You have probably already heard of the Obama Administration’s latest outrage — just one of many — against religious freedom in this country. The Department of Health and Human Services, in its latest formulation of the new requirements for health-care insurance offered by employers, has announced that there will be no religious exemption for those who find it immoral to provide insurance for contraception, sterilization or abortifacient drugs — that is, of course, all Catholic employers.
HHS Kathleen Sebelius did thoughtfully mention that the employers will have a whole year to comply, or, as Cardinal-designate Dolan has put it, to “learn to violate our consciences.” (Sebelius, is, by the way, Catholic).
More than 60% of all the bishops who are heads of dioceses in the U.S. have weighed in against this violation of the right to practice our religion unimpeded, and have urged people to write to the Presdient, HHS and their Senators and Congressional representatives. At least one bill to kill this mandate is already in the works.
There is much more excellent coverage at www.americanpapist.com., including a full list of bishops’ statements.
One thing everyone can easily do — petition the White House here The petition already has almost 7,000 signatures - it needs 25,000 to get noticed for government action.
The administration would apparently just really love for this to go away until after the election. We must not let them!
I have a few more thoughts on the wider implications of this particular mandate, but they will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day.
I am very anxious to kick off the centenary for Papa Luciani! Preparations began last year in his home town of Canale d’Agordo.
This prayer for the centenary of Papa Luciani has been published in the diocese of his birth; from Humilitas (Italian ed), September 2011, p. 5.
PRAYER FOR THE CENTENARY
Lord, Omnipotent and eternal God,
We admire the marvels that You Grace
works in your children. Today
We bless you for the love You have poured out
On Your Servant, Pope John Paul I, by calling him
To life, to Your friendship,
To serve You as pastor and as Your
Vicar for the Universal Church.
As we inaugurate the centenary year that recalls
the history of his life in the light of your Providence,
which guides men and events toward the encounter with You,
from the testimony of life of John Paul I,
a living image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd,
help us to draw on those gifts that make us
Your children and disciples of Christ:
from his faith and serenity we want to learn
to abandon ourselves to You with the heart of a child;
from his generosity, we want to learn
to say “Yes” to everything You ask of us;
from his love for the simple and the little ones,
we want to learn to serve everyone who needs us.
Father in Heaven,
We humbly ask you to glorify
In your Church Your Servant John Paul I,
So that, through his intercession and his example,
We may all draw on and give,
with humility and simplicity ,
The light and love that radiate from You.
Through Christ out Lord.
I knew I needed to do something to get back into regular blogging, and this is news I can’t not report: Our archbishop has just been named a cardinal!
At the end of his celebration of Mass for the Feast of the Epiphany, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he will be elevating 22 cardinals in a concistory on February 18. Among them is Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York! Abp. Dolan accepted in his usual folksy and humble fashion.
And just a bit more:
It’s delightful news, but really no surprise. The Archbishop of New York is always traditionally a cardinal, but Dolan hasn’t been made one in his almost three years in New York because he predecessor, Edward Cardinal Egan, is still under 80, the age at which cardinal usually “retires,” at least in the sense of losing his voting rights in a conclave. It’s not thought good to have two cardinals with voting rights from the same diocese. Abp. Dolan is rising to the rank of cardinal just a little before Egan’s 80th birthday in April, so Pope Benedict raised him the minute he was able to do so. Cardinal Dolan will now have the chance to advise the Pope in one or more of the Vatican’s congregrations and will almost certainly vote in the conclave to elect Pope Benedict’s successor.
Just another piece of Catholic history being made.
From the Radiomessage of Albino Cardinal Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, and future Pope John Paul I, December 25, 1971.
The Christmas crib . . . does not only fill the eyes of the children with enchantment and wonder, it is not only a happy note of color; it is a book that even the adults must decipher and read. It sums up life as it appears to the eyes of us Christians. At the top, above the stable, the angels who announce Christ’s birth. In the middle, the baby. Near him Mary, the “wondrous mother” and Joseph her husband. Around them, the poor shepherds and the rich Magi. Also standing around are the animals most closely tied to man: the ox and the ass in the stall, the shepherds’ lambs. Here there is an ecumenical brotherhood; there is an covenant between the high and the low, between the beasts and man, of all men with each other, between men and God.
But the center, the light, the sun of this picture is the baby: God made man, who has become our brother. Looking at him, the Christians of the East are accustomed to say: “How great you have made us, Lord!” We Venetians, on the other hand, say, “How small you have made yourself, Lord!” And we add: “It is truly fortunate that you have come! We are wretched and burdened with debts towards God the Father, but between the Father and us, now there is you. It is like when we put on red glasses and everything appears red to us: the Father looks at us through the red of your goodness and makes us good and finds us good too!”
You have loved us, O Lord! The crib and Bethlehem are only a beginning. Nazareth, Jerusalem, Calvary, the cross and the resurrection are the completion. They say to us, “He has done everything for you. What will you do for him?”
Here is the news that went out today. Now that the film is completed at last, I look forward to regular blogging again Thanks to everyone for your patience.
Yes, the DVDs are here at last! The documentary on St. Elizabeth is done!
The first shipment went out on December 17. I am gradually filling orders over vacation. Many of you who ordered or donated will be receiving your copies very soon, if you haven’t received them already.
A few other notes. I wasn’t able to finish all the subtitles, but this version, for the North American release, has subtitles in English, Spanish and Italian. The wonderful woman, a Secular Franciscan, who is doing the French subtitles was unexpectedly hospitalized, and could not finish them
in time. (She has many troubles and could use your prayers). We are still working on the French, German and Hungarian subtitles, and they will go on the next release, hopefully right after Christmas. No closed-captioning as yet; I am also working on that.
Due to the time-consuming nature of putting subtitles into the whole film, I didn’t have time to finish the study guide in time to put it on the DVD in PDF form as planned, though I expect to do so in later issues. In the meantime, I will start putting up the parts that are finished on the
film’s website
www.stelizabethdocumentary.com
Look for them by the beginning of the new year. This could actually be the start of a fascinating project. I would like to invite anyone who uses the DVD for Franciscan formation to send in any study materials they have developed and I will post these on the website as well, so they can be
useful to others.
Also, there are a still a few orders, mostly foreign ones that, due to the terribly clumsy nature of the Paypal interface, have reached me without any shipping charges added. For foreign mail, this is a considerable amount ($13.95). I will need to contact each of these people individually
to solve this problem. So if you haven’t received your DVD yet, this may be the reason.
Thanks again to everyone who made this possible. A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
