Fr. Z's Blog | Catholic commentary by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There’s “oorah… yawn” and there’s “OORAH!”

Posted on 6 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

You can’t fool Marines for very long.

Tip of the biretta to Te Deum:

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Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged marines, OORAH, USMC
25 Comments

And “egregious instances of theft” from the National Archives

Posted on 6 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This isn’t exactly like the movie National Treasure … for that you need my autobiography. Still, this can go into your Just Too Cool file from the WaPo.

In National Archives thefts, a radio detective gets his man
By Del Quentin Wilber and Lisa Rein

NEWTOWN, Conn. — J. David Goldin, an eccentric 69-year-old with a handlebar mustache and an obsession with radio, was trolling eBay one evening in September 2010, looking for old radios and recordings, when he spotted an item that piqued his interest: the master copy of a broadcast radio interview with baseball legend Babe Ruth as he hunted for quail and pheasants on a crisp morning in 1937.

For a moment, Goldin contemplated bidding. It was the kind of historic recording that would fit perfectly in his collection of more than 100,000 radio broadcasts, all meticulously enhanced and preserved on tapes stored in thin white boxes on a maze of shelves in his humidity- and temperature-controlled basement “vault.” Then he leaned closer to his computer, adjusted his thick glasses and studied the record’s photograph and description.

What happened next would set in motion a federal investigation with a twist worthy of a classic radio drama.

Goldin exposed what authorities have called “one of the most egregious instances of theft” from the National Archives, where the government preserves billions of historic documents, photographs and recordings. On Thursday, that investigation is scheduled to culminate in the sentencing in Greenbelt’s federal court of a longtime Archives official who has admitted to stealing nearly 1,000 recordings, many of them rare.

[…]

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged Babe Ruth, National Archives
7 Comments

Your Sunday Sermon notes

Posted on 6 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This week I will post this a bit early, for the sake of your memories.

Do you remember some good point from the Sunday sermon you heard?

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
27 Comments

Pope Benedict may make his SSPX decision before the end of May

Posted on 6 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Our friends at Rorate, who are always on top of these things, posted that – according to a French news source – the Holy Father may make a decision about the SSPX before the end of May.

From the French-language religious news agency I.Media:

Benedict XVI’s decision regarding the return of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX) to the full communion of the Church will take place from now up to the end of the month of May 2012, Vatican sources close to the dossier have indicated to I.MEDIA. For the moment, the response of the SSPX to the “doctrinal preamble” prior to any agreement, delivered by Rome in September 2011, is still being studied by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Received on April 17, the response of the Superior General of the SSPX, Bp. Bernard Fellay, will be submitted to Benedict XVI afterwards. The latter has made multiple gestures, since 2005, with a view to obtain an agreement that would mark the end of a breach of nearly 24 years.

Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.

Do not forget to pray for a positive resolution of the division.

Posted in Pope of Christian Unity | Tagged Benedict XVI, Pope of Christian Unity, SSPX
52 Comments

The Feeder Feed: new arrivals: UPDATE!

Posted on 5 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

It has been a huge day at the feeder. So far today I have seen four new arrivals of the season.

First, however, a cameo from “jake”, or “future supper”.

Here is Mr. Thrasher. They have some 3000 different calls.

You all know Ray.

You all know the Chickadee.

Here is a new arrival: Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, digging into the grape jelly I put out for newly arriving Orioles.

Red-winged Blackbird has been around a long time. This one is pimping his wings a bit.

New arrival: Red-breasted Grosbeak.

New arrival: White-Crowned Sparrow.

New arrival: Baltimore Oriole.

Just as I was transferring my photos to my computer, I saw the first Indigo Bunting of the year. I put out some millet, which they prefer. Hopefully I’ll be able to add a shot later.

They eat here because of your donations.

UPDATE!

I did get the Bunting.

And also Mrs. Rose-Breasted Grosbeak showed up for the first time.

Posted in The Feeder Feed |
14 Comments

Bp. Morlino: “There is no place in the priesthood today for ‘wimpish-ness.’”

Posted on 5 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From the diocesan paper of the Diocese of Madison, comes some reflections from His Excellency Most Reverend Robert Morlino about the priesthood and last week’s “Good Shepherd Sunday”.

Excerpts and with my emphases.

It takes bravery to follow Christ as priests
Bishop’s Column
Thursday, May. 03, 2012

This past Sunday is often called, “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The word the Scriptures use is really not adequately translated in English as simply, “good.” The word really means, “honorable, worthy, noble,” or, “so excellent in every way that its goodness is itself beautiful.”

And, in particular, our Gospel for this past Sunday (Jn 10:11-18) points out that the shepherd is willing to lay down his life for his sheep; he is honorable, worthy, and noble in his bravery — even laying down his own life for the sheep. And toward the end of that Gospel passage, Jesus says, “No one takes my life from me, I lay down my life, and I take it up again.”

The shepherd is indeed a brave shepherd. And so, in some ways, as the years go by, I hope that we start to call this, “Brave Shepherd Sunday,” for the bravery of the shepherd is one of the key virtues focused upon that help us to call him, “good.”

This past Sunday was also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations — it always falls on Brave Shepherd Sunday. And it is a day of prayer, in particular, for vocations to the priesthood. Of course we pray that everyone can be faithfully successful in finding his or her vocation, but we pray especially for an increase in vocations to the priesthood. The priesthood is not one vocation amid many. The vocation to be a priest is the vocation to coordinate the other vocations in the Church, to recognize, to call them forth, to help discern them, and to serve them.

The priest’s vocation is all about the fullness of the vocation of everyone else. The priest has a special call to discern and to direct those other vocations, so that the Church might be one, so that there might be one flock and one shepherd. So, the priest is as concerned about everybody else’s reception of the Grace of Christ, as his own. And, the priest has a very good motive for his concern about everyone else’s reception of God’s Grace, for Jesus Christ will hold him to account for that on Judgment Day.

The priest must do what is necessary to build unity in the flock and to call the flock to holiness, so that he himself might receive a “good account before the fearsome judgment seat of Christ,” when the time comes. It is only in doing his best for everybody else’s holiness that the priest can do the best for himself. And to do that today it takes bravery.

When we look for candidates to the priesthood and as we pray for vocations, we are looking for men who are brave in their willingness to seek holiness, to speak the truth, to lay down their lives. There is no place in the priesthood today for “wimpish-ness.” There is no place for an attitude that just wants to please people, no matter what they think and no matter what they want. Today the priest has to stand up and be brave, preaching the Truth with love. He has to be willing to be unpopular. And if it comes to it, he has to be open to martyrdom.

[…]

Our world is in such a state that even the government wants to make sure that everybody — perhaps even little girls — have access, free of charge, to artificial contraception and they call it “preventive services.” Preventive medicine is medicine that protects someone from an illness (like a vaccination against the flu). What disease does artificial contraception protect a woman from? Pregnancy? Our government would have us think that pregnancy is a disease, and that instead of finding fulfillment in her motherhood, a woman must have the absolute freedom to turn against her motherhood — as if the fruits of being a mother were a disease.

Bravery means standing up for moral truth
It’s time for all of us to be brave in admitting what the moral truth is about artificial contraception. It’s not a time to by shy, retiring, and politically correct. Sometimes people come up to me and say, “in my parish it’s not permitted to talk about that.” How sad. Where is the sign of the brave shepherd?

[…]

Read the rest there.

Posted in Mail from priests, New Evangelization, Our Catholic Identity, Priests and Priesthood, Religious Liberty, The future and our choices | Tagged abortion, Bp. Morlino, contraception, D. Madison, Good Shepherd, HHS mandate, Pres. Obama, priesthood, Priests, vocations
35 Comments

The 2020 annual LCWR Assembly

Posted on 5 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I picked this up from a future edition of the National catholic Reporter.

Breaking down barriers, affirming freedom

Jamie O’Brien

12 August 2020

HONOLULU (NcR) The 2020 annual national assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is underway in Honolulu, under the swaying palms and by the sparkling sandy beaches. Once again the gathered sisters have met to affirm each other in their respective callings.

Beth Mackee, LCWR co-mentor, introduced this year’s national assembly speaker Dyna Moore. Moore, the latest in a series of transgendered Daughters of Charity to profess vows, told the assembly in her keynote speech how liberating it was for her now to be a woman.

However, Moore directed the majority of her remarks to the Assembly’s theme, “Age: The Final Frontier“.

Picking up on the assembly’s strong anticipation of President Obama’s fourth term, Moore reminded the group that “much still needs to be done to carry forward the liberation of women from all forms of oppression, especially sexual oppression”.

Congratulating the LCWR for its defeat a decade earlier of the CDF’s attempted 5-year takeover, Moore recalled the women religious who in the meantime “heroically fought the male hierarchy’s strong support of legislation banning polygamous lesbian marriages”.

Yet Moore challenged the assembled sisters to intensify their efforts in support of a national law aimed at lowering the age of sexual consent to 11.

In her talk, Moore, a professor of linguistics at Notre Dame, surveyed the negative history surrounding language concerning women’s rights.

Moore claimed that “terms such as abortion and prostitution and polygamy, and now pedophilia, have been used by men to stigmatize women in their search for sexual liberty”.

After fighting for the right of women of all ages to have abortions without parental knowledge or consent, Moore suggested that women religious should “lead the battle for the relational freedom of females of every age”.

The assembly rose in a standing ovation when Moore declared that “the human right of girls to choose sexual partners regardless of age represents the final frontier of women’s sexual and reproductive freedom”.

While Moore was speaking, members of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Nuns, SNAN (formerly known as SNAP) protested outside Honolulu’s most expensive hotel, where the Assembly was held.

“They are compromising the future repressed memories of countless children,” said a SNAN spokesperson.

Posted in Classic Posts, Lighter fare, The future and our choices | Tagged age discrimination, LCWR, magisterium of nuns, paedophilia
17 Comments

Georgetown Jesuits invite Kathleen Sebelius

Posted on 5 May 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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Jesuits.

They have effectively said to the US Bishops: “Screw you!”

From the CNS:

Kathleen Sebelius to Speak at Georgetown Commencement Ceremony

In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that “pro-choice” Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of the Obama administration’s assault on religious freedom through the HHS contraception mandate, has been invited to speak at one of Georgetown’s several commencement ceremonies.

The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to protest this outrage here: GeorgetownScandal.com. It has also alerted Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and sent a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia urging him to immediately withdraw the invitation.

Last week The Cardinal Newman Society released a list of 11 scandalous commencement speakers at Catholic colleges and universities, as well as a report on homosexual “lavender graduations” including one at Georgetown.

The nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university has chosen to honor Sebelius by granting her a prestigious platform at its Public Policy Institute commencement ceremony, despite her role as the lead architect of a healthcare mandate that will force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, abortifacients and sterilization against their religious beliefs. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has termed the mandate “an unwarranted government definition of religion” that is “alien both to our Catholic tradition and to federal law,” “a violation of personal civil rights” and “a mandate to act against our teachings.”

But Secretary Sebelius’ record on abortion is at least as troubling as the mandate. When Governor of Kansas, Sebelius supported abortion rights and vetoed pro-life legislation. In 2008, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City reportedly told Sebelius, a Roman Catholic, to stop receiving the Eucharist until she publicly recants her position on abortion and makes a “worthy sacramental confession.”