Why Sebelius should refrain from communion

By ARCHBISHOP JOSEPH f. NAUMANN

As a Catholic priest, my life is dedicated to attempting to bring people to Jesus Christ. In our Catholic faith, we believe that Jesus makes himself uniquely present to us through our reception of the Eucharist.

Catholics, in receiving the Eucharist, profess their faith in the real presence of Jesus as well as their communion with His Church.

Catholics have a personal responsibility not to receive Holy Communion if they have with knowledge and intention committed a grave evil.

While I realize that most readers of The Star do not share my faith in the Eucharist, I share this brief description of Catholic belief to provide the context for my request that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius not receive Holy Communion.

As a bishop, it is my responsibility to protect the integrity of the sacraments as well as the teaching of the Church.

Many public policy issues have ethical and moral dimensions. Our Catholic faith offers us principles that guide our understanding of such important societal issues as immigration, war, health-care reform, etc.

While the principles are consistent for every Catholic, the determination of how to apply them varies.

However, there are some actions that, because they involve the destruction of innocent human life, can never be justified. A Catholic in good conscience can never support policies permitting abortion, experimentation on human embryos or euthanasia.

Catholics in public life who consistently support policies that permit these intrinsic evils not only damage themselves spiritually but also create scandal by leading others into error.

For more than 25 years, Gov. Sebelius has advocated and supported legalized abortion. She has opposed such modest protections as parental notification for minors, waiting periods, informed consent and improved regulation of abortion clinics.

In the hope to awaken her to the grave spiritual consequences of her own actions and in an effort to prevent her from leading others into error, it was my responsibility to request that the governor refrain from receiving the Eucharist.

Unlike the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist that depends on faith in a revealed truth, the Church’s defense of the sanctity of human life is based on human reason.

The Church has a moral obligation to stand with many other Americans of different religious persuasions in the defense of the most fundamental of human rights.

Obviously, the governor has the freedom to continue her past support for legalized abortion that has served her well politically. But she does not have the right, by her public actions, to attempt to redefine Catholic teaching regarding abortion as well as our understanding of the Eucharist.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann is the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, which covers 21 counties, 111 parishes and 203,741 Catholics.

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Armenian rite ordinations in Rome...

From Orbis Catholicus:





"If you've been blessed with the grace of a liturgical interest then a visit to Rome's (Catholic) Armenican rite parish is a must. This parish is located in the fashionable Via Veneto neighborhood (the Church of San Nicola da Tolentino). Armenican Catholics have had this Rome parish as their own since the 1880s when PopeLeo XIII gave them the property. Armenian seminarians live in the attached collegio. In the photos is a diaconal ordination from Sunday. The ordaining prelate was His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX, the Catholic Patriarch of Armenians.Needless to say, the rite was breathtaking. "

• Armenian rite ordinations in Rome...
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Help Me Rhonda alternate single version - The Beach Boys

Palestrina - Surge, illuminare

Pope to make historic visit to Britain

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Britain next year, according to senior Vatican sources.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:18PM GMT 14 Mar 2009



The German pontiff will make the first Papal visit to this country in nearly three decades.

It is understood that the historic event is being timed to coincide with the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who is on the path to becoming the first British saint for 40 years.

Details of the visit, which will attract crowds of hundreds of thousands of people, are still under discussion, but cities being considered include London, Birmingham, Oxford, Edinburgh, Armagh and Dublin.

A senior cardinal is due to make a private trip to Britain in the summer to make preparations for the Pope's visit, which could be announced by the end of this year.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales will hope that such an event will capture the imagination of the country's four million Catholics, of whom only a quarter now regularly attend Mass...

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Cardinal Pell Says Secularism Is Getting Totalitarian

Considers Cases of Religious Intolerance

LONDON, MARCH 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies, according to the archbishop of Sydney.

Cardinal George Pell affirmed this at a conference last week in Oxford on "Varieties of Intolerance: Religious and Secular."

The Australian prelate began his address considering two examples of intolerance. The first was the little-publicized reaction to California's vote in November to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

The cardinal said that religious groups, businesses and individuals that worked toward the amendment have been the victims of pro-homosexual retaliation, ranging from death threats to boycotts to forced resignation from jobs.

He went on to consider as a second example the opposite reaction of human rights groups to what is considered intolerance of Islam.

The prelate said these cases show there is "onesidedness about discrimination and vilification."

"Some secularists seem to like one way streets," he added. "Their intolerance of Christianity seeks to drive it not only from the public square, but even from the provision of education, health care and welfare services to the wider community. Tolerance has come to mean different things for different groups."

The cardinal noted how particularly in the United States, members of Church organizations are facing more and more legal obstacles when it comes to following their consciences.

And in Australia, he said, the abortion law enacted last year in the state of Victoria "made a mockery of conscientious objection."

"Pro-abortion commentators attacked the concept of conscientious objection as nothing more than a way for doctors and nurses to impose their morality on their patients," Cardinal Pell recalled. "Victoria’s statutory charter of rights, which purports to protect freedom of religion, conscience and belief, was shown to be a dead letter when it comes to abortion. […] The human rights industry ran dead on the freedom of conscience issues which the legislation raised. Amnesty International seems to have been completely missing in action. […] As we know, abortion corrupts everything it touches; law, medicine and the whole concept of human rights."

Christian response

The cardinal contended that "there is an urgent need to deepen public understanding of the importance and nature of religious freedom."

"Believers should not be treated by government and the courts as a tolerated and divisive minority whose rights must always yield to the minority secular agenda, especially when religious people are overwhelmingly in the majority," he said. "The opportunity to contribute to community and public good is a right of all individuals and groups, including religious ones. The application of laws within democracies should facilitate the broadening of these opportunities, not their increasing constraint."

Affirming that "modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies," the cardinal went on to explain how it is different than "traditional liberalism, which sees the individual and the family and the association as prior to the state, with the latter existing only to fulfill functions that the former require but which are beyond their means to provide."

He said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights understand and articulate this proper relationship.

Cardinal Pell stated that new trends in using anti-discrimination law and human rights claims to advance the "autonomy project" is not new but that there is a new and "dangerous" trend: the withholding or retrenchment of exemptions for church agencies and conscience provisions for individuals.

The broad effect of this, he said "is to enforce conformity."

The key to the solution, Cardinal Pell affirmed, is that "Christians have to recover their genius for showing that there are better ways to live and to build a good society; ways which respect freedom, empower individuals and transform communities. They also have to recover their self-confidence and courage.

"The secular and religious intolerance of our day needs to be confronted regularly and publicly. Believers need to call the bluff of what is, even in most parts of Europe, a small minority with disproportionate influence in the media. This is one of the crucial tasks for Christians in the 21st century."

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On the Net:

Full text of address: http://documents.scribd.com/docs/1aqyamje35bx7w1omesl.pdf

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Novena To St. Jude

Desperate Situations & Hopeless Cases


Dear Apostle and Martyr for Christ, you left us an Epistle in the New Testament. With good reason many invoke you when illness is at a desperate stage. We now recommend to your kindness
{name of patient}
who is in a critical condition. May the cure of this patient increase his/her faith and love for the Lord of Life, for the glory of our merciful God. Amen.

Novena To
St. Jude

Most holy Apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally, as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of, Pray for me, I am so helpless and alone.
Intercede with God for me that He bring visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation and help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly -
(make your request here)
- and that I may praise God with you and all the saints forever. I promise, O Blessed St. Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor granted me by God and to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you.
Amen

PRAYER

May the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored, and loved in all the tabernacles until the end of time. Amen.

May the most Sacred Heart of Jesus be praised and glorified now and forever. Amen

St. Jude pray for us and hear our prayers. Amen.

Blessed be the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Blessed be the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Blessed be St. Jude Thaddeus, in all the world and for all Eternity.
(say this prayer, followed by the Our Father and the Hail Mary)

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LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Official translation:

LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

concerning the remission of the excommunication

of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre

Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church...

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The Helix Nebula from La Silla Observatory
Credit: WFI, MPG/ESO 2.2-m Telescope, La Silla Obs., ESO

Explanation: Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius and spans about 2.5 light-years. The above picture was taken by the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-meter Telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.