Punditry

WASHINGTON – Many people like to stop and play with newborn babies, but now some adult women are playing house with fake babies.

Some women are even going as far as taking day trips with the fake babies to the park, out to eat, and even hosting birthday parties for them.

Forty-nine-year-old Linda is married with no children of her own. Now, she says she feels like a mother because she has Reborns — dolls made to look and feel like the real thing.

“It’s not a crazy habit, like, you know, drinking, or some sort of, something that’s going to hurt you. It’s like a hobby.and it doesn’t really hurt anybody,” Linda said.
These women are paying big bucks for this hobby, from $100 to a few thousand dollars. For Reborn owner Lachelle Moore, the fake babies fill a void.

“What’s so wonderful about Reborns is that, um, they’re forever babies,” said Moore, who has grown children and grandchildren. “There’s no college tuition, no dirty diapers… just the good part of motherhood,” she added.

In her Kansas City home, Moore even has an elaborate room for the dolls. She organizes birthday parties, bakes a cake and even invites guests.

Psychologists say there could be a problem if and when these women stop interacting socially with others in their life.

Psychologists say there could be a problem if … Thus sayeth the culture of death. I must say that my reaction to this story is that it creeps me out. Our society’s view of children as an inconvenience is bad enough and when a natural instinct towards motherhood is diverted in such a way the distortion is made more evident. Children now are seen as a resource-monger, as something that takes away from what you have. The comedian Gallagher and notorious watermelon smasher use to illustrate parenthood by putting a diaper on an anchor. I thought this pretty funny at the time when I was a young father myself, but this bit of comedy is now seen a the reality of parenthood and all of the joys of such mostly ignored.

Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, in the heart of San Francisco’s gay Castro community, was vandalized over the weekend by opponents of Proposition 8, the California resolution passed by voters in November that rejected gay marriage. Swastikas were painted on the church and the names Ratzinger (referring to Pope Benedict XVI) and Niederauer (the San Francisco Archbishop) were scrawled besides the Nazi symbol.

So you pander to homosexuals and become the most gay-friendly Catholic church in San Francisco and have at least five “married” men on staff and what do you get – vandalized. Bishop Niederauer gave Communion to men in drag and members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and wrote a rather weak letter to the homosexual community almost apologizing for Prop 8 and he gets labeled a Nazi. You just can’t win when it comes to homosexual activists.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is asking Catholics nationwide to respond to this incident:

“In the wake of Proposition 8, innocent persons have been assaulted, churches have been vandalized, a white substance resembling anthrax was sent to the Knights of Columbus and to Mormon temples, supporters of traditional marriage have been branded Nazis, African Americans have been called the ‘N-word,’ houses and cars have been trashed, etc. Unfortunately, most of those in the gay community have been silent about these acts.

“Part of the blame for the latest attack goes to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Both Newsom and the Board have shown nothing but contempt for the First Amendment rights of Catholics. When crucifixes are sold as sex toys and Catholic sensibilities are assaulted by naked men in the street at the annual Folsom Street Fair, they say nothing. When gay men dressed as nuns show up at Mass-at the same church-they say nothing. But the Board was quite vocal about condemning the Catholic Church in 2006, something which led to a lawsuit triggered by the Catholic League and the Thomas More Law Center.

“For those who love to write about ‘root causes,’ let them ponder the guilt of these public officials. Moreover, leaders in the gay community show no leadership when it comes to denouncing incivility committed in the name of gay rights. This has got to end.”

Contact Mayor Gavin Newsom and ask him to finally condemn gay assaults on Catholics and other people of faith:

Using just anecdotal evidence I wonder if today’s Holy Day of Obligation is the least attended. Year after year no matter what parish I might go to on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God there is but half the people there you would see on a Sunday or some other Holy Day of Obligation.

I guess sleeping in after partying all night is preferable to actually honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary on her feast. Yeah it’s gravely sinful to miss Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation without serious reason – and a hangover is not one of them. The idea that missing Mass is gravely sinful is certainly not something you hear much anymore since it is one of those things that went-out-with-Vatican-II-but-didn’t-really-go-out-with-Vatican-II.

The parish I went to today is usually so packed on Sundays and other Holy Days of Obligation that you have to park in satellite parking and they have a couple of dedicated vehicles that can carry 40 some people to the front entrance. Today though no problem parking with plenty of empty spaces near the main entrance. I would be curious if this is something my readers have observed.

The lack of attendance only give bishop’s credence for transferring feast days to the nearest Sunday, a practice I abhor.

SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 30 (UPI) — A teacher at a Roman Catholic school in San Antonio fired after she married a divorced man has filed a federal discrimination complaint.

The principal of Central Catholic High School urged Marquis LaFortune, 25, a week before her wedding in November to resign or to have her husband-to-be seek an annulment of his first marriage, options she turned down. She told the San Antonio Express-News that the firing took some of the joy out of the preparations for the marriage.

“I would have resigned if I’d felt like I’d done something wrong,” she said. “I couldn’t get out of bed. It’s just been this cloud. It was supposed to be the best week of my life, and I had to pull myself together for the ceremony.”[article]

“I would have resigned if I’d felt like I’d done something wrong,” – because how you “feel” about it is important.

LaFortune has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Catholic Church is an equal opportunity employer and anybody who teaches in a Catholic school and tries to get remarried should be fired.

School officials learned of her fiance’s marital status from an article in The Pep, the school’s newspaper. She helped manage the paper.

Doh!

CAIRO – Egypt’s Coptic pope has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in, a newspaper reported on Friday.
“Confessions over the telephone are forbidden, because there is a chance the telephones are monitored and the confessions will reach state security,” the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted Pope Shenuda III as saying.
The leader of the Coptic minority also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read by websurfers.
“A confession over the Internet does not count as a confession, because everybody can look at it and it won’t be secret,” he said.

The Catholic Church’s reasons for not allowing confessions over distances is rooted in her sacramental theology. Every Sacrament is a personal encounter with the Lord in and through the person of the minister. In the Gospels every act of forgiveness was personal with the person present to him (with healing this was not always so.)

The type of reasoning above overlooks the fact that a confessional booth could be bugged and there was the case where a sacramental confession heard in prison was taped. In those cases of listening in would certainly not invalidate the confession, though it is certainly sinful and those people would be bound by the seal of confession. The same goes for an especially loud penitent when you can accidentally overhear a confession while waiting in line, in that case you would be bound to the seal of confession.

The sacrament of confession, also practiced by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, is normally a very private conversation between penitent and priest.

Unlike Roman Catholic confessions, Coptic confessions are done face to face.

Well actually Catholics can confess face to face also, though they always have the right to confess anonymously behind a protective screen.

Coptic Patriarch Anba Morcos said that people have begun to phone in their confessions.

“It’s a new thing; it’s been happening for the past four or five years,” he said.

That is rather odd that the question is just being addressed now. The Catholic Church answered the question shortly after the telephone was invented. Some people wondered again about this after the internet became popular, but the questions was really already answered. It is not about something being overheard or spied upon because you could use PGP encryption on both ends via email and have a higher chance of security than inside of a confessional. Confession like all of the sacraments is a personal encounter with Christ .

Morcos added that Pope Shenuda has also banned monks in Coptic monasteries from using cell phones.

Of course any personal telephone including a landline the monk used would be “cell” phone by definition.

Teresa Benedetta has translated what the Pope recently said on Monday

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man’s self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God’s work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’ effectively results in man’s self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony – which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman – as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

And then Reuters and other news agencies translated his speech into something quite different.

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 22 (Reuters) – Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the Pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration. [The Pope clearly says saving man ‘from the destruction of himself’, not from gays, nor saving ‘gays’ or homosexuals, or any other way of parsing his statement uncharitably and erroneously.]

“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”

The Pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”

He also defended the Church’s right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.”

Got that. Defending marriage most beatifically is an attack on people who have same-sex attraction or gender confusion. The media has the charism of infallibility when it comes to reporting what the Pope did not say.

I can just imagine the typical reporter reading what the Pope said. First they would come across the comparison using ecology and think “darn, no headline there” and then come to the part on “between a man and a women” and the pink triangle alarm bells went off with them shouting “stop the presses!” or whatever term is used today.

A reader sent me a link to this article.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton has suggested it is not a good idea to go to Confession regularly.

The bishop made the comment in a frank interview with The Catholic Herald in which he defended “green” youth liturgies and said Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that forbade married couples from using contraception, “could be” wrong because it was not infallible teaching.

Doesn’t it just warm your hearts to know that there are bishops who doesn’t know the difference between the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Magisterium? Hey the Church has never made an infallible definition on infanticide, racism, or genocide so your thinking that these are immoral “might be” wrong.

When asked if he thought regular Confession was a good idea, the bishop said: “No, because my own experience when we had Confession every day at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham was that regular penitents came back with exactly the same words week after week. So there you would say, actually, there is no conversion taking place.”

Concerning the grace you receive in sacramental confession – fuggetaboutit! If you are not instantly cured from habitual sin there is no reason to keep trying. We should be able to give a good confession, receive absolution, and then be canonized! Otherwise no conversion is taking place and we should just give up if we have the same laundry list of sins from week to week.

Now we certainly require the proper disposition to more fully receive the fruits of the sacrament of confession. That certainly even with frequent reception of this sacrament that we can block grace and being complacent by not really preparing ourselves for grace and acting on the grace given.

I do find it odd that those who seem to have a problem with frequent reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the same time don’t seem to have a problem with everyone going to Communion. The Eucharist is a power hose of the sacraments and since the world isn’t brimming with saints I guess “no conversion” is taking place and we should stop having frequent reception of the Eucharist by this logic.

I also noticed he mentioning of using to have daily confession. I guess there like so many places in the world now that I guess people are not sinning anymore and so don’t need more access to the sacrament.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church encourages regular Confession but says that Catholics are only required to confess once a year.

Bishop Conry also suggested that there should be a greater emphasis on charity rather than on contraception.

“The birth control issue becomes easy because it’s measurable. You do it or you don’t do it. But love: you do it or you don’t do it, how can you measure that? We fight the easy battles but we ignore the bigger ones,” he said.

How about both/and here and beside contraception is not opposed to charity. It is a lack of charity that leads to contraception in the first place. The view that a potential child is a nuisance is about as uncharitable as they come. Being open to the gift of children is both charitable and an act of responding to God’s will. And as for “a greater emphasis on charity rather than on contraception” – it would be hard to have a lesser emphasis on something than contraception from the pulpit. Contraception has become the Lord Voldemort of sins. “The-Sin-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

But Bishop Conry criticised environmentalists who attacked the Church’s teaching on contraception.
He said: “You get people like George Monbiot saying: ‘If the Pope changes his position tomorrow, the world would be rid of the scourge of Aids.’ He’s talking nonsense.”

Exactly right.

On the traditional Latin Mass the bishop said he thought it was “a bit over the top” but that he had never tried to restrict it in any way.

He said that traditionalists in England and Wales were “a small group of very vocal people” and that Summorum Pontificum, which allowed priests to celebrate the traditional Mass without the permission of a bishop, did not introduce “significant change”.

Bishop Conry, who is supervising youth ministry after the closure of Catholic Youth Services, also said the Church had to speak to young people in their own language.

He argued that talking about faith in the context of climate change was likely to be more effective than addressing salvation or repentance.

“You can’t talk to young people about salvation,” he said. “What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people’s language. If you’re going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet.”

Yeah young people can’t handle the Gospel. This is exactly the type of thinking that has worked so well in the last 40 years! 40 years of catechetical desert. Sure as St. Paul said we have to be fed milk first, but milk is substantive and you are nourished by it. Preaching the Gospel in the context of climate change is one of the sillier statements I have run across. What exactly is the context? That saving your soul is related to saving the planet? Call me a soulamentalist, but I believe saving your soul is the most important thing, While being a good steward of the environment is being thankful to God for his creation I don’t think climate change hysteria (the new Millenialists) is the proper context for teaching Christ crucified. Pope Benedict has talked about using the context of ecology to explain how respecting the inherent laws of creation as a way of what is seeing what is good or bad. On the occasion he made these remarks on teaching young people he first started with a philosophical explanation of conscience and natural law. We can certainly pull examples from the world around us to explain the moral law and our need for redemption, but we must explain the moral law. Young people deserve the respect to be talked to seriously and not talked down to.

American Papist reminds us of this story:

Last July, 15 nuns from a schismatic convent in Washington state rejoined the Catholic Church. They left the motherhouse of the Religious Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI), located on the outskirts of Spokane, to form a new congregation: the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church. They formally renounced their state of schism, made a profession of the Catholic faith, became a private association of the faithful under the care of Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, and recognized the legitimacy of the popes from Paul VI through Benedict XVI.

Their former order, which still has approximately 35 sisters, holds to the sedevacantist position that popes elected since John XXIII are invalid and that Vatican II was a heretical council.

Which brings us to another story

he nuns’ Dec. 12 letter says the Vatican’s action “has diminished our Church.” They believe that “excommunications depend not on edicts or laws, but on compliance” by the faithful. If the faithful do not exclude or shun someone from the community, they are not excommunicated. The letter asserts that Bourgeois is not outside the community because they “embrace him wholeheartedly.” The letter was organized by the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN).

“In the first century, Christians resolved their disagreements about following traditions such as circumcision and kosher dietary laws by dialogue and discussion,” said Sister Beth Rindler, speaking for NCAN. “We need to follow their example by promoting public discussion about the ordination of women,” the Franciscan Sister said.

“We hope the excommunication is not issued,” said Dominican Sister Donna Quinn, one of the coordinators of NCAN. “The medieval punishment of excommunication serves only to embarrass our Church in the eyes of the world and fuels further anger and resentment among the U.S. faithful.”

“Many of the signers have served the Church for more than 40 or 50 years. Many are prominent leaders in their fields,” said Loretto Sister Jeannine Gramick, another NCAN coordinator. She pointed to Mercy Sister Theresa Kane, who made worldwide headlines when she asked Pope John Paul II to open all ministries to women on the occasion of his first visit to the U.S in 1979, and Dominican Sister Carol Coston, who founded Network, a Catholic social justice lobby. She also noted the signatures of Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a prolific writer in the field of spirituality, Notre Dame Sister Ivone Gebara, a noted Brazilian feminist theologian, and Loretto Sister Maureen Fiedler, host of the public radio show Interfaith Voices.’

Of course Jeannine Gramick was previously restricted by the Vatican pastoral work with lesbian and gay persons and then changed to a different religious order that was more open to disobedience to continue her outreach to confirm people into sin. The only surprising thing from NCAN is that they only had a hundred signatures.

“”The medieval punishment of excommunication serves only to embarrass our Church” shows they understand the issue of excommunication as thoroughly as the issue of women’s ordination – that is not at all. Excommunication is certainly no medieval punishment, but a ecclesial remedy to help focus someone on repentance that has been used since the beginning of the Church. The idea of excommunication is certainly rooted in the steps Jesus tells us to take when we need to rebuke a sinner that ends with “if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. ”

“If the faithful do not exclude or shun someone from the community, they are not excommunicated.” Yeah that would really have worked during the Arian or other heresies in the Church. There is always some community willing to embrace a heretic. Besises excommunication is not shunning in any way. Excommunicatin as a censure that affects the person’s right to receive the sacraments and has nothing to do with removing someone from the Church.

As you would expect we once again get the constant call to dialogue as if this issue can never be settled unless they get their way. Get with Vatican II sisters which restated in Lunem Gentium.

This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

Or as Pius XII said in Humani Generis:

But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

Disobedience to the magisterium of the Church will never be a path to holiness, but a path that can lead straight South. Disobedience to the Church is disobedience to Christ no matter how prophetic you say you are.

I do think these stories make a nice contrast. One group gave up the belief that there was no pope, NCAN needs to give up the belief that they are the pope.

In other news Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association issued a statement praising Obama’s pick of Sen. Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes the same Tom Dashle who was once pro-life who voted for cloning, ESCR, and abortion in almost every case (except for partial birth abortion). Looking at what she has written in the past no doubt she fully approves of Dashle’s vision of socialize health care and so what if he supports killing the innocent? You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and you have to support child killing politicians to get socialized health care. Though to be fair she has written in the past “Our ethical standards in health care flow from the Catholic Church’s teachings about the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.” Too bad Catholic Tom Daschle does not believe the same.

NAPLES — President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are appearing in Italian nativity scenes this year, alongside the baby Jesus and wise men, according to Naples craftsmen selling figurines in the run-up to Christmas.[article]

Well I guess we should be happy they are not replacing Jesus with the Obama child in swaddling clothes. Surprised they at least didn’t have him down as one of the wiseman. Surely his pal Gov. Blagojevich could sell a wise man seat to him. Obama would be better cast as King Herod the Great with the murder of the innocents.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was almost grounded at Murrayville Elementary School this week after a parent complained about the classic Christmas song’s inclusion in her daughter’s upcoming kindergarten concert.

The objecting parent was upset about the words “Christmas” and “Santa” in the song, feeling that they carried religious overtones.

That prompted the song to be pulled from the upcoming holiday concert, which in turn upset more parents.

…”They have clearly decided that any other religion or custom is not important,” the objecting parent said after learning about the reversal on “Rudolph.” She asked that her name not be published, to shield her daughter’s identity.

The mother, who is Jewish, said she was trying to have a Hanukkah song added to the musical lineup but had not received a return phone call about it from school officials by mid-afternoon Friday. [article]

We seem to get these stories more and more every year. Multiculturalism and tolerance only leads to thin skins and perceived offenses found everywhere. Finding offense though in a song developed for Montgomery Ward only proves how silly this trend has become.

It is also rather sad that the most religious song they had for Christmas was Rudolf in the first place. We have turned into a culture looking for slights at every opportunity. Survival of the whinniest. There are certainly things in the culture to be offended at, but demanding a Hanukkah song to balance a song about a reindeer with a luminous birth defect is just plain dumb. Though what is even more dumb in those in the schools that accede to such requests instead of laughing them off. The idea of some kind of quota for a concert is also wrong. I would have no problem with including a Hanukkah song, but it shouldn’t be done in this PC mindset. Will school concerts have to also include songs on primordial ooze to satisfy atheist parents?

When I was an atheist singing in a choir I had no problem singing religious hymns even if they were predominantly Christian with some Jewish ones. I loved the songs that were musically solid songs. The modern atheist seems to be a weaker atheist. The new atheist go around demanding that they never have to hear of religion and demand pathetic little signs wherever there is a public nativity. Though I would also have a problem with those who remove those atheist’s signs. Though maybe their signs evolve and develop legs and walk of by themselves. Atheist signs on a bus don’t disturb me and signs of religion shouldn’t disturb them.

As dumb as public schools are in their decisions we get stories like this.

Enduring favourites such as Hark the Herald Angels Sing and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen are being altered by clergy to make them more “modern and inclusive”.

But churchgoers say there is no need to change the popular carols and complain that the result is a “festive car crash” if not everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

It comes just a day after a Church of England vicar banned his congregation from singing O Little Town of Bethlehem because he believed its words do not reflect the suffering endured by modern residents of Jesus’s birthplace.

Another clergyman has rewritten the Twelve Days of Christmas to include Aids victims, drug addicts and hoodies.

Among the “theologically-modified, politically-corrected” carols encountered by visitors to the website are Hark the Herald Angels Sing in which the line “Glory to the newborn King” has been replaced by “Glory to the Christ child, bring”.

The well-known refrain of O Come All Ye Faithful – “O come let us adore Him” – has also been changed in one church to “O come in adoration”, both changes apparently made for fear the original was sexist.

“[One reader] wrote in asking if the original line was considered too gender-specific,” Mr Goddard said. “But as he rightly pointed out, Jesus wasn’t hermaphrodite, neither was he a girl.”

Churchgoers at one carol service will not be allowed to sing the words “all in white” during Once in Royal David’s City in case they appear racist, while another cleric has removed the word “virgin” from God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. [article]

Political correctness does the opposite of bringing people together. A forced conformity that is not conformity at all. Whether it is religion or gender we have created a society of people looking for an offense to be upset about.