Via Domenico Bettinelli

Saints from Cory Heimann on Vimeo.

Musings of a Pertinacious Papist posts and article by Pieter Vrie from the New Oxford Review (with permission) that has some interesting insights into the apostolic visitation of U.S. women's religious orders

That a national leadership conference should be the subject of a doctrinal inquiry by the Holy See is "virtually unprecedented," says the always informative Vatican insider John L. Allen Jr. (National Catholic Reporter, May 1), because such tasks are commonly left to the competence of national bishops' conferences. Moreover, that the CDF, the highest doctrinal office in the Church, is spearheading the investigation -- as opposed to the CICLSAL, which has jurisdiction over religious orders -- suggests that Rome has grave concerns about the theological currents emanating from the LCWR's assemblies. Here is one instance in which Benedict's curious selection of William Cardinal Levada as prefect of the CDF will be of benefit: The American cardinal should have no trouble decoding "nuance" in the LCWR material to be scrutinized.

The rampant dissent in religious orders is not exactly a well kept secret. These religious communities were unable to correct since their leadership had succumbed to the same disease for the most part. The U.S. Bishops also failed to act and to do anything meaningful in this regard. It is too bad the Vatican had to step in and that says a lot.

Seems a bit blunt, but the truth is often that way. Though we must not forget the blossoming of religious life that are built of rock and not the shaky ground warned about. Where Christ and his Church is loved we have wonderful examples. Or course what is true for religious life is true for all of us. The guilty conscience of the LCWR will decry this as an inquisition, though I am sure wolves aren't happy either when the shepherds show up.

Yesterday D. G. D. Davidson of The Sci Fi Catholic announced that he had been accepted to the seminary and will be attending during the fall. He will make a great priest and explains some of the reasons why he is discerning the call.

Power. Over you, specifically. One aspect of the priesthood has a particular appeal to me, and that's the ability to exert control over superstitious parishioners via their deceased loved ones. If you don't do what I say, or give me sufficient money, I'll have the ability to cast your dead relatives from purgatory into hell. Think about that for a minute and then tell me who wouldn't want to be a priest.

Wealth. Speaking of sufficient money, we all know the Vatican has gigantic vats full of it, so much that if the Church only opened her greedy coffers, she could instantly solve all the world's problems with her enormous monetary assets and still have enough left over to fund an ill-fated space program involving flying cathedrals and confused nuns. Fortunately, she's not going to do that, because every good bishop knows money was made for swimming in, Scrooge McDuck style. As a mere priest I won't have a big vat of moolah like the pope, but I'm sure I can acquire a small bathtub full, which is sufficient for my modest needs.

Influence. As a priest, I might be able to speed up the process of the canonization of Isaac Leibowitz. I mean, let's get this show on the road here. What's taking so long?

He really gets the priesthood and of course trying to get a fictional character in a class SF novel canonized would be great. He also lists other great reasons.

Yesterday D. G. D. Davidson of The Sci Fi Catholic announced that he had been accepted to the seminary and will be attending during the fall. He will make a great priest and explains some of the reasons why he is discerning the call.

Power. Over you, specifically. One aspect of the priesthood has a particular appeal to me, and that's the ability to exert control over superstitious parishioners via their deceased loved ones. If you don't do what I say, or give me sufficient money, I'll have the ability to cast your dead relatives from purgatory into hell. Think about that for a minute and then tell me who wouldn't want to be a priest.

Wealth. Speaking of sufficient money, we all know the Vatican has gigantic vats full of it, so much that if the Church only opened her greedy coffers, she could instantly solve all the world's problems with her enormous monetary assets and still have enough left over to fund an ill-fated space program involving flying cathedrals and confused nuns. Fortunately, she's not going to do that, because every good bishop knows money was made for swimming in, Scrooge McDuck style. As a mere priest I won't have a big vat of moolah like the pope, but I'm sure I can acquire a small bathtub full, which is sufficient for my modest needs.

Influence. As a priest, I might be able to speed up the process of the canonization of Isaac Leibowitz. I mean, let's get this show on the road here. What's taking so long?

He really gets the priesthood and of course trying to get a fictional character in a class SF novel canonized would be great. He also lists other great reasons.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama has named Douglas Kmiec, the Pepperdine University law professor who has become a key impediment to pro-life Catholics as the ambassador to Malta. The move is sure to spark opposition in Catholic circles given Malta's strongly pro-life stance.

Kmiec became the main Catholic cheerleader for the Obama campaign during the 2008 presidential election and his ringing endorsements of the aggressive abortion advocate drew scorn nationwide.

Kmiec has continued defending Obama despite his moves to force taxpayers to fund both abortions and embryonic stem cell research that destroys human life. And he has come to the defense of Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnson, who has compared pregnancy to slavery and is a former lawyer for a pro-abortion group.

He was denied communion last year during a meeting of Catholic business leaders because of his endorsement and repeated campaigning for Obama.

Obama will nominate Kmiec as the ambassador to the Catholic country that is a small Mediterranean island just south of Italy. The decision requires approval from the Senate, which is expected even though his defense of Obama's pro-abortion views may cost him some votes.[reference]

Hopefully Kmiec will learn something from this 98% Catholic country which does not have legalized abortion.

On Twitter I quipped:

"If pro-aborts call abortion "termination", then why don't they call abortion doctors 'terminators'?

Someone else responded wondering if these Terminators say "Hasta la vista, baby" - rather appropriate in a twisted scary way.

These terminators disguised as doctors are much more murderous than those robots from the future. SkyNet dreams of being as efficient in killing off humans as the Culture of Death is. These terminator's go after more than Sarah Connor's and her son. They are rather open to just about anybody. Terminator robots come into present naked. Terminator doctors keep children from being born into the world naked. Though the biggest difference is that we must pray for these terminators.

I don't get too many negative emails. Though when I do they are usually from some tolerant open-minded liberal Catholic. Today I got a good laugh when I opened up one email that started.

I happened to run across your misguided, fanatical website which condemns the Rev. Deb Halter for leaving the Roman Catholic church and writing about it in National Catholic Reporter.

Someone suggested I add "misguided, fanatical website" to my site's metadata tag after I posted this opening line on Twitter. Surely the author has read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" with such a charming intro.

You need to understand that you shouldn't criticize someone unless you've been in their shoes, ...

I was wondering where my shoes were. I guess the author of the email must have gone off walking in them. Though this is a very common thread in emails I do get from liberal Catholics in that I am taken to task for judging or criticizing someone while they are judging or criticizing me. The guy goes on to call me a "Yahoo". They will quote "Thou shalt not judge" while at the same time judging my motives and then insulting me.

Now I don't mind criticism when it is in the area of ideas. I try for the most part to make my commentary about ideas and actions and not resorting to making personal attacks on people. G.K. Chesterton managed to make sharp criticisms of his friends ideas while still remaining friend with them - that is my model. The article my emailer seemed to be upset about I think I did just that and then asked my readers to "pray for her." Pretty mean I guess.

By the way this is the last day of voting in the Catholic New Media Awards, so vote for your favorite blog, website, podcast.

I have been working closely with ACORN to get the vote out.

You often hear supporters of abortion say that they are not "pro-abortion" While this makes no sense when they do in fact support a women being able to choose abortion, it is true on one level.

If tomorrow a 100 percent perfect form of contraception became available and realistically the option for abortion was never needed they would not mourn the loss of chemical or surgical abortion. In fact what they would like is if each women had a switch where her fertility could be turned off and off as desired. Mostly they would want this switch in the off position and in fact to be comparable to a switch on a aircraft that launches rockets. That is lots of warning and break-wire to make sure it was not tripped accidentally. The culture of death would not be too concerned if this perfect form of contraception was not entirely free of side effects. This has never been too much of a concern for them, though no doubt they would prefer it to be so.

No what the supporters of abortion are is anti-child. A child should never result unless they have deemed the timing perfectly convenient and that the child is 100 percent willed. They are open to life only on their terms and a gift of a child is a gift that should be returned or best never received at all. The sexual act must be totally divorced from the natural consequences unless directly willed. The old "Every child a wanted child." Of course they never take into account that this is not the fault of the child, but of their will. They should directly will that any child they have is wanted.

One of the greatest evils of our age is the promotion of sex as not being only in the context of marital relations and the related divorce of procreation from the marital act. So many errors flow from this. Once this attitude is taken then when a child naturally results it must be suppressed for the sin of inconvenience. The human child then becomes not a person, but an intrusion that must be eliminated if possible. Once the contraceptive mentality is accepted it will then go on to excuse any evil act. Children must be prevented by any means possible. But if you choose to have a child then it is often in the context of a family quota. Children are okay when you are ready, but not too many. I was certainly guilty of this attitude and thought after one boy and one girl, that's it. It is pure selfishness and an act of control not love.

No surprise that family life is in such decline. Sin is in the will and we have willed wanting control and not giving of our selves. A child becomes a spreadsheet representing rows and columns of costs. A child will deprive me of doing or buying such and such. Can we be surprised at ramped divorce in a culture of selfishness? Abortion just means that we will murder the innocent to maintain our selfishness.

Dr. Paul Camarata of the SaintCast continues to crack me up.

For me iBrievary using my iPod Touch has replaced my 4 volume set of the Liturgy of the Hours. Just so convenient and in multiple languages.

Alphonse is the story of eight lives that intersect because of an attempted abortion. Why "attempted?" Because while there are no angels or demons on either side, there is definitely a monster in the middle: Alphonse.

Rendered "grotesquely abnormal" by his unwitting mother's use of controlled substances, he is both sentient and freakishly coordinated. He is also deeply wounded, twisted by fear and rage after the attempt on his life - and bent on revenge.

But violence begets violence. Alphonse is pursued even as he is pursuing, and haunted by the insistence of his only friend that there is another way...

Thus is the premise for Alphonse: Untimely Ripp'd, the first issue in a five-issue comic miniseries from writer Matthew Lickona and artist Chris Gugliotti. Matthew Lickona is known for his book "Swimming with Scapulars" and I must say I am impressed with the first issue of this graphic novel. Probably isn't for everybody since it is kind of a firm noir graphic novel, but I found the story so far quite interesting and not what you would expect. Available at alphonsecomic.com

Caritas Christi Health Care, the financially challenged Catholic hospital system founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, is abruptly ending its joint venture with a Missouri-based health insurer at the insistence of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who has decided that the relationship represented too much of an entanglement between Catholic hospitals and abortion providers.

The dramatic development, just days before the joint venture was scheduled to start providing care to low-income residents as part of the state's efforts to establish near universal health coverage here, is a vindication of sorts for a variety of very conservative Catholic critics of the cardinal, who have been arguing angrily and loudly that it would be "evil" for Caritas to partner with a health provider that covers abortion services.

The newspaper had to get that bit in and blame critics who were quite upset with a cooperation with evil that I would certainly would not class as only remote material cooperation. I am quite thankful for those critics who held the Archdiocese's feet to the fire and that Cardinal O'Malley did the right thing.

In keeping with the ethical directives that bind Catholic hospitals, Caritas hospitals will not provide abortion or sterilizations. Caritas already refers privately-insured patients who seek such services to their insurance providers, and will do the same with state-insured patients. (Caritas spelled out its practices for handling Catholic ethical teachings in a statement June 11.)

The previous statement contains this:

Dr. Ralphe de la Torre, President of Caritas Christ, stated that "when a a patient seeks such a procedure, Caritas health care professionals will be clear that (a) the hospital does not perform them and (b) the patient must turn to his or her insurer for further guidance. ..."

Such an approach seems odd to me. "Hey we don't abort or sterilize, buy hey talk to your insurer." Yes the paramount of moral guidance the insurer. Though if only they would not shell out for such evil. They should really be on our side just to save some money. Maybe I am naive, but can't a Catholic hospital give some moral guidance on this instead of shoving them off to the insurers? Or is this protection to keep from getting sued?

Regardless Cardinal O'Malley did what needed to be done.