Category: Uncategorized

New pro-life/family blogger: Dale O’Leary

I’m glad to see commentator and researcher Dale O’Leary sharing the fruits of her work with a wider audience on the internet at her new weblog. For a long time, we in New England have benefited from her newspaper writings and articles in the Catholic and pro-life press. Welcome to the blog scene, Dale!

What I heard in church Sunday

Our music director gave the choir a week off, so I went to another church this week.
It didn’t get off to a good start, ’cause when I arrived, their choir was practicing a song in which they were congratulating us all about our “diversity” and wanting to “sing a new church into being.” So from diversitie, they went on to heresie.
To my relief, I saw on the hymn board that they were going to sing it as a recessional ditty, and that would solve the problem. I wouldn’t have to be under the same roof with them while they were singing it; I could just leave quickly after the dismissal, in case God were to drop the Big One on them.
Anyway, I like the pastor there: he preached well, and he talked about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Mass was not completely as usual, because he performed a baptism for an infant, and the steps in that rite were interpolated into the Mass at various points.
At one point, he spoke about the duties of the parents and godparents: that little Sean Joseph needed to “learn the difference between good and evil and how to choose evil and avoid good, and someone is going to have to teach him to choose evil and avoid good.”
Huh? So maybe they were singing a new church into being after all? Nah.
I don’t know if anybody else noticed his verbal flub. I couldn’t help chuckling and making a “swap those two things” gesture. For whatever reason, he paused, and then went on with his explanations, and didn’t have any more glitches.
A friend who used to direct music at that church told me later: don’t worry, they’ll probably never sing that song again: the pastor detests it.
Like I said, I think he’s a good guy.

A light unto the nations: Pope Benedict’s homily for the Presentation

This evening I translated the Holy Father’s homily for the Feast of the Presentation after Fr. Mark posted the original Italian text over at Vultus Christi. Here it is:
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI
Vatican Basilica
Tuesday, February 2, 2011
Dear brothers and sisters!
The meeting of the two Testaments
In today’s Feast we contemplate the Lord Jesus, whom Mary and Joseph present at the temple “to offer him to the Lord” (Lk 2:22). In this gospel scene the mystery of the Virgin’s Son, consecrated by the Father, having come into the world to faithfully accomplish His will (cf. Heb. 10:5-7), is revealed. Simeon points him out as a “light to enlighten the nations” (Lk 2:32) and announces with a prophetic word his supreme offering to God and his final victory (cf. Lk 2:32-35). It is the meeting of the two Testaments, Old and New. Jesus enters into the old Temple, He who is the new Temple of God: he comes to visit his people, bringing obedience to the Law to fulfillment and inaugurating the last days of salvation.
10_prese.jpg
The light that comes to enlighten the world
It is interesting to observe closely this entrance of the Child Jesus into the solemnity of the temple, into a great hustle and bustle of so many people occupied by their duties: the priests and Levites with their turns at service, the many faithful and pilgrims desiring to meet the holy God of Israel. But none of them realizes a thing. Jesus is a child like every other, the first-born son of two very simple parents. Even the priests prove unable of grasping the signs of the new and particular presence of the Messiah and Savior. Only two elderly people, Simeon and Anna, discover the great news. Led by the Holy Spirit, they find in
this child the fulfillment of their long waiting and watching. Both contemplate the light of God, who comes to enlighten the world, and their prophetic gaze opens into the future, as an announcement of the Messiah: Lumen ad revelationem gentium! (Lk 2:32). In the prophetic attitude of the two venerable elders, the entire Old Covenant expresses the joy of meeting the Redeemer. In the face of the Child, Simeon and Anna grasp intuitively that He is the long-awaited One.
(Continue reading at Vultus Christi.)

A lesson on ethics in social communications

The news aggregator site and pro-Medjugorje wind machine Ministry Values, which does not claim to be a Catholic site, presented a story today with the byline of Stephen Ryan and the headline “Vatican Hammers Conservative Catholic Bloggers”, about lay Catholics using their Internet writings to prod Church officials for reform. It also presented some cautionary words from other sources, including remarks by Abp. Celli from the Pontifical Council on Social Communications.
But while “author” Stephen Ryan was quoting a Vatican official about the ethics of social communications, he showed his own distinctive Internet-based writing technique, which could be summed up in the words “copy and paste”.
Paragraph 1 of Ryan’s story is copied from an AP story:
http://dailyme.com/story/2011012400000064/pope-catholics-online-hits.html (para. 5)
Paragraph 2 is from a column by Fr. James Martin, SJ, in America magazine:
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=3447 (para. 1)
Paragraph 3 is taken from another AP story, with some added words:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/25/catholic-bloggers-aim-purge-dissenters/ (para. 1-2)
Further material comes from this AP story:
http://www.valleynewslive.com/Global/story.asp?S=13894385
If you use scissors and paste, and cobble together a web page from other people’s copied words, without attribution, is it ethical?
[UPDATE: 1/25: Creative Minority Report has responded to the same dodgy article. The CMR piece and the ensuing comments produced an amazing display of upset on Mr. Ryan’s part, to the point where he indicated a wish to punch me in the nose! Poor man! Perhaps that falls into the category of “bad fruits of Medjugorje”.]