Have a care also for your deacons, whose ministry of service is associated in a particular way with that of the order of bishops. Be a father and a guide in holiness for them, encouraging them to grow in knowledge and wisdom in carrying out the mission of herald to which they have been called.
Pope Benedict Glasgow Bellahouston Park, Eucharistic Celebration, Homily September 16.
Please pray for our dear Pope. While he is being greeted by huge crowds, there is a lot of anti Catholic hostility in the UK. 
The police arrested suspected terrorists, but we don’t know if they were targeting the pope.
I always tell the candidates and catechumens in the RCIA to avoid getting 
their theology or facts on the workings of the Catholic Church from the news media.
The MSM is usually ignorant of religion especially Catholicism. They don’t even try, it seems, to get it right anymore.
Journalist John Allen is the only bright light at the dissident National Catholic Reporter. He is dying breed of old school journalists. He actually digs for the facts in a news item, and then reports the, gasp, facts. He leaves his opinion out of it.
In a recent article, Allen tackles the dismal state of religion news. It is well worth the read.
Excerpt (H/T Get Religion):
On Tuesday a piece in the U.K.-based Telegraph carried the following headline: “Muslims will become majority in Europe, senior Vatican official warns.” An alarmist subhead added: “European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamized, a senior Vatican official has said.”
Seeing that header, I wondered if the Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, had delivered a speech somewhere I didn’t know about, or if the President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, maybe had given an interview to Le Monde that was making the rounds.
In any event, I held my breath, because pugnacious statements from the Vatican about Islam have a history of kicking up dust.
Then I drilled down into the article, and discovered that the “senior Vatican official” is an 81-year-old Italian priest named Fr. Pierro Gheddo, who in reality holds no Vatican position whatsoever. (In the index to the Annuario, where the names of Vatican personnel appear, he’s not there.) Gheddo is a member of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions, a religious order founded to support the overseas missions of the Milan archdiocese, but that no more makes him a Vatican official than being a Jesuit or Dominican makes one pope.
Gheddo is a veteran missionary and a prolific author and speaker. For the record, he serves as postulator for three sainthood causes, but that doesn’t make him a “Vatican official” either, and certainly not a “senior” one.
In other words, this is a bit like the Washington Post taking a comment from a retired analyst from the Brookings Institute, who has no job at the White House and who couldn’t even get into the building without permission, and trying to pass it off as coming from a “senior administration official.”
It’s hard to tell whether this was an honest mistake, or a deliberate act of “sexing up” a story. In any event, it was dangerous — whenever you stoke the clash of civilizations, you’re playing with fire.
Do read the whole article here.
Amid all of the shouting and noise over a proposed Mosque near ground zero 
and a pastor seeking his 15 minutes of fame by threatening to burn a Quran, we need a reminder that Muslims died that day too.
Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?
He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the North Tower collapse, to be followed soon by the South. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.
Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.
Read the whole article here.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
As I wrote in this blog post too many Catholics put their faith in a particular 
political party before their Catholic faith.
Excerpt:
While I believe that our faith should inform our political choices, politics should not inform our faith. In the increasingly divided country that we live in, Christians are too often influenced by the tribal party that they identify with instead of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Consequently people who are Pro Life defend politicians and parties that are decidedly pro abortion. Other people who are, also, Pro life, play mental Twister to defend politicians who advocate torture.
Yes the Church does encourage us to vote. Sometimes the only choice is none of the above.
Deacon Keith Fournier lays it all out for you so that I don’t have to. He thinks that ‘Morally Coherent’ Catholics Can Change this Nation. H/T Thomas Peters.
He writes:
Catholics are not one more “interest group” which can be polled, pandered to and bought. Our social obligation is to promote the true common good, not just use the slogan to sound “catholic” as happened in the last political cycle. We need to promote the truth as taught by the Church no matter what it is labeled in the political parlance of the hour. Our political participation must be committed to human life and dignity, marriage and the family, authentic human freedom, and solidarity.
Please read the whole article.
Well I identify as simply Catholic. I am a political agnostic. My participation in the public square is, for the most part, limited to voting while holding my nose. But I am an informed observer of the political scene.
Deacon Fournier’s call for Catholics to be morally coherent or consistent is a wise and noble one. But moral consistency and/or intellectual consistency is just not very common. Consistency requires logical reasoning. When our moral beliefs are based on sentiment and feelings, the only outcome is moral relativism. Moral relativism is inconsistent. It is the doctrine of whatever.
That is why we have people who think that it is okay to be for abortion “choice” and against the death penalty; and why we have those who think that it is compatible to be pro-life and for torture. Me thinks that we have a long way to go before anyone, including Catholics, strive for coherence moral or otherwise.
The cable channel TLC will soon be airing a new reality show about a man who has three, soon to be four, “wives”. Geesh this guy is collecting women like some men collect beer cans. H/T First Thoughts
It is a good thing that I know who wins out at the end of time or I might give up the fight.
Heh. This is funny! H/T Alive and Young.
Well we are back from Denver. Lord, I really hate the drive. Ten long hours, and Nebraska is really really flat. But it was great to be able to spend some time with my parents.
The traffic in Denver is awful at least in comparison to Des Moines. I really do like living here. Bit if we have another winter like last years, I think the whole state of Iowa is going to move to Arizona.
Deacon predicts that it is going to be a mild winter. I hope that he right.
I am working on a post about homosexuality and same sex marriage, but it is slow going probably because I am so tired today. It also didn’t help that our Pastor called up and asked why we weren’t at the meeting yet. Umm What meeting?
Ooops! The good Monsignor forgot to call one of his Deacons last week to inform us of his meeting with the Deacons an their wives concerning faith formation planning for the next several months. My husband was able to come from work, and I made it eventually.
Anyway Monsignor Pope has a great post on the Biblical and heavenly roots of the liturgy:
Catholics are often unaware just how Biblical the Sacred Liturgy is. The design of our traditional churches, the use of candles, incense, golden vessels, the postures of standing and kneeling, the altar, the singing of hymns, priests wearing albs and so forth are all depicted in the Scriptures. Some of these details were features of the ancient Jewish Temple, but most all of these are reiterated in the Book of Revelation which describes the liturgy of heaven. Read the whole thing here.
Our Bishop wants us to read this statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Here it is en Espanol.
Deacon and I are heading off to Denver for the weekend to visit my parents. I will resume blogging 
on Tuesday.
Before I go, today is the feast day of St. Gregory the Great, pope. Read about him here
For your listening pleasure some Gregorian chant:
A Deacon's Wife 