Archive for the ‘catholic’ Category

a few days ago, but I’m heading off to Boston anyway. If I can’t get in I’ll see if I can score some interviews with bloggers in attendance for DaTechGuy’s Field Guide to Bloggers. I’m presuming they will have an accessible wi-fi so in or not I’ll do some posting from there.

Wish me luck.

is a must read:

Just as we Catholics love to accuse protestants of “church shopping”, there has never been a time in the Church’s history that Catholics haven’t “priest shopped.” Want to use birth control? Need an annulment? Keep looking and you will find a priest who will lend, perhaps tacitly, a way for you to circumvent doctrine.

After you have finished her first rate post don’t miss the excellent post by Robert Kumpel that she quoted:

We have had individual bishops and/or the USCCB take positions that suggest:

1) Compassion means looking the other way at illegal immigration

2) Compassion means legitimizing homosexuality

3) A politician’s position on abortion is unimportant

4) Environmental concerns trump concern for the unborn

5) It is perfectly permissible (or even laudable) to vote for the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in history

6) Ordaining women is inevitable

7) The Holy Father’s liturgical roadmap is flawed

EVERY ONE OF THESE POSITIONS IS A LIE.

Love means to desire what is good for others. We can disagree about what is good, but goodness is built on the truth.

The biggest problem of the church is not its doctrine, it is those who particularly in positions of authority who ignore, misrepresent or teach it falsely for their own pride and/or popularity. When you have authority you are expected to use it, if you aren’t going to use it then you shouldn’t have it. The great church scandals of the last decade would have been avoid if Bishops and Cardinals did their jobs.

And I remind everyone that Catholicism is a totally voluntary choice. If you want another church there are thousands of other out there. Liberal churches in particular can use the bodies these days. If you don’t like Catholicism don’t be one.

Today this tweet came from the Shrine of St. Jude:

Today is the Day of Prayer for Cancer at the National Shrine of St. Jude. Today we pray in a special way for all those affected by cancer.

On the same day one of the worlds most famous atheists pens an article called Topic of Cancer where he talks about the effects of radiation therapy:

Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

Even as we regret the sad ending to an exciting story and empathize with certain battles that are lost; “If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice.”“, it is apparent that he struggles with cancer he hasn’t ended his struggle against redemption to wit:

Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger emphasis mine?

Ah yes the villainy of the pope, that arch meddler who still leads a church that insists on praying for him and doing its all to grab him from the abyss he cannot see and refuses to acknowledge. Some things never change.

I’ve often said that people have the rest of their lives to ridicule, abandon or live without the grace of God for their satisfaction and the approval of the world, after that they’re on their own. For Mr. Hitchens that reality is closing in, but in fact it closes in on all of us every day. The difference is that Chris Hitchens is aware of it. May the rest of us not forget.

Via Robert Stacy’s post titled Just another Deadline:

Memeorandum thread here.

Update: The Anchoress response reminds me of the nuns at the convent at the end of Cyrano de Bergerac

Unfortunately the Abortion news is almost uniformly bad:

Pundit and Pundette reports that the president is pushing abortion in Kenya:

Administration officials have indeed sent a clear message to Kenya. After the Kenyan Parliament approved the abortion liberalizing draft constitution, the White House released a statement lauding the parliament’s decision and encouraging Kenyans to “see this important reform element through can help to turn the page to a promising new chapter of Kenyan history.”

Pundette reminds us also of the endorsement of all of this by the famously Catholic Joe Biden.

Meanwhile in the Senate Frank Lautenberg tries his best to keep American Taxpayers paying for Abortion worldwide, as Mass Citizens for life informs us:

Last Friday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) introduced an amendment to the foreign appropriations bill that would make permanent President Obama’s overturning of the Mexico City Policy. which stops tax dollars from going to groups that promote and perform abortions overseas.

But that’s not all:

The legislation funnels millions more taxpayer dollars to groups like the United Nations Family Planning Fund (UNFPA), which has worked hand-in-hand with the population control officials in China to enforce the nation’s one-child policy with forced abortions and other human rights abuses.

On top of the $55 million to UNFPA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would get a $24 million raise. The USAID is currently funding (probably illegally) lobbying efforts to legalize abortion in Kenya’s constitution.

Just what we need to be financing with two wars and a bum economy.

In NJ Chris Christie vetoed a bill funding planned parenthood and the Democrats in NJ are on the warpath to override:

The vote in the Senate had been 30-10 with no abstentions and all Senators present and voting. Three of the seven Republican Senators had already told Friedman that they would vote against this bill. All four of the rest would have had to vote against party, including Beck, who would have had to come back from her China trip to cast the override vote. The latest press statement indicates that this will not happen.

However they voted to pass the override bill once, will the fold like wet blankets again? Time will tell.

Speaking of federal funding of abortion, thanks to the generous help of the US government and the support of the Fitchburg City Council Planned Parenthood will be opening its doors in town this Friday. Protests are planned for the day and your participation in them would be most welcome.

A protest is scheduled for their opening at 1 p.m. on Friday.

I still recall protesting earlier this year and having a man opposed to us going on about how good it is to rid ourselves of the minority freeloaders. What a disgrace.