Fr. Z's Blog | Formerly entitled: "What Does The Prayer Really Say?" – Clear, straight commentary on Catholic issues, liturgy and life by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf o{]:¬)

Tablet: “Don’t let anyone tell you the Council didn’t change much!”

Posted on 20 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The Pill… aka The Tablet… does it again!

On 5 October the American journalist Robert Kaiser, who covered the Council for Time magazine, gave an address for the annual evening of self-affirmation and pre-Conciliar Church bashing for the liberal London Catholic bien-pensant.

Yes, Robert Kaiser gave the 2012 Tablet Lecture!

The talk was entitled “Stories of Vatican II: The Human Side of the Council”. It can be summarized as “Pre-Council, bad. Post-Council, good.” The talk is salted with witticisms such as, “The Council Fathers did not follow the example of Trent. They followed the example of Jesus.” Trent v. Jesus. Get it? And: “Before the Council, we were sin-obsessed. It was even a sin to eat a hamburger on Friday night after the game.” Tom, the bishops in England and Wales reinstated Friday abstinence in 2011. And: “Before the Council, we thought we were miserable sinners when we were being nothing but human.” The Council, apparently, did away with personal sin.

But note that The Tablet described Kaiser’s talk as: “Don’t let anyone tell you the Council didn’t change much”.

Let’s drill into what The Tablet and Kaiser think about that.

During his talk, Kaiser insisted:

Please note that most of these changes did not come about because the Fathers of Vatican II revamped what we had already professed believing in the Apostles Creed. They didn’t change our faith, they didn’t come up with a new understanding of God. Still one God, two natures, three persons. Only in this sense can I agree with Pope Benedict XVI when he keeps insisting on something he calls ‘the hermeneutic of continuity.’

I have to agree with him when he says the Council didn’t come up with anything new. No, no new dogmas.

Hmmm….

“Still one God, two natures, three persons.”

Still.

That’s the problem with Vatican II. In its wake, especially with the help of the Tablistas, people screw up even the most basic tenets of our Faith.

Liberals no longer remember that it’s, watch carefully…

God has one essence, in three divine Persons.
Christ, the Second Person, has two natures.
God has one nature, a divine nature.

But, as Kaiser and The Tablet say, “nothing changed” in regard to the faith.

The Council did not, in fact, change the basic tenets of the Faith. It’s just that some people don’t care what they are anymore.

Posted in Liberals, The Drill, Vatican II | Tagged Robert Kaiser, The Creed, The Tablet, Vatican II
23 Comments

Bp. Olmsted removes “Catholic” status from another Phoenix hospital

Posted on 20 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Bp. Olmsted is reinforcing Catholic identity again.

As I wrote some time ago: We’ve seen this movie before, and it ain’t The Bells of St. Mary’s.

I saw this at azcentral.com:

Bishop strips Mercy Gilbert Medical Center of Catholic status

By Michael Clancy
The Republic

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, a 212-bed hospital that served about 85,000 patients last year, mostly from the East Valley, has been stripped of its Catholic status.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix temporarily revoked the Catholic status of the hospital on Thursday. Mercy Gilbert had been the last Catholic hospital in the Phoenix area.

Officials from the diocese would not comment, but Olmsted said in a statement that the hospital has not met his criteria to be considered Catholic. [I wonder if other US bishops have criteria and if they are examining Catholic hospitals.]

Diocese spokesman Rob DeFrancesco declined to address the nature of the criteria, but he said nothing specific happened that concerned the bishop. [In other words, the woman religious administratrix didn’t approve abortions?]

The revocation is reminiscent of the bishop’s decision in December 2010 to revoke the Catholic status of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. Both St. Joseph’s and Mercy Gilbert are part of Dignity Health, a California company.

Paul Szablowski, vice president of marketing, communications and public relations for Dignity Health Foundation East Valley, said the hospital wants to retain its Catholic identity.

“We think we have a clear picture of what it will take to satisfy the bishop,” Szablowski said.

Julie Graham, the hospital’s public-relations and marketing director, later said that they believe the bishop was only warning them and that they still have the Catholic status. [Ummm…. Julie… what part of “revoked” was unclear?]

The diocese statement said that at this time, Olmsted could not guarantee that the hospital’s care fully conforms to Catholic teaching.

The Catholic Church details its positions in a 43-page document called Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. It includes the church’s opposition to contraception, abortion and euthanasia. It calls for consultation with the bishop under certain circumstances.

Two years ago, in the St. Joseph’s controversy, Olmsted declared the hospital to no longer be Catholic after talks failed to resolve differences that stemmed from a medical procedure at the hospital.

[Watch this…] A pregnant mother of four was ill with pulmonary hypertension, and doctors determined that surgery was needed to save her life. They also claimed the procedure met the terms of the directives. [Was that spin?]

Olmsted concluded the surgery was an abortion, not permitted under the directives.

In discussions with the hospital, he demanded more oversight, required the hospital to provide education about the directives to medical staff, and obliged the hospital to acknowledge his authority.

The hospital said it could not legally or ethically comply with Olmsted’s demands. [And, therefore, Olmsted was right to revoke their Catholic status.]

Officials at St. Joseph’s have said that, other than Olmsted’s declaration that Mass may no longer be celebrated at the hospital, nothing has changed as a result of his position. [Maybe “officials” at the non-Catholic hospital have said that, but the rest of the world knows that if a hospital is going to call itself Catholic, it has to be in line with criteria that the local bishop has the right to set and review. Furthermore, St. Joseph’s, formerly Catholic, became the hissing shame of the Catholic world for a time because of their decision.]

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Brick by Brick, Fr. Z KUDOS, Linking Back, New Evangelization, Our Catholic Identity | Tagged Bp. Olmsted, Catholic Hospitals, Catholic identity, D. Phoenix
8 Comments

ORIONID METEOR SHOWER TODAY

Posted on 20 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From Spaceweather

ORIONID METEOR SHOWER–TODAY! Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley’s Comet, source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Forecasters expect ~25 meteors per hour when the shower peaks on Oct. 21st. No matter where you live, the best time to look is during the dark hours before sunrise on Sunday morning. Observers in both hemispheres can see this shower. [video] [full story] [NASA Chat] [meteor radar]

On Oct. 19th, as Earth was making first contact with the debris stream, NASA’s All-sky Fireball Network recorded 10 Orionid fireballs over the southern USA.

A video from NASA:

[wp_youtube]_zy4DVdfdsw#![/wp_youtube]

Posted in Just Too Cool, Look! Up in the sky! | Tagged meteor shower, Orionid
2 Comments

Taking books to heart

Posted on 20 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I am surprised that I, a bibliophile, don’t know much about these just too cool books. I knew of their existence, and the memory lingered in the back of my mind, but go now and have a look at the blog of the great artist Daniel Mitsui (his art makes great gifts), The Lion and the Cardinal. He has several entries about “Cordiform Books” from earlier in October. One entry is HERE.

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged cordiform books, Daniel Mitsui
4 Comments

Of priest holes and peddler trunks

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In another post today I mentioned Shakespeare. Here is another Shakespearean connection with something that is just too cool.

At The Shakespeare Blog I saw an entry about an October fair held in Stratford-upon-Avon. The post concerns itinerant players and peddlers who would have come to town fairs. But the post also includes this:

Itinerant people, among them acting companies, were still treated with suspicion. During the 1590s legislation was brought in to control these rogues and vagabonds. Itinerants were not only possibly thieves, or people who might be a drain on the resources of the places to which they traveled, they could be political or religious activists. The British Museum’s current exhibition Shakespeare: staging the world, [I saw this during my recent wonderful visit to London.] contains a fascinating and extremely rare object. It’s a trunk which on the outside looks just the sort of thing Autolycus, the peddler, would have carried, but in this case it contains not ribbons and songs, but Catholic vestments, rosary beads, a chalice, and even an altar stone. A Catholic priest, carrying this trunk, had everything he needed to carry out religious services.

The trunk had been walled up in a country house in Lancashire, where it was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century after at least two hundred years. Lancashire was a hotbed for recusancy, and following the banning of Catholic priests in the late 1500s they had to disguise themselves in order to carry on. A travelling peddler would have been a good disguise, as many of the objects he was carrying could be easily taken for legitimate goods for sale.

[…]

Will we return to those days?

I have a small kit that fits into lunch box.

Posted in Just Too Cool, Linking Back, Priests and Priesthood, Religious Liberty, TEOTWAWKI, The future and our choices | Tagged mass kits, recusancy, recusant, Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon
20 Comments

Study shows self-identifying homosexuals are actually a very small percent of US population

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At Investors.com we find this interesting article.

I must say that, if this is accurate – and it seems to be – then the mainsteam media and entertainment industry saturation of homosexual stories and characters in TV shows is even more obviously revealed as blatant social engineering which must be resisted and stopped.

Massive study finds only 3.4% of American adults identify as LGBT
2 Comments
By ANDREW MALCOLM

A massive new survey published this morning reveals that only 3.4% of American adults publicly identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, with the highest percentage coming among the younger, less-educated non-whites.
The new Gallup Poll of more than 121,000 adults, the largest of its kind on record, wass conducted during the past four months. It finds the percentage of self-reported LGBT Americans to be much smaller than a general impression derived from their presence in popular culture and their perceived influence in liberal American politics.
The special report found 3.4% of adult Americans publicly reporting themselves as personally identifying with those categories, 92.2% saying they do not and 4.4% refusing to say or claiming not to know.
Given the stigma often attached by some to those categories, some unknown portion of the Didn’t Say’s and No’s presumably are choosing to remain in the closet, holding down the LGBT number somewhat.
“This initial analysis,” Gallup reports, “reveals new insights into the composition of the LGBT community in the U.S. In particular, the findings challenge both media and cultural stereotypes to reveal that the LGBT population is in a number of ways not that different from the broader U.S. population.” [EXACTLY.]
Gallup also found the social characteristics of those self-reporting themselves as LGBT is dramatically different from their portrayal in the media as largely white, well-educated and well-to-do.
The largest percentage (4.6%) came among blacks, followed by Asians (4.3%), Hispanics (4%) and non-Hispanic whites (3.2%).
Results showed that a larger percentage of women, especially younger women, reported themselves as LGBT (3.6%) compared to men (3.3%).
And Gallup reports those publicly asserting to be LGBT tend to be younger, less-educated and less wealthy than the rest of the population.
Among those making less than $24,000, 5.1% reported being LGBT, compared with 3.5% earning between $24,000 and $60,000 and only 2.8% who earned more.
The more education respondents had the less likely they were to report being LGBT. Those with some college education (4%) or some high school (3.5%) came in under those with college diplomas (2.8%) or a post-graduate degree (3.2%).
East and West coast residents tended to report being LGBT more (3.7% and 3.6%, respectively) than those living in the Midwest (3.4%) or the South (3.2%).
Gallup also noted:

“As courts, legislatures, and voters continue to debate issues like marriage for same-sex couples, child-rearing rights for LGBT people, and bans on workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, these data provide new and detailed information about the lives of LGBT Americans and their families. They offer an unprecedented resource for informing those debates with facts rather than stereotype or anecdote.“

Posted in One Man & One Woman | Tagged Gallup Poll, homosexuals, LGBT
33 Comments

YOUR URGENT PRAYER REQUESTS

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Please use the sharing buttons! Thanks!

Continued from THESE.

I get many requests by email asking for prayers. Many requests are heart-achingly grave and urgent.

We should support each other in works of mercy.

As long as my blog reaches so many readers in so many places, let’s give each other a hand.

If you have some prayer requests, feel free to post them below. You have to be registered here to be able to post.

But, registered or not, please take a moment to pray for the people about whom you read here below.

Finally, I still have two serious personal petitions.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged Your Urgent Prayer Requests
19 Comments

Archbp. Gomez: traditional devotions together with new means of communication

Posted on 19 October 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Some years ago I was hanging around outside the Paul VI audience hall (Vatican) during a plenary session of the Italian Bishops Conference. I was waiting for my bishop to emerge. As I waited I chatted with fellow journalists, the bishops’ drivers and secretaries, a couple bishops who had fled the hall in the despair of boredom. The day before, I had been to a Eucharistic procession held by the Teutonic College, next to the Paul VI Hall, that went up through the Vatican gardens. Swiss Guards carried the canopy. Deep in his chest one old bishop rumbled “Meno chiacchiere – più processioni. … Less jabbering – more processions.”

Perfect.

This isn’t rocket science.

I was delighted to read these comments by the Archbishop of Los Angeles at CNA.

LA archbishop thinks best ways to reach youth are often old ones

By Matthew A. Rarey

Vatican City, Oct 19, 2012 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The New Evangelization needs to reach out to young people using every means available, new and old, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles says.
“It is our mission to ask God for the grace to discover new means to reach out to young people,” Archbishop Gomez said. “We need to use all the new means of communication so that they can understand what we are talking about.” [Like.. the internet too? But let us not forget that Christ Himself is the perfect Communicator. Liturgy is our most perfect form of communication. We need to work on a theology of communication.]

The New Evangelization must present timeless truths in new ways, he told CNA on Oct. 18 during a break of the synod on the New Evangelization.

“Beautiful traditions, like the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and the time of contemplation and meditation, are very popular among young people,” he noted. “So we have to go back to that, so that they can feel, too, how important … the Catholic faith is for them.” [Do I hear an “Amen!”?]

Young people are a major focus of the New Evangelization – which is aimed at reintroducing the faith to formerly Christian countries.

Archbishop Gomez believes the Church can accomplish this by taking action rooted in prayer.

“The first thing we need to do is to pray for them,” he said. “And then we have to come up with new, better ways to reach out to them.”

[…]

Happily, we have old, better ways which can be new again.

Public devotions, recitation of the Rosary, novenas, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, processions, Holy Mass in the older form.

I am reminded of what Benedict wrote to the Irish people in the wake of the terrible scandals. He urged a return to the basics: fasting, prayer, confession, devotions.

Is this so hard?

It is interesting that more and more prelates are beginning to talk about pious devotions again.