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Liturgy of the Hours

  /   Monday, September 27, 2004   /   Comments(0)

Yesterday, I gave a talk on the Liturgy of the Hours to the Frassati Society. It went better than expected given how vague the history was. The morning before the talk, I was reminded by a priest that the Liturgy of the Hours is second only to the Mass in dignity. Such makes me wonder how I managed to be Catholic for eight years without ever having heard of it. I was baptized in 1991 and first learned of the existence of the prayer in 1999. I was not alone.

The aforementioned priest helped me to think of the psamls that we pray in the Liturgy of the Hours in a new way. It is the prayer of the whole Church. Something in a Psalm may not apply to me, but it most certainly applies to someone in the Church. I am grateful for this insight.

After talking about it, we prayed Evening Prayer. It went well, especially given that it was the first time that many of them had prayed it. We also prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet, one of my favorite devotions.

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Terri’s Fight

  /   Saturday, September 25, 2004   /   Comments(0)

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled Terri’s law unconstitutional. If something isn’t done soon, Terri Schiavo could face death by starvation. Some of the readings of the opinion show that the court has appeared to say what sounds to me like “How dare the legislation and governor pass a law to override our authority! Judges rule!”

This is outrageous. The purpose of the judiciary is to interpret laws. If in fact such an interpretation of law and constitution is shown to be contrary to what the people intend, then our elected representatives have the right to pass new laws to ensure that the law serves its purpose. Otherwise, we do not have democracy, but instead we have a monarchy of judges. So much for checks and balances.

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Overpopulated? I Think Not

  /   Friday, September 24, 2004   /   Comments(0)

It appears that none other than Newsweek will report that developed nations have more problems with depopulation than overpopulation. This gives us one more reason to believe that the human race is contracepting itself out of existence.

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Voter Guide Under Attack

  /   Thursday, September 23, 2004   /   Comments(0)

The notorious “Catholics” for a “Free Choice ” (Don’t ask them about membership statistics.) has decided to complain to the IRS about the Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics from Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers published it in USA today in several cities, and apparently Frances Kissling is hopping mad. She is even trying to stop them from publishing the guide. Catholic Answers has replied that they won’t be intimidated and darn well they shouldn’t be.

However, I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t concerned about them. They say they’ve checked the guide out with independent legal counsel (35 K PDF file), but I wouldn’t count on a government body to actually make a decision based on the law. Although this will likely go to the IRS before it will end up in any court, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some activist-like ruling there. This is compounded by the fact that John Kerry scores a big fat zero on the voting criteria, even though Catholic Answers doesn’t mention any candidate or race in the guide.

Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely hope that Catholic Answers wins the fight. If Frances Kissling can silence Catholic Answers, then the Church ought to be allowed to legally ban her and her “organization” from calling itself Catholic.

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Whatever the Intent

  /   Wednesday, September 22, 2004   /   Comments(0)

Whatever the person’s intent may be, this is really sick.

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The Great Barbecue

  /   Wednesday, September 22, 2004   /   Comments(0)

Fr. Bryce Sibley gives a clear warning to those who prefer barbecue to Sunday Mass.

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Presuming Invincible Ignorance

  /   Sunday, September 19, 2004   /   Comments(0)

After a few recent conversations, a thought has occurred to me. Feel free to comment. Many times, even some orthodox Catholics will see that another is in serious sin and say that they probably aren’t culpable because they don’t know better. Others are a little less certain of such a fact and will say that we can’t know if they are culpable or not given the widespread misinformation in our society or even within the Church.

However, if we don’t know if one is culpable or not, then doesn’t this mean that they might be culpable? Do we just excuse them, and let it slide? Aren’t we risking their souls by doing this? It seems to me that it would be better to assume that they are culpable and that if we are able to reach out to them with the truth, we must. The actions that we can take are left to prudential judgment, but excusing their sin cannot be an option. It has often been a thought of mine that excusing one’s sin is judging that person just as much as condemning them. A judgment made in a different direction is no less a judgment.

Even if we have strong reason to believe that a person is not culpable for a sin, we still have reason to do what we can to correct the disorder. Paragraph 1793 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that even an sinful act that one is not culpable for “remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder.” The Holy Father stated it another way in Veritatis Splendor, paragraph 63, by stating “It is never acceptable to confuse a subjective error about moral good with the objective truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience.”

So, why is it that so often we turn a blind eye to sins that are keeping our brothers and sisters from having the life God wants them to have? We do them no favor. In fact, we may be risking their souls.

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Personally Opposed . . . But, One More Time

  /   Sunday, September 19, 2004   /   Comments(0)

Dennis has posted about the unworkable nature of the “personally opposed . . . but” argument. After all, can one imagine Hitler saying that he was personally opposed to the slaughter of the Jews, but he can’t let his religious beliefs stand in the way of doing what he thought was “right for the country.” (Word to anyone looking for trouble: I, and nearly anyone who reads this blog knows that indeed what Hitler did was DEAD WRONG.). Few would argue in favor of that mass extermination of lives, but yet another mass killing happens right around us, one unborn child at a time, and few people give the east end of a west-bound rat about it.

Further, how can one be only personally opposed to a true evil? There are things that I personally wouldn’t do but wouldn’t tell others not to. However, those acts are not evil. If an act is evil, it remains evil whether someone else believes it or not. If something is only a matter of my personal preference, then I have no right to call it anything else but my preference.

Can you imagine the reaction of some of those same proponents of the “personally opposed . . . but theory” to any of the following had they happened:



Sadly, the logic of this is not likely to convince those who have set their hearts against the truth. Fr. Dave Pivonka, in his CD-set entitled Generation Why?, reminds us that one attribute of our generation is that we are not self-reflective. We do things based on what feels good to us rather than objective judgment.

Another thing that Fr. Pivonka mentions is how we have become desensitized to abortion. The reason the three above statements (or Dennis’ analogy) would outrage people today is that we can see the harm in them. There are many who really can’t see that abortion is the destruction of innocent life. There are still others who may understand that life is being destroyed but don’t see that it is really significant. This is true because the unborn have no voice of their own. This is why Christians everywhere must be their voice and champion their cause.

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Kerry Meets Steubenville

  /   Monday, September 13, 2004   /   Comments(0)

Last night, after hearing a great talk at Frassati Society, we brought up this little gem. For some strange reason, John Kerry decided he’d show up in Steubenville, Ohio on Saturday, September 4 to campaign. Needless to say, he got his due. There were at least 500 people there booing the living daylights out of him.

I can’t help but wonder what he was thinking. One friend of mine suggested that he probably wasn’t thinking at all. Something did occur to me later. As far as I can tell, neither Steubenville nor the orthodox Franciscan University are well-known outside of orthodox Catholic circles. I hadn’t heard of it until 1999, eight years after I became Catholic. Given that Kerry far from an orthodox Catholic (Well, actually, it would be a stretch to call him Catholic at all.), it isn’t inconceivable that he didn’t know about Franciscan University. I guess he knows now.

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Index of Forbidden Words

  /   Sunday, September 12, 2004   /   Comments(0)

An Index of Forbidden Words has been posted by Jeff Culbreath and Dale Price. These are the terms that should throw red flags when you hear them used by a supposedly Catholic speaker. However, they left an important word out. That word is “complex.”

Sometimes you hear this word as “very complex” or even “often misunderstood.” How do you see this? Find a local “liturgist” who doesn’t stick to the Liturgy. Then, show the appropriate citation from the GIRM. You will be told that Liturgy is very “complex” or that the texts are “often misunderstood.” Try this same thing with someone teaching heterodox morality. Show them the Catechism, and you will be told that these things are very “complex.”

In other words, you have to buy their books or go get a Ph.D. in order to even have the slightest grasps of any aspect of the Catholic Faith. Nah, that’s too difficult, so just do what they tell you to. They act as though they are so enlightened when what they really are is disobedient. Many may be so enlightened that they have no idea they are disobedient. As Cardinal Arinze once said “They don’t know that they don’t know.”

By the way, I agree with Dale Price’s dissent on a couple of Culbreath’s words, especially “universal call to holiness” and “abundant life.” While “abundant life” may be used by some people in left-field, it has an orthodox meaning as well. Also, rarely have I heard dissenters concern themselves with personal holiness. My experience has been that statements on the “universal call to holiness” have been more the product of Franciscan University of Steubenville than any dissenting organization. The dissenters are usually more concerned with misguided notions of justice.

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