What a great game!

Who Dat talking about beating dem Saints!

Whoooooohoooooo

Is God on the Saints’ side?

OF COURSE.

FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA

Will the Saints go marching in?

The old spiritual is about heaven: How I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in … And should New Orleans win the Super Bowl this Sunday, many of the team’s fans will consider it heaven on Earth. If the devil were trading football victories for souls on Bourbon Street, one fears that he would do a brisk business.

New Orleans loves the Saints. Football—college and professional—is a powerful cultural force across the American south, but between Atlanta and Texas there are no NFL teams save for the Saints. So since the Saints began playing in 1967, they have enjoyed wide devotion. They were loved when they were the “Ain’ts,” losing far more often than winning. And they were loved during the long 1970s when their star quarterback, Archie Manning, was something of a one-man show. On Sunday, Archie’s loyalties will be divided, for his Saints will be facing the Indianapolis Colts; and their star quarterback is none other than his son Peyton Manning—better even than his father was, and one of the best of all time.

The Saints have been loved with the long-suffering love that fans reserve for perennial losers. The Saints have never won a Super Bowl. They have never been in a Super Bowl. They entered the league in 1967, meaning that they have gone championship-free for as long as the Toronto Maple Leafs, without the benefit a proud history before that.

But since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ripped the heart out of New Orleans (and the roof off the Superdome), the Saints have become even more intensely associated with their city. There was initial pain when it was thought that the Saints might move, and then rejoicing when they stayed. The Saints’ return to the Superdome on Monday Night Football in 2006 was one of the most emotionally charged moments in the history of American sports.

A spiritual bond has since been established between the team and its city, as if somehow the rise of the Saints post-Katrina is the rise of the city from the waters of the flood. A Super Bowl for the Saints would no doubt be considered an act of God—perhaps considered divine compensation for the act of God that laid the city low.

No other team has quite the religious trappings of the Saints, which is suitable for New Orleans, where the sacred and very profane jostle for room. They call their corporate sponsors “patron saints.” There is a cheering nun on the banner of their homepage. And they are not shy about calling upon God for a little assistance.

The Saints customarily have a Mass celebrated before their Sunday games, which is not uncommon in the NFL. But on Monday? Saints’ owner Tom Benson, a practising Catholic, opted for a pregame Mass this past season before their biggest game, the Monday night contest against the New England Patriots. He had the Mass offered by the Archbishop of New Orleans, Gregory Aymond, his retired predecessor Archbishop Philip Hannan, and for good measure, Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio, where the Saints played in the aftermath of Katrina. Theologically, a Mass by a simple country pastor is no less efficacious than one with three archbishops, but one wants to be sure. The Saints shellacked the Patriots in their coming-out party as one of the NFL’s elite teams. If it were possible, Benson would likely have the College of Cardinals in for the Super Bowl.

No other team has quite the religious trappings of the Saints, which is suitable for New Orleans, where the sacred and very profane jostle for room.

So is God on the Saints’ side? That might be pushing it a little too far—after all, the Colts have fans, too. But if the Lord comforts the afflicted and restoreth the years that the locust has eaten, it would be fitting for the Saints to go marching in.

In 1966, the new team was announced for New Orleans on All Saints Day, Nov. 1. In due course it was proposed that the team be named after the famous hymn, which doubles as a jazz number in New Orleans funeral processions—a double entendre more relevant during the losing years. The then-governor of Louisiana asked Archbishop Hannan if the name might be sacrilegious. The archbishop said no, but warned that “from the viewpoint of the Church, most of the saints were martyrs.” The long suffering may soon be over.

Such fun and enjoyment.

from Aggie Catholic

How appropriate that our son, Lil T, was given the book, The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

From OSV

Move that church! Extreme makeover for one parish

By Mary DeTurris Poust

What do you do with a 100-year-old church after it closes? Well, for one Buffalo parish the answer was decidedly outside the box: “preservation through relocation.” That’s right. The 800-seat basilica is going to be moved, piece by piece, granite column by granite column 900 miles away to an Atlanta suburb, reflecting through its physical relocation a very real societal shift as Catholic populations decrease in the northeast and flourish in the south.

On the project website, Moved by Grace, St. Gerard’s Church in Buffalo is described as an “approximation” (one-third the size in scale) of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. After it closed in 2008 due to dwindling parish membership, preservation became an issue because of the severe weather on the shores of Lake Erie. Enter Mary Our Queen parish in Georgia, where what started as a small mission with 70 families in an office building grew into a 15,000 square foot “temporary” structure for 700 families in search of a permanent home.

What an inspiring story!

I hope that more are able to do this and also want to do this.

Our prayers are that this is successful.

From here

Arguments against Bp. Hubbard’s authorization of “needle programs”

Formal cooperation in another’s evil act (that is, undertaking to help expressly another to perform an act known to be evil) is itself evil. Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology (1938), I: 341-342. There are no exceptions to this rule; no supervening circumstances can ever render formal cooperation in evil good.

The use of [illegal] drugs “inflicts very grave damage on human health and life [and] . . . is a grave offense. Clandestine production and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law.” CCC 2291, my emphasis. See also Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, “Charter for Health Care Workers” (1995), n. 94.

I think that one who supplies, without a physician’s prescription, needles/syringes (nb: devices with only one practical use) to people whom one reasonably believes will use those devices to inject illegal drugs into their own bodies and/or the bodies of others, encourages those people to practices that are gravely contrary to the moral law, rendering thereby, it seems to me, direct assistance to their commission of an objectively gravely evil act while intending precisely to help them accomplish that act. This conclusion is not contingent on whether the needles are clean, or are merely exchanged, or on any other accidental aspect of the program.* The only question is whether giving a syringe to a drug abuser abets his or her injection of illegal drugs. If it does, then giving a drug user a needle formally cooperates with the specific evil of his or her taking those illegal drugs.

Thus, when, Bp. Hubbard of Albany authorized his Catholic Charities office to distribute syringes to apparent drug abusers, in my opinion, he began formally** cooperating in the grave evil of drug abuse in his diocese.
Now, I can’t imagine that any of these observations come as a surprise to the Albany administrators who spent, what? five years? developing this proposal. But the official inadvertance to some pretty obvious objections (at least in the materials I located in this matter so far) is disquieting. Perhaps the powers-that-be will share their analysis more fully, or at least cite us to some experts who are willing to stand behind this program?

In any event, if my moral analysis is correct (and I invite interested persons to carefully investigate the tradition for themselves), then there is an obvious concern for the scandal (in the classical sense of that word, that is, conduct that has the effect of diminishing others’ sense of sin and/or encouraging others to commit sin) that is given when, not simply Catholics, but Catholic bishops approve the public distribution, under Catholic auspices, of injection devices to users of illegal drugs.

Indeed, if a bishop, who is to be “an example in holiness and charity” (1983 CIC 387; CCC 893), uses his offices to achieve the distribution of needles to illegal drug users, is he not abusing ecclesiastical power or function and/or placing acts of ecclesiastical power, ministry or functions with harm to others, contrary to Canon 1389? If such actions are undertaken by one who “has been established in some dignity or . . . position of authority or office” (1983 CIC 1326.1.2), does that not make the immediate reversal, or at least suspension and reconsideration, of such a decision all the more urgent? + + +

* To be clear, under Catholic moral analysis, there are no justifications for formal cooperation in evil, so if needle programs are formal cooperations in evil, we need not comment on the various justifications alleged by proponents of needles-for-illegal-drug-users programs. We simply cannot do evil to achieve good. One could, however, if one wishes, see some brief comments by Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., on “safe injection sites”.

** In 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed an Australian religious hospital to cease providing an injection room for heroin addicts on the grounds that such assistance was “an extremely proximate material cooperation in the grave evil of drug abuse.” I don’t have all the facts of that case or the entire CDF letter, but it is interesting to note that CDF reproved what it considered to be “only” direct material cooperation in drug-abuse. While I argue that Bp. Hubbard’s action here seems to constitute formal cooperation in drug abuse, even if his actions were deemed to be “only” material cooperation in illicit drug use, they would still labor under weighty moral objections.

More from Religion News Service; A brief discussion over at Catholic Answers on-line forum.

See also NCCB/USCC, “A Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis” (1990), wherein: “Education and treatment aimed at changing behavior are the best way to control the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users and to prevent passage of the virus to their sexual partners and to children in the womb. Although some argue that distribution of sterile needles should be promoted, we question this approach for both moral and practical reasons: More drug use might result while fewer intravenous drug users might seek treatment; Poor monitoring could lead to the increased spread of HIV infection through the use of contaminated needles; Distribution of sterile needles and syringes would send message that intravenous drug use can be made safe. But IV drug users mutilate and destroy their veins, introduce infection through contaminated skin, inject substances that often contain lethal impurities, and risk death from overdoses.” My emphasis.

I’m thinking the author was one of the 4.  What do you think?

At our local library sale yesterday, I found a book buried beneath a stack of other books: Father Smith Instructs Jackson by Bishop John Francis Noll (Bishop of Fort Wayne) Copyright 1950.

About the Bishop from Wiki:

Most Rev. John F. Noll (January 25, 1875 – July 31, 1956) was bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Fort Wayne, Indiana from 1925 until his death in 1956. He was a native of Fort Wayne, and one of seventeen children. John Noll attended St. Lawrence Seminary in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin from 1888 to 1893. He was ordained a priest in 1898. His life was notable for four main reasons; he was the founder of the newspaper Our Sunday Visitor; Pope Pius XII elevated him to archbishop in 1953, despite the fact that he never headed an archdiocese; he was instrumental in generating support for construction of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C.; as a young priest, he sometimes confronted people who claimed to “expose” evil practices within the Catholic Church. He would ask the alleged former priest or nun to which order he or she belonged, and to recite specific prayers, some questions were posed in Latin. In this way he exposed the speakers as simple anti-Catholic rabble rousers.

The book is written in dialogue form between Fr. Smith and a Mr. Jackson.  The intention of the book seems to be for those that never had a good solid foundation in their faith, or as he puts it – the science of God – and for those that are curious about the Catholic Church.

The second paragraph of the introduction states something I found profound:

But it must ever be remembered that one may have a vast store of religious knowledge gathered from study and still lack faith – because faith belongs to the supernatural order and is a gift of God.  Catholics who are convinced that they possess the true Faith, should frequently thank Almighty God that He has so blessed them and should show their gratitude by striving to interest others in their religion.

Since we are familiar with the Baltimore Catechism (taught during this time) this will be an interesting read.

But this is something I didn’t know…..

The initial focus of Our Sunday Visitor was to combat anti-Catholicism, help Catholics preserve their identity, teach Catholics about their faith, and combat social injustice. A column started in 1912, called “Father Smith Instructs Jackson,” was later collected into a popular book which sold millions of copies.^[4]

On March 30, 1913, the paper offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who could prove the anti-Catholic charges laid against the Church. No one ever claimed the reward.

Link to Our Sunday Visitor.

Some others I found:

The next one I will probably read is The Catholic Woman – Proceedings from the Wethersfield  Institute.

What are the chances of finding these all together at a book sale in the deep South?

Oh, we bought over 12 books, including a big World Atlas and paid $7 for all of them.

As our State moves forward to pass a law to make it illegal to buy some cold medicine without a prescription (which I am totally against), NY Catholic Charities has the OK to distribute needles to drug abusers to help combat AIDs.

“I understand there will be questions, but this is common sense,” said Sister Maureen Joyce, CEO of Catholic Charities. “I strongly believe in this. It will save lives.”

Except for the fact that it is common that those poor people who are addicted do other things that put them at risk for AIDS.  A needle isn’t going to be a solution to the epidemic.

And it seems they have the stamp of approval…

Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, who serves as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, has approved a proposal by diocesan Catholic Charities to distribute free needles to drug abusers in the hope of preventing the spread of AIDS.

Common sense has just left the building and has been replaced with false compassion.  I would  rather the money used to buy needles to go for even ONE persons treatment.

Exactly what constitutes aiding and abetting?

Advantages of a GO phone….

1. It’s cheap and it works with the card from my other phone

2. No surprise bills because someone accidentally (or on purpose) connected to the internet

3. No surprise pics of what the children have done while they had your phone – no camera

4. No worry that your hip teenage daughter will want to use this in public – so no worry to remind her that it is impolite to talk on the phone while shopping.

5. No temptation to buy the latest, trendy applications – you can’t anyway – plus Fr assured me that it is still possible to get to heaven or holier without the iPhone Apps – so there.

6. No worry that someone will steal my phone.

7. No worry if the phone breaks/can be replaced for $20 or under.

8. It isn’t hot pink

9. I can tell my ring tone from others because I may very well be the only one on the face of the earth that still has one.

10.  No worry that someone will want to borrow my phone.

Extra bonus – helps keep me humble.

So, why don’t you have one?

from Al Kresta regarding the President’s remark about the  Supreme Court’s decision:

The President took a cheap shot at the Supreme Court during his State of the Union message. As SCOTUS sat politely the President scolded them saying:

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign companies – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”Justice Sam Alito couldn’t tolerate the misleading claim and could be seen shaking his head and mouthing the words “Not true.” Good for the Justice, it was a righteous act. The President’s remark was a low blow directed at the least partisan of our three branches of government. But more important than the indignity of the remarks is that they were false.

Firstly, on this point of foreign finagling in our elections, the President is just too late and apparently uninformed (Scary, isn’t it? He is scarily ignorant or deliberately forgetful, and either prospect is, yes, scary.) Congress has already passed a bill to insure that foreign entities would not control American elections: It’s the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1996. It prohibits indpendent political commercials by foreign nationals or companies.

Secondly, Justice Anthony Kennedy specifically wrote in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission that the opinion did not address the question of foreign companies.

Thirdly, by chastising the Supreme Court as they sat surrounded by screaming Democrats, he seemed to be messing with the independent judiciary and reshuffling the balance of power. He was definitely sending them a signal. It was a bold, aggressive act by the President and I hope someone will correct his breach of decorum. But he won’t fail to remind you that he is appalled by Washington’s partisanship.