Reject gossip about the Church just as for anyone; seek the good in the Church as you do in anyone

In the face of the libelous unfounded rumors, gossip and scurrilous innuendo currently being peddled by journalists who easily entertain fantasies in order to sell newspapers, make a name for themselves and perpetuate so-called “trends” in the news I have a statement to make.

I have had the completely unmerited privilege in the past few years of getting to know a Vatican insider, a man of rank, experience and influence who served at one time within the Roman curia.  He is one of the kindest, most humble and good people I know and an example of the many dedicated, sincere and committed Catholic Christians who have the privilege and duty of assisting the Holy Father our Pope in his mission as universal pastor in Rome and elsewhere around the world.  He is tireless in his ministry and very seldom is seen to take time for himself in his many travels to seek out the members of the Lord's flock and to serve them as an "alter Christus".  He is not the only one who is both living his faith and serving the Church as a true servant: there are many more like him who will never be known because they do not promote themselves in the media and the media is not interested in the good, the true and the beautiful, especially as it is found so often in the Lord’s Mystical Body, which is the Church on earth.

Those who are shocked by the existence of sinners in the Church are like the Pharisees who refused to sit and eat with Christ because He associated Himself with tax collectors and prostitutes.  They are yet far from the Kingdom of God and certainly need our prayers and the witness of our kindness. Those who hate the Church will certainly use sin against her but those who love her should be among the last to find themselves scandalized, knowing themselves and all who share the privilege of being members of the Body of Christ, to be themselves sinners also in need of mercy and redemption in Christ.  Fasting and prayer are the first recourse for those who seek to cast out evil in themselves or in the Church.

Those who have Faith, however, are first and foremost responsible for seeing the good and the Godly in all mankind, sinners and saints.  Those who call themselves Christians have the first duty to live the life of grace in desire for their own salvation and as part of that experience to see the image and likeness of God in everyone, for “God desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”.  We have the duty, also, to pray for our Holy Father and all who collaborate with him in his ministry.

And, finally, we are called to refuse to participate in detraction and calumny which are sinful and to “never let evil talk pass your lips; say only the good things men need to hear, such as will help them on the day of the Lord Jesus”.

Is the accusation of judgment leveled against the Church's public moral witness in fact a testimony to the existence of conscience?

"Seems to me that Jesus wants us to love our neighbors and leave the judging up to Him" is a typical response of many people today when they encounter the Church and her members acting in witness to their faith by speaking out on moral teachings in the public square.

Many who are completely unfamiliar with Christianity can be excused for such a simplistic misrepresentation of the work of the Church which is in obedience to Christ.  We can certainly attempt an explanation and certainly always pray for them.  Perhaps more difficult to understand would be why do people who call themselves Christian and even Catholic equate witness with judgment? Perhaps because they experience in the face of witness by word or action on the part of others what we might call the sting of an informed or educated conscience.

The modern destroyers and disrupters of nature have done much to distort the human person but they have not yet figured out how to finally and fully destroy or annihilate the conscience, that still small voice speaking out within the interior life of every human person that calls them to recognize and assent to an opinion that may be different than their own presently held position.

Perhaps when people accuse as judges those who witness to their Faith by word or action in the public square, such as young people on the March for Life each January, protestors at an abortion clinic, or bishops speaking out in defense of marriage, what they in fact are describing is their recognition of the possibility that their choices and actions may not be an autonomous expression of sovereign individual will but may in fact stand always in the light of ideas, opinions and suppositions which find their source also outside the self.  What this other source might be we need not necessarily name "truth" but even the possibility that some person or some idea may conflict with one's own is seen as an inadmissable oppression, even a crime to be hunted down and shut away if not entirely eliminated.

This, I suspect, is what people who accuse Catholics of "judgment" in fact are themselves witnessing to, even if unwittingly: that Catholics, Christians and others of good will are right to assert that every human person does indeed have a conscience and is indeed capable of using it.  Another small victory in the battle to assert the existence of natural law as a basis for public discourse?  Perhaps so.

Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday homily: "there is a force that does not reside in our hearts, but that emanates from the heart of God and the power of His mercy"

Venerable Brothers,

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin a new Lenten journey, a journey that extends over forty days and leads us towards the joy of Easter, to victory of Life over death. Following the ancient Roman tradition of Lenten stations, we are gathered for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The tradition says that the first statio took place in the Basilica of Saint Sabina on the Aventine Hill. Circumstances suggested we gather in St. Peter's Basilica. Tonight there are many of us gathered around the tomb of the Apostle Peter, to also ask him to pray for the path of the Church going forward at this particular moment in time, to renew our faith in the Supreme Pastor, Christ the Lord. For me it is also a good opportunity to thank everyone, especially the faithful of the Diocese of Rome, as I prepare to conclude the Petrine ministry, and I ask you for a special remembrance in your prayer.

The readings that have just been proclaimed offer us ideas which, by the grace of God, we are called to transform into a concrete attitude and behaviour during Lent. First of all the Church proposes the powerful appeal which the prophet Joel addresses to the people of Israel, "Thus says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning" (2.12). Please note the phrase "with all your heart," which means from the very core of our thoughts and feelings, from the roots of our decisions, choices and actions, with a gesture of total and radical freedom. But is this return to God possible? Yes, because there is a force that does not reside in our hearts, but that emanates from the heart of God and the power of His mercy. The prophet says: "return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting in punishment" (v. 13). It is possible to return to the Lord, it is a 'grace', because it is the work of God and the fruit of faith that we entrust to His mercy. But this return to God becomes a reality in our lives only when the grace of God penetrates and moves our innermost core, gifting us the power that "rends the heart". Once again the prophet proclaims these words from God: "Rend your hearts and not your garments" (v. 13). Today, in fact, many are ready to "rend their garments" over scandals and injustices – which are of course caused by others - but few seem willing to act according to their own "heart", their own conscience and their own intentions, by allowing the Lord transform, renew and convert them.

This "return to me with all your heart," then, is a reminder that not only involves the individual but the entire community. Again we heard in the first reading: "Blow the horn in Zion! Proclaim a fast, call an assembly! Gather the people, sanctify the congregation; Assemble the elderly; gather the children, even infants nursing at the breast; Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her bridal tent (vv.15-16). The community dimension is an essential element in faith and Christian life. Christ came "to gather the children of God who are scattered into one" (Jn 11:52). The "we" of the Church is the community in which Jesus brings us together (cf. Jn 12:32), faith is necessarily ecclesial. And it is important to remember and to live this during Lent: each person must be aware that the penitential journey cannot be faced alone, but together with many brothers and sisters in the Church.

Finally, the prophet focuses on the prayers of priests, who, with tears in their eyes, turn to God, saying: " Between the porch and the altar let the priests weep, let the ministers of the LORD weep and say: “Spare your people, Lord! Do not let your heritage become a disgrace, a byword among the nations! Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’"(V.17). This prayer leads us to reflect on the importance of witnessing to faith and Christian life, for each of us and our community, so that we can reveal the face of the Church and how this face is, at times, disfigured. I am thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the Church, of the divisions in the body of the Church. Living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry is a humble and precious sign for those who have distanced themselves from the faith or who are indifferent.

"Well, now is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation" (2 Cor 6:2). The words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians of Corinth resonate for us with an urgency that does not permit absences or inertia. The term "now" is repeated and can not be missed, it is offered to us as a unique opportunity. And the Apostle's gaze focuses on sharing with which Christ chose to characterize his life, taking on everything human to the point of taking on all of man’s sins. The words of St. Paul are very strong: "God made him sin for our sake." Jesus, the innocent, the Holy One, "He who knew no sin" (2 Cor 5:21), bears the burden of sin sharing the outcome of death, and death of the Cross with humanity. The reconciliation we are offered came at a very high price, that of the Cross raised on Golgotha, on which the Son of God made man was hung. In this, in God’s immersion in human suffering and the abyss of evil, is the root of our justification. The "return to God with all your heart" in our Lenten journey passes through the Cross, in following Christ on the road to Calvary, to the total gift of self. It is a journey on which each and every day we learn to leave behind our selfishness and our being closed in on ourselves, to make room for God who opens and transforms our hearts. And as St. Paul reminds us, the proclamation of the Cross resonates within us thanks to the preaching of the Word, of which the Apostle himself is an ambassador. It is a call to us so that this Lenten journey be characterized by a more careful and assiduous listening to the Word of God, the light that illuminates our steps.

In the Gospel passage according of Matthew, to whom belongs to the so-called Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to three fundamental practices required by the Mosaic Law: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. These are also traditional indications on the Lenten journey to respond to the invitation to «return to God with all your heart." But he points out that both the quality and the truth of our relationship with God is what qualifies the authenticity of every religious act. For this reason he denounces religious hypocrisy, a behaviour that seeks applause and approval. The true disciple does not serve himself or the "public", but his Lord, in simplicity and generosity: "And your Father who sees everything in secret will reward you" (Mt 6,4.6.18). Our fitness will always be more effective the less we seek our own glory and the more we are aware that the reward of the righteous is God Himself, to be united to Him, here, on a journey of faith, and at the end of life, in the peace light of coming face to face with Him forever (cf. 1 Cor 13:12).

Dear brothers and sisters, we begin our Lenten journey with trust and joy. May the invitation to conversion , to "return to God with all our heart", resonate strongly in us, accepting His grace that makes us new men and women, with the surprising news that is participating in the very life of Jesus. May none of us, therefore, be deaf to this appeal, also addressed in the austere rite, so simple and yet so beautiful, of the imposition of ashes, which we will shortly carry out. May the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and model of every true disciple of the Lord accompany us in this time. Amen!

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-benedict-xvis-last-public-mass-full-text#ixzz2KoGqlPD3

A Dictatorship of Relativism

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of RELATIVISM which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

-Pope Benedict XVI

"Activists mobilize around White House’s Catholic ’hate group’ petition"

By By David Gibson| Religion News Service, Published: January 7

The White House’s novel online system for allowing citizens to petition the administration on any number of causes has led to various unintended consequences: petitions to secede from the U.S. following President Obama’s re-election; a petition for Vice President Joe Biden to star in a reality show; and a petition for the government to disclose its secret archives on extraterrestrials.

Now there is a petition to designate the Roman Catholic Church as a hate group for its opposition to gay rights, and it may wind up generating almost as many press releases as signatures.

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The “We the People” petition was filed on Christmas Day and was prompted by Pope Benedict XVI’s Dec. 21 year-end address to Vatican administrators in which he denounced gay marriage as a threat to Western civilization.

The petition blasts Benedict for “hateful language and discriminatory remarks” and for implying “that gay families are sub-human.” The petition says that as a result of those remarks, the Roman Catholic Church “fits the definition of a hate group as defined by both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.”

As of Monday (Jan. 7), the anti-Catholic petition had garnered just over 2,200 signatures, well short of the 25,000 signers it needs by Jan. 24 to reach the threshold for consideration by an administration officials. (The federal government does not designate hate groups; it only prosecutes certain hate crimes.)

But conservative Catholic media and activists were already leveraging the petition to highlight their opposition to President Obama.

On Jan. 4, Catholic News Agency published a story quoting Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council — which gained notoriety when it was designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 — saying the petition reveals an “underlying agenda” to “stigmatize any disapproval of homosexuality at all and essentially to silence us.”

Catholic Advocate, a lobbying group with ties to the Republican Party, followed up with an email blast later that day citing the petition and asking for emergency donations to “help us launch an all-out campaign against the Obama Administration’s hateful, secular agenda.”

And Thomas Peters, a conservative activist who blogs at CatholicVote.org, asked that the White House “declare once and for all that it does NOT consider the Catholic Church to be a’hate group.’”

The ADL also responded, with national director Abraham Foxman calling the petition’s claim “an outrageous and offensive conceit” and saying it was “irresponsible for the promoter of this petition to use our name.”

The originator of the petition is only identified on the “We the People” website as “Zach N” of Atlanta.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/activists-mobilize-around-white-houses-catholichate-group-petition/2013/01/07/179c85b2-5913-11e2-b8b2-0d18a64c8dfa_story.html

Alveda King: from the back of the bus to the abortion clinic

Pope Benedict at Epiphany: To love men pastors must be "restless for God"

"Following a tradition begun by Pope John Paul II, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord also as the day when episcopal ordination will be conferred on four priests who will now cooperate in different ways in the ministry of the Pope for the unity of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the multiplicity of the Particular Churches. The connection between this episcopal ordination and the theme of the pilgrimage of the peoples to Jesus Christ is evident. It is the task of the Bishop in this pilgrimage not merely to walk beside the others, but to go before them, showing the way. But in this liturgy I would like to reflect with you on a more concrete question. Based on the account of Matthew, we can gain a certain idea of what sort of men these were, who followed the sign of the star and set off to find that King who would establish not only for Israel but for all mankind a new kind of kingship. What kind of men were they? And we can also ask whether, despite the difference of times and tasks, we can glimpse in them something of what a Bishop is and how he is to carry out his task.

"These men who set out towards the unknown were, in any event, men with a restless heart. Men driven by a restless quest for God and the salvation of the world. They were filled with expectation, not satisfied with their secure income and their respectable place in society. They were looking for something greater. They were no doubt learned men, quite knowledgeable about the heavens and probably possessed of a fine philosophical formation. But they desired more than simply knowledge about things. They wanted above all else to know what is essential. They wanted to know how we succeed in being human. And therefore they wanted to know if God exists, and where and how he exists. Whether he is concerned about us and how we can encounter him. Nor did they want just to know. They wanted to understand the truth about ourselves and about God and the world. Their outward pilgrimage was an expression of their inward journey, the inner pilgrimage of their hearts. They were men who sought God and were ultimately on the way towards him. They were seekers after God.

"Here we come to the question: What sort of man must he be, upon whom hands are laid in episcopal ordination in the Church of Jesus Christ? We can say that he must above all be a man concerned for God, for only then will he also be truly concerned about men. Inversely, we could also say that a Bishop must be a man concerned for others, one who is concerned about what happens to them. He must be a man for others. But he can only truly be so if he is a man seized by God, if concern for God has also become for him concern for God’s creature who is man. Like the Wise Men from the East, a Bishop must not be someone who merely does his job and is content with that. No, he must be gripped by God’s concern for men and women. He must in some way think and feel with God. Human beings have an innate restlessness for God, but this restlessness is a participation in God’s own restlessness for us. Since God is concerned about us, he follows us even to the crib, even to the Cross. “Thou with weary steps hast sought me, crucified hast dearly bought me, may thy pains not be in vain”, the Church prays in the Dies Irae. The restlessness of men for God and hence the restlessness of God for men must unsettle the Bishop. This is what we mean when we say that, above all else, the Bishop must be a man of faith. For faith is nothing less than being interiorly seized by God, something which guides us along the pathways of life. Faith draws us into a state of being seized by the restlessness of God and it makes us pilgrims who are on an inner journey towards the true King of the world and his promise of justice, truth and love. On this pilgrimage the Bishop must go ahead, he must be the guide pointing out to men and women the way to faith, hope and love.

"Faith’s inner pilgrimage towards God occurs above all in prayer. Saint Augustine once said that prayer is ultimately nothing more than the realization and radicalization of our yearning for God. Instead of “yearning”, we could also translate the word as “restlessness” and say that prayer would detach us from our false security, from our being enclosed within material and visible realities, and would give us a restlessness for God and thus an openness to and concern for one another. The Bishop, as a pilgrim of God, must be above all a man of prayer. He must be in constant inner contact with God; his soul must be open wide to God. He must bring before God his own needs and the needs of others, as well as his joys and the joys of others, and thus in his own way establish contact between God and the world in communion with Christ, so that Christ’s light can shine in the world.

"Let us return to the Wise Men from the East. These were also, and above all, men of courage, the courage and humility born of faith. Courage was needed to grasp the meaning of the star as a sign to set out, to go forth – towards the unknown, the uncertain, on paths filled with hidden dangers. We can imagine that their decision was met with derision: the scorn of those realists who could only mock the reveries of such men. Anyone who took off on the basis of such uncertain promises, risking everything, could only appear ridiculous. But for these men, inwardly seized by God, the way which he pointed out was more important than what other people thought. For them, seeking the truth meant more than the taunts of the world, so apparently clever.

"How can we not think, in this context, of the task of a Bishop in our own time? The humility of faith, of sharing the faith of the Church of every age, will constantly be in conflict with the prevailing wisdom of those who cling to what seems certain. Anyone who lives and proclaims the faith of the Church is on many points out of step with the prevalent way of thinking, even in our own day. Today’s regnant agnosticism has its own dogmas and is extremely intolerant regarding anything that would question it and the criteria it employs. Therefore the courage to contradict the prevailing mindset is particularly urgent for a Bishop today. He must be courageous. And this courage or forcefulness does not consist in striking out or in acting aggressively, but rather in allowing oneself to be struck and to be steadfast before the principles of the prevalent way of thinking. The courage to stand firm in the truth is unavoidably demanded of those whom the Lord sends like sheep among wolves. “Those who fear the Lord will not be timid”, says the Book of Sirach (34:16). The fear of God frees us from the fear of men. It liberates." - Pope Benedict, Epiphany Homily, 2013