In today’s Enquirer (article by Dan Horn)–my emphases and comments.

Catholics stand together during Sunday Mass to recite the “Profession of Faith,” a creed that defines precisely what it is that makes them Catholic.

“We believe in God … We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ … We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

The prayer covers a lot of ground, from God’s creation of the Earth to Christ’s birth and crucifixion to the promise of life in heaven. Most churchgoing Catholics memorized the words as children and consider the creed a statement that unites them in a common belief.

And yet, when they walk out of church at the end of Mass, they still find plenty about their faith to argue about.

The arguments have been passionate in recent weeks as Cincinnati’s Catholics debated Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk’s decision to punish Sister Louise Akers for publicly supporting the ordination of women priests.

Pilarczyk told Akers she could not teach in archdiocesan schools until she renounced her stance on the issue. A week after she refused, a parish priest in Westwood dismissed a volunteer religion teacher, Carol Egner, for writing a letter to The Enquirer supporting Akers and her position on women priests.

The decision to punish the teachers not only rekindled debate over the ordination of women, but also highlighted a long-running tug-of-war between traditionalists and progressives over the future of the Catholic Church.

“What’s happening with Akers is not an isolated case,” said John Allen, an author and columnist who covers the Vatican for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper. “It’s a small piece of a much bigger picture.”

The struggle within the church has intensified in the past few years as conservative Catholics, energized by the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI, pushed for stricter adherence to church teaching. They have praised a Vatican investigation of women’s religious orders, welcomed a return to traditions such as the granting of indulgences and cheered Pope Benedict’s declaration that Catholics must “not seek to adapt the faith to the fashions of the age.”

They also supported Pilarczyk’s decision to get tough with Akers over the ordination of women, which some consider a vestige of a liberal theology that took hold in the 1960s and 1970s after the Second Vatican Council.

The council, also known as Vatican II, launched reforms that some theologians now say were misinterpreted as an invitation to change the central teachings of the faith to better mesh with the changing secular world.

“Vatican II wasn’t intended to set off a liturgical civil war, but that’s what we got,” said Rich Leonardi, a Cincinnatian who writes the conservative Catholic blog Ten Reasons. “There was a tendency to think the church should just go with the flow, to move with the world rather than to move the world.

“That ship has sailed. There’s no intensity around that movement any more.”

Catholics who favor reform dispute Leonardi’s take on their views, saying they remain active and committed to changing their church from within. They acknowledge, however, that they face more challenges today than they did just a few decades ago.

“I do think there seems to be a trend among bishops around the country to get much more hard-line about women’s issues,” said Christine Schenk, director of FutureChurch, which favors a “discussion” about women’s ordination but has not endorsed the idea.

“It’s a mystery to me, but talking about women’s equality in the church is threatening at some level.” (Oh. Puh-leaze. Genesis doesn’t say “male and female he created equally” It says, “Male and female he created them.” Each gender is unique, and each has unique gifts. They are not interchangable things. For more–read the Theology of the Body. Even a brief summary will suffice.)

Dealing with dissent

Conservatives have gained momentum in the past decade among the laity, in seminaries and in the church hierarchy. They have taken to blogs, TV and radio and have become more active in church affairs and in secular politics.

That was evident earlier this year when bishops and thousands of lay Catholics publicly opposed President Barack Obama’s speech at the University of Notre Dame on grounds that his pro-choice stance conflicted with Catholic teachings.

“What we’re living through right now is a kind of reaction against what was seen as an excessively liberal period,” Allen said.

From the outside looking in, divisions within the church are not all that visible because polls show America’s 70 million Catholics tend to hold views similar to those of the general population.

But those polls also show that Catholics who describe themselves as “orthodox” or who attend Mass regularly are more closely aligned with their church’s teachings on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and embryonic stem cell research.

These are the Catholics who have embraced what some call the “Catholic identity movement,” which calls for closer adherence to the traditions and teachings that separate Catholics from other Christian faiths.

“A watered down Catholicism that asks nothing of its members shouldn’t expect to get anything in return,” Leonardi said.

One of those teachings is the all-male priesthood. While not referenced in Scripture, it is based on sacred tradition passed down over 2,000 years and is specifically referenced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In other words, the male priesthood is non-negotiable.

“The church has no authority to ordain women,” said archdiocese spokesman Dan Andriacco. “It is not an open question.”

He said the discipline imposed on Akers and Egner is not part of a wider crackdown on dissent, as some fear, and the archdiocese has no interest in rooting out rank-and-file Catholics who don’t agree with everything the church does, including the 60 percent who tell pollsters they support ordaining women.

“There is no witch hunt,” said the Rev. Earl Fernandes, dean of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary. “We’re a big church. We try to help each person to grow in faith.”

‘Spirit of openness’

Dissent is nothing new for Catholics. The church’s positions on birth control, celibacy for priests, the Latin Mass and a host of other traditions and teachings have been argued for decades, or even centuries.

Priests and bishops know not every Catholic will adhere to every teaching of the faith, and most say there is room on some issues for healthy debate, or at least for disagreement.

“We want to have a fundamental spirit of openness,” Fernandes said.

Church officials say Akers and Egner crossed a line because they are teachers who publicly challenged church teachings. Their argument goes something like this: Religion is about belief, and those who believe women should be priests don’t believe what the Catholic Church teaches. They believe what Methodists teach. (Ha!)

That doesn’t mean they have to quit the church, but it does mean they aren’t permitted to teach. (Exactement!)

“We want our teachers to be authentic,” Fernandes said. “We want our teachers to believe what they teach.”

Both Akers and Egner say they would not express their views on women’s ordination in their classes, and they consider themselves loyal to their church and to the core beliefs recited every Sunday in the Profession of Faith.

They say there should be room in their church for them to do the work they love, even if they disagree on the ordination of women.

“Catholics have a very long tradition of various beliefs and the ability to talk about them,” Egner said. “Sometimes things change.”

Can be found here.

More thoughts later, after I’ve read it.

Fr. Z, as we know, is always great.

But with this speech, and his comments, it is beyond great. 

It is required reading. 

Archp. Burke’s comments at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast are definitely worth reading in their entirety. 

They sum up a question I’ve talked about before here: am I (are we) American Catholics, or Catholic Americans? 
I think this speech goes a long way in answering that question.

What do you mean self-control is something we should practice? (My emphases)

Pope Benedict XVI: condoms make Aids crisis worse

Pope Benedict XVI said that the distribution of condoms ‘aggravates’ the Aids crisis, as he embarked on his first trip to Africa.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 7:58PM GMT 17 Mar 2009

Pope Benedict XVI gestures from the airplane before leaving from Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport for a trip to Africa that includes stops in Cameroon and Angola Photo: AP

While en route from Rome to his first stop, Cameroon, the Pope said that the condition was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”

Speaking on board his official plane, the pontiff insisted that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids, advocating sexual abstinence and fidelity within marriage as a way of fighting the disease.

During the seven-day visit, which will take Benedict to Cameroon and Angola, he said he would address the continent’s “grave problems and painful wounds”.

Africa is crucial to the Vatican because of its growing number of believers. Within 15 years around a sixth of the world’s Catholics, or 230 million people, are expected to be African. The continent also produces a large proportion of the world’s Catholic priests.

But it also presents huge challenges for the Pope, including tension with Islam in some countries, competition from evangelical churches and opposition to the Church’s ban on condoms in countries where Aids is rife.

Pope Benedict, who has mostly confined his travels to Western countries during his four-year papacy, will first visit Cameroon during his week-long trip, and then Angola.

His only previous visit to Africa was to Kinshasa in 1987 when he was a cardinal.

He will appeal to rich countries which are grappling with the global financial crisis not to forget Africa’s acute needs.

An estimated 800 million Africans suffer from chronic hunger and the crisis is already affecting the level of remittances sent from abroad as African immigrants in Europe lose their jobs.

Although he will only visit two of Africa’s more than 50 countries, he hopes that his visit will “embrace the entire African continent”, he said on Sunday during his weekly blessing in St Peter’s Square in Rome.

He referred to Africa’s “ancient cultures and its difficult path of development and reconciliation, its grave problems, painful wounds and enormous potential and hopes”,

He is expected to meet African bishops, Muslim imams, politicians and women’s advocacy groups.

The six-day tour will be the 81-year-old pontiff’s 11th foreign trip.

He is scheduled to visit Israel and Jordan in May.

(from The Telegraph)

Oh, my goodness. AIDS is not a reason to disband Church doctrine! Whatever will the Pope say next?

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi (h/t–dad)

Pope tells Pelosi: Catholics cannot back abortion

So a lot of the time, when Catholics talk about voting pro-life, they get “well what about War? Because JP II and BXVI were against the Iraq war, etc., etc.” 

First, a quote from the US Bishops: 

From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Living the Gospel of Life (1998)–their emphasis: “But being “right’ in such matters [other social issues] can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the ‘rightness’ of the positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community…All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundations.”

 

There are five non-negotiable issues for Catholics when voting: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, gay marriage and human cloning. These are all intrinsically evil and can NEVER be supported in good conscience. 

Note that war is not on that list. The church has a “just war” theory. Good Catholics can disagree with whether or not the Iraq war fits the definition. But the point is that war can sometimes be justified. The five non-negotiable issues above are NEVER justifiable. 

Seriously–the first work out of my mouth this morning, when I read the following, was, “ARGH!!!!”
The letter in today’s Columbus Dispatch–”Obama Presidency Would Be A Good Fit For Catholics”

ARGH!!!
My comments and emphases in bold.

Obama presidency would be a good fit for Catholics
Saturday, September 6, 2008 3:09 AM

While the agents of division seek to deceive Catholic voters with single issues (gee, only the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE!) and stories of Communion denials, there is much for Catholics to look forward to with a Barack Obama presidency.

With families struggling to survive, as both parents work jobs under threats of layoffs, America needs new leadership. With health-care costs soaring and millions of Americans without health insurance, America needs a new plan.

With our country at war and relations with other countries strained, America needs a new strategy. With our educational systems failing and our children falling behind, America needs a new perspective. With our planet warming and energy costs rising, America needs to show the way.

As a Catholic going to the polls this November, I am mindful of these shared problems we face as Americans. My faith and love for my country compel me to vote for a candidate who will bring a systematic reform of No Child Left Behind.(No, your duties as a Catholic compel you to vote for the candidate who is PRO LIFE, sorry, buddy.)

As a Catholic, I am called to vote for the candidate who will bring improved access to health care for the poor and for working families. As a Catholic, I seek a candidate who supports a lowering of the federal deficit. I seek a candidate who seeks a realistic investment in alternative energy, speaking to the call I have as a Catholic to be a good steward of the environment. NO! AS a CATHOLIC, you are to seek the protection of the most vulnerable–Children in the womb! This is a non-negotiable issue, say the bishops, say the pope, says the CCC

As a Catholic watching my country from a worldview, I seek a candidate who will end the harsh interrogation of detainees and restore our respect and relations globally. As a Catholic, I seek a candidate who works to address the circumstances surrounding a woman’s decision to have an abortion and works to reduce and eliminate abortions in this country. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

The possibility for an Obama presidency brings the prospect of a national unity not felt since the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Catholic social teaching proclaims that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, no matter if they are rich, poor, white or black. (Gee, Catholic social teaching ALSO is TOTALLY PRO LIFE and says Abortion is a “grave sin”.)

As president, Obama will tend to the dignity of the human person. (The Man is for INFANTICIDE. That’s protecting the dignity of the human person? )We will hear his call to family, community and participation. Rights will become a priority, as will options for the poor and vulnerable. As president, Obama will bring dignity back to work and secure the rights of workers.

As our nation regains respect in the world, I believe an Obama presidency will bring solidarity to our planet, as well as care for God’s creation. These tenets and issues are part of my being, part of my faith narrative (Faith narrative?? What the heck does THAT mean?) and the reasons I will vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden this November.

Oh my. This man needs a good, solid dose of WDTPRS? and a reading of the CCC.
All of those things–the right to work, the environment, etc.–are important to Catholics. But they are not non-negotiable. Abortion is. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for a candidate who is pro-choice, never mind a candidate like Obama who supports infanticidewhere this is a solid pro-life option available.
In this election, we have that option.

But wait…there’s more! (As the Count on Sesame street says…)

Here are two awesome interviews with Archbishop Chaput of Denver, who is a hero of mine. If any American could be Pope, I’d pick him (well, and my cousin, naturally.). 

The first is from NRO

Some choice bits (but you really need to read the whole thing) (emphasis mine):

LOPEZ: What should it mean when someone says, “I’m Catholic.”

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: It should mean that we love Jesus Christ as our redeemer, love the Catholic Church as our mother, and give our hearts to what she teaches, because she teaches in Christ’s name.

LOPEZ: What should it mean when I’m “voting Catholic?”

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: We should see ourselves as Catholic first — not white or black, or young or old. or Democrat or Republican, or labor militant or business owner, but Catholic firstas the main way we identify ourselves. Our faith should shape our lives, including our political choices. Of course, that demands that we actually study and deepen our Catholic faith. The Catholic faith isn’t a set of clothes that we can tailor to a personal fit. We don’t “invent” our faith, and we don’t “own” it. If we really want to be Catholic, then we’ll live by Catholic teaching. Otherwise we’re just fooling ourselves and abusing the belief of other Catholics who really do try to practice what the Church teaches.

And: (emphases mine)

LOPEZ: Whenever I write about Catholics and abortion, I am immediately asked, “What about war? What about the death penalty?” What about them? Can a Catholic vote for Senator “Surge”? We have killed people in Iraq, after all.

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I’ve written and spoken against the death penalty for more than 30 years. And along with most other American bishops, I opposed our intervention in Iraq. But these issues are different in kind, not merely degree, from the violence involved in abortion. Anyone rooted in Scripture and Catholic tradition will understand the distinction if he or she reasons honestly. Genocide, euthanasia, abortion, and deliberately targeting civilians in war — these things are always grievously wrong. But in Catholic thought, war and capital punishment can be morally legitimate under certain carefully defined circumstances. Abortion is never morally justified. 

Last: 

LOPEZ: If there is one single point that every Catholic reader of your book could take away from it and pray about and make their own, what would you pray it be?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: Again: Don’t lie. If we say we’re Catholic, we need to back it up with proof. Our faith needs to be the North Star of our lives. Our behavior needs to match our words, including in our political choices.

Here’s the Archbishop’s interview with radio host (and Catholic) Hugh Hewitt

And, of course, here’s the book: Render Unto Caesar. 

Yes, it has been a million years, but–for my posting here, I like to be “inspired”, so to speak, and not just post dribble. So here we go with link-o-rama; specifically, Obama and abortion. 

These first two are about Obama’s performance on Sat/Sunday night with Pastor Rick Warren:

Bill Krystol in the NYT

Michael Gershon in the WaPo

My comment: Anyone who says that abortion decisions, or when life begins, is “above his pay grade”, then I don’t want him making life and death decisions. Besides, if you aren’t sure, shouldn’t you err on the side of life? 

Next, Rick Lowry of NR on Obama and “born-alive” abortions

Carl Anderson on Catholics and voting (NRO) 

This is worth some quoting: 

Building a culture of life and a civilization of love means truly transforming our politics. In this process, dealing with the abortion rights issue is fundamental. While there are certainly many issues that are important to Catholic voters, none has caused more damage to our society than this taking of innocent human life.

It is time that Catholics demand real change — and real change means the end of Roe v. Wade. Real change is possible, but it is difficult. First, the political manipulation of Catholic voters by abortion-rights advocates needs to end. It is time to stop creating excuses for voting for pro-abortion-rights politicians. It is time that Catholics shine a bright line of separation between themselves and all those politicians who defend the abortion-rights regime of Roe v. Wade.

During the Pope’s visit to the United States in April, he urged those gathered at Yankee Stadium to protect “the unborn child in the mother’s womb.” That statement drew the loudest, longest applause of his trip. In this election year, when the Catholic vote is crucial, politicians who choose to ignore that thunderous response do so at their peril.

Imagine the effect if this year millions of Catholic voters simply say “no” — no to every candidate for every office of every political party who supports abortion rights. 

It’s time Catholics stop accommodating pro-abortion-rights politicians and it’s time to start demanding that they accommodate us. This is the only decision that offers the real chance for real change, because no candidate or political party can withstand the loss of millions of Catholic voters in this — or any other — election. In this election, if a Catholic cannot vote for the pro-life candidate, then not voting for that office may be the sincerest expression of faithful citizenship.

This year, Catholic voters have the power to transform politics. As faithful citizens, Catholics can build a new politics — a politics that is not satisfied with the status quo, but one that is dedicated to building up a culture of life. If they stand together and demand better from politicians, Catholics can transform politics, and that would be real change. 

And then, one from the “I can’t believe this makes sense” pile: 

Pat Buchannan

For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby’s skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.

Partial-birth abortion, said the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, “comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary.” 

Yet, when Congress was voting to ban this terrible form of death for a mature fetus, Michelle Obama was signing fundraising letters pledging that, if elected, Barack would be “tireless” in keeping legal this “legitimate medical procedure.” 

And Barack did not let the militants down. When the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on this barbaric procedure, Barack denounced the court for denying “equal rights for women.” 

As David Freddoso reports in his new best-seller, “The Case Against Barack Obama,” the Illinois senator goes further than any U.S. senator has dared go in defending what John Paul II called the “culture of death.” 

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste. (EMD: emphasis mine) 

 

Obama has a 100% voting record with NARAL. Think about that for a minute. 

From the Corner:

Bianca Jagger [Jack Fowler]
lobbies for expansion of Tridentine Mass in England. She’s one of a number of Latin Massers signing a petition prompted by the lack of clerical enthusiasm for Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter (Summorum Pontificum) advocating greater use of the once-universal rite.