We know that there are two sets of rules, one set for liberals and another for conservatives.
I read that Rush Limbaugh apologized for what he called the activist from Georgetown who wants taxpayers to pay for her contraceptives.
I am sure that Nancy Pelosi will now apologize to other members of the House whom she accused of trying to kill women.
I am certain that liberals will now abandon their double-standard in a spirit of civility and fairness.
Here is the Collect of the 2nd Sunday of Lent, a new composition for the Novus Ordo based on a precedent in the Liber Mozarabicus Sacramentorum.:
Deus, qui nobis dilectum Filium tuum audire praecepisti,
verbo tuo interius nos pascere digneris,
ut, spiritali purificato intuitu,
gloriae tuae laetemur aspectu.
Used by early Latin writers such as Sts Hilary of Poitiers (d c 368), Ambrose (d 397) and in liturgical texts, gloria is more than fame or splendor of appearance. Our Latin liturgical gloria is the equivalent of biblical Greek doxa and Hebrew kabod. Romans translated these concepts also with words like maiestas and claritas. Gloria has to do with man’s recognition of God as God. Gloria is a characteristic of God which He will share with us so as to transform us throughout eternity.
The vocabulary of the prayers reinforces that this covenant we are in with God is not a contract between equals: He is Almighty and eternal, we are lowly and mortal. We do well to beg as supplicants before His Majesty, not as cowed slaves terrified of a harsh master, but with the reverential awe of children looking at authority with the eyes of truth. Our orations during Mass help us to see who we are and who we are not.
LITERAL RENDERING:
O God, who commanded us to listen to Your beloved Son,
deign to nourish us interiorly with Your word,
so that, once (our) spiritual view has been purified,
we may rejoice in the sight of Your glory.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
God our Father,
help us to hear your Son.
Enlighten us with your word,
that we may find the way to your glory.
NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
O God, who have commanded us
to listen to your beloved Son,
be pleased, we pray,
to nourish us inwardly by your word,
that, with spiritual sight made pure,
we may rejoice to behold your glory.
Note the senses of hearing (audire) and of seeing (intuitus, aspectus), both physically and also inwardly, spiritually. The voice of God the Father spoke at the Transfiguration commanding us to listen to His beloved Son (Matthew 17:5). We listen to Jesus and look at what He does, both in the pages of Scripture and in His continuing work through Holy Church. Christ’s words which we hear and His deeds which we see both save us and teach us who we are (cf. GS 22).
Aspectus has both active and passive connotations, that is, the sense of sight, the act of seeing a thing, and the appearance of the thing itself. Aspectus can mean, “mien, countenance”, how something “looks”. Think of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play inciting his soldiers before battle to “lend the eye a terrible aspect” (III, i). Intuitus (from intueor) means “a look, a view; respect, consideration.” You know intueor from a verse of the hymn of St Thomas Aquinas Adoro Te Devote: “I am not looking (intueor) at the wounds, like Thomas; I am nevertheless professing faith that you are my God; make me always more to believe in you, have hope in you, love you.” That hymn also sings “ex auditu solo tuto creditur’, only “by hearing” is the doctrine of the Eucharist believed “safely”. Sight, touch and taste can deceive us.
Our intuitus spiritalis could be our own ability to see clearly into the state of our soul. Our intuitus (“insight”, “view”) is that spiritual lens which must be cleansed so that we can have a more perfect “view”. Otherwise, intuitus could be the spiritual landscape within us, the “view” God sees, how we “look” to Him. “View” picks up both views of intuitus (the power to see and that which is seen). “Insight” would favor just one possibility. The cognate “intuition” suggests the wrong connotation from common usage, that is, “sudden insight” or “good guess”.
Both how we see and what is seen in us, our “spiritual view”, must be purified (purificato) so that God is not offended (cf. Habakkuk 1:3) God and neighbor must see His image in us. We must see His image in ourselves and others if we are going to treat them with the charity Christ commands. St. Bonaventure (d 1274) wrote about how Thomas the Apostle looked through the Lord’s visible wounds and saw His invisible wound of love. We must with charity try to look past our neighbor’s imperfections, the wounds caused by sin, to see the intended reality.
Lent is a time for gaining a “view” of the Love who died and rose for us, thus transforming us into more perfect images of who He is: risen, living, glorious. This necessarily requires a close examination of our lives to see and to hear what or whom we have placed at the center of our lives, Jesus Christ’s rightful place.
At Life Site I read a story about how some Chinese women fled China to the USA in order to save their babies from the One Child Policy.
In the future, if Pres. Obama has his way, this won’t be possible. Let’s not forget that he promoted infanticide in Illinois.
I think this is where we are headed in the USA if Obamacare is permitted to take root.
Call me crazy. Go ahead. Do it.
Here is an excerpt of what I read on Life Site:
Take, for example, the compelling story of Mrs. Liu who has already had a previous abortion due to China’s policy:
The day before she left China, the officials came to her mother’s home to check on her. To look thinner and not pregnant, she tied a belt around her waist before meeting with them, Mrs. Liu said.
“They asked me to sign a guarantee statement saying that I was not pregnant, and that I would take responsibility for any consequences if I were [pregnant].”
Mr. and Mrs. Liu thought that the worst thing that could happen to them was paying the fines or losing their jobs. But later they found that the water supply, electricity, and heating of their apartment were cut off. Mrs. Liu’s parking space was also taken away, and they realized that they might even lose their apartment.
In order to save the husband’s job, the couple even considered divorce as a last resort, because if their apartment were confiscated, they would not be able to afford another one, even if they spent their life savings, Mrs. Liu said.
Mrs. Liu was eventually able to leave China and come to the United States, using the opportunity of accompanying her son to study abroad. But officials didn’t stop harassing them even after she left China.
“They even planned on sending someone over to ‘settle the score’ with me, but gave it up after learning that it wouldn’t work in the United States.”
On Dec. 2, Mrs. Liu gave birth to a healthy baby in Los Angeles.
“After seeing my baby, I felt that I could give up anything,” she said.
Via the great Vincenzo:
Remember his promises at Notre Dame? The hopes of Card. Cottier? The excuses of Doug Kmiec? The panting of L’Osservatore Romano?
Don’t forget that Vincenzo has the Pius Clocks!
St. James Cathedral in Seattle was defaced with anti-Catholic spray-painted stenciled graffiti.
Nice choice of color.
Coming to a Catholic Church near you.
NOW, the National Organization of Women, has been struggling to remain relevant for some years now. Mention NOW and most women will say “Who?”
NOW is having a spittle-flecked nutty about the fact that the Catholic Church is resisting Pres. Obama’s latest move in the kulturkampf.
NOW prez, catholic, Terry O’Neill has so flipped out that she is now howling that resistance by the bishops and, of course Republicans, is going to KILL women.
Sounds rather like catholic Nancy Pelosi, doesn’t it? “Kill” women?
This isn’t the lunatic raving of an unhinged ideologue. This is just standard leftist boilerplate.
In October 2011 Pelosi said that Republicans want women to die on the floor.
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There there is Rep. Louise Slaughter (nomen omen -D-NY 28):
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Now for NOW on the USCCB and the GOP, between which she draws a laughable moral equivalence:
The collusion of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has led to an open declaration of war on the women of this country. The bishops have long sought to enshrine into law those policies of the Catholic Church that subordinate women. And they don’t care how badly women get hurt in the process.
In the last election, the bishops helped to elect legislators that would do their bidding, which includes enacting dangerous and discriminatory bills denying women safe, accessible and affordable abortion care and family planning, even encouraging hospitals to let women die in the name of ‘life.’
A recent poll shows abortion ‘barely registers’ among voter priorities, and yet Speaker Boehner has declared barring federal funding for abortion care a ‘highest priority’ — responding not to the call of his constituents but to the demands of the bishops. And it turns out abortion isn’t the only target, as evidenced by their stunningly dangerous efforts that, if enacted, can and will result in the preventable deaths of women:
[…]Not only are these assaults on women’s rights at odds with generally accepted medical practice and flatly unethical, there is little doubt that they will kill women.
Do they all have the same writer or is this just the fruit of a liberal education?
How much do catholics such as Pelosi and O’Neill have to do before can. 915 is applied?
Were can. 915 applied properly a few times, priests and the general public would start to get a sense of how it is properly applied, instead of just assuming that it may be applied to anyone at all even for well-intentioned motives.
If I were Bishop of Black Duck, I would advise Terry O’Neill privately, that without her issuing a public statement retracting her mendacious accusation, can. 915 would necessarily have to apply in her case. If she then did not come around, I would then issue a press-release that she has been advised. I would thereafter send a memo to all priests of the diocese and to the local newspapers that Terry O’Neill may no longer present herself for Holy Communion within the Diocese of Black Duck and that no priest or minister of Communion should administer the Eucharist to her except in the case of danger of death, presumably after her confession and anointing.
Did you know that Pres. Obama’s closest science adviser, John Holdren, was a colleague of Paul Erlich, the chicken-little of resource scarcity due to over-population? If we don’t force the number of births down, we’ll run out of resources and die. Babies are, in this deluded school of thought, the enemy.
Enter catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Sec. of the HHS, who under the directions of her master in the Oval Office, testified before a House panel that “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception.”
The Obama Adminstration is trying to reduce the number of live births, not just pregnancies.
Check out the CNS article on what ensued.
According to CNS:
During the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said that contraception provided by insurance companies to people employed by religious organizations under the future form of the rule Sebelius described would not be was not free.
“Who pays for it? There’s no such thing as a free service,” Murphy asked.
Sebelius responded that that is not the case with insurance.
“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for cost of contraception,” Sebelius answered.
Murphy expressed surprise by the answer.
“So you are saying, by not having babies born, we are going to save money on health care?” Murphy asked.
Sebelius replied, “Providing contraception is a critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children.”
Murphy again sought clarification.
“Not having babies born is a critical benefit. This is absolutely amazing to me. I yield back,” he said.
Sebelius responded, “Family planning is a critical health benefit in this country, according to the Institute of Medicine.”
When the government gets to redefine these so-called “reproductive services” as a basic “right”, then they will after that tell you how you must use them.
Margaret Sanger would be so proud.
You know what? The longer old people live the more we have to spend to take care of them, especially with the decreasing number of young workers available to fund the entitlements. It is my right to have contraception and abortifacients. But instead we are spending money on old people. Fewer old people means that my rights are vindicated. Why can’t people see that we need fewer old people?
Catholics are also standing between me and my rights….
Jesuit-controlled America Magazine recently caved in to the Obama Administration in the matter of Pres. Obama’s attack on the 1st Amendment and on the Catholic Church. In their role as a pipe for the Magisterium of Nuns, the magazine undercut the American bishops and chose to advance the Promotion of the American Patriotic Catholic Association.
My emphases:
Bishop Lori Responds to ‘America’ Editorial
Friday, March 02, 2012 12:41:48 PM
Author: Tim ReidyBishop William E. Lori, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committeee on Religious Liberty, has sent a response to America‘s editorial “Policy, Not Liberty.” The letter will also appear in an upcoming edition of the print edition:
The March 5th America editorial takes the United States Bishops to task for entering too deeply into the finer points of health care policy as they ponder what the slightly revised Obama Administration mandate might mean for the Catholic Church in the United States. These details, we are told, do not impinge on religious liberty. We are also told that our recent forthright language borders on incivility.
What details are we talking about? For one thing, a government mandate to insure, one way or another, for an abortifacient drug called Ella. Here the “details” would seem to be fertilized ova, small defenseless human beings, who will likely suffer abortion within the purview of a church-run health insurance program.
What other details are at issue? Some may think that the government’s forcing the Church to provide insurance coverage for direct surgical sterilizations such as tubal ligations is a matter of policy. Such force, though, feels an awful lot like an infringement on religious liberty.
Still another detail is ordinary contraception. Never mind that the dire societal ills which Pope Paul predicted would ensue with the widespread practice of artificial contraception have more than come true. The government makes the rules and the rules are the rules. So, the bishops should regard providing (and paying for) contraception as, well, a policy detail. After all, it’s not like the federal government is asking bishops to deny the divinity of Christ. It’s just a detail in a moral theology—life and love, or something such as that. And why worry about other ways the government may soon require the Church to violate its teachings as a matter of policy?
More details come to mind. Many if not most church entities are self-insured. Thus, Catholic social service agencies, schools, and hospitals could end up paying for abortifacients, sterilizations, and contraception. If the editorial is to be believed, bishops should regard it not as a matter of religious liberty but merely policy that, as providers they teach one thing but as employers they are made to teach something else. In other words, we are forced to be a countersign to Church teaching and to give people plenty of reason not to follow it. The detail in question here is called “scandal”.
Then there is the detail of religious insurers and companies that are not owned by the Church but which exist solely to serve the Church’s mission. The new “accommodation” leaves them out in the cold. And if I really wanted to get into the weeds I’d mention the conscience rights of individual employers.
Have I forgotten any other details we bishops shouldn’t be attending to? Well, I guess we’re policy wonks for wondering if the government has a compelling interest in forcing the Church to insure for proscribed services when contraception is covered in 90% of healthcare plans, is free in Title X programs, and is available from Walmart (generic) for about $10 a month. Pardon me also for wondering whether the most basic of freedoms, religious liberty, isn’t being compromised, not by a right to health care, but by a claim to “services” which regard pregnancy and fertility as diseases.
And didn’t President Obama promise adequate conscience protection in the reform of healthcare? But maybe it’s inappropriate for pastors of souls to ask why the entirely adequate accommodation of religious rights in healthcare matters that has existed in federal law since 1973 is now being changed.
Oh, and as Detective Colombo used to say: “Just one more thing.” It’s the comment in the editorial about when we bishops are at our best. [NB!] Evidently, it’s when we speak generalities softly and go along to get along, even though for the first time in history the federal government is forcing church entities to provide for things that contradict church teaching. Maybe Moses wasn’t at his best when he confronted Pharaoh. Maybe the Good Shepherd was a bit off his game when he confronted the rulers of his day.
But those are just details.
Most Reverend William E. Lori
Bishop of Bridgeport
Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty
WDTPRS kudos to Bp. Lori.
WDTPRS raspberries to Amerika.
You know by now about the dust up in the Archdiocese of Washington DC, where a priest denied Holy Communion to a woman who had in private announced to him in an unrepentant way that she was a practicing lesbian. The context was the funeral of the lesbian’s mother. This occurred against the backdrop of the unnatural “marriage” legislation going into force in Maryland. The lesbian, now making loud protestations of high dudgeon at having been denied Communion, is calling for the removal of the priest from parish ministry.
It think it is not unlikely that the priest was “set up” for this. But that’s another kettle of fish.
I have several posts about this issue and about can. 915 on this blog. Start HERE.
Leaving aside the questions about the proper application of can. 915 in this case, the MSM seems to have it out – in their shallow way of being bloodthirsty – for this priest.
There is a POLL on the site of the NY Daily News which could use your attention.
I suggest that you vote. Here is a screenshot. Click the image or HERE to go to the page where the poll is.
Note the inept way the question is phrased, with its flawed grammar. And there is that “removed from the archdiocese“? This was obviously posted by someone who hasn’t a clue about what she is talking about.
Whether the priest in question made the right choice according to Canon Law, in that place and at that moment aside, his removal from his pastoral mandate is NOT WARRANTED for that instance of denial of Holy Communion to that person. Based on this event alone, his removal would be far out of proportion to what he did, even if he didn’t get the law right this time.
Here are the results at the time of this writing, 2 March 1825 GMT:
Of course we know that it is unimaginable that the Archbishop of Washington DC should pay attention to a poll in the NY Daily News. Nevertheless, I think it is a good idea that when people see a poll like this, they don’t automatically get the idea that the priest is the bad guy… which is the image the MSM delights in advancing as often as possible.
UPDATE 3 March 16:21 GMT:
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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