding the Church’s teaching internally.” Father Hehir further argued that such an approach is consistent with Catholic tradition because, “Catholic tradition doesn’t always try to translate internal policy into public policy.”


But the U.S. Bishops aren't advocating such silence.  A new publication from the Bishops urges priests to preach on contraception, sterilization and in vitro fertilization.  In addition, the Bishops are urging priests to stress "God's desire to forgive our sins and renew his grace" and to offer "extra hours of sacramental reconciliation each week."  See here.

Related reading: Father J. Bryan Hehir's corroding and ambiguous pluralism.

U.S. Bishops: What is behind this?

One has to wonder what the U.S. Bishops are up to here.  During  a General Audience on July 10, 1996, Pope John Paul II spoke on the virginity of Mary and Jesus' virginal conception.  The Holy Father said:

The Church has constantly held that Mary's virginity is a truth of faith, as she has received and reflected on the witness of the Gospels of Luke, of Matthew and probably also of John.


In the episode of the Annunciation, the Evangelist Luke calls Mary a "virgin", referring both to her intention to persevere in virginity, as well as to the divine plan which reconciles this intention with her miraculous motherhood. The affirmation of the virginal conception, due to the action of the Holy Spirit, excludes every hypothesis of natural parthenogenesis and rejects the attempts to explain Luke's account as the development of a Jewish theme or as the derivation of a pagan mythological legend.

The structure of the Lucan text (cf. Lk 1:26-38; 2:19, 51) resists any reductive interpretation. Its coherence does not validly support any mutilation of the terms or expressions which affirm the virginal conception brought about by the Holy Spirit.

The Evangelist Matthew, reporting the angel's announcement to Joseph, affirms like Luke that the conception was "the work of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 1:20) and excluded marital relations.

Furthermore, Jesus' virginal conception is communicated to Joseph at a later time: for him it is not a question of being invited to give his assent prior to the conception of Mary's Son, the fruit of the supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit and the co-operation of the mother alone. He is merely asked to accept freely his role as the Virgin's husband and his paternal mission with regard to the child.

Matthew presents the virginal origins of Jesus as the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. "'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel' (which means, God with us)" (Mt 1:23; cf. Is 7: 14). In this way Matthew leads us to conclude that the virginal conception was the object of reflection in the first Christian community, which understood its conformity to the divine plan of salvation and its connection with the identity of Jesus, "God with us".

Early Church firmly believed in virginal conception

Unlike Luke and Matthew, Mark's Gospel does not mention Jesus' conception and birth; nonetheless it is worth noting that Mark never mentions Joseph, Mary's husband. Jesus is called "the son of Mary" by the people of Nazareth or in another context, "the Son of God" several times (3:11; 5:7; cf. 1:11; 9:7; 14:61-62; 15:39). These facts are in harmony with belief in the mystery of his virginal conception. This truth, according to a recent exegetical discovery, would be explicitly contained in verse 13 of the Prologue of John's Gospel, which some ancient authoritative authors (for example, Irenaeus and Tertullian) present, not in the usual plural form, but in the singular: "He, who was born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God". This version in the singular would make the Johannine Prologue one of the major attestations of Jesus' virginal conception, placed in the context of the mystery of the Incarnation.

Paul's paradoxical affirmation: "But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman ... so that we might receive adoption as sons" (Gal 4:4-5), paves the way to the question about this Son's personhood, and thus about his virginal birth.

The uniform Gospel witness testifies how faith in the virginal conception of Jesus was firmly rooted in various milieux of the early Church. This deprives of any foundation several recent interpretations which understand the virginal conception not in a physical or biological sense, but only as symbolic or metaphorical: it would designate Jesus as God's gift to humanity. The same can be said for the opinion advanced by others, that the account of the virginal conception would instead be a theologoumenon, that is, a way of expressing a theological doctrine, that of Jesus' divine sonship, or would be a mythological portrayal of him.

As we have seen, the Gospels contain the explicit affirmation of a virginal conception of the biological order, brought about by the Holy Spirit. The Church made this truth her own, beginning with the very first formulations of the faith (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 496).

The faith expressed in the Gospels is confirmed without interruption in later tradition. The formulas of faith of the first Christian writers presuppose the assertion of the virginal birth: Aristides, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian are in agreement with Ignatius of Antioch, who proclaims Jesus "truly born of a virgin" (Smyrn. 1, 2). These authors mean a real, historical virginal conception of Jesus and are far from affirming a virginity that is only moral or a vague gift of grace manifested in the child's birth.

The solemn definitions of faith by the Ecumenical Councils and the papal Magisterium, which follow the first brief formulas of faith, are in perfect harmony with this truth. The Council of Chalcedon (451), in its profession of faith, carefully phrased and with its infallibly defined content, affirms that Christ was "begotten ... as to his humanity in these last days, for us and for our salvation, by the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God" (DS 301). In the same way the Third Council of Constantinople (681) proclaimed that Jesus Christ was "begotten ... as to his humanity, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, she who is properly and in all truth the Mother of God" (DS 555). Other Ecumenical Councils (Constantinople II, Lateran IV and Lyons II) declared Mary "ever-virgin", stressing her perpetual virginity (DS 423, 801, 852). These affirmations were taken up by the Second Vatican Council, which highlighted the fact that Mary "through her faith and obedience ... gave birth on earth to the very Son of the Father, not through the knowledge of man but by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit" (Lumen gentium, n. 63).

In addition to the conciliar definitions, there are the definitions of the papal Magisterium concerning the Immaculate Conception of the "Blessed Virgin Mary" (DS 2803) and the Assumption of the "Immaculate and Ever-Virgin Mother of God" (DS 3903).

Mary's holiness and virginity are closely linked

Although the definitions of the Magisterium, except for those of the Lateran Council of 649, desired by Pope Martin I, do not explain the meaning of the term "virgin", it is clear that this term is used in its customary sense: the voluntary abstention from sexual acts and the preservation of bodily integrity. However, physical integrity is considered essential to the truth of faith of Jesus' virginal conception (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 496).

The description of Mary as "Holy Ever-Virgin, Immaculate" draws attention to the connection between holiness and virginity. Mary wanted a virginal life, because she was motivated by the desire to give her whole heart to God.

The expression used in the definition of the Assumption, "the Immaculate, Ever-Virgin Mother of God", also implies the connection between Mary's virginity and her motherhood: two prerogatives miraculously combined in the conception of Jesus, true God and true man. Thus Mary's virginity is intimately linked to her divine motherhood and perfect holiness."

 
What are the U.S. Bishops up to?

Supernatural vision in Boston or betrayal?

In my previous post, I noted how the new policy of the Boston Archdiocese which prohibits "discrimination" against students who come from a homosexual household is not in accordance with Canon Law.  Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, in an article entitled "Five Essential Marks of Catholic Schools," writes:

"The Church sees education as a process that, in light of man's transcendent destiny, forms the whole child and seeks to fix his or her eyes on heaven. The specific purpose of a Catholic education is the formation of boys and girls who will be good citizens of this world, loving God and neighbor and enriching society with the leaven of the gospel, and who will also be citizens of the world to come, thus fulfilling their destiny to become saints. In a speech addressed to American Catholic educators in New Orleans, Pope John Paul II presented them with the pressing challenge of clearly identifying the aims of Catholic education, and applying proper methods in Catholic elementary and secondary education. . . . It is the challenge of fully understanding the educational enterprise, of properly evaluating its content, and of transmitting the full truth concerning the human person, created in God's image and called to life in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

An emphasis on the inalienable dignity of the human person -- above all on his or her spiritual dimension -- is especially necessary today. Unfortunately, far too many in government, business, the media, and even the educational establishment perceive education to be merely an instrument for the acquisition of information that will improve the chances of worldly success and a more comfortable standard of living. Such an impoverished vision of education is not Catholic.

If Catholic educators, parents, and others who dedicate themselves to this apostolate fail to keep in mind a high supernatural vision, all their talk about Catholic schools will be no more than "a gong booming or a cymbal clashing" (1 Cor. 13:1)."  See here.

Did you get that?  But how is it possible for Catholic schools to maintain a Catholic identity and to "keep in mind a high supernatural vision" if they attempt to partner with parents or guardians who are not commited to this same goal?    The U.S. Bishops have stated clearly that, "Catholic schools collaborate with parents and guardians" to equip young people with "..a sound education, rooted in the Gospel message, the Person of Jesus Christ" so that these same young people will have "the foundation to live morally and uprightly in our complex modern world." See here. p.3.

But how can homosexual couples be honestly committed to this supernatural vision when they are engaging in an illicit same-sex relationship?  Homosexual acts are not rooted in the Gospel message.  Can the Church partner with individuals who are not committed to Church teaching and who are determined to embrace acts which the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches are "intrinsically disordered" and constitute "acts of grave depravity"? (CCC, 2357).

"They hear the term 'material cooperation' but do not understand its philosophical underpinnings..."

Pursuing God's will and avoiding all wrongdoing are at the very heart of any authentic Catholic apostolate. This includes Catholic hospitals and health care systems. Often this is forgotten when those responsible for operating such hospitals and health care systems come to view such actions as sterilization and abortion merely as forbidden procedures and wrongful cooperation with them as mere rule breaking. It often happens that when Catholic hospitals embark on joint ventures, mergers or affiliations, monetary considerations distract from the Church's authentic moral teaching.

In the words of Patricia Cahill, "The majority of joint ventures, networks, mergers and affiliations which have occurred and which are on the drawing board are, from my observation, driven from a business or economic perspective. The leaders responsible for consummating these arrangements understand the business world well. They also understand and support fully the fact that no proscribed services may be offered by their own Catholic institution. However, when the transaction under consideration is between the Catholic provider and a non-Catholic provider and its consummation promises improved fiscal well-being for the Catholic partner, attention sometimes shifts from strict adherence to the Ethical and Religious Directives to a tone of compromise which recognizes the ethical perspective of the non-Catholic provider and softens the principle to achieve the desired outcome. These are not people who intend to do wrong but they are people who have not necessarily had the theological and philosophical preparation to address appropriately the material cooperation questions before them. They hear the term 'material cooperation' but do not understand its philosophical underpinnings and rationale and thus, in my opinion, are ill equipped to apply the principle to the matter at hand." ("The Principles of Cooperation and Their Application to the Present State of Health Care Evolution").

It is only through fidelity to its proper mission that a Catholic hospital or health care system maintains its identity. Let us heed the U.S. Bishops:


"On the one hand, new partnerships can be viewed as opportunities for Catholic health care institutions and services to witness to their religious and ethical commitments and so influence the healing profession. For example, new partnerships can help to implement the Church's social teaching. New partnerships can be opportunities to realign the local delivery system in order to provide a continuum of health care to the community; they can witness to a responsible stewardship of limited health care resources; and they can be opportunities to provide to poor and vulnerable persons a more equitable access to basic care.

On the other hand, new partnerships can pose serious challenges to the viability of the identity of Catholic health care institutions and services, and their ability to implement these Directives in a consistent way, especially when partnerships are formed with those who do not share Catholic moral principles. The risk of scandal cannot be underestimated when partnerships are not built upon common values and moral principles. Partnership opportunities for some Catholic health care providers may even threaten the continued existence of other Catholic institutions and services, particularly when partnerships are driven by financial considerations alone. Because of the potential dangers involved in the new partnerships that are emerging, an increased collaboration among Catholic-sponsored health care institutions is essential and should be sought before other forms of partnerships." (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services).


Related reading here.