Boiler plate stuff he comes up with periodically.
Incontrovertible but hardly in a class with his climate-warning rhetoric,
Pope Francis warns against turning Earth into vast pile of ‘rubble, deserts and refuse’
Which I liken to the long-bearded, white-gowned guy carrying an “End is near” sign. I swear, he’s made an act of faith in this business.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Marquette University had wrongly fired a conservative professor after he criticized a colleague who he believed to be curtailing student discussion of gay marriage.
The court found that Marquette violated the academic-freedom clause in professor John McAdams’ contract when it fired him over a 2014 blog post accusing a graduate student of refusing to allow undergraduates to express opposition to gay marriage during her class. As part of the ruling the university has been ordered to reinstate McAdams and provide him damages, including back pay.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has struck a major blow in favor of free speech,” McAdams’ attorney, Rick Esenberg, of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Now what to do about the wretchedly wrong the decision-makers in this Jesuit-connected university? At the very least, they will bear watching.
via National Review
The “mafia” in question being the cabal of cardinals who met at St. Gallen, Switzerland before the election of Benedict. It’s a term one of them used jokingly for themselves.
They are described as having engineered the election of Francis, with a goal of remaking the church, in which they were thwarted by Benedict but are being helped by Francis.
. . . ominously scandal-ridden figures like Cardinal Danneels, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick—the timeline was estimated at just four or five years to “make the Church over again.”
At this point,
October’s youth synod is about finishing the old business of the St. Gallen mafia. It will mark four years since Archbishop Bruno Forte crafted a manipulated synodal report on the “precious support” found in same-sex relationships—released the very day that two Italian political parties backed homosexual unions.
Pope Francis approved the text before it was published, and his homily that day excoriated “doctors of the law”—an “evil generation”—for resisting the “God of surprises.” Archbishop Forte, meanwhile, declared to the media that “describ[ing] the rights of people living in same-sex unions” is a matter of “being civilized.”
More here via Crisis Magazine.
. . . in a long article extremely well done, full of links to sources.
Just keep in mind, the church has survived worse. Though mostly from outside enemies, however.
One Jesuit to another: there’s something you left out.
So in a trenchant First Things review of the Martin book, Father Paul Mankowski, SJ, asks it:
Is sodomy a sin? Perplexed readers of Fr. James Martin, SJ’s latest book will want to put the question to him, if only to understand why he felt it important to write at all.
Remember, please, there are Jesuits and there are Jesuits. In this corner . . .
via Catholic Culture
Judge Raymond Kethledge an originalist, as in this recent opinion “with a direct invocation of originalism.”
“Faithful adherence to the Constitution and its amendments requires us to examine their terms as they were commonly understood when the text was adopted and ratified, rather than applying meaning derived years later that may weaken constitutional rights,” the opinion reads.
Which is to distinguish things that change from those that don’t. Key to our survival as the nation we have become.
via The Daily Caller
Cardinal Cupich consolidates for some big pushing on a national scale.
In the works for quite some time from his seat on the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Blase Cupich’s much-anticipated backup has arrived – at Roman Noon, the Pope named three auxiliary bishops for the 2.4 million-member archdiocese of Chicago: Fathers Ron Hicks, 50, the vicar-general; Mark Batosic, 56, until now chaplain of the Cook County Jail; and Robert Casey, 50, until now pastor of the city’s St Bede Parish.
Young, vigorous, accomplished, eminently appointable.
Cupich’s first batch of deputies since his arrival in late 2014, the bishops-elect were all classmates at Mundelein and ordained priests together by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in 1994. With the triple nod, the number of Stateside auxiliaries added to the bench within the last two years now stands at 25.
Preparing the way for winning the next national bishops’ meeting vote for head man. And for proliferation of future bishops in charge of whole diocese.
Francis’ man in Chicago and the U.S. gains a lot here.
The 45-year-old abuse case against Cardinal McCarrick has brought an important point back to light: the abuse crisis in the Church is largely a homosexual problem, and the gay inmates are running the asylum. [!]
The suspicion lingers.
It says there’s a fraternity within the priestly fraternity. And a tightly knit one at that.
I’ve been told this — and wrote about it in my 1994 book Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics, which the Kirkus reviewer called “A heavily partisan but still valuable contribution to current debates within the American Catholic Church.” (I’ll take the faint praise, admitting the first part, welcoming the second.)
To cite what I reported, from three of the 34 veteran pastors interviewed for the book, answering question #5 of the ten that I asked each priest, “Gay & lesbian issues: how if at all do they turn up in your ministry? What do you say or do?”:
[Fr.] Mike brought up the issue of gay priests. “My only problem with gay priests, guys I have known, is they tend to think that being gay they have some sort of permission to be sexually active and don’t have the same (obligation) to respect their vows.
I have tried to get an explanation from them, but I never could fully understand what they are thinking. Sexually active gay priests don’t seem to feel it’s violating their vows. It’s a puzzlement to me.”
Fr. Walt:
“In the ordinary parish, only 2% or 3% are gay, so
it’s not a big problem. In the priesthood, on the other hand, it’s way
higher. There are going to be two priesthoods, and very soon,
because of the split between straights and gays.“We pretend we don’t notice, but there are big differences
between the two groups. Both sides understand this, but no one
wants to think it. It’s going to be a gigantic issue in the church.”
“What shape will it take? Turf-protection, mutual suspicion?” I asked.
“Already there’s suspicion. Turf issues haven’t surfaced,
because most of it is closeted. You can’t have turf if you’re closeted.“There will be an expose or outing. It will be explosive. Downtown
won’t, doesn’t know how to deal with it. It’s going to blow up in their
face. People have asked them to deal with it, and they haven’t.
“Have you any percentages?”
“No. I am amazed that people can come up with, say 40%.
But my knowledge is limited, partly because gay priests stay away
from non-gay priests. I don’t even know who they are.”
Ben, in the same interview, conceded the numbers could be high, as reported from
various sources.
“The priesthood makes it acceptable for two men to
travel together. It offers a cover, institutionalizes the male
relationship.“But it’s really a matter of the Catholic obsession with sex.
We have created the problem, and the people who will pay for it are
gay. We have brought this on ourselves.”
Walt:
“I don’t know about that,” said Walt. “A certain softness and
effeminacy has happened in the church. I don’t know how it’s
connected to homosexuality. Our diocese has the best leadership we
could hope for. But even he (the bishop) projects a softness.”“I like him a lot, but it’s people like him who can get ahead in
the system,” said Ben.“That’s a problem, when you have this softness,” said Walt.
“It’s probably in some way connected to homosexuality as a given in
the church. Unless the whole thing is faced, you allow softness to be
the real mode the church is known for.“Once the pastor in this diocese was known as cigar-
chomping and whiskey-drinking. How did that change?“It’s connected somehow to not facing certain things, such as
homosexuality.”
“Softness” is a word that turns up. A major liberal theologian used it in conversation with a newsman friend of mine. He too was concerned.
As obviously is the author/speaker of this hard-charging video at OnePeterFive , who (unwittingly started me on this knotty subject.
Huge difference here in the mass of today and the one of fifty years previous to this lengthy and very helpful article in October of 2017. It’s the sort of thing that hits those in the face who heard mass before the Vatican 2 changes. It explains much of the irreverence that characterizes much of today’s worship.
. . . what we have seen in the past fifty years is precisely an inversion of these [once accepted priorities]), so that the Mass as social event is placed first; going up to receive Communion is placed second; the idea of adoration is a muted third; and the notion of the Mass as a propitiatory and impetratory (petitioning) sacrifice is so foreign as to be unintelligible.
The four priorities:
1. The Mass is first the offering, through the sacrifice of Christ, of the religious worship we owe the triune God, for His own sake, because He is worthy of it and we are damaging ourselves if we do not rightly order our minds and hearts to Him.[1] As St. Thomas says, God is offended by our sins not because they injure Him but because they injure the rational creature, whom He loves (that is, whose good He wills). This worship includes the acts associated with the offering of Mass, namely, adoration, contrition, supplication, thanksgiving, and praise, which have both internal and external aspects, as St. Thomas well develops in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa.
2. Second, because the Mass is the august sacrifice of Christ, we are brought into the very presence of the divine Redeemer, “the Lamb that was slain,” who is “worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction” (Rev 5:12). This is why Augustine says that before receiving, we must adore: we would sin if we did not adore.[2]
3. Third, the Mass is the sacrificial banquet of the Lamb, in which we partake of His flesh and blood for our sanctification and salvation, provided we are not conscious of any unconfessed mortal sin, which includes living in a state of life that is not allowed by divine law.
4. As a distant fourth, one might then speak about the Mass as a social event in which the people of God are seen as a people, in which the unity of the Church is represented and accomplished, and in which certain of our needs as communal beings are met.
Something we can take seriously, that is, not a premium brand of community-building.
There’s a lesson in this: Do not pet a shark.
via The Daily Caller
Blithe Spirit 