Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

From Fr. Z’s website (and, Lord knows, I need these as much as anybody!)

Fr. Z’s 20 Tips For Making A Good Confession o{]:¬)

We should…

1) …examine our consciences regularly and thoroughly;
2) …wait our turn in line patiently;
3) …come at the time confessions are scheduled, not a few minutes before they are to end;
4) …speak distinctly but never so loudly that we might be overheard;
5) …state our sins clearly and briefly without rambling;
6) …confess all mortal sins in number and kind;
7) …listen carefully to the advice the priest gives;
…confess our own sins and not someone else’s;
9) …carefully listen to and remember the penance and be sure to understand it;
10) …use a regular formula for confession so that it is familiar and comfortable;
11) …never be afraid to say something “embarrassing”… just say it;
12) …never worry that the priest thinks we are jerks…. he is usually impressed by our courage;
13) …never fear that the priest will not keep our confession secret… he is bound by the Seal;
14) …never confess “tendencies” or “struggles”… just sins;
15) …never leave the confessional before the priest has finished giving absolution;
16) …memorize an Act of Contrition;
17) …answer the priest’s questions briefly if he asks for a clarification;
18) …ask questions if we can’t understand what he means when he tells us something;
19) …keep in mind that sometimes priests can have bad days just like we do;
20) …remember that priests must go to confession too … they know what we are going through.

I hope that these are helpful as we prepare for Lent…and get to confession more often, possibly (maybe. I’m not making any promises here)

Can you expect to go to heaven for nothing? Did not our Savior track the whole way to it with His tears and blood? And yet you start at every little pain.
— St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

A very good thing for us to ponder, especially as Lent is coming up in about a month. People who ask, “why is their suffering in the world? Why does God permit it?” need look no farther than the Cross. If God sent His own Son to suffer and die, then how can we expect to be exempt from it? Suffering is a natural part of our spiritual growth. Some of us are called to more than others, but God knows what is best for each of us. And we have, in Jesus, a Savior who has “drunk to the dregs of human suffering” (as Fr. Benedict Groeschel writes in his Rosary: Light and Life ) and knows what we are feeling.

H/t Amy Welborn...

Colorado’s governor is not what I would call pro-life:

Archbishop fires 1st salvo at Gov. Ritter
The Catholic leader blasts a plan to restore state funds to family-planning clinics that offer abortion.
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 01/16/2007 10:55:04 AM MST

Archbishop Charles Chaput opposes Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to restore state funding to Planned Parenthood. (Post)Less than a week after his inauguration, Gov. Bill Ritter is getting heat from the outspoken Catholic archbishop of Denver over a familiar topic: abortion.

In his column in this week’s Denver Catholic Register, Archbishop Charles Chaput calls the Democrat’s pledge to lift eligibility restrictions on state-funded pregnancy prevention and family-planning programs “seriously flawed public policy.”

Ritter, a Catholic who describes himself as “pro-life,” wants to lift an order by his predecessor, Republican Bill Owens, also a Catholic. The order restricted groups that perform abortions from getting state money for family planning and pregnancy prevention.

Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer declined Monday to respond

Chaput’s Column
Read Archbishop Chaput’s complete column challenging Gov. Ritter.
directly to Chaput’s criticism but emphasized Ritter is opposed to funding abortions.
Only family-planning groups that show they can segregate state funds from money spent on abortions would be eligible, Dreyer said. An amendment to the state’s constitution forbids the use of state dollars to subsidize abortion directly or indirectly.

“The archbishop and the governor agree on certain aspects of this issue,” Dreyer said. “The governor believes strongly it is good public policy to attempt to reduce unintended pregnancies, and that is his goal.”

Calling out Ritter is in keeping with Chaput’s belief that Catholic politicians must adhere to church teachings in their public life in order to remain true to the faith. The Denver prelate has gained a national reputation for his willingness to speak out.

Chaput praised Ritter’s desire to improve health care and education and said his State of the State address brimmed with “good will, good sense and hope.”

Much of Chaput’s ire focused on Planned Parenthood, which lost nearly $400,000 in state funding under the Owens administration. Chaput highlighted a passage in Ritter’s State of the State talk in which he talked about judging legislation’s impact on future generations.

“It’s hard to have a future ‘for our children and our children’s children’ without children, and in practice, Planned Parenthood specializes in the business of preventing them,” Chaput wrote. “Even more troubling is Planned Parenthood’s long involvement in abortion ‘rights’ and the lethal services associated with them.”

Chaput questioned whether it’s possible to segregate money for abortion and family planning. He wrote that it’s reasonable to believe Ritter’s stated opposition to abortion and his “pro-life” label given Ritter’s “engaged and active” Catholic faith.

“What his words do actually mean will become clear in the demands he places on Planned Parenthood for proof that state funds truly are segregated from abortion services and don’t materially support the killing of unborn children,” Chaput wrote.

But Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains may not seize the opportunity if the restrictions are lifted, given the high costs of restructuring to meet the state’s demands and other factors, said spokeswoman Kate Horle.

She said Planned Parenthood also would be reluctant to take resources from smaller clinics statewide that currently receive state money for family planning.

“While I recognize it’s Bishop Chaput’s religious prerogative to want to believe Planned Parenthood somehow wants to increase the abortion rate in Colorado - which is what he implies - what we have always done is try to make sure every child is a wanted and a loved child,” Horle said.

Jeanette DeMelo, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Chaput’s chief objective in the column was to start a conversation and find common ground in the debate over family-planning funding.

Chaput did not challenge Ritter’s abortion stance during the campaign.

I recently have started reading Danielle Bean’s blog and came across this old post in NFP, etc. I thought it was great;

Your Turn: Being Open to Life
6/26/06 9:18 PM
A reader writes:
It would be nice to know that there are others out there who struggle with the conflict of truly being open to life and loving children and wanting a big family, but at the same time being overcome by the fear of the realities of a really big family and not knowing how to “slow down.” Because NFP isn’t as easy as everyone says it is and depending on one’s fertility signs, it doesn’t really always work. At least not for me.

Hmmmm, I do not want to get bogged down in the details of whether or not NFP “really works” here other than to mention that NFP methods test out at 98 point whatever percent effective, but what really counts for most people is “user effectiveness” which is a lower number. The simple fact is that using NFP to space or prevent pregnancy, particularly for some people, is not quite as simple as popping a pill. And that’s a good thing. Because we ought not to be using it the way some people pop a pill.

I think that with NFP, there wind up being many “accidental” pregnancies that are not truly “accidents” at all. Couples often know when they are bending or breaking particular rules or not paying close enough attention to fertility symptoms and lo and behold—a pregnancy results!

This might lead to a great deal of frustration with NFP, but as I said, I think it is a good thing. NFP is not fun. This fact likely encourages many couples to be more generous in planning their families than they would otherwise be. The seriousness with which most couples learn and use NFP is usually directly proportional to the seriousness of their reasons for using it. Personally speaking, if conception did not come easily for us and my husband and I had to actively plan every single pregnancy in the way people using artificial birth control do, we might have 3 or 4 children by now. We surely wouldn’t be expecting our eighth. We would be missing out and wouldn’t even know it.

All of which brings us to the heart of the emailer’s struggle. It can be hard—so very hard—to accept God’s plan for our families in place of our own. It is downright scary sometimes to turn something as powerful and potentially life-changing as our fertility over to God. And this works both ways. I know women struggling with infertility who want desperately to conceive and are unable to. These women too experience frustration, disillusionment, and fear in accepting God’s will for themselves and their families.

But our bodies and our fertility do belong to God. Sometimes the hardest words in the world to pray are “Thy will be done.” I know that when I pray it, my mind sometimes races through all the possibilities of what “God’s will” might be and I am tempted to add, “Oh, except for that! Thy will be done as long as it isn’t that!” Something to work on.

Sent to me by one of my co-workers….

Each Friday night after work, Bubba would fire up his outdoor grill and cook a
venison steak. But all of Bubba’s neighbors were Catholic…and since it was
Lent, they were forbidden from eating meat on Friday. The delicious aroma from
the grilled venison steaks was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful
that they finally talked to their priest. The Priest came to visit Bubba and
suggested that he become a Catholic. After several classes and much study, Bubba attended Mass…..and as the priest sprinkled holy water over him, he said, “You
were born a Baptist, and raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic.”

Bubba’s neighbors were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived, and the
wonderful aroma of grilled venison again filled the neighborhood. The Priest was
called immediately by the neighbors and as he rushed into Bubba’s yard clutching
a rosary preparing to scold him, he stopped and watched in amazement.

There stood Bubba, clutching a small bottle of holy water which he carefully
sprinkled over the grilling meat and chanted: “You wuz born a deer, you wuz
raised a deer, but now you is a catfish.”

So what is going on with the Anglican Commuion? Amy Welborn asked, and got this answer:

The over-arching thing is the coming Lambeth Conference in 2008. Every ten years all Anglican bishops the world over gather in England for this; it lasts about five weeks, I think. Invitations from the Abp of Canterbury go out shortly. The “Global South” churches — places like Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, the Southern Cone of South America — are threatening to run a rump conference in Africa if the pro-gay USA and Canadian churches are not disciplined, and they’re adamant that the gay bishop must not be invited. If that rump Lambeth Conference is held the Anglican Communion will be over.

Meanwhile, next month there is a meeting of Anglican primates which has been called months ago to discuss the issues raised by the “Windsor Report” (dealing with the gay issue, sexuality in general and how teachings on these subjects should be approached by the inter-related provinces of the Communion) and the USA and Canadian response to the Windsor Report.

The primates’ meeting is the immediate crisis. The Global South Bishops are outraged at what they see as the inadequate North American response to Windsor. The North American bishops are offended that certain other provinces (Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda) are actually planting jurisdictions in North America, accepting oversight of formerly Episcopal congregations and even consecrating bishops for North America. And the powerful Archbishop of Nigeria (19 million Anglicans) and others are now saying that they will not sit down at the meeting with Katharine Jefferts Schori, the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, if she comes — not because she is a woman, but because of her heterodox views. These Global South folks are strongly Evangelical Anglicans, and Mrs Schori seems to find regarding Jesus as the one Way to the Father excessively limiting.

Then there’s England. The Global South is enraged that the Church of England is permitting its gay clergy to enter into civil partnerships (officially it expects these to be celibate unions). The Anglo-Catholic “Forward in Faith,” a powerful organization, is lobbying for its own English province with orthodox bishops; now Evengelicals have told the Archbishop that they want to be free to avoid dealing with heterodox bishops and are threatening to leave. The Archbp of Nigeria has said that he believes Canterbury and the CofE should be disciplined for tolerating heresy.

Meanwhile, parishes all over the United States have been announcing their withdrawal from the Episcopal Church. They then seek oversight from a foreign bishop or one of the new American bishops the foreign bodies consecrated. The Episcopal Church Center in NYC is therefore coordinating a concerted legal strategy with the various dioceses aimed at squelching the secessionists with litigation to prevent them from taking their property.

And the Archbp of Canterbury said publicly last week that he feared he was losing control of the Communion. A website with a wealth of info on this is Virtue Online, www.virtueonline.org