Paul Zalonski – Page 300

CT Catholics to fight Department of Health and Human Services on conscience rights

Since it was announced on January 20th that Catholic institutions will be expected by law, to comply with Federal mandates to provide services named “healthcare” but really are procedures connected with contraception and abortion, several US bishops have come out against the Obama administration’s war on conscience rights of people of faith, and the Connecticut Catholic dioceses (Hartford, Stamford, Norwich and Bridgeport) will be fighting Obama. Why is this important: conscience can’t violated, Catholic institutions serve not just the Catholic population, but everybody. Catholics will not comply with Obama, it contradicts Jesus. As Pittsburgh’s Bishop Zubik said, to hell with you Mr Obama.

What follows are a few paragraphs of Archbishop Mansell’s February column in the Catholic Transcript (the full text can be read here):

We cannot comply with this edict. Our parents and
grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and
towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to
have their posterity stripped of their God-given rights. In generations past,
the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and
protect her sacred rights and duties. We hope and trust that she can count
on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren
deserve nothing less.

The Dioceses of Bridgeport and Norwich, as well as the
Ukrainian Diocese of Stamford, will be joining us in the Archdiocese of
Hartford as we mount a campaign against this horrific development. Prayer
and fasting are, of course, supremely important, that wisdom and justice may
prevail and religious liberty may be restored. You may also wish to visit www.usccb.org/conscience
to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to
contact our Senators and Representatives to support legislation that would
reverse the Administration’s decision.

We must act strongly against this
edict. It affects the lifeblood of Catholics and millions more who are not
Catholic but whom we serve diligently. The future of all of us and our
country as well is at stake.

Archbishop Henry J. Mansell

Archbishop of Hartford

The Catholic Transcript, February 2012

Pope shows us that “True authority is humble service in love”

The homilies and brief Angelus talks of the Pope really set the stage for what we ought to pay attention to in our spiritual life. His thinking is clear, and germane. Today is no different. How is it that we recognize and live within the authority of Jesus?

This Sunday’s Gospel (Mk 1.21 to 28) presents us with
Jesus, on the Sabbath day, as he preached at the synagogue at Capernaum, the
small town where Peter and his brother Andrew lived on the lake of Galilee. In
his teaching, which arouses the wonder of the people, following the liberation
of “a man with an unclean spirit” (v. 23), who recognizes in Jesus as
the “saint of God,” that is, the Messiah. In a short time, his fame
spread throughout the region, which he travels announcing the Kingdom of God
and healing the sick of all kinds: word and deed. St. John Chrysostom observes
how the Lord “alternates the speech for the benefit of those who listen,
moving on from wonders to words and again passing from the teaching of his
doctrine to miracles” (Hom. on Matthew 25, 1: PG 57, 328).

Continue reading Pope shows us that “True authority is humble service in love”

Obama’s breach of faith over contraceptive ruling

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr., is not a completely reliable Catholic intellectual, but I think we ought to pay attention to today’s opinion piece, “Obama’s breach of faith over contraceptive ruling.” I don’t agree with all that Dionne posits, but it would be incorrect to dismiss the whole piece because he does have a point for us Catholics to pay close attention to.

One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a
presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual
concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he
utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services
should be treated under the new health care law.

His administration mishandled
this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive
Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the
Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

This might not
be so surprising if Obama had presented himself as a conventional secular
liberal. But he has always held himself to a more inclusive standard.

His
deservedly celebrated 2006 speech on religion and
American public life was a deeply sophisticated and carefully
balanced effort to defend the rights of both believers and nonbelievers in a
pluralistic republic.

Obama’s speech at Notre Dame’s
graduation in 2009 was another tour de force. His visit to South
Bend was highly controversial among right-wing Catholics. Yet his address
temporarily silenced many of his critics because it showed an appreciation for
the Catholic Church’s contributions to American life — particularly through its
vast array of social-service and educational institutions — and an instinctive
feeling for Catholic sensibilities.

The priority renewal of the faith

The full body of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met with the Pope on Friday, 27 January, to discuss his conviction that no other work of the Church, particularly this congregation, takes precedence to the work of evangelization. Everyone ought to be committed “to bringing God back into this world and to opening to all men access to the faith.”

Benedict see now as the opportune moment “to point out to all the gift of faith in the Risen Christ, the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the invaluable doctrinal synthesis offered by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” Recently, the Pope said that “we are facing a profound crisis of faith, a loss of religious meaning which constitutes the greatest challenge to the Church” (Message for World Mission Day).

Other things that concern us, the Pope noted were:

1. the unity among Christians: maintaining “coherence in the ecumenical task with the Second Vatican Council and the whole of Tradition”;

2. warned of the dangers of “a shallow moralism”;

3. to promote “the logic” contained in the conciliar teaching: “the sincere search for the full unity of all Christians is a dynamism animated by the Word of God”;

4. a need for a “discernment between Tradition with a capital letter and the traditions”: “There exists,” he said, “a spiritual wealth in the different Christian confessions, which is an expression of the one faith and gift to share” (reflecting the recent work done for the full communion of Anglicans).

The last concern of Benedict was that the entire Church speak with one voice with Peter.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

O God, who made Saint Thomas Aquinas outstanding in his zeal for holiness and his study of sacred doctrine, grant us, we pray, that we may understand what he taught one imitate what he accomplished.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, patron of Catholic school teacher and researchers, pray for us.

“Man’s good and what makes man good in God’s sight does not, principally, consist in external acts. But in the external actions we must use discretion and make charity the measure of our use of them”

Pelicanus

PELICANUS is the word for a certain breed of bird

Who truly is a crane;

Egypt is his domain.

There are two kinds there-of;

Near to the Nile they live;

One of them dwells in the flood, the fishes are his food;

The other lives in the isles on lizards, crocodiles,

Serpents and stinking creatures, and beasts of evil nature.

In Greek his title was Onocrotalos, which is longum rostrum,

Said in the Latin tongue instead,

Or long break in our own.

Of this bird it is known that when he comes to his young,

They being grown and strong,

And does them kindly things,

And covers them with his wings.

The little birds begin fiercely to peck at him;

They tear at him and try to blind their father’s eye.

He falls upon them then and stays them with great pain,

Then goes away for a spell, leaving them where they fell.

On the third day he returns, and thereupon he mourns,

Feeling so strong a woe to see the small birds so

That he strikes his breast with his beak until the blood shall leak.

And when the coursing blood spatters his lifeless brood,

Such virtue does it have

That once again they live.

Know that this pelican signifies Mary’s Son:

The little birds are men restored to life again by that dear blood

Shed for us by our God.

Now learn one morning more, revealed by holy lore:

Know why the small birds try to peck thie father’s eye,

Who turns on them in wrath and puts them all to death.

Men who deny the light would blind God’s blazing sight,

But on such people all His punishment will fall.

This is the meaning I find:

Now bear it well in mind.

— from an Anglo-Norman Bestiary of 1120 by Philippe de Thaun;

this version from “Things of this World” by Richard Wilbur

Saint Angela Merici

May the Virgin Saint Angela never fail to commend us to your compassion, O Lord, we pray, that, following the lessons of her charity and prudence, we may hold fast to your teaching and express it in what we do.

We need a full restoration of the congregation of sisters founded by Saint Angela Merici. Notice what the Church holds us as important for us to imitate.

(icon taken from Archbishop Prendergast’s blog)

Law and the Gospel of Life –Archbishop Dolan addresses a NY crowd

Fordham Law School’s Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer’s Work hosted Archbishop Timothy Michael Dolan, PhD, for an inaugural address in the Law and the Gospel of Life series.

Sadly, it didn’t make the news, well not much was said around the area about it. Fordham University published this brief press release read here. The crowd exceed initial expectations and a change of venue was made. Cardinal-designate Dolan centered his comments on Blessed John Paul II landmark encyclical, the Evangelium Vitae (1995). An excerpt of Dolan’s remarks follows, below is the link to his entire text:

The Gospel of Life proposes an alternative vision of law and culture, one that provides an antidote to the pragmatic nihilism that produces a Culture of Death. It seeks to recapture the essential relationship between the civil law and the moral law, and to foster a culture in which all human life is valued and authentic human development is possible.

Continue reading Law and the Gospel of Life –Archbishop Dolan addresses a NY crowd

Archbishop Dolan on Obama’s healthcare reform law and protecting our religious freedom

The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece of New York’s Archbishop, Timothy Michael Dolan, today. You can read the entire op-ed piece of Archbishop Dolan here: WSJ-ObamaCare-and-Religious-Freedom.pdf

An excerpt follows:

Coercing religious ministries and citizens to pay directly for actions that violate their teaching is an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience. Organizations fear that this unjust rule will force them to take one horn or the other of an unacceptable dilemma: Stop serving people of all faiths in their ministries–so that they will fall under the narrow exemption–or stop providing health-care coverage to their own employees.

The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience, for everyone. The Amish do not carry health insurance. The government respects their principles. Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new health-care reform law respects that. Quakers and others object to killing even in wartime, and the government respects that principle for conscientious objectors. By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.

Timothy Michael Dolan, PhD

Archbishop of New York

Wall Street Journal

25 January 2012

Benedict: Our divisions diminish our witness to Christ…The goal of full unityis a secondary victory but important for the good of the human family

Dear brothers and sisters! It is with great joy that I extend my warm greetings to all of you who have gathered in this basilica for the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in this year when we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, that the Blessed John XXIII announced in this very basilica on January 25, 1959. The theme offered for our meditation in the Week of prayer which we conclude today, is: “All shall be changed by the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 15.51-58).

Continue reading Benedict: Our divisions diminish our witness to Christ…The goal of full unityis a secondary victory but important for the good of the human family