“Wielding a blow-dryer, a leading atheist conducted a mass “de-baptism” of fellow non-believers and symbolically dried up the offending waters that were sprinkled on their foreheads as young children.
At the annual American Atheists Convention, one of atheism’s premier provocateurs, Edwin Kagin, faced the crowd and raised high a hairdryer labeled “Reason and Truth.”
Okay, I get that a hair dryer is used to symbolically dry up the waters of baptism. But I don’t get labeling it “Reason and Truth”. Reason and Truth is um hot air? Heh. Well viewing the video below, I have to say that Mr. Kagin, is spouting a lot of hot air.
I think that there are too many people with too much time on their hands. Oh and too many adults acting like teenagers.
“Early accounts report that Saint Apollinaris was ordained Bishop by Saint Peter himself and sent as a missionary bishop to Ravenna during the reign of the emperor Claudius. Renowned for his powers to heal in the name of Christ, he was frequently exiled, tortured and imprisoned for the faith, and finally martyred.”
Collect: God of power and mercy, you gave Apollinaris, your martyr, victory over pain and suffering. Strengthen us who celebrate this day of his triumph and help us to be victorious over the evils that threaten us. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
At a parish staff (volunteers included) retreat, a consultant was brought in to determine and explain our personality types. Deacon Larry and I have taken several personality tests over the years.
Talk about two becoming one; we always have the same results. And we always end up being tagged with one “type”. It doesn’t matter if it is the Briggs Myers, the Disc Personality Test that we took in preparation for the retreat, or various others that we have taken. So when we were asked to indicate what our personality type was prior to seeing the results, we predicted the type correctly.
Our personality’s are always described with such words as domineering, impatient, strong willed, logical, skeptical, forceful, inquisitive, self assured, and well you get the drift. In a test that I had to take when my husband was in deaconate formation, for example, the types were grouped by four animals: Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver.
Guess which animal deacon and I are? No not the Golden Retriever. The Lion. This time, at the retreat, we came out as D for dominance.
Did I mention that I am always the only woman at the table with this particular trait? And it is always the smallest group.
Sigh. (Our marriage has been a gift, wonderful, and all good things. But it has never been boring.)
No wonder people used to accuse me of eating barbed wire for breakfast. This personality type might be beneficial if one is the CEO of a fortune 500 company. But when you are a Catechist, deacon’s wife, or a deacon, not so much.
The good news is that our personality types may be inborn, but that doesn’t mean that we are slaves to negative and/or unchristian traits. As Christians we are called to transform ourselves, to perfection of life, to become like Christ. Even if we have traits that make it difficult.
Deacon and I have learned, or rather are learning, to over ride the parts of our personalities that are contrary to the pursuit of holiness.
I pray a lot for humility, patience, and God’s grace to change. My daily prayer is Lord increase my heart. It may be working because this time there were nice words included in my profile: generous, charming, mature, sensitive. Deacon, being further along on the holiness quest, has always been better at overcoming his negative traits.
Me. Well I am much more stubborn.
Christians are called to grow in virtue. While we can do nothing without God’s grace, cooperation is called for on our part. In order to become holy we have to engage our human intellect and will.
As Catholics we do this by receiving God’s grace in the sacraments, especially Eucharist, and by actively accepting this grace. We do this by examining our conscience, and by changing our behaviors. We are called to persevere. To fight the good fight.
We, to paraphrase St. Paul, are called to tame our passions. This is not easy. My sinful inclinations tend to be powerful. A powerful beast.
At the same time we cannot change our personalities completely. Nor should we. God gave us our personality. After all, he chose St. Paul. And Paul admits that he was a Zealot. We just have to strive to use our traits for the good. For God and others.
It is as if the good Susan, the one who wants to become like Christ, is similar to a horse jockey. A jockey is small in stature, and low in weight (me not so much). Yet he is in charge of a powerful horse (a beast) with a mind of its own.
In order to win, the jockey, has to let the horse use all of its power and speed. The horse is usually bred for speed, power, and resilience. But if that was all that was needed for the horse to win, a human jockey would not be necessary.
The role of the jockey is to harness the power of the horse. The best jockeys know the strength and weaknesses of the horses that they ride. To win, they have to minimize their mounts weakness and maximize their strengths.
It is the same with our personalities. Maximize those traits which help us to grow in holiness. Suppress the traits that if left un-controlled lead us away from the finishing line. God’s kingdom.
It is not easy. I sometimes fail to bite my tongue. I fail to love. I think that I know best. It would be impossible without God’s grace. Without the sacraments.
And so I continue to persevere. To run the race. To get up when I fall down in the dust.
Ready for a wee chuckle. Well watch this video of a recent Geico commercial. It shows what my personality would be like if left to my own devices. A former drill sergeant as a therapist. Heh.
The abuse allegations ripping through the Catholic Church would not have been ignored; there would have been no cover-ups. Or so the progressives and anti-Catholic chattering classes tell us.
“The bishop of Hamburg – the world’s first female Lutheran bishop – has resigned amid criticism of her handling of a sex abuse case.
Maria Jepsen stepped down saying her credibility had been contested.
She denies having known before May this year about a priest in the town of Ahrensburg who reportedly sexually abused boys and girls in the 1980s.”
If only Priest Could Marry!
Germany faces up to sexual abuse after scandals at Catholic, other schools
“Allegations of sexual abuse at schools run by the Catholic and Lutheran churches, as well as at an elite secular boarding school, have put child protection at the top of the domestic agenda in Germany.” Read more here.
Last I heard, Lutheran Priests and secular school teachers can marry.
Oh and only the Catholic Church puts known abusers back into contact with children.
A former Ogden coach and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1996 to multiple charges of sexual exploitation of minors is being allowed to volunteer in the same district where the violations occurred. Read on.
Non of the above excuses Catholic Priests who abused children or the Bishops who did nothing. Priests are ordained to be in the person of Christ. It is beyond evil.
The media attention to abuse in the Church has led to major reforms in the Church. Children are safer in Catholic schools and in the Church. Why hasn’t the media, however, crusaded with the same intensity against all child abusers including those hidden away in our public schools.
This is where the idea of “choice” apart from morality and the belief that all life is sacred leads:
The above billboards are going up in New Jersey.
“But critics say the 15-by-49ft posters may be a ‘tipping point’ for vulnerable young people and that they ignore the sanctity of human life.
The signs have gone up in New Jersey with others due to go up in San Francisco and Florida soon as the campaign spreads across the U.S.
Final Exit Network said both New Jersey and San Francisco were selected because a majority of people in the area would be open to the message. Florida was picked because of its large elderly population.
Passing motorists were appalled. Shona Harris said: ‘It’s horrible! Why would you put up a billboard with such an immoral message? It should be taken down.’
Judith Springer, a psychologist and board member of the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide, added: ‘The idea of any of these upset, impressionable kids seeing a billboard like that absolutely horrifies me.
‘You can’t filter who sees a publicly displayed sign.’
Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, said it ‘cannot be condoned.’
He said: ‘The Catholic Church teaches, and has always taught, that all human life has dignity and all human life is precious.'”
This is a beautiful story (you might want to grab a box of tissues).H/T Rod Dreher
“They did everything together.
So it was fitting that, at the end, they died together, succumbing within hours of each other from a multitude of ailments.
They had moved just last month to the San Diego area, to be near their daughter. But Mr. DeMuro — who had leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes — soon was in hospice care at their senior apartment. And Mrs. DeMuro — with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart failure — was soon on a ventilator at Sharp Grossmont Hospital.
Their children knew it was only a matter of time. So, on June 28, they had an ambulance bring Mr. DeMuro to the hospital on a gurney to be with his wife. He greeted his bride of 62 years as he always had: “Hi, Babe.”
“They had them facing one another in their individual beds, and we put their hands on top of one another so they could hold hands,” their daughter said. “Mom was awake. She said, ‘Lou, I love you. I had a wonderful life. I’ll see you in another place.’
‘Wow. I am fully in accord with the Church and recognize her ability to set her rules as she believes they are formed by Scripture, but laid out like that our policy looks awfully cold-hearted. Is it really any great shock that the pews are empty on Sunday?’
(Note: I don’t know where the reader lives, but we have a Saturday vigil mass and three Sunday Masses and our pews are far from empty. The majority of Catholic Churches in our city are not empty.)
Ouch! The reader rightly pointed out that the way the post was organized; it did come off rather harsh. I originally wrote the piece for a specific person who wanted to know where the Church taught that Catholics who marry outside the Church should not receive Holy Communion. Just the facts. Just the documentation.
I probably should have waited to post it until I edited it for the blog. Mea Culpa.
The case of a person who marries outside of the Church and is, therefore, unable to receive Eucharist is easily remedied. Such marriages are validated all the time.
But I suspect that what really seems harsh is that because the Church does not recognize a marriage celebrated outside the Church (if one of the spouses is Catholic) the couple is considered to be “living in sin”.
In our culture where sex has been reduced to a pleasurable activity instead of sacred act between a couple united in matrimony, this does seem very harsh. The conviction that sex outside of marriage is in any way a moral wrong seems antiquated at best. Oh and we are really stuck in the bad ole dark ages, because we define marriage as between one man and one woman.
In the Gospels, Jesus says many hard things. Anyone who thinks that Jesus was a nice non judgmental guru has not studied the bible.
Jesus said things like:
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, * that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few”.
Discipleship is not for wimps. Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him. We are called to do God’s will and not ours.
We are called to be holy. We are not called to be nice.
We are called to bear our sufferings; to persevere in faith.
We are called to live in truth and to know that evil exists. We are not called to believe that the only evil is to suffer. In our culture, the only evils are unhappiness and suffering.
Jesus tells us that he is the truth. There is absolute truth. Jesus also said that the world would hate those who follow Him:
I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth. (John 17:14-19)
But God is merciful. We all sin. We all fall short of God’s glory. We turn away from Truth itself. That is why we have the sacrament of reconciliation. God touches us, forgives us. God gives us the grace to turn back to Him.
“St. Bonaventure’s theology is always written with holy passion, in the tradition of St. Augustine, and always directed towards increasing the depth and intensity of the spiritual life. Because of his burning zeal, Bonaventure became known as the “Seraphic Doctor.” St. Bonaventure was elected minister general of the Franciscan order in 1257 and played a prominent role in settling the dissension that had plagued the order since the death of its founder, St. Francis. In fact Bonaventure’s Life of St. Francis was approved by the Friars Minor as the official biography of their founder. Having been created Cardinal Archbishop of Albano in 1273, St. Bonaventure attended the Ecumenical Council of Lyon where he died in the same year that St. Thomas Aquinas died, in 1274.
As a theologian, Saint Bonaventure upheld the duty and value of using the human intellect to reflect on the mysteries of faith. But for him all human wisdom was folly when compared to the mystical illumination given to the faithful Christian by God himself.”
This excerpt from today’s office of readings, by St. Bonaventure, is about contemplative prayer:
Christ is both the way and the door. Christ is the staircase and the vehicle, like the throne of mercy over the Ark of the Covenant, and the mystery hidden from the ages. A man should turn his full attention to this throne of mercy, and should gaze at him hanging on the cross, full of faith, hope and charity, devoted, full of wonder and joy, marked by gratitude, and open to praise and jubilation. Then such a man will make with Christ a pasch, that is, a passing-over. Through the branches of the cross he will pass over the Red Sea, leaving Egypt and entering the desert. There he will taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the sepulchre, as if he were dead to things outside. He will experience, as much as is possible for one who is still living, what was promised to the thief who hung beside Christ: Today you will be with me in paradise.
For this passover to be perfect, we must suspend all the operations of the mind and we must transform the peak of our affections, directing them to God alone. This is a sacred mystical experience. It cannot be comprehended by anyone unless he surrenders himself to it; nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it; nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent into the world, should come and inflame his innermost soul. Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit.
If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervour and glowing love. The fir is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, fired by Christ in the ardour of his loving passion. Only he understood this who said: My soul chose hanging and my bones death. Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God, for it is certainly true that: No man can look upon me and live.
Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions and all the fantasies of our imagination. Let us pass over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father, so that, when the Father has shown himself to us, we can say with Philip: It is enough. We may hear with Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; and we can rejoice with David, saying: My flesh and my heart fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my heritage for ever. Blessed be the Lord for ever, and let all the people say: Amen. Amen!
Marriage Outside of the Church and Reception of Holy Communion
Q Can a Catholic who was not married in the Church, receive Holy Communion? If not, why? (please provide citations)
A. Catholics who were not married in the Church may not receive Communion.
First in order for a Catholic to be in a valid sacramental marriage there are four requirements:
“Just as individual states have certain requirements for civil marriage (e.g., a marriage license, blood tests), the Catholic Church also has requirements before Catholics can be considered validly married in the eyes of the Church. A valid Catholic marriage results from four elements: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they freely exchange their consent; (3) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; and (4) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister. Exceptions to the last requirement must be approved by church authority. (Source: United States Catholic Bishops Conference)
Further the Church requires that the marriage take place in a Catholic Church. This is because the Sacrament of Marriage is a communal celebration. Permission can be given, in certain circumstances for the marriage to be Celebrated in another suitable place with the permission of the Ordinary. Cannon Law States:
Can. 1118 §1. A marriage between Catholics or between a Catholic party and a non-Catholic baptized party is to be celebrated in a parish church. It can be celebrated in another church or oratory with the permission of the local ordinary or pastor.
§2. The local ordinary can permit a marriage to be celebrated in another suitable place.
In other words if one of the spouses is a baptized Catholic, a marriage celebrated outside of the Catholic Church is not valid unless permission from the local bishop was received.
There is a remedy. Marriages can be validated by the Church. The process entails marriage preparation (as set by the diocese) and the celebration of the Rite of Marriage witnessed by a priest or deacon.
Until the marriage is validated, the marriage is not recognized by the Church.
Second to be eligible to receive Holy Communion, one must be in a state of grace. That is one must not have committed a mortal sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“1385 To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” 218 Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.
Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
A mortal or grave sin severs our relationship with God. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of communion, of unity. When we commit a mortal sin we are no longer in union with God or the Body of Christ, the Church. Mortal sin or grave matter is defined by the Ten Commandments. (CCC # 1858: http://www.kofc.org/un/catechism/search.action ).
Sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage is a grave sin against the sixth commandment: “you shall not commit adultery.” It is a serious offense against chastity. The Church calls sex outside of marriage fornication. The Catechism states:
2353 Fornicationis carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young.
Therefore if one is in a marriage that is not recognized in the Catholic Church, reception of Holy Communion is prohibited until the marriage is validated.
The Bishops of the United States are concerned about recent rulings on marriage.
WASHINGTON—Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, expressed grave concern regarding recent rulings by a federal judge in Massachusetts rejecting the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.
Archbishop Kurtz offered his remarks after two rulings on July 8 that held that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Section 3 provides that for purposes of federal statutes, regulations, and rulings, “marriage” means the legal union of one man and one woman.
“Marriage – the union of one man and one woman – is a unique, irreplaceable institution. The very fabric of our society depends upon it. Nothing compares to the exclusive and permanent union of husband and wife. The state has a duty to employ the civil law to reinforce – and, indeed, to privilege uniquely – this vital institution of civil society. The reasons to support marriage by law are countless, not least to protect the unique place of husbands and wives, the indispensible role of fathers and mothers, and the rights of children, who are often the most vulnerable among us. And yet, a judge has decided that a marriage-reinforcing law like DOMA fails to serve even a single, minimally rational government interest. On behalf of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, I express grave concern over these dangerous and disappointing rulings which ignore even the most apparent purposes of marriage and thus offend true justice,” he said.
Something tells me that the battle is just beginning to heat up. St. Michael, Pray for us.
A Deacon's Wife 