Catonsville, MD: Eucharistic Procession on Saturday, March 2

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