Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Even B XVI has an iPod now….

The gift – a 2GB model – was given to recognise the pontiff’s first visit to the radio station’s headquarters. It was the station’s 75th anniversary.

As well as a number of Vatican Radio shows, the iPod contains music by Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.

Awesome…so if I download that playlist, does that get me some graces? I love Beethoven but Stranvinsky seems a bit post-modern for this pope…maybe I’m reading too much into it.

The Buffalo News has this interesting piece….whatever happened to priestly obedience?

In a rare public dissent, 19 Catholic priests have denounced the Vatican’s opposition to gay marriage and allowing homosexuals into the priesthood.
The clerics signed an open letter that ran last Sunday in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper.

The priests said the church was invoking “natural law” to make its case against homosexuality, arguing that slavery was also once considered “natural.”

“What we are saying is that human nature is constantly evolving,” Claude Lemieux, one of the signatories, told the Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “We believe this position is closer to that which is shared by our parishioners.”

The letter questions whether the church has “the last word on the mysteries of political, social, family and sexual life.”

“In these matters,” the letter says, “the official teaching of the church has shown itself more than once to be wrong.”

The letter was in response to the position against gay marriage by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Recent guidelines of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education also restated opposition to the ordination of priests with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies.” But the Vatican said there would be no crackdown on gays who are already ordained.

Canada last year legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, a move many clerics of all religions opposed.

There are roughly 13 million Catholics in Canada, about 43 percent of the population, and nearly half live in the French-speaking province of Quebec. In 2004, Quebec legalized gay marriage.

I mean, if you can’t get the clergy to oppose something that is clearly against everything they claim to profess and believe….who can you look to?

From the 3/3 USA Today …liberal daydreaming? I’m wont to think so….

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday he will consider increasing women’s “institutional” role in the church but reiterated that they would remain barred from the priesthood, Italian news agencies reported.
The pontiff made the comments in response to a question by a clergyman during an audience with Rome’s parish priests, the Apcom and ANSA agencies said.

Benedict said he would begin reflecting on the possibility of giving “institutional” recognition to women after noting that women’s “charisma” had always played an important role in the church, the agencies said.

He mentioned Mother Teresa and Saint Catherine of Siena, among others, and did not say what type of institutional roles he had in mind.

Mother Teresa started her international order in the Indian city of Calcutta in 1950 and became a global icon of humanitarian causes before her death in 1997. Saint Catherine, who lived in the 14th century, cared for the sick and was consulted by the Vatican about the affairs of the Church.

Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, unequivocally backed a male-only priesthood, arguing that Jesus chose men as his apostles.

In one of his few concessions, the late pontiff formally permitted women to serve at the altar, approving a practice that was already widespread in the United States and western Europe.