On the occasion of the Feast of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, we invite you to attend the first presentation of “Crossroads on the Road.” The 75-minute theatrical production, Maurice & Therese: A Story of a Love will be performed this Sunday, October 5, at 3 pm at St. John the Martyr Church in Manhattan. The performance is free of charge and open to the public. See below for more details.
Elizabeth Ela writes a piece for HeadlineBistro.com which is helpful. AND write to YouTube at the email address noted below to register your complaint.
People can find a video of almost anything on YouTube: babies’ first steps, Saturday Night Live skits, news clips, concerts and now – to the shock of Catholics everywhere – desecration of the Eucharist.
YouTube has long been a destination for Catholics seeking video clips of Masses, apologetics lectures or devotions, but now Catholic outrage is growing as the site has become home to a string of videos depicting acts of Eucharistic desecration, including flushing a host down the toilet, putting one in a blender, feeding one to animals, shooting one with a nail gun and more. “I don’t know what to say,” said a stunned Msgr. C. Eugene Morris, professor of sacramental theology at Kenrick Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, when told about the videos. “I am outraged that YouTube is tacitly supporting this and giving this behavior an audience.”
The most prominent series of videos come from one YouTube user who claims to steal a consecrated host every day and desecrate each one in a different way. His videos began two months ago with the user saying into a webcam that he denied the Holy Spirit, then splitting a host in half and eating it with disrespect.
Most of the videos only have a few hundred views – relatively low for YouTube standards – although the latest installment, “Eucharistic Desecration #33: Nail Gun,” has been watched over 1,000 times.
The user, who lists his first name as Dominique, has also posted a video of his receiving communion at an unidentified Catholic church and removing the host from his mouth in the church parking lot. Msgr. Morris said people need to “stand up” for their faith in cases like this. Some have taken up the challenge.
Thomas Serafin is president of the International Crusade for Holy Relics, an internet watchdog group of Catholic laymen. His group has been fighting online affronts to the Catholic Church, including the sale of the Eucharist and of relics of the saints online, for more than a decade. “YouTube has to be held accountable and stopped,” Serafin said from Los Angeles. “If Catholics don’t take a stand right now, they can expect such outrages to continue.”
Serafin added: “The internet is, in many ways, a new world, and it is our duty to evangelize this world, but we have to speak up and be heard to do that.”
YouTube’s content policy technically restricts users from posting videos that contain hate speech or “shocking and disgusting” elements.
“We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” YouTube’s Community Guidelines state. “But we don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).”
YouTube spokesperson Kathleen Fitzgerald asked for additional links to the desecration videos, but did not respond to a request for comment prior to the publication of this story.
However, YouTube defines hate speech as “content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.”
The guidelines add, “YouTube is not a shock site. Don’t post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust.”
Users may “flag” offensive videos, which YouTube says will alert their reviewers to videos that may violate content guidelines. A video featuring the Eucharist desecrated with a knife was flagged by Headline Bistro staff but remains on YouTube.
“Here you have someone attacking another group, and there’s no outcry,” Msgr. Morris said. “We’re not hurting anybody or attacking other’s beliefs,” he added, saying he would ask perpetrators of Eucharistic desecration, “Why are you so concerned about this? Why is it your business?”
One name still making the rounds in YouTube and bloggers’ discussions on Eucharistic desecration is Paul Z. Myers, the University of Minnesota professor who asked his blog readers in July to “score” him “some consecrated communion wafers.”
“If any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare,” Myers wrote in response to the case of a University of Central Florida student who stole a consecrated host the previous month.
Myers later posted a picture of a host – which he claimed was consecrated and sent to him via mail – as well as pages from the Koran and atheist Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” in a trash can, underneath coffee grounds and a banana peel.
As for the current YouTube videos, Dominique cited Myers as inspiration for the video series. In terms of the response he’s received for his own acts of Eucharistic desecration, Dominique said most reactions are “quite funny.”
“The best I have are from moderate Catholics,” he wrote in an email to Headline Bistro. “Catholics who really believe that a cracker can become somebody after a magic ritual don’t get the point, but some moderate Catholics who see the wafer as a symbol of Jesus’ flesh realize something. Sometimes they disagree with what I do, but they realize that some of their friends are quite insane and that something must be done about that.”
Msgr. Morris refuted Dominique’s portrayal of believing Catholics as “insane.”
“If you don’t believe in the mystery of Christ, then of course you don’t understand the sublime mystery of the Eucharist,” Morris said.
“We have confidence,” he added, in what “(Christ) has said to us” in regards to the Eucharist. Morris also pointed out the many examples of men and women who died for their faith in the Eucharist over the past 2,000 years.
Serafin said people should call or write YouTube to demand that the videos be taken down. YouTube’s public relations email address is press@youtube.com
“Christ died on the cross for us,” said Serafin. “The least we can do is defend him in cases like this.”
“Prayer is less a function and more a disposition. Indeed, prayer, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, is ‘a vital and personal relationship with the living God…the living relationship of the children of God with their Father'” (nn. 2558, 2565).
The general intention
That the Synod of Bishops may help all those engaged in the service of the Word of God to transmit the truth of faith courageously in communion with the entire Church.
The mission intention
That in this month dedicated to the missions, every Christian community may feel the need to participate in the universal mission with prayer, sacrifice, and concrete help.
From the First Steps on the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
God has raised up St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, to enable us to grasp and live the profound truth of divine Love with the same intensity as she lived it. Or to put it another way, the Church has proclaimed St. Thérèse a Doctor of the Church in order to help God’s people love the love that is mercy.
Therese was so convinced about how much we need to love the love that is mercy – instead of some twisted, inept infatuation with justice – that she made it the theme of a little Christmas play she wrote and performed for the community in 1894.
In the play, the Angel of Judgment approaches the infant Jesus in the manger and says this:
Have you forgotten, Jesus, O Beauty supreme, that the sinner must at last be punished? I will chastise the crime in judgment; I want to exterminate all the ungrateful. My sword is ready! Jesus, sweet victim! My sword is ready!! I am set to avenge you!!! (Theatre au Carmel, Paris: Cerf DDB, 1985, p. 108, author’s translation)
And the baby Jesus replies:
O beautiful angel! Put down your sword. It is not for you to judge the nature that I raise up and that I wish to redeem. The one who will judge the world is myself, the one named Jesus! The life-giving dew of my Blood will purify all my chosen ones. Don’t you know that faithful souls always give me consolation in the face of the blasphemies of the unfaithful by a simple look of love? (ibid.)
This little dramatic scene proved to be prophetic. In it we see prefigured the very model for Thérèse to be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. We hear a little child… speaking with the authoritative voice of God…correcting a destructive concept of divine justice…offering a new way to grasp God’s love…and transforming the world through a graced teaching on God’s mercy.
A growing concern is the sustainability of the earth given the life we lead. Uncritical
consumption of goods and lack of regard for sound ecological principals can be distressing and theologically bankrupt. The good stewardship of the gifts God has given is paramount. In the recent past the pope told assembled audiences that the created world is a great gift of God but it is “exposed to serious risks by life choices and lifestyles that can degrade it. In particular, environmental degradation makes poor people’s existence intolerable.” In another place Pope Benedict said, “In dialogue with Christians of various churches, we need to commit ourselves to caring for the created world, without squandering its resources, and sharing them in a cooperative way.”
Reading The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church we see a teaching that says the world’s poor, who very often live in slums, are connected to the environmental crisis. In cases of poverty and hunger, it is “virtually impossible” to avoid environmental exploitation.
The Holy Father urges us to listen to “the voice of the Earth” or risk destroying it. Moreover he said, “We cannot simply do what we want with this Earth of ours, with what has been entrusted to us.”
Noting that the world’s religions have shown a growing interest in the environment, particularly the ramifications of climate change; look at the statements of Patriarch Bartholomew, known as the “Green Patriarch,” on environmental matters. He voices his concern and pledges support; so I would say that Orthodox Christians are ahead of Western Christians when it comes to working for a more green environment. A rather dire prediction was given by Benedict: “We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive. This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness…than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive.”
At the new year, Pope Benedict’s World Day of Peace message of 2008 focused two paragraphs on our responsibility for the earth today and for the future. He said,
The family needs a home, a fit environment in which to develop its proper relationships.
For the human family, this home is the earth, the environment that God the Creator has given us to inhabit with creativity and responsibility. We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion. Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man. Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits and to exhibit towards nature the same responsible freedom that we claim for ourselves. Nor must we overlook the poor, who are excluded in many cases from the goods of creation destined for all. Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances. If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations. Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying.
In this regard, it is essential to “sense” that the earth is “our common home” and, in our stewardship and service to all, to choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions. Further international agencies may need to be established in order to confront together the stewardship of this “home” of ours; more important, however, is the
need for ever greater conviction about the need for responsible cooperation. The problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short. In order to face this situation effectively, there is a need to act in harmony. One area where there is a particular need to intensify dialogue between nations is that of the stewardship of the earth’s energy resources. The technologically advanced countries are facing two pressing needs in this regard: on the one hand, to reassess the high levels of consumption due to the present model of development, and on the other hand to invest sufficient resources in the search for alternative sources of energy and for greater energy efficiency. The emerging counties are hungry for energy, but at times this hunger is met in a way harmful to poor countries which, due to their insufficient infrastructures, including their technological infrastructures, are forced to undersell the energy resources they do possess. At times, their very political freedom is compromised by forms of protectorate or, in any case, by forms of conditioning which appear clearly humiliating.
Yahoo carries a video story on the installation of solar panels at the Paul VI Audience Hall and Ecotality Life publishes a story on the greening of the Vatican. The point is not that we garner Catholic support for green technology, green gadgets and green gizmos for a new industry but that we take seriously the needs of the planet, our own needs and those of our brothers and sisters.
The Catholic News Service carried two stories yesterday on the eco-friendly work of the Pope:
First saplings of Vatican reforestation project to be planted
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The first saplings of the Vatican Climate Forest, a reforestation project to offset the Vatican’s carbon dioxide emissions, will be planted in November, the Vatican newspaper said. The U.S.-based Planktos Inc. and its Hungarian partner, KlimaFa Ltd., are restoring more than 600 acres of forests in Hungary along the Tisza River to offset emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2. The two companies earn money by selling greenhouse-gas mitigation credits to individuals and businesses. Whatever carbon dioxide emissions an individual or company cannot eliminate can be offset by planting trees or buying the carbon mitigation credits of a company that plants trees or takes other action to eliminate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Planktos and KlimaFa announced in 2007 that they would donate to the Vatican enough mitigation credits to offset the Vatican’s annual CO2 production, estimated at 10,000 tons.
People must live morally, ethically, to save environment, says pope
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) — The only way to put an end to environmental degradation is for people to live more simply and ethically, said Pope Benedict XVI. All of creation represents “an enormous gift from God to humanity” so people have a responsibility to “protect this treasure” and dedicate themselves “against an indiscriminate use” of the earth’s resources, he said. The pope made his comments during a Sept. 27 audience with members of the Italian Tourist Youth Center and the Belgium-based International Bureau of Social Tourism. The audience also marked World Tourism Day which is sponsored by the U.N. World Tourism Organization. It was dedicated this year to the theme “Responding to the Challenge of Climate Change.” The pope said, “Environmental degradation can only be stopped by spreading an appropriate culture of behavior that includes more sober lifestyles.”
The example of Saint Jerome, priest, confessor of the faith and doctor of the Church lived ca. 341-420. He lived a simple life dedicated to the Church; he made the sacred Scriptures accessible to the people by translating them into Latin and writing commentaries. Saint Jerome was a colorful character and concerned for the welfare of others.
O God,
Who for the expounding of the Holy Scriptures
did raise up in Thy Church the great and holy Doctor Jerome;
we beseech Thee, grant that by his intercession and merits we may,
by Thy help, be enabled to practice what he taught us both by word and by work.
Given that today is a feast day of a great saint dedicated to knowing and living the Scriptures, an excerpt from the work, All About the Bible, seems useful for our meditation today.
Man Shares with God
Making all this known to man was not the work of a moment, from our point of view. God had made man to His own image and likeness. This means that man shares with God the power to know himself and others. Man shares with God the freedom to embrace that which is good. Man can even know the infinite goodness Itself which is God; he has the power to make his whole being center on that goodness of God – to bring about his own human perfection and the perfection of those with whom he lives.
But man had so distorted this image of God as to seek happiness where there is only misery, peace where there is only disturbance, security where there is only danger. But God is not so weak that He would have to start over with a new human race. God is not so petty as simply to seek revenge on the man who betrayed Him. Because man had made himself an ugly distortion of the image of God, God came into man’s world as Savior to bring beauty out of ugliness. In this is seen the power of God; in this also is known the love of God who can never cease to pursue this fallen man so as to give him greater blessings than those he had thrown away. When God took a hand in our world, He still respected that image of Himself in man that man had distorted. Man doesn’t change overnight from an infant into an adult. He doesn’t learn all things suddenly in a flash of light. This is not the way God made us. In coming to man as his Savior, God dealt with man as God Himself had made him – a being who learns step by step, a being who learns from others and from the world about him, a being who can do only as much as he knows how to do.
To bring to the world the knowledge of the astonishing love and goodness of God was a long process. Two thousand years passed before the full work of God as Savior was established in our world as a living thing. The central point of this work was the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, One who was wholly and completely a man like us in all save sin, and yet true God from all eternity. Christians group all the events that led up to this central event of history under the term “Old Testament.” It was that period between the call of Abraham about 1800 years before Christ to the coming of Christ Himself. It was that patient struggle of God to show man how far he had drifted from God, how little he actually knew about either God or man himself. By His unselfish, relentless pursuit of man, God brought at least some – those who were willing to do what they knew how to do for God – to realize that their only happiness in their own lives and in their nation was to be found in obedience to God.
All About the Bible is a booklet published by the Catholic Information Service. There are more than 60 titles published by CIS to help learn the Catholic faith or just to review some things about the faith.
Poor box at SS. Peter and Paul hits million milestone
By Christie L. Chicoine
East Goshen, Sep 28, 2008 (CNA).- Week in and week out, parishioners of all ages at SS. Peter and Paul Parish thoughtfully slip cash — and occasionally checks — into the
church’s five poor boxes.
Last month, their charitable acts of kindness topped more than $1 million for the 18 years the poor box ministry has been in place there.
“I’ve been looking forward to that,” said Msgr. James J. Foley, pastor of SS. Peter and Paul. “My hope, in the beginning, was that we could raise $6,000 a year. We raised $10,000. Now, we’re raising almost $10,000 every two months,” and sometimes much more.
An observation made by a nun who was visiting the parish sums up the program’s success. “She said, ‘It’s the only church I’ve ever been in where people line up to put money in the poor box,'” Msgr. Foley recounted.
… the Feast of the three Archangels who are mentioned by name in Scripture: Michael,
Gabriel and Raphael. This reminds us that in the ancient Church – already in the Book of Revelation – Bishops were described as “angels” of their Church, thereby expressing a close connection between the Bishop’s ministry and the Angel’s mission. From the Angel’s task it is possible to understand the Bishop’s service. But what is an Angel? Sacred Scripture and the Church’s tradition enable us to discern two aspects. On the one hand, the Angel is a creature who stands before God, oriented to God with his whole being. All three names of the Archangels end with the word “El”, which means “God”. God is inscribed in their names, in their nature. Their true nature is existing in his sight and for him. In this very way the second aspect that characterizes Angels is also explained: they are God’s messengers. They bring God to men, they open heaven and thus open earth. Precisely because they are with God, they can also be very close to man. Indeed, God is closer to each one of us than we ourselves are. The Angels speak to man of what constitutes his true being, of what in his life is so often concealed and buried. They bring him back to himself, touching him on God’s behalf. In this sense, we human beings must also always return to being angels to one another – angels who turn people away from erroneous ways and direct them always, ever anew, to God. If the ancient Church called Bishops “Angels” of their Church, she meant precisely this: Bishops themselves must be men of God, they must live oriented to God. “Multum orat pro populo.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Ordination of Bishops, 29 September 2007)
The Feast of the Archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, patrons of those who work in radio: pray for us.
The Catholic Information Service at the Knights of Columbus publishes a number of booklets on matters pertaining to the Catholic faith. Each of the 60+ booklets gives a very good introduction to what we believe but the booklets are neither the first word nor the last on the subjects they treat. One such booklet is All About Angels, and the following is an excerpt:
More often, however, angels appear in a multitude (cf. Daniel 7:10). When they do, the Old Testament writers employ military metaphors to describe their collective presence. Metaphors such as “host” or “army of the Lord” and “encampment of God” all suggest that angels could be found in large numbers, arranged in an orderly fashion. In rare displays of cordial greetings between men and angels, we are told the proper names of three angels: Michael (Daniel 10:13), which means “Who is Like God?”; Gabriel (Daniel 8:16), which means “Power of God”; and Raphael (Tobit 7:8), which means “God has healed.” These named beings were later identified by Catholic tradition as “archangels.” Although these personal names tell us something about the nature of God, they should not be considered solely as metaphors for God’s attributes. An archangel’s name, like our own, reveals the identity of a unique, personal being.
The Archangels are charged with protecting an individual or a multitude of individuals or with delivering solemn messages from God to man, such as when the Archangel Gabriel greeted the Blessed Virgin Mary with the news of the Incarnation.
Finally, the Prayer after Communion on the Feast of the Archangels serves as a reminder that divine providence has placed us “under the watchful care of the angels” so that “we
may advance along the way of salvation.” Through the liturgy of the Mass we are encouraged, then, to love, respect, and invoke the angels. Invoking the angels may seem like an odd practice, but when we recall that those angels who did not reject God are saints, we quickly realize that there is little difference between this practice and the ancient practice of invoking human saints. We pray to the angels as we do to the saints, for the same reasons, namely, so that they will guide and protect us, as well as intercede with God on our behalf. At the end of the funeral liturgy, in the Prayer of Commendation we invoke the angels and saints to aid and accompany us as we leave this world:
Saints of God, come to his/her aid!
Come to meet him/her, angels of the Lord!
Receive his/her soul and present him/her to God the Most High.
May Christ, who called you, take you to himself;
may angels lead you to Abraham’s side.
The Roman calendar sets aside two feast days to honor God’s invisible servants. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council’s reform of the sacred liturgy, we continue to celebrate (as we have for centuries) the feasts of the Archangels and of the holy Guardian Angels. The feast day of Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel, and Saint Raphael, which the Church now celebrates on September 29, was first approved by the Lateran Council in 745. The feast day of the Guardian Angels, celebrated on October 2, originated in 1411 at Valencia, Spain. The liturgical celebration of these two feast days makes us mindful of our communion with the angels and of the immense expanse of the Church, which encompasses heaven and earth. The Opening Prayer for the feast of the archangels emphasizes the universal scope of God’s providence: “God our Father, in a wonderful way you guide the work of angels and men. May those who serve you constantly in heaven keep our lives safe from all harm on earth.”
The Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel
Pope Leo XIII speaks of a vision he had at Mass that terrified him. In fact, there seems to be a variety of versions of the narrative. As it goes, either the Pope saw devils congregating around the Holy See or he heard that it was granted to Satan to try to undermine the Church for the next one hundred years. Who is to doubt the either interpretation of the vision? As a result of the vision, Pope Leo composed this prayer to Saint Michael and ordered in 1886 that it be recited after every Low Mass. This custom was suppressed in 1964 as part of the official liturgical acts of the priest at Mass but the tradition of saying the prayer persists. The prayer evokes a strong sense of protection and confidence in the holy work of the Archangel and therefore I strongly recommend that you say it following Mass and daily if you don’t make it to Mass.
Personally, in the past year I started saying this prayer I learned as a child.
Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
cast into hell Satan and all evil spirits
who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
The Latin text of the prayer is as follows:
Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio.
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae caelestis,
Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.
The Servant of God Pope John Paul I
One that showed “the merciful face of the Church”
17 October 1912 – 28 September 1978
God, Who, in Thine ineffable providence,
didst will that Thy servant John Paul I
should be numbered among the high priests,
grant, we beseech Thee, that he,
who on earth held the place of Thine only-begotten Son,
may be joined forevermore to the fellowship of Thy holy pontiffs.
In 2003, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, “personally, I am totally convinced that he was a saint because of his great goodness, simplicity, humanity and courage.”
Watch Rome Reports on the Pope.
