Preparations are underway for the first 1962 Latin Mass (also called the Tridentine Mass) to be celebrated in the diocese. The pamphlets have been ordered, the ladies are shaking out their veils and the priests are brushing up on their Latin. In late March, Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde announced that St. Lawrence Parish and St. John the Baptist Parish in Front Royal would be allowed to offer a weekly Tridentine Mass. Father Christopher Mould, pastor of St. Lawrence Parish, plans to have a practice session before the first Mass this Sunday at 12:30 p.m. He has been studying and practicing the old Mass as he prepares.
April 2006 Archives
We know well how the resurrection is represented in the Western tradition, for example, in Piero della Francesca. Jesus comes out of the sepulcher raising the cross as a standard of victory. His face inspires extraordinary trust and security. But his victory is over his external, earthly enemies. The authorities had put seals in his sepulcher and guards to keep watch, and, lo, the seals are broken and the guards asleep. Men are present only as inert and passive witnesses; they do not really take part in the Resurrection.In the Eastern image, the scene is altogether different. It is not developed under an open sky, but underground. In the resurrection, Jesus does not come out but descends. With extraordinary energy he takes Adam and Eve by the hand, who were waiting in the realm of the dead, and pulls them with him to life and resurrection. Behind the two parents, an innumerable multitude of men and women who awaited the redemption. Jesus tramples on the gates of hell which he himself has just dislocated and broken. Christ's victory is not so much over visible but over invisible enemies, which are the worst: death, darkness, anguish, the devil. ...full article from Catholic Online.
The following text is used during the preparation of the altar when first communions are celebrated at my parish. I'm posting without comment because I'd like to know what you think about it. If you have a few moments, please review and post your reactions below.
TEXT FOR USE DURING OFFERTORY, AFTER COLLECTION/OFFERTORY HYMN:
FIRST EUCHARIST CELEBRATION
PREPARATION OF THE TABLE
READER: Today we shall recall what Jesus and his friends did when they celebrated their last supper. This was the first Eucharist. Jesus ate this meal the night before he gave his life for all of us on the cross.
(Slight pause)
READER: Jesus wants us also to share in his meal. First we need a table. We call it an altar. To prepare the table for a meal, we bring up a table cloth.
(Two children walk up the center aisle bringing the altar cloth. They place the cloth on the altar. One other child brings up the corporal, opens it and places it on the altar. Two parents assist with this.)
READER: The meal Jesus shares with his friends is a special meal of love and thanksgiving. We therefore decorate the altar with flowers.
(Children bring up flowers and place them in front of the altar.)
READER: We also use candles on our altar to show that we are celebrating a special meal.
(Two children bring up tapers. The two parents assist in the lighting of the candles.)
READER: For our meal, we need the food and drink that Jesus used at the Last Supper: bread and wine. Bread gives us the strength to live, and wine helps us rejoice.
(Two children bring up the bread and wine. These gifts are received by the presider. Two other children bring up the collection basket.)
READER: In Jesus’ time, all the people at a meal drank from one large cup to show their union with one another. Let us bring to the table the cup that we use at the meal of the Lord.
(One child brings up the cup and a second child brings up the purificator. Both are received by the presider.)
READER: We have brought to the table of the Lord all that is needed for the meal. But there is no meal without people to eat and drink together. At each Eucharist, we are invited as guests of the Lord. We bring to the meal all that we are and all that we do.
Web designer Carl Schaad discloses the secrets of the John Lennon seance.
Today is the traditional date of Shakespeare's birthday, and also the day of his death. You may not have learned in school that Mr. Shakespeare may have been a closet Catholic; it is indisputable that he was surrounded by Catholics his entire life, and they must have had some influence over him. Wikipedia has a brief but cogent discussion of his possible religious committment(s).
Of course, today is an excellent day to visit Open Source Shakespeare.
Among my friends, there are plenty of ex-Slashdot readers. They just couldn't take the number of asinine contributors in the discussion threads, and I don't blame them for avoiding the site.
I still read the front page on most days, because are usually two or three items that are worth reading. Occasionally, I will read a thread if there is a good chance the participants aren't mentally out to lunch. But on any political topic, the lefty-libertarian fringe comes out in full force, screaming at the top of its lungs about Bushitler MONITORING MY FREAKING BROADBAND CONNECTION!!!! This is interlaced with huge doses of adolescent sarcasm, misfired jokes, and signature lines referring to Unix system processes.
Case in point: you know how when you're in a group of people, you can pretty much assume that everyone will agree that kiddie porn is horrible, and child pornographers are the lowest form of human scum? Not on Slashdot. A sample of the discussion is below -- each paragraph is from a different person:
When will the think of the children bullshit stop? It's obvious why they want all this data retention, and it AINT child porn. dataveilance...This is what happens when you let Johnny have a computer in his room.The whole "child porn argument" is poorly thought out. It's a knee-jerk line brought out by politicians when they don't have any other way of garnering support for an unpopular and invasive policy, which is so polarizing that it automatically casts a shadow on anyone who opposes it.
If America sacrifices its ideals and stops being America, there won't be any "American" children to protect.
Wholly 1984 Batman!
This is yet another attempt by the Bush administration to increase domestic surveilance, and to create a de-facto state of permanent constant survelliance on all Americans.
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we'd want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren't? So they're going to keep records of everyone's activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
Well, it's like the AG said, the internet is creating a feedback loop where younger and younger children are exploited. Since there's a lower limit to how young a child can be, those sickos have gone on to fantasize about children that aren't even born yet! That's why they're using cartoons, because they can't take pictures of people who haven't even reached the stage of fertilized egg yet. They're being victimized years before they'll even exist. Think of the future children!
Funny thing is, I can take measures to protect my daughter from sex perverts, but how do I protect her from a government that is slowly turning into an orwellian police state?
I think that laws making child pornography possession illegal are, at best, in line with laws making drug possession illegal to try to reduce the demand to squeeze out drug sellers. We want to step on sexual abuse of children, so we stomp on child pornography production. To stomp on that, we try stomping on child pornography consumers to reduce demand. You're talking about a pretty darn indirect benefit at a potentially steep privacy and civil rights cost.
Twenty-seven years ago today, Jimmy Carter was attacked by a killer rabbit. An omen of what was to come?
Here's some data:
Among the top five countries on this scale are three-and-a-half Catholic countries (counting Canada as the "half"); among the bottom five are no Catholic countries.
QED. :-)
When Planned Parenthood resorts to scare tactics against pro-life pregnancy aid services and tries to get their advertising banned by law, you know the good guys are having an effect!
By the way, notice the rhetoric in the piece: for PP, terms like "pregnancy help" don't appear, but "crisis pregnancy" is the lede. When you hate birth, every pregnancy is a crisis.
Anniversary audio:
The announcement of Pope Benedict's election (6.5 MB)
His first address (in Italian) and a papal blessing (8.2 MB)
No, that's not my age. I'm referring to this story about a rum-laced cake that survived in an attic from 1962 to now, and looks about the same as it did then!
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) -- Lance Nesta did what many people do when receiving a fruitcake - he set it aside, only to rediscover it more than 40 years later in his mother's attic. Nesta couldn't resist taking a peek at the cake, still in its original tin and wrapped in paper.
"I was amazed that it hadn't changed at all," he said.
Nesta's two aunts sent him the fruitcake in November 1962 while he was stationed in Alaska with the Army.
Back in 2003, I posted a cautionary note advising people not to buy so-called "Monastery Icons" because they were made by members of a strange sect that blended Hinduism with Christianity. It changed its name several times and relocated every few years. Now they're in California. [Update: New Mexico as of 2010.]
Just in case anyone had any lingering doubts about the nature of the group, its web site now describes them openly as a Hindu ashram.
It's good that they cleared that up.
The folks at St. John Cantius parish in Chicago must not have known about this when they presented Pope John Paul II (sorry, the newsletter link is broken now) one of the sect's pseudo-icons.
(Update: Corrected the reference to the Holy Father; thanks to reader Hache who spotted a mistake.)
Who's going to be a new Catholic this Easter?
Well, among bloggers there's Dawn Eden for starters; but then she was really one all along in potentia, I guess!
But there are other dear people on the way in, and I'm rejoicing with all of you. (This will be my 26th anniversary as a Catholic.)
Know that the saints, that great "cloud of witnesses", cheer you on as you come into full communion with our Lord's mystical Body. And one Heart desires it even more.
The Italian press agency AGI reports on the Pope's Chrism Mass homily:
POPE REMEMBERS DON SANTORO, MAN OF PRAYER
(AGI) - Vatican City, April 13 - "Being a priest means being a man of prayer". Benedict XVI wanted to remind his listeners of this fact today: all the priests, bishops and cardinals who celebrated at his side the Chrism Mass, the first ritual of Maundy Thursday. "Being a priest", said the Pope, "means being a friend of Jesus Christ, and this ever more so with all of our existence. The world needs God, not just any god, but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who became flesh and blood, who loved us to the point of dying for us, who rose again and found room in himself for man. This God must live in us and we must live in Him".
Stressing that this is "our priestly calling", Pope Ratzinger gave homage to Don Andrea Santoro, murdered last February in Trebisonda, Turkey, while praying, by repeating a phrase Cardinal Marco Ce' said during Spiritual Exercises. "The word", said the Pope, "said 'I am here to live among these people and allow Christ to do so by lending him my flesh. One becomes capable of salvation only by offering up their bodies. The evil in the world needs to be carried and the pain shared, absorbing it in one's bodies completely, as did Jesus".
Pope Ratzinger stressed that every priest needs prayer, "a mount", "an interior height that we must climb". "Only in this way", the Pope noted, "can friendship develop. Only in this way can we carry out our priestly duties, only in this way can we bring Christ and his Gospels to men". Benedict XVI didn't hide the fact that "simple activism can be heroic". But, he warned, "external acting, at the end of the day, doesn't produce fruit and loses effectiveness if it does not arise from the deep, intimate communion with Christ. The time that we use for this is time of pastoral activity, of authentic pastoral activity".
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131214 APR 06
The homily (in Italian) is online at the Vatican site.
I haven't read it yet, but I'd like to dig into the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Ironically, the condensed version has a much longer title.
Jimmy Akin has read the Compendium, and likes it. I happen to like Jimmy Akin, as we once sat and smoked together in a San Diego tobacco store, so you can trust his judgment.
One reason I'm anxious to get my hands on this volume is so I'll have better answers for my kids when they ask questions. Explaining justification is quite easy. Explaining the Trinity is not.
The cause of "Tibet" appears, at first glance, to be one of those fashionable causes that celebrities love to embrace. Anything endorsed by Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, and the Beastie Boys is suspicious, don't you think?
Yet Tibet the nation, as opposed to Tibet the cause, has a very legitimate grievance against the Chinese government that has attempted to absorb it. China has murdered several hundred thousand Tibetans during their obscene occupation, and driven a similarly large number into exile. Now they are encouraging Han Chinese immigration into their restive "territory," and ethnic Tibetans will soon be a minority in their own ancestral lands.
The one bright spot for Tibet is its spiritual and would-be temporal leader, the Dalai Lama. Normally, one may safely assume that any Eastern spiritual leader known to Westerners is a charlatan, more interested in selling books and conducting seminars than achieving inner peace. A sure mark of the religious dilettante is the remark, "I'm interested in Eastern spirituality."
Real Eastern spirituality, as opposed to the denatured, consumerist version, has some rough edges to it. For one thing, the various moral codes differ, but they generally agree that giving into one's sexual passions is not the way to achieve happiness. Many strains of Buddhism place a very low priority on any bodily activity; celibacy is widely practiced and considered a highly desirable state for advancing in the life of the soul.
All of these points are raised in this account of an interview with the Dalai Lama. He takes a dim view of homosexuality, which might surprise his lefty fans. Not to mention his chummy behavior with their Black Beast:
Although he appeared not to approve of the war in Iraq, he was admiring of [President] Bush.This passage could have come from Popes Benedict or John Paul:"He is very straightforward," said the monk.
"On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war.
"By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism."
"It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences -- yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours," he said.I read another article where he condemns syncretism, and gently chides Westerners for trying to combine elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and bits and pieces of other religions and spiritual practices. He doesn't think that's healthy, and usually recommends that people work from within their tradition unless they have a true conversion of the heart."I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice -- which brings no real freedom."
The late Holy Father attempted to reach out to leaders of other religions, including the Dalai Lama. Over the years, self-styled defenders of the faith have criticized him for this. But isn't this a man we should be working with? Sure, make it politely clear that we are not compromising our faith in the One, True God, but we as Catholics should work with any man of good will.
Read the whole article. It isn't very long.
Below is an excerpt from an episode of "South Park." I gather that the show "Family Guy" is going to depict Mohammad (npffp) in an upcoming show. The speech defending free speech borders on eloquent; the crowd's reaction is sadly believable. Check it out.
Some of you know I have a big problem with the Becker "Litany of the Saints." To me, it sounds like a jam session with a bunch of names thrown in. The joke with folks who share my disdain is you can add all sorts of name combinations since the word "Saint" doesn't appear much:
Peter, Paul & Mary - pray for us
George Jetson - pray for us
His Boy Elroy - pray for us
The banality of the Becker piece compared with the prayerful simplicity of chant drives me batty. Why replace something honored by the Church as having a special place in our liturgies with something so... blah?
I finally found out why the Becker won out over the chant Litany: our DRE thinks gregorian chant is boring.
That's right: boring. As in not fun or exciting. And prayer is supposed to be fun and exciting.
We're back to the chant litany this year, thank God. It was my only request of our main music/liturgy director and I'm glad it was honored.
Bishop Bruskewitz continues to roll against the National Review Board. The Wanderer just published an interview with the Bishop of Lincoln in which His Excellency pulls no punches. Here's some of the more pithy quotes:
Q. Why do you object to pro-abortion Catholics serving on the lay board? Aren’t a lot of prominent Catholics supporters of partial-birth abortion? Don’t they deserve representation too? A. It’s a standing disgrace that some of these people who call themselves Catholic don’t understand the heinous evil that they support. That we should give them a position of prominence in the Church is an outrage.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is one of my living heroes. She has a tremendous independence of mind and spirit, with the confidence to issue orders and the humility to carry out orders. It would take a long essay to explain why she is the foremost Total Bad-Ass in the Bush Administration. Here is but one example: she is an accomplished amateur pianist:
After the Shostakovich, they turned to Brahms's Piano Quintet in F minor: "Condi's piece," as Mr. Battey called it. This intense, intricate and extremely difficult work is one of Ms. Rice's favorites. She reveres Brahms, she said, because the music is "passionate but not sentimental." In the scherzo, the players set a breakneck pace. Sometimes notes splattered and coordination teetered on the brink. It hardly mattered. The music-making was risky and vital.
The New York Times, taking a break from viciously attacking associated with the Bush Administration, published this warm appreciation of Dr. Rice, and for that they should have one-half percent of their credibility restored.
Can anyone point me to a good Web site statistics tool? I've used the various free options out there, but they're not terribly impressive. Here's what I need it to do:
1. It should be able to filter out referrer spam from a hostname list that I specify.
2. It should do a reasonably solid job at Web analytics -- e.g., it should be able to tell a robot from a recurring user.
3. It should be free.
Any thoughts?
And just for fun, here's a musical salute to the staple food of the holy days.
On Tuesday at 11, at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 
the choir (with soloists and volunteers from other groups) will be singing these and other works:
Which one is not like the rest?
(a) Ecce sacerdos magnus, Leo Abbott (music director)
(b) Juravit, William Cdl. O'Connell
(c) Melodic Gloria, James Chepponis
(d) Responsorial Psalm and Gospel Acclamation from Mass for the Chrism, Robert Twynham
(e) Sanctus from Mass for the City, Richard Proulx
(f) The Lord Is My Shepherd, Thomas Matthews
(g) Laudate Dominum, Mozart
(h) Pan de Vida, Bob Hurd, arr. Kingsbury
Today's liturgical practices smackdown brought to you by Cardinal Arinze.
Holding up his fists, he said "This one is law, and this one is order"
Actually, what he said was:
"A do-it-yourself mentality, an attitude of nobody-will-tell-me-what-to-do, or a defiant sting of if-you-do-not-like-my-Mass-you-can-go-to-another-parish, is not only against sound theology and ecclesiology, but also offends against common sense," the Cardinal said."Unfortunately, sometimes common sense is not very common, when we see a priest ignoring liturgical rules and installing creativity, in his case personal idiosyncrasy, as the guide to the celebration of Holy Mass."
Episcopalians consider freeze on gay bishops
"Our continued membership in the Anglican Communion can no longer be taken for granted," he wrote. "There is now evidence that a majority of bishops are beginning to rethink the position staked out by the General Convention 2003, when it approved the election of the bishop of New Hampshire."
Cardinal Mahony: Left-Wing Radical
I'll leave the commenting to you.
Up in Manchester, New Hampshire, the closing of one church made it possible for an Eastern Catholic congregation to buy it and move in from their overcrowded former church a few blocks away. So far they're making a good start with it. Nicely enough, their iconostasis from the old church fit perfectly in the sanctuary of the new one! Here are a few quick photos from my visit there today.
Update: I modified the link to work around a limitation in the MSIE browser.
(Part One Here)
I found the Wanderer interview with Paul Likoudis where Bishop Bruskewitz offers the ten reasons why he refused to participate in the John Jay study:
"1) This study is not directed to developing programs for the protection of young people. . . . The study seems to be to satisfy curiosity."2) Serious sins against the Eighth Commandment are likely to be part of the result of the study: detraction, calumny, slander, contumely, etc.
"3) The study asks to include information even for inconclusive allegations and anonymous allegations.
"4) Many of the accused in the files of many dioceses are dead and will not be able to defend themselves.
"5) No equivalent study has ever been made in the United States so that there is no comparison to any other sector of people in the United States, such as Protestant ministers, public school teachers, doctors, youth ministers, artists, newspaper reporters, etc.
"6) The United States federal government Office of Health and Human Services refused to grant a certificate of confidentiality for the study as requested by the National Review Board.
"7) The reporting of the study does not promise to place into context the overwhelming number of priests who do not and did not ever commit any sexual abuse of minors.
"8) The study is skewed and inaccurate from the start because any self-reporting can include both inflation and deflation of information.
"9) About one-third of all the Catholic clergy in the United States are not included in the study, since religious orders and other communities (for instance, Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Franciscans, etc.) are not included.
"10) The administration of the USCCB [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops] which signed the contract with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice has given the ownership of all the information into the possession of the college."
Over at his blog, Dr. Ed Peters is asking whether Bishop Bruskewitz is right to refuse compliance with USCCB's review board. In a nutshell, the answer is yes. Dr. Peters might be a canonist, but so are Bishop Bruskewitz and Msgr. Thorburn (the Bishop's close advisor, closer friend and Vicar General.) In fact, both of these individuals were accomplished canonists before finding themselves in their current ecclesiastical office.
Now the tone of the good Bishop's letter is admittedly a tad combative, but this is more a matter of pastoral theology than canon law.
That being said, Peters appears to overlook the principles of canon law (and in this case the Divine law) that the Bishop is trying to uphold. The first is a very fundamental principle of natural justice: Every accused has the right to face his accuser. (See my blog entry above).
The Bishop has repeated asserted that the audit, as it is currently structured, violates this fundamental principle of justice. Having read the text of the John Jay questionaire myself, it appears to me (and I'm a canonist too) that the Bishop is right. Simply put, beyond other weaknesses that call into question the audit's methodology, the questionaire does not allow for an accused priest to defend himself.
I suspect this is why everyone keeps griping about Bruskewitz, but nobody actually challenges his "non-compliance" before the Roman Rota or the Congregation for Bishops. The universal law provides these two options for bringing about the correction of wayward bishops.
This is not the first time Bishop Bruskewitz has found himself in the middle of a controversy. This wouldn't be the first time his actions were challenged in Rome. Bishop Bruskewitz has always maintained he would willingly submit to the Holy See's decision if over-ruled in Rome.
I believe that the Bishop is a man of his word, however, this has never been put to the test. Why? Because the Holy See has always upheld his controversial actions/decisions.
Secondly, it is a matter of the Divine law that Christ instituted His Church as a hierarchy. Within this hierarchy, laypeople submit to Bishops, not Bishops to laypeople. No merely ecclesiastical law -- including the particular law establishing the national review board and its various derivatives -- can contradict the Divine law.
This is why the charter (at least the version given recognitio by the Holy See) establishes the review board and its derivatives as merely consultative. They have no binding power over any bishop. This is clear in the text of the charter itself. In fact it was clearly worded this way, at the Holy See's insistance, after some Bishops tried to give away too much power in the first couple of drafts. (Which is what got the bishops in trouble in the first place; many more-or-less abdicated their responsibilities to psychologists and other lay experts).
Here's a sampling of the text itself. Please note the words in bold:
Article 8...The Committee is to advise the USCCB on all matters related to child and youth protection and is to oversee the development of the plans, programs, and budget of the Office of Child and Youth Protection. It is to provide the USCCB with comprehensive planning and recommendations concerning child and youth protection by coordinating the efforts of the Office and the National Review Board...
ARTICLE 9.
The Office for Child and Youth Protection, established by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, is to staff the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People and be a resource for dioceses/eparchies for the implementation of “safe environment” programs and for suggested training and development of diocesan personnel responsible for child and youth protection programs, taking into account the financial and other resources, as well as the population, area, and demographics of the diocese/eparchy...
ARTICLE 10.
The Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People is to be assisted by the National Review Board, a consultative body established in 2002 by the USCCB...
The Board will also advise the Conference President on future members...
While the Bishop may not be in compliance with the national review board, he is in compliance with canon law -- both universal and particular. He has heard the advice of the Review Board and its various derivatives, and he has chosen to reject it where he feels their advice conflicts with his obligation as a Bishop to uphold the natural principles of justice. He has also defended the proper role of the episcopacy against those who would attempt to usurp it.
Put another way, what is particular law is the implementation of the national review board as outlined in the charter. The charter clearly establishes the national review board as a consultative body with no actual coercive power over bishops.
Here is a third issue. Does Bishop Bruskewitz deny, in the words attributed to him, that the national review board and its derivatives have any standing under canon law? While his words admittedly appear to be those of understatement, ridicule and scorn, it seems to me that the answer is no when one looks at the actual words he uses. The Bishop is strait-shooter, but he is also a good canonist. You can bet he carefully crafted his comments.
Here's a line-by-line analysis.
Some woman named Patricia O'Donnell Ewers,
While not the most polite tone, I assume the bishop has correctly identified the name and gender of his accuser. It may be rude, but it is neither heretical nor schismatic.
who is the Chair of something called "A National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People",
Similar to above. His tone may be one of understatement and ridicule, but he seems to have correctly identified her title. The national review board is "something".
has said that her Board "calls for strong fraternal correction of the Diocese of Lincoln."True. This is what her board is calling for.
The Diocese of Lincoln has nothing to be corrected for,
I personally believe this is true, as does every other canonist with whom I have discussed the Bishop's reaction to the national review board over the years (Dr. Peters being the only exception). Nevertheless, this appears to be the source of the controversy. As previously stated, the universal law provides the means for correcting wayward bishops. Let a canonist who disagrees with the Bishop take up the cause in Rome.
since the Diocese of Lincoln is and has always been in full compliance with all laws of the Catholic Church and with all civil laws.Again, I believe this to be true. Note that Bishop Bruskowitz didn't say "in full compliance with all the recommendations of the national review board and/or its derivatives." This is not necessary since the board enjoys no legislative power; it was established in particular law as strictly an advisory board. If Bishop Bruskewitz is not in compliance with canon law or civil law, then please show me where.
Furthermore, Ewers and her Board have no authority in the Catholic ChurchThis is not how I would have worded it, but the statement is true. The board is advisory. This is clear from the charter. It is a matter of particular law. The board cannot bind a bishop.
and the Diocese of Lincoln does not recognize them as having any significance.
Brilliantly subjective. His Excellency does not say that he does not recognize the board; he simply states that he does not recognize the board as having any significance. Like any good canonist, he left himself some wiggle room.
[snip text which, although true, is irrelevant to controversy at hand, namely whether the Bishop is subject to the board]
The Diocese of Lincoln does not see any reason for the existence of Ewers and her organization.
Same as above. I agree with Amy Welborn that the Bishop should have made it clear he was not speaking of Ewers personally. I also think the tone is somewhat strong. I think this was a "teachable moment" and the Bishop should have used a more gentle tone to reach a broader audience rather than a New Oxford Review tone that distracts from the substantive issue being debated.
Nevertheless, this is a matter of pastoral theology and not canon law. And since my expertise is in the latter and not the former, I will leave the tone for pastoral theologians to debate.
The Bishop's statment is again subjective. He is expressing an opinion. He does not deny the board's existence or its mandate under canon law. He simply states he does not see the reason for it. He is well within his canonical rights to do so.
In the end, canon law -- both universal and particular -- is clearly on the side of Bishop Bruskewitz. The national review board may be a matter of particular law, but so are its limitations.
I call this, the "promised lamb."
This was our Thanksgiving meal - no one in my family gets excited about turkey.
Here's Fr. Jerome Magat with my wife Teresa and me from last Thanksgiving.
Fr. Magat is parochial vicar at St. Elizabeth's in Colonial Beach, VA. He organized a free clinic in Colonial Beach as well.
