Posts Tagged ‘catholic’

If you’re going to be Catholic, be CATHOLIC

Posted: December 23, 2010 by datechguy in abortion, catholic
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Apparently there is a hospital in Arizona that is unclear on the concept of what being a “Catholic” hospital means as Fr. Z explains:

St. Joseph’s Hospital, run by the Religious Sisters of Mercy with the administration of Catholic Healthcare West based in San Francisco, at the okay of their ethics panel, did a direct abortion. They have also provided contraceptive services and, apparently, done other abortions

Unless you get your Catholicism from MSNBC you know this is what we in Catholic Circles call Mortal Sin thus the local Bishop has done what a local Bishop is supposed to do in such a case:

By virtue of my Episcopal authority as the Ordinary of the Particular Church of the Diocese of Phoenix, and in accord with Canon 216 of the Code of Canon Law, I hereby revoke my consent for the following organization to utilize in any way the name “Catholic”.
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ

As you might guess some of the usual suspects are up in arms:

“Catholic Healthcare West and its system hospitals are valued members of the Catholic Health Association,” said that group’s president, Sister Carol Keehan. Her remarks came less than 24 hours after the Bishop of Phoenix stripped one of those hospitals, St. Joseph’s in Phoenix, of its Catholic affiliation.

You might remember Sr. Keehan as the $800,000 a yr. Nun who helped back Obamacare and its abortion provisions, as I noted before there is considerable inflation since 29 ad and 30 pieces of Silver.

The article goes on to explain who is in charge here:

As for who truly “speaks for the Catholic Church,” the cardinal left no room for doubt: “The bishops in apostolic communion and in union with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, speak for the Church in matters of faith and in moral issues and the laws surrounding them.”

That means if you want to be Catholic you listen to the Bishop and the church not to an organization contradicting them or a nun who has a flexible definition of the vow of poverty.

Fr Z bottom lines it:

You may be tempted to think, “Is that all the bishop can do? Remove this symbol? Remove the title ‘Catholic’?” But, had this been a Methodist Hospital, would it matter if the hospital lost its “Methodist” title? Would it matter if it kept it? No, because symbols are not important to Methodists in the way they are to Catholics. Catholicism is immersed in a profoundly symbolic world, like no other religion in history.

When a Catholic bishop issues a formal decree to confirm that you have stripped yourself of your Catholic identity, that is monumental. This is what schism smells like, friends.

Be clear: the administration of the hospital stripped itself of its Catholic identity and Bp. Olmsted confirmed their decision.

As for Sr. Keehan et/al they are certainly welcome to do what they want and say what they want and I’m sure the mainstream media and this administration will back and honor them for the rest of their lives…

…after that they’re on their own.

If only NY and Mass. had ended celibacy they would not have lost seats in redistricting

Posted: December 22, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, congress
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A few weeks ago a column by Bonnie Erbe to nobody’s surprise who is paying attention (PBS on their online site actually refers to her as “non-partisan” which says more about PBS than it does about her) noted church closing in the East and painted it as a result of the old church orthodoxy:

Dogmatic, dictatorial churches do not resound with today’s spirituality, and young people are not clamoring to join them. So sending a message that says, in essence, “Follow my rules or go to hell” might be a good way of retaining older parishioners used to such harsh boundaries. But as elderly parishioners die off, they take the church’s message with them.

I live in a city where 4 Catholic churches recently closed and it is a shame to see churches close in NY and other urban areas, yet lets look at Dave Weigel’s column today about redistricting which links to this rather good 8 decade chart at the NY Times and what do we see? We see a flight of people not from the church but in general from particular states.

More and more of the faithful youth are fleeing high tax liberal states and settling elsewhere as Michael Barone writes:

Texas’ diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.

There’s a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.

This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.

I suspect that if you want to see where the church is growing and thriving just follow that electoral population.

My oldest son is a solid Catholic who is going to college on a full academic scholarship. As soon as he graduates he plans on getting out of this state and I can’t say as I blame him.

So Bonnie rather than your argument concerning the empty churches I would refer you to Stacy McCain’s explaining the demographic facts of life and Ed Driscoll who says this:

And it seems rather difficult to build an emerging Democratic majority when two of the most prominent “liberal” cities in America (very much in name only, given the mammoth regulatory mazes and bureaucratic armies these cities come equipped with) have such poor future demographics. Or as Mark Steyn, who inspired our headline above with this classic 2006 article, wrote about Europe’s similar (and not at all coincidental) demographic woes, “what’s the point of creating a secular utopia if it’s only for one generation?”

As even Illinois, which is among the democratic states losing a congressional seat, is learning you can’t vote the dead if you oppose them being born.

Off to the studio to record the Christmas show

Posted: December 20, 2010 by datechguy in catholic
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I’ve been pins and needles all day today, a lot of little things going wrong etc.

And today we record the Christmas show all about Christ and Christmas and how the media treats the Church.

It’s almost as if someone wants to keep me wound so the show doesn’t go well. Any suggestions as to who?

Update: We’ve forgotten our story

One more thing about Sarah Palin and why she makes establishment folks uncomfortable

Posted: December 16, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, tea parties
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In addition to the other problems that the establishment has with Sarah Palin. She also calls out their religious “personally believes” nonsense. It so rattled Kathleen Kennedy Townsend As Patrick O’Hannigan reports, had to respond:

Washington Post editors gave Townsend 1,500 words to defend her uncle’s attempt to compartmentalize his faith, but the “coulda been a contender” lament that they got for their trouble only exposed Townsend as another palooka in a family full of them.

Townsend asserts that she gave America by Heart a careful reading, from which she came away sure that Palin supports an unconstitutional religious test for public office. Inconveniently, we have to take Townsend’s word for that, because Palin actually says no such thing: the closest she gets is to express disappointment at John F. Kennedy’s failure to reconcile his “private faith and public role,” and his unwillingness to tell fellow countrymen “how his faith had enriched him.”

Well who knows faith better, a non-Catholic like Palin or a member of as far as the media is concerning the Catholic family of America? Let’s ask archbishop Chaput:

Speaking this past spring at Houston Baptist University, Archbishop Chaput noted that “Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private.” That was one of the things about which John F. Kennedy was mistaken. Moreover, said Chaput, Kennedy’s remarks in Houston “profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation.” And “Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”

In other words, Sarah Palin’s criticism of the Kennedy approach to faith accords substantially with criticisms offered by another Christian of unquestioned acumen. Not only that, but Chaput came loaded for bear, quoting another scholar to buttress the point that John F. Kennedy “secularized the American presidency in order to win it.”

But what does he know? He’s only an Archbishop.

That’s why they fear Palin she and the tea parties that support her, they threaten their entire way of life and force them to face realities beyond it.

Update: Cleaned up the first sentence and added quotes. Let me clarify what “Personally Believes” stuff means. It is when a pols says he “personally believes” something but votes a different way due to a separation between their religious belief and their public life. This is nonsense since we are the sum of our beliefs and if we are willing to turn them off like a light switch then we are hollow.

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