Richard Chonak: March 2004 Archives

In February, Bishop Ratko Peric of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno in Bosnia-Herzegovina issued a new summary of the Medjugorje case. At the end of the report, he lists the Holy See's statements:

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has intervened four times through two of its Secretaries, while the Prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger, also made an important intervention.

In 1985, Msgr. Alberto Bovone notified the Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of Italy not to organize official pilgrimages to Medjugorje.

In 1995, Msgr. Tarcisio Bertone wrote to the bishop of Langres, Msgr. Leon Taverdet, and repeated the same to Msgr. Lucien Daloz of Besan�on, France, who were interested in knowing the position of the Holy See on Medjugorje.

Finally, in 1998, the same Secretary wrote to Msgr. Gilbert Aubry, bishop of Reunion. All these letters emphasized that pilgrimages, whether private or public, are not allowed if they presuppose the authenticity of the apparitions, since this would be in contradiction to the declaration of the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia.

Ratzinger's frei erfunden. In 1998, when a certain German gathered various statements which were supposedly made by the Holy Father and the Cardinal Prefect, and forwarded them to the Vatican in the form of a memorandum, the Cardinal responded in writing on 22 July 1998: "The only thing I can say regarding statements on Medjugorje ascribed to the Holy Father and myself is that they are complete invention" - "frei erfunden".

L'Espresso's www.chiesa department presents an excerpt from the testimony of Romanian priest Tertulian Ioan Langa to the persecution of the Church under Communism.

(Thanks, CWN.)

Springfield, MA, vocations director Fr. Thomas Pacholec is raising money for clergy abuse victims by running in the Boston Marathon April 19.

Nenad Jankovic, a Croatian artist, portrays scenes from Scripture in his charcoal drawings. Here's his Isaiah.

Now this is one for the geek Catholics: obscure intra-Church stuff with an ecumenical angle.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church has petitioned the Pope to be raised to the dignity of a patriarchal Church -- giving its principal archbishop the title of Patriarch of Kiev. In practice, their clergy have been using the title for years. Since the Russian Orthodox Church gave itself the same status many years ago, it only seems fitting that the Ukrainian Church, which was founded earlier, should have it too. The prelates of the Russian Orthodox Church, however, don't take kindly to the idea.

Here's a statement from Ukrainian Catholic bishop Basil Losten.

Marvin Olasky's Christian newsmagazine WORLD has a cover story on art and culture, and makes an interesting point about art as a divine vocation:

"Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded." And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work (Exodus 35:30-36:2).

This is the first text of Scripture that directly teaches the doctrine of vocation: Bezalel has been "called by name." Bezalel, also the first to be described as having been filled with the Holy Spirit, is given a task by God, who has called him not into some prophetic office, but to work with his hands, to serve God and his neighbors by being an artist.

Via Vociferous Yawpings: Bai MacFarlane is fighting the divorce in court, God bless her.

The story of how the couple met isn't on his web site CatholiCity any more, but Google's cache still has it.

It's hard to imagine these two very public Catholics being eligible for a declaration of nullity, and I presume Mrs. MacF. will make the case against that too if it comes up.

What the heck went wrong?

Massachusetts' highest court once again rules that old obstacles to free sexual expression must be swept aside.

BOSTON (AP) The state's highest court ruled Monday that the state's law against incest doesn't apply to stepparents and said it was up to the Legislature to enact a ban.

Ruling in the case of a 60-year-old man accused of having sex with his teenage stepdaughter, the Supreme Judicial Court said under the current law the incest prohibition applies only to natural or adoptive parents.

A law professor observes that the court wasn't willing to construe the word "parent" broadly here, although in another case, it's certainly been willing to construe "marriage" broadly:

Wendy Murphy, a professor at the New England School of Law, said she appreciated the court's ruling ''in a technical sense,'' but she questioned why the justices didn't recognize the role of stepparents in modern families when they have recognized the changing nature of families in other cases.

For instance, the SJC noted the ''changing realities of the American family'' in its landmark decision in November that found it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage in the state.

Aren't we lucky to have such wise judges?

In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, it is customary for someone -- a server or other layman -- to assist the priest as he chants the Gospel. The server stands in front of the celebrant and bows his head, and the priest rests the Gospel book open upon it.

This does not work very well when the server is about 4 inches taller than the celebrant, even after bowing his head.

It's a good thing this maladroit arrangement happened at a liturgy on Saturday morning, and only nine people were present. I can't really tell what it looked like, because my head was underneath a book at the time. Anyway, Bishop John was very nice about it later.

A friend asks prayers for the family of Catholic writer/speaker Johnnette Benkovic:

+ Please storm heaven for the necessary graces. He had recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Jesus, mercy.

Dear G--,
Our son, Simon, was killed today in his truck in an accident. Please pray for us...please pray for us.
Johnnette

AP reports

China has shut down a pair of Web sites that were free-ranging user forums known as blogs, stepping up government attempts to control political discussion on the Internet, a media watchdog group reported even as one site reappeared Friday.
However, a note Friday on the page of the second site, blogbus.com, said it was still closed due to content problems.
"Because individual postings contained forbidden content, the server is temporarily down. We will seek a speedy resolution to the problem," said a message on the site's Web page.

The characters in The Duplex don't know it, but Lenten abstinence is not required on Solemnities (such as St. Joseph's day) that fall on a Friday.

Can. 1251: Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

On the other hand, the Red Sox home opening game is not a Solemnity; so don't eat any Fenway Franks on Good Friday.

Allen the accountant (plug) sent this St. Louis Jesuits spoof over the transom:

Though the markets may fall and the bonds turn to dust
Yet the standard of gold shall last
As a treasure to all who trust not the bank
Sing the praise and the glory of gold.

None of those relativistic floating exchange rates here, huh.

As Joe Sobran and various others have pointed out, one complaint about the Passion movie is to call it "pornographic" because of its violence.

But apparently you can leave out the qualifier! The admirable Jesuit professor Fr. Ronald Tacelli gave a talk at my parish on Sunday, and mentioned the latest theory he's heard from the cultured despisers of religion. Some people are saying that Passion is just plain porn: or gay porn, to be specific. Now that's pretty ridiculous, Professor Tacelli says: if Mel Gibson were to turn the Crucifixion of our Lord into gay erotica, the liberals would be praising it! They'd say it's "transgressive"!

Scrappleface reports: 9th Circuit overturns Iraqi Constitution.

By the way, now that the national abuse report is out, and many of the dioceses have put out their reports, I suppose it's an appropriate time to post this link: a database of known abuse allegations, compiled from media reports, diocesan statements, and public records.

Cardinal Ambrozic leads the way:

TORONTO, March 5, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a press release yesterday, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto reported that it has suspended the faculties of Father Tim Ryan. The Toronto Scarboro Foreign Mission Society priest who, in August 2003, filed an affidavit with the Supreme Court of Canada in support of homosexual marriage.

[via Relapsed Catholic.]

The so-called "compromise" proposal that would have forced Massachusetts voters to choose between full gay marriage or civil unions, with no option to refuse both -- is on the way out. House Speaker Tom Finneran has moved to separate the two issues and give voters a choice. Offering two amendments to the voters -- one to ban gay marriage and one to establish civil unions -- looks like a compromise package that pro-family legislators can legitimately support.

Hi, y'all! 19-year-old convert Nathan Nelson has joined us at stblogs.org with The Tower, and gen-Xers Bobbi and Brian have brought over their own blog, a companion to their website Revolution of Love.

The lay-run National Centre for Padre Pio in Barto, PA, has released a statement of its position about the decree by Allentown's bishop Edward Cullen prohibiting the celebration of the sacraments at the Centre's chapel. Board members say that the Bishop has not responded to their canonical appeal and they are therefore appealing to Rome.

(I'd be happy to post a link to a statement from the bishop about the case, but have not been able to find any on the diocesan website. If any readers know where to find a statement from the diocese, please post a link in the comments.)

British video artist Leo Earle has a clever two-minute Quicktime film about finding God in the midst of doing the dishes.