Fr. Rosica's criticism of the pro-life movement
Tuesday, September 08, 2009. (link) 
Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B. — the CEO of Salt + Light TV (Canada's EWTN) and Consultor for the Pontifical Council for Social Communications — had some very poignant and insightful things to say on his blog this week about the direction the Catholic pro-life movement has taken. Here are some salient excerpts: "...many so-called lovers of life and activists in the pro-life movement, as well as well-known colleagues in Catholic television broadcasting and media in North America, have revealed themselves to be not agents of life, but of division, destruction, hatred, vitriol, judgment and violence. Their words and actions vitiate their efforts in favor of life. Their open and public attacks against [specific cardinals and priests] indicate that something is terribly wrong in the pro-life movement. Civility, charity, mercy and politeness seem to have dropped out of the pro-life lexicon.Thank you, Fr. Tom, for telling it like it is. The Church needs more priests like you.
"Through vicious attacks launched on blogs, a new form of self-righteousness, condemnation and gnosticism reveals authors who behave as little children bullying one another around in schoolyards—casting stones, calling names, and wreaking havoc in the Church today! What such people fail to realize is that their messages are ultimately screamed into a vacuum. No one but their own loud crowd is really listening. We will never change laws and bring about conversion of minds and hearts with such behavior. We make the Church and our efforts for life look ridiculous and terribly anti-Christian. Sowing seeds of hatred and division are not the work of those who wish to build a culture of life.
"...I was shocked at the messages and calls we received over the past few days from those claiming to be 'pro-life.' They expressed regret that we did not join in the public condemnation... That is not what Salt + Light Catholic Television Network is about. Nor will we ever be about such things. We will not contribute to the misery and division within the world and the Church. We believe in the Gospel of Life and strive to humbly bring the Gospel message to the world. We defend life from the earliest moments to the final moments of natural death. But we refuse to destroy and kill others along the way."
The full story that evoked this response revolves around the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy; the full post can be read at: Senator Edward Kennedy’s funeral: On mercy and misery.
UPDATE: Canada's Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Register, has just published a startling article about this: In response to what he wrote (quoted above), Fr. Rosica has been receiving "threats against his life" from LifeSiteNews readers and pro-life bloggers! Read the article at: LifeSite accused of fuelling web war on Salt + Light.
You may also be interested in reading the SIRIUS Radio Transcript of Fr. Rosica’s Interview on Across the Nation.
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On Medjugorje and the Marian apparitions
Sunday, August 02, 2009. (link)
It was widely reported last week that Pope Benedict XVI had defrocked Tomislav Vladic, the Franciscan priest who was the self-proclaimed "spiritual leader" of the six visionaries of Medjugorje, who claim to have been visited by Mary over 40,000 times since 1981.As a convert from evangelical protestantism, let's just say that I've always been somewhat skeptical of the phenomena of Marian apparitions. The idea that Jesus is sending his mother to tell certain chosen people scary "secrets" of doom and gloom is just incredibly odd to me, and doesn't really jive with my concept of God or Christianity. After all that was accomplished in the Incarnation, why would God now need to behave this way towards us?
The trouble is, it's pretty hard to hang out in very Catholic circles without feeling some sense of peer pressure to accept such apparitions. It can end up feeling like a litmus test: if you're really Catholic, then you must follow and believe in the more mystical things. It was a constant sore spot between myself and my mother-in-law, who believed strongly in these and other Marian visionaries. (More on that in a moment).
I know several people that went on expensive pilgrimages to Medjugorje, and returned with heartfelt stories of the mystical experiences they felt they experienced there.
How do they feel, now, to find that the spiritual director of the visionaries has been stripped of his priesthood — not only because he got a nun pregnant (hey, we're all sinners right?) — but for something far worse: "for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism, disobedience to legitimately issued orders" all specifically linked to the "context of the Medjugorje phenomenon." In particular, he is under an "absolute prohibition of releasing declarations on religious matters, especially regarding the phenomenon of Medjugorje."
It is said that this all happened back in March, but it was kept under wraps and only hit the press last week, months after the fact. In the meantime, the lucrative business of Medjugorje has continued unabated; pilgrims are still being relieved of thousands of dollars every day, and "messages" from Mary are still being published by the seers.
Yes, you can say that the Church never "approved" of Medjugorje in an official way; but you really wouldn't expect it to while the alleged phenomenon is still occurring. Even saints have to be long dead and gone before their canonization can begin to be considered, and one would expect the same of these apparitions. (Imagine if the Pope approved the apparitions, and then sometime later the apparition said we should stop following the Pope! That'd be awkward.)
My question is: why did the Church allow this fraud to continue for decades? Perhaps you'll say, "Well, the Church can't prevent individuals from exercising their free right to visit Medjugorje," and I'll have to concede that fact. But you and I both know that it had the power to do something. For example, why didn't the Church absolutely forbid all priests and religious from taking part in this false event, under threat of excommunication? Instead, it specifically chose not to do anything. Yes, now they have laicised the priest who was accused of fabricating the fraud — but it seems that was only done at the priests' own request, and done quietly and surreptitiously months before the rest of the Catholic faithful learned about it. And, not surprisingly, some in the Church are quick to point out that they believe this is not a judgment against the apparitions themselves. Seriously?
My mother-in-law was not well. She suffered from schizophrenia. It's clear that she gravitated towards these types of mystical fringe phenomena due to her illness, as I'm sure many do. But the Church did not protect her, or anyone else, from this fraud. I feel like if there had been more clarity coming from the Church about these sorts of phenomenon, people may have been able to recognize her imbalance sooner — perhaps even she herself... but instead, these phenomena taught her to misinterpret her illness as a mystical experience, encouraging her and others to not only accept it, but embrace the illness as something holy and proper and right.
Most people have only lost their money; but my mother-in-law lost her life.
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Reflecting on my abusive mother
Wednesday, April 22, 2009. (link)
Have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the abusive relationships I have had or observed during my life, how they have affected me, and how to deal with them. One of the biggest problems in my life has been my emotionally and physically abusive mother. Today, I came across a description of abusive women written by an experienced psychologist, and made notes of some of the spot that particularly resonated with my experience:Children grow up without the understanding that that other mothers are different from theirs. They may never gain insight into the role their mother has played in their own functioning, unless someone helps them to understand. Because abusive women believe that nothing is ever their fault, and because they are almost impossible to please because they continually change the definition of what it takes to please them, their children grow up with a sense of continually being defeated. It is natural for a child to try to please their mother; however, with this type of mother, the children learn to give up...what’s the use, she will never change. They then generalize this idea to many parts of life.Anyway, these were the things that particularly leapt out to me as definite experiences in my own life, though the document goes on to describe ways an abusive woman relates to others, such as their husband, that fits my mother to a T as well.
She often makes negative comments to her children, but many children who grew up with this type of mother say that their mother never gave them a compliment.... If she gives them a compliment, it is usually accompanied by a negative, put-down or is given in front of others, to impress them.
Many children with abusive mothers grow up constantly saying, “I’m sorry”, for even the slightest mistake. They were blamed for so many things that they become afraid of making any mistakes and misinterpret the normal ups and downs of behaviors as mistakes. ... They may constantly try to read others to see if their behavior is approved, because that is how they tried to survive their abusive mother.
Abusive women and other narcisistic and self-centered women do not seem to find joy in giving to others.... Many children of abusive women indicate that their mother always expected something in return when she did something for them.... Although they convince their mate they are good mothers, these women are very self-centered and always puts herself in front of her children.
She often is most abusive to the rebellious child (in spite of them often being the only emotionally stable one in the family), because the compliant child does everything she wants. The abusive woman almost always hates men. She uses them and manipulates them and often wants their attention and approval. However, because she hates men, her sons can become a problem to her when they grow beyond the cute stage.... Tend to be the most abusive to children who are rebellious and who refuse to be compliant and obedient. They seem to hate this child and blame this child for any and every wrong in their life. May spend hours complaining to other family members about how victimized she is by this child.
Although the father of her children is often unabusive to them, he rarely protects them from the abusive statements and behavior of their mother. The role of a parent is to protect their children from abuse and harm and to make them feel safe. Although the father may empathize with the child, he plays the role of a sibling who is also being abused. He may work long hours to avoid her, leaving the children with the abusive mother for long periods. He may be unaware of the extent of the abuse, although he is aware that she is abusive because she abuses him. This distorts the child’s perception of both a mother and a father and has far reaching consequences.
In these families, the child may be blamed for the mother’s temper tantrums, or irrational behavior. “Don’t get your mother started”, the child is warned. When the mother gets out of control, the family says, “See what you did” to the child, who then takes responsibility for the mother’s behavior. She may blame the child for everything.... Accepting responsibility for things they do not control or did not do, often extends into adult functioning and leads to a lifetime of guilt.
Possess an incredible memory for details, especially how others have wronged them. Rarely forget a mistake that others make and constantly bring these mistakes up, even years later. Use her memory of mistakes to degrade others in her life. Lies and believes her own lies... Often tell completely different lies about the same incident to two people that she should have known might talk to each other.
Has a massive rage that may not be evident all the time. When this rage surfaces it is of incredible intensity. Can switch moods in an instant, often going from smiling to rage and back to smiling as if they have a feeling “switch” that they can turn on and off in a way that seems unnatural. Are vindictive. Like sharks, they rarely give up in attacking someone they hate. Keep coming back again and again in furious attacks when other people would have let the anger go. Love to turn people against each other. For example, will create tension by informing one person that another has said something negative about them, which may be a total lie or a distortion of what was said.
So, what advice is there for someone dealing with a mother like this? Mainly just the obvious: detach yourself from them, move on with your life, and try your best to understand how this has affected you and your adult relationships. If you must keep contact, make sure it is detached and not emotionally involved: one example given was that of a guard in a jail, who expects insults and abuse from the inmates, but doesn't allow it to bother him. If only that were so easy to do with your own mother!
What do you think an appropriate Christian/Catholic response to such abuse is? Certainly this isn't quite what "turn the other cheek" was intended to mean...?
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More Questions than Answers
Sunday, September 21, 2008. (link)
Do you know this man - this picture - this story?You might not.
It's fifteen years old.
This is Gilbert Gauthe. And when I was eight years old, he was convicted of sexually abusing dozens of altar boys in Louisiana. His was the first case of a pedophile priest to gain national attention.
What I am asking today is why did it take fifteen years and two thousand miles for me to hear about this? God's mercy, that's what.
Because fully letting in what has been going on in North America, in my own backyard no matter where I live, has rocked me to the core. Everything I once knew, I no longer know. Everything I once cherished, I examine with upturned eyebrow.
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Following up on the priest sex abuse scandal
Tuesday, August 12, 2008. (link)
Way back at the beginning of 2006, I posted about the priest sex abuse scandal; particularly as related to the charges filed against Msgr. Bernard Prince. I've been meaning to write a little follow-up here, since learning that his trial wrapped up last January (we were a little preoccupied at the time and so the story flew under our radar).In the end, Msgr. Prince plead guilty to the dozen charges of sexual abuse brought against him. His sentence for abusing at least a dozen boys? Four years in prison.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems a little lenient. I assume that is partially due to his age (72, now), but still. And, as in my original post, I am not sure I'm very satisfied with the official Church response to the events; with the Diocese of Pembroke issuing a statement only after he was found guilty in court... hoping that the healing of the victims can "begin" now after more than two years since his arrest, and some four decades since the allegations began. Is that really the best they could do?
From here it will go on to multi-million-dollar civil lawsuits against both the priest and the Church; and what frustrates me about that is knowing that the money is going to come out of the pockets of the completely innocent everyday Catholic parishioners of the Diocese of Pembroke; not the pockets of the bishops or priests who covered up the abuse. [sigh]
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Books for Giraffes
Friday, December 01, 2006. (link)
From my inbox...Dear [insert friend's name here],
It is with much sadness that I am forwarding this appeal to you. Recently, alarming scientific studies have discovered that a shocking 90% of giraffa camelopardalis have been found to be unable to read at even a basic grade 1 English (British) level.
As seen in the attached press release photo, many giraffe have been given sub-standard reading materials, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, Olmec script, and Rongorongo. We cannot allow this travesty to continue. Every living creature has a basic human right to good quality, properly spelled reading material.One moment of your time could end the literary extinction of these beloved even-toed ungulate mammals. Your consideration can bring quality literature to them, including (but not limited to) Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says that the best way to improve the Giraffidae quality of life is to forward this e-mail to everyone you know. Forward it to everyone in your mailing list, and then find every e-mail address you can on the Internet, and forward it to them too. Bill Gates (who is tracking this e-mail just like every e-mail) promises to send one book to one giraffe for every e-mail you forward.
Furthermore, an ancient African curse has been invoked with this e-mail, ensuring that if you do not forward it to at least nine people (one for every giraffe subspecies), two terrible things will happen sometime in the next nine days: 1. you will be given a terrible (and itchy) throat infection, possibly requiring hospitalization (or bad-tasting cough syrup), and 2. a cute furry baby giraffe will die alone and hungry somewhere in the world, crying out for it's mama. These things will be your fault, if you don't immediately forward this e-mail to everyone you know!
Sincerely,
[insert your name here].
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Quick quiz and reader survey
Monday, October 09, 2006. (link)
((Who knows what the above symbol means?
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Not letting good things go
Monday, October 09, 2006. (link)
Catching up on email - listening to Jack Johnson - sipping on a chai latte - got off work early - went shopping. Not a bad day, eh? (Yes, I still say "eh," even in south Louisiana.)I'm loving the music especially. The cd player is broken in our car and it seems the radio stations down here are still in the dark ages. Or the trend to have "Oldies Hour" has terribly overextended itself. I'd like to shake all the DJ's out of their coma. I'm tired of old music!!! It's so bad that when "Lady in Red" came on today - the one old song I NEVER get tired of - the radio still got turned off.
Partly the blame is on the fact that I don't like rap, hiphop, dance or club music. And that's on a lot too. Trying to dodge those always leads me straight to the oldies.
So, I'm making a conscious effort to surround myself with my music at home, to get back in touch with friends and to not forget about my blog. I do really really like all of you, after all. And I read in a quote book today this... if I can remember it fully... "The best.... something... against fear is direct action." I suppose the end was my favorite part.
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A papal pat on the back for Canadian Catholic schools
Friday, September 08, 2006. (link)
I was pleased to see the following in the Holy Father's address to the Ontario Bishops:Within the context of the evangelization of culture, I wish to mention the fine network of Catholic schools at the heart of ecclesial life in your Province. Catechesis and religious education is a taxing apostolate. I thank and encourage those many lay men and women, together with Religious, who strive to ensure that your young people become daily more appreciative of the gift of faith which they have received. More than ever this demands that witness, nourished by prayer, be the all-encompassing milieu of every Catholic school. Teachers, as witnesses, account for the hope that nourishes their own lives (cf. 1 Pt 3:15) by living the truth they propose to their pupils, always in reference to the one they have encountered and whose dependable goodness they have sampled with joy. And so with Saint Augustine they say: "we who speak and you who listen acknowledge ourselves as fellow disciples of a single teacher."It's nice to see a papal nod to the hard working teachers in the Canadian Catholic school system, who suffer under so much persecution from that "holier than thou" brand of Catholic homeschoolers who would love to see the system completely shut down. It may not be perfect, but we are all one Body in Christ, and we need to work together to make things as good as they can be for our children.
We are definitely missing the Canadian Catholic school system in our lives since the move -- here in Louisiana, the cost to send our two children to a Catholic school would be over $500 a month, which we simply cannot afford. Please don't let the Canadian Catholic school system die, or you will find you miss it a lot more than you thought you would.
[Post updated on September 20 with longer quotation from the full document.]
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It's the end of the world... but I feel fine.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006. (link)
It seems like everywhere I turn, someone is claiming that we are in the end times, and proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh.You know, if that's what you believe, then fine -- hide under your bed and put a paper bag over your head. Certainly buying a gas-powered generator won't save you: the noise is just going to attract all the destitute survivors who will realize that it means your basement is also probably full of canned food. (I hope you've got a gun to kill all the poor hungry people who will be coming for your carefully prepared disaster supplies.)
No, seriously now -- what bothers me is the evidence people keep giving to support the notion that the world is on the brink of ultimate disaster. If it's not hurricanes, it's the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The world is called catastrophic. It is said that war and terror is growing out of control... and lets never forget: immorality is at an all time high, and growing worse and worse every day.
I'm sorry, but I just can't swallow it. To me, it is fearmongering, and entirely un-Christian. And it seems to fly in the face of the obvious, which is that The World Is A Better Place Now Than It Has Ever Been In The Past.
I'm sorry, but if that fact is not plainly obvious to you, you need to study more history. If you feel that the current wars herald the end of the world, how do you explain that the immensely more huge World Wars did not? I mean, come on -- we survived the Cold War... how can we be in such a panic about the Iraq war? As for 9/11 -- terrorists have been active in the world for all time, and buildings have fallen, and people have died, countless times in other countries... just because it happened in America, does it suddenly mean something so different that we need to fear the end of the world? I mean, how self-centered can we be?
Do you think the world is a worse place for black people? For women? And don't tell me it's a worse place for children: when I was a kid, we watched violent fare like Looney Tunes and Spider-Man... where my kids are watching shows like Blue's Clues and Between the Lions... people are striving to educate children more than just entertain. And everyone is trying to live healthier, worry about the environment, care for the poor, and secure freedom for all. How is this worse? Why are we so afraid?
No, come on people -- get a grip. Stop letting the fearmongers control your lives and souls. The world is a better place, and it will keep getting better, as long as we don't let irrational fear destroy us.
(Nah, if you ask me, it's more fun to worry about the coming technological singularity... but that's not necessarily the end of the world... just the end of the world as we know it. haha...)
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