An Easter blessed with the joy of faith in the Risen Lord to all of you and your families!
Surrexit Dominus vere, Alleluia!
Move violates First Amendment Right to Free Exercise of Religion |
 Archbishop Timothy Broglio (center) celebrates Ash Wednesday Mass at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, on March 2, 2022. |
| WASHINGTON, DC - Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has issued a “cease and desist order” to Holy Name College, a community of Franciscan Catholic priests and brothers, who have provided pastoral care to service members and veterans at Walter Reed for nearly two decades. The government’s cease and desist order directed the Catholic priests to cease any religious services at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. This order was issued as Catholics entered Holy Week, the most sacred of days in the Christian faith, in which they participate in liturgies remembering Jesus’ passion, and leading the Church to celebrate the Resurrection on Easter morning. The Franciscans’ contract for Catholic Pastoral Care was terminated on March 31, 2023, and awarded to a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract. As a result, adequate pastoral care is not available for service members and veterans in the United States’ largest Defense Health Agency medical center either during Holy Week or beyond. There is one Catholic Army chaplain assigned to Walter Reed Medical Center, but he is in the process of separating from the Army. His Excellency, the Most Reverend Timothy P. Broglio, J.C.D., Archbishop for the Military Services, condemned the move as an encroachment on the First Amendment guarantee of the Free Exercise of Religion. Archbishop Broglio said: “It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged when it was so readily available. This is a classic case where the adage ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ applies. I fear that giving a contract to the lowest bidder overlooked the fact that the bidder cannot provide the necessary service. I earnestly hope that this disdain for the sick will be remedied at once and their First Amendment rights will be respected.” Ms. Elizabeth A. Tomlin, Esq., General Counsel of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA (AMS), has reached out to the contracting officers at Walter Reed numerous times throughout Holy Week asking for the Franciscans’ Catholic ministry to be reinstated at least through Easter. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has not responded to these requests from the Archdiocese. While Walter Reed’s chaplain office claims Catholic care is being provided during Holy Week, the AMS maintains that without Catholic priests present at the medical center, service members and veterans are being denied the constitutional right to practice their religion. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is one of many medical centers within the Department of Defense and Defense Health Agency whose pastoral care lies within AMS jurisdiction. The refusal to provide adequate pastoral care while awarding a contract for Catholic ministry to a for-profit company that has no way of providing Catholic priests to the medical center is a glaring violation of service members’ and veterans’ Right to the Free Exercise of Religion. Especially, during Holy Week, the lack of adequate Catholic pastoral care causes untold and irreparable harm to Catholics who are hospitalized and therefore a captive population whose religious rights the government has a constitutional duty to provide for and protect. Source. Milarch.org |
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Marine Corps generals understand more about Jesus, sacrifice, and the Cross than some priests and bishops.
It was a generally acknowledged fact, and confirmed by my experience serving across several Marine Corps commands, that generals, and other officers at lower levels, would request priests when the subject of chaplains came up. As confirmed by their experience coming up as officers through the ranks, priests could be packed up and ready to go without any strings attached, such as family crises, when it came time to shove off for deployments or field exercises. Because priests were married to the Church only, they could be prepared at a moment’s notice to be ready to move out, a basic expectation of every Marine and Sailor.
The priest was more quickly prepared than some poor PFC Shmuckatelli, whose wife wasn’t coping with his absence well and beseeching him to call in sick or otherwise get permission to stay back while the unit moved out. Often it was the chaplain called in by a frustrated command to work with the family to get the Marine back into deployable status. Undeployable Marines eventually wash out and are sent home.
I first served as an officer in combat arms Armor branch in a tank battalion. There is no more pressured position in the Army as a whole at “the tip of the spear,” where “everyone else is support.” There I witnessed up close and personally the issues that affect families and that sometimes rightly pull the soldier or military member away from active service in order to properly care for his or her loved ones. It is a delicate balance between two worlds. The mantra “the mission comes first” must at times yield to the needs of those closest in the bonds of affection and duty under God.
Thus, the attraction for commanders of all kinds to know that, when “the balloon goes up,” the chaplain will be ready to go and support all of the command personnel assets as part of the general effort to keep the troops fit for duty.
The Church has given, through the synods, a microphone to some priests, bishops, and cardinals who seem to no longer grasp the nature of the Lord’s Cross, as the essence of our faith and fight against evil. They have given into the delusion that the Church must now change her mission to serve some this-worldly agenda rather than salvation.
Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/the-world-understands-the-cross-when-synods-dont/
Why is the Mass on Holy Thursday offered in the evening? What is the Mandatum? Why is the Blessed Sacrament translated to an altar of repose? Why is the high altar stripped? Fr. Goffine answers!
http://mcitl.blogspot.com/2023/04/instruction-for-holy-thursday.html
Please pray for Joe in Missouri.
O St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, I place in you all my interest and desires (mention our special intention here).
O St. Joseph, do assist me by your powerful intercession, and obtain for me from your divine Son all spiritual blessings, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So that, having engaged here below your heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving and homage to the most loving of Fathers.
O St. Joseph, I never weary of contemplating you, and Jesus asleep in your arms; I dare not approach while He reposes near your heart. Press Him close in my name and kiss His fine head for me and ask Him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath.
St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for me.
Amen.
One Our Father, One Hail Mary, One Glory Be.
St. Joseph, Ora Pro Nobis.
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Cardinal Roche’s “holy war” against tradition, and the Traditional Mass, is perpetrated on the falsehood that Catholic theology — and the truth of Revelation which it imparts — can “change.”
Roche was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for programming which aired March 19, in which he continues his jihad by means of restrictions on the Traditional Mass. He is the source of a cascade of documents implemented under Pope Francis since July 2021 to limit and ultimately ban, the holiest tradition and divine revelation of the Holy Mass handed down from apostolic times. Traditionis custodes, the first shot fired in the modernist war on the Mass, was ignored by many bishops. These may have been the ones who responded positively to a Vatican survey which was used as the excuse for the restrictions. We were informed the survey revealed an overall negative reaction.
Roche here sounds in the interview much like an intellectual adolescent recycling clichés:
“The theology of the Church has changed. Whereas before the priest represented, at a distance, all the people — they were channeled through this person who alone was celebrating the Mass.”
The theology of the priesthood is based on the truth that the Mass is the self-offering of Christ, a true sacrifice that takes away sins. The priest stands in persona Christi and does indeed thus as another Christ truly offer the sacrifice. The baptized present participate according to the graces of their Baptism, but the sacrifice does not depend upon them in the same way as on the role of the priest. The difference is a matter of kind and not simply degree. The Mass can be offered with or without the presence of the people.
When Roche says that “it is not only the priest who celebrates the liturgy but also those who are baptized with him, and that is an enormous statement to make,” he cannot state such in a way to imply that the Mass cannot be offered by the priest alone. The theology of the priesthood is based on the truth of the sacrificial death of the Lord on the Cross. This cannot change no matter how Cardinal Roche may twist himself into a pretzel theologically.
Comments by Austen Ivereigh were also aired on the program. He argues devotees of the Traditional Mass should be labeled as “a movement undermining the Second Vatican Council.” Ivereigh therefore supports restrictions on the TLM “to put a limit, to put borders, not to suppress it, but to put it back into the hands of the bishops.”
The several documents churned out by Roche have taken more and more control over the liturgy away from local bishops. As quoted by LifeSiteNews, liturgical scholar Matthew Hazell highlighted Roche’s comments, noting that contrary to the cardinal’s claim, the teaching of the Church had not changed. He pointed to the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei, in which the Pontiff outlined the Catholic teaching on the congregation uniting themselves to the priest in the sacrifice of the Mass.
Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/no-cardinal-roche-the-churchs-theology-has-not-changed/
