The answers to three key Catholic questions speak volumes

Once again let me stress that I developed this set of questions in the mid-1980s as a journalistic tool. The goal, when asking these questions, is to listen carefully to the answers.

It is especially interesting, of course, to note when people remain silence or try to find a way to maneuver around the questions without answering.

Different types of believers, of course, have different answers. The goal is to listen carefully and then respond with follow-up questions that yield nuggets of on-the-record doctrinal, as opposed to political, information. The goal is to transcend mere labels.

Here are those questions, once again:

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

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Father Andrew Greeley, novelist and Catholic critic, dead at age 85

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Father Andrew M. Greeley, an outspoken Roman Catholic priest who wrote more than 50 novels and publicly feuded with his superior John Cardinal Cody, died at the age of 85 in his Chicago home, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

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Fr. Andrew Greeley and Brutal Chicago Church Politics

Queer preaching

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, made controversial remarks on ABC Australia’s popular “Q&A” show on Monday, noting that Jesus lived an “alternative lifestyle” while highlighting how Jesus spent time with male disciples and that he loved them.

“Jesus had a very kind of alternative lifestyle,” Robinson said, hinting at a possible sexual orientation for the Savior of the world.

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Cardinal Dolan can’t just laugh this one off.

Cardinal Dolan Has Taught Us A Few Important Things In The Last Few Weeks. In the last few weeks Cardinal Dolan, through his spokesman Joseph Zwilling, has been doing a lot of teaching by word and deed.

His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, has let the Church know pro-abortion New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is a Catholic in good standing.

The world has also found out the Archdiocese of New York is paying for abortions and contraception for thousands of its employees.

The Cardinals spokesman has rather heartlessly described the abortions and contraception the Archdiocese provides as “services” and excused the Archdiocese paying the bills for these “services” because they write the checks “under protest.”

We have many lessons we can learn from these situations.

Editor’s note: Someone better take a close look at what’s going on in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and other similar sized urban areas. This church scandal is just beginning to break!

John Jay report deliberately ignored widespread homosexual activity of priest abusers

On May 18, researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice released their long-awaited final report, “Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.”

The research team, led by Karen Terry, Ph.D., gathered an impressive amount of information from which they drew a number of conclusions; the most unsettling of which is the claim that homosexuality is unrelated to the abuse (particularly of adolescent males, the primary victims in the crisis.)

Though 81 percent of the victims were post-pubescent males, researchers downplayed the homosexual connection by suggesting that this simply reflects the fact that offenders had greater access to boys. The report also proposes the possibility that, “Although the victims of priests were most often male, thus defining the acts as homosexual, the priest did not at any time recognize his identity as homosexual.”

A less politically correct conclusion, it would seem, is to acknowledge that the offending clerics were perhaps unwilling to take “ownership” of their struggle with homosexuality. In any event, this line of argument appears to be little more than a red herring.

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Their birthdays – and their lives – were most cruelly and brutally stolen

The Pro-Life Action League, along with Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and Priests for Life has announced the “National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children” to take place on Saturday, September 14, 2013. It is meant to honor the unborn at the grave sites where they are buried.

Eric Scheidler, Executive Director of the Pro-life Action League, stated, “It’s sobering to realize that grave markers for the unborn victims of abortion list only a date of burial. They have no birthdays because they were never allowed to be born. We can list no date of death, because those who killed them discarded their bodies like garbage. But they are not garbage to us. They are our brothers and sisters. That’s why we buried them, and that’s why we visit their graves to mourn for them and testify to their humanity.”

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Yes … but will the bishops mess things up again?

Speaking on a five-city tour through northern California, the three-time Boston mayor and well-known author, said Catholics feel disenfranchised and think powerful secular groups wield too much power and influence in American politics, reports the Catholic Business Journal.

“It is only a matter of time before Catholic voters say they have had enough of dysfunctional and unrepresentative government,” he said, adding, “and divisive politics.”

Flynn continued, “[We need] lay Catholic leaders committed to expressing this Catholic voice to emerge, and to unite this divided country.”

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Editor’s note: Mr. Flynn neglected to mention the nearly 50/50 split between liberal and conservative Catholics in the United States – or what he planned to do to resolve that issue. A miracle, perhaps?

Pope announces world-wide hour of Eucharistic Adoration on Sunday, June 2, 2013.

Vatican City, May 28, 2013 / 06:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic world will be united with Pope Francis on the Feast of Corpus Christi as he leads a “historic” hour of simultaneous Eucharistic Adoration.

“Even some islands in the middle of the ocean … at two in the morning – they don’t have electricity – but even with that they will be in communion with us and Pope Francis for one hour,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella said as he explained the intense reaction he is seeing to the June 2 event.

“I am proud to say that this is a historical moment for the history of the Church because for one hour all the churches in the world will be united. … We are united because the Eucharist makes us all one body and one spirit, so we enter into the deepest meaning of the Eucharist,” the archbishop told CNA in a May 28 interview.

Contact your parish/diocese for local times.

Time Zone Conversion Site

Editor’s note: Correction -five in the evening Rome time, is 11 am Eastern, 10 am Central, 9 am Mountain and 8 am Pacific, in the continental United States.

Senator Dick Durbin – the guy who only recently discovered soot in Chicago’s Union Train Station – doesn’t know whether the 1st Amendment applies to bloggers.

Seen on the American Catholic:

One of the worst senators in the nation, Dick Durbin (D.Ill.), wonders whether the First Amendment covers bloggers in the above video.

I can understand why Durbin brings this up.  First, because Durbin is a Democrat hack.  Originally elected to Congress from the congressional district including Springfield, Illinois, Durbin ran as a pro-lifer, defeating pro-abort Republican Congressman Paul Findley.

Realizing that a pro-life Democrat was going nowhere in Congress, he switched to being a pro-abort and now has a 100% rating from NARAL and a 0% rating from National Right to Life.  That he is a Catholic is of course of no consequence to him in regard to his politically expedient choice of embracing abortion uber alles.

Durbin is a down the line liberal and most contemporary liberals and Democrats hate and fear the new media that does not give them lock step subservience as does most of the mainstream media.

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Radical ideas Barack Obama and former Pope Benedict XVI have in common

Indeed, as I have pointed out more than once on these pages, it was (Cardinal) Ratzinger who wrote in 1987 (in the second edition of his Principles of Catholic Theology) that the “demolition of bastions” in the Church is “a long-overdue task.” The Church, he declared, “must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted. She must demolish longstanding bastions and trust solely the shield of faith.”

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Editor’s note: “CHANGE” came to the Catholic Church long before Barack Obama’s similar type of “CHANGE” came to America. Neither is any good.

Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Custodi di Quella Fede

“Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups.

Know them by their fruits and avoid them.

Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution.

These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.”

47 Various Encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII

In God We Trust: A few other things worth remembering this Memorial Day.

  Watch the 3-minute video

There’s an extraordinary amount of Judeo-Christian religious tradition incorporated into the design elements of the Nation’s Capitol – especially for a nation that is often portrayed today as “secular”.

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Submitted by John Z.

A short, 12 point study on the Holy Trinity

The Church teaches that the Holy Trinity
is the central mystery
of the Christian Faith.

But how much do you know about this mystery?

What is its history?

What does it mean?

And how can it be proved?

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

1. Where does the word “Trinity” come from?

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The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite.

The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don’t matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.

The left launched two revolutions. One was the hard revolution of bombs and assassinations by those who did not have the time or patience to wait for the long march through the institutions of the state. This revolution was born quickly and died quickly. It killed millions and choking on their blood it died by stages, losing its ideas and then its power, until there were only a few old men and women in shawls clinging to red velvet portraits of Stalin.

But there was also the soft revolution that was slow and subtle. It was a revolution of laws, rather than bombs. It did not concern itself with 5-year-plans but with 50-year-plans. It proceeded by increments, raising the temperature so very gradually that the free world did not realize it was cooked until it could smell its own burning flesh.

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Some 250,000 pro-family marchers are evidently not too happy about (literally) gay Paree.

When they followed the noise and witnessed what she described as “pro-family” signs, Glass said she realized “oh, we’re not the only ‘crazy’ ones,” explaining that it is “sometimes very difficult to be on the right in America.”

The Associated Press reported there being about 5,000 police present for the demonstration, due to clashes that have occurred in other anti-gay marriage protests.

But Glass said the event was very well organized and even seemed to have its own security detail.

“Nobody bothered these people,” she said, noting that people on the street were giving thumbs up and people in balconies were cheering. ”

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Damage control at the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark

Monsignor John E. Doran, the No. 2 official within the archdiocese, has stepped down due to “operational failures” and will no longer hold a leadership position, according to letter to parishioners by Archbishop John J. Myers.

The resignation came after Bergen County, New Jersey, prosecutors arrested Father Michael Fugee on Monday on accusations of violating a 2007 judicial order to avoid working with children after he confessed years before to groping a teenage boy, according to court documents.

“The seriousness of the situation with Father Fugee necessitated a thoughtful and effective response,” Meyers wrote in the letter posted on the archdiocese website.

“Appointing a new Vicar General will be just one step in a comprehensive plan to review, and where necessary, strengthen our internal protocols and ensure we are doing everything we can to safeguard the children of our community.”

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Trinity Sunday: Simple mathematical equation explains the sacred reality of the Holy Trinity.

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

A text-based explanation from the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent.com:

The Blessed Trinity

This article is divided as follows:

• Dogma of the Trinity
• Proof of the doctrine from Scripture
• Proof of the doctrine from Tradition
• The Trinity as a mystery
• The doctrine as interpreted in Greek theology
• The doctrine as interpreted in Latin theology

Radical Catholicism confronts radical Islam on the streets of London

Psalms 23:4
For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evils, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me.

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, the mother of two and former Scout leader who calmly confronted the Woolwich killers in hope of preventing further bloodshed, credits her heroic actions to her Catholic faith.

The Telegraph reports:

Around her neck, she wears a small gold cross, encrusted with rubies and diamonds. She is a practising Catholic and partly credits her faith for how she acted. “I live my life as a Christian,” she explains. “I believe in thinking about others and loving thy neighbour. We all have a duty to look after each other. A whole group of people walking towards those guys would have found it easy to take those weapons out of their hands. But me, on my own, I couldn’t.” [Read the full interview.]

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They’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life?”

Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to.

And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy.

And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up.

And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . .

But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”

Read more from Mark Steyn

Redeemed – certainly. Justified – perhaps, someday.

Pope Francis says atheists who do good are redeemed too.

The Vatican issued an “explanatory note on the meaning of “salvation,” on Thursday, May 23, after media reports circulated indicating that Pope Francis” promised heaven for everyone engaged in good works, including atheists.

In response to the media attention, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said that people who know about the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”

Rosica also said that Francis had “no intention of provoking a theological debate on the nature of salvation,” during his homily on Wednesday.