In case you haven’t heard, children with birth defects (or for any reason) are forced to be born prematurely and left to die — and in one facility, in a cold urinal. Then the *physician signs the birth and death certificates at the same time. The mortuary picks up the child’s body, and all is soooo respectable.
Please submit this petition to YouTube to remove 40 videos from this clown (fsmdude) shown desecrating the Blessed Sacrament repeatedly:
It’s gotten to the point that I can’t wait to see the latest food review post on Fr. Z’s Blog:
“he House Majority Leader wouldn’t talk to me the rest of the day.
Was it because I introduced an abortion survivor, or was it because we touched her soul? She could congratulate an inspirational cerebral palsy victim and advocate, but was outraged when she discovered that the person she congratulated was also an abortion survivor.”
Death Wish: The Impending Suicide of a Once Great Nation by Fr. John Corapi
A 15 Minute Meditation Before the Election
How many ways do bad bishops punish good priests? Take your pick: exile, silencing, mandatory evaluation at pseudo-psychiatric facilities like St. Luke’s, frequent reassignment, making them permanent parochial vicars with no hope of becoming pastors, marginalization, driving them out (to other dioceses or the military vicariate), whispering campaigns that designate them “mentally unstable” or “unfit for ministry,” etc. The ultimate punishment, the bishop’s sword of Damocles, so to speak, is suspension. It hangs over the head of a good priest who knows his “spiritual father” will use it. How many orthodox priests hear variations of the threat, “You have no idea what I can do to you!” But the good priests do know. They’ve seen the sword fall on their brothers.
By now we’ve all heard the stories of whistleblower priests being bullied into checking into the diocesan-approved treatment center for “evaluation.” Or perhaps the seminarian or diocesan priest branded a sexual deviant for opposing women’s ordination or the Lavender Mafia, by the shrinks hired to screen them. More recently, priests who have been falsely accused of misconduct and removed from ministry without due process find themselves bullied into the diocesan gulag for evaluation.
Fr. Owen Gorman preached a retreat during Holy Week. Father’s from the Diocese of Clogher in Ireland. On that particular Tuesday, he discussed Adoration, Reparation, Spiritual Motherhood for Priests, a booklet released by the Holy See’s Congregation for the Clergy on December 8, 2007. This Vatican initiative encourages the vocation of spiritual motherhood for priests. It’s a vocation for all women, and men as well, not just for those in the consecrated life.
Here’s the beautiful pdf of
(Incidentally, when bishops force their priests to be fingerprinted and subject them to criminal background checks, they may have caused this unintended effect to arise over time: Priests are being trained by the bishops themselves to take recourse to secular authorities to solve ecclesial disputes. Canon Law may take a back seat to secular law when bishops and priests disagree. The specter looms of priests and their bishops settling disputes in a secular courtroom.)
Eric Clapton’s Holy Mother made its rounds on the Catholic Answers forums. The lyrics reflect despair, anger, and finally hope. I wasn’t expecting this from the secular music world, but here it is.
“She was confirmed (she was never a practicing Catholic). Went to ________ to finishing schooling (PHD). She met a young priest (35 she was 28), got close to him and for about 7 months had an affair with him (slept with him).
In 2007 (to “run away” form the situation) she came back we started talking (I didn’t know all this) and we started dating in 2008. On May 19th she told me everything about her past, not only this affair but her other relationships (9 others) and she’s had an abortion. It was huge and it took me awhile to digest.”
“As revolting and destructive as the sexual abuse issue is, it is the exercise of ecclesiastical office with respect to upholding the teaching and laws of the Church that is more closely related to the work of the Saint Joseph Foundation. After all, in almost twenty-four years of existence, the Foundation has received only a handful of complaints related to sexual abuse, while we have received thousands of complaints alleging deficient or erroneous teaching, violations of liturgical norms and the abusive exercise of the ministry of governance. Using the very limited amount of data available, I will try here to give our readers some idea of what has happened whenever bishops’ performance in these areas has been called into question.”
“The vocation to be a spiritual mother for priests is hardly known, barely understood and consequently, rarely lived, although fundamental and vitally important.”
~ Congregation for the Clergy, Spiritual Motherhood for Priests
Philip Lawler: The Faithful Departed - The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture
Excerpt from Dr. Mirus:
Reasons for Hope
Phil Lawler argues persuasively that hope does not lie in what has already been done. The net result of the initial measures taken following the sex abuse crisis is that “all priests were now treated like members of a suspect class, while bishops preserved all their dignity and privileges” (191). Instead, the author argues that the solution must match the problem. The problem is precisely the problem posed by Augustine. Therefore, the solution must begin with a frank and contrite admission that the bishops themselves have administered their dioceses from a position of spiritual bankruptcy. Only then can the necessary renewal begin, an interior renewal which causes our shepherds to once again view the Church as the body of Christ, utterly dependent on the truth and grace of the Savior—a Church which will in fact always be hurt by complacency, worldliness, secular processes, political management techniques and, yes, lies.