I Am Back.

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Really. Honest. I mean it.

Oh boy. In my last post I promised to keep on blogging. That was a month ago. Embarrassing much?

So. What happened. Well, first I took on the job at my parish of Director of Faith formation after my predecessor took a job at another parish. It has been harder to find the time and energy to blog than I anticipated. It didn’t help that I have had a nasty cold for much of that time.

The new job prompted me to consider if I should continue this blog or close it down.  I haven’t had time to read my favorite Catholic blogs never mind write new posts for my own. But I think that I am called to keep this blog going. Besides I do miss writing even though it is often a painful process.  I just have to develop a consistent habit.

Hopefully writing on this blog will become a habit quickly.  My favorite deacon is probably thinking, Yeah right.

You see it took me 38 years to develop the habit of doing the laundry on the same day every week.

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I Am Still Here

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Sorry about disappearing from the blogging world. God Bless all of you who have emailed me expressing your concern. My favorite deacon and I are fine. Our life has just been crazier than usual the past few weeks.

I am back. It is going to be hard to carve out the time to blog, but I am not ready to throw in the keyboard just yet.

God definitely has a weird sense of humor.  But more about that later.

Hint: Be careful, very very careful what you pray for. God just might answer!

 

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Fr. Pavone Does Not Need Groupies

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

As I said in a previous post, I really don’t want to comment on Fr. Pavone. But I do find the way that some supporters make him to be a celebrity disturbing.  It is not healthy or orthodox to elevate priests to celebrity status complete with groupies.

Jesus, and Jesus alone, is our savior. Not Fr. so and so.

Dr. Gerard Nedal has an excellent post up on the subject (H/T Deacon Greg).

I’m getting inundated with emails and comments, including a new website to “Free Father Pavone!” Then there was the letter people wanted me to circulate that was so crass and vulgar in its invective against Bishop Zurek that I actually blushed reading it. I guess my last post hasn’t penetrated the din, so I’ll be a bit less diplomatic and a bit more direct.

Please stop sending me attacks on Bishop Zurek. No, I don’t approve of the public circulation of his letter. Not one bit. But that doesn’t give me the right to trash him in return.

“An eye for an eye, leaving the whole world blind,” as Ghandi put it.

This shrill “Free Father Pavone” rhetoric is entirely over the top. He’s not an Orca. He’s a priest in good standing, still celebrating the sacraments in his diocese. It is a dim view of the diocesan priesthood that views it as some sort of prison. Really!!!

I love the energy and focus that Father Pavone has brought to the pro-life movement. I love that he has embraced Silent No More, Rachel’s Vineyard, Gospel of Life Ministries, the training of fellow priests, Alveda King and the National Black Pro-life Coalition, Bryan Kemper, Abby Johnson, etc. The man has done great good, and nobody can ever take that away from him.

Bishop Zurek has also supported his being in this ministry, and nobody should take that from him either.

This lashing out at the bishop is being watched by all of his brother bishops. I sincerely hope the shrill don’t really think that Father Pavone is worth the alienation, the impression that we’re a shadow church and that Father Pavone is our Pope. That’s a mighty big alienation of the bishops for one man.

It doesn’t do Father Pavone’s reputation a damned bit of good with the bishops, either. He looks like he has a rabid rabble for a following. It reflects poorly on him and on all of us.

The truth of the matter is that a leader inspires others to act. A good leader inspires others to act passionately. A great leader inspires others to act sacrificially, death to self. Continue reading….

 

 

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Mary’s Sorrow and Worried Mothers

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

It is often hard to be a mother.  When we worry for our children, it is often a difficult test of faith. We mothers often find it hard to let go and let God.

Today is the day that we commemorate Our Lady of Sorrows. Fr. Longenecker reflects on the seven sorrows of Mary in order to help grieving mothers:

So often in counseling or the confessional I come across grieving mothers. Mothers who are so terrible concerned for their children who are straying–mothers upset about their childrens’ loss of faith. Mothers worried about their children’s choice of spouse, their grandchildren’s religious education, their children’s career choice. You name it.

The typical male response is, “Get over it.” But I realize that the mother has a bond with the child that the father doesn’t really understand. Mama finds it difficult–very difficult to let go.

There’s a little line at the heart of Arthur Miller’s play, The Death of a Salesman where Willy Loman’s wife, Linda sits on the stage alone. Her sons have both turned out to be losers. One she hasn’t heard of for years. The other one is a layabout and a phony. Then her husband commits suicide. In her grief she says, “Life is a casting off.”

So it is. Life is about letting go, not grabbing. We must, in the end, let go of all things and go out of this world naked and alone–just as we came into it. Life is a preparation for this final letting go, and therefore we should start practicing how. Throw the lumber overboard! Life is a casting off.

This is where the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of Mary can help women. In the seven sorrows the Blessed Mother struggles to cast off. Of all women she has an even closer bond to her child than others. Because she has the perfect bond with her son, the tearing away of motherhood is even more poignant and painful. Identifying with her sorrows through this devotion can help women make sense of their own suffering with their families.

How does this work? Like this: First sorrow–the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her own heart also. Women who are suffering begin to realize that this special mother’s suffering is a way to draw closer to Christ and through their suffering a sword will pierce their own heart, and that this is part of the mystery of being one with Christ.  Continue Reading…

The Word on Fire Blog also has a lovely reflection by Fr. Steve:

The poet Wendell Berry reflects that for parents, the only way is hard.  We who give life give pain.  There is no help.  Yet we who give pain give love; by pain we learn the extremity of love…  In other words, it may be different in another world, but in this world, all love requires a sacrifice, and with that sacrifice there is inevitable pain.  To reject sacrifice as the condition for the possibility of love is to live an essentially loveless existence.  
Berry continues his reflection with this insight: I read of Christ crucified, the only begotten Son sacrificed to flesh and time and all our woe.  He died and rose, but who does not tremble for his pain and loneliness, and the darkness of the sixth hour?  Unless we grieve like Mary at his grave, giving him up as lost, no Easter morning comes…  Continue reading…
Wow. Unless we grieve like Mary at his grave, giving him up as lost, no Easter comes.

 

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Pray for Fr. Frank Pavone

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Fr. Pavone is being placed on restriction. From the Anchoress:

Father Frank Pavone, one of the country’s most visible and vocal opponents of abortion, has been suspended from active ministry outside the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, over financial questions about the priest’s operation of Priests for Life.

The suspension was made public in a Sept. 13 letter from Amarillo Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his fellow bishops across the country, but Father Pavone told Catholic News Service that he was returning to Amarillo and planned to continue functioning as a priest there.

“My decision is the result of deep concerns regarding his stewardship of the finances of the Priests for Life (PFL) organization,” Bishop Zurek wrote. “The PFL has become a business that is quite lucrative which provides Father Pavone with financial independence from all legitimate ecclesiastical oversight.”

Bishop Zurek said “persistent questions and concerns” from clergy and laity about how the millions of dollars in donations the organization has received are being spent led to the action. Continue reading…

Deacon Greg has more here and here.   I am going to refrain from commenting. Please pray for Fr. Pavone that he is given the grace to be both obedient and humble.

Posted in Catholic Church, Church Scandal, Pro life | 4 Comments

Bishop Pates Responds to Des Moines Register

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

If you follow this blog, you might remember this post. A  colomnist for our local paper wrote an opinion piece criticizing Dowling Catholic High School for not wanting to honor a Planned Parenthood supporter and one time board member.

Our bishop wrote a letter to the editor in response. Here it is in full.

“I regret not having been able to respond to two recent columns by Rekha Basu about the Dowling Catholic High School Distinguished Alumna Award at the time Ms. Basu sought comment. I was prevented from doing so until now by a trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8 that included 22 hours in transit each way to Côte d’Ivoire, Africa, on behalf of the International Justice and Peace Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

With due respect to Ms. Basu, I would like to make clear the church’s teaching, and my own views, on abortion and what we see as consistency in our defense of life.

First, we believe that independent human life begins at conception. For me, that’s not hard to appreciate since I consider my own life to have begun then and can’t imagine justifying ending it at any point in its development.

Second, we see the right to life of unborn children to be based on natural law, the law “written on our hearts.” The basis of the Declaration of Independence, the natural law guarantees rights that are “self-evident.” And the first among the three famous rights — the others being liberty and the pursuit of happiness — is the right to life. If one lacks that right, the others have little meaning.

Although many choose not to see the consistency in this approach, the Catholic Church also opposes other life-destroying practices, such as capital punishment and assisted suicide. And based on this “ethic of life,” it favors immigration reform, the right to a living wage, early childhood education, the right to health care, and concern and help for the poor.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the church — while respecting the lives of those affiliated with it — is distanced from Planned Parenthood. It was founded by Margaret Sanger, a proponent of eugenics, a philosophy holding that human hereditary traits can be improved through such policies as exclusionary immigration and family planning aimed at preserving the able-minded, and compulsory segregation or sterilization of the profoundly retarded. Planned Parenthood may provide other useful services, but those services cannot compensate for the denial of the basic right to life.”

— Bishop Richard Pates, Diocese of Des Moines

 

Posted in Bishop Pates, Catholic Church, Pro life | Tagged , | 3 Comments

9/11 and the Christian Call to Forgive

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

I have written before on the Christian call to forgive our enemies. It is not an easy thing–especially in light of 9/11–but is a requirement of discipleship none the less.

Our pastor, Monsignor Bognanno, was featured in the Des Moines Register this week.  He spoke about the need to forgive and pray for the terroists:

On Sept. 11, 2001, Msgr. Frank Bognanno had been assigned to Christ the King Catholic Church for only a few weeks. He didn’t really know the parishioners or how he could best minister to them to help them through the tragedy the country had just experienced.

But he knew one thing: His job was about salvation and mercy, not vengeance. So he initiated a special themed Mass on Tuesday nights.

Ten years later, the tradition is still going strong.

“I actually had been in Washington, D.C., giving a talk to Catholic chaplains when the first plane hit, and when we found out and turned on the television, we watched the second plane hit,” Bognanno said.

“We didn’t know if we were being attacked; we didn’t have any idea what was happening. All we could do was pray.

“When I was finally able to get out of Washington a few days later and come back home, I gave some thought to how to bring something positive about what had happened. And one day soon after, I said to the congregation, ‘You know what? This happened on a Tuesday, so every Tuesday from now on, we’re going to have a Mass for the terrorists.’ ”

To be specific, the Mass would be held for the conversion of terrorists, but rather to pray as a congregation for the souls of the terrorists who had died and for God to open the hearts of living terrorists, to enable them to see that God does not want them to kill. Continue Reading…….

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Even in the Darkness God is Near

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Zenit has the translation of yesterday’s general audience.  The Pope continued his school of  prayer with a reflection on Psalm 3. He concludes by reminding  us that God always answers our prayers:

“Dear brothers and sisters, Psalm 3 presents us with a prayer full of trust and consolation. In praying this psalm, we can make the psalmist’s sentiments our own — [the psalmist] who is a figure of the just man who is persecuted, and who finds his fulfillment in Jesus. In suffering, in danger, in the bitterness of misunderstanding and offense, the psalmist’s words open our hearts to the comforting certainty of faith. God is always near — even in difficulties, in problems, in the darkness of life — He listens, He responds and He saves according to His ways. But we need to know how to recognize His presence and to accept His ways, like David in his crushing escape from Absalom his son; like the just man who is persecuted in the Book of Wisdom; and finally and fully, like the Lord Jesus on Golgotha. And, when to the eyes of the impious, God seems not to intervene and the Son dies, precisely then are true glory and salvation’s definitive realization manifested to all who believe. May the Lord grant us faith; may He come to the help of our weakness; and may He enable us to believe and to pray in every anxiety, in the painful nights of doubt and in the long days of suffering, by trustfully abandoning ourselves to Him who is our “shield” and our “glory.” Thank you.”

Read the entire reflection here.

Posted in Pope Benedict XVI, Prayer | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Today we celebrate the birth of Mary.

H/T Deacon Greg:

“This radiant and manifest coming of God to men most certainly needed a joyful prelude to introduce the great gift of salvation to us. The present festival, the birth of the Mother of God, is the prelude, while the final act is the fore-ordained union of the Word with flesh. Today the Virgin is born, tended and formed and prepared for her role as Mother of God, who is the universal King of the ages.

Justly, then, do we celebrate this mystery since it signifies for us a double grace. We are led toward the truth, and we are led away from our condition of slavery to the letter of the law. How can this be? Darkness yields before the coming of the light, and grace exchanges legalism for freedom. But midway between the two stands today’s mystery, at the frontier where types and symbols give way to reality, and the old is replaced by the new. Therefore, let all creation sing and dance and unite to make worthy contribution to the celebration of this day. Let there be one common festival for saints in heaven and men on earth. Let everything, mundane things and those above, join in festive celebration. Today this created world is raised to the dignity of a holy place for him who made all things. The creature is newly prepared to be a divine dwelling place for the Creator.” – St. Andrew of Crete, from the Office of Readings for September 8th

Read more on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary here.

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Invite People Into the Church

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Monsignor Pope has an ambitious evangelization plan to double Mass attendance!

“It is a true fact that simply increasing numbers is not the only, or even most important goal. But rather, that we should authentically evangelize and draw souls to Christ, to his Sacraments, his Word and the fellowship of the Church. At the heart of evangelization is relationship: meeting Christ in others, allowing them to meet Him in us. This is what Christ did, he went out and met others and summoned them to the Kingdom by stages and through relationships. He tells us to do them: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And Lo I am with you always, until the end of the world. (Matt 28:19)

Am I crazy? Perhaps, but at least call me a fool for Christ. I am going to aim high, that we double our Sunday numbers. Not just for the number’s sake, but for what they represent, souls coming back to God’s house, to be nourished at the altar of the Word and Eucharist, to be more deeply immersed in Christ.

How about you? Will you be crazy too? Are you willing to join me in being a fool for Christ? Let’s get started, there is a work to do.”

Monsignor’s plan is well thought out and the goal is achievable. It is the best plan that I have seen, and it didn’t take a year of parish meetings and dog and pony shows to devise. Please go and read his post to get the details.

What do you think?  The only thing that I would add is the use of the  new media to reach out to young people.

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