The Holy Father is always an amazing homilist, but his Easter Vigil homily is just so good. Almost every part of it struck me with his insights. The way he looks at the creation account really opens it up along with his talking about the real darkness of evil, especially a scientism with a blinded moral vision. Just read it.
Logos Bible Software continues to add great stuff for Catholics:
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Some very fine writing from Pat Archbold.
My son doesn’t look anything like Trayvon Martin, the boy so tragically killed in Florida. My son also doesn’t look anything like George Zimmerman, the man who shot him.
Does that mean that I shouldn’t care about either of them since they don’t look like me or my sons? President Obama seems to suggest so.
President Obama, ostensibly commenting on the Trayvon Martin case, but actually commenting on himself, both inadvertently and advertently, said “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” and suggested that the entire nation needed to do some “soul searching.”President Obama, unlike the rest of us mortals, seems to have some magic insight into the motivation and reason for this tragedy and he doesn’t like what he sees. So the remedy he prescribes is that we, and by we I assume he means those folks that don’t look like Trayvon or Mr. Zimmerman for that matter, that we look down deep and figure out what is so wrong with us, wrong with me, that I caused two people who don’t look like me and that live 1200 miles away from me to get into an altercation leaving one of them dead.
But here is the thing. I care about Trayvon. I care about Trayvon even though he doesn’t look anything like me or my boys. I care about justice and justice requires that I don’t assume that I know Mr. Zimmerman’s mind that night just because he doesn’t look like me. Maybe he followed Trayvon because he was black and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he caused the altercation that ended in tragedy and maybe he didn’t. The Police didn’t think so.
Maybe the Police in this case are complete incompetents, maybe they are racists, and maybe they’re not. It is hard for me to judge. It is hard to judge, not because I don’t have any relevant facts upon which to base a sound judgment, no. By Mr. Obama’s logic, it is hard to judge the Police in this case because I don’t know if they look like me or my boys.
This is the problem with viewing things through a racial lens in that we narrow down tragedies to a scope we concern ourselves with instead we should have a “human race card” and pray for all.
Read more:
A very worthwhile piece from George Weigel.
In May 1953, the Polish government ordered the implementation of a decree giving the state the authority to appoint and remove Catholic priests and bishops throughout the country: The Catholic Church was to become a subsidiary of the Polish state; its clergy would act as agents of state power; and its educational and charitable activities would be approved (or rejected) by a state intent on bringing the most important institution in Polish civil society to heel. The bishops of Poland, who had tried for years to find a modus vivendi with the Communist regime, now drew the line. Meeting in Kraków under the leadership of the country’s primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, the Polish episcopate issued a memorandum deploring the government’s attempt to turn the Church “into an instrument of the state” as a violation of the natures of both church and state. The memorandum concluded memorably: “We are not allowed to place the things of God on the altar of Caesar, Non possumus! [We cannot!].”
He then goes one to write:
Americans accustomed to religious freedom may, at first blush, find it hard to imagine any possible analogy between our situation today, in the midst of the debate over the HHS “contraceptive mandate,” and that of Poland’s Christians in 1953; of course those brave men and women faced challenges far beyond those facing American believers today. Yet the structure of the moral and political argument, then and now, is eerily similar. In both cases, an overweening and arrogant government tries, through the use of coercive power, to make the Church a subsidiary of the state. In both cases, the state claims the authority to define religious ministries and services on its own narrow and secularist terms. In both cases, the state is attempting to co-opt as much of society as it can, while the Church is defending the prerogatives of civil society.
The USCCB’s latest statement on the HHS mandate is quite good. It makes the correct points without falling into rabbit holes and tries to fill some of those holes along the way. If we were arguing with people trying to make rational judgments it would go along way. Since that is not the case the points will be ignored and countered with intellectual folly.
This letter appears on America magazines in response to their own previous article defending the attack on religious freedom by the Obama administration and will appear later in the print edition.
The March 5th America editorial takes the United States Bishops to task for entering too deeply into the finer points of health care policy as they ponder what the slightly revised Obama Administration mandate might mean for the Catholic Church in the United States. These details, we are told, do not impinge on religious liberty. We are also told that our recent forthright language borders on incivility.
What details are we talking about? For one thing, a government mandate to insure, one way or another, for an abortifacient drug called Ella. Here the “details” would seem to be fertilized ova, small defenseless human beings, who will likely suffer abortion within the purview of a church-run health insurance program.
What other details are at issue? Some may think that the government’s forcing the Church to provide insurance coverage for direct surgical sterilizations such as tubal ligations is a matter of policy. Such force, though, feels an awful lot like an infringement on religious liberty.
Still another detail is ordinary contraception. Never mind that the dire societal ills which Pope Paul predicted would ensue with the widespread practice of artificial contraception have more than come true. The government makes the rules and the rules are the rules. So, the bishops should regard providing (and paying for) contraception as, well, a policy detail. After all, it’s not like the federal government is asking bishops to deny the divinity of Christ. It’s just a detail in a moral theology—life and love, or something such as that. And why worry about other ways the government may soon require the Church to violate its teachings as a matter of policy?
More details come to mind. Many if not most church entities are self-insured. Thus, Catholic social service agencies, schools, and hospitals could end up paying for abortifacients, sterilizations, and contraception. If the editorial is to be believed, bishops should regard it not as a matter of religious liberty but merely policy that, as providers they teach one thing but as employers they are made to teach something else. In other words, we are forced to be a countersign to Church teaching and to give people plenty of reason not to follow it. The detail in question here is called “scandal”.
Then there is the detail of religious insurers and companies that are not owned by the Church but which exist solely to serve the Church’s mission. The new “accommodation” leaves them out in the cold. And if I really wanted to get into the weeds I’d mention the conscience rights of individual employers.
Have I forgotten any other details we bishops shouldn’t be attending to? Well, I guess we’re policy wonks for wondering if the government has a compelling interest in forcing the Church to insure for proscribed services when contraception is covered in 90% of healthcare plans, is free in Title X programs, and is available from Walmart (generic) for about $10 a month. Pardon me also for wondering whether the most basic of freedoms, religious liberty, isn’t being compromised, not by a right to health care, but by a claim to “services” which regard pregnancy and fertility as diseases.
And didn’t President Obama promise adequate conscience protection in the reform of healthcare? But maybe it’s inappropriate for pastors of souls to ask why the entirely adequate accommodation of religious rights in healthcare matters that has existed in federal law since 1973 is now being changed.
Oh, and as Detective Colombo used to say: “Just one more thing.” It’s the comment in the editorial about when we bishops are at our best. Evidently, it’s when we speak generalities softly and go along to get along, even though for the first time in history the federal government is forcing church entities to provide for things that contradict church teaching. Maybe Moses wasn’t at his best when he confronted Pharaoh. Maybe the Good Shepherd was a bit off his game when he confronted the rulers of his day.
But those are just details.
Most Reverend William E. Lori
Bishop of Bridgeport
Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty
Simply the best video I have seen on the HHS mandate.
The presentation and the production values of this video are superb, and if something deserves to go viral this is certainly it. The use of humor along with a serious message is just perfect.
Fr. Leo Patalinghug gave the keynote speech at the first Catholic New Media Celebration and I was quite impressed by him. That he also later went on to beat Bobby Flay on a throwdown, is impressive. But this is even more impressive as far as I am concerned.
More like this please.
From the estimable Ironic Catholic an idea I wish I had though of :
Of course there is a lot of buy in for this idea from the media in general.