News

Zhengding (AsiaNews) – More than a thousand underground Catholics defied police controls to meet in a church in Wuqiu (Hebei) to celebrate mass on the feast day of the Assumption of Mary with their bishop, Julius Jia Zhiguo, who has been under house arrest and police surveillance around the clock. Sources told AsiaNews however that the bishop is isolated and that priests and seminarians cannot see him in person. Monsignor Jia is bishop of the underground diocese of Zhengding (Hebei), which has more than 110,000 Catholics with 80 priests and more than 90 nuns.

For the Olympics public security officers warned Catholics in the diocese not to celebrate the feast in Wuqiu cathedral. Prelates and priests were placed instead under house arrest.

Mgr Jia Zhiguo himself has been under police surveillance around the clock since April. The police even build a small house in front of the bishop’s residence just to monitor him.

The solemnity of the Assumption is a major Catholic celebration in China. At least a thousand faithful peacefully flocked to the church in Wuqiu in defiance of police order.

The bishop’s residence is located just beside the place of worship.

To avoid conflict and other problems, the public security officers monitoring the cathedral allowed the large crowd to go in. The officers did not follow them into the church but maintained order in the courtyard.

The bishop was thus able to celebrate mass with the faithful.

Sources in Zhengding told AsiaNews that the bishop remains in isolation and cannot see or meet his seminarians or priests.

Jennifer M. Hasselberger’s who was the bishop’s delegate for canonical affairs of the Diocese of Fargo, N.D., will join the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as chancellor for canonical affairs on Aug. 18. There was some comments about this and a supposed connection between her and Rent-a-Priest. A reader sent me the following info.

The topic of my JCL thesis (licentiate in canon law) was movements of validly ordained Roman Catholic priests who had left ministry with the Catholic Church and were attempting to offer sacramental ministry outside of the structures of the church. I wrote the thesis at a time when penal law was an increasingly important process, and the argument was that formal canonical action needed to be taken against these men, many of whom simply walked away from active ministry without ever having been formally suspended, etc.

In the process of researching this topic, I sought information from the organization ‘Rent A Priest’. They later requested (I think from my university) a copy of my thesis and have used selective quotations as a justification for their cause.

However, my thesis was not in any way an endorsement of married or suspended clergy exercising ministry. The statement that is generating so much interest is one that is simply a canonical truth- once validly ordained, a priest never loses the grace of ordination. Therefore, in emergency situations, even a laicized priest retains the right to administer the sacraments.

In my thesis I was very critical of organizations like the Rent A Priests, who take that principle of law (which is meant to protect the right of the faithful to have access to the sacraments, especially in danger of death situations), and use it in an attempt to justify their ministry. I argued that their stated position that a priest-shortage, or the possibility of a closed parish, makes their return to ministry (outside of the Catholic Church) legitimate (a closed parish equaling an emergency situation), is a willful misinterpretation of the letter and spirit of the law. I went on to say that only some of the sacraments that they offer are valid, as others (like marriage) are only valid when they are offered by someone with the faculties and permission of the local ordinary.

The Rent A Priests have had that quotation on their website for years, and I have never attempted to have it removed largely because the wisdom of many dioceses has been that we only look bad when trying to take them on. It has never been a problem for me, and I am certain that there would be no issue if the people who are so upset would read the thesis rather then the Rent a Priest website. They should consider their source!

When it comes to Rent-a-Priest it is the rule of thumb that they are willing to lie and take things out of context to justify their work.

ORANGE PARK, FL — After Robert Powell hit the Florida Lottery jackpot last month and took home more than $6 million, he thought of his church.

And he offered to drop his tithe, around $600,000, in the collection plate of First Baptist Orange Park.

But the church and Pastor David Tarkington politely declined and told Powell they will not accept the lottery winnings.

Hey Mr. Powell have you considered crossing the Tiber? Donations from lottery money, hey we’re down with that (with the caveat expressed in CCC 2413).

The Catholic Diocese of Dallas warned parishioners Monday that a man appears to be posing as a bishop and charging up to $200 to perform illegitimate sacraments at Dallas area hotels.

At least four people have called local parishes during the past month after becoming suspicious of a man who claimed to be a Mexican bishop and charged $100 to $200 to perform the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion.

Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas said the Archbishop of Acapulco, Mexico reported that a man named Martin Davila Gandara may be operating in the Dallas area.

Law and Order or other shows

Congratulations to Greg and Jennifer of
the Rosary
Army apostolate and podcast since they will be hosting a
three hour show five days a week on Sirius Radio in September.
 Good decision Sirius.  I have long been a fan of
their show and got to briefly meet Greg at the Catholic New Media
Celebration in Atlanta. The show will be called “The Catholics Next
Door.” Though secularists might think this sounds like a Wes Craven
film.

Carson Weber let me know that there is a
new blog to support RCIA team members called simply “The Blog
That’s All About R.C.I.A.” Looks quite solid. 

When Jean at Catholic Fire
emailed me today that her blog had been marked as spam I didn’t realize
how widespread this was.  The Anchoress reports that the same
thing has happened to Happy Catholic, Deacons Bench,
and the Paragraph
Farmer.  So it looks like there is some effort to
take down some of my favorite blogs on blogspot.  The blogs
still show up, but the authors are locked out from updating and must
file a report with Google to get someone to look at their blog first
which takes a while. It does make me glad that I host my own blog instead of being at the whim of Google.

Not long ago there was a concerted effort
to take down pro-Hillary blogs likely from Obama supporters and this
has also been happening to other conservative blogs.

I was always rather dubious of the Flag
Blog button at the top of blogspot blogs and was a reply to the
spammers who poison everything. Though in this case Google treats you
as guilty until proven innocent.  Some bloggers who suffered
this problem moved to wordpress.com.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

Update: Nice to find out that this was just a glitch that happened throughout blogspot blogs. Sometimes it is too easy to jump to conclusions.

Thomas Peters posts that Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit is
hosting a special one-day conference to celebrate the 40th Anniversary
of Humanae Vitae on September 20th.

Speakers include internationally-known theologians Dr. Janet Smith and
Dr. Michael Waldstein. Most Rev. Robert Carlson of Saginaw will be the
Mass celebrant and homilist.

I’ve attached the official press release as a word file. For
convenience, I’ve also posted these materials online in a blog post.
The official website is here. They are already accepting online
registrations.

A prophet is not respected in his own
Country and when it came to Pope Paul VI, a prophet is not much
respected in his own Church.  Today is the 40th anniversary of
Humanae Vitae and sadly every prediction that Pope Paul VI made have
come true. We hear so many people today who say they have a prophetic
voice and they are almost always the same ones who have ignored the
prophetic voice of the Church.  The real prophets always
preached a message that was out-of-touch with the society, which was
why they had to preach it in the first place.  An easy general
test for false prophets is if you do not have to change anything to
conform to their message then they are a false prophet.  The
false prophets of today have the same message that the false prophets
in Ahab’s day did, that is to tell him “everything is going fine.”
 The false prophets of today see the breakdown of
marriage, family, and the treatment of women and then demand
that have more of the same that lead to the problems in the first
place.  The hubris of false prophets prevents them from being
embarrased that all the predictions they made on wide availibility of
contraception were not only incorrect, but exactly contrary to what
they said.  Every child a wanted child has turned into every
child is wanted by an abortionist.

Mary Eberstadt has written a great essay
in First Things the Vindication of Humanae Vitae which
goes through the predictions and concequences and uses secular sources
to back this up.  A real worthwhile read.

Marcel LeJeune has commented on the above
article with some good commenary.

In addition Joseph Bottum adds his own thoughts.