January 2009 Archives

Today, a dear friend of my brother and his fellow classmate at St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia has passed on to eternal life. Deacon Adam Crowe was only 26 years old, and was to be ordained a priest this spring for the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York. Deacon Crowe was a guest in our home when my brother Deacon Steve was home on free weekends. He was kind, compassionate, sharp, holy and dedicated totally to the Catholic faith and his formation to become a priest. He celebrated Steve's ordination last June with us and he assisted at Steve's first Mass as a deacon. He was an inspiration to us and would have been a wonderful priest.

Please pray for his family back in New York and his seminarian brothers at St. Charles, who all mourn an unexpected and profound loss.

I'm sure that Deacon Adam is on his way to rest in the Lord and to intercede for us all. May the peace of Christ be his, and be ours when God calls us home.

When Cardinal Rigali called out the Teleprompter Messiah (thanks, kshaidle) about his decision to fund baby-killing organizations overseas, he got this response impugning pro-lifers' motives as being purely partisan, and they should shut up about it:

President Barack Obama on Saturday issued a statement criticizing debate on the policy as divisive and fruitless. "For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate," he said. "It is time that we end the politicization of this issue."

Well, there's the new tone in Washington for you: your concerns are stale and fruitless and we don't want to hear about your disagreement.

A photography student followed Capuchin friar Fr. Matthew Palkowski around for a few days for a project; here's his glimpse at one priest's life in the city.

The photos are pretty cool; it's too bad the artist David Jolkovski only posted these few online.

At the passing of moral theologian and Dunwoodie professor Msgr. William Smith, John Mallon posts some recollections along with a 1995 interview.

"...if we are to be ministers of the gospel, and witnesses of the gospel, then we have to preach the gospel, and the gospel is both the call to conversion and the call to compassion. And the same revealed word of God insists--it is not an option, it is an obligation--that we do the truth in love."

Pope Benedict is to Pope John Paul II,
as Bp. Williamson is to... Abp. Milingo.

For a long time, Abp. Milingo's problems, in the eyes of Church authorities, were mostly behavioral rather than doctrinal, but there was something the Vatican could do to deal with him: imposing a forced retirement.

If the erratic Bp. Williamson of the SSPX ever does accept some regularized status in full communion with the Church, the best that Pope Benedict will be able to do with him is the same approach: to insist that Williamson retire and spend the rest of his life doing good for the Church and for his soul in some modest way. And, for G-d's sake, shutting up.

So Mr. Obama is going to take the oath of office while holding the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he took the oath. Our Sunday Visitor mentions that there is a "Catholic connection" to that historical event: that Lincoln took the oath before Chief Justice Roger Taney, the first Catholic to hold that office.

Alas, Taney is not a figure in whom we could take pride. He was a firm supporter of slavery, and wrote in the Dred Scott decision that

blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."

Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . ."

Which is more or less the way some contemporary public officials consider preborn children: that they can be created or destroyed at will, treated as objects to be placed in cold storage, flushed down a sewer when unwanted, destroyed in laboratory experiments for utilitarian purposes, and not treated as members of the human community or subjects of rights.

With so many bad Catholic politicians collaborating in this injustice, it is only appropriate to associate Taney with the inauguration of the most pro-abortion administration yet in the US.

Noting the passing of Pio Cardinal Laghi, former apostolic pro-nuncio to the United States (grant him eternal rest, Lord), here is a 1990 analysis by Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, on the bishops appointed during Cdl. Laghi's tenure 1980-1990.

Fr. Reese's data disproved some liberal myths about the Laghi bishops, and his article contains one quote that might reinforce conservative complaints: Laghi's predecessor Abp. Jean Jadot said: "There is no difference between the appointments made by Laghi and myself. Most of the candidates appointed I would have proposed as my number one choice."

Well, it can't come too soon!

Petrus reports that the Holy Father has directed CDF to prepare an instruction for bishops on how to proceed with cases of alleged Marian apparitions and other alleged mystical phenomena.

The first step is to impose silence on the alleged visionary. And that step by itself is half the battle, because stopping the publicity associated with false mysticism limits the damage and confusion it can cause. Also, when false seers disobey such directives, they make the bishop's job in identifying them much easier!

A rough English version of the article is available on-line as well.

Here's an event for readers in DC and the Arlington diocese; thanks to the schola member who sent the information.

For the feast of the Epiphany, there will be a Solemn High Mass at Holy Trinity parish in Gainesville, VA. Several local seminarians from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, and St. Charles Borromeo, as well as diocesan priests, will be serving or singing at the Mass. The parish priests are Fr. Peffley and Fr. Wooton, to whom we are greatly indebted for affording us this extraordinary opportunity to offer this very solemn form of the Traditional Mass.

All are invited and encouraged to witness this magnificent liturgical form of the immemorial Roman Rite.

In Epiphania Domini
Solemn High Mass
Tuesday, January 6th at 7:00 PM

Holy Trinity Catholic Church
8213 Linton Hall Rd
Bristow, VA 20136
www.holytrinityparish.net