HHS mandate, part 2

I have an irrate commenter who is very good at verbosely rattling off President Obama’s talking points.  In short:

• nobody is forcing religious employers to pay for contraceptives; the insurance companies will pay for them
• it isn’t true that anybody is forcing anyone to buy contraceptives at all: you could just pay the fine/assessment/tax/whatever Obama is calling it this week
• you people need to stop believing everything the bishops tell you

Hmmm.  I could make snarky comments about him, but I’ll just make a lazy post by copying my reply.

Ok, so here’s the HHS statement on its final ruling.  Yeah, that’s what I said it said, thanks.

You may note that it clearly states that all health insurance plans that do not qualify for an exemption must provide contraceptive services.  Even those who qualify for an examption and don’t provide contraceptives will probably be required, the statement says, to inform their employees about where to get contraceptives for free.

So, every Catholic school, hospital and charity will be required to provide contraception (because they don’t fit under the new, narrow definition of a “religious” entity).  Even parishes and convents that fit under the definition should be aware that HHS is already contemplating how to force them to promote contraception to their employees.  The so-called compromise only means that these institutions will be forced to buy insurance that, for “free”, provides contraceptives.  NEWS FLASH: when the hotel says the wi-fi and breakfast are “free”, they aren’t; you’re paying for it, they just add it to the room price.  When the insurance company says, “Sure, we provide contraceptives for free,” um, no, YOU’RE PAYING FOR THAT.

(And you’re happy that dioceses will be forced to buy insurance from someone else?  Why?  Adding the bureaucracy of an insurance company won’t make health insurance cheaper for the employees.  Is it because the government can bully the insurance companies more easily?  Or are you just anti-Catholic and want Catholics to please keep their unauthorized opinions to themselves, unless they’re standing in a church?)

And, holy crap!  how generous!, HHS has allowed that those institutions that do not fit under the definition but have objections can have an extra year to, as Cardinal Dolan put it, “Figure out how to violate our consciences,” as long as they prove that they even qualify for the extension.

The last time I checked, in this country, we do not generally give out rights only to those who can PAY THE FINES FOR THEM.  If you have to pay a fine for it, it ISN’T RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.  I am not interested in being a dhimmi in my own country, thank you very much.

Yes, I’m yelling.  Here’s my short version:

The federal government has a definition of what constituted a religious institution; this administration chose to use a definition that excludes most religious institutions.  Why?  Are they trying to drive religious institutions out of the public square?

If I pay for insurance that provides contraceptives, I am directly complicit in something I hold to be sinful, no matter how the accounting is done (this has nothing to do with paying taxes; that is a much more remote connection between my money and behavior I may hold to be immoral).  So, no, the latest “compromise” isn’t worth anything.

If I have to pay a fine to exercise my religious freedom, then my “right” has been reduced to a calculation of how much money the government can get out of me, money that the government will directly use to fund something I object strongly to.  And once I’m out of money, my right to religious freedom is gone.  Somehow, I seem to remember from high school government class that that is not how our Bill of Rights is supposed to work.  (But Obama was a Constitutional law prof; I’m sure he’ll tell us that, since he sees the Constitution as a living document, “bill” must be reinterpreted in the modern way, so it now means, “You get rights, and the government will send you a bill.”)

And if you think, “Well, I don’t care about contraception; I want it covered,” then please consider what else is legal that you or your church might object to funding: abortion, sex-change operations, and euthanasia.  If they force the Catholics to bow (and we are the largest single denomination in this country and our hospitals care for 1/6 of American patients), do you think they are going to stop here?

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My country…

“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case.  It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”  — G.K. Chesterton

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  – First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

As Christians aware of our history (and I’m not at all sure that most of us are), we have frequently had cause to love the countries we live in while fighting their current stupidities or evils.  If we are aware of the histories of official government persecution or blind eyes to persecution (for Catholics, this would include Elizabeth I’s police state, the invasion of Maryland while it was still a colony, and repeated instances of the destruction of Catholic institutions and murder of Catholics in the U.S.); we certainly have grounds to expect the future might hold problems in a similar vein, prompting a pre-emptive promise to love our country, in spite of its failings.

And so, we come to the current “desperate case”:

In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences. 

– Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City

I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance.

- Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria

In spite of a “compromise” that still meant everyone would be paying for contraceptives and abortions (we’d just hide the accounting, and, no, really, this time we’ll put it into law, unlike that last promise we made to the pro-life Democrats who voted for the health care bill in the first place.  Really!), the HHS mandate is still a violation of religious liberty.

The Amish, who have religious objections to insurance, get an exemption from the plan.  They also, we learned while on vacation in the area around Lancaster, PA, get an exemption from Social Security taxes, since they don’t take the payouts, relying instead on their children and their own savings when they retire, which they don’t do very early.  (Gee, I’m not expecting to get a payout from Social Security, can I opt out of that tax and invest my own money, too?)

Catholics, however, do not get an exemption from the new health care law.  The only religious organizations exempt from paying for contraceptives they believe to be sinful are actual churches.  The definition specifies that the religious exemption is only for those organizations who employ and serve almost exclusively their co-religionists.  The school the church runs will have to pay for contraceptives.  The diocese that runs soup kitchens and counseling services will have to pay for contraceptives.  Heck, if your parish is considered a mission parish and is evangelizing a less-Catholic area and has a lot of non-Catholic participants at mass, you might not really be “religious” enough under the definition the Obama administration has chosen to use.  (Remember the howling about all the “the secretary shall define”, “the secretary shall decide”, etc. vagueness in the massive health care bill?  If it’s that huge, and still contains all this leeway, what are they hiding?  Well, here’s where it comes to bite us.  Just like the pro-lifers were saying all along.)

The lawsuits against the federal government are piling up.  Several major Protestant leaders have stepped up to support the Catholic Church (and I should note that Catholics aren’t the only church that has objections to contraception, although all the major Protestant denominations abandonned their bans on contraception by the mid-1900′s, starting with the Anglicans in 1930 at their regular Lambeth Conference).  There are multiple websites up to collect signatures against the government mandate, including StopHHS.

I seriously hope the U.S. government gets trounced in court… except that my tax dollars are being spent to attack my church and to defend this idiotic law.

And right now, while I love my country and am very proud of our troops, especially this Memorial Day weekend, I still feel about like some poor daughter having to haul her drunk mother home from the bar, yet again, to the jeers of the neighbors.  This is when you say, “My country, right or wrong,” and it makes your eyes sting with tears to think of how horribly, desperately astray my dear country has gone.

You grit your teeth, say it anyways, and pray that your mother and your country sober up and straighten out again, knowing that you’ll probably have to say it again under similar circumstances, even as you pray you don’t.

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Trust my government?

This weekend, at mass, one of the prayers of the faithful was something about, “For those who have lost their trust in their government, we pray to the Lord.”

Huh?

It’s not like they print them in the church bulletin under the notice for the next pancake supper, so I couldn’t check, and I sort of forgot about it.  Then something reminded DH about it (we went to separate masses last weekend, keeping the kids home in an attempt to break the flu/fever cycle), and he asked me if the later mass had had the same petition.

Sure, our previous bishop had a reputation for picketing the local naval weapons station to protest nukes, irritating the sailors and getting them in trouble for being late, but not really changing any minds.  If he wanted to affect policy, he should’ve tried going the other direction up the freeway, to DC.  Maybe he didn’t know how to get to DC; he never managed to show up for the March for Life or even spend much time in the diocesan paper on it… and Richmond is only about an hour and a half from the National Mall in DC.

And, yes, a few years back, a study guide on Just War Theory from the diocesan Justice and Peace Office concluded with the condescending, “If anyone in your group still hasn’t reached the maturity to embrace pacifism, try to be accepting, and continue to pray for their conversion.”  Hmm.  Let’s see… the J&P Office, or St. Thomas Aquinas… I’m betting on the Angelic Doctor, thanks.  (I should note that pacifism is not a required nor even a universally recommended Catholic theological position.)

But praying for my poor, misguided, strange loss of trust in my government?

Thanks, but I’m a Catholic: no, I don’t trust my government completely.

Frankly, I don’t trust any human institution completely.  But the government?  Heck, no.

Queen Elizabeth I’s government arrested Catholics simply for trying to attend mass.  It wasn’t until Queen Elizabeth II’s government that Catholics were allowed the vote in Ireland.  The Chinese communist government has tried to co-opt churches, forbid Catholics from following or even communicating with the Pope, and wipe out the remnants.  Governments in Muslim countries routinely look the other way when Christians are murdered.  The Saudi Arabian government allows its religious police to arrest Catholics (often workers from the Philippines) for holding prayer meetings in their apartments (no rosaries or Bibles; the workers are not allowed to bring those into the country, and public Christian prayer is absolutely prohibited).  In the United States, we nearly had Catholics prohibited from voting early on.  And then there’s the litany of atheistic regimes that have tried to wipe out Catholicism by execution: revolutionary France, Russia, communist Spain, etc.

So, no, I have never completely trusted my government.

I don’t think any Christian should uncritically trust their government; unlike modern liberals, we do not believe that people are fundamentally good.  People are fundamentally fallen; as a Catholic, I would add that even Christians, washed with baptism, are still subject to concupiscence, the tendency towards sin.  Yes, our government has worked reasonably well for a few centuries… but that is no guarantee of continued benevolence into the endless future.  Yes, individuals can show wonderful flashes of virtue.  However, given a large enough crowd (and the federal government has certainly become more than a crowd), there is bound to be sin, corruption, pride, and misguided actions.

Christians should not be concerned about those who regard their government with a healthy (and maybe very large, lately) dose of skepticism.  We should be concerned and pray for those who trust their government a little too much, a little too uncritically.

Government, to quote George Washington, is, like fire, “a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

I trust my government like I trust fire: only so much, and only when it stays in its box.

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Ash Wednesday

*sigh*  Late, as usual.  (The dragon is getting done, but I’m sick, again.)

In the meantime, and lacking in news info because I’ve been watching Olympics, I am submitting a very non-serious start to Lent.

The lead-up:  At the Naval Academy (at least back when we had a real plebe year, unlike everyone after us…), plebes (aka freshmen) had a rough time at breakfast and lunch.  We sat with our squads, stood at attention before meal, ate at attention, and got grilled on professional knowledge.  “Weapons fore to aft on the Arleigh Burke destroyer, and pass the ketchup!” was not unheard-of conversation.

On Fridays, the upperclassmen were usually exhausted from their own weeks; they, after all, were heavy into their majors courses.  Plebes were busy trying to survive and trying to sleep through Chemistry.  Anyways, Fridays, therefore, were joke day.

I was known as a miserable joke teller, but this week, luck was with me.  I had a good joke from the music/humor tape that had been playing in the local Irish shop.  And the set-up was about to make it priceless.

It was Lent.  On Fridays, the entree was some sort of fish, out of respect for the Catholics, who abstain from meat in Lent on Fridays.  (We all had to eat the exact same thing, so there wasn’t really a way to give options, except that every table got bread, peanut butter, and jelly as a last resort.  That’s lunch “family style” with about 4,000 of your closest friends.)

One of my upperclassmen came in, threw his cover (aka “hat”) onto the hat shelf under his chair, and commenced ranting about the fish.

“Why do I have to eat fish?!?  I’m not Catholic!  This is all your fault!  [pointing at me, the only Catholic plebe in the squad]  Tell me why I have to eat fish?!?  What happened to separation of church and state!?!?!”

The rest of the squad laughed at him, and I, upon further questioning, admitted to hating fish (especially the Navy version: square or triangle) and commented that I got through Lent on peanut butter and jelly.

Then, after the fish had been picked over, came joke time.

The joke:

A while back, in Ireland, John, a Protestant boy, fell madly in love with Mary, a Catholic girl.  Deciding that mixed-marriages were not wise, he decided that he would convert.  John converted happily, they were married, and life seemed good.

One day, Father O’Malley, the local priest, dropped by to pay the newlyweds a visit.

“Oh, hello, Father!  I’ve been meaning to come talk to you…” began John uneasily.

“Why?  What’s the matter?  It isn’t Mary, is it?  You haven’t changed your mind now?” worried the priest.

“Oh, no, Father, Mary’s wonderful!  I couldn’t be happier being married.  The problem is…” and John dropped his voice to a confidential whisper: “I don’t feel Catholic.”

“Hmmm.  That is a problem.”  The priest pondered for a minute.  “Well, try this: whenever you don’t ‘feel Catholic’, just tell yourself, ‘I’m not a Protestant, I’m a Catholic.  I’m not a Protestant, I’m a Catholic.’  See if that helps, and I’ll look for some books that might help, too.”

Grateful, John thanked the priest, Mary came in from shopping, and all had a lovely visit.

A week later, bringing the promised books, Father showed up at John and Mary’s house and knocked on the door.  Mary opened it, and a lovely smell wafted out.

“Well, good morning, Mary!  And how are– Wait a minute.  That isn’t a smell that should be coming from a good Catholic house on a Friday, Mary!”

Rolling her eyes, Mary gestured the priest inside and replied simply, “Check the kitchen, Father.”

Reaching the kitchen, Father O’Malley found John standing over a huge, fragrant, sizzling steak.  As the juices dripped and the wonderful smells filled the entire neighborhood… [and now my upperclassman was practically drooling and looking like, seriously, he would've liked to have strangled me, except his classmates were loving seeing him squirm...]

Waving his grill spatula at the pan, John was telling the steak, “You’re not a steak, you’re a flounder!  You’re not  a steak, you’re a flounder!”

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Our Lady of Guadalupe

Happy (belated) feast day, everyone!

I have an excuse for being late: my DH has been hogging the laptop, so I haven’t had a chance to download the really cool photos I want to add to this post.  Plus, I’ve been busy turning a huge pile of heavy red felt into cloaks for the kids.  BTW, it is also the third week in Advent, so, for the interested, I suggest you go read last year’s post on Gaudete Sunday for an explanation of the purple/pink candle combinations on Advent wreaths and other related ramblings.

December 12th is the celebration of the apparitions of Mary to an Aztec convert to Christianity named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (he took “Juan Diego” as his baptismal name, when he and his wife converted as adults).

My (somewhat) brief summary:

On December 9th, 1531, Juan Diego was headed to mass, as was his custom.  He encountered a beautiful young woman, surrounded with light like the sun, who addressed him in his native tongue and asked him to go to the bishop in Mexico City to ask that a shrine be built on the hill for her.  Realizing that she was the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego went to the bishop, but Bishop Zumarraga (rather understandably) did not believe him.

Returning to Tepeyac Hill, Juan Diego begged the Virgin to pick someone else, someone worthier, but she told him that, no, it had to be him.  She instructed him to go to the bishop again the next day.

The next day, December 10th, Juan Diego again asked the bishop to build the shrine, and the bishop again refused.  This time, however, the bishop suggested that if Juan Diego could bring him a sign from the lady, then the church might be built.  Juan Diego informed the Virgin that the bishop still hadn’t believed him and that the bishop wanted a sign.  The Virgin told Juan Diego to come back the following day to receive the sign for the bishop.

Juan Diego headed home to discover that his uncle, who lived with him, was seriously ill.  He spent the next day caring for him.  Finally, early on the morning of December 12th, it became apparent that his uncle was on the verge of death.  Juan Diego set off for the nearest church to ask a priest to come perform Last Rites for his uncle.  Knowing that he had promised the Virgin to return the day before, Juan Diego skirted Tepeyac, thinking to avoid her.

Of course, she found him anyways.  She assured Juan Diego that his uncle did not need a priest right away, for he would live (she appeared to the uncle, who was healed).  The Virgin sent Juan Diego to the top of the hill to pick the roses that had miraculously grown there overnight.  He filled his cloak (a rough peasant cloak made of cactus fibers called a tilma) and brought the flowers to the Virgin, who arranged them, instructed that the flowers were to be shown to the bishop first, and sent Juan Diego on his way.

When Juan Diego finally was able to get in to see the bishop, he breathlessly announced that he had the sign.  Opening his tilma, the roses spilled to the floor.  Underneath them was the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  (Properly, the name was “Coatlaxopeuh”, which means “Who crushes the serpent”, which has implications both biblically and within Aztec culture, as one of their chief gods was the winged serpent Quetzalcoatl.  The bishop, unfamiliar with Nahuatl and perhaps a little homesick, heard it as the name of a favorite Marian shrine in Spain.)

Conversions to Christianity after the Spanish conquests had been rather slow, despite the Fransiscans’ best efforts.  The Conquistadors were not always (to put it mildly) the best examples of Christian behavior.  After the apparition, however, where Mary appeared as an Aztec princess, millions converted to Christianity and embraced Christ.  Going along with this, child sacrifice, which had accelerated in an attempt to get the gods to kick out the Spaniards, came to a halt.

The Virgin of Guadalupe has a special place of honor in Mexico and has been declared the Patroness of the Americas.  Also, for the ending of the child sacrifices, she has been tied to the pro-life movement, and many parishes’ and organizations’ banners will feature Our Lady of Guadalupe at pro-life events.

The kids, last year, dressed up. Crash is about to cry because he doesn't want his picture taken; he wants to know when the pinata is coming.

So, yes, even us non-Spanish speakers can show up for the celebrations.  As Father was blessing the children who’d dressed up for the mass last year, he got to our end of the group, and, somewhat startled asked, “A Chinese Lady?” on seeing Empress in her red dress and blue-green cloak with gold stars.  “Well, we love her, too!” I answered.  Father wasn’t quite as surprised to see us at the Aztec dancing this year, where he’d been asked to come give a blessing before the event started.  And the kids have gotten used to the fact that they can’t understand much of what is said at the Spanish mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe, but they are starting to get that the liturgy is the same, so they participated with the prayers somewhat.

The Aztec dancers were just awesome.  Apparently, there is a huge gathering of traditional dancers in the plaza outside the shrine in Mexico for the feast day.  Since they couldn’t be there, the group leader explained, they wanted to bring a bit of their prayerful offering to God- their dancing- to here.

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Unity with Who?

I love my Church.  I enjoy reading papal encyclicals, studying the Bible, listening to prayerful music (everything from a capella chant to modern rock).  I’m far from perfect, but I am trying to follow Christ.

I am considerably less fond of my local parish.  I get tired of fighting over whether I or the lousy Religious Education program have the right to teach my children.  (“But she won’t know the First Communion song!” protested one person.  I’m sorry, is that in the GIRM?  I don’t recall reading about an official “First Communion song” that’s required for the sacrament.)  The sheer blankness of our church (white ceiling, nearly bare walls, no stained glass, tabernacle hidden around a corner behind the altar) is depressing.  My husband leaned over to me during a particularly notable meditation hymn this morning and whispered, “Puppies are cuddly, puppies are cute…”, a reference to a truly (intentionally) awful bit of singing in Veggie Tales’ Esther.  I have sat through previous music choices that could most easily be explained as resembling “The Rainbow Connection,” the heavy-on-the-banjo song Kermit the Frog is singing at the opening of The Muppet Movie.  The organist once played “Everything’s All Right Now” from Jesus Christ, Superstar during communion (no, I am not making this up; I really wish I was!); when we pointed this out to the priest, he mildly said, “Well, it would depend which song from the musical she played…”  (If you are fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with that particular musical, the key points are that it denies the divinity of Christ and has him sleeping with Mary Magdalene.)  I won’t even go into the lyrics of “Pass My Love Around,” a frequent choice for what is supposed to be the somber, penitential, but hopeful “Lamb of God” section of the liturgy.

And we’re known as one of the more liturgically conservative parishes in the area.

This morning, however, took the cake.  The sermon was a long, mushy defense best titled, “Can’t we all just get along?”  We were chastised for infighting among Catholics.  (True; we should always be charitable.)  We should stop arguing about who is a “good” Catholic and who is not.  (Um… wait a minute… that sounds suspiciously like a swipe at people (including bishops) who have publicly denounced “Catholic” pro-abortion politicians.)  Some like modern music, some think we should go back to Latin, turning the altars around, and chant!  (Well, it would beat “The Rainbow Connection!”)  Some think this, some think that, some say the Church should liberalize our stance on contraception… (First time we’ve ever heard contraception mentioned from the pulpit in ten years (except for the pro-life mass, but that was just for the pro-life committee), and all that was said was that many think it should be declared not a sin?!  How about a reminder that it is still a sin whether you like that or not?).

So, we need to stop this infighting, the pastor told us.

On a strangely related note, the morning paper brought an opinion piece from Cal Thomas, “The Church of What’s Happening Now.”  Thomas discussed the Episcopalian Church’s decision to end the ban on ordaining more active gays.  After the brouhaha over Gene Robinson, and the resultant exodus of moral conservatives, the Episcopalians decided to sidestep the issue by simply not ordaining any more gays for a while.  Now, they’ve decided they need to be inclusive and wholeheartedly embrace those living homosexual lifestyles by ordaining them.  “Inclusivity,” Thomas pointed out, “has nothing to do with the foundational truths set forth in Scripture.”

My pastor would beg to differ.  Looking at today’s Gospel reading (the feeding of the multitudes with five loaves and two fish), he concluded that Jesus fed everyone without asking them about their personal behavior or beliefs.  This feeding created a unity, “Even if they were not themselves aware of it.”  And the important thing is this unity, right?

Hmm.  I don’t have a degree in theology, so maybe I’m just not being nuanced enough or something, but I seem to remember Jesus later criticizing the crowds for following Him only for food.  He seems to have thought that the “unity” of having eaten the miraculous meal together wasn’t enough: He wanted their hearts and minds.

In John 6, Jesus tells the crowds they have to eat his body to have true life within them.  Many of those who had followed him to that point abandon Jesus, grumbling, “This is a hard saying.  Who can listen to it?”  Darn it, there’s that exclusivity thing again: those who rejected the teaching left.  Jesus did not chase after them calling, “Hey, it’s ok; you don’t have to believe that part if you don’t feel like it!  Just stay united in physical nearness, if not belief; that’s enough!”  No, Jesus turned to the apostles and asked, “Do you want to leave, too?”  Peter answered that they knew Jesus was the Messiah, so where else would they go?  The goal was unity with Jesus, so Peter would try to understand truth.

Unity is wonderful.  Buying it by excusing sin is not (and it would only produce a false, superficial unity, anyways).

Pretending that sin is not sin is neither charitable nor Christian.  Paul does not admonish us, “If your brother offend you, just ignore it for the sake of unity.”  No, he tells us to charitably confront his sin, then take it to the church, then, if he still fails to repent, turn him out of the Church until he brings himself back to unity.

In order to repent, someone has to know he/she has sinned.  If ignorant, how can the sinner repent?  If the sinner doesn’t repent, how will he reach Heaven?  What of anyone who failed to warn him he was on the way to hell?  Do you think we’ll get off on the excuse, “Well, we were trying to keep our numbers up and didn’t want to scare anyone off” or “But it isn’t *nice* to tell someone their life choices are wrong!  That’s judgemental!”?

We have a word for it: irenicism, the chasing of unity at all costs by constructing a lowest-common-denominator kind of peace.  Sort of a, “Well, we all believe in Jesus, so can’t we all just *love* and forget about sins and doctrinal arguments and get along?”  We don’t all agree; we need to acknowledge that and continue the search for truth in all its (His) fullness.

Maybe I’ve been beating around the bush.  Maybe the question should be, “Unity with WHO?“  Each other?  I’ll join a garden club if that’s all I want.

Heaven is to be in full communion with God, who is Truth.  One Truth, not many.

To be within the unity of the Church is to be conforming our hearts and minds to Christ, not just to each others’ opinions.

Pretending that the false unity of many different “truths” is the goal ignores the real goal: Heaven.

(Where I suspect Jesus Christ, Superstar will not be on the playlist.)

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Notre Dame: Where are the bishops?

A few dozen pro-life Notre Dame students skipped their own graduation to attend the alternate ceremony, with Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life giving the address.  In the arena, a few people tried to interrupt President Obama’s speech.  Most of those present, however, chanted, “Yes we can!” to drown out the protesters.  Fr. Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, gave a glowing introduction to Mr. Obama.

So much for Fr. Jenkins’ claims that, by honoring Obama, they would have a “discussion” about abortion or some kind of “persuasion” or “discourse”.  It sounded like a pretty much wall-to-wall lovefest.  Sort of like “persuading” China to improve its human rights record by giving them every political and economic concession they want.  Yeah, that worked really well; just ask the jailed lawyer who tried to expose the forced abortions (which are supposed to be illegal, anyways) under the One Child Policy.  Gee, it gives the impression that we really didn’t care about either China’s human rights abuses or Obama’s radically pro-abortion record.

The good news is, Fr. Jenkins, et al.,  have probably managed to lay to rest any remaining doubt that Notre Dame might have some interest in being a truly Catholic university anymore…

 

While writing an answer to our local paper (more on that later), I came across this set of photos from Voices Carry, via Jill Stanek’s blog (Jill Stanek was the nurse who blew the whistle on aborted babies who didn’t die being left in dirty laundry or buckets of water to kill them).  I’m just giving you the juxtaposed photos; go read the rest of the post.  I agree with VC: Obama already got his thunderous ovation, but this priest has earned one from the more important audience.  (Obama is shown receiving his honorary award, the priest is receiving a jail tag from the police.)

Randall Terry made the comment in a newsletter once that only priests who had an arrest record for abortion protests, or at the very least a record of having participated actively in the pro-life movement, should be considered for promotion to bishop.

Where were the bishops at Notre Dame?

The local bishop refused to attend the graduation, for the first time in twenty years as the bishop of the diocese, but, as far as I’ve heard, he wasn’t at the alternate graduation for the pro-life seniors.

Archbishop Burke, formerly of St. Louis and now working at the Vatican, denounced the debacle at Notre Dame to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast… but none of the U.S. bishops were at Notre Dame to protest, or even said much.

Dr. Alan Keyes, who was arrested for protesting, said on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News that Bishop Sheen once said that the laity will save the Church.  I’ll take heart in the fact that Bishop Sheen has been downright prophetic on many other things about our society and Church; maybe he was right.

But why aren’t the leaders leading?  Is this why they like the UN so much: both the bishops and the UN prefer to hurl sharply worded papers (preferably with $5 words to make sure few people understand it) from a distance and pretend they’ve solved the problem while the massacres continue?

I’m not trying to be disobedient or disrespectful of my bishop.  I’ve written his office a few times, things along the lines of, “Can we expect to see a letter or press release on this?  Please?  Anything?”  I read the pope’s encyclicals, addresses, etc. when I have time.  I try to “think with the mind of the Church” as the saying goes.  The Church is soundly pro-life.  We have a tradition of being outspoken.  (Remember Peter and Paul in Acts getting flogged, arrested, and thrown out of cities for speaking boldly in the name of Christ?)  Bishops, in fact, wear red to remind them that they, too, must be ready like the martyrs were to let their blood be spilled for the sake of Christ and His Church.  (Do they remember that?  Paper cuts don’t count!)

I don’t want to lead the Church; I have other callings, other things to be taking care of (three of them, in fact, who are finally in bed).  I have no interest in “fixing” the problem by ordaining women.  I don’t think lay boards will improve the situation, either.  More or different groups in power won’t solve the fundamental problem.

I want the shepherds to lead.

But I won’t wait for them, either, if they insist on being silent.

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Holy Thursday

Having grown up Catholic, I am used to the pattern of Holy Week.  Palm Sunday (Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the first reading of the Passion), followed by Holy Thursday (mass usually in the evening, washing of the feet, Last Supper focus, institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood), Good Friday (the only day of the year that we do not have mass, altars are very bare, statues are removed or covered, focus is the Passion and crucifixtion of Jesus, services at noon and three, bracketing the time of day Jesus was on the cross), food blessing on Saturday, and Easter.

It was sort of funny to hear the DJ on K-Love (a national Christian radio station; primarily evangelical Protestant bent, some anti-Catholic comments or songs on occasion, but generally really good) exulting in the joy of the Resurrection.  I’m thinking, “Hey, hold it!  I’m on my way to Holy Thursday mass.  There is a lot of darkness and mourning to go through before we get to the joy.”

When you think about it, the Resurrection is not exactly the central point.  We were redeemed by the crucifixtion.  The gates of Heaven, shut by Adam’s disobedience, were opened.  In some sense, the Resurrection was proof for us that Jesus had really conquered Satan and death.  We are reminded that, ultimately, there is joy in heaven, but, if even Jesus had to go through suffering and death, why would we think we’ll be exempt?  But suffering is hard, and maybe it’s easier to just skip the flagellation, the crown of thorns, the humiliation, the beatings, and the awful death, and just go straight for the end of the story.

But how you get to the end is important.  You can’t just skip the hard work and suffering in the middle of a fairy tale and talk about the happily-ever-after.  There is a vast difference in the pride of working, saving, and earning your first piece-of-junk car… and just having it handed to you.  The bitterness makes the sweetness more appreciated, more valued.

 

On the way home from mass, K-Love was playing a song that started, “I don’t have a God I can put on a stand, or a God I can hold in the palm of my hand…”

“That’s a pity,” I muttered, and shut the radio off.

I briefly explained to my son that the song seemed to be taking some pretty direct shots at Catholic belief and had a bit of discussion about Eucharist and the Lord of Creation who gave up heaven to become a baby that needed his diapers changed and a man who got tired, hungry, and sick, and then gave Himself to us in the Eucharist.

Curious, I popped the radio back on in time for a chorus that emphasized God’s power and majesty.  I looked up the lyrics at home: the song is “One True God” by Mark Harris.  Reading it, I would say it’s ok; although the first two lines struck me as particularly anti-Catholic (and I have heard them before in exactly that context), Harris is trying to emphasize that God is always with us, always in control, etc.  All true. 

But He gave Himself to us.

Jesus did not have to put up with being crucified.  As He told Pilate, He could have had legions of angels to defend and rescue him.  But that wasn’t God’s will; the plan was much more difficult than merely showing how powerful and in control God is by dazzling all of Jerusalem with legions of imposing angels.  Instead, Jesus allowed Himself to be delivered into our hands.  To be flogged, to be spit upon, to be mocked.

Having made himself vulnerable in this way, Jesus was recognized and worshiped by a few: the Gospels tell us of the faithful disciples and His mother, Mary, who stayed at the foot of the cross.  The weeping women of Jerusalem.  Tradition remembers Veronica (whose name, probably for lack of her real one, means “true image”), who reached out to wipe His face.  Even the good thief (traditionally named Dismas, simply Latin for “thief”, again, for lack of his real name) and one of the soldiers (after His death) recognize the Messiah.

But His self-giving is mostly met with derision and scorn.

The Crucifixtion, Paul tells us, is a “stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Greeks” (1 Cor 1:23).  God(s) just don’t do that, you can imagine them saying.  The Lord is not weak, He is mighty and sovereign over all of creation, insist the Jews.  Gods do not suffer at the hands of mortals; what kind of god is that?! scoff the Greeks.

But this one was weak and did suffer.

Holy Thursday, as I mentioned, focuses on the Last Supper.  Catholics mark it as the beginning of both the mass and the priesthood.  (Reading Chaim Potok, a contemporary Jewish novelist, I was surprised at how close the traditional blessings over various foods still were to the blessings said over the bread and wine at mass.)  Jesus took the Passover, the “perpetual memorial” ordained by God for the Jewish people to remember their salvation from slavery in Egypt, and rewrote it into the new covenant, our salvation from sin.  Jesus gave us Himself under the appearances of bread and wine, humble and powerless, much as He would shortly give Himself over to be crucified.  “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in rememberance of me.”  “This is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant…”

The Creator of everything does not force us to love Him.  In the Eucharist, He opens Himself to the mocking and abuse all over again; lately, it’s been a number of atheists seem to think themselves daring to pocket hosts at masses to desecrate later to show their disdain for those ridiculous Catholics.  But we also abuse His gift by receiving unworthily.  Paul strictly warned the Corinthians that

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.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (1 Cor 11: 27-30, RSV)

There are consequences for the abuse of the tremendous gift of the Eucharist.  But still Jesus gives it, even knowing that we won’t appreciate it, may even mock it or refuse to believe.  Sadly, even many Catholics refuse to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, siding with those disciples in John 6, who mutter, “This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?” when Jesus tells them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.  John tells us that many disciples left Jesus after this incident.

We need to end up on the side of the Apostles.  When Jesus asks the Twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”, Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  They didn’t fully understand, but they trusted Jesus.

We do have a God we can place in a monstrance and adore.

We do have a God we can hold in our hand.

He lets us.

He makes Himself weak and humble, that we would finally understand not just the infinity of His power, but the limitlessness of his love.  That none of us is beyond His reach.  That He is truly with us, even when our frail hearts don’t feel it.  He gave Himself totally for us, holding nothing back, making Himself vulnerable, that we might believe and be made perfect.

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Speaker Pelosi Likes Leather

Apparently, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi enjoys the taste of shoe leather.  First, she insisted that she knew more about Catholic theology than the Catholic Church, and continued to insist (loudly and publicly) on her allegedly Catholic wisdom after the bishops corrected her grossly flawed “understanding” of abortion in Catholic thought for the last two thousand years.  Now, she’s insisting that she knows how to fix the economy.

How, pray tell?  Kill babies.

Strangely, Speaker Pelosi doesn’t seem to have figured out that the usual politician response when an uproar breaks out because people actually noticed that you said something really, really dumb is, “I misspoke; what I meant to say was…”  Instead, she keeps right on chewing on the shoe on the foot in her mouth.

Asked how sending money to Planned Parenthood ($200 million for contraceptives and “family planning” in the bailout package) qualified as an economic stimulus, Speaker Pelosi elaborated, “Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs.”

As the business section loves to tell us, “One of the worst economic mistakes you can make is to have a child.  Worse yet, have two!  Yikes!  What will happen to your retirement?  And think of all the stuff babies need!  That’s expensive!”

Want to know what really happens to your retirement with no children?  Ask Japan.  They’re so panicked about their crashing population (and shrinking workforce), companies are sending workers home early, hoping it will encourage them to have more children.  Given how ingrained it is in their current culture, however, it doesn’t really seem to me that this will be anywhere near enough to halt the unprecidented greying of their population.  (They have acheived the dubious distinction of being the society with the oldest median age ever.)

Let’s be clear here: what the “family planning” services do is reduce births, which is how they reduce the costs of health care, education, etc.  It’s not a baby, it’s just a drain on the economy.  (What’s next?  Mandatory euthanasia?  End of life care is vastly more expensive than “well baby” check-ups.)  Of course, in twenty years or so, that “useless” baby will most likely be a productive worker and taxpayer.  (Or are we assuming that only “those people’s” babies will be aborted or contracepted, the ones who won’t be “productive” enough to have rights?)

“Family planning” is yet another nasty little euphemism we use, sort of like “planned parenthood.”  What we mean, of course, is contraception and abortion.  There is no planning for parenthood, only for the avoidance of it at all costs.

The fact that Speaker Pelosi could even suggest this with a straight face on national tv is a sad, sad commentary on the state of our country.  We’ve lived with the Culture of Death for so long, the skeleton doesn’t even have to be hidden anymore.

President Obama, in a magnanimous gesture, has graciously allowed that the Planned Parenthood bailout ($200 million in the bailout package) can be removed as a nice gesture to Republicans (after a huge backlash to the wastefulness and moral inappropriateness of using the bailout to prop up Planned Parenthood).

I can’t wait to see what the second half of this “generous” compromise is going to be.

 

Oh, wait, news just in: no more compromises will be forthcoming.  Speaker Pelosi has succeeded in getting the stimulus through.  The House just passed the economic “stimulus” bill, including $400 million for global warming research, $335 million for STD prevention (would we be surprised if Planned Parenthood was profitting from that?), $650 million for digital tv converstions, and $1 billion for Amtrak (which has never been anything but a money sink), among other useless expenditures.

Not a single Republican voted for it, and only eleven Democrats voted against it.

I wonder if Pelosi will treat us to a victory speech?  I hope she salted her shoes.

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The bailout, the debate, and abortion

Well, the Senate passed the $700 billion bailout.  It remains to be seen if the House will pass it.  Heck, the last time they voted on it, 12 of the 37 Democrats on the Finance Committee voted against the bailout bill.  Five Democratic committee chairs voted against it.  Rumor has it that freshman Democrats were told to go ahead and vote against it, so that their upcoming election campaigning would be easier.  And it failed to pass, and the Democrats blamed the Republicans… in spite of the fact that the Democrats could’ve passed it without a single Republican vote.

After the stunt Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pulled the other day, it’s amazing that the Democrats and Republicans are even willing to be in the same room.  In case you missed it, she made a speech right before the vote:

$700 billion. A staggering number, but only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness when Pres. Bush took office, he inherited Pres. Clinton’s surpluses – four years in a row budget surpluses on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned it around. And now 8 years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an “anything goes” economic policy, has taken us to where we are today.

They claim to be free-market advocates, when it’s really an anything goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you will have a golden parachute and the taxpayer will bail you out.

Those days are over. The party is over in that respect.

Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, many good things in our economy. But in this case, in this unbridled form, as encouraged and supported by the Republicans — some Republicans, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders had gone on NPR to explain how they were going to use the economy and the bailout bill to beat the Republicans over the head in the elections next month.

Yeah, that’s really bipartisan.  That’s the way to encourage Republicans who are deeply ambivalent about the bailout bill to hold their noses and vote for the thing, by taking the opportunity to bash the president and gloating that, no matter how bipartisan they try to be, you’re going to thrash the Republicans with the bill.  “Well, fine, if that’s how it’s going to be, we’ll hold out for a better bill that reflects more of what we want to see in it.”

Hopefully, Speaker Pelosi will try to show some restraint in the name of leadership and bipartisanship (which she insisted would be her focus when she was elected Speaker) when the bailout bill comes back before the House.

*******************************************************

And then there’s the Vice Presidential debate tomorrow night.

I would have to agree with those who have complained that Gov. Palin has looked- to put it mildly- increasingly stiff in her interviews.  O’Reilly commented tonight that she looked like Reagan looked after his handlers tried to stuff him full of information.  He seemed somewhat concerned that she wasn’t answering questions to a level she seems capable of, but mostly, O’Reilly focused on the handlers’ gaffs.

Interestingly, I got an e-mail from the website Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President begging the handlers to back off and “Please let Sarah be Sarah!”  There was the Gov. Palin we saw at the convention and the Gov. Palin we saw on the documentary footage Fox has been showing (shot this spring by an Israeli filmmaker doing a series on remarkable women).  And then there’s what we’ve seen lately.

However, on a positive note, Adam Brickley also wrote that there are signs that the handlers are getting smacked down and we might see more of the Sarah Palin we liked when we first saw her.

Now, the question is, is this what is driving the disgruntlement lately with Palin?  Kathleen Parker, a conservative commentator, called for Palin to bow out for the sake of the country.  She said she’d liked Palin initially, but had come to feel uneasy about her.  However, since Parker has also described herself in her columns as “personally pro-life” but publicly “reluctantly pro-choice”, it is unclear what bearing that has on her opinion of Sarah Palin, who does not think murder is a personal decision. 

Is Parker really upset by Palin’s interview performances, or is Palin’s unabashedly pro-life position grating on Parker’s conscience?  Is Parker, who was pro-Palin before she became anti-Palin, creating an acceptable way out for herself like the one she’s suggesting for Palin?  “Well, I liked her initially, but she didn’t do amazingly well in the interviews, so now I have an excuse to dislike her besides her public pro-life positions, which I disagree with.” 

It seems that a lot of the criticism is coming from people who don’t want to say that their issue with Gov. Palin may be rooted in abortion.  If that’s your issue, why not say it?  I think they know that their lie that “most Americans are pro-choice” isn’t true, or at least isn’t true to the level of accepting completely unlimited, taxpayer-funded abortions that the Democrats are pushing.

Yes, others have criticized Gov. Palin’s performance in the interviews.  (Others have countered that the Gibson interview was edited to make Palin look bad.  (read the whole transcript here))  Then again, a lot of people are intent on making Gov. Palin fit their preconceived notions that conservative, pro-life, non-Ivy League women are stupid.

 

Meanwhile, where the heck is Sen. Biden?

All the buzz has been about Gov. Palin; almost nobody is talking about Sen. Biden. 

For interest’s sake, we can only hope he goes and says something really dumb, like the comment about FDR getting on the TV at the beginning of the Great Depression, in 1929.  (Considering that the TV wasn’t commercially available until the late 1930′s and Sen. Biden was born in 1942 to a financially struggling family, you’d think he would remember when TV’s were not common.)  Or saying Hillary Clinton would’ve been a better VP pick.  Or, from the primaries, the comment about Sen. Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”  Oops.  (Although I would have to agree with Biden’s comment that, “I think [Obama] can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”)

Meanwhile, the bishop of Scranton has released a statement clarifying (again) that pro-abortion politicians are in grave sin.  He also mandated that all parishes under his jurisdiction must read this letter instead of giving a homily or sermon and that it should be printed and included in all parish bulletins.  As was to be expected, the first few hits on Google were disgruntled people complaining that the bishop shouldn’t be telling Sen. Biden how he should write policy.

If abortion (45 million dead in this country alone, and counting) isn’t an issue that the bishops can talk on, what is?  It isn’t like the bishop is telling Sen. Biden to write a law to mandate that everyone go through Catholic marriage prep classes before getting married or to make the “Hail, Mary” the state prayer. 

The bishop is saying that murder is wrong, even when we pretend that the murdered weren’t really human enough to deserve protection. 

There are pro-life atheists (I marched next to one at the March for Life in 2007; we had a nice talk), pro-life Protestants (quite a few of them, actually), pro-life Muslims, pro-life Jews… this is not a Catholic issue, this is a human issue.  Just like the Church has something to say about the rights of workers (Pope Leo XIII was one of the first mainstream voices to support the idea of unions in Rerum Novarum), the environment, the death penalty, war and peace, and other social issues “acceptable” to the left wing, it also has something to say about abortion.

I’ll let the bishop have the final word:

Being “right” on taxes, education, health care, immigration, and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life. Consider this: the finest health and education systems, the fairest immigration laws, and the soundest economy do nothing for the child who never sees the light of day. It is a tragic irony that “pro-choice” candidates have come to support homicide – the gravest injustice a society can tolerate – in the name of “social justice.” 

Even the Church’s just war theory has moral force because it is grounded in the principle that innocent human life must be protected and defended. Now, a person may, in good faith, misapply just war criteria leading him to mistakenly believe that an unjust war is just, but he or she still knows that innocent human life may not be harmed on purpose. A person who supports permissive abortion laws, however, rejects the truth that innocent human life may never be destroyed. This profound moral failure runs deeper and is more corrupting of the individual, and of the society, than any error in applying just war criteria to particular cases.  

Furthermore, National Right to Life reports that 48.5 million abortions have been performed since 1973. One would be too many. No war, no natural disaster, no illness or disability has claimed so great a price.

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