The Death of Catholic Parochial Education in Boston and the Message of Akita

If Boston area laymen are correct, real Catholic education is dead in the Catholic archdiocese with the imminent release of a policy mandating the admittance of children of same sex parents. The most recent draft of the Diocesan policy available is dated September 16th. It mandates non-discrimination: "We do not discriminate against or exclude any categories of students." If this draft policy is close to the one adopted, the scandal will be severe. One local Boston blog itemized the problems of the policy in this list:

1. Identity and Purpose of Catholic Education is Never Stated


2. Cardinal O’Malley’s Direction of Non-Discrimination is Flawed

3. Issues of Partnering with Gay Parents are Ignored

4. Protecting Innocence of Children is Impossible

5. Inherent Contradiction: Catholic School Education for Kids of Gay Parents is Ignored

6. Policy Mandates Implicit or explicit recognition of the gay/lesbian relationship as valid

7. Policy Creates Scandal of Giving Implicit Recognition to Gay Partnerships

8. Policy Creates Slippery Slope for Future Undermining of Catholic Identity

9. Policy Enables False Compassion on the Sinner

10. Use of Holy Father’s Quote is Deceptive

11. Draft Policy Violates Principle of Subsidiarity

If, in fact, the blogger is correct and the policy is implemented Cardinal O'Malley has recognized by implication the legitimacy of gay "marriage" and ordered pastors, principals, teachers, band directors, janitors, etc. to play along. The policy itself doesn't say one word about gay parenting. It doesn't have to. The controversy grew out of a pastor refusing admittance to the child of lesbian "parents." The pastors will be instructed and, once gay students begin attending, silence will be imposed out of fear of lawsuits.

The policy claims that Catholic teaching will be upheld. Nonsense! Can you imagine homosexuals tolerating the school teaching that their relationships are immoral and sinful? What are the practical implications when same-sex parents attend school events and parent-teacher conferences? Will anyone say a word if they are holding hands or meet and greet after school with a kiss on the mouth? Is anyone going to challenge the parents for their immoral lifestyle? Can anyone imagine a teacher saying a word of criticism about a situation that they've been mandated to accept? How about other parents? What happens to the Catholic identity of the school when the homosexual parents are heading committees and even running for PTO president?

No one wants to see children harmed, but the children living with same sex "parents" are already in harm's way by living in perverted situations. The children are further harmed by being put in a situation of conflict in school where, if the truth is told, they are constantly confronted with choosing between the truth or their parents. Children love their families no matter how dysfunctional. To put them in a continual situation of stress sounds to me like a recipe for psychological disaster.

So is the alternative for everyone from the principal to the parents to accept and be silent? That's the likely outcome, but it's hard to claim it has no consequences. In fact, it hurts everyone. The entire school must live the lie that homosexuality and homosexual parenting is normal and good and must be respected. Anyone who refuses to play the game and confronts the situation will be accused of homophobia and bullying. Unfortunately, most Catholics today, raised with almost no understanding of the faith, would probably accept the situation without batting an eye. Tolerance of everything, except intolerance, is the modern mantra.

Children are the most innocent victims of the gay lifestyle. You see them at gay pride parades exposed to all kinds of perversion including men masturbating in the streets. You see them shouting profanities on gay YouTube videos. There are many who exploit children for their own perverse purposes. Gays use children to pretend their playing house is real.

At Akita, an approved apparition, Our Lady told Sr. Agnes Sasagawa that a time would come when bishop would fight against bishop and cardinal against cardinal:

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres (other priests). Churches and altars will be sacked. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

We have already seen too much of this prophecy fulfilled. Another part of it offers a terrifying warning:

if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by my Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and the priests.

Must we see this part of the prophecy fulfilled before we wake up? I pray not, but the actions of so many of our bishops are leading us to disaster. They appear to have no faith in or fear of God. Those of us who do must do all we can through prayer and penance to hold back the wrath the world so richly deserves. I'm saying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy tonight as my bedtime prayer.

Pope John Paul II to be Beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday

Healing of French nun is the miracle for Pope John Paul II's beatification. See here.

Novena of Reparation for Abortion Begins Today

Priests for Life is calling for a novena of reparation for the sin of abortion. It begins today and ends on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22nd. Joining the novena is a great preparation for those planning to attend one of the marches around the country. It is also a great way to spiritually march. If you want to make your prayers even more powerful back them up with sacrifice.

Prayer of Reparation
God and Father of Life,
You have created every human person,
And have opened the way for each to have eternal life.

We live in the shadow of death.
Tens of millions of your children have been killed because of the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Father, have mercy on us.
Heal our land
And accept our offering of prayer and penance.
In your love for us,
Turn back the scourge of abortion.

May each of us exult in hearts full of hope
And hands full of mercy
And work together to build a culture of life.

We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Why the Left Blamed the Right for What Happened in Tucson

"What happened in November has to be stopped by whatever means possible."  Daniel Henninger

The elections that swept out so many liberals and decisively changed the House of Representatives is described by Henninger as "Armageddon" in the eyes of the political Left. He attributes the Left's haste to blame the Right to "political calculation and personal belief." Like Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, the Left's true believers think the end justifies the means; the truth be damned. And so they are willing to flame anyone who disagrees with them regardless of the facts. Read the Wall Street Journal article here. 

The reality is that sin makes people blind, stupid, and crazy. When you look at the lives of those who commit these atrocities they are usually involved in serious sin (the occult, lust, etc.). Those who use these tragic events to slander the innocent for the crimes of the crazy are irresponsible at best, malicious at worst. Let's hope the wild-eyed Lefties calm down. They've been sounding so much like mad dogs, that the saner members in their own ranks are trying to muzzle them. Let's hope they're successful.

See here how one group of monks responded to the killings.

Thought for the Day: The "Hound of Heaven" is Your Friend

"The two greatest dramas of life are the soul in pursuit of God and God in pursuit of the soul."   Fulton Sheen 

One of my favorite poems is Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven.  I memorized the first stanza a number of years ago and often recite it to myself.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; And in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter....

I love the cadence which sounds the beat of the pursuing hound who follows "with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace." The poem fills me with wonder. The God of the universe pursues ME. In my youth when I was running away from God, he set the hound loose and he has been my friend ever since I stopped running and surrendered to the truth and listened in earnest to the voice of God. He loved me in my tragic state of rebellion and loved me into faithfulness; not a perfect faithfulness, unfortunately, but a striving one.

Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

I am still unworthy of His love, but he loves me anyway! And then comes that oh-so-personal message to Me, a creature, who is literally less to Him than a grasshopper is to me:

Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

If only all men would know that when they drive God away, they drive away Love Incarnate. He is all in all, but he loves each of us, as St. Augustine says, as if there were just one of us. Any suffering he allows in our lives is only the "Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly." Oh, if only we could see it!

The hound of heaven is, indeed, man's best friend.

Know Yourself and Recognize the Seven Pallbearers that Kill a Man's Character

Fulton Sheen wrote a wonderful book called Lift Up Your Hearts. In it he provides practical guidelines for knowing oneself, an absolute necessity for growing in the spiritual life. He introduces the book by discussing the "ego" and the "I." The ego is who each one of us thinks he is. The I is who I actually am. Because of our fallen natures, self-knowledge is difficult and self-delusion is easy. It's essential to understand where our personalities sink into egotism because, "Egotism - an inordinate love of self - is the basic cause of all sins and of all unhappiness which lacks a rational cause."

Egotism, Bishop Sheen says, leads to self hatred. "A man can hate himself in two ways: either by hating the vanity, conceit, and self glorification which do injury to his soul - and this is the way of purification - or by hating whatever in him interferes with his pretense of being God - and this is the way of self-destruction, one of hell that exists on earth." We need to know the difference. How? By growth in self knowledge through self examination. One way he offers is by examining what he calls the "Pallbearers of character," the seven deadly sins that make us egotists and destroy our integrity. By recognizing the signs and symptoms of the seven deadly sins, one can recognize his own greatest temptations and work to develop the opposing virtues. Bishop Sheen says that "Character grows by leaps and bounds as soon as one has ferreted out the master egotisms....As we depress the ego and face our own predominant fault, the neighbor who before seemed hateful takes on a new lovableness. By losing our own pride and vanity, we gain a world of friends."

So let's examine the seven deadly pallbearers of character that threaten to kill our integrity.

The first pallbearer: Pride
Definition: "too great admiration for oneself. The ultimate stage of pride is to make oneself his own law, his own judge, his own morality, his own god."

Signs of pride: boasting, love of publicity (conceit), hypocrisy (pretending to be what you are not), hardheadedness (stubborn adherence to one's own opinions), quarrelling when challenged, discord (refusing to give up your own will), and disobedience (not accepting any authority other than self).

The second pallbearer: Avarice
Definition: "Perversion of the natural right of every man...[to own] things which minister to the needs of his body and his soul.] desiring wealth as an end rather than a means, disregarding the rights of others in the way wealth is acquired and used."

Signs of avarice: harshness, indifference to the suffering and needs of others, anxiety and restlessness of soul, excessive love of luxury, always wanting more, acquiring and protecting possessions through dishonest means.

The third pallbearer: Envy
Definition: sadness at another's good

Signs of envy: snobbishness, jealousy, possessiveness, backbiting, gossip, tale-bearing, seeking to lower the reputation of another, resentment.

The fourth pallbearer: Lust
Definition: Inordinate love of the pleasures of the flesh. "No passion...more quickly produces slavery than lust [because its] perversions more quickly destroy the power of the intellect and the will."

Signs of lust: selfishness, narcissism, boredom, divorce, infidelity,intellectual blindness, inability to see the truth, imprudence, rashness, inconstancy, thoughtlessness, hatred of God and religion, denial of immortality

The fifth pallbearer: Anger
Definition: A violent desire to punish others (distinct from righteous anger)

Signs of anger: lowest degree - touchiness, undue sensitivity, impatience at small slights, grumbling; 2nd degree - flaring up, violent gestures, throwing things, redness of face; 3rd state - physical violence against another, hatred that seeks to "get even," doing physical harm to others.

The sixth pallbearer: Gluttony
Definition: abuse of lawful pleasure attached to eating and drinking

Signs of gluttony: taking more than necessary, too luxurious a manner of consumption, using food or drink at inappropriate times. Moral effects of gluttony are "despair, a weakening of the will, and the materialization of life."

The seventh pallbearer: Sloth
Definition: "Malady of the will which causes neglect of one's duty...a distaste of the spiritual."

Signs of sloth: procrastination, laziness, idleness, lukewarmness in prayer, contempt for self-discipline, careless execution of work, listlessness, aversion for effort, negligence in works of piety.

Do you recognize yourself among these "pallbearers?" If you do, you are making progress toward self-knowledge. Once a person recognizes his root vice, he can work on developing the corresponding virtue. He can begin to put the ego in its place and let the I, the image of the great I AM, shine forth.

A number of years ago I used Lift Up Your Heart for a two-day personal retreat. I found it a time of self-awakening and challenge. It was a grace that left a few important points stamped on my mind and heart. Bishop Sheen himself once said that, "Any book which inspires us to lead a better life, is a good book." I can't think of a better description for this one.

St. Maria Goretti, Jared Loughner, and Judge John Roll

All day I've been thinking about St. Maria Goretti. If you don't know her story I'll recap it briefly here. Maria was born in 1890, the third child in a family of poor Italian peasants. Maria's parents lost their farm and were forced to move and work for other farmers. When Maria was nine her father died of malaria and her mother had to work in the fields with her brothers. Maria was a pius little girl. On her first Communion day in 1901, Maria's special request of God was to allow her to receive Communion again soon. This was in the days before Pope Pius X encouraged the practice of frequent, even daily Communion.

Maria's family was so poor, to help make ends meet, they shared their house with a father and son, Giovanni and Alessandro Serenelli, a teenager. One day when she was alone in the house tending her baby sister, Alessandro, who had sexually harrassed Maria numerous times approached her and demanded she have relations with him. When Maria refused, saying, "No, Alessandro, it is a sin," he stabbed her numerous times. She was eleven years old. Maria died the next day after unspeakable suffering but not before she forgave Alessandro for his cruel actions.

For three years Alessandro was unrepentant in jail, but he began to have a change of heart after a local bishop visited him. He also dreamed of Maria who brought him lilies which burned up in his hands. Alessandro repented and when he was released from jail went to Maria's mother and begged her forgiveness which she freely gave. They both attended Maria's canonization in 1950. Alessandro prayed every day to Maria and called her "my little saint." She is one of the youngest saints of the Church.

So what does Maria Goretti have to do with Jared Loughner and the murder of Judge John Roll? As Fr. John Hardon often said, there are no coincedences, nothing "just happens." Judge Roll, a daily Communicant and devout Catholic, was present at that event for a reason. Is he to be the catalyst for the conversion of a murderer? When Alessandro went to Assunta, Maria's mother, shortly after his release from prison and asked for forgiveness she replied that if Maria could forgive him on her deathbed, she could do no less. Did Judge Roll have a chance to think about what was happening before he died? Did he see his assailant? We will never know, but we do know that he went to Communion shortly before those fateful moments at the shopping center. Jesus was present and crucified again in the suffering and death of His faithful servant. I'm asking the intercession of John Roll for the conversion of his murderer. Imagine the power of him praying for his killer. May his ultimate sacrifice become the hope of salvation for a poor lost soul in the service of Satan.

Arizona Shooter Story Gets Crazier All the Time

The latest bizarre element of the Arizona shooting story is this: Jared Loughner had a tent shrine in the back that held elements used in occult worship. (See here.) As more evidence comes out, I'm more convinced than ever that the guy is insane, even possessed. In his mug shot (on left) he looks possessed. Look at the eyes...and the smile. This is a guy who just killed and wounded a lot of people and he's thrilled. Is he reflecting the image of Satan?

Comedians used to say "the devil made him do it." Now the radical left says, "conservatives made him do it." I suppose that's not surprising. To them, the right and the devil (if they believed in him) are the same thing.

Pray for all the victims, but also for Jared Loughner and his family. This family apparently has been dealing with Jared's mental illness for a long time, coping in isolation. (See here.) It is a human tragedy for everyone involved. But no one is irredeemable. Let's pray this story has a good ending. I urge readers to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for the deceased victims and for Loughner. The only final disaster is eternal damnation. Please pray for him and his parents. Can you imagine the suffering of knowing that your son committed this terrible act?

Lest We Forget: Michelle Malkin Documents Liberal Hate Speech and Violence

As liberals continue to work for political points by attacking conservatives as violent hate mongers following the Arizona shooting, conservatives are responding with proof of liberals' hate speech. And there's plenty of it. Michelle Malkin documents just a sample of liberal hate from the past decade. Check it out. Liberals are experts when it comes to wishing violence and evil against their opponents. Here's just one example - a comedian wishing for Sarah Palin to be "gang raped":



So all you mindless clones out there claiming there is no such thing as liberal hate and violence, please get real. No one spews hatred like a liberal...(take your pick): rapper, movie star, comedian, college student, feminist, union thug, eco-extremist, homosexual activist, abortion mill deathscort, etc.

Murdered Judge was Pro-Life Catholic

While liberals continue to politicize the Arizona shooting blaming conservatives for the violence, more is coming out about Judge John Roll, one of the victims. He was a pro-life Catholic, member of the Knights of Columbus, and was invited to participate in the meet and greet. He dropped by on the way home from Saturday morning Mass. Read about him here. And please continue to pray for the victims and family members traumatized by this terrible event. Also pray for all the strident voices using this tragedy to attack those who embrace traditional values.