Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

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.

President and pontiff

Web Posted: 06/07/2008 12:57 AM CDT

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY — When President Bush pays a visit to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican next Friday, it will be his sixth meeting with a pope, and his third meeting with Benedict in just over a year.

Never in U.S. history has a president consulted so often with the leader of the Catholic Church. Carl Anderson, a former Reagan aide who now heads the Knights of Columbus, calls it “remarkable.”

“Less than 50 years ago,” he said, “it was a question as to whether a Catholic should even be able to run for president.”

Bush has emphasized his admiration for the papacy, and in particular for Benedict, whom he has called a “very smart, loving man.” When Benedict arrived in Washington in April, Bush met him on the tarmac, the only time he has so honored any dignitary.

Less obvious is how the pope views the president. It is not only Benedict’s relatively shy personality that prevents him from being so demonstrative, but the customary reserve that his office imposes on its occupants.

“These are the kinds of cards that popes don’t show,” said Father Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center and author of “Inside the Vatican.”

Yet according to informed observers, there is reason to believe that Benedict, despite some important policy differences with the president (most notably over Iraq), feels a genuine affinity with Bush as both a man and a leader.

For the pope, part of the attraction may lie in Bush’s life story.

“I’d imagine that he has respect for the president as a man who turned his life around, had a conversion experience, stopped drinking and started living a religious life,” Reese said.

Benedict, who has warned against the increasing secularization of Europe and praised the prominent role of religion in American public life, is likely to appreciate a head of state who is “not afraid to express his faith as a Christian,” said Father Joseph Fessio, a former student of the pope who now runs Ignatius Press, Benedict’s principal English-language publisher.

In the president, the pope finds a key supporter of the Catholic Church’s positions on such controversial questions as abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage. Bush’s arguments have frequently echoed Benedict’s appeals to “natural law” and even employ the terms of Catholic social doctrine (despite the fact that the president is a Methodist).

Nowhere has the congruence of their thinking been clearer than at April’s welcoming ceremony at the White House, when Bush cited Benedict’s denunciation of the “dictatorship of relativism,” and the pope noted the importance of American religiosity as inspiration for abolitionism and the civil rights movement.

To which Bush replied, “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech.”

“They could pretty much have given each other’s speech,” said William McGurn, Bush’s former head speechwriter and a Catholic, who was present at the ceremony but did not write the president’s remarks.

Fessio agreed. “In terms of authentic, normative Catholic teaching, I don’t see any area in which the pope and President Bush disagree,” he said.

The most notable case of disharmony between the two leaders was over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed at least as ardently as Pope John Paul II.

“But Iraq is not a matter of Catholic social teaching,” Fessio said. “That was a prudential decision on whether or not the use of force was justified. The pope would be the first to tell you that good Catholics can disagree on that.”

Likewise, Benedict’s views on economics, taxation and government regulation — which are known to lie to the left of Bush’s — are merely his personal opinions, not doctrine that he holds as binding on the faithful, Fessio said.

In any case, it would be uncharacteristically undiplomatic of any pope to let past differences get in the way of constructive collaboration with a world superpower.

“The Vatican knows how to agree and disagree with heads of state and work with them anyway,” Reese said. “It’s got a big agenda.”

But I’m back! Sometimes I run into dry spells on this blog. I don’t just want to randomly write things–I want them to have some heft, you know? This isn’t the blog where I just mindlessly spill about my day (although I don’t really do that at the Bucket, either..)…

Anyway, here are some links/thoughts…

This is a great piece from Fr. Z on one of my favorite Saints, St. Gianna Molla. If I was getting confirmed today I would pick her. For those unfamiliar with her story, she was an Italian doctor who was diagnosed with a uterine tumor while pregnant, but she would not have a surgery that would remove it, since it would endanger her child’s life. Instead, St. Gianna gave birth to a healthy baby girl, even though St. Gianna died shortly after. The daughter became a doctor, like her mother.

Also from Fr. Z, the Pope’s address to Young People at Yonkers. This was the only speech of his I was able to hear live while he was in the US (since I do not have cable at my apartment, sigh…I could only watch snippets whilst I was at my parents). This was truly a remarkable speech.

Side note re: music. I can’t believe someone complained about the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” being sung when the Pope was welcomed at the White House.
1) The Pope asked for it!
2) It is said to be one of the Virgin Mary’s favorite hymns (as told by the visionaries at Medjuorgje–it’s on the tape “Sounds of Medjuorgje”, which my dad played over and over in the car when I was a kid).
3) (I think it was) The Army Choir sounds AWESOME when they sing this! When it was sung (twice!) at Reagan’s funeral, I just loved it. They do a fantastic job. Why shouldn’t we sing one of the best songs we have?
4) It’s a true, honest-to-God Americanhymn. Let’s give him the good stuff!

And I have to say, I loved watching GW with the pope. He has had so many Catholics on his advisory boards, working in his administration, etc.–and we can’t forget the appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito!

And assorted notes.

From the Corner:

Popes Must Speak Out for Peace [Michael Novak]

That is what popes are intended to do — they are to represent Christ, the Prince of Peace, in a world that is and has always been a maelstrom of passions, conflict, and wars. Popes have sometimes been warlike, but that ill becomes their office, and nearly always causes lasting repugnance.

That is why in 2003 many Americans who believed that the war in Iraq was justified, also believed that it was very good for Pope John Paul II to oppose the war. The pope should not be, and should not even be allowed to seem to be, a proponent of war, especially of a war with so many complex religious tendrils, and with so many centuries of conflicted history. It was right and just for Pope John Paul II to oppose the war.
The role and munus (office, burden, duty) of the presidents of nations are different. Presidents must make a probable judgment about the long-run implications both of inaction and action, and about what in the long run will have been the most creative path for them to have taken. These are excruciating judgments, for they usually involve long-run costs, discouragements, and difficulties. Many of us of a certain age remember the long sacrifices and costs of World War II.

This background is important to grasp, since Pope Benedict XVI will almost certainly judge that he is duty-bound to call for the violence in Iraq to cease. The edge of his words will be felt more sharply here, where he delivers them, than among Al Sadr and his Shia militias, who are now causing so much of the violence in three cities in Iraq. The Shiites militias very much want the Americans will stop fighting, and to depart.

The pope may also continue saying, as he has often in the last year, that the religious freedom and dignity of every person in Iraq must be protected, and minority populations (in this case, one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world) must be especially respected. He may repeat his deep conviction that violence is contrary to the nature of God.

Benedict XVI may also wish the future of democracy and the rule of law in Iraq to flower fully, and to be long-lasting. He may express the hope that these will bear good fruit for justice and human dignity throughout the Middle East, and all around the world.

The pope is not primarily a political player, and yet the cultural and moral power of his words and actions may this week well have long political consequences. On the record, we are entitled to have confidence in Benedict’s bravery, balance of mind, and concern to do his duty.

Fr. Neuhaus in yesterday’s WaPo:

edict is not a showman, as many – intending praise or blame – said his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was. Benedict is a priest and professor who finds himself in the unexpected position of being pastor of a universal church of 1.2 billion people. This visit to America is a pastoral visit, and he will do what good pastors do: teach, encourage, and gently correct where necessary. The best way to understand Benedict is to listen carefully to what he says.

Many who claim to be perplexed by Benedict wonder how the harsh doctrinal “enforcer” under John Paul II can reinvent himself as the benign father of the family of the faithful. (The word “pope” has its origins in “papa.”) No reinvention is necessary. Those of us who have known him for many years, recognize in Benedict the invariably gentle manner of the learned and intellectually curious Joseph Ratzinger. If there is a surprise in these first three years, it is that Ratzinger, who very much wanted to retire to his scholarly pursuits, seems to enjoy being pope.

Key to understanding the man is that he is much more of an Augustinian than a Thomist. Of all the great doctors (i.e. teachers) of the Catholic intellectual tradition, the fifth century St. Augustine and the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas are the great lights by which most schools of thought are defined. To be sure, there are Augustinian Thomists and Thomist Augustinians, and the distinctions often have more to do with sensibility than substance. Put all too roughly, Thomists are devoted to a systematic presentation of unchanging principles of reason, while Augustinians are given to a discursive account of the complexities of mind and heart in pursuit of the right ordering of love to the truth, and ultimately to absolute truth, who is God.

Perhaps the best known words of Augustine are these: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Benedict’s first encyclical (teaching letter) is titled Deus Caritas Est – God is Love – in which Thomas gets one footnote to dozens from Augustine. Benedict recently said at the funeral of a friend, “Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or a moral system. Christianity is an encounter, a love story, an event.”

In Benedict’s telling, it is in the first place the story of God’s unqualified love for and commitment to the human project. He speaks frequently of Jesus Christ as “the human face of God.” While the Church says “no” to this and “no” to that, every “no” is in the service of a much greater “yes.” Against a sometimes dry intellectualism or restrictive moralism, Benedict presents the way of Christ as a high adventure of mind and heart toward the transcendental realities of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In sum, Christianity is an invitation to say “yes” to God’s “yes” in Jesus Christ.

This Augustinian pope has a very high estimate of human reason, and in his United Nations address this week I expect he will address the rational grounds for commitment to human rights and the dignity of the human person. Reason was also the centerpiece of his “controversial” lecture at Regensburg University in September, 2006, where he challenged Muslims to recognize that the use of violence in advancing religion is “to act against reason and therefore to act against the nature of God.”

A constant theme of Benedict’s is that, when rightly understood, there is no conflict between religion and science, faith and reason, heart and mind. Theories to the contrary, he contends, are both unreasonable and de-humanizing because they fail to offer an adequate account of the limits, possibilities, and complexities of the human experience. His message is one of prophetic humanism.

This week Benedict will be addressing many issues, both those internal to the Church and those related to the culture and the world. To understand Benedict, listen to what he says, and listen most closely to what he says about what it means to be a human being fully alive. ++++++++++

Father Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things, the monthly magazine of religion, culture, and public life.

And, from Newsweek, two opposing stories:
George Weigel
And this.

is yoga.

Something like this.

The beginning:

There is a translation point regarding the optional rite of washing feet (the “Mandatum” or “Command” – whence the word Maundy) on Holy Thursday.

In many places women are invited to have their feet washed.

This is against the Church’s laws which are based on divine revelation Scripture (cf. Matthew 20:28).

Now, this is Fr. Z, so of course he’s got the goods on it. Do read it.
Like the title suggests, this is something I never really thought about. Heck, my mom even had her feet washed one year. But is it indeed a licit practice?

(One of the reasons I probably didn’t think about it was 1) I’ve never been asked, and 2) we’re too busy in choir singing the feet washing song. :))

Something to ponder as we get into Holy Week…

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he not his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

Today’s Gospel is my favorite Gospel passage, since it reflects so neatly upon my own experience. Many people today share the same feelings as the disciples–if you have an illness, or are experiencing difficulties and trials, you must have “done something” to deserve them. Because God is a good and just God, so why would anyone endure trials or sufferings if they didn’t deserve them?

A corollary is also seen–people who are “oppressed and afflicted” (Isaiah 52) wonder what they have to done to offend God. “Why me, God?” can be a frequent cry (see the Book of Job). And here, Jesus provides the answer: “so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

In Catholicism, Suffering is not Suffering for its own sake. As John Paul The Great wrote in his encyclical Salvifici Doloris (On the Meaning of Suffering) in 1984:

The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

In the Way of the Cross message of 2005, John Paul invokes Paul:

The adoration of the Cross directs us to a commitment that we cannot shirk: the mission that St. Paul expressed in these words: In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church. (Colossians 1:24).

So here we have some of the basis of the Church’s doctrine of “Redemptive Suffering.” It is not a waste to suffer. God sees and sympathizes with us. All of us suffer to different degrees–spiritually, physically, mentally, etc. But this doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us. Mother Teresa once said that in suffering, Jesus is bringing you close enough to Him so that He can embrace you, He can kiss you. Suffering brings you closer to God.

Sure, there are ways we’d like to get closer without actually suffering. I don’t know anyone who wakes up and says, “Yes! Today’s another chance to suffer! Woohoo!” But God does not abandon us. Even when we think he has–as Jesus did, on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?”–he has not. Through His Passion and Death, Jesus has been through everything a human being can endure. He knows what we are feeling.

Our suffering can bring others to him. When I was in the ICU in 2001, friends that hadn’t been to church in years went and prayed. The same thing happened during my transplant. I’m not aware of any Great Conversions from these experiences, but my circumstances brought other people before God, and made them aware of Him and His dominion over us. My talking and normal activities hadn’t done that–it took something very, very dramatic to get these kids into a church. Maybe they haven’t been since; I don’t know. But I know they were there at least once, asking God for a favor. Sometimes the “God as ATM” theory is the first way you get people to go to church–ask God for something and see what happens.

God’s work can be made manifest through you–but you have to consent to it.

From Amy Welborn: Papal Posts and Links.

He’ll be at the White House on his birthday. I wonder if he’ll find a piano at the WH and entertain W and Laura.