The future of Catholic hospitals

Posted on 24 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Remember Catholic Healthcare West?

Catholic Healthcare West now Dignity Health; Dominican Hospital to remain Catholic, hospital president says

By JONDI GUMZ – Santa Cruz Sentinel

SANTA CRUZ – Dominican Hospital officials announced Monday that they remain wedded to the Catholic mission, despite an announcement by the hospital’s parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, to split from the Catholic Church and adopt a new name, Dignity Health.

“We will remain a Catholic hospital, sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, following the ethical and religious directives for Catholic health care services,” Dr. Nanette Mickiewicz, Dominican Hospital president, said in a brief statement Monday. “In the rapidly changing health care environment, this new name and structure position the entire organization for growth and success.”

Beverly Grova, who heads the Dominican Hospital Foundation, reiterated that message.

[…]

In mid-December, the privately-run company was designated by Medicare as one of 26 “hospital engagement centers,” accepting a mission to change practices to reduce injuries and complications 40 percent and hospital readmissions 20 percent over three years. That initiative is funded by the federal health care reform legislation.

Catholic Healthcare West had three layers of management. Nuns from six religious orders served as corporate board members who appointed the 18-member board of directors; together they selected the executive management.

Dignity has a single board that retains nine members from Catholic Healthcare West. They include Sister Julie Hyer, a member of the Adrian Sisters who preceded Mickiewicz as Dominican Hospital president. She did not return a call seeking comment Monday.

The Diocese of Monterey had little comment on Catholic Healthcare West’s decision.

“Dignity is an independent organization that operates within the boundaries of the Diocese, but is not a part of the Diocese,” said Dean Warren Hoy, spokesman for the bishop. “Therefore, we can’t appropriately comment on their actions.”

Dignity operates three hospitals in the Diocese, Dominican in Santa Cruz, Arroyo Grande in Arroyo Grande, and French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, he said, adding, “We do not anticipate any significant changes in these three hospitals’ operations as a result of the change to Dignity Health.”

Deck pointed out Dominican’s Catholic affiliation prevents doctors there from doing a tubal ligation, a procedure to prevent future pregnancies, at the time of a Caesarean section, or an abortion.

Those who want a tubal ligation must go to Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center or Watsonville Community Hospital, he said noting abortions usually are performed at a freestanding outpatient center rather than at a hospital.

“I don’t think Dominican Hospital will start doing abortions right away,” Deck said, but he expects there will be pressure to perform that service, perhaps by setting up a separate unit.

[…]

Meanwhile,

We have seen this movie before, and it ain’t The Bells of St. Mary’s.

Posted in Our Catholic Identity, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged , , ,
22 Comments

NJ Bishops defend true marriage

Posted on 24 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I note with interest at the National Catholic Register (the Catholic one) that the bishops of New Jersey have issued a statement about same-sex “marriage”.

New Jersey Bishops Release New Statement on Marriage
Same-sex ‘marriage’ ‘is not marriage and should not be treated as marriage,’ they say.

[…]

As citizens, we must protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Same-sex unions may represent a new and a different type of institution, but it is not marriage and should not be treated as marriage.

What can you do to help protect marriage? Today, we ask all people of good will to do three simple things. First, pray for all married couples and all families. Second, reflect on this important question, “How can I help my family and the families I touch to grow in hope, love, peace and joy.” Third, we ask everyone to reach out to your neighbors, your legislators and the governor with a simple message: “Preserve the definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman.”

To help everyone understand why marriage can only be a union between one man and one woman, we offer the following facts:

[…]

Be sure to read the whole thing over there.

I think there is a political/social war brewing. Our bishops deserve our strong support.

There will be all manner of bullying and intimidation applied to dioceses, bishops, priests. They need your prayers and support. People who hate the Church and her message about the dignity of human life in all aspects will try to silence bishops and priests. They are bullies and their threats and attacks must be resisted.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, New Evangelization, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity, Religious Liberty, The future and our choices | Tagged , ,
8 Comments

Robert George on Pres. Obama’s attacks on religious freedom and Catholics

Posted on 24 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Prof. Robert George, on his blog Mirror of Justice, comments about Pres. Obama’s blatant attack on the the 1st Amendment, religious liberty and the Catholic Church.  My emphases and comments:

The Obama administration’s abortifacient and contraception mandate is appalling, but I cannot claim to be surprised by it. In fact, I would have been surprised—indeed stunned—had the administration done anything significant to honor or protect the rights of Catholics and others on whose consciences the mandate will impose.

In every area touching the sanctity of human life and issues of sexual morality, the Obama administration is aggressively prosecuting the agenda its critics predicted and its most ardent left-wing supporters hoped for. Those who are driving the train, including key administration officials who self-identify as members of the Catholic Church, have no regard for the ethical beliefs of Catholics and others when they are in conflict with left-liberal orthodoxy. Their task, as they perceive it, is to fortify and expand the “right to abortion” and “sexual freedom” wherever they can.  [Abortion being a “sacrament” for the secularizing “religion” of liberals.] They pursue this agenda with a religious zeal because, in fact, the ideology in which abortion is a “right” and “sexual freedom” is a core value is their religion. These beliefs are integral to their worldview. If, like Kathleen Sebelius, they happen to be Catholics, you can be assured that it won’t be Catholic teaching, or the Judaeo-Christian ethic, that shapes their policies on issues of life and death and marriage and sexual morality; it will be liberal ideology—pure and simple—that does the shaping.

Interestingly, Obama and his people have been willing to break the hearts of those on the left when it comes [to] Guantanamo, rendition, basic procedural rights of detainees and those accused of supporting terrorism, targeted assassinations, drone attacks, and so forth. But they keep faith strictly with them when it comes to anything pertaining to abortion, contraception, and other central components of the ideology of lifestyle liberalism—the conscience rights of Catholics and others be damned.

Pro-life citizens, including many Catholics, who in 2008 allowed themselves to be persuaded that Obama wouldn’t, as his critics warned, push abortion hard and run roughshod over the religious liberty and rights of conscience of Catholics and other pro-life citizens and their institutions, have now gotten a rude awakening. His administration revealed its contempt for religious freedom and the rights of people and communities of faith when it embraced an extreme and utterly untenable position on the ministerial exemption in the Hosanna-Tabor case. In case anyone thought that was some sort of isolated mistake, the President’s abortifacient and contraception mandate leaves the matter in no doubt.

In 2012, it is no longer possible to sustain illusions about what Obama and his people mean to do to us. They are already doing it. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

I will add, as I wrote elsewhere, that – in light of the probability that the Supreme Court will overturn all this – Obama’s true motive seems to be a long-term goal of being able to say that he really tried to to do all this.

Posted in Our Catholic Identity, Religious Liberty, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged , ,
16 Comments

Aurora Borealis Watch: 24 Jan 1400 UT: Solar storm to hit earth

Posted on 23 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From SpaceWeather:

Space Weather News for Jan. 23, 2012
http://spaceweather.com

INCOMING CME: Big sunspot 1402 erupted on Jan. 23rd, producing a strong M9-class solar flare and a fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME). Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the CME should reach Earth on Jan. 24th at 14:18 UT (+/- 7 hr) and Mars a little more than a day later. Strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud reaches Earth. Our magnetic field is still reverberating from a CME impact on Jan. 22nd, so another blow could spark impressive auroras at high latitudes. Sky watchers in northern Europe, Canada, Alaska, and northern-tier US states such as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin should be alert for Northern Lights.

Some day one of these things is going to take out our electrical grid. Then what?

Posted in Global Killer Asteroid Questions, Look! Up in the sky! | Tagged , , ,
28 Comments

A near disaster reconstructed

Posted on 23 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

On a completely different note, remember that USAir flight taking off from LaGuardia in Queens which hits birds, lost both engines and had to land in the Hudson River?

There is a digital reconstruction of the flight from the data in the “black box”

[wp_youtube]tE_5eiYn0D0[/wp_youtube]

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged , , ,
19 Comments

March for Life Reports

Posted on 23 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Have you been following the March for Life in Washington, DC?

Is there a local event in which you are participating?

Posted in Emanations from Penumbras | Tagged ,
38 Comments

Occupiers trash, urinate on Cross, and steal from NYC church.

Posted on 23 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

How d’ya like those Occupiers?  Huh? Huh?

I read a story the other day that the rat population is exploding in the Occupiers zone in Washington DC.

Now I read in the New York Post that they trashed churches where the pastor was giving them some help.

‘God’-awful OWS mob steals sacred item from church
Churches desecrated
By CANDICE M. GIOVE

There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.

When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.

In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”

The pastor of the church did not return calls.

At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.

About 60 occupiers had rolled out their sleeping bags between the pews the night before as part of their evening ritual, Rev. Brashear recalled. When they returned to the church later, following the pastor’s discovery, he issued a stern warning: “You have 24 hours to find it and to come up with an amends and to come up with a plan.
‘I’m sorry and it won’t happen again’ won’t work,” he scolded.

The artifact vanished just three weeks after a $2,400 Apple MacBook vanished from Brashear’s office. He told the occupiers that even when the 100-year-old Upper West Side church extended help to addicts during the 1980s drug scourge, no visitors touched its $12,500 sacramental instrument.

“Not even crackheads messed with that,” he said.

The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.

Posted in Dogs and Fleas | Tagged , , , , , , ,
29 Comments

Fox News show “Huckabee” has two powerful pro-life segments

Posted on 22 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I caught Mike Huckabee’s weekend show tonight.

After he interviews three of the four presidential candidates (ho hum), in the second part of the show, he interviewed a woman named Rebecca Kiessling, who was conceived during a rape.  A conversation with her helped Gov. Perry change his mind about the “rape and incest” exception.  Her story was pretty powerful.

And then there was Carol Everett, who ran abortion mills as a business because she wanted to be a millionaire.  She knew that, because of her cut from every abortion performed, she had to get 40,000 abortions performed.  Therefore, she needed repeat customers.  She described the strategy of getting young women to start using abortion as their strategy for all of their pregnancies.  She distributed low does contraceptives and defective condoms which would fail.  She eventually had a conversion experience, which she described during the interview.

I sure hope that Huckabee posts video clips of these brief interviews.

Finally, it is important to remember that there is no sin that any of us little humans can commit that the infinitive power of our loving God will not forgive provided we confess our sins and receive absolution.  And when we receive absolution, the sin is gone, removed, taken away, it is no more.  It isn’t covered over or ignored.  It is gone, removed by Christ, through the actions of the priest, and it will not be held against you at your judgement.

You may have the memory of the sin and you will have to do penance.  It may be very hard for a long time, but the guilt of the sin will have been taken away from you.

There is nothing we can do that is so bad that God cannot forgive.  Never forget that.

What a magnificent gift we have from Our Lord: the Sacrament of Penance.

Posted in Emanations from Penumbras | Tagged , , , ,
3 Comments

The Holy See did NOT approve NeoCat liturgical variants for Mass

Posted on 22 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The other day I posted about a certain approval given by the Holy See to some thing the NeoCats do.

At the time, I speculated that this was NOT an approval for the NeoCat liturgy, which many were (rightly, I think) worried about.

Despite my warning observations, some readers of the more traditional stripe out there staged a little nutty.

It seems, however, I was right.  The Holy See did NOT approve the NeoCat variants for Mass (Deo gratias).

Read this on CNA:

Vatican approval for Neo-Catechumenal Way only applies to non-liturgical catechesis

Vatican City, Jan 21, 2012 / 05:15 pm (CNA).- The Vatican’s approval of the Neo-Catechumenal Way’s forms of “celebration” only applies to non-liturgical prayers within their catechesis and not to the Mass or other liturgies of the Church.

“With respect to the celebrations of the Holy Mass and the other liturgies of the Church,” communities of the Neo-Catechumenal Way must “follow the norms of the Church as indicated in the liturgical books – to do otherwise must be understood to be a liturgical abuse,” a Vatican official told CNA on Jan. 21.

[…]

In this process, “the Neocatechumenal Way obtained no new permissions whatsoever,” said the official, who is familiar with the approval process for prayers and liturgies.

“Essentially, the Pontifical Council is only approving these things that are found in the Catechetical Directory of the Neocatechumenal Way, and in no way touches those things contained in the liturgical books.”

[…]

coffeeYou can read the rest over there at CNA.

And those of you who were worked up about this can relax and have a WDTPRS mug filled with soothing Mystic Monk Coffee!

Better make that decaf, okay?  Or herbal tea?  Maybe “Peaceful Monk”?

Try the Universae Ecclesiae mug.

UPDATE : 23 Jan 01:55 GMT:

I am getting love notes from NeoCats now.

One of them reads:

New and varied liturgical forms are good for the church.

You are an idiot and a mental retard.

Varied liturgical forms like this?

I respond: We need Summoum Pontificum.

You know… this hurt my feelings soooooo much. I think you should all buy some Mystic Monk Coffee or Tea to make me feel better!

o{];¬)

Posted in Linking Back, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged ,
98 Comments

Collect 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Posted on 22 January 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Some less than doctrinally-minded Christians are under the false impression that Catholics think we can “earn” our way to heaven by our own good works, as if our good works had their own merit apart from God.

Catholics believe that true good works always have their origin in God, but the works are truly our works as well, since we cooperate with God in performing them.  Therefore, having their origin and purpose in God, they merit the reward of God’s promises.

Whenever we find a reference to works in our liturgical prayers, do not forget the Catholic understanding of good works.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,
dirige actus nostros in beneplacito tuo,
ut in nomine dilecti Filii tui
mereamur bonis operibus abundare.

This our Sunday Collect was in both the 1962 Missale Romanum and the 8th century Liber sacramentorum Engolismensis for Sunday in the Octave of Christmas.

Beneplacitum means “good pleasure, gracious purpose”.  In the Vulgate beneplacitum translates the original Greek eudokia in, e.g., Eph 1:9; 1 Cor 10:5.  Other phrases are used for eudokia too (e.g., bona voluntas in Luke 2:14, the famous “peace on earth to men of good will” or “peace on earth good will toward men”).  Paul wrote eudokia at the beginning of 2 Thessalonians (1:11-12), rendered as voluntas bonitatis in the Vulgate:

… we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his call, and may fulfill every good resolve (omnem voluntatem bonitatis) and work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (RSV).

Abundo means, “to overflow with any thing, to have an abundance or superabundance of, to abound in.”  In that preposition in with the ablative indicating place or location in space (in beneplacito tuo) we have an image of our good works originating in God and, coming from Him, overflowing out to and from us.

A LITERAL VERSION:
Almighty eternal God,
direct our actions in your gracious purpose,
so that in the name of Thy beloved Son,
we may merit to abound with good works.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
All-powerful and ever-living God,
direct your love that is within us,
that our efforts in the name of your Son
may bring mankind to unity and peace.

NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
Almighty ever-living God,
direct our actions according to your good pleasure,
that in the name of your beloved Son
we may abound in good works.

From before time and the universe were created, God knew each one of us.  Of all the possible universes He could have created, He chose to create this one, into which He fashioned us at the precise moment He foresaw we would be needed in His plan.  Along with existence, He gives us work to do, and offers the graces to do it.  When we cooperate, we “abound” because of God’s action within us through the good works He makes meritorious.  They overflow from us because of His generosity.

St. Augustine of Hippo (d 430), working against the errors of Pelagianism, wrote in a monumentally important letter to the Roman priest Sixtus (later Pope Sixtus in 432):

“What merit, then, does a man have before grace, by which he might receive grace, when our every good merit is produced in us only by grace and when God, crowning our merits, crowns nothing else but his own gifts to us?” (ep. 194, 5, 19).

To abound, we must bow and we must bend.

When we bend our will to God’s will and plan, especially as manifested through the teachings and disciplines of Holy Church, we lose nothing of our selves or our prized “freedom”.  In fact we become freer in our self-fettering to God.

Picking up a theme Pope John Paul II presented from the beginning of his pontificate, “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!”, Pope Benedict said in April 2005 during his homily for the Inaugural Mass of his pontificate:

“Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? …  No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation.”

Posted in Our Catholic Identity, WDTPRS | Tagged , , , ,
11 Comments