The Future of Pro-Life Work and Witness – “How can we protect the unborn in a society transformed by the sexual revolution? What is the proper scope of principle, and what of prudence? Where can our pro-life witness be most effective?” Pro-Life Politics After Dobbs: A Symposium (First Things)
Challenging the Accusations – “A U.S. congressman is joining Christian leaders in supporting a Finnish parliamentarian who is on trial for promoting biblical marriage.” Exclusive: Rep. Roy Offers U.S. Support as Persecuted Finnish Leader Faces Third Trial for Her Faith (Washington Stand)
An Architectural Design Ethos – “While some reserve the right to stubbornly hang on to the outdated notion that modern architectural beauty is necessarily out of step with the sacred, I reserve the right to make fun of them.” The Architecture of Prayer: An interview with architect Amanda Iglesias. (Comment)
Trumpism and Catholicism – “The dispute began when Commonweal published an article by Massimo Faggioli that linked certain segments of U.S. Catholicism to former President (and current Republican presidential candidate) Donald Trump, naming Bishop Barron and his ministry among them.” The battle between Commonweal and Word on Fire reflects deeper divides (Our Sunday Visitor)
The No Mass Pope – “Why has Pope Francis not celebrated Mass in public for well over a year? He will frequently ‘preside’ at a Mass … but he has not been the principal celebrant since sometime in mid-2022.” Why doesn’t Pope Francis Celebrate Mass? Part II (Catholic Culture)
An Authentic Openness to the World – “This openness to what is ‘above and beyond’ is, of course, openness to what has already come into the world: the Word made flesh, with whom man can call the Creator ‘Abba Father.'” A Real Openness to the World (What We Need Now)
Cemetery Mass Denied – “Two legal organizations have filed a lawsuit after the National Park Service denied, for the second year in a row, the Knights of Columbus’ request to host a Memorial Day Mass inside a national cemetery.” First Liberty, McGuireWoods LLP sue National Park Service for not letting Knights of Columbus host Memorial Day Mass inside cemetery (CatholicVote)
Ministry to Young People – “[W]hat the United States can share is its long experience of a very nuanced approach to young people, really meeting young people where they’re at — whether it’s youth, collegians, or young adults.” ‘Listen, teach, send’ – The USCCB’s draft plan for young people (The Pillar)
Drag for Children – “Salerno native Carmine De Rosa performed as one of the official artists for the inaugural World Children’s Day. In his capacity as a quick-change artist or a living cartoon, De Rosa appeared as a woman, wearing multiple outfits in drag.” Male drag ‘artist’ dances for kids at Vatican’s World Children’s Day (LifeSite News)
Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus – “A Roman Catholic Diocese in New York dropped out as host of a music festival after finding out that the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus was one of the participants. ” Buffalo Catholic diocese cancels concert after learning of gay chorus’ participation (Fox News)
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@ Drag for Children
Archbishop Viganó quoted the Gospel, noting Christ’s warning about causing scandal: There are no more words to express the scandal and disgust, in the complicit and cowardly silence of the Episcopate. Viganó also implicated His Holiness as an endorser of LGBT. Lifesite also said the dragqueen artist in question entertains at first communion parties. If Italians are becoming so nonchalant, they’re reverting back to the days of pagan Rome. A complacency that spells the death of Christianity.
Added is the response to Francis’ slur on homosexuals. Taken out of context of his efforts to accommodate homosexuality, Msgr Battista Ricca a widely known practicing deviant assigned by His Holiness to manage Casa Santa Marta, one of many examples, the slip does not reveal what his vision really is. When we survey the entire field of like occurrences within the Church during this pontificate that vision becomes clearer.
Fine, surely begin with “listening,” and the Road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35)…
But also, in his seventh World-Youth-Day “1985 Letter to Youth,” Pope John II began, instead, with the young man who asked “What must I do to gain eternal life?” (Mt 19:16-30). https://www.pathsoflove.com/texts/letter-to-youth.html
Does the new approach really hear the incoherent world that now afflicts our youth, and possibly assume too much about the radical and alarming historical fact (!) of the Incarnation (say what?) and Redemption (say what?) and the reality of the Real Presence (say what?), now with more of a multicultural focus on “ministry”?
From another time of cultural upheaval, what would the convert St. Augustine have to say?
Specifically, what does it mean when we read: “One thing that we can learn is this: For many other cultures, ministry with young people is very much integrated into just the way that they do church, period”?
Do we really “do” (c)hurch? Before being “sent,” Mass in the sacramental and Eucharistic (C)hurch (!) is not something that WE do. We don’t do “project Church” (as Benedict clarified in “The Ratzinger Report”, also 1985). And, prior to ministries, what, too, about personal “vocations” as such, whether ordained, religious, married or single?
How much will be taught in “listen, teach, send”?
@ Challenging the Accusations
Päivi Räsänen is the victim of an interreligious squabble over marriage that is assumed a violation by the Finnish courts. It’s actually traditional religious belief on marriage as opposed to the Finnish Lutheran Church openness to same-sex union that’s on trial.
Finland associated with Scandinavia, is not Scandinavian ethnically and regards language. Where it is associated is its secularist liberal mindset. Moreso than other European nations. Advantageous for a more dynamic nuclear Catholicism of candidates, leaders well versed, well read in the sophisticated free spirited arguments [well read to satisfy the validity of one’s own religiosity in comparison] of an advanced liberalism, example Trondheim’s Archbishop Erik Varden.
@ An Architecture Design Ethos
WOW! The article and images are stunning.
And, Winston Churchill is quoted: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” He was speaking of the reconstruction of the fire-gutted British Parliament Building (with two Houses, and with the two parties facing opposite each other), but his words surely apply to Church architecture as well.
Yours truly was trained in five years of architecture school, mostly remnants of the Beaux Arts Tradition, but also contrasted with the dehumanizing and rationalized version which has turned so much secular architecture into uprooted personal exhibitionism and too many Catholic churches into roundabout (roundtable?) social halls.
Elevating and interiorizing architecture for churches…a tough language to reconstruct. This article is wonderful!
Re LifeSiteNews’ report of drag artist at Vatican World Children’s Day: What else is new? To what greater depth of leprous scandal will this Vatican succumb? Will nothing move the bishops to act against it en masse? Are there any faithful bishops? For what or whom do they wait?
It’s about time someone took that journal of pseudo-Catholicism, Commonweal, to task for failing to distinguish themselves from recycling juvenile left-wing sociological carricatures. Retracting one paragraph is not enough for their long history of false witness.
The Future of Pro-life Witness -is in the work pro-life is continuing to do today.
The situation attaining presently is not fluidity in pro-life. It is the abortion complex undergoing a change or metamorphosis from fixed into a fluidity complex. It wants to spill over into pro-life into order to disrupt it and to have a confused pro-life as one of the ways to bolster its own “relevance” and “certainties” at the same time thereby aiding the undermining.
Pro-life must do what it always has done and it is safe and secure. An example of this is in the last link from CNA, “NY AG sued for targeting pro-life pregnancy centers”.
It is the abortion complex that is in trouble. Every one of its aspects is about defending the killing of an innocent human life and person. You could break apart the problems for abortion to see them in their own conditions, categorize them correctly and properly and deal with them smartly -it all comes to the SAME CONSEQUENCE AND RESULT. The Breyer approach to anaylsing things can’t even see its own absurdities.
Justice Breyer is adept at saying the same thing over and over again through transmorgrified presentations he makes “different”. His basic approach is “pragmatism” as he sees it to be understood and applied. This runs through all his judicial output, his books and his philosophizing. What is more important to catch with him, is, in my opinion, whenever he speaks he actually reveals the whole game plan for the wrong side. This especially happens in his interviews and you will notice this yourself if you call up some of the past ones and go into it.
The other thing to grasp is that the abortion camp feels weak and knows it is weak without him and this is a deep motivation behind staking out his public airings.
In the interview in the PBS clip a number of points come out PLUS his basic routine. His basic routine is a kind of gig about “law” that allows him to “call authoritatively” upon “authority” and what is “right”. You can see how this plays out in the March 24 PBS interview video with Amna Nawaz, first link.
In particular at minute 3:10 et seq., he asserts a distinction between judges who are “substituting” their own opinion or determination in place of what is “clear” and what is “law”. This gets restated at 8:09 et. seq. where the judges by “law” are obliged to always “must do the right thing”.
In that context he sets up “contrasts” among legal theories of interpretation and ethics that somehow all lend to the conclusion that he is “right” -and abortion is right. Actually if you critically look at the post-Dobbs general discourse, the Breyer approach misses the mark and would be untenable. Is 6 weeks “originalism” and live-birth-abortion, “pragmatism”? Is 15 weeks “strict constructionism” but using the pill after 15 weeks “ethics”?
Unworkable. No clear answer here. He can’t meet his own horizon.
He could also be saying that the judge who can not admit post-partum killing lacks the full range of “ethical facility” and therefore should be passed over in favour of one who can admit it.
His indication is that with the retiring of “conservative” judges the abortion position could gain momentum with the appointment of more liberal types. I suggest that he is actually inviting the current Bench to be “pragmatic” in this other sense and allow compromises NOW so that there won’t have to be “too many cases getting overturned”.
When it comes to the meanings of words, Breyer is offering the extreme positivist track. He cites “fish” as an example, if used in a statute it can’t mean “carrot”. What he sidesteps here and elsewhere is that the law is not confined to understanding only objective words but also subjective, physical and amoral as well as physical and moral; in addition to a host of other things like custom; or intangibles; and including some absolutes such as natural law.
Law is a creature of morality. Like the embryo that is both a fact that can not be anything else and a moral demand at the same time.
Actually then the conception of the human being would be one of those areas where originalism, textualism, strict constructionism, pragmatism, etc., can be thought out in such wise that they all coincide to give the identical interpretations and sense of purpose and the same result or “consequences”: the protection and facilitation of human life at all points and moreover and especially when it is defenseless and most vulnerable.
I recommend to Justice Breyer to turn away from his chosen existentialist-anomalous path and the perversion of words and law; and go instead to Jesus Christ. He should ask Jesus for light and strength to bring his heart and mind to those things that count and that reflect the will and the greatness of the Almighty for all His children who are His own creation; that for Breyer at the moment is inconceivable to him.
It’s a serious defect for any judge who doesn’t have it. Jesus Christ will hear you. Don’t jump at an answer, wait for it to come. Breyer’s years are not many remaining and if he is sincere Jesus will be sure to make things plain for him.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/stephen-breyer-on-new-book-reading-the-constitution-and-debate-over-how-to-interpret-it
https://www.wral.com/story/biden-pledges-to-name-progressives-to-the-supreme-court-suggesting-he-expects-vacancies/21456412/
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/257834/new-york-attorney-general-sued-for-targeting-pro-life-pregnancy-centers
My consolation is that at Her Fatima Apparition in 1917, etc. Our Lady told us to pray for the Church, and priests, in persona Christi. When we sacrifice and fast, and offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Sacred Latin (with English) Mass, we offer up fitting honor to God and hear Traditional catechism which sanctified saints of the ages to build monasteries, abbeys, colleges, orphanages, Catholic schools, hospitals, etc. And the laity were prompted to serve Christ in the world faithfully, as many were heroes of the World Wars of the twentieth century.
Let us pray as never before, for conversions to the Truth, Chinese martyrs, the Clergy, etc. Our Lady’s Holy Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet and Novena are God’s provisions for graces- those we must ASK to receive- in quiet contemplation, and esp. at Holy Mass. We don’t need to be on street corners. But The Legion of Mary is on street corners, in nursing homes, etc. bringing Our Lady to those in need. The charity of Christ urges us on, Christians. Peace, love, joy of Christ.