January 2004 – Page 3 – Catholic Light

Are we men or machines?

I’ve been looking for a new job recently. I don’t want to leave my current position unless I find something better, but it’s probably time to leave before I get burned out and unsuitable for human company. Right now, I do Internet development for a company that owns a slew of news properties, including two you’ve almost certainly heard of. Our team runs the Web sites and the content management system that powers them.
There are plenty of jobs out there, despite what Hodean & The Gang says, but I’ve been picky about where I’ve applied. Several weeks ago, a former co-worker recommended that I submit an application to a company for which she was doing contract work. I did that, and they invited me to an interview. By the end, I wanted to switch my line of work to something more spiritually rewarding, like coal mining.
Margaret, the HR lady, met me at their development office. (I have changed the names in this story to protect the innocent and the guilty.) She introduced me to Benjamin, a skinny, pale, intense little person.
The first few questions were sensible: he handed me a short program, and asked me to tell him what various parts of the code did and what the output would look like. I felt like things were going quite well — we were talking about the kind of things that Web developers should know, and I sailed through that part. Then it started.
“What,” Benjamin asked, “is a Cartesian join?”
“I don’t know,” I said after thinking a moment. “I’ve heard the term but I can’t define it for you.” I don’t believe in pretending I know more than I do, and I find that people usually appreciate that kind of honesty.
“Umm…okay….” He looked taken aback. “Well, tell me what this SQL code will do.”
“Oh,” I said, “That will return a resultset with all the rows in both tables.”
“That’s right. That’s a Cartesian join.”
Okay, I thought to myself, This guy definitely majored in computer science.
Then we went through the looking glass. “Do you know what a Fibonacci sequence is?”
Nope. Sure didn’t. He explained it, and asked me to write a program to calculate it. I started fumbling my way through it. To understand my frustration, an analogy:

Knowing how to calculate a Fibonacci sequence
is to
running a real Web site
as
knowing about Monet’s paintings of the gardens at Giverny
is to
running the garden in your backyard.
I managed to get over the sheer irrelevance of the task and came up with a solution, but at that point I considered thanking them and leaving.

Tonic for the soul…

Yesterday, my lovely wife and I attended Mass at Old St. Mary’s in Chinatown, Washington, D.C. They have the Ecclesia Dei indult, and we were treated to a Low Mass. (I am a 30-year-old convert living in the Arlington Diocese, and our bishop has not found it necessary to grant the indult; consequently I have never participated in the “old” Mass before.)

Had I know the delights that awaited me, I would have gone much sooner. I was struck by the silence, the Tridentine mumble, well-trained altar boys, the lack of pop music, the repetitions, and the reverence of the faithful, the servers, and the priest, among other things. I was also struck by the difficulties a renegade priest would have if he wanted to abuse the ritual to suit his own tastes.

The entire experience was, in a word, perfect.

Dean: Prolifers and Taliban

Yesterday, Howard Dean made an interesting comment in which he compared pro-lifers to the Taliban. In a nutshell, this incident summarizes why Catholics no longer have a home in the DNC. Here’s an unofficial transcript from [sic.] Catholics for Dean: “And the implication that the government has the right to tell a woman when she can and cannot bear a child is different, but has the same philosophical root as the implications of the Taliban telling women how they’re to behave and how they’re to act.”

“Aside From the Issue of Abortion…”

Why the Dems Still Don’t Get It..
Pete Vere
Kathy Shaidle, a fellow Catholic blogger, recently forwarded me her response to an interesting email she received. It came from a Howard Dean supporter named Tim Huegerich. Having performed a small internet search on Mr. Huegerich, he seems like a sincere pro-life Catholic. Which is why his attempt to recruit Catholics into Howard Dean’s campaign makes absolutely no sense.
“Aside from the issue of abortion…” Tim writes, “Howard Dean in line with Catholic Social Teaching across the board, far surpassing the other candidates. He opposed the Iraq war, stands for workers and fair trade, has delivered health insurance for all children in Vermont, and has begun a revolutionary change in politics by attracting thousands of disenchanted non-voters and financing his campaign with contributions from ordinary people averaging less than $100.”
Kathy’s response to the concept of “Catholics for Dean” is rather appropriate. This is so embarrassing… she writes. While there is no question I would be a Democrat if every issue held equal weight, the truth is that some issues are more important than others. Abortion is one such issue. As a practicing Catholic, the right to life is non-negotiable. Period.
Hence the problem with every presidential candidate running within the Democrat primaries: 1) The Democratic nominees don’t get the abortion issue; 2) The Democratic party doesn’t want to get the abortion issue; and 3) No Democratic presidential candidate even wishes to try and understand how practicing Catholics approach the abortion issue and why we think the way we do. Thus I am likely wasting my time in stating the obvious.
To a practicing Catholic, what lay in a woman’s womb is not just some anonymous blob of cancerous tissue. Rather, it is a human life. Abortion ends that human life. Therefore a Catholic is no more open to negotiating the abortion issue than an African American is open to debate over slavery. Catholics believe that abortion is murder, and when the state permits abortion, Catholics believe that abortion is state sanctioned murder. Regardless of whatever stance a candidate puts forward when it comes to other issues, abortion trumps them all. As practicing Catholics we believe in freedom of choice within the abortion debate only insofar as a well-formed Catholic conscience always chooses a pro-life candidate over one who is pro-abortion. We simply have a hard time voting for politicians who campaign on the killing – rather than the kissing – of babies.
When I mentioned this uncomfortable fact (at least from the perspective of a pro-life Deaniac) to Mr. Huegerich, he replied: “You underestimate the gravity of these ‘other issues.’ 24,000 people die every day around the world from hunger […] there are also 42 million uninsured Americans enduring untold suffering.” These are indeed legitimate issues that concern the Church’s social teaching. Yet like her system of governance, the Church’s social teaching is of a hierarchical nature. Catholic social justice begins with the right to life, from which all other social rights and obligations flow. The state’s duty is to protect this fundamental right. Common sense dictates that a butchered baby laying in a Planned Barrenhood dumpster has no need of socialized healthcare.
There once was an exception to the Democrat’s well-deserved reputation as the Abortion Party. His name was Bob Casey. He was the Governor of Pennsylvania. Back when we lived in Scranton, our family had the good fortune of moving into the Governor’s neighborhood. In fact, we often stopped to converse whenever we met on the sidewalk. Governor Casey was a principled Catholic, a principled politician and a principled Democrat. If he were still living, I would support his presidential campaign over that of any Republican candidate.
Throughout the Governor’s political career, the right to life was non-negotiable. He put his faith first and his political aspirations second. Yet when the DNC silenced Governor Casey at the 1992 convention, it became clear that there was no longer any room left in the Democratic Party for practicing Catholics – an observation since confirmed by the Senate Democrat’s fillibustering of any pro-life judicial nominee. The DNC silenced the debate over abortion and sent practicing Catholics packing for the GOP and various third parties. The Republicans did not use abortion as a wedge issue, rather the DNC handed us over to the GOP. And if pro-life Catholics are now wary about engaging in bona fide dialogue in the Democratic Party over abortion, as Mr. Huegerich alleges, it is because the Democrats shut down the dialogue and showed their lack of good faith when they silenced Governor Casey.
Whatever other faults one may find with Dubya and the Republican Party – and the Republican pro-life record is far from perfect – there is still room under the Republican tent to argue the pro-life case. This is not the case with the Democrats who, in the interest of short-term political expediency, chose to abort their traditional Catholic constituency. Having subsequently lost the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and several key Governor’s mansions, their post-electoral-abortion syndrome is the consequence of this decision.
[Permission to reproduce in whole is granted by the author, provided that credit is give to CatholicLight.StBlogs.org ]

Controversy for St. Pio?

Padre Pio was the subject of some suspicion and controversy during his lifetime, and I guess it’s not too surprising that there’s still some occasional fuss related to him.
In 1970, Vera Calandra and her family founded the Padre Pio Centre near Reading, PA, to promote the canonization of the saintly friar who had miraculously healed her daughter in 1968. For years the Centre was the official representative of his canonization cause in the U.S., authorized by Padre Pio’s Capuchin order to raise funds and distribute literature. Now that the canonization has been accomplished, it seems to make sense that the Centre could continue its work of promoting devotion to St. Pio, spreading his spirituality, and eventually develop into a shrine for those purposes, ideally with the participation of Capuchins.
That’s where the catch comes in: the Padre Pio Centre remains under the direction of the Calandra family. The Diocese wants to control it; the family says their mortgage obligations won’t let them turn it over; and the two sides have never reached an agreement. The Capuchins are understandably standing back from the project until the bishop and the family work it out.
Now Bp. Edward Cullen of Allentown has said Merry Christmas to the Centre by ordering them to stop the two Masses per week that he had previously allowed at the site’s chapel.
Here’s a local news story found in Google’s cache:

Mass stopped at Padre Pio site
By Megan Wolf
[Boyerstown Area] Times Staff
The National Center for Padre Pio in Barto may no longer hold Mass, and Center officials want it back.
Effective January 1, the Rev. Edward P. Cullen, D.D., Bishop of Allentown, has directed that enrollment in the Padre Pio Association of Poor Souls be discontinued.
According to the Diocese of Allentown, a letter dated Dec. 17 was written to the officials of the Padre Pio Center, where Bishop Cullen stated the decision to withdraw permission for Mass and Sacraments was due to the Center’s failure to conform to canonical mandates.
“There has never been a specific allegation of impropriety. Never,” said Julie Calandra-Lineberg, vice president of the center.
In a prepared statement, the Diocese of Allentown said, “The Bishop’s letter said the mandates have been repeatedly explained in meetings and correspondence between the Diocese and Center officials over the last five years.”
“The Bishop has withdrawn permission for Mass and the celebration of the sacraments at the Centre, which is not a shrine and has never been recognized as such by the Catholic Church,” the statement from the Diocese read.
“The former Bishop Welsh officially blessed the center and welcomed it into the Diocese, in 1991. Now, Bishop Cullen is forming a new board to give the Bishop complete control of the Center, which is a civil organization. It cannot be done, and he was told that repeatedly,” she said. “We have been absolutely courteous. We cannot do that which is not legal.”
The Association of Poor Souls, begun in 1992, allowed for donations to be made for members to be remembered in a Mass.
Now, the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith will assume the responsibility to fulfill the spiritual benefits to enrolled members.
New members will not be accepted.
The Center held Mass twice a month and on the first Saturday.
Officials at the Center said they hope to hold Mass in the future.
According to Calandra-Lineberg, the Bishop has 30 days to answer the Center’s appeal, which is Feb. 1.
“Perhaps he should reconsider. The Bishop’s directive was incorrect,” she said.
In other news, the center is planning an expansion project, which will add a 22,000-square-foot museum.
The three-story museum will house a cultural education center, dedicated to the life of Padre Pio, who was canonized into sainthood in 2002.
The construction began in August and is slated to be complete by this summer.

I have to figure that the Church has resolved similar property disputes in the past, and can do so again, without resorting to the interdicts and excommunications that the U.S. bishops used in the 19th-century controversy over “lay trusteeship”.
[Via Amy.]