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Rick Leornardi has created a new blog to cover the Year of St. Paul with Man of Three Cultures.

I have often joked in that past about how crappy the web sites of most Catholic churches are. Not even web 1.0, more like web I.0 where the bulletin in PDF format is months old and the rest of it is never updated. A reader sent me a link to his parish web site that is nicely done, but not in an overblown way with intrusive Flash intros. The church itself is also quite beautiful and my reader recommends the video talks by John Meehan, founder of Magdalen College.

Blog by the Sea reports:

La-Croix (through AFP) has reported that Pope Benedict XVI today signed the decree of the “miracle of the child” allowing the beatification of the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The announcement was made in a statement released today by the Diocese of Séez. The diocesan announcement says that the announcement appeared at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon in L’Osservatore Romano.
St. Thérèse’s parents’ bodies were exhumed in Lisieux on May 28 in preparation for placing them in the basilica in September. They were previously declared to be venerable in 1994.
According to the diocese, which apparently is drawing from the Vatican’s article in L’Osservatore Romano, the time and place of the beatification will be announced on July 13. That is the 150th anniversary of the marriage of St. Thérèse’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin.

This is great news. Some years ago another member of the Carmelite group I was attending lent me a book on Louis Martin and so I came to have a devotion to him. One of my favorite stories in the book is that he had a devotion to the Desert Fathers and would constantly read up on him. His daughters would sometimes hide his book on the Desert Fathers our of concern that he would run off to emulate them. This of course was never any threat of this since he was a true father devoted to his children. The irony is that it was all of his daughters that ended up becoming nuns and leaving him. He was not one to begrudge God anything and the gift of his daughters to God was a full offering.

VATICAN CITY – The devil may wear Prada — but the pope does not.

According to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the bright red loafers that Pope Benedict XVI wears are not designed by the Milanese fashion house, as has long been rumored.

“Obviously the attribution was false,” the Vatican newspaper said in its Thursday’s editions.

“Such rumors are inconsistent with the simple and somber man who, on the day of his election to the papacy, showed to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square and to the whole world the sleeves of a modest black sweater,” it said.

Fashion scrutiny
Still, Benedict’s fashion sense has often drawn media attention.

Three years ago around Christmas, he showed up for his weekly public audience in St. Peter’s Square wearing a fur-trimmed stocking cap that could have passed for a Santa Claus hat. The hat, as it turned out, is a “camauro,” which dates back to the Middle Ages and figures in many papal portraits.

On a separate occasion, Benedict sported a sumptuous red velvet cape trimmed in ermine — another piece of traditional papal attire that had long been abandoned.

L’Osservatore Romano said the pope’s interest in clothes has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with liturgy — what symbolism traditional garments can bring to the Christian liturgy.
“The pope, therefore, does not wear Prada, but Christ,” L’Osservatore said.

Now that is an awesome closing sentence to a silly subject. It is good to get confirmation of what I had read before, though I also doubt this will shunt the media’s fascination with linking the Pope to Prada.

Actor Tom Hanks is in Rome for the filming of
Angels and Demons, a film adaptation of the book by Dan
Brown.

Director Ron Howard is working on the film version of
Brown’s novel, following up on his previous cinematic rendition of
another novel by the same author, The Da Vinci Code. Scenes are
already being staged around the Pantheon in Rome.

The
production of Angels and Demons will cost more than $100 million. The
film is due to make its appearance in theaters next summer.

Well, if this movie was going to be made anyway I
don’t think that this is necessarily bad news. The Da Vinci Code was
pretty much a flop in the United State and got only a 25% rating from
Rotten Tomatoes. Even fans of the book found the movie boring. Ron
Howard also directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas which was a
terrible piece of film making. Ron Howard certainly seems to fail at
adaptations, though his films with Russell Crowe are quite good along
with his comedies.

So maybe we can pray that he will be just as good of
director as he was for the previous Dan Brown movie and How the
Grinch Stole Christmas, though I guess that would be a pretty mean
prayer. Then again the plot for Angels and Demons is not as bad
towards the Church as The Da Vinci Code anyway. It is rather silly
taking place in Vatican City with illuminati, antimatter, a Pope
with a son from artificial insemination, and a murderous Camerlengo,
and theological nonsense about being able to force a link between God
and Man via science.

I am still convinced as I wrote before that Ron
Howard’s animus towards the Church is that he mistakenly thinks that
Opus Dei is Latin for Opie Die.

WASHINGTON (Roto Reuters) There has been some recent controversy involving members of Sen. Obama’s vice presidential search committee such as Eric Holder who was involved in the Marc Rich pardon and Jim Johnson who received some questionable Countrywide mortgages. At first Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said “these folks aren’t even working for me” even though he appointed them as part of a three man team last week.

To quell criticism for these picks on his VP search committee Sen. Obama has decided that he will appoint a vice presidential search committee exploratory committee. The members of this new committee will work to select the best candidates to be on the vice presidential search committee. Some within Obama’s organization have suggested that it might be best to pick people that have had no previous relationship with Sen. Obama since it so often turns out that the people he has chosen to work with either hate America or have other problems. One staff member who refused to be identified said that “After Rev. Wright, Fr. Pfleger, Tony Rezco, Bill Ayers, etc – with friends like that who needs enemies.” Though some within the campaign think that maybe what is needed is an exploratory committee for the vice presidential search committee exploratory committee to ensure that members of appointed to the exploratory exploratory committee are thoroughly vetted.

The Catholic Thing looks to be a great new website that provides excellent commentary.

The Catholic Thing, a program of the Faith & Reason Insitute, is in the process of developing its editorial structure. Its current publication committee includes: Hadley P. Arkes, Jason Boffetti, George Marlin, Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Robert Royal, Austin Ruse, William L. Saunders, and Michael Uhlmann. Kirk Kramer is the web administrator.

I assume that they take their name based on G.K. Chesterton’s book “The Thing.” I just wish they would get an RSS feed.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is about to launch his latest outreach to religious voters, but the name of the group could land him in legal trouble.

First reported on Friday by Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Obama’s “Joshua Generation” is designed to help the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee appeal to young evangelicals.

But “Generation Joshua,” a division of the Home School Legal Defense Association, has been established since 2003 and is pursuing legal action against the Obama campaign.

I guess Generation Moloch didn’t have the same ring. Though thanks to pro-abortion politicians like Obama Generation Joshua is much smaller than it should have been. In other news Catholic League president Bill Donahue wonders if Obama’s Catholic Advisory Council has been dissolved.

Pete Vere at Catholic Exchange updates the story Fr. Alphonse de Valk.

In a decision that foreshadows the possible fate of Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Canada’s leading pro-life voice among Catholic clergy, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal has forbidden evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson from expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality. The tribunal also ordered Boisson to pay $5,000 “damages for pain and suffering” and apologize to the “human rights” activist who filed the complaint.

The complaint stems from Canada’s debate leading up to state legislation recognizing so-called same-sex marriage. In 2002, the pastor wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper in which he denounced the homosexual agenda as “wicked” and stated that: “Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.”

The activist subsequently filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission – a quasi-judicial body that investigates alleged discrimination within the Canadian province. The government tribunal published its decision [http://albertahumanrights.ab.ca/Lund_Darren_Remedy053008.pdf] on May 30.

While agreeing that Boisson’s letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” Moreover, the tribunal’s decision “prohibited [Boisson] from making disparaging remarks in the future” about the activist who filed the complaint and witnesses who supported the complaint. Many of Canada’s religious leaders and civil libertarians have expressed concern that the government’s human rights tribunals are interpreting any criticism of homosexual activism as ‘disparaging’.

The tribunal also ordered Boisson to provide the complainant with a written apology for his letter to the editor. This last requirement threatens civil liberties in Canada, said Ezra Levant, a Jewish-Canadian author and lawyer. Levant, himself the target of an Alberta Human Rights Commission investigation, is facing the possibility the state may order him to apologize as well.

“Ed Stelmach’s ‘conservative’ government now believes that if it can’t convince a Christian pastor that he’s wrong, it will just order him to condemn himself?” Levant wrote on his blog. “Other than tribunals in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, where is this Orwellian ‘order’ considered to be justice?”

“This is like a Third World jail-house confession – where accused criminals are forced to sign false statements of guilt,” Levant wrote. “We don’t even ‘order’ murderers to apologize to their victims’ families. Because we know that a forced apology is meaningless. But not if your point is to degrade Christian pastors.”

St. Louis, Jun 8, 2008 / 03:06 pm (CNA).- An excommunicated board member of a breakaway St. Louis Catholic parish has reconciled with the Church after meeting privately with the Archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond L. Burke. Archbishop Burke has said he is “profoundly happy” about the man’s reconciliation.

Edward Florek was excommunicated in December 2005 for his membership on the St. Stanislaus Kostka Corporation board of directors, which opposed Archbishop Burke’s parish restructuring plan and brought in a renegade priest to staff St. Stanislaus Kostka Church.

Thanks be to God. This is great news!

There are certain things that are almost certain to get my ire up. One of them is putting a picture up of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as a header in an article on women’s ordination. The scandalous lie that Saint Thérèse advocated women priests is bandied about in progressive quarters as if it is the truth instead of calumny against a great Doctor of the Church.

“If only I were a priest! How lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give. You to souls!” “Yet while wanting to be a priest, I admire St. Francis of Assisi and envy his humility, longing to imitate him in refusing this sublime dignity.”

I myself have often thought of being a priest and what it must be like to hold Jesus in your hands during the consecration. So I guess I must be advocating that married men who have never had a vocation to the priesthood be priests. And what about those single men without a priestly vocation? I guess they are also not equal and it is just not fair until the “institutional Church” allows everyone to be a priest regardless of a simple thing like a vocation. In fact maybe I should start a “Single and Married Men Without a Priestly Vocation Ordination Conference.” How long must men without priestly vocations have to await for equality. We are not truly free until we can live peacefully in a vocation-blind society.

Now back to the article in question. I doubt if it will surprise my readers that it was in the America Magazine blog, those that aren’t surprised will at least be disappointed. Admirer of all things Jesuit (except dissent) Karen Hall is not much pleased either. In this post Francis X. Clooney, S.J. laments about the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith recent decree on those who attempt to confer or women who receive ordination are automatically excommunicated.

We all know that there are Catholic women with a very deep conviction that God is calling them to priestly service in the Church. Many of these women, during long years of service to the Church, have discerned the matter over and over again, tested it in community — and still affirm, “God is calling me to ordained ministry, to the priesthood.” Some of these women have suffered very patiently and quietly in a Church that says it cannot ordain them; some have left, often sadly, and welcomed ordination in another Christian community; and some, reports tell us, have been ordained by bishops — and for this, they are to be counted as excommunicated.

What advocates of women’s ordination never mention is that it is not the deep conviction of the person that is primary in discerning a vocation. Not all men who enter seminary go on to be ordained since they either discern that they have no priestly vocation or that their bishop or seminary discerns this. The discernment process is mediated by the Church and it is not the individual alone who determines their calling. This is such a weak argument in so many ways. What about the various people such as Kansan David Bawden (Michael I) who consider that they are the current Pope. Surely they have “very deep convictions” that God is calling them to papal service in the Church. The sad truth is that there are many people who have deluded themselves into believing something that is simply not true. They need to be charitably corrected and objectively it is not charitable to go along with or support them in their mistake.

This blog is not the place to debate the merits of positions on women’s ordination. But it seems obvious that very many of us feel strongly on this issue — including, surely, many who are ordained 3 or 13 or 30 or 50 years — and we are not likely to change our minds now. This issue — does God call women as well as men to ordination? — seems likely to remain one of the great divides in the Church of the 21st century, and we all, men as well as women, are, or should be, suffering through the experience. That the Vatican has definitively ended the discussion does not make it less likely that many will continue to have hearts rent by the issue. I am sure God hears many a prayer, many a day, on the topic.

Wow I guess the apostolic tradition and magisterial teaching on this subject must be all wrong since many people feel strongly on this subject. I guess the fact that those such a myself who support Church teaching and feel strongly on the subject don’t count. In this case suffering is being caused by a lack of obedience and pride that assumes they know better than the Church. Pope Michael 1 is not the only one who thinks they are Pope.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in a dubium that “This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. But even if you don’t accept the dubium, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis requires “Religious submission of intellect and will” as taught by the Second Vatican Council. Blog posts like this one at America Magazine show a total disobedience even to Vatican II which they seem to always talk about, but never read. The question of women’s ordination is settled, please move on to the vast areas of theology that are not settled or can be more deeply reflected on and more light shed upon.

For those who want to look at the reasons why the Church does not have the authority to change this teaching I would highly recommend Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide To The Teaching Of The Church by Sr. Sara Butler, MSBT which I reviewed here.