Surely enough, we now have this statement from the Foundation. They decided to “amend their criteria” to support organizations under investigation if the investigation is “political” and is not “conclusive.” So, I guess PP’s willingness to violate mandatory reporting for statutory rape doesn’t constitute a criminal act under Komen’s criteria. It must be just politics driving those investigations.

Under this “revision,” Planned Parenthood keeps its existing grants and may apply for new ones. While writing about how they don’t want their mission “marred by politics,” it is hard for me to interpret their statement as anything but either 1) bowing to political pressure from pro-aborts OR 2) ultimately wanting to maintain their ties with Planned Parenthood. For those who might think Komen hasn’t really reversed their earlier decision, note that Planned Parenthood is declaring victory on their web site.

Perhaps some people reading this wonder why I would be concerned as long as the money granted is being used for mammograms or other screenings. The answer is that money given for breast screenings means that more money from their general fund can then be used for their immoral activities like abortion and contraception. No matter what other services they provide, the fact remains that they are a MAJOR provider of abortions in this country. While breast cancer does kill many women, abortion is a directly intended killing of millions of unborn children.

So, as much as I’d like to support breast cancer research, I cannot and will not do it by supporting an organization that is helping to fund an organization such as Planned Parenthood. The great evil of abortion far outweighs any good that PP could possibly be doing. I will not take any chance on donating money to them.

In short, this means that nearly all Catholic employers, whether they are agencies of the Church or businesses owned by devout Catholics, will be required to pay for people’s mortal sin.  At best, the Obama administration is attacking freedom or religion.  At worst, the administration wants to stop the Church from providing health care and other social services or even wants to destroy the Church.  We cannot stand by and let this happen.

This is not about “the Church getting into people’s bedrooms.”  If people employed by the Church choose to use contraception, we aren’t performing bed checks.  God himself will do that, and those people will have to answer for having abused the gift by which God gave us to help him in bringing new life into the world.  This is simply about not requiring the people of this world who are standing with Christ on this not to have to pay the bill for people to sin.

It was very apparent in this article.  The author, one of the “young voices,” is “longing for a new, unbroken church.”  She describes the Eucharist as a time when they “listened to one another’s stories” and “shared our brokenness.”  The people in this church want to “be a part of a community that is relevant” and share with “those we break bread with” and “want our experience of others to be affirmed.”  In her church, she is “looking for meaning and authenticity from ourselves, our friends and family, and our institutions.”  I could go on as there’s a lot more of this in the article.

Indeed, it’s what is left out that is telling.  All of the phrases of what the author longs for are about the people with whom she is present.  She even says they went to “uncover the wholeness found in ‘we’.”  There is no mention of having an encounter with the living God.

After all, God will “meet us where we are,” but he loves us too much to leave us there.  Far more than “sharing our brokenness,” God wants to give us life to the full.  There, we can find healing for our “brokenness,” which ultimately has its root in sin.  The article seems to imply that the people at this church are content to remain in their “brokenness” and possibly also in their sin.  Naturally, they will keep longing for happiness because they will never find it that way.

The Mass gives us our greatest opportunity to encounter Christ and be transformed.  It gets better; he is wanting to give us eternal life with him in Heaven where there will be no more “brokenness.” We don’t need to make it “relevant” or “meaningful,” it must change us and make us “relevant” and “meaningful” to it.

We need not simply share our story.  We need to know Christ’s.  Let him transform our story into something beautiful and joyful for him.

The more troubling part to me is that he isn’t the first on-fire, orthodox priest to do this.  Over the last few years I’ve seen a number of priests who appeared to be holy, orthodox, and happy priests leave their ministry.  Some just picked up and left; others were caught in scandal.  It has left me wondering what is going on.

I have to remind myself that there are a lot still standing, and they really need our prayers.  They have an indelible mark on their souls and a target on their backs, as Fr. Z explains very well. Perseverance to the end in service to Christ is difficult for any of us.  All of us who wish to attain eternal salvation much support each other and especially our priests.  There are just so many traps set by the enemy for all of us that I can’t name all of them in this post.  We can easily grow tired of fighting the good fight, especially in today’s world.  Our priests are often on the front end of this battle, and their perseverance is often what brings the salvation of many.

It’s one thing to be glad that they cannot do their evil deeds anymore.  However, to actually desire or rejoice their demise is quite another.  To desire their damnation is even worse.  There is a point at which we can desire the justice of God, but often the line between that and desiring their damnation is a very fine one that is difficult to walk.  It would be very dangerous for our souls to end up on the wrong side of that line.

Simply put, we know that God would much rather have had their repentance.  Can you imagine what a powerful witness either Kevorkian or Tiller would have been had they repented?  Let’s not forget that the rejoicing in Heaven would have been tremendous.

Even now, we can still hope and pray, as I always do men like these die, that they repented at the last minute.  You and I may never have done anything like what these men did, but we are sinners.  By hoping in the mercy of God for them, we realize that we, too, are in need of his mercy.  If they did repent because of our prayers, they could become a powerful intercessor for us. By being merciful, we have hope of receiving God’s mercy.

Several years ago, I can remember someone saying that the best defense against false teaching is to know the true Catholic faith.  Well, this has a lot of truth to it.  Still, I do believe that it sharpens ones knowledge of the faith to learn about ideas that are opposed to it and what is wrong with those ideas.  This is why books like this provide great resources that I wish I had just before I entered college.

When Summorum Pontificum was published in 2007, it generated a variety of reactions.  Bishop Burbidge of Raleigh, NC welcomed it.  Meanwhile, in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a strange list of “norms” was published regarding its use that seem to defeat the purpose of the Holy Father’s decree.  In fact, what I’ve read about this past week’s new letter seem to have been written to specifically counter what they are saying in Cincinnati.

Here’s my question:  Why are there people so afraid of allowing the celebration of the Extraordinary Form?  Pope Benedict is only asking for it to be made available for those who desire it.  What is the problem that a bishop or an office of worship in a diocese would need to set up such barriers?

Well, there is one legitimate concern.  Some people who favor the old rite do so because they don’t respect the validity of the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  This is a form of dissent against the Church that cannot be supported.  The new instruction addresses this by saying that groups such as these should not be accommodated.  The purpose of Summorum Pontificum was to promote reconciliation, not schism.

Do people (whether laity, priests, or the local bishop) worry that priests, especially younger ones, will just up and decide that they aren’t going to offer the Ordinary Form anymore?  This is highly unlikely.  The greater availability of the Extraordinary Form is for people who request it.  If there is not a group of people requesting it, it’s difficult to imagine priests eager to impose it on them.  Are people going to want the Extraordinary Form in such numbers that priests everywhere will be compelled to offer it?  I doubt this.  Too many people (out of ignorance, mostly) believe that the Extraordinary Form is a relic of the Dark Ages.

Do people have some problem with the Extraordinary Form? If so, what?  It had been the only form of the Roman Rite for centuries, and it is a very beautiful rite.  Whenever I have been, I see people who truly want to be at Mass and give worship to God.  So, I ask (please feel free to comment), what are we afraid of?

For the most part, the bulletin for me has been the means by which I remember what day and time a certain event will be held.  It isn’t much more than that.  I may have learned about the meeting or event somewhere else.  However, I’ve reached a point where I don’t even want to pick up a copy of a paper bulletin.  It’s just something that will get tossed in a pile somewhere.  If I want to read the bulletin, I’m going to download it, even if we have a paper copy at home.  It’s easier for me to look online than to try to find where we put our copy of the bulletin.

I’d love to see some parish have their bulletin online only.  I am willing to bet that there are very few, if any, people who wouldn’t be able to access it today.  Maybe a few copies could be printed for them.  It just seems that it would save a lot of expense and could even be updated if an error were found.

Well, I was in for a not-so-pleasant surprise.  I got a message saying that it was blocked from Best Buy’s network because it was “Religion.”  If I get an iPad, I’m getting it somewhere else.

Contraception rivals immunization in dollars saved for every dollar invested. Spacing out children allows for optimal pregnancies and optimal child rearing. Contraception is a prototype of preventive medicine.

This guy is an Ob/Gyn.  Does he think pregnancy is an illness?  We might, as a society, save money, but for what purpose.  Fortunately, the USCCB has weighed in on this.  Hopefully, our upcoming election will boot the promoters of this nonsense out of office.

If, for example, the resurrection of Our Lord isn’t historically true, then there is no need to believe in him.  In fact, there’s really not much point in studying Scripture.  While it’s true that there are truths that can be known in different ways, there isn’t a contradiction between them.  Something is either true or not, and what’s true is true.

The used car salesman who says, “Trust me” can be refuted if you produce his rap sheet.  But the math teacher who says that 2+2=4 is not refuted when you show him to be a drug dealer.  The truth that bishops hand along does not depend on their personal holiness, any more than the truth of our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ was disproven by Peter’s chickenhearted failure to live by his own preaching at Antioch.

On a related note, the idea that the efficacy of the Sacraments is based on the holiness of the priest or bishop who administers them is a heresy known as Donatism.  Be thankful for this.  We can go to Mass or to Confession and not have to inquire on the state of the priest’s soul.

While all of this, as well as the stories from Europe, were coming out, I read this article from Phil Lawler.  In it, he explains how sexual abuse is a problem in society as a whole, not just the Church.  He is very careful to explain that he understands, as I do, that this does not mean that we should excuse those in authority in the Church for their actions.  The Church must uphold and be held to a higher standard than secular society.  In fact, I would argue that the problem is not that the Church has become worse than secular society but that the Church and her institutions have largely become secularized and then experienced the attending problems.

So, if the fact that sexual abuse and its cover-up is a societal problem doesn’t excuse the Church, what does it mean?  Well, it means a couple of things . . .

First, we have evidence that our media is targetting the Church, whether out of animosity or the desire to sell stories.  After all, if the media’s real interest were sexual abuse, they’d be taking a lot of other people to task for sexual abuse cover-up.  Even the New York Times story mentioned that local law enforcement was aware of the case but did not prosecute.  Amidst calls for Pope Benedict’s resignation, why has there not been a call for an investigation of the law enforcement offices in Wisconsin?

Second, it means that there is nothing inherit in the structure or discipline of the Church that is causing the problem.  The usual gang has used this as yet another excuse to promote their pet agendas:  married priests, women priests, changing the Church’s teaching on sexuality, etc.  However, if the same problem is happening in wider society, it’s hard to make a case that the problem is caused by anything particular to the Church. 

The problem of sexual abuse is, in my opinion, nothing but a symptom of the real problem plaguing the Church – secularization.  This is seen in many of the more horizontal liturgies that we see in parishes today.  It shows in Catholic institutions like hospitals and universities that are now difficult to distinguish from their secular counterparts.  It shows in a Church who is afraid to teach her doctrine.  It shows in orders of nuns that have become little more than social workers (hence the apostolic visitation).  Pope Benedict XVI is doing all he can to try to combat these trends.  While people in the media call for his resignation, I see him as the man whom the Church needs most.

I wouldn’t limit the applicability of what he said to politics.  During my first year in pharmacy school, a well-known professor of one of our classes stated that they should have vending machines for birth control in every school.  He said that “personally, I’m against it.”  He went on to say that our “professional duty” comes before our “personal beliefs.”

Even today, you hear people often debating on whether one may do or not do something on the basis of “personal beliefs.”  It’s as if they’ve forgotten that there might really be a God who will one day judge them, or they have decided that such a concern is of no consequence.  Whether such is true has little to do with one’s “personal beliefs.” Here’s a quote on this from Archbishop Chaput:

Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience.  Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance.  And too many just don’t really believe.  Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles.  But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”

“Too many just don’t really believe.”  I can never know for sure what is in someone’s heart.  However, the actions and attitudes I’ve seen displayed on the part of many people show so little concern for God. I have talked to many people in my life who seem quite satisfied to believe that neither they nor anyone else knows anything about God. Either there is a God, or there isn’t.  God cannot exist and not exist at the same time.  Either he has revealed himself or not.  This has eternal significance, so take time to find these things out.

Archbishop Chaput gives us an answer that is both simple but yet very difficult in today’s world.  We must all have, first and foremost, “a zeal for Jesus Christ and his Church.”  The Archbishop himself states that he is a Catholic Christian first and then an American citizen.  We most certainly must love our country, but we are citizens of Heaven first.