Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests

By Father Gordon J MacRae

The scales of Saint Michael the Archangel symbolize the balance of God’s justice with God’s mercy. Can the Church reflect justice with mercy for fallen priests?

(These Stone Walls) A few older posts on These Stone Walls keep showing up in our monthly stats revealing new reader interest. Nine months after I wrote “Father Benedict Groeschel at EWTN: Time for a Moment of Truth,” it still draws lots of readers and new comments. Another post, “Goodbye, Good Priest! Father John Corapi’s Kafkaesque Catch-22,” is two years old this week, but still draws scores of readers searching for news of Fr. Corapi. A reader sent me a well written take on that controversy titled “Father Corapi and Praying for Priests” posted June 6 by Matthew Brower on his blog, Catholic Stand. Part of it caught my attention:

“I am aware of some of the events that transpired when things seemed to fall apart for Fr. Corapi and there is much more that I do not know. During those days it seemed like the Catholic media and blogs were spilling over daily with reports and wild speculation. Some of what was reported was no doubt true but it certainly seemed to me we were witnessing a sort of Catholic tabloid frenzy where the line between fact and irresponsible speculation was blurred. I believe very few do have all the relevant facts.”

Matthew Brower, an attorney in private practice in Montana, is a Notre Dame alumnus who earned his Juris Doctor with honors at Ave Maria School of Law. His post two years after Fr. John Corapi’s fall from grace is not at all a defense of the priest, nor do I defend him here. That wasn’t Mr. Brower’s point and it isn’t mine. He wrote further:

“Most of those I know who looked up to Fr. Corapi as an inspiration and confirming voice have remained close to the Church and seemingly grown in faith, understanding well that it is God alone we worship and not those he has sent to draw us closer to Himself.”

I say “AMEN!” to that, and “Bravo” to Matthew Brower for having the courage to point it out. I have written elsewhere that I became very uncomfortable with the pedestal upon which Father Corapi stood – whether he wanted to stand there or not, I do not know – and from which he fell from grace two years ago with a loud crash. I was troubled by the self-description of so many of his admirers that they were “followers” of Father Corapi. It was a lesson learned. I don’t want followers. I can’t have followers. I don’t recall the specific post, but I remember writing a plea to TSW readers in reaction to this: “Please don’t follow me. Follow Christ!” If ever the day comes that I point only to me and not to Christ, it is that day that I must stop writing.

ANGELIC JUSTICE

There is another of my posts that endures in reader interest, and it shows up in current stats more than any other. It was written nearly three years ago, but it drew over 300 new readers in May. That post is “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed” in which I wrote about the symbolism of St. Michael’s iconic scales.

After that post was published, readers sent me dozens of holy cards with icons of Saint Michael (laminated cards are not allowed), all of which are now on my cell wall. One is on my coffee cup. Some of the nicer icons have since migrated over to my friend, Pornchai’s side of the cell. When I inquired, he said, “Well … umm … He does have wings, you know!”

After posting “Angelic Justice,” a friend sent me a Saint Michael medal. On the back is engraved, “Justice for Fr. Gordon MacRae.” It’s very nice and a privilege to wear, but there is a lot more to the story of Saint Michael. He isn’t just the Patron Saint of Justice. He is the Patron Saint of Mercy as well, and the two cannot be separated for as that post reveals, they are among the highest attributes of God in Judeo-Christian tradition.

Saint Michael’s scales do not signify the meting out of God’s justice, but rather the balancing of God’s justice with mercy. The two aspects of the justice equation symbolized by Saint Michael’s scales cannot be separated, for justice without mercy is little more than vengeance, and vengeance is not ours to have (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19)... (continued)

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Link:

• Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests 

Related:

• Fr. Gordon MacRae: Federal Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Habeas Corpus Appeal

Father Gordon MacRae: Honoring Father Norman Weslin as Light Finally Dawns Upon Notre Dame

By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

Five days after Fr. Norman Weslin’s death, the University of Notre Dame joined 42 Catholic groups in religious liberty lawsuits against the Obama Administration.

Father Norman Weslin left this life behind on May 16th.  He will not be easily forgotten. He did something that many on the outer fringes of leftist religion in America wish he had done three years ago. He went quietly, something that he was not at all accustomed to doing in this life. I am proud to say that Father Norman Weslin is forever present on These Stone Walls in an image that I cannot erase from my mind’s eye of late. The image is an enduring Catholic scandal.



One of my TSW posts, “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life,” featured a haunting and now famous image of the nearly 80-year-old Father Weslin being arrested for a pro-life protest on the campus of a  major American Catholic University in 2009.  Juxtaposed next to that haunting image is a photo taken simultaneously of a triumphant President Barack Obama bestowed with an honorary degree by the president of the University of Notre Dame after delivering the Catholic school’s 2009 Commencement Address.

That photo of the elderly Father Weslin on the ground being arrested for his protest is a monument to the greatness of this quiet priest. The image says everything that needs to be said, for Father Norman Weslin, above all, departed faithfully, having served his Lord, his Church and his faith with the last full measure of devotion. Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, about whom I wrote in “The Duty of a Priest,” wrote of Father Weslin’s death that “our loss is Heaven’s gain.”

He wrote that Father Norman Weslin believed “that a priest’s place was not behind his people, lending encouragement, but out in front, leading the way.” As a result, Father Weslin spent many days and nights in jail, as did John the Baptist and the Apostles. That scene at Notre Dame three years ago will prove itself to be a proud and defining moment for the Catholic Church in America. As one writer put it succinctly at the Voices Carry blog:

“While the millstone of Notre Dame is placed around [our President's] neck and 12,000 at Notre Dame stand giving a thunderous ovation, all Heaven stood to honor an 80-year old priest as he received Heaven’s high honor for peacefully taking a stand for life and the plight of the unborn . . . That little jail around the neck of this bound man of God is a high honor in the kingdom of God...”

Click Here to Read More at These Stone Walls 

Link:

• Honoring Father Norman Weslin as Light Finally Dawns Upon Notre Dame

Notre Dame President Protests Birth Control Inclusion in Obamacare

(AP) SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- President Barack Obama's health care overhaul should be changed so that religious schools such as the University of Notre Dame aren't required to go against their beliefs and provide birth control to students and employees, the school president says...

"This would compel Notre Dame to either pay for contraception and sterilization in violation of the church's moral teaching, or to discontinue our employee and student health care plans in violation of the church's social teaching. It is an impossible position," he wrote.

h/t to Father Zuhlsdorf

• ND president protests birth control inclusion
• Notre Dame’s Fr. Jenkins and a different view of Pres. Obama

EWTN Host Dana Featured at Notre Dame Medjugorje Conference

2010 National Medjugorje Conference

University of Notre Dame

May 21, 22 and 23

Conference Speakers Include:

"Ivanka Elez was the first to see Our Lady on the side of Mt. Podbrdo when the events of Medjugorje started on June 24, 1981. Her words, "Look Mirjana, Gospa!", have echoed throughout the world for the last 29 years. She has received all ten secrets revealed by Our Lady and no longer has a daily apparition, but she does see Our Lady once a year on June 25th. Her special mission is to pray for families. Ivanka and her husband Rajko have three children and live in Medjugorje."

"Dana is one of Ireland's most successful entertainers and has received acclaim through best-selling Catholic recordings, top rated TV appearances, and conferences throughout theworld. She joined young Catholics in singing when Pope John Paul II visited Denver for World Youth Day. Dana wrote the theme song "We Are One Body" for this event. She was the first woman to receive the prestigious San Benedetto award for her outstanding work in defending life and the family."

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Here's one of Ivanka's messages to the local bishop:

A) June 21, 1983: The Virgin states: "Tell the Father Bishop (Zanic) that I request his urgent conversion to the events of the Medjugorje parish...I am sending him the penultimate warning. If he is not converted, or will not be converted, my judgment as well as that of my Son Jesus will strike him." (Seer Ivanka writing to Bishop Zanic)




 Recent news and related links and articles:

• Vatican studies visions of Virgin at Medjugorje
• The Truth About Medjugorje by Msgr. Pavao Zanic, Bishop of Mostar 
• Dana Official Web Site 
• 2010 National Medjugorje Conference

The history you may have missed and rather not know

From Musings of a Pertinacious Papist blog:

In the July-August 2009 issue of New Oxford Review, Michael V. McIntire, a 1957 graduate of Notre Dame and former Associate Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, writes:

In the early 1960s, promotion of the eugenics agenda of John D. Rockefeller III and Planned Parenthood was being frustrated by the Church's stubborn moral opposition to contraception. Rockefeller and Planned Parenthood considered public acceptance of contraception to be the key to public acceptance of eugenics by abortion, euthanasia, and genetic manipulation, and they actively sought a prominent Catholic voice to assist them in successfully opposing the strength of the Church's teaching on that issue. Notre Dame became their willing accomplice in this quest.

The university hosted three unpublicized conferences attended solely by theologians and academics who were selected because of their opposition to the Church's teaching on contraception; the first of these conferences was chaired by Notre Dame's president at the time, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh. The purpose of the conferences was to develop a "Catholic" position paper justifying the morality of contraception, which was finally promulgated in 1964 with massive publicity. The paper, popularly referred to as the "Notre Dame Statement," proclaimed that contraception was moral, that the Church's contrary teaching was unscientific and out of touch with modernity, and that those who believed it to be immoral had no right to impose this anachronistic belief on others. That proclamation was accepted and taught as authentic Catholic teaching by many Catholics, including many bishops, priests, and religious, and contributed greatly to the hostility of many to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was issued four years later. Notre Dame was rewarded for this traitorous activity against the Church with millions of dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation and other foundations whose primary mission for at least three generations has been to finance the worldwide spread of the eugenics agenda throughout the world — the agenda now called "the Culture of Death."

In 1967 Notre Dame severed all juridical relations with the Catholic Church, declaring itself to be independent from all Church authority. The infamous "Land O'Lakes Statement" became the new charter of the university, a charter that essentially replaced the faith-based principles of the Notre Dame's founder. The Land O'Lakes Statement is firmly grounded in religious relativism — the view that religious belief is not based on an absolute objective truth but on one's personal opinion, and that all such opinions are equally valid, provided they are sincerely held. Land O'Lakes proudly declared that the university would no longer promote "theological imperialism," a euphemism for the doctrine that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Christ. Paradoxically, while rejecting all Church authority, that Statement arrogantly asserted that the university has the authority and the right to pass judgment on the teachings of the Church, and to decide what is and what is not proper Catholic teaching.

The Congregation of the Holy Cross meekly ratified this rebellion by transferring all interest and control of Notre Dame, which formerly belonged to the Holy Cross Province, to a board of predominately lay trustees. Since then, Notre Dame has been just another charitable educational corporation organized under the laws of Indiana and run by a board of trustees who, like their secular counterparts, are selected, not for their fidelity to the Church, but for the degree to which they can bring money, power, and prestige to the university....

[The foregoing paragraphs are excerpted from NOR Guest Column, "Notre Dame, R.I.P." by Michael V. McIntire, and reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.]

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Obama Aide: Not Our Goal to Reduce Abortions

by Wendy Wright

05/22/2009

Author’s Note: Because of the Obama speech at Notre Dame and the widespread misunderstanding that this Administration has fostered, others have urged me to make public what the White House official in charge of finding “common ground” stated in our meeting.

Two days before President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, I was at the White House for one of the meetings that he spoke about. About twenty of us with differing views on abortion were brought in to find “common ground.” But the most important point that came from the meeting was perhaps a slip from an Obama aide.

It revealed that what many people believe -- including high-profile pro-life leaders who support Obama -- is sorely wrong.

sk nearly anyone, “What is Obama’s goal on abortion?” They’ll answer, “Reduce the number of abortions.” A Notre Dame professor and priest insisted this in a television debate after Obama’s speech. The Vatican newspaper reported it. Rush Limbaugh led a spirited debate on his radio program the next day based on this premise.

But that’s not what his top official in charge of finding “common ground” says.

Melody Barnes, the Director of Domestic Policy Council and a former board member of Emily’s List, led the meeting. As the dialogue wound down, she asked for my input.

I noted that there are three main ways the administration can reach its goals: by what it funds, its messages from the bully pulpit, and by what it restricts. It is universally agreed that the role of parents is crucial, so government should not deny parents the ability to be involved in vital decisions. The goals need to be clear; the amount of funding spent to reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions is not a goal. The U.S. spends nearly $2 billion each year on contraception programs -- programs which began in the 1970s -- and they’ve clearly failed. We need to take an honest look at why they are not working.

Melody testily interrupted to state that she had to correct me. “It is not our goal to reduce the number of abortions.”

The room was silent.

The goal, she insisted, is to “reduce the need for abortions.”

Well, this raises a lot of questions.

If you reduce the need, doesn’t it follow that the number would be reduced? How do you quantify if you’ve reduced the “need”? Does Obama want to reduce the “need” but not the number of abortions? In that case, is he okay with “unneeded” abortions?

Note what Obama said in his speech at Notre Dame:

“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. …”

Abortion advocates object to the phrase “reducing abortions.” It connotes that there is something bad or immoral about abortion. Melody’s background as a board member of one of the most hard-core abortion groups in the country (Emily’s List even opposes bans on partial-birth abortion) sheds light on why she was irritated when that was stated as her boss’ goal.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that Democrats, after losing the presidential election, began rethinking their harsh, no compromise stance on abortion. Their solution?

Change their language but not their position.

The LA Times interviewed me on this strategy and reported: “Wright said it was too early to know whether Democrats would change their votes on upcoming antiabortion legislation, or would only change the way they speak of abortion. She said the comments of some party leaders led her to believe that ‘it would just be changing of wording, just trying to repackage in order to be more appealing -- really, to trick people.’”

Howard Dean, then head of the Democratic National Committee, validated my concern. He told NBC's Tim Russert: "We can change our vocabulary, but I don't think we ought to change our principles."

By all his actions so far, Obama is following this plan.

Obama needs to be honest with Americans. Is it true that it is not his goal to reduce the number of abortions?

More importantly, will he do anything that will reduce abortions? Actions are far more important than words.

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Wendy Wright is President of Concerned Women for America (CWA.)

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Parsing the Vatican Newspaper

It doesn’t always speak for the pope.

By George Weigel

The newspaper published by the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano, has created more than a little mischief recently, featuring essays by ill-informed European journalists who imagine that they understand American history, the American political scene, and the grave moral issues being contested in these United States. Pro-administration American journalists and activists have leaped with barely concealed glee on several unfortunate articles in this genre, claiming that they demonstrate that “the Vatican” believes the U.S. Catholic bishops overreacted to Notre Dame’s award of an honorary doctorate of laws to President Obama, and that “the Vatican” is taking a wait-and-see, so-far-so-good attitude toward Obama after the horrors of the arch-demon Bush.

About which, several points must be made.

1. The first thing one learns in Vaticanology 101 is that there is no such thing as “the Vatican.” The Holy See is as complex and confused a bureaucracy as one finds in national governments. Many points of view coexist within the Vatican walls, and there are more than a few curialists who like to talk to reporters. Very few if any of these chatty people count, in terms of expressing the settled judgment of the senior leadership of the Catholic Church. That leadership, when it wishes to make a serious point, does so through its major figures, not through the bureaucratic munchkins and not via commissioned essays in a newspaper that, while published by the Holy See, is not taken all that seriously there...

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God bless you Father

Just me… and Norman

Notre Dame Pic 1: Mortarboard

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What Notre Dame Taught

by Tom Piatak on May 17, 2009

Notre Dame taught a clear lesson today, in its decision to have President Obama as a commencement speaker and to award him an honorary degree. That lesson is this: American politicians can freely embrace abortion and face no negative consequences at all. Any pro-abortion politician who climbs to the top of Benjamin Disraeli’s “greasy pole” will get nothing but applause and praise from those who now run Notre Dame.

The Second Vatican Council defines abortion as an “unspeakable crime.” Not so Notre Dame. Father Jenkins’ effusive introduction of Obama never hinted that abortion is an “unspeakable crime.” According to Father Jenkins, nothing is “unspeakable” because what matters is that we have a “dialogue,” even though “Difference must be acknowledged, and in some cases even cherished.” Amazingly, he praised Obama’s supposed courage in coming to a place that showered him with applause, that vigorously arrested all pro-life demonstrators coming onto campus, and that provided him with a photo opportunity more effective than millions of dollars spent on campaign ads in demonstrating to Catholics that they need not worry about a candidate’s support for abortion in deciding how to vote: “Most of the debate has centered on Notre Dame’s decision to invite and honor the President. Less attention has been focused on the President’s decision to accept. President Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows full well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sancity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research.” How Notre Dame opposed Obama’s policies was not described. In fact, it is not at all clear from Notre Dame’s own statements that it does oppose Obama’s policies on abortion and stem cell research. Notre Dame’s official press release on the commencement noted that Obama’s “stance on abortion was likely unacceptable to some” at Notre Dame. And Father Jenkins could not even bring himself to say that the policies Obama supports are wrong, much less evil. Describing things as they are would apparently interfere with the “dialogue” Father Jenkins is so excited about.

Any politician watching today’s spectacle would have to conclude that the worst risk he runs from such as Notre Dame in supporting abortion is that he will be given an honorary degree, applauded, and told that it is important to “dialogue.” This lesson is especially harmful to the dwindling band of pro-life Democrats. Given the national Democratic party’s ironclad support for abortion, pro-life Democrats take a stance that prevents them from aspiring to their party’s presidential nomination. And, if such politicians take a pro-life stance for fear of Catholic opposition, Notre Dame sent a powerful signal today that they limit their ambitions for no good reason.

Obama has not been reticent in voicing his support for the “unspeakable crime” of abortion. Obama does not even claim to be “personally opposed” to abortion. Instead, he said during the campaign that he would not want his daughters “punished” with a baby if they engaged in premarital sex. His unstinting advocacy for abortion is a matter of public record, and he did not retreat from it at all at Notre Dame. Instead, he indicated in his speech that he has already learned that he has nothing to fear from Catholic prelates eager for “dialogue.” His praise for the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago obscured the salient point that nothing Bernardin said or did caused Obama to modify in any way his support for abortion. Even some of the Obama lines that drew applause at Notre Dame at least hinted at his opposition to Catholic teaching. Obama drew applause when he called for “reducing unintended pregnancies”—a likely reference to the federal funding for artificial contraception that Obama supports—and when he called for “health care policies” with “respect for the quality of life”—the same terminology used by those advocating for euthanasia.

It should not have been like this at a Catholic university, particularly at a Catholic university as inextricably intertwined with the American Catholic idenity as Notre Dame. As John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, “But today, in many people’s consciences, the perception of [abortion’s] gravity has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behaviour and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception.” By awarding Obama an honorary degree and showering him with applause and praise, Notre Dame has assisted mightily in obscuring the gravity of abortion. And, when Obama appoints the next pro-abortion justice to the Supreme Court, signs a law providing for the federal funding of abortion, or signs the Freedom of Choice Act—all things he is committed to doing—he will be able to say, with some justice, that he is doing so with the imprimatur of Fr. Jenkins and the nihil obstat of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees.

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President Obama speaks of the ‘call to love’ at Notre Dame commencement

U.S. President Barack Obama greets graduates after addressing commencement ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, May 17, 2009.

South Bend, Ind., May 17, 2009 / 03:43 pm (CNA).- President Barack Obama addressed graduates of the University of Notre Dame this afternoon. As he spoke about the importance of diversity and the "call to love," hundreds of protesters gathered in a prayer vigil for the conversion of the President on his stances on life issues such as abortion.

As the President began his speech, according to Fox News, protesters in the crowd began to shout before they were drowned out by others in the audience.

President Obama told the graduates that they must find a way to "reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity - diversity of thought, of culture, and of belief..."

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Father Z: "Was that Neville Chamberlain who intro'd the President?"

McCorvey among those arrested at Notre Dame today

Graduates, families await presidential visit

By SANTIAGO FLORES
and MARGARET FOSMOE
Tribune Staff Writers

SOUTH BEND — Norma McCorvey, a primary figure in the controversial court case Roe v. Wade, and at least 36 others have been arrested today on the campus of the University of Notre Dame.

McCorvey, 61, threw her support Friday behind those protesting President Barack Obama’s invitation to speak here today.

A crowd of protesters is descending on South Bend for Obama’s commencement visit...

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How Notre Dame Drifted Away from the Catholic Church

By Paul Shlichta

Today, to the disgust and apparent surprise of many Catholic bishops and laity, the University of Notre Dame, once the pride of Catholic intellectual life in America, will behave in a very un-Catholic way by honoring, as commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient, POTUS Barack Obama, one of America's most extreme advocates of abortion.

This surprise is hard to understand. The old Latin proverb nemo repente turpissimus can be translated as "nobody becomes very evil overnight." Even Judas served a lengthy apprenticeship as an embezzler before moving on to greater betrayals. In a similar manner, I contend that the invitation to Obama was merely a milestone of a drift away from the Catholic Church that Notre Dame started decades ago.

How it Happened

One might imagine such a process taking place by external erosion, by a determinedly Catholic faculty being gradually forced to yield to the secular pressures of a materialistic world. On the contrary, I suspect that Notre Dame's decline and fall were caused by internal decay, rather like what Fr. Daniel A. Lord (a famous Catholic pamphleteer of the last century) called "spiritual termites". There is even evidence that the source of this decay was Notre Dame's own Department of Theology.

The process started a century ago, when the Catholic Church was attacked by a group of internal heresies that Pope Pius X collectively defined as "modernism"....

*snip*

Simultaneously, liberal seminary officials began discouraging "rigid" conservative aspirants to the priesthood and favoring more "flexible" liberally minded candidates. This weeding out process, described in detail in Michael Rose's Goodbye Good Men produced an overall shortage of priests and tended to bias the crop of future priests toward liberalism [3]. Thus, in imitation of the replication mechanism of viruses, liberal theologians used traditional Catholic institutions to reproduce their own kind and disseminate them throughout the Church...

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University wrong to place prestige above principle

“My favorite grandpa, Clem James Sheeran, was Catholic. Irish to the core, his favorite place (other than church) was Notre Dame. I can’t imagine what he would think as the university recognizes someone who contradicts the core values of the Catholic faith by promoting an anti-life agenda. As we learned today, our nation is more pro-life than ever before; it is a very important time to strengthen the message that every baby is created for good purpose and has the potential to make this world a better place.” - Sarah Palin

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80 Year Old Priest Arrested at Notre Dame

Keyes, priest arrested at Notre Dame protest

"Notre Dame is arresting a priest," the Rev. Norman Weslin, founder of the Lambs of Christ abortion protest group, said as Notre Dame security personnel put plastic restraints on his wrists Friday. "Why are you arresting a priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby? You've got it all backward..."

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To Bear Witness To the Truth: An Unequivocal Moral Obligation for All Christians

by Rev. John Corapi, SOLT, STD

Every Catholic and, indeed, every Christian faithful to the Gospel, has the moral obligation to bear witness to the truth, “in season and out of season, convenient or inconvenient,” accepted or rejected. This mandate is nothing new, of course. It’s as old as the Old Testament, and as new as the New Testament. Nonetheless, I’m afraid that it has become more necessary than ever to remind ourselves of it.
The Magisterium formally teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2471, quoting Sacred Scripture, “Before [Pontius] Pilate, Christ proclaimed the He has ‘come into the world to bear witness to the truth’ (Jn 18:37). The Christian is not to be ‘ashamed then of testifying to our Lord’ (2 Tm 1:8). In situations that require witness to the faith, the Christian must profess it without equivocation, after the example of St. Paul before his judges. We must keep ‘a clear conscience toward God and toward men’” (Acts 24:16).
Let me give you one definition of equivocation: “A statement that is not literally false but that cleverly avoids an unpleasant truth; intentionally vague or ambiguous.” How about this for an example: “A woman has the right to choose.” Choose what? A less vague, ambiguous, and equivocal statement would be, “A woman (or man) has the right to choose to perpetrate homicide. Or, “A nation has the right to facilitate, enable, or legislate genocide.”
Oh, excuse me, that would be an unpleasant truth, or maybe an “inconvenient truth,” as the inventor of the internet, Al Gore, might say.

The Catholic Church unambiguously and formally teaches:
The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them [IMPELS THEM] to act as witnesses of the Gospel and the obligations that flow from it. This witness is a transmission of the faith in words and deeds. WITNESS IS AN ACT OF JUSTICE THAT ESTABLISHES THE TRUTH OR MAKES IT KNOWN (see Matthew 18:16).

The recent travesty involving the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to the President of the United States to give the commencement address and receive an honorary doctor of laws degree is the antithesis of Catholic and Christian witness to the truth. A lawyer who vigorously, publicly, and consistently support an anti-life and anti-family litany of evils will now receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from what is arguably the most prestigious Catholic University in America.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Indeed, what thousand words will be conveyed by the picture(s) of Mr. Obama receiving his honorary doctorate and sending off the graduating class at Notre Dame University?
This will be a dark day indeed for the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic Church that permitted it to happen. In the end, the bishops have the right and the duty to decide if the University of Notre Dame can any longer claim “Catholic” credentials.
Meanwhile, the obligation to bear witness to the truth weighs more heavily than ever on each one of us. We have rapidly entered into a new era of persecution of the Church and the truth that she professes and teaches, reminding us again,

"The disciple of Christ must not only keep faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.” (Lumen gentius 42; Dignitatis Humanae 14).
Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32-33).

God Bless You,
Fr. John Corapi

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Notre Dame Students Select Father Frank Pavone to Lead Obama-Free Graduation

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 11, 2009

South Bend, IN (LifeNews.com) -- Notre Dame students who don't want to attend a graduation ceremony involving pro-abortion President Barack Obama put together alternate plans. Today, they announced that Father Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, will lead prayer at a pro-life prayer vigil.

The Class of 2009 Vigil for Life will be celebrated at Sunday's commencement ceremony at the same time as the graduation event.

“In standing with these students, I am standing with the true spirit of Notre Dame: a pro-life spirit, in harmony with human reason and Catholic Faith," Father Pavone told LifeNews.com on Monday.

"The scandal that has been generated does not represent what Notre Dame is all about," Pavone added. "It represents a radical betrayal of what Notre Dame is all about."

Pavone said the scandal has resulted in pro-life Catholics standing up for the teachings of the Catholic Church and wanting to hold the university accountable to them.

“Hundreds of thousands of Catholics, hundreds of priests, and dozens of bishops have called upon Notre Dame to end this scandal by withdrawing its invitation to President Obama," he said. "The result of that demand is not in our control."

Pavone told LifeNews.com he thinks pro-life students should exercise their right not to attend the graduation ceremony, where President Obama will give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree.

"One final response to this scandal is fully in the control of each graduating senior: don't show up. Don't participate in an event which will only serve to obscure rather than highlight the Church’s pro-life teaching and the true spirit of Notre Dame," Pavone continued.

"The seniors who do this are manifesting the real meaning of commencement: they are carrying out the witness to truth and service that their hard-earned degrees have prepared them to give in the world," he added.

Some pro-life students plan to join Pavone for the alternative event, but others plan to conduct their own protest during the graduation ceremonies, ND Response, the pro-life collection of student groups, told LifeNews.com last week.

"It certainly appears obvious from these announced plans that a large or perhaps the sole focus of that response is a boycott," ND Response indicated. "There also may be other small groups or individuals amongst the 2009 graduates and their guests who have their own ideas about raising the pro-life issue to Mr. Obama inside the Joyce Center."

The students say they want a focus on peaceful and respectful opposition, especially in light of some of the more in-your-face opposition appearing at their campus in recent days along with the arrest of some pro-life advocates.


Related web sites:
Priests for Life - http://www.PriestsforLife.org
Notre Dame response - http://www.ndresponse.com

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Dr. Alan Keyes Released from Jail -- And Will Bear Witness on Notre Dame Campus Again

Contact: Sue Cyr, 904-687-9804; stopobamanotredame.com

SOUTH BEND, Ind., May 9 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Alan Keyes and 20 peaceful pro-lifers were arrested yesterday after they walked onto Notre Dame's campus praying the rosary and pushing baby strollers carrying baby dolls covered in "stage blood" to protest the invitation of Notre Dame to President Obama to deliver the commencement address at this year's graduation.

Dr. Keyes will be leading peaceful witnesses again on campus this coming Tuesday and Friday -- and is calling on others to join him.

Dr. Keyes said upon being released from jail, "I went on campus to bear witness to the truth that the invitation by the University of Notre Dame to Barack Obama is a travesty and abomination against the truth that is characteristic to our Catholic and Christian faith. Obama's actions deserve condemnation, not honor.

"I am issuing a call to everyone of like mind that we must come together now to bear witness to the world, to send a message to destroy this scandal and spread the truth of the Christians' dedication to life.

"I am going back on campus to prayerfully bear witness. Come, join me, let us trespass together so that in our trespasses we might find ourselves fully in obedience to the will of God."

Dr. Keyes released a statement before his arrest explaining why he was willing to be arrested, and can be read at www.StopObamaNotreDame.com.

Last Thursday, pro-lifers began to arrive from around the country to push the strollers with Dr. Keyes, and face the ire of Notre Dame officials, as well as arrest. Most of those risking arrest are from Notre Dame; but pro-life advocates from Washington D.C., Michigan, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico and Ohio have also arrived.

Randall Terry, www.StopObamaNotreDame.com organizer states:

"Dr. Keyes presence has catapulted this battle to a new level. If we have 100 or more people going to jail over the next week protesting this blatant evil, it may derail Obama's speech, and it will be a message that reaches America, the Vatican, and the world. This is a critical moment to wake people up!

"We are asking our pro-life friends to join us in jail, or at least to come and stand with us in the streets. Please join us for prayerful witness events on campus this coming Tuesday and Friday."

For more information, and for media personnel that want to be updated, call 904-687-9804.

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