Archives for 2012

7 Quick Takes Friday (set #65)

Friday, May 25, 2012 A.D. 1 Comment

This week: An excellent video on religious freedom. An update on the unjust imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. The story of an autistic kid, a kind gesture and how it worked out. The official biographies of American presidents from Calvin Coolidge on get an update. Will proposes to Jennifer. Andrew Klavan on “talking crap.” A quote of the week.

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This Sunday, the 8th summary in my War on Religion series will be posted. It’s focus is the unprecedented 43 federal lawsuits against the Obama administration filed last week by Catholic dioceses and institutions. One of the many included videos is this excellent one from the Archdiocese of Washington explaining religious freedom:

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In February, I wrote about the sad story of Father Gordon MacRae – an unjustly imprisoned, innocent priest. His case may be an extreme example of a falsely accused priest but is far from unique. David Pierre’s recent book Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories details many more.

Michael Novak has also explored this recently on his blog in A Different Priestly Scandal. Father Zulhsdorf covers and expands on Michael’s work.

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Jason McElway is a bit different and does not always “fit in” with everyone else. He has autism. Jason liked basketball and his high school allowed him assist their team. This video from a couple years ago tells the story of his last game:

Spotted by my friend Tom.

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Placing Obama in the context of American history has just become easier, thanks to Obama himself. He has modified the official biography of every president since Calvin Coolidge (except Gerald Ford) to include himself. You just don’t see narcissism like that every day.

You can’t make stuff up like this. Go look yourself. For a quick sampling, see Commentary Magazine‘s piece: Obama Drops His Name Into the Other Presidential Biographies

— 5 —

Will proposes to Jennifer…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtwcN27tGwI

Spotted by Larry D at AotA

— 6 —

It is election season again and our sitting president asks us to give him another chance. Andrew Klavan gave a reasonably good overview last year of how Obama has done so far in his 3-part video series called President Obama, Talking Crap:

That last video mentions Catholic Paul Ryan’s budget proposals. I mentioned Ryan’s most recent budget proposal in a previous 7 Quick Takes. Pope biographer George Weigel has also commented.

— 7 —

The quote of the week:

When Barack Obama made his unsurprising announcement today that he has finally evolved far enough to endorse homosexual marriage, ironically an evolutionary dead end, he made two other interesting statements.

First, he attributes his evolution to his Christian faith. This is sort of odd, speaking as a Trinitarian Christian, because it puts Christ in the position of disavowing himself. This is not surprising. Anyone who learned Christian theology from Jeremiah Wright is bound to have imbibed a substantial number of heresies.

The most surprising statement was this:

[W]hen I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf…

Really. Our troops are fighting on his behalf? I had always imagined they were fighting on behalf of the nation.

Obama: Troops Are Fighting On My Behalf

Some random thoughts or bits of information are worthy of sharing but don’t warrant their own full post. This idea was started by Jennifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary to address this blogging need. So, some Fridays I too participate when I have accumulated 7 worthy items. Thank you Jen for hosting this project!

Filed Under: quick takes

Finding a church home

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 A.D. 2 Comments

Here in the South, upon moving to a new community, it does not take long before someone will ask if you have found a new “church home.” I love it when people are not afraid to openly live their Christian faith and work to fulfill the Great Commission.

There are other reasons people seek a new church home too. The loss of a much loved pastor, internal political battles and changes in direction of the church community or the individual — to name a few.

So, what might be a “check list” of considerations when looking for a new church? Here are some that are common:

A welcoming environment: how does the church make you “feel”? How much do they want you?
A comfortable environment: is parking easy and seating comfortable? Is the sound system awesome and are big screens used to bring everyone closer to the action?
Physical proximity: is it the closest church? If not, how much further must you drive to get there and how many other churches will you pass?
Spiritual proximity: are their apparent beliefs compatible with yours? Do they agree with your position on homosexuality, abortion, women clergy, the death penalty, forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation? Pay special attention to this point because you certainly don’t want to hear a bunch of sermonizing on things you reject.
Rules: are they easy-going or do they have a bunch of “rules” that you are expected to follow such as attendance, tithing, music, dress, alcohol, dating, displays of affection and so on. You are an adult and don’t need to be told what to do, right?
A powerful preacher: does the pastor preach well? Are his or her topics interesting and pertinent to your life? Do you feel engaged by his manner of presentation? Can she extensively quote scripture to support her points?
Moving / uplifting music: does the music “do something for you”? Do you enjoy it and look forward to each performance?
Size: do you prefer a large or small church family?
Ease of joining: are you accepted as a baptized Christian or do they force you to attend classes before letting you join?
Member neighbors: will membership improve and strengthen your social standing in the community? Will it give you another thing to have in common with your neighbors?
Professional benefits: does the church have a lot of members who are “movers and shakers,” whose shared affiliation at church could be a professional asset?

These and similar points are on many folks’ lists, explicitly or implicitly, when (for whatever reason) they look for a new church home.

If I might be so bold (and indeed I might!) gentle reader, these are all wrong-headed. These questions do not bring you closer to the truth taught by our Lord, lead to increased holiness or necessarily keep you on the path to salvation. This is consumerism.

Don’t get me wrong, we live in a consumer driven society and there is nothing wrong with optimizing our personal interests per se. Common examples are buying a new house or car, choosing a gym or doctor, searching for a new job, joining an organization or even deciding which charities to support. All of these things can be approached from the perspective of a consumer.

Your faith is a completely different matter. There is only one God, the Creator of all things, who became incarnate in His Son, who revealed His Father’s will and through His blood our sins are atoned. Your questions should be pointed to Him, not yourself:

When was this church founded and by who? Jesus was very clear that there is 1 Church and He expects unity within it. He promised it would be protected against the forces of evil until the end of time.
How was the organization of this church determined? What are the requirements to be a leader in the church.
Does this church teach the truth? By what authority is it guaranteed? Truth is not relative to what you want or a democratic vote. There are not multiple, conflicting truths.
Has the church modified, added to or removed from its teaching over time? Have adjustments been made to accommodate modern thinking and social changes or have the teachings of Jesus been preserved.
In what manner do you worship as a community? How does it differ from the early Church?

Only the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Himself. It is the universal (consistent, unchanging, “catholic”) Christian Church. Jesus selected and formed the apostles and appointed Peter as their leader. The Catholic Church maintains direct, uninterrupted succession to them. The Church is NOT empowered to change or redefine the deposit of faith, but rather preserves it under the protection of the Holy Spirit. We have taught the same thing for 2,000 years. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was first celebrated by our Lord himself at the Last Supper and His Passion. We canonized (compiled) the Holy Bible and through our Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, alone interpret it without error.

We were not founded by men – with differing beliefs – 1,500 years after Jesus. We do not have newly invented doctrines (after 1,500 years) such as Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone), Sola Gratia (Grace Alone), Sola Fide (Faith Alone), Solus Christus (Christ Alone) and Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone Be Glory). All faithful Catholics worldwide share common beliefs, the same today as they were 500, 1,000, 1,500… 2,000 years ago.

Christians in other communities are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They too form the Body of Christ. They too are part of the Communion of Saints. They too are partially Catholic! There is only 1 Christian Church, the Catholic Church. Some are in full communion with the Church (faithful Catholics) while other Christian communities, to varying extents, lack the fullness of the faith and are burdened by error. Come home.

“I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”

John 17:14-23

Filed Under: Church, essay, faith

7 Quick Takes Friday (set #64)

Friday, May 18, 2012 A.D. 2 Comments

This week: From the Susan B. Anthony list… Welcome to the Bureau of Womanhood Conformity. The Fathers of Mercy: supporting the new evangelism since 1808. A child’s story of survival, born 4 months premature. Candid comments on the abortion business, from a former clinic owner. A whole new market snuffing-out life at the other end – Planned GrandParenthood. The liberal magazine cover craze.

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Welcome to the Bureau of Womanhood Conformity. Independent thoughts are considered subversive. Rule #1: all must agree with Our Leader. Deviations will not be tolerated.

Tell President Obama to respect a woman’s choice to practice her beliefs… not his. It is not Obama’s opposition who is waging a war on women.

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This is not the first time the Church has had a call for a new evangelism. The Fathers of Mercy were founded in 1808 to fulfill this very purpose. They are still going strong! Stop by their website to learn more about them or visit their YouTube channel for some excellent homilies. For example, there is this one on superficial preaching:

…or this on on the warnings and prophecy of Pope Paul VI in his 1968 masterpiece Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMrSXXJnLA

Fallen away Catholics and those interested in the fullness of the Christian faith might be interested in the basics:

Spotted by John Bedard

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Only 1 pound, 2 ounces and 12 inches long – Ezekiel Cal Lugo was born 4 months early. This beautiful video tells the story:

Spotted by Matt Archbold at CMR

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Pregnancy services such as abortion protect a woman’s right to choose and make it the “safe, legal and rare” option that it is today. Women’s health, not profit, is the motive. Yea, right.

Spotted by Matthew Archbold at CMR

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Laugh now, but for the culture of death, the implications of this are not at all far-fetched:

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Thanks to a new California law, school students will now receive mandatory ~~indoctrination~~ instruction on the historical contribution of homosexuals. California lawmakers are determined to ~~brainwash~~ teach their young children that which is necessary to become successful adults. Apparently, that does not include things like science. California now ranks 47th in the nation in science at the 8th grade level. Only 22% of California 8th grade students managed to even pass the national standardized test.

Oh, and while California lawmakers are focused on honoring the gay agenda, the state itself is sinking fast. Governor Moonbeam (Jerry Brown) announced the deficit is now $16 billion (up from $9.2 billion in January). Expect drastic cuts and huge tax increases, followed by an exodus of individuals and companies to… anywhere else.

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Newsweek, irrelevant as ever, pays homage to their candidate. If you have been under a rock, that first cover is real. The others are products of The Looking Spoon and The People’s Cube.

Filed Under: quick takes

Myth: Catholics oppose science

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 A.D. Leave a Comment

Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT)

Nothing could be further from the facts. Catholics love truth, science reveals truth – ergo, Catholics love science! It is through science that we explore the beauty and richness of God’s ordered and intelligible creation. Science and Catholicism are completely compatible without qualification.

Those without faith will tell you that “the right to look through telescopes and speculate about the result was obstructed by the Church.” Let’s just say that the truth is not in them. J. L. Heilbron (former professor and vice chancellor of UC Berkeley) notes “the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.”

You might be surprised who proposed the theory of the expanding universe (the “big bang”), Hubble’s law and the first estimation of the Hubble constant. It was NOT Edwin Hubble! In fact, it was Georges Lemaître. That is, Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître – a Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven.

At this point I had intended to include a list of famous Catholic scientists. Since such a list would be immense, I was thinking a more manageable list would be only Catholic scientists who were priests – similar to Monsignor Lemaître mentioned above. Most people would likely assume such a list to be tiny. Alas, even Wikipedia lists 236 priests who “have made significant contributions to science“.

Of course, there was the Galileo incident – commonly misreported by secularists, anti-Catholics and others against the Church. Even in their misreporting, one can see that the Church and science were not separate. In a nutshell, the issue the Church had with Galileo was that he published as fact that which, at the time (and for many decades later), was an unproven theory. Modern scientists do not accept such behavior either. Galileo also did not win any friends when he jumped far outside of his area of competence to lecture Church authorities publicly on the true meaning of Holy Scripture. To learn more, see this and this.

We still build observatories. Our roots here go back to Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, ultimately resulting in the Observatory of the Roman College (1774), the Observatory of the Capitol (1827) and the Vatican Observatory (1789, refounded 1891 by Pope Leo XIII). In subsequent years more were built, including the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) in Arizona in 1993.

Much of my focus above was on astronomy. The Church has been just as involved in every other field be it physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine and other scientific disciplines.

BTW, guess who invented the University System? It wasn’t the Greeks or Romans, Eastern mystics or even mathematically literate Arabs. It most certainly wasn’t atheists. It was the Catholic Church from centuries before the Renaissance the Catholic Church has built and operated universities throughout the world. Most major universities trace their roots to the Church.

An excellent source of additional information is Thomas Woods’ How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Online, two extensive archives on the Church in science are at the Catholic Education Resource Center and at Catholic Answers. Numerous, well-researched, detailed articles are available from both.

Filed Under: essay, myths

7 Quick Takes Friday (set #63)

Friday, May 11, 2012 A.D. 3 Comments

This week: Obama has now “evolved” and is out of the closet on so called “gay marriage.” Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi teach the Catholic faith and explain how it moves them to support unnatural unions. “Occupiers” have been showing their political leanings via their t-shirts. “Hope and Change” has become “Hype and Blame,” so a new slogan has been unveiled. The Copenhagen Philharmonic takes us away from all of this in a flash mob.

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Obama has now “evolved” and is out of the closet. He has given his full support to “gay marriage”. If given the opportunity, he will back that with the full power and might of the federal government. “Gay marriage” is not about discrimination, bigotry or equality. See my earlier piece But how does “gay marriage” hurt you? for a primer. The Manhattan Declaration folks also recommend the following:

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Father Joe (Biden) has again been teaching the faith to all who will listen. His lessons span wide ranging topics from abortion to unnatural sexual unions to social teaching. Always interesting and always wrong. His bishop has corrected him before, but can not be on alert 24/7 to counter every statement this guy makes.

Why does he do it? After all, Biden could simply give his support to all these things and his reason for doing so, WITHOUT identifying himself as a Catholic or falsely claiming congruity with Catholic teaching. Answer: to give cover to those who wish to place political interests above God. To those inclined to think of his “teaching” as giving “plausible deniability,” remember that God knows your heart.

Father Z does a great job as always commenting on a Life News piece in his: Joe Biden: Theologian!.

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Nancy Pelosi has added her own colorful comments, explaining that her Catholic faith “compels” her …[to be]… for same-sex marriage.

Biden and Pelosi both are speaking loudly and proudly for the Catholic faith. This is not ignorance, given that they have been clearly told of their error. Access to any Catholic Catechism or faithful Catholic would also have quickly cleared up any misunderstanding. This is continuing, purposeful scandal to mislead the faithful and general public.

Father Z also covers this well, commenting on a CNSNews piece in his: Nancy Pelosi, Doctrix of the Church, cites Theologian Obama and calls evil “good”.

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Are they simply stupid or historical ignorant? The “occupiers” have a strong affinity for communist icons as evidenced by the popularity of t-shirt images. Then again, it may simply be a proclamation of their politics:

Spotted at Against the Grain

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Obama’s last campaign slogan was “Hope and Change.” As president, this has morphed into “Hype and Blame,” fundamentally transforming America away from Christianity into something we do not want and from which recovery will be difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXUz1R_UZgw

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Obama officially announced his presidential reelection campaign last week on Karl Marx’s birthday. His new, official campaign slogan was also announced – Forward. “Forward” has long been a rallying cry for Marxist propaganda as explained by The Washington Times. See their piece: New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism. Really, comrade.

— 7 —

Too much depressing political news this week. For something much lighter and uplifting – the Copenhagen Philharmonic participate in a flash mob:

The music (Grieg’s Peer Gynt) was performed and recorded on the subway. The Danish metro is very quiet. They used 3 camera mounted mics, two microports glued to the ceiling and one stereo mic in the middle of everything. Spotted by Deacon Greg.

Some random thoughts or bits of information are worthy of sharing but don’t warrant their own full post. This idea was started by Jennifer Fulwiler to address this blogging need, but is guest hosted this week by Hallie Lord at Betty Beguiles. So, some Fridays I too participate when I have accumulated 7 worthy items. Thank you Jen (and Hallie) for hosting this project!

Filed Under: quick takes