08:18 PM 7/8/2008 - Starbucks is the best example of a phony status symbol that means nothing, but people will still pay 10x as much for because there are French words all over the place. You want coffee in a coffee shop, that's 60 cents. But at Starbucks, Café Latte: $3.50. Cafe Cremier: $4.50. Cafe Suisse: $9.50. For each French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they'll give you all the cream you want until you're blue in the face. Forty million people are walking around in coffee shops with jars of cream: "Here's all the cream you want!" And it's still 60 cents. You know why? Because it's called "coffee." If it's Cafe Latte - $4.50.
          You want cinnamon in your coffee? Ask for cinnamon in a coffee shop; they'll give you all the cinnamon you want. Do they ask you for more money because it's cinnamon? It's the same price for cinnamon in your coffee as for coffee without cinnamon - 60 cents, that's it. But not in Starbucks. Over there, it's Cinnamonnier - $9.50.
          You want a refill in a regular coffee shop, they'll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you're 27 and keep drinking coffee until you're 98. And they'll start begging you: "Here, you want more coffee, you want more, you want more?" Do you know that you can't get a refill at Starbucks? A refill is a dollar fifty. Two refills, $4.50. Three refills, $19.50. So, for four cups of coffee - $350.
          And it's burnt coffee. It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot." But when it's burnt at Starbucks, they say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend. It's a special bean from Argentina....." The bean is in your head.
          And there're no chairs in those Starbucks. Instead, they have these high stools. You ever see these stools? You haven't been on a chair that high since you were two. Seventy-three year old Jews are climbing and climbing to get to the top of the chair. And when they get to the top, they can't even drink the coffee because there's 12 people around one little table, and everybody's saying, "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me....." Then they can't get off the chair. Old Jews are begging Gentiles, "Mister, could you get me off this?"
          Do you remember what a cafeteria was? In poor neighborhoods all over this country, they went to a cafeteria because there were no waiters and no service. And so poor people could save money on a tip. Cafeterias didn't have regular tables or chairs either. They gave coffee to you in a cardboard cup. So because of that you paid less for the coffee. You got less, so you paid less. It's all the same as Starbucks - no chairs, no service, a cardboard cup for your coffee - except in Starbucks, the less you get, the more it costs. By the time they give you nothing, it's worth four times as much. Am I exaggerating? Did you ever try to buy a cookie in Starbucks? Buy a cookie in a regular coffee shop. You can tear down a building with that cookie. And the whole cookie is 60 cents. At Starbucks, you're going to have to hire a detective to find that cookie, and it's $9.50. And you can't put butter on it because they want extra.
          Do you know that if you buy a bagel, you pay extra for cream cheese in Starbucks? Cream cheese, another 60 cents. A knife to put it on, 32 cents. If it reaches the bagel, 48 cents. That bagel costs you $312. And they don't give you the butter or the cream cheese. They don't give it to you. They tell you where it is. "Oh, you want butter? It's over there. Cream cheese? Over here. Sugar? Sugar is here." Now you become your own waiter. You walk around with a tray. "I'll take the cookie. Where's the butter? The butter's here. Where's the cream cheese? The cream cheese is there." You walked around for an hour and a half selecting items, and then the guy at the cash register has a glass in front of him that says "Tips." You're waiting on tables for an hour, and you owe him money.
          Then there's a sign that says please clean it up when you're finished. They don't give you a waiter or a busboy. Now you've become the janitor. Now you have to start cleaning up the place. Old Jews are walking around cleaning up Starbucks. "Oh, he's got dirt too? Wait, I'll clean this up." They clean up the place for an hour and a half. If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of a coffee shop. A whole new type. Instead of 60 cents for coffee I'll charge 2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no busboy, and you'll clean it up for 20 minutes after you're finished," Would you say to me, "that's the greatest idea for a business I ever heard! We can open a chain of these all over the world!" No, you would put me right into a sanitarium. Starbucks can only get away with it because they have French titles for everything,
          Nazi bastard sons-of-bitches. And I say this with the highest respect, because I don't like to talk about people.

by Jackie Mason

James Bowman, a columnist for The New Criterion, begins an interesting articile about the current presidential campaign with this gem:

On my occasional visits to Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee merchants, I try to refuse to use the private language the company has thoughtfully provided for the convenience of its patrons. Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect. Doubtless the marketing department in Seattle has tested it to a fare-thee-well and found that most people are not like me; most people are happy to use the special, European-sounding jargon—the Stargot, as we might call it—because it flatters them into the belief that, along with their coffee, they have purchased at a very reasonable price admission to an exclusive circle of coffee-drinkers who are socially a cut or two above those who drink from the caffeine-springs of Dunkin’ Donuts or Ma’s Diner, where they use ordinary English.

by Priestly Pugilist

02:02 PM 7/8/2008 -

[I was going to engage is cleaver, mind-boggling commentary here; but, instead, I'm just going to let these three stories from various sources speak for themselves. The first story is from a news organization, but the person who e-mailed it to me didn't include the by-line. --PP]

posted by Priestly Pugilist

01:46 PM 7/8/2008 - If you can not figure out that the miracle of the loaves and fish is a prefiguring of the Holy Eucharist, you need some sort of remedial class. It’s painfully obvious that this event of feeding 5000 people with five pieces of bread and two fish has little to do with hunger or magic tricks as it does with feeding the world with the Body and Blood of Christ.
          And there is symbolism of the Eucharist all over this passage. For example, when he gets out of the boat, the first thing he does is heal the sick. Why? Because in order to receive Holy Communion one must be free from sin. When our Lord commands the disciples to feed the people with the meager supplies on hand, they complain that it won’t be enough; but our Lord presses them on, reminding them that what they are going to accomplish will be done by his power, not their own. Then after he breaks the bread, he gives the bread and fish to the disciples to distribute to the people -- he doesn’t distribute it himself; that’s because Christ entrusts the Holy Eucharist to his Church, particularly his priests, without whom there could be no Eucharist. Then St. Matthew goes on to tell us that they all ate and were satisfied. Of course they were, because the body and blood of the Lord is not food in the conventional sense, but spiritual food -- the actual life of the risen Savior. No ordinary food could satisfy that completely. And it wasn’t just some who were satisfied, nor even most: St. Matthew says that all were satisfied, because the Eucharist is the remedy for all sin, for all people. And when it was all over, they took up twelve baskets of leftovers, in much the same way that we keep “leftover” particles of the Blessed Eucharist in our tabernacle here in church. And the baskets are left over because the Eucharist, once we partake of it, cannot remain dormant within us, but must be carried with us into the world, so that the life of Christ which we receive can be shared with everybody. And when the baskets are collected, Jesus and his disciples get back into the boat and move on, because the grace of the Eucharist must be spread to everyone. No one can attain heaven without it, as our Lord himself said in Ch. 6 of John’s Gospel, "Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall have no life in you."
          Of course, our Lord’s disciples were not thinking of these things when our Lord performed this miracle -- and he did it twice; they were probably thinking, “Gee, what a great trick. Wish I could do a trick like that.” Whether they remembered it on the night of the Last Supper we’ll never know. But they certainly remembered it later, and so did the Fathers of the Church. St. Jerome wrote,

The multiplication extended itself beyond that which was necessary, so that twelve baskets remained, one for each Apostle. The Apostles had not yet received the power to consecrate and distribute the Bread of Heaven, the Eucharist; yet Jesus, with a symbolic act, to nourish the hungry crowd, did not create new food, but took that which was in the hands of his disciples, and blessed it.

01:22 PM 7/8/2008 - Of course we had two sets of readings today, since the feast of Ss. Peter & Paul falls on a Sunday. I would like to focus our attention on the first of these, which is the Gospel for the Sunday. The two cures our Lord performs as recorded in this Gospel lesson are very curious, because the one is very different from the other.

          In the first case, our Lord is approached by two blind men; in fact, St. Matthew tells us that they were following Jesus and calling after him. And when he turns to address them, he asks them, Do you believe that I am able to do this?" He solicits from them an act of faith before he cures them. You may recall a few weeks ago, when we were discussing the centurion whose servant our Lord cured, and how our Lord remarks about how this man’s faith is greater than anyone else’s even though he is a pagan. And I had mentioned at that time how much our Lord wants us to need him, and how he will often allow us to suffer for a time until we are prepared to rely solely on him. So, this cure here of the two blind men would seem to fit this pattern quite nicely. They want to be cured, but he first requires them to make an act of faith. Once they make it, he cures them in short order.
          But then right away St. Matthew reports another cure: this time, it’s a fellow who’s possessed. Only this time, our Lord performs the cure without even conversing with the man; there is no act of faith required. So, we’re tempted to say, “Well, what’s the deal? Are we required to believe before God answers our prayers or not?” Well, I think there’s a very good and obvious answer to this question: the man is mute. He can’t talk; so, how can our Lord solicit an act of faith from him? How can the man be expected to declare his faith when he can’t declare anything? It reminds me of a bumper sticker that I saw once which made me laugh, which read, “Illiterate? Write for free help.”
          Now, there’s probably a lot we could glean from this particular Gospel passage; but the one thing that sticks out to me as I read of these two cures together as the Church presents them to us, is the fact that God does not require from us what we are unable to do. Of course, the question that must follow that observation is, “Who is it who is qualified to judge what we’re capable of and what we’re not capable of?” More often than not we believe that we are able to judge that for ourselves, hence the excuses we make for ourselves: “I can’t do that. It’s unfair for me to be required to do that because I’m not able.” But I would suggest that we ourselves are actually the least qualified to make a sincere judgment about what we able to do. Think back to your school days, to that one teacher that you remember more than any other, who had more of an influence on you than any other. Was it not the one who pushed you the hardest, who constantly rode you and drove you to do more than you thought you were able? And didn’t you surprise yourself by actually doing it? Maybe you failed along the way and had to start again, but eventually you succeeded because someone had enough faith in you to force you to push the envelop, to not give up when you wanted to surrender. And then you realized that if you had listened to yourself and stopped when you thought you had done all you could do, you never would have succeeded.
          So, what does all this mean? It means that, in our relationship with God, in our relationship with the Church, even in our relationships with others, there is a difference between knowing our limitations and becoming comfortable with them. Spiritually speaking, it might be a question of some habitual sin, or some obligation the Church imposes upon us; it may be something related to our marriage or family obligations; but, whatever it is, if we’re on the verge of telling ourselves that we’ve reached our limit and can’t go on, we may be selling ourselves short; and, if that judgment is being made solely by ourselves alone without any input from someone else, we probably are.
          In the Gospel lesson, our Lord didn’t require an act of faith from the mute man simply because he knew the man wasn’t capable; but he did require it of the two blind men because they were able, even if they themselves thought they were not. The bottom line is that it was our Lord who made that judgment, not the men themselves. Neither should we make that judgment for ourselves. Next month we celebrate the Dormition, and it presents us with a good opportunity to challenge our view of ourselves and our abilities. Mary, after all, did question the angel when he came to her: How is this to be since I have not known man. But he would not allow her to sell herself short. That’s why, at her Dormition, she was assumed body and soul into heaven; she lived up to what she was in spite of herself. So must we. Our Lord himself said it: "With God, all things are possible."

by Father Michael Venditti

01:12 PM 7/8/2008 - I would like to continue today with the exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans which we began last week, wherein St. Paul was snipping at the Christians in Rome because they weren’t adhering to the faith they had received from the Apostles, but were making up their own religion to suit their own fancies and calling it Christianity; something that a lot of people today like to do.
          Today, St. Paul delves a little deeper into what’s wrong with the Christian community is Rome, and lashes out at them about another common problem that is all to present even in the Church today: the notion that we all have to be the same. He’s describing how all of us have different gifts and abilities given to us in grace: some people are teachers, some are preachers, some are leaders, and so forth; and some people are not these things -- they have other gifts. We are not all equal. He’s writing this to the Christians in ancient Rome because, apparently, there was some jealously among them -- some backbiting and sniping and vying for position; and Paul, rightly so, thinks it’s unseemly for Christians to be behaving this way. He considers such behavior among Christians to be hypocrisy. That’s why he says in the Epistle: "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly and affectionate to one another, with brotherly love, giving preference in honor to one another; not lagging in diligence but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. Distribute to those in need, be hospitable, bless those who persecute you, and do not curse anyone." He lecturing them like a father would lecture his children, because that’s what they are by the way that they’re behaving; and he’s giving them an abject lesson in maturity. He’s telling them, basically, to grow up.
          But one point he makes toward the beginning of this reading is something that deserves to be meditated upon seriously. He says that those who show mercy should do so cheerfully. Now, we don’t often think of cheerfulness as a Christian virtue, but it is. And this is not the only place in the New Testament where he mentions this. As a matter of fact, our Lord, himself, mentions this. On Cheesefare Sunday, just before Lent, in his admonitions about fasting, our Lord says straight out: When you fast don’t walk about with a long face like the hypocrites do, saying, “Look how I’m suffering.” He says to comb your hair and wash your face, so that no one knows that you’re fasting. After all, who are you fasting for? Are you doing penance so that everyone can see you do penance; or are you doing penance for God? God knows the secrets of your heart; you don’t need to put on a display for someone else.
          St. Paul is saying basically the same thing, but he doesn’t localize it to the subject of fasting; he applies it to our whole lives as Christians. The Christian, for St. Paul, is not someone who walks around with a long face, all teary-eyed, beating his breast and saying, “Woe is me.” For St. Paul, the Christian is someone who, despite whatever personal problems he may have, is still filled with joy because of his faith. He is the kind of person who, no matter what befalls him, trusts our Lord to see him through. He’s not saying the Christian doesn’t have problems -- everybody has problems; but the Christian with a problem behaves differently than the pagan with a problem. The Christian with a problem doesn’t need to seek out the sympathy of others, because he doesn’t need it. He has our Lord. And even when our Lord is slow in responding, or responds in an unexpected way (which he often does), the Christian can deal with it because he knows that the grace of Christ will always be there so long as he always remains faithful.
          Now, being cheerful in the face of great personal difficulty is a hard thing to do; and, to be fair, in some circumstances it can be almost impossible. What is always possible, though, is prayer. Prayer is our direct link with Christ; it is our cell phone to God. And there are no peak hours or roaming charges. But even prayer needs to be done in a spirit of maturity. God is not a vending machine, and what we pray for we don’t always get just the way we want. Prayer is conversation; and, when you converse honestly with someone, you don’t always hear what you want to hear. When illustrating the way prayer works, I always like to refer to the story of the two little boys walking home from Sunday school, where they had just heard a lesson about prayer, and one turns to the other and says, “I don’t believe in prayer.”
          And his companion is a little shocked, and says, “What do you mean you don’t believe in prayer? What’s the matter with you?”
          And the first little boy says, “I don’t believe in prayer. I don’t believe it works, and I can prove it. Remember that X-Box you wanted for Christmas last year?”
          “Yes.”
          “Did you pray for it?”
          “Yes.”
          “Did you get it?”
          “No.”
          “There, you see? That’s why I don’t believe in prayer. God didn’t answer your prayer.”
          And his companion says, “Oh, yes he did. He said ‘No.’”
          Now we can pray to God ‘till we’re blue in the face about all our problems and say, “God, I need this” or “God, I need that.” And we might be tempted to become indignant when God doesn’t give us this or that, thinking that God, for some reason, has chosen to ignore us; when, in fact, God may be saying to us, “I know some things you need more that that: things maybe like patience, or perseverance, or faith.”
          Whatever it is that prays on our minds and makes life difficult from time to time, St. Paul is right, and so is our Lord. Our problems are ours, not anyone else’s; and there’s no reason for us to spread the misery. Because if we truly are people of faith (or, at least striving to be), there’s no misery to spread. Christ truly is, as St. Basil the Great says of him in his Liturgy, “a help to the helpless, a hope to the hopeless.”

by Father Michael Venditti

12:58 PM 7/8/2008 - Illness prevented regular posting; so, let's make up for lost time:

Brethren, my hearts desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

12:44 PM 6/1/2008 - The difficulty with finding a relevant meaning from some of these Gospel passages has a lot to do with the art of translation. Matthew’s Gospel is a problem in particular, because it’s the only book of the Bible written in what is now a dead language. The other Gospel’s were written in Greek; Matthew’s was written in Aramaic, the common Hebrew dialect spoken by our Lord.
          The word in question, which causes the difficulty in this passage, is the one which our own Gospel book has translated as “money;” the actual word is mammon; and while it’s almost always translated as “wealth” or “money,” it means something more than that. One of the frustrations in trying to learn some of these ancient languages is that there are so many different words which the Lexicon translates in the same way, because each of them connotes something unique. So, in your Bible the word reads as “money,” and in English money is money. But in Aramaic you may have 12 different words that mean money, and each one says something different about it or the person who owns it or uses it. Mammon is wealth or money, but with a certain quality of personification. When it’s used as the object of a sentence, it implies some kind of reciprocal human-like relationship to the subject of the sentence. So when one possesses mammon, one not only possesses money but is also possessed by it. And all of that is known simply by looking at the one word, mammon.
          Which kind of sums up our Lord’s whole point, doesn’t it? St. John Chrysostom explains for us exactly how the choice of this word defines the whole meaning of our Lord’s narrative. It’s not the possession of the wealth that’s the problem; it’s the possession that the wealth holds over us that’s the problem. The Greek and Aramaic languages give you the option of speaking about inanimate objects as persons because it is a fact of life that such objects can become virtual “persons” to those who desire them. Money becomes mammon when obtaining or preserving it becomes the focus of your life, a relationship which should exist only with another person. It’s all right to focus on your husband or your wife, it’s all right to focus on your children, it’s all right to focus on God; but to focus on something that is not a person is wrong. It robs all the other “persons” in your life of their humanity. You end up giving human dedication to something that is not human, thus making all the other people in your life less than human by subordinating them to an inanimate object.
          And this, I think, is a very good way to understand the point our Lord is making. There are all kinds of things we need to fulfill our obligations to the people whom we love. One of them is money. You can’t feed a family or put a roof over their heads without it. But every month you’re handed that pay check, it isn’t the number of digits on the check that should give you satisfaction; it’s what that number should represent to the person who has his life well-ordered: the meeting of his responsibilities to those who depend on him.

          The ancient Desert Fathers we remember as the supreme teachers of holiness. But in another sense we have to recognize that, spiritually speaking, they took the easy way out. By forsaking all material possessions and retreating into the solitude of the desert, they isolated themselves from everything that could possibly come between God and themselves. We don’t have that luxury. We depend on others and others depend on us, in marriage, in the priesthood, in any number of situations in which we may find ourselves. They were like alcoholics who completely gave up drink; we are more like compulsive overeaters who can’t give up food, but must try somehow to live with it in a modified and detached way; which, when you think about it, is a much more difficult thing.
          We can, therefore, presume that our Lord used the word that he used very deliberately. It isn’t a question of how much, but a question of why? When two people get married and look forward to a family, they’re concerned with creating a home and an environment in which a family can flourish. But as the years pass that focus can get lost. We become so immersed in the various activities that keep the check coming in, that we forget the reason for it all. Work and job, then, become foci in themselves, not that we consciously make them so; but that through years of going through the motions we have forgotten what it’s all for. And this is true not only in reference to our families but most especially in reference to God. After all, just as material wealth exists for the benefit of our families, so our families are really nothing more than a means to bring ourselves and others closer to Christ. That’s why marriage is a sacrament. It is a way to God. One gets married precisely because two souls seeking perfection have a much better chance of success than one soul alone, because they temper each other, and limit each other, and motivate each other to do what is right. Otherwise, she exists only to please me, and I exist only to please her, when the reality should be that we both exist to help one another please God. And this is self-evident: how many people are there in our own parish who would not be here except for the fact that, somewhere along the line, they married someone who went to church on Sunday? How many couples are there who honestly know that they would not be here were it not for the fact that they needed a baby baptized, or felt guilty about not raising a child in a religious environment. And while some might question the purity of such motives, the fact is that it’s exactly this sort of thing that marriage and family are for.
          The longer I live the more I’m convinced that everything we do has some kind of ulterior motive; but that’s OK just so long as that ulterior motive is a positive one, and not mammon. In the end, no matter what we do, no matter what reason we think we have for doing it, it must be something that will lead us to God. And it will be, as long as it’s not mammon, as long as we can see the will of God in every task of life. And that happens when we train ourselves to see, in everyone who depends on us, the face of Christ.

by Father Michael Venditti

11:17 AM 5/29/2008 -

[Do you recall the famous 3/1/07 post about global warming? If not, just use the link at the bottom of the page to go find it. It resulted in your Priestly Pugilist being quoted by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla) on the Minority page of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (you can read about that in the 4/04/07 post). Needless to say, your PP does not believe in man-made global warming. The hoax that man is killing the planet is perpetuated by socialists who, having seen the politcal wing of their movement die with the Soviet Union, have latched onto environmentalism as a new way to acquire power, control the lives of others, and attack the one thing in the universe they hate the most: freedom.
      But while most Americans have been suckered into the fraud -- ready and willing to give up their liberty to prevent a catastrophy that doesn't exist -- not everyone in the former Soviet block is a true believer, to wit Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic (pictured above). These exherpts from his speach two days ago at the National Press Club are pure gold! They're also pure truth! Keep in mind he speaks somewhat broken English.
      This is a transcript from the Rush Limbaugh Program taken from Rush's web site, and I've left Rush's comments in because they're good, too. --PP]

by Priestly Pugilist

10:50 AM 5/28/2008 -

[Robert Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report, a political newsletter he founded in 1967 with Rowland Evans. This column, originally published in April, is an excellent companion to the 10:03 AM 5/7/2008 and 09:36 PM 5/9/2008 posts on Archbishop Weurl's disobedience regarding the distribution of Holy Communion to pro-death politicians living and working in his diocese. Mr. Novak's columns are routinely available at HumanEvents.com. --PP]

by Robert Novak

09:48 AM 5/27/2008 - What does it mean to follow Jesus? It certainly doesn't mean for us what it did for the future apostles we read about here. We're not expecting, surely, to be working at our jobs, like Simon and Andrew, encounter our Lord, and quit our jobs and leave everything behind to follow him, though once in a while you see it. I was in the seminary with a young man who was raised a Protestant, and who felt very strongly a call to the Catholic Faith. And when he was received into the Catholic Church he did so with the expectation that his parents would never speak to him again, since his family belonged to a sect which was very anti-Catholic. That is certainly a dramatic answer to a very direct calling. For those of us born into our faith, it's never so dramatic, and we might make the mistake of thinking that there is no call for us to follow. We may already be married, or priests, or whatever, and think that we've already answered our call. And that's a great mistake. For, as Simon Peter found out later, the call to follow our Lord cannot be answered in one moment. We answer it every minute of every day, until the end of our days. Peter answered the call that first day he met our Lord, as we just read; he failed to answer that same call on the day he betrayed our Lord three times; he answered it again on that day in Rome when he gave his life as a martyr for Christ.
          And this is something that most of us know from our own experience. Those of you who are married know that saying "I do" on the day of your wedding is not the end of the story. It's true that on that day you are giving a definitive answer to a call which you fully intend to be a lifetime commitment; but the choice is not made only on that day, the choice is made every day of your life that you have to live with that person. And every time the circumstances change, and every time there's some difficulty, and every time there's temptation -- every time something happens that causes you to wish you had not answered that call -- you have to make a choice. The experience of the Priesthood is no different.
          Now, when our Lord ran into Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, they didn't completely know what they were getting into. If they had known, do you think they would have followed in the first place? If Peter had known that his following this man would mean that he would end up murdered in a far away country, do you think he would have dropped his nets and walked off after Jesus? Probably not. And who would have blamed him? And yet, when the time came for him to bear witness in Rome, he counted it a privilege to shed his blood for Christ.

          And while you may not know it, as a priest I encounter people all the time who have just that kind of courage, people whom you would never suspect of possessing great heroism, people who secretly carry in their hearts the constant burden of sacrifice to remain faithful to a choice made in faith, whether to a spouse or to the Church or simply to life itself in the face of some painful illness or emotional suffering. Why do they remain faithful?
          Peter was not prepared to die for our Lord that first day he met Jesus. If he had seen the future, he wouldn't have followed our Lord, he'd have run for the hills. He followed precisely because he did not know what he was getting into. But when the time came, he made the supreme sacrifice for Christ. By that time, he was prepared: he had followed our Lord for three years, he had listened and learned, he had grown in his faith to the point that Jesus could entrust him with the care of the Church on earth, all of which graces he could never have received had he not said "Yes" that first day. It's the same in marriage: just because a young couple receives instruction from the priest or goes to some class doesn't mean they're prepared for married life. I meet with couples several time prior to their wedding day to make sure they understand what the Church expects of them in married life, but not with the idea that after talking to me they're going know what marriage is all about. I've never been married. I can't tell them how to react when married life throws them a curve ball. That's something they have to learn for themselves. And they learn to deal with that by making a choice every day to be faithful. The easiest time they make that choice is on their wedding day. And every time they face a difficulty, they have to make that choice again; and each time it gets harder because the challenges are greater. But every time they make that choice, they're stronger for it. And eventually they'll realize that the challenges they're conquering now are challenges they would have never been able to meet at the time they were married, challenges that would have scared them off had they known about them on the day of their wedding. And the same thing is true in the Holy Priesthood. You learn about the priesthood in the seminary; but you learn how to actually be a priest by being a priest. And with every challenge you meet with fidelity, you're that much more prepared for the next.
          "If you would be my disciple," said our Lord, "you must deny yourself, take up your cross EVERY DAY, and follow me." Every day. Not just once. And it's not true only for commitments like marriage or the Priesthood. In this day and age, just being a Christian is a struggle. The promises made for us by our parents and godparents on the day or our baptism we make again and again whenever we're faced with a moral choice. And it's easy to surrender. One can always find convincing reasons to choose self-preservation over sacrifice. But the Lord hasn't left us to face these choices alone. Grace is not a fairy tale. If it was, then a whole lot of martyrs died for nothing. Saint José Maria Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, used to say, "If you want to be happy, be faithful; if you want to be more happy, be more faithful; if you want to be very happy, be very faithful." Let us all pray that we will choose to be very happy by being very faithful to the choices we have made, and the choices we continue to make every day.

by Father Michael Venditti

01:27 PM 5/22/2008 - Rome, May. 20, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has affirmed that a policy barring homosexuals from admission to seminaries applies to all Catholic dioceses and religious orders.
          In a brief letter to the world's bishops, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, underlined that a November 2005 policy statement from the Congregation for Catholic Education is "valid for all formation houses for the priesthood," including those administered by religious orders, the Eastern Catholic churches, and missionary territories.
          Cardinal Bertone's letter -- which, he noted, was specifically approved by Pope Benedict XVI -- refers to the Instruction released by the Congregation for Catholic Education in November 2005, saying that neither active homosexuals nor celibate men with "profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" should be ordained to the priesthood or allowed to begin seminary training.
          That Vatican document, which has now been reinforced, instructed bishops and religious superiors to use "painstaking discernment" in appraising the candidates for priestly training. Candidates who are identifiably homosexual are not qualified for ordination, the Vatican said. "In the case of a serious doubt in this respect, they must not admit him to ordination," the document added.
          Since the release of the Instruction in November 2005, some bishops and religious superiors had questioned whether the policy was to be applied universally throughout the Church. Cardinal Bertone's letter, which he wrote to all the world's bishops and religious superiors in response "to numerous requests for clarification," answers those questions in the affirmative.

from Catholic World News

01:44 PM 5/22/2008 - The Vatican Secretary of State has issued a two-sentence statement concerning the interpretation of the 2005 Instruction on the non-admission of homosexual persons to Holy Orders. In response to "numerous requests for clarification," the Holy See made clear what was clear from the outset, that the force of the prohibitions extends to seminaries operated by religious orders, mission territorities, and Eastern rite Churches. Two or three years from now, in all probability, the Vatican will issue a further clarification affirming that the Instruction remains valid for Capricorns, redheads, and Edmonton Oilers fans. No one is fooled here. These are not good-faith doubts sent Romewards by genuinely perplexed ecclesiastics. The game is to stall implementation of unwelcome directives by finding textual ambiguities and feigning bewilderment, in the hope that, by the time the Church's cumbersome machinery of response has produced its answer, Pope Benedict will be dead and replaced by a man with a more enlightened view of the issues.
          It's no secret that the old line religious orders are the most fervid dissenters from the ban on homosexuals, and their superiors comprise a kind of Shadow Cabinet within the Church: hostile to the policy of the Holy See but outwardly deferential to its authority -- and, most importantly, incubating in their ranks a parallel government and parallel apparat in which the "alternative" policies are discreetly advanced. The Shadow Cabinet's own term for this genial subversion is Creative Fidelity, and any housewife whose husband protests he was "creatively faithful" to her during his Las Vegas business jaunt will be able to gauge the degree to which the Pope is reassured by the euphemism.
          Nor is the Vatican faultless as to its own responsibilities in the matter. Remember the much-ballyhooed "new and serious" Apostolic Visitation of U.S. seminaries launched in response to the clergy abuse crisis? The results of the investigation seem to have vanished into the ether. Those in charge managed to steer it to its conclusion without risk to any sitting bishop, and lay interest in reform has waned to the point where the findings can be safely entombed in a file cabinet until a new generation of prelates replaces those who were implicated. To put in the (curial favorite) future perfect tense: face will have been saved.
          In sum, it looks as if we're still stuck with the post-Conciliar truce: the Holy See holds fast, at least on paper, to the vera doctrina, while the clergy follows its own inclinations, pausing, when thwarted, to ponder what the meaning of "is" is. The faithful -- watching the gap widen between Roman teaching and the convictions of the men Rome provides as their ministers -- are presented with a distasteful choice between docility and orthodoxy. Those who wish to be sure of a welcome will decide that neither matters very much.

by Diogenes at Catholic World News

12:46 PM 5/22/2008 - Vatican, May. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The artistic heritage of the Church is a resource for Christians of all eras, Pope Benedict XVI said at his weekly public audience on May 21.
          "If faith is alive, Christian culture does not become a thing of the past," the Holy Father told his Wednesday audience. "Cathedrals are not medieval monuments, but places where we can meet God and one another. Great music -- Gregorian chants, Bach, Mozart -- are not things of the past." The Holy Father based his address on the life and work on Romanus the Melodist, a Syrian "theologian, poet, composer, and permanent deacon" of the 6th century. He said that Romanus belonged to "that sizeable group of theologians who transformed theology into poetry," along with St. Ambrose, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross among others."

          Romanus the Melodist taught the people through his music, the Pope continued; his hymns provided "a lively and original way of presenting the catechesis." Today those hymns provide insights into both the music and the theology of his generation. "This great poet and composer reminds us of all the wealth of Christian culture which was born of faith, born of hearts that encountered Christ," the Pope said.
          Among the important messages in the hymns of Romanus, the Pontiff mentioned the continuity between Christ and his apostles, ensured by the Holy Spirit, and the critical importance for each Christian to prepare for the Final Judgment.

[St. Romanus is the figure in the bottom center of all icons of the Protection. He has no connection to the apparition of the Theotokos, but is included simply because his feast falls on the same day. --PP]

from Catholic World News

05:42 PM 5/18/2008 - It is one of the forgotten teachings of our faith is that everyone is called to be a saint. Of course, it was Our Lord who first said that. We don't respond to it because of the way we've mystified the saints. We romanticize their lives so much that we almost turn them into gods and goddesses to worship instead of examples to follow. But the message of the Gospel is that we are called to be saints. Holiness is for everyone: the father and husband as well as the priest, the wife and mother as well as the nun. There is no one who is not meant by God to be a saint.
          Not too many years ago our late Holy Father, John Paul II, canonized a man whom I think is one of our Church's greatest saints, Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of the lay organization Opus Dei, whom you’ve heard me quote several times. He was a priest, but he dedicated his life to showing lay people how to become saints. And it's a hard thing to do, because so many people think that in order to be holy you have to be stuffy, boring, grave, prudish, and basically strange. Even piety by itself has little to do with genuine sanctity ... people who spend their time beating their breasts, or pining away in front of icons, or praying endless Rosaries are not necessarily holier thereby. Those things can be aids to holiness, certainly; but holiness itself is something much more substantive. Living the Gospel, bearing witness to it by example ... prayer, yes; but not prayers rattled off by rote; prayer to achieve union with God, prayer that focuses on the Eucharist as the center of our lives. Most important of all, the realization that God wants us to perform the tasks of our state in life as a means of sanctifying the world.

          One of the greatest victories of the Devil in our time was convincing people who are inclined toward religiosity that they achieve holiness either by some sort of volunteerism or by persuing a psudo-clerical "ministry," as if good works by themselves constitute holiness. If we want to serve the Church in holiness it is by participating in it's mission to sanctify the world by fostering an interior life, by going to confession frequently, by learning to unite ourselves to our Lord in prayer, by constantly seeking out the Blessed Eucharist as a source of grace and an amour against imorality, and by fulfilling all the obligations of our state in life: by keeping a Christian home, by raising children in the faith, by becoming living examples of the Gospel at home, in the place where we work, among our friends. This is service to Christ and His Church, and this is holiness.
          So, let us approach this Sunday of All Saints with the realization that we, ultimately, are supposed to be one of them, always remembering that, while it is important to pray for the intercession of the saints, it is more important to follow their example.

by Father Michael Venditti

03:59 PM 5/16/2008 - Either the folks over at Reuters are incredibly stupid or ... actually, I don't think there's another option. First, the headline:

Pope restates gay marriage ban after California vote.
By Philip Pullella

I didn't know the Catholic Church had a "gay marriage ban," did you? I know that "gay marriage" is an oxymoron, given that the Holy Mystery of Matrimony can only be received by a man and a woman; but that's not a ban; it's just reality. The Holy Father couldn't "allow" gay marriage anymore than he could allow the sky to be green and the grass to be purple. He has no authority over the laws of nature. And that's just the headline. What about the story itself?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

by Priestly Pugilist

07:40 PM 5/15/2008 -

[From Father Z's blog, comes another bomb dropped by a former Vatican employee, though this one is somewhat postive.
      Italian journalist Bruno Volpe, whose interview with Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige concerning the suggestion that the Roman Catholic practice of receiving Communion in the hand be abolished (which you can read in the 04:05 PM 2/22/2008 post below), has graced us with another scoop; this time, an interview with His Eminence Virgilio Card. Noč, [pronounced "No-eh"] former papal MC, the predecessor of Archbp. Piero Marini (whose childish rant against Pope Benedict you can read about beginning with the 10:19 AM 4/8/2008 post below). The full text of the Italian can be seen at the Petrus web site.
      This is an interesting interview on several fronts. For the "Ratzis" (fans of the current Holy Father), Pope Paul VI is often villified as the author of all that's gone wrong with in the liturgical life of the Latin Church since Vatican II. For the "Montinians" (fans of Paul VI), Papa Ratzinger is the interloper who is undoing everything their hero "gave his life" to accomplish by way of re-styling the liturgy of the Church so as to destroy the beariers to eventual union with the Protestants. In this interview, he candidly speaks about Pope Paul and what kind of man he was.
      But of most interest to us, I'm sure, will be his willingness to speak about Pope Paul's inflamatory comment, made in the later part of his life, that the "smoke of Satan" had entered the Church through the liturgical abuses that arose following the Council, a remark that has been cautiously avoided by everyone remotely connected with Papa Montini -- until now.
      Keep in mind that Cardinal Noč is old and ill, and Fr. Z has translated the interview word for word; so the grammer is not always perfect. --PP]

by Bruno Volpe

06:41 PM 5/12/2008 -

[The following joyful announcement is lifted from the Rorate Ceali blog. --PP]

by Carlos Antonio Palad

Mar Bawai's diocese is headquartered in California. The Chaldean Catholic Patriarcate governs all Chaldean Catholics from the Patriarchal See in Iraq.
          After rejoicing in the good news, your PP paused to wonder how the various members of the Eastern Catholic press will treat this news. In recent years, some political correctness has crept into some publications, most notably, One magazine, with which Father Venditti exchanged some correspondence which you can read back in the posts for 5/16/2007 and 5/24/2007. According to Executive Editor Michael J. L. La Civita, there are only two forms of Christianity, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. When questioned on this by Fr. V, Mr. La Civita said he had a mandate from the Holy See to "act if is the Church is [already] one," though he failed to provide any documentation to support this odd claim.
          So, the betting pool is now officially open. I'm betting that One magazine doesn't report this story. But on a happier note, let's all join together in a prayer of thanksgiving and support for Bishop Bawai and the 3000+ priests, deacons and faithful he has brought into union with the See of Peter.
          As an added point of interest to the above, you might want to scroll down to the three-part post below, beginning with the 12:11 PM 4/12/2008 entry, about the decision of the Holy See to allow Chaldean Catholics to receive the Holy Eucharist from the Assyrian Church Mar Bawai and his flock have just left, which concerns the Holy See's decision that the anaphora (eucharistic prayer) used by that Church is valid in spite of the fact that it does not contain the words, "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood." It would be interesting to know whether Mar Bawai's flock, newly united to Rome as Chaldean Catholics, will continue to use this apostolic anaphora, or even if that previous decision had something to do with nudging Mar Bawai and his flock toward Catholicism.

by Priestly Pugilist

12:56 PM 5/11/2008 -

Heavenly King, Conforter, Spirit of Truth,
everywhere present and filling all things,
Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life,
Come and dwell within us, cleanse us of all stain,
and save our souls, O gracious One.

09:36 PM 5/9/2008 - Memo to Arch-Tame Wuerl: Yes, sir, it can be done!

Kansas, May. 9, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has announced that Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion because of her support for legal abortion.
      In a column appearing on May 9 in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Leaven, the archbishop said that Governor Sebelius has sent a "spiritually lethal message" by implying that she could remain a Catholic in good standing while supporting abortion on demand.
      The archbishop's column cited in particular the governor's veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which would have required abortionists to inform women about the effects of the procedure and alternatives to abortion.
      The governor's stand in favor of abortion is particularly painful, Archbishop Naumann wrote, because Sebelius is a Catholic. He reported that he had met with her "several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions." Because the governor has now rejected his pleas and her public stand constitutes a scandal to the faithful, the archbishop said that he has now directed her to refrain from receiving Communion. Archbishop Naumann reported that he has asked Governor Sebelius to accept this directive, so that she will "not require from me any additional pastoral actions."
      The governor will be welcomed back to Communion, the archbishop wrote, if she acknowledges her error, goes to Confession, and makes "a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion."

by Priestly Pugilist

by Priestly Pugilist

01:04 PM 5/9/2008 - Explaining Ratzinger’s "Proportionate Reasons," part 2 of 2.

          In essence, proportionalism makes the presence of a proportionate reason the sole criterion for whether an act is justifiable. In other words, you can do anything if you have a good enough reason. There are no actions that in principle can never be done. It is clear that this is not what Ratzinger is suggesting. In fact, quite the opposite: He recognizes that some actions (such as abortion and euthanasia) are intrinsically evil and can never be justified. What he is doing is discussing how far away—how remote—your actions have to be from these for you to be able to act in good conscience.
          In the case of voting for a pro-abortion politician, the act of voting is remote from the act of abortion. A person may vote for such a politician, but he usually will get elected only when this vote is combined with the votes of many others. Then, once he takes office, he has the ability to influence public policy regarding abortion, but he does not commit these actions himself (at least in his capacity as an elected official). He leaves that to doctors. The chain of human choices that interpose between one person’s act of voting and the end act of another person committing abortion show that the voter’s cooperation with abortion is remote. If he does not approve of abortion, it is also material rather than formal.

Proportionate Reasons

Traditional Catholic moral theology allows that remote material cooperation with an evil action may be justifiable in certain circumstances. In Ratzinger’s words it "can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons." Some may find this difficult to accept, but traditional Catholic moral theology is firm on the point.
          Consider a parallel: God does things that enable others to commit sins (e.g., giving them life, free will, the ability to act). He even continues to supply them with these things when they are in the very act of committing abortion and euthanasia. What the proportionate reasons are that justify God in doing this forms a major part of the problem of evil, but we do know that God is justified in all that he does. Thus Catholic moral theology is on firm ground in acknowledging that remote material cooperation with an evil can be justified when there are proportionate reasons.
          We might ask: What kind of reasons could there be to vote for a pro-abortion or pro-euthanasia politician? Here is a clear case: Suppose that in a given election either Candidate A or Candidate B is morally certain to win, but it is not clear which will win. Candidate A’s only policy is that he supports abortion, while Candidate B has two policies: He supports both abortion and euthanasia. In this case, more harm will be done to society by the election of Candidate B, and so based on principles touched on by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae 73, one may cast one’s vote in such a way as to limit the harm done to society.
          In such a situation, casting one’s vote for Candidate A does not amount to an endorsement of his policies. It represents an attempt to reign in the greater harm that otherwise will result. This is something many seem confused about. It often appears that people regard casting their votes as if they were swearing to a particular proposition, such as "I support all of the policies of this candidate." If that were the case, then one could never vote for a candidate with a less then 100-percent perfect set of social policy views.
          But voting does not entail this. Very likely votes are not to be understood as involving propositions at all, but to the extent that they can be translated into propositions, they would be something more limited, such as "Of the options available, I want this candidate to be elected this time." That doesn’t involve a personal endorsement of any of the candidate’s policies. In fact, one might oppose all of a candidate’s policies and vote for him purely to keep an even worse candidate out of office. This was the case with voting for Candidate A to prevent the election of the even worse Candidate B. Candidate A’s policy was evil, but Candidate B’s policies were even more evil.
          In the real world, the principle is more difficult to apply, because candidates rarely have entirely evil platforms. Many will have elements in their platforms, alongside support for abortion and euthanasia, that Catholics are permitted to support, and some will be tempted to support them for these reasons. Many suggested Cardinal Ratzinger was giving his blessing to voting for pro-aborts if there were enough other good things about them. But having a number of good points is not enough. As the Cardinal indicated, there must be counterbalancing reasons proportional to abortion.
          Such reasons are not easy to come up with, particularly for candidates seeking offices that have the ability to impact abortion law significantly. These include the presidents who nominate Supreme Court justices and the senators who confirm them. One wants to weed out pro-abort candidates on the lowest level possible so that they can’t use their political track record to get elected to higher office. But the more impact the office has on abortion policy, the more weighty a reason must be to allow a vote for them.
          What kind of reason would be needed to vote for a pro-abort candidate for president? Something unimaginably huge.

The Abortion Numbers

Consider: A million and a half new Americans are murdered every year by abortion. While particular historical circumstances increase or decrease the number of Supreme Court appointments a president gets to make (some presidents get many and some get none), if we average out the differences, it turns out that a pro-abort president on average could extend the abortion holocaust by four years equivalent to the four-year term he spends in office.
          At 1.5 million kids killed per year, that means that a pro-abort president would be responsible for extending the abortion holocaust to include six million additional murders. When one takes into account the fact that about half of the recent presidents have had second terms, that would mean a pro-abort president would be responsible for extending the abortion holocaust to include approximately nine million Americans.