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TFP-America Needs Fatima supporters in Hazleton, PA, have started a monthly rosary rally at noon on each first Saturday of the month.
Please join them. For more information, call Walter Camier at 570-582-6932 or Jose Ferraz at 570-582-7678.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Catholics plan to protest at Notre Dame
From: www.catholicnewsagency.com
Over sixty St. Louis Catholics plan to join Notre Dame protests
St. Louis, Mo., May 7, 2009 / 04:03 pm (CNA).- Dozens of St. Louis Catholics are planning to travel to South Bend, Indiana to take part in May 17 protests against the University of Notre Dame’s decision to host President Barack Obama as commencement speaker and to award him an honorary law degree.
The protesters from the St. Louis area are being organized by John Ryan, a 56-year-old member of Most Sacred Heart Parish in Eureka, Missouri. An announcement from Ryan says the group aims to confront the "scandal" caused by University of Notre Dame President Fr. John I. Jenkins’ decision "to honor the most pro-abortion President in history." The group also intends to "make amends for the damage this scandal has caused the Church."
Describing its motives, the announcement cites President Obama’s decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy and to expand federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.
"The minute I heard about this, I knew I had to find every Catholic I could and be on that campus that day," Ryan said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Similar scandals have been going on at Catholic universities for decades, but you can’t really get any worse than this."
Full story here:
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Meditation for Mother's Day
Our Lady is the archetype of all mothers. Sometimes, a child senses her maternal goodness symbolically through the ambience of a pious family. The affections of this family create an occasion for graces. The first experiences a child has with this affection lead him, though still young, to compare life within the family with that without.
Thus, he affirms: “There is nothing like the family!”
He sees that the caresses and love he receives there exist nowhere else.
All this affection can be summarized in one word: family.
While the word family represents many people, there is another word that signifies just one person, who is the quintessence of the family: mother. A good mother is the epitome of love and affection, and consequently goodness and mercy.
Through contact with his mother, the child begins to understand untiring goodness, grace, support and inexhaustible love. He experiences that maternal affection whereby a mother is never tired or bored of being with her child.
For a true mother, the joy of life consists in holding her child in her arms, putting him down to watch him run this way and that and being unceasingly riddled with her child’s questions.
He, who enters this world perceiving the joy that a good mother brings him, will eventually see that life can be very difficult. However, to the extent that he remembers his mother, he remembers the Paradise of his childhood.
With this remembrance, he conserves hope in the Celestial Paradise, where his Blessed Mother will welcome him.
By Plinio Correa de Oliveira
The ‘Weight’ of the Holy Rosary at the Judgment Seat of God*
“Whatever you do, do not be like a certain pious but stubborn lady in Rome, so often mentioned when speaking about the Rosary.
She was so devout and so fervent that she put to shame by her holy life even the strictest religious in the Church.
“Having decided to ask Saint Dominic’s advice about her spiritual life, she asked him to hear her confession.
For penance he gave her one whole Rosary to say and advised her
to say it every day. She said that she had no time to say it, excusing herself on the grounds that she made the Stations
of Rome every day, that she wore sackcloth and a hair shirt, that she carried out so many other penances and fasted so much.
Saint Dominic urged her repeatedly to take his advice and say the Rosary, but she would not hear of it. She left the confessional,
horrified at the tactics of this new spiritual director who had tried so hard to persuade her to take on a devotion that was not at all to her liking.
“Later on, when she was in prayer, she fell into ecstasy and had a vision of her soul appearing before Our Lord’s Judgment Seat. Saint Michael put all her penances and other prayers onto one tray of the scales and all her sins and imperfections onto the other
tray. The tray of her good works was greatly outweighed by the
tray with her sins and imperfections.
“Filled with terror she cried for mercy, imploring the Blessed Virgin Mary’s help. Her gracious Advocate took the one and only
Rosary that she had said for her penance and dropped it onto the tray of her good works. This one Rosary was so heavy that it weighed more than all her sins as well as all her good works. Our Lady then reproved her for refusing to follow the counsel of her servant Dominic and for not saying the Rosary every day.
“As soon as she came to she rushed and threw herself at Saint Dominic’s feet, and told him all that had happened. She begged his forgiveness for her unbelief and promised to say the Rosary faithfully every day. By this means she arose to Christian perfection and finally to the glory of everlasting
life.
“You who are people of prayer— learn from this how tremendous is the power, the value and the importance of this devotion of the Most Holy Rosary when it is said together with meditation on the mysteries.”
*An excerpt from Saint Louis de Montfort’s The Secret of the Rosary (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1999), 63–64.
Archbishop Wuerl Refuses to Deny Communion to Pro-Abortion Speaker Pelosi
Wednesday May 6, 2009
Insists Canon 915 not to be used as Pope Benedict and Archbishop Burke have insisted
By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. has stated that he would not deny Holy Communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most notoriously pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians in the U.S., because he says historically "the Church just didn't use Communion" as a "weapon."
In an interview published in a Politics Daily article today, Bishop Wuerl said he disagreed with refraining from giving communion to manifestly pro-abortion politicians, which was equated with "Communion wielded as a weapon." "That's the new way now to make your point," said Wuerl.
"We never - the Church just didn't use Communion this way. It wasn't a part of the way we do things, and it wasn't a way we convinced Catholic politicians to appropriate the faith and live it and apply it; the challenge has always been to convince people.'' On the other hand, sanctioning Catholics tends to alienate them, he said.
Wuerl said he will make no effort to keep Speaker Pelosi from receiving Communion, saying first "there's a question about whether this canon [915] was ever intended to be used'' to correct Catholics in grave error.
Canon 915 states: "Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to holy communion."
"I stand with the great majority of American bishops and bishops around the world in saying this canon was never intended to be used this way," said Wuerl.
Wuerl also said that he thought "we've been making progress" in conveying the pro-life message to the Democratic Party, but "There was just a setback with the distraction of Communion."
(To read Archbishop Wuerl's interview for Politics Daily: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/06/archbishop-wuerl-why-i-won-t-deny-pelosi-communion/)
Wuerl's statements appear to contradict a 2004 statement by the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger titled "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion," in which Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, stated: "Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person's formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church's teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist."
With quotations from a 2002 declaration of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Ratzinger continues: "When 'these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible,' and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, 'the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it'.
"This decision, properly speaking, is not a sanction or a penalty," Ratzinger wrote. "Nor is the minister of Holy Communion passing judgement on the person's subjective guilt, but rather is reacting to the person's public unworthiness to receive Holy Communion due to an objective situation of sin."
In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) in February, Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, agreed with Ratzinger's assertion that bishops have no choice but to withhold communion from manifestly pro-abortion politicians. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09020402.html)
Burke told LSN: "I don't understand the continual debate that goes on about it [denying communion to pro-abortion politicians]. There's not a question that a Catholic who publicly, and after admonition, supports pro-abortion legislation is not to receive Holy Communion and is not to be given Holy Communion."
"The Church's law is very clear," said Burke. "The person who persists publicly in grave sin is to be denied Holy Communion, and it [canon law] doesn't say that the bishop shall decide this. It's an absolute."
Burke also called "nonsense" the idea that the Church's law "makes the Communion rail a battleground," and said the opposite was true: not enforcing Canon 915 frequently results in using Communion unto political advantage.
Failing to enforce Canon 915, said Burke, means pro-abortion politicians - such as Sen. John Kerry, who published several photographs of himself receiving Communion from Papal representatives - are able to send a message to Catholic voters that they are in good standing with the Church despite supporting abortion, which the Church considers an intrinsic evil.
"What are they doing? They're using the Eucharist as a political tool," said Burke.
To express concern:
Congregation for Bishops
Giovanni Battista Re, Cardinal, Prefect
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Phone: 06.69.88.42.17
Fax: 06.69.88.53.03
Maine Legalizes Homosexual "Marriage"
Wednesday May 6, 2009
Governor John Baldacci gave final approval to same-sex "marriage" this afternoon
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
AUGUSTA, Maine, May 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Maine Legislature and the state's Democratic governor John Baldacci gave final approval to same-sex "marriage" this afternoon.
Governor Baldacci signed Bill LD 1020 less than an hour after the state legislature approved it, putting to rest speculation that he might veto the legislation. Baldacci had said earlier this week that he was opposed to homosexual "marriage" but was uncertain whether he would veto the bill.
"I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage," Baldacci said in a statement.
"I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste. I think Maine people should be proud of the way this has been handled."
In reference to his personal feelings about the legislation, Baldacci said "Under the Constitution, we are all the same. Times have changed."
The bill may still be overturned by a referendum, as happened in California last year.
"Just as the Maine Constitution demands that all people are treated equally under the law, it also guarantees that the ultimate political power in the State belongs to the people," Governor Baldacci stated.
Maine is now the fifth state in the U.S. to allow same-sex "marriage", following Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont.
Washington DC Approves Same-Sex "Marriage" Recognition
Wednesday May 6, 2009
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
Washington, DC, May 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an almost unanimous vote. Washington DC will now recognize same-sex "marriages" performed in other US states.
The District of Columbia is not a state, and has to have many of its laws cleared through the US Congress before they can be enacted.
Washington DC's city council voted twelve to one in favor of the measure at a meeting yesterday. It was reported that the sole "no" vote was by former mayor Councilman Marion Barry, who said he decided to take a stand with the "ministers who stand on the moral compass of God. It has been a very agonizing and difficult decision. I feel comfortable with this position because I know where my heart is."
Barry told reporters after the meeting, "All hell is going to break loose. We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this. What you've got to understand is 98 percent of my constituents are black and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents."
A majority of African-Americans are against same-sex "marriage." According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, support for homosexual "marriage" among African-Americans stands at 42% while opposition is at 51%.
Councilman Barry confirmed that "At least 70 percent of those who express themselves to me about this are opposed to anything dealing with this issue. The ministers think it is a sin, and I have to be sensitive to that."
The legislation will be sent to Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, who supports same-sex "marriage," for approval, before being placed before Congress.
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