Immaculate Heart of Mary

Thanks to Catholic Knight Website for posting this news on the new Courageous Bishop in the Springfield, MO – Cape Girardeau, MO diocese in Missouri.  After years of dissent Bishop James Vann Johnston is going to try and bring the diocese back to orthodoxy.  Let us pray for this courageous bishop.

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Three interesting developments are underway in the Diocese of Springfield – Cape Girardeau. Bishop James Vann Johnston has already given preeminent position to the Usus Antiquior (Extraordinary Form Latin Mass) at St. Agnes Cathedral in Springfield where it is celebrated no less than five times a week. Days and times for liturgical celebrations can be viewed on the Latin Mass Community website.

In addition to this, The Catholic Knight has learned that Bishop Johnston has also given his support to the creation of an Anglican Use Community within the City of Springfield. This community lists dates, times and locations for their liturgical services on their website as well. With this latest action we see that Bishop Johnston is opening up avenues for liturgical renewal both on the Latin and English front.

The Catholic Knight therefore calls upon all his readers, to contact friends and family in the Springfield Missouri area, and encourage them to attend either the Traditional Latin Mass, or the Anglican Use liturgy, or both, in support of Bishop Johnston’s effort to clean up the liturgical mess in the Diocese of Springfield – Cape Girardeau.

Lastly, The Catholic Knight has just learned that Bishop James Vann Johnston now plans to Consecrate the Diocese of Springfield – Cape Girardeau to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 2010. When we consider the meaning of such an act, in light of the revelations by the three seers at Fatima some 93 years ago, it would appear the good bishop is seeking the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima. This comes as the liturgical reform gets underway in earnest, with the implementation of the new English translation for the Roman Missal, sometime next year.

A lot of news has been coming out of the Diocese of Springfield – Cape Girardeau lately, much of it pertaining to the liturgy, and not all of it good. The diocese has also been plagued by public heresy from some of it’s priests. One extreme example of this was exposed here on The Catholic Knight a little over a year ago. This new bishop of Springfield – Cape Girardeau certainly has his work cut out for him. He can be assured of the prayers of The Catholic Knight, and I would personally like to ask all my readers to join me in praying for him as well. He is a brave man taking on a Novus Ordo establishment that has been entrenched in Southern Missouri for a very long time.

God expects us to make good use of all of the talents that He has given to us. The parable of the fig tree teaches us about the need to develop our good spiritual fruits. Cultivating our gifts is our life’s job.  Discerning these talents takes time.  All are freely given to us at our Baptism.  The purpose of the gifts is primarily to build up the Body of Christ. When Jesus came upon the fig tree along the road, He noticed that is was barren.  He threatened to cut it down. “Why should it exhaust the soil?”   The gardener asked for a year to restore the health of the tree.  Jesus granted his request, but stated that it would be cut down if it failed to produce good fruit.

Are you producing good spiritual fruit?  Or are you just taking up dead space? Are you gifts being placed at the service of the Church?  Or are they even being used at all?  Heed the Gospel.  If you have talents that will help someone in need, put them to good use TODAY!

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,
Fr. Mark Bozada

May we trust that, just as God provided the Israelites with manna until they arrived in the promised land. He will always provide us with all that we need.

Discover the charitable heart of Bishop Robert Vasa as he answer your questions on Catholic hot topics during a Catholic Answers Q & A hour.

• Bishop Robert Vasa On Catholic Answers

Archbishop Charles Chaput delivered an address to health care professionals in Houston, the following is a slightly edited, abbreviated version of the actual address.

Scattered through the Gospels are brief summaries of how Jesus and his disciples understood his mission. Here’s one of them from the Gospel of Matthew: “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages … preaching the gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity” (Mt 9:35). Jesus redeemed the whole human person – mind, body and spirit.

Jesus gave this same mission to his Church. He told his apostles: “Whenever you enter a town … heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God has come near you’” (Lk 10:9). Thus, wherever a local Church was founded, Christians started ministries to the sick, especially to the weak and most vulnerable. They didn’t ask permission from the civil authorities. They didn’t do these things to show good citizenship, or because it was lucrative business. They cared for the sick because that’s what Jesus did. And that’s what he commanded his disciples to do.

Catholic Hospitals Are At A Crossroads

Our mission has brought us to a crossroads with the current national debate over health-care reform . We face big economic and philosophical questions about the viability of the Catholic health-care ministry.

What Is Your Identity & Mission As A Health Care Professional?

But I want to talk about the one question that undergirds all the others. That’s the question of your Catholic identity and your mission: Who are you? And what does it really mean to be a Catholic health-care professional?

Back To Our Roots; The Hippocratic Oath

Dr. Herbert Ratner, a Catholic and a family practice doctor who devoted his life to questions of medical ethics, believed that the ancient Hippocratic Oath sworn by physicians for 2,500 years offered another path. It could serve as a cornerstone for the identity of persons working in health care. It could be a shield from what he called bullying by the state, “the dehumanization of society and the brutalization of medicine.”2 Unfortunately, the original oath is rarely used these days.

Louis Lasagna rewrote and arguably softened it in 1964. We should also remember that while the original oath barred physicians from helping with abortions – in fact, the oath specifically rejects medical aid for abortions and physician-assisted suicide — some sources suggest that Hippocrates himself may have invented surgical tools to perform abortions. Abortion, of course, was common in the pre-Christian world.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when both of those simple words – “human” and “person” – have disputed meanings, and the idea of the “sanctity” of human life is sometimes seen as little more than romantic poetry. And this cultural confusion, fueled by trends in our science and technology, is magnified in the current debates over health-care reform.

The State Is Pushing Catholic Hospitals To Perform Abortions . . .

In a number of states, the Church has faced government attempts to press Catholic hospitals, clinics and other social service institutions into violating their religious principles. This is becoming a national pattern. In Colorado, to name just one example, lawmakers recently tried to block the sale of two local hospitals to a large Catholic hospital system unless the Catholic system agreed to demands that it arrange for abortions, sterilizations, and other so-called women’s services.

The question we should ask ourselves is this: What kind of a society would need to coerce religious believers into doing things that undermine their religious convictions — especially when those same believers provide vital services to the public.

Massachusetts, A Sign Of The Future!

Massachusetts, wanting to provide emergency contraception drugs to the victims of sexual assault, pushed through a law that requires Catholic hospitals to administer drugs even if they might act to cause an abortion.

Clearly that’s bad law and bad medicine. And it sets a dangerous precedent because it allows the government to directly interfere in the doctor-patient relationship. In effect, it dictates the exact medical procedure that doctors must follow in every case, no matter what their professional judgment might be. It requires doctors and nurses to be the enforcers of state abortion ideology.

We now often see in the actions of our public authorities the opposite of what the American Founders intended for our country. The Founders worked hard to create the structures of a limited government subordinate to civil society. Civil society is much larger and much more alive than the state. And to stay that way, it depends for its survival on the autonomy and free cooperation of its parts – families, communities, churches, synagogues, and fraternal and charitable associations. All of these entities have rights completely independent of government. Rights that precede the state.

Now how does all this relate to the very practical topic of our time together today: health-care reform and the future of the Catholic health-care ministry?

I’ll answer with a few simple facts.

1. While access to decent health care may not seem like a “right” to some people in the same sense as our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – reasonable people might reasonably disagree about that — the Church does see it as a right.
2. A government role in ensuring basic health care for all citizens and immigrants can be very legitimate and even required. But that doesn’t justify excluding government from helping to solve chronic problems when no other solutions work.
3. The principle of subsidiarity reminds us that problems should be solved as locally as possible.
4. No national health-care plan can be morally legitimate if it allows, even indirectly, for the killing of the unborn, or discriminatory policies and pressures against the elderly, the infirm and the disabled. Protecting the unborn child and serving the poor are not unrelated issues. They flow from exactly the same Christian duty to work for social justice.
5. The health-care reform proposals with any hope of advancing now in Washington all remain fatally flawed on the abortion issue, conscience protections and the inclusion of immigrants.

So what do you need to do as Catholic health-care professionals in the face of these challenges?

Have courage.  Trust in God.  Speak up and defend your Catholic faith with your medical colleagues.  Commit yourself to good and moral medicine.  Get involved and fight hard for the conscience rights of your fellow Catholics and their institutions.  Remember the Hippocratic Oath.  Dedicate yourselves again to being truly Christian and deeply Catholic health-care professionals.

You and I and all of us – we’re disciples first. That’s why you gave your heart and all your talent to this extraordinary vocation in the first place. Remember that as you go home today. Use up your lives for the glory of God and the dignity of your patients. You walk in the footsteps of the Healer of humanity and Redeemer of history.  In healing the sick, proclaim his Kingdom with the witness of your lives.

Full Version Here:

And to Help Restore Our Own!

It was my privilege today to visit the National Shrine of the Infant of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma. (They pronounce it Prage). This was a very interesting stop because the pastor of the parish is a convert from Episcopalianism. Also, it was intriguing because I have to admit that the devotion to the Infant of Prague is not something which is, errr, shall we say,  immediately accessible to the male Evangelical convert to Catholicism.

In the end I bought an image of the Infant of Prague for my little chapel and learned to appreciate this not immediately winsome devotion. I felt happy about this: I like the Infant of Prague now! I guess that means I’m really a Catholic at last…

Here’s how it happened: Catholics should understand that the Infant of Prague is very alien to the typical Bob Jones graduate…The first impression is, “Good heavens! Why is baby Jesus dressed up like that? Is that some kind of fancy Catholic idol or what?” But putting my prejudice on one side and wanting to ‘affirm and not deny’ I learned about the history of the devotion and was given a very nice tour of the shrine including a look at a cupboard full of all the different outfits they had for him. It prompted a question on the drive back, “Can you get Infant of Prague kits? You know, buy the baby in diapers and then you buy the outfits separately? What does baby Jesus wear under the royal robes?”

Seriously, I wanted to try to understand this rather unusual devotion. Then I learned that the Infant of Prague actually started out with Saint Theresa of Avila. She had a devotion to the child Jesus. Bingo! A connection with my favorite Therese of Lisieux who also had a devotion to the child Jesus and spiritual childhood and spiritual innocence. I’m beginning to get it.

So after the tour I thought I’d kneel down and see if I could get hold of this a little bit more. As I’m kneeling I begin to understand the child dressed in royal robes and crown, for the whole image tells us that although he was a child born naked and squawking in a stable he was at the same time the royal prince of the house of David. He was a simple child, yet King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Furthermore, this is my destiny. I cannot enter the kingdom unless I become as a little child, but to enter the kingdom and be a royal adopted prince, a Son of God and a brother of Jesus is my ultimate destiny.

Then as I’m kneeling there I begin to see that this child is also the focus of our prayers for spiritual childhood and innocence for ourselves, but it should also be the one we turn to pleading for protection for our own children and for the innocence which is being lost every day to the corrupt morals of our day. Then thinking about innocence and children, lo and behold, I come home and check my emails only to find this horrible link: specially designed condoms for twelve year olds. Can you imagine? The world rightly bewails pedophilia and the sexualization of children, then turns around and offers pole dancing kits to little girls and condoms called ‘Hotshots’ for seventh graders.

So, may the Infant of Prague deliver us from such evils, protect our children and grant us the gift of spiritual childhood.

Father Dwight Longenecker

The Transfiguration is a central revelation in Luke’s Gospel.  For Jesus to appear between Moses and Elijah, was an extremely powerful endorsement from the Old Testament figureheads.  Moses represents the Law.  Elijah represents the major and minor Prophets of the Old Testament.  As they were preparing to leave, Peter asks if the trio was staying.  While Peter was still speaking, a cloud descended from above and declares, “This is my Beloved Son; listen to Him.”  Suddenly, the cloud parted, and Jesus stood there, alone.

In awe, the Apostles fell silent.  Jesus then asks them not to say anything about the event, until after His Resurrection from the dead.  How were the Apostles to understand this event?  Why did Jesus ask for silence?   When were they going to see Jesus die? By asking these questions, the Apostles were on their way to learning about the mysteries of Jesus’ life.  Little did they understand these events.  It would not be until the infusion of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that they would come to understand their significance.  What Jesus reveals to the  Apostles, He reveals to the Church. That is all of US.  As it was for the Apostles, so it is for His people.  Jesus exposes Himself to you and I.  Jesus wants us to know He is the LAW, Jesus wants us to know He is the PROPHET.  Jesus died and rose from the dead, to save us from eternal death.  It is why He was revealed in Glory before the Suffering of His crucifixion.  Allow Jesus to raise you up and save your from eternal death this Lent

Entrusting you to the care of Our Lady,
Fr. Mark Bozada

May our Lord save you and raise you up…May He free you from all of your SINS.

Man-Made Disasters

Pat Robertson hit the headlines after the Haiti earthquake speculating that the disaster was a punishment for Haiti’s voodoo practices. Rationalists were quick to pooh pooh such an idea, and anyone who believes in a merciful God should have trouble with the idea that the Almighty is up there doling out natural disasters to sinners. More questions arise than are answered with such a scenario. If God is punishing sinners, why does he let so many off the hook? If he is interested in visiting disaster on people, why an earthquake or tsunami which must kill an awful lot of innocent people as well as the wicked. No, the simplistic idea of God meting out such arbitrary ‘justice’ doesn’t make sense.

However, what if there were other forces in play which do alter the equation somewhat? We know that sin causes stress. You hurt me. I get angry with you. I feel stressed. You feel stressed. Maybe I hurt you back. Perhaps that starts a spiral of revenge and violence and negativity. So far so bad. We also observe that the negativity spreads to other people. Our hatred and violence and revenge and rage touches other people too. I talk to my friends and they take my side. You talk to your friends. They all get caught up in our spiral of rage. Before long we have a war going on. The same spiral of ugliness and sin and suffering applies to any kind of sin. Lust breeds lust. Rage breeds rage. Killing breeds killing. So it goes on.

It goes further: what if all this ugliness actually spirals out of control in a society? So we see that lust or rage or violence or revenge sometimes erupts in mass murder, genocide, massacres, rape and abuse. Sometimes a whole nation can be overtaken by sin. It’s like the whole tribe or the whole nation is infected with a terrible virus of evil or infested with an evil spirit. A mood takes over. A dark Lord reigns. The light goes out and inexplicably a whole nation drifts into the dark side.

Here’s the jump: what if these negativities and this darkness actually move across into the rest of the created order? Can the whole earth somehow pick up that virus of evil and take on the darkness and turmoil the way a whole society can? What if the natural order picks up the negativities and starts to boil over itself as if it is sharing society’s sickness? There seem to be hints in Christian theology that this is exactly what happens. The doctrine of original sin includes the idea that the whole natural order has also fallen into a broken condition and St Paul speaks of the whole of creation “groaning for redemption as a woman giving birth” (Rom.8:22) What if this interaction and identification of the whole created order with human choices is a constantly dynamic relationship and not just a once and done event?

So, while God isn’t up there throwing a dice to decide which wicked people get an earthquake today, it could be that there are mysterious links between human behavior and the behavior of the created order. Too much greed and rage and lust and violence might just boil over and manifest in natural disasters–as if the created order is reflecting our own corporate disharmony, violence and broken-ness, and this stress and corporate negativity erupts at the weak points–tectonic plates, dormant volcanoes or volatile weather cycles.

If this is so, then the opposite must also be true. A cycle begins with every act of sacrifice we make. A wheel turns with every prayer, every action of love and forgiveness and every little kindness matters. Everything in God’s good world is connected, and the good I do has eternal consequences. A science teacher once told me that every beam of light goes out into the dark universe and continues to travel forever. It’s the same with every action of love and goodness.

If this is so, then holiness doesn’t simply transform me. It transforms the world.

Father Dwight Longenecker

Fr. Z gives us a reminder that we need more priest.

We need more vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

Let’s be careful about prayers for vocations.

At times we should pray strictly for vocations to the priesthood. PRIESTHOOD!   Deacons are great, but they are not priests.   Religious women are great, but they are not priests.  Religious men are find, but that is its own vocation.  Married people are wonderful, but with a super small number of exceptions it is morally tedious to recount, they are not priests.

Often prayers for “vocations” are all lumped together, probably so as to avoid one of the great modern mortal sins: not being inclusive.

Fine.  Do that.  Pray for “vocations”.

But let us pray for PRIESTS…. priestly vocations… vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

And another thing… this is the Year for Priests.  Yet I see this project and that effort for prayer for bishops, seemingly all the time.   Great!  Pray for bishops.  Bishops are priests too.    Bishops need constant prayers.  I too am constantly telling people, imploring people to pray for our bishops, upon whom so much depends.  I pray for a list of bishops after every Mass.   But can priests have their year?  Please?  We pray for bishops all the time.  It seems like every year is the year for bishops, right?  At every Mass we pray for bishops by name, for heaven’s sake!

Okay… I must get back to work.

Thus endeth the rant.

“O My God, give us priests; My God give us holy priests; My God, give us many holy priests!”

If They Stand In Opposition to Church Teaching!

NEW YORK, February 26, 2010 Following a period of relative silence since his installation last year, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan eagerly took an opportunity to set forth Church teaching on controversial points, including the forbidding of public honors for pro-abortion politicians, in a recent interview with NY1.  The bishop also asserted that his outspokenness on such issues was simply part of his job as shepherd and teacher of the faith.

When NY1 News reporter Roma Torre asked whether a pro-abortion Catholic should be invited to a “Catholic event” such as the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, Dolan’s response was unequivocal.

“Actually, Roma, I don’t think we should invite anybody that would take a stance [in favor of] abortion, because this is not a Catholic issue,” he replied.

The archbishop later clarified that his answer pertained to giving public honors to such persons.

“In our mind, being opposed to abortion, is a civil rights issue, it’s a natural law issue, it’s not a Catholic issue,” Dolan continued. “We’d be uncomfortable in anybody that would, say, promote a stand that would be for bigotry, or against civil rights, because that’s contrary not only to the teaching of the Church but to what we would call civil rights and the natural law.”

The archbishop said that a pro-abortion Catholic such as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would be “welcome” to a Catholic event – but “there’s a difference between everybody being welcome, and providing somebody who is dramatically, radically, publically at odds with the Church on a particularly given issue to have a place of prominence and to receive an award.”

When the University of Notre Dame announced last year that the pro-abortion President Obama would offer the commencement address and receive an honorary law degree at the school, the New York archbishop condemned the invitation as a “big mistake.”

Dolan, who has earned a reputation for outspokenness promoting Catholic orthodoxy on life and family issues, explained that his goal is not to “look for headlines.” It was because of his office as teacher, he said, that he “won’t duck the tough issues.”

“It’s not like I sit down and say: How can I grab some headlines, how can I really cause a splash,” Dolan said.  “You just try to do your work, and sometimes things get attention. …

“If people ask me, I feel obliged as a teacher, as the official teacher of the Archdiocese of New York, to try my best to give the Church’s wisdom here.”

Dolan noted that he was “grateful” that the New York legislature struck down a same-sex “marriage” bill last year.  He also affirmed that the St. Patrick’s Day Parade should continue disallowing a gay pride banner, which would conflict with the parade’s “strong Christian identity.”

But, he said, it would be a mistake to understand the Church’s stance against such matters as mere naysaying.

Instead, he said: “the Church in a way is one big yes: one big yes to human life, one big yes to anything that advances, lifts up, enlightens, liberates legitimate human identity. We’re in the ‘yes’ business, not the ‘no’ business.

“So I get frustrated sometimes, when that’s interpreted as being ‘anti-gay,’ that’s where we kinda cringe,” he continued, “because believe it or not, we get attacked from the other extreme for defending the rights of gays and for the strong Church teaching that every single human being … is a child of God, deserving of dignity and respect.”

Dolan called the late John Cardinal O’Connor of New York, who was outspokenly pro-life, his “hero” – and acknowledged that his office calls for a “prophetic” voice, although he prefers using a persuasive tone when possible.

“There’s always a little bit of tension between those two,” said Dolan. “But occasions might call that I’ll have to be prophetic. I’m sure there’s gonna be times … that I’m gonna have to be a bit of a pitbull. In general, I like to be an Irish Setter.”

By Kathleen Gilbert LifeSiteNews

Mass Intentions… It has always been the practice of the Roman Catholic Church to pray for the dead.  This tradition actually can be traced back to the Book of Maccabees in the Old Testament.  Having suffered a great defeat in a battle of war, the Jewish soldiers gathered mementos from the dead, and prayed for their souls.

After the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, early Christians buried their loved ones and prayed for their on going purification.  Sometimes we presume that ALL people go right to Heaven. The saints tell us otherwise. Most go to Purgatory for ongoing purification. Having Holy Masses said for the dead is a wonderful holy tradition of the Church. It shortens their time spent in Purgatory. Renew that wonderful tradition of our Faith. Have masses said for your beloved ones.

“Some souls would suffer in Purgatory
until the Day of Judgment if they were
not relieved by the prayers of the Church.”
St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church