Catholic Relief Services Scandal Hits the Blogosphere

August 16, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In July, LifeSiteNews broke the story of Catholic Relief Services, “the official overseas relief and development agency of the USCCB,” granting $5.3 million to CARE, a pro-contraception and pro-abortion organization.

Since then, numerous blogs have picked up the story—and investigated further. “Red State” has reported on CRS as a dues-paying member of both the pro-conraception CORE Group and the pro-abortion group MEDiCAM.

“Societas Restituo Catholicam” has the evidence on MEDiCAM in a detailed post showing visual proof of the company’s “firm commitment to expanding abortion” since 2005.

In a press release, CRS said their involvement with these organizations actually demonstrates “our faithfulness to Church teaching” because they can “contribute our Catholic voice to the conversation.”

The inconsistencies of the explanation have been hashed out at “Veneremur Cernui” in a series of posts going back to February 2010, when CRS hit the spotlight for giving money to global warming advocates.

Each blog names employees at CRS who are, the evidence suggests, directly involved in programs that go against Church teaching. They take issue with the CRS’s statement that “CRS seeks to advance the common good of the world through the uncommon excellence of our staff, partners and programs.”

“Red State” reports that two CRS employees, Rolando Figueroa and Kristin Weinhauer, reviewed a document “produced through a project that CRS had direct oversight for” that clearly promotes contraception—especially among young people—as a means of protecting against STDs.

“Societas Restituo Catholicam” shows that Dr. Sok Pun, another CRS employee, is on the 2011 Steering Committee of MEDiCAM.

Another blog, “Rorate Caeli,” posts on the CRS scandal and makes a fresh point: while Catholics can make the choice to stop donating to CRS, “ultimately the bishops of the United States are directly responsible…and they are the ones who must be pressured to immediately intervene and completely overhaul CRS.”

Source here

The rot of the death culture is sickening...where is the the oversight? Simply disgusting!

An open letter to Cardinal Dolan about the Obama invitation

From Life Site News, Judie Brown

Your Eminence,

During the last week, there has been much written on diocesan websites and by other bishops concerning the controversy created by your invitation to President Obama to attend the Alfred E. Smith dinner. Much of what has been written seeks to justify that invitation.

American Life League recently launched an effort to convince you to rescind that invitation. The reason for this memo is to let you know exactly why we are doing what we are doing.

First, let me point out that Cardinal Egan invited Mr. Obama to this same dinner four years ago and we did not object. Although we disagreed with Obama’s basic philosophies, we felt that an attempt by the cardinal to show congeniality was worth trying.

However, it is now four years later and it is clear that whatever the cardinal hoped to accomplish at the 2008 dinner did not work. In four short years, President Obama has done everything in his power to undermine the teachings of the Catholic Church. As you know, he is implementing programs and policies that may soon make it necessary for the Church to repudiate our basic beliefs or close down all of our charitable and educational organizations.

Your Eminence, Mr. Obama has a long history with the Catholic Church. From his days as a community organizer working with Catholic churches in Chicago to his current attack on our beliefs, Obama has shown himself to be a shrewd politician with a captivating personality. How else do you explain the fact that, despite his very public support of abortion, contraception, and Planned Parenthood, he received 54 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008?

The question is NOT why you invited Mr. Obama to the dinner. The real question is why he accepted.

I submit to you that the reason he accepted is that he has nothing to lose. The Al Smith Foundation website touts that, at the 2008 dinner, Obama displayed “wit, wisdom, warmth, and wile.” I am sure the author of those words thought he was being totally complimentary, but the fact is that he was very accurate. Synonyms for “wile” are, of course, “hoax,” “ploy,” “scam,” and “deception.”

I believe Mr. Obama sees the 2012 Al Smith dinner as an opportunity to, once again, use his wiles to entice the Catholics in America to “trust” him——a trust that he has betrayed time and time again.

Your Eminence, when I think of the outcome of the event - where you are seen hosting both candidates for president - I am convinced the idea that will be transmitted through the images of that dinner will be that a vote for either candidate is okay with the hierarchy.

This is precisely why American Life League launched the No Dinner for Obama campaign. We don’t want Catholics to be confused about the most pro-abortion president in American history. Our duty is to be faithful and to defend moral principles, while begging our hierarchy to do the same.

We pray for you, and all members of the hierarchy, “Lead us out of temptation and toward truth, particularly today when so much is at stake.”

You and the bishops of the Church have convinced us over the last several months that the future of the Catholic Church in America is hanging in the balance. We MUST oppose the contraceptive mandate and all of the other affronts the current administration is throwing at us.

Inviting the head of that administration to dinner and a night of humor and congeniality is NOT how we are going to save our Church.

Please, your Eminence, cancel the invitation or cancel the dinner. If you do neither, I am very afraid that, at this time next year, you may be forced to cancel most Church activities that take place outside the confines of your physical churches.

Asking the blessing of Your Eminence, I am,

Yours respectfully in Christ,

Judie Brown, President American Life League

Link here

Baltimore Archbishop: Catholic Voters Can’t Vote for a Candidate Who Stands for an Intrinsic Evil

This has been stated time and time again. Nevertheless, it bears repeating.

“This is a big moment for Catholic voters to step back from their party affiliation,” Baltimore archbishop William E. Lori tells me from the Knights of Columbus annual convention in Anaheim, Calif.

For Catholic voters in November, Lori advises, “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”
. . .
“Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs?” the pope, perhaps prophetically, asked during his 2008 visit to Washington, D.C.

...“If we are going to transform the culture from within, which we are called to do, and defend our basic freedoms,” it will be primarily the role of the laity, Lori tells me.

“The bishops are teachers,” he said, but political leadership “really needs to come from the laity as citizens and mothers and fathers and voters.”

When it comes to election advice for Catholics: “The reality is we are defending something that transcends party. The defense of religious liberty,” he said, “should not be a Democratic or Republican issue.” For a Catholic voter, this should be “fundamental, as people of faith.”...

More here

Is it possible to see some PUBLIC EXCOMMUNICATIONS of those "Catholics" who publicly and obstinately defy the Church and her shepherds?

For example, Archbishop Lori could address the scandal occurring from the words and actions of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend who is promoting same-sex "marriage" and is urging Catholics to uphold Maryland's same-sex "marriage" law at the polls. She is pushing Catholics to oppose Church teaching.

When does a dinner invitation become a scandal?

When it involves the fabled Al Smith Dinner in New York, all you have to do is invite President Obama:

By tradition, the storied Al Smith Dinner has provided a few hours of comic relief from the angry volleys of the campaign trail — a white-tie charity banquet held in the weeks before Election Day, hosted by the archbishop of New York and featuring speeches by the two presidential candidates on the condition that they lob nothing more than good-natured jibes.

But the Catholic hierarchy’s fierce feud with President Obama, abetted by the increasingly sharp tone of the 2012 elections, is threatening to invade this demilitarized zone and give New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan a case of pre-dinner agita.

Dolan has reportedly extended an offer to Obama (as well as his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney) to attend this year’s dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, scheduled for Oct. 18, and reports say the president has accepted. That has mobilized abortion opponents, who view Obama as the worst thing since Roe v. Wade and an enemy of religious liberty because of his administration’s controversial birth control mandate.

The Rev. Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, a leading abortion opponent based in Staten Island, said Monday (Aug. 6) that “the polite putting aside of differences for a while amounts to scandal.”

“There comes a time when enough is enough and we can no longer afford to give people a reason to doubt our position as a Church,” Pavone wrote in an email. “So no, I don’t think the invitation is appropriate at this time.”

“Better to cancel the event than have it become another cause for scandal in the Catholic Church,” Randy Engel, head of the U.S. Coalition for Life, told LifeNews.com, an anti-abortion website.

The New York Archdiocese has not formally announced that Obama and Romney have been invited, or have accepted. But Meghan McGuinness Myers, executive director of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation, which organizes the annual fundraiser on behalf of various children’s charities, told LifeSiteNews that Obama had been invited and had accepted.

Read more.

From The Deacon's Bench

A Petition to Cardinal Dolan & the Archdiocese of New York: Disinvite President Obama from the Al Smith fundraising dinner

The New Archbishop of San Francisco

The Holy Father named Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland to be the ninth Archbishop of San Francisco. A terrific appointment. More to follow as this surprise (to some) appointment--he moves across the Bay from Oakland to San Francisco--begins to hit the email stream. Although obviously there are plenty of details that soon-to-be Archbishop Cordileone needs to master, it is not exactly as if he comes to the appointment without a clear sense of the situation in the City of St. Francis. A press conference at 10 AM at the cathedral will be streamed here. Bishop Salvatore CordileoneYou can bet this will be seen and felt by some as the San Francisco Earthquake of 2012.

Here is the Vatican on the subject of the new Archbishop of San Francisco:

Read more at catholicworldreport.com

Cardinal Burke: Theologians’ Mandatum Should Be Required by Colleges, Disclosed to Students

Catholic families have a right to know which theology professors have the mandatum, and Catholic colleges and universities should require it as a condition for employment, affirmed the Vatican’s chief judge Cardinal Raymond Burke in a new report prompted by recent concerns from Pope Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Burke and several bishops, canon law experts, and theologians discussed the mandatum with The Cardinal Newman Society in an online report published today at http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/.

The report, titled “A Mandate for Fidelity,” follows upon a May 5th address by Pope Benedict to several American bishops during their ad limina visit to Rome. The Pope expressed concern that “much remains to be done” toward the renewal of Catholic identity in U.S. Catholic colleges and universities, “especially in such areas as compliance with the mandate laid down in Canon 812 for those who teach theological disciplines.”

...
Citing Pope Benedict’s description of the mandatum as “a tangible expression of ecclesial communion and solidarity,” Cardinal Burke said:

It’s tangible in the sense that it’s a public declaration, in writing, on the part of the ecclesiastical authority that a theologian is teaching in communion with the Church, and people have a right to know that so that if you, for instance, are at a Catholic university or parents are sending their children to the Catholic university, they know that the professors who are teaching theological disciplines at the university are teaching in communion with the Church. They are assured in that by the public declaration of the diocesan bishop.

“The fact that I teach in accord with the Magisterium is a public factor,” added Cardinal Burke. “That’s not some private, secret thing between myself and the Lord.”

More here: http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/Home/tabid/36/ctl/details/itemid/1585/mid/435/cardinal-burke-says-theologians-mandatum-should-be-required-by-colleges-disclos.aspx
  

Dr Edward Peters: My brief replies to Albany's brief response

Dr Peters writes:

A political wag once observed that the fastest way to start a ruckus on Capitol Hill is to point out what the Constitution actually says. In the Church, it seems, the fastest way to start a ruckus is to point out what the Code of Canon Law actually says.

The Diocese of Albany has responded, briefly, to my comments regarding the eligibility of Gov. Andrew Cuomo for holy Communion under Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.

See them here

Vatican Canon Law Adviser: NY Governor Andrew Cuomo Should Be Denied Communion

(CNSNews.com) – In receiving communion at a Mass offered by the Roman Catholic bishop of Albany, NY, that state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, who supports abortion, gay marriage, and lives with his girlfriend, committed an “objectively sacreligious” act that “produces grave scandal,” according to Dr. Edward Peters, a top expert in Catholic Church law and a consultant to the highest court at the Vatican.

Peters specifically cited Cuomo's cohabiting with Food Network hostess Sandra Lee as "publicly acting in violation of a fundamental moral expectation of the Church," and that "as long as he persists in such conduct, he should refrain from taking holy Communion" and "if he approaches for holy Communion, he should be denied the august sacrament in accord with Canon 915."...

More here

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke at Oratory of St. Francis de Sales

A few weeks after his elevation to the College of Cardinals by the Holy Father, His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke is coming home to St. Louis.

St. Francis de Sales Oratory will have the great honor of receiving His Eminence on Saturday, January 8, 2011 at 5:00 PM. Cardinal Burke will celebrate a Solemn Te Deum of thanksgiving with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. After the ceremony all the faithful are invited to the church hall for a reception in the Cardinal’s honor. Please join us on this glorious occasion when we will have the opportunity to congratulate His Eminence personally and to thank him for all that he has done for St. Francis de Sales Oratory.

Source.

Dr Edward Peters: Bp. Olmsted, Canon 216, and St. Joseph's Hospital

Dr Peters writes:

Well, the situation at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, in terms of its compliance (or lack thereof) with several fundamental points of Catholic medical-moral teaching, was apparently worse than we thought. Bp. Olmsted’s decision to decertify St. Joseph’s as a Catholic institution is quite well grounded.

Read why here

Phoenix hospital that performed abortion no longer Catholic

From LifeSiteNews:

PHOENIX, Arizona, December 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Catholic hospital that performed a direct abortion last year has lost its official endorsement as a Catholic institution by the local bishop.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Az. announced in a news conference Tuesday morning that St. Joseph’s Hospital was no longer Catholic after it refused to comply with the bishop’s terms, which included renouncing the direct killing of an unborn baby of a woman suffering from pulmonary hypertension, at 11 weeks gestation.

Olmsted said that, “Communication with leadership at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Catholic Healthcare West has only eroded my confidence about their commitment to the church’s ethical and religious directives for health care,” according to local news reports...

More here

Dr Edward Peters: Lisa Fullam's dangerous advice should be ignored

Dr Peters writes:

When informed that the Vatican would oppose him, Joseph Stalin shrugged and asked “How many troops does the pope have?” To the dictator, the only views that mattered were those backed-up by men with guns.

Lisa Fullam has offered authorities at Catholic Healthcare West / St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix similarly myopic, even dangerous, advice when she suggested that, because the word “Catholic” is not copyright-able, the enterprise should continue to call itself “Catholic” despite Bp. Thomas Olmsted’s threatened prohibition of such use, and simply “let the canonical chips fall where they may.” Apparently Fullam believes that, since men with badges will never show up to enforce a cease-and-desist order (that will never be issued) by a civil court regarding the word “Catholic”, Catholic hospital officials need not worry about bishops tossing a few “canonical chips” their way.

I strongly suggest that St. Joseph's seek advice from another expert.

Read more here.

Cardinal Burke: Authentic Catholic universities help resist ‘secular dictatorship'

The authentically Catholic university helps students resist “secularist dictatorship” by keeping Jesus Christ at the center of its mission and by exposing the moral bankruptcy of contemporary culture, Cardinal Raymond Burke said Dec. 4...

In a lengthy discussion of the nature of Catholic higher education, he said that a Catholic university faithful to its identity will help students give an account of their faith and help them resist “the secularist dictatorship which would exclude all religious discourse from the professions and from public life in general.”...

Cardinal Burke lamented the fall of many American Catholic colleges and universities that have become “Catholic in name only.”...

On the issues of creating curricula and hiring professors, Cardinal Burke advised “special care,” noting the poor religious formation of many young Catholics.

“Given the religious illiteracy which marks our time and in fidelity to the seriousness with which university studies should be undertaken, there is really no place for engaging in speculative theology and certainly no time to waste on superficial and tendentious theological writings of the time,” the cardinal contended...

Much more here from Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Rather timely considering the plans SLU has for a speaker

SLU Students Invite Controversial "Theologian" to Speak

The question is "Will Bishop Carlson stop it"?

The Post Dispatch states that:

Students at St. Louis University have invited....Todd Salzman, chairman of the theology department at Creighton University in Omaha, to give the keynote speech at its 6th annual Undergraduate Marriage and Dating Conference in April.

The problem is that Salzman has espoused views in his book, "The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology," which are contrary to the teaching of the Church. The book was co-authored by Creighton emeritus theology professor Michael Lawler, and published by Georgetown University Press in 2008.

Of course, it appears that every dissenting "Catholic" praised the book and we only need to imagine why.

The Post continues:

After "The Sexual Person" was published, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on doctrine began examining the Creighton professors' conclusions.

In September [of 2010], the committee of nine bishops issued a 24-page statement on the "Inadequacies in the Theological Methodology and Conclusions" of "The Sexual Person." The authors, it said, "reach erroneous conclusions on a whole range of issues, including the morality of pre-marital sex, contraception and artificial insemination."

There we have it! It really is a no brainer these days.

But let's look a bit closer at what the bishops discovered. From the 'Conclusion' of the 24 page report (PDF found here), we read [all bolding mine]:

Professors Lawler and Salzman present their book as a quaestio disputata, as an examination of a disputed question in the way of the medieval universities(4). The scholarly disputations of the Middle Ages, however, took place in a framework provided by Catholic faith, requiring a recognition of the authority of Sacred Scriptures and authoritative Church teaching and a knowledge and appreciation for the Catholic theological tradition. The authors of The Sexual Person, by contrast, base their arguments on a methodology that marks a radical departure from the Catholic theological tradition.

Consequently, it is not surprising that they reach a whole range of conclusions that are contrary to Catholic teaching. The Committee on Doctrine wishes to make it clear that neither the methodology of The Sexual Person nor the conclusions that depart from authoritative Church teaching constitute authentic expressions of Catholic theology. Moreover, such conclusions, clearly in contradiction to the authentic teaching of the Church, cannot provide a true norm for moral action and in fact are harmful to one's moral and spiritual life...

That such people as this "theologian" be invited to speak at a presumably Catholic institution of learning is a scandal.

The invitation should be withdrawn, saving SLU the embarassment of having Bishop Carlson nix the whole affair.

Post-Dispatch link here

Bishop Robert J. Hermann Retires

Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the retirement of Bishop Robert J. Hermann, who has served as auxiliary bishop of St. Louis since 2002. His retirement is effective Dec. 1, the same day as the appointment of Msgr. Edward M. Rice as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis...

A Mass of thanksgiving for his service will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. The Mass also marks the eighth anniversary of his episcopal ordination...

More here from the St Louis Review.

We wish Bishop Hermann well in his retirement and offer prayers of thanksgiving for his devotion to Christ and to Catholics of St Louis. I hope we will continue to be inspired by his wonderful articles in the St Louis Review.

Msgr. Rice named Auxiliary Bishop by Pope Benedict XVI

On Dec. 1, Pope Benedict XVI named the director of the archdiocesan Office of Vocations as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Bishop-designate Rice, 50, will be ordained to the episcopacy during a 2 p.m. Mass Thursday, Jan. 13, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

Bishop-designate Rice was informed of the appointment Nov. 4 in a meeting with Archbishop Robert J. Carlson. The news, he said, came as a shock.

“At first I thought he was joking,” Bishop-designate Rice said with a bashful smile. “I had this immediate knot in my stomach. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, where did this come from?’ I was in a daze. It was hard to comprehend what it was all about.”...

More here from the St Louis Review.

Congratulations and prayers to Msgr. Rice!!!

Dr Edward Peters: A good profile essay on almost-Cardinal Burke

Dr Peters writes:

Franz Klein of the Diocese of Lacrosse has a nice spread on Archbishop, and-one-day-shy-of-being-formally Cardinal, Burke in the on-line The Catholic Times (18 Nov. 2010, page 3B). Klein offers a good overview of Burke’s typical day at the Apostolic Signatura, and of the esteem in which he is held by those concerned for the proper coordination of law and theology. The essay even features a few quotes by yours truly. So enjoy!

It's been another good week for the Church: Abp. Dolan elected president of the USCCB, Abp. Burke, among others, elevated to the College of Cardinals. Let's just remember, though, the trials of the Church in places like China, where bishops faithful to the Holy See are being forced to attend on Saturday an episcopal ordination performed in violation of 1983 CIC 1382. Think of it as two strides forward, one shove back. Oremus pro invicem.

Speaking of cardinals, I have updated my list of Cardinal Electors.

Original post here.

Archbishop Nienstedt Refuses Communion to Dissidents

At today's Noon Mass, a statement was read over the intercom prior to ommunion by the Archdiocese's Communication's Director one Dennis McGrath. This Sunday was Vocation Sunday and the Archdiocese has more students studying for the priesthood than it's had for thirty years, but Archbishop was not present.

The statement was to the effect that only baptised Catholics who are disposed to receive Communion and in agreement with the entirety Church's teaching may receive Communion, and specifically, that Rainbow Sashers may not receive Holy Communion, but they were invited to remove their sashes.

The approach he's taken to this situation matches the description of him given by the Star and Tribune as "cool and collected."...

More here

And another report here

CCHD - Same as it ever was?

USCCB “Review and Renewal of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development” betrays utter lack of reform

I've downloaded and read the CCHD “Review and Renewal of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development as Accepted and Affirmed by the USCCB Administrative Committee,” – promulgated on September 15, 2010 – and can only cry in absolute frustration, that nothing has changed. The new, improved CCHD is still all about funding Alinskyian organizing (organizing based on the organizational theories of the late, great Saul Alinsky)….which is still all about progressive politics…which is still all about killing babies...

Continued here at Orate Fratres

I, personally, would have a difficult time EVER contributing to this cause (agenda) of the USCCB until such time as it is thoroughly cleansed of those responsible for its rot and decay.

Military archbishop describes dangers of altering 'don't ask, don't tell'

After a series of legal reversals this week, the permanent status of the military's “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy on homosexuality remains unresolved. On Oct. 22, Military Archbishop Timothy Broglio explained to CNA why he believes the government must maintain the policy....

Archbishop Broglio explained to CNA what he sees as the basic flaw in Judge Phillips' ruling...The archbishop explained that while individuals may have a legal right to declare their sexual preferences, they have no comparable “right” to serve in the military at the same time.

Rather, he said, the military reserves to itself the right to deny individuals that privilege-- just as soldiers may forfeit the privilege of military service in many other ways, through their speech and behavior...

More here