Academic Priests Can Forget Ordinary Ministry

Too many priests are missing out on ordinary ministry, cardinal warns

Vatican City, Oct 13, 2008
(CNA).- The prefect for the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, warned this week that many priests dedicated to teaching forget or abandon ordinary ministry, in which the Word of God should be at the center.
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The Culture Of Death: The Politics Of Death

Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.

Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.

He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”

Pelosi drew U.S. bishops’ scorn for saying in a television interview last month that the Church itself had long debated when human life begins. Biden is a practicing Catholic who also supports abortion rights and analysts have said he could help woo wavering Catholics into Obama’s fold. Both argue that they cannot impose their religious views on others.

Burke said pro-life Democrats were “rare” and that it saddened him that the party that helped “our immigrant parents and grandparents” prosper in America had changed so much over the years.

Burke made headlines as archbishop of St. Louis for his public attacks on public figures who strayed from Catholic teaching. He suggested during the 2004 presidential campaign that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic, should be denied communion because of his views on abortion. Several bishops said at the time they would not give him communion and the media staked out churches where he attended Mass to see if he received it.

“Lately, I’ve noticed that other bishops are coming to this position,” Burke told Avvenire, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a letter in 2004 to American bishops restating the Church position that a priest must refuse to distribute communion to a Catholic politician who supported abortion rights. But Burke lamented that the letter was never distributed.

Burke’s criticism isn’t limited to Democrats. Last year, he accused singer Sheryl Crow of being “a high profile proponent of the destruction of innocent lives” for defending a woman’s right to have an abortion and for being a proponent of stem cell research. He resigned as head of a children’s medical charity that featured the singer for a benefit concert.

Pope Benedict has been encouraging Catholic bishops to speak out more openly on public policy issues to make the Church’s voice heard. Any bets on when we’ll hear from Burke next?

Link (here)

If Mass Were An EPCOT Parade

Thank you Fr. Ray Blake, this Mass is the one at the Los Angeles religious education conference, presided by Cardinal Roger Mahoney, view the video (here)

Cardinal Pell And The Holy Father At World Youth Day

Cappa Magna

Is it just me?
Gerald Warner
Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general. If it is an exaggeration to say that he believes the world has gone to the dogs, it is only a slight hyperbole.
Cappaphobia: mental disorder afflicting progressive Catholics

July 10, 2008
The stress of modern life is generating new kinds of mental illness, sometimes taking the form of irrational fear of certain objects. The latest example is an obscure disorder called cappaphobia. It is caused by cappa magna choralis and chiefly targets the elderly, many of whom may already be suffering from dementia. I first came across this clinical condition when shown a samizdat publication issued by a beleaguered group of progressive Catholics from an address in King Street Cloisters, which atmospherically evokes a huddled catacomb.

A letter to the editor began: "Seeing Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos vested in a cappa magna in Westminster Cathedral was a chilling experience."

An accompanying photograph, without even the health warning "May contain some flash vestments", illustrated the offending garment, a long train of scarlet moire silk being worn by Cardinal Castrillon at the celebration of the Tridentine Mass in Westminster Cathedral on June 14. The acute allergic reaction this vesture produces among cappaphobics should not be underestimated.

The cappa magna, a ceremonial cloak for cardinals and bishops, was first regularised in 1464. In 1952 Pius XII, in a misguided fit of radicalism, shortened the cardinalitial cappa from six yards to three.

That moment marked the beginning of the Church's downward trajectory. In 1969 Paul VI, in an orgy of vandalism reminiscent of the burning of patents of nobility in the French National Assembly in 1789, abolished the winter ermine hood on the cappa, along with the cardinals' galero hat, the red tabarro cape, buckled shoes and just about everything that compensated for the sacrifices Catholicism imposes on the faithful.

Now Benedict XVI, by resuming the ornamental half-sleeves on his soutane outlawed by Paul VI, has effectively signalled the repeal of the drabby sumptuary laws of 1969. This places cappaphobes at high risk of exposure.

Perhaps, on the lines of the pollen count warnings, there should be a cappa count. Jerusalem should be avoided, since the Latin Patriarch uniquely retains the ermined cappa. World Youth Day is likewise off limits since it is hosted by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, who flaunted a six-yard cappa at the last gathering. Rome might seem safe, since Paul VI forbade the cappa within the Eternal City.

Rumour has it, however, that Pope Benedict has commissioned a 30-piece set of baroque vestments modelled on those of Leo X, which could be equally traumatic.

A letter from another cappaphobe the following week, in the same publication, observed: "It would be interesting to know if the silk cappa magna worn by the cardinal could be sold for the poor in accordance with Jesus' instruction." There is a slight error in exegesis here. Jesus said, "The poor you have always with you"; the apostle who raised the bolshie question about selling the expensive balm with which Our Lord was being anointed was Judas Iscariot.

Link (here)