By this point what I am posting is already old news in the realm of the internet, but it merits repeating just in case anyone who reads this blog hasn't heard of it. The Bishop of Green Bay, The Most Reverend David L. Ricken, has sent a wonderful letter out to his diocese. You should click the link and read the whole letter but I have posted an excerpt below. After reading it I think you will agree that Bishop Ricken is most certainly not namby-pamby.

I would like to review some of the principles to keep in mind as you approach the voting booth to complete your ballot. The first is the set of non-negotiables. These are areas that are “intrinsically evil” and cannot be supported by anyone who is a believer in God or the common good or the dignity of the human person. They are:
1. abortion
2. euthanasia
3. embryonic stem cell research
4. human cloning
5. homosexual “marriage”
These are intrinsically evil. “A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.” Intrinsically evil actions are those which have an evil object. In other words, an act is evil by its very nature and to choose an action of this type puts one in grave moral danger.

May God bless this good bishop and the work he is doing for the Church in Green Bay. And may God bless all the bishops of the United States as they stand up for the Truth and defend it with their teaching, with their actions and with their lives. And may the assaults of the devil not prevail against them.

By Denise M. Burke, Esq.

As a committed Catholic and as an attorney who has dedicated her legal career to the on-going legal and cultural battles to protect the sanctity of all human life, I have -- not surprisingly -- been following election-year politics very closely.  Much of what I have seen and heard from the candidates and the campaigns has not been particularly noteworthy or surprising.  What was unexpected was the Obama Administration's full-frontal assault on the Catholic Church and our right to faithfully practice and pronounce our faith in the public square. 

Make no mistake -- the results of this election will have profound implications for the Church and for the faithful.  George Weigel, the biographer of Blessed John Paul II and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has written an excellent piece for National Review that concludes:

"Whatever happens on November 6, though, the Catholic Church in America has been changed, likely in irreversible ways, by the experience of this campaign year.

 A critical mass of U.S. bishops now understands the challenge of this
cultural moment, and these bishops are prepared to exercise their pastoral office in the prophetic way that the challenge of the culture requires.

The utter incoherence of the Pelosi/Biden/Sebelius form of Catholicism has created a situation that those prophetic bishops will not likely fail to address. For while it is true that the Catholic Church is big enough for Paul Ryan and Joe Biden (and Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius), it is also true, and far more urgently true from a pastoral point of view, that there are different pews within Big Church Catholicism. Many of those in the more distant pews are grievously uncatechized, which causes them to lead lives of spiritual
and moral incoherence. That situation will not be tolerated indefinitely.

As the Catholic Church once became the lead Christian community in
intellectually formulating the pro-life position, it has now become the lead church in articulating, through the arts of public reason, the defense of America’s first freedom, religious liberty. In both of these exercises, Catholics have found common cause with evangelical Protestants; and in the religious-freedom battle (and the battle to defend marriage rightly understood), Catholics have found new allies among Mormons. And as the Catholic-Evangelical alliance in the American culture war led unexpectedly to new and rich theological exchanges, so, it may be expected, will the partnership in battle
alongside Latter-day Saints. The ecumenical landscape in the 21st century will thus look nothing like the ecumenical landscape when the Second Vatican Council opened 50 years ago.

'Progressive' Catholicism in America once claimed the Church’s Vatican II defense of religious freedom as its proudest accomplishment — as well it might.  Yet that, too, has changed. The abandonment of the religious-freedom issue by far too much of the Catholic Left in 2012 was a further indicator of what Francis Cardinal George announced years ago: the death of liberal Catholicism from what had become, in the post–Vatican II decades, its spiraling intellectual implausibility.

Should the Republican ticket prevail, Vice President Paul Ryan will be the new face of public Catholicism in America, and a bracing new debate will unfold about embodying the principles of Catholic social doctrine in American public policy, and in joint work by the public and private sectors, to empower the poor, reform health care and education, and build a cultural and legal architecture of life. This debate will set the intellectual pace for the Catholic Church throughout the Western world.

Should the Democratic ticket prevail, the Catholic Church in the United States will be compelled to confront the federal government as it has never done before in the history of the Republic. The Church will do that to defend its own. But it will also do that for the sake of American constitutionalism. For what prickly John Adams once facetiously referred to as 'Grandmother Church' has, in 2012, become the lead church in the defense of the constitutional order for which Adams and his contemporaries argued, fought, and bled."

Read the entire column at "Catholic Reflections on the Endgame of
2012" .

In my last post on the Pope's letter, Porta Fidei, my focus was on the commitment that all Catholics should have for their faith in Jesus Christ. Today I want to discuss what that commitment entails.

To be committed to the Truth of the Catholic Faith means that we truly believe what has  been revealed to us through the Holy Catholic Church. But that brings up the following question: what has been revealed to us?

In answering this question, the word 'revealed' is of no small importance. For something to be revealed signifies to us that we could not have come to know it on our own efforts. Therefore, if something is to be revealed to us it must be done by someone other than ourselves. And this same rule applies for the revelation of ultimate Truth. Mankind could not have come to know the Truth of the Catholic Faith through his own efforts. It had to be revealed from outside. And that is exactly what happened. God came to us from Heaven, from outside our realm of understanding, and came into the midst of mankind by becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, who is both God and man. And it is Jesus who has revealed to us God's divine and ultimate Truth.  This Truth is the salvation and also the path that leads us to the salvation that we so desperately need. This Truth is safeguarded for all time by the only Church that Christ founded, the Catholic Church. And each person baptized in the Catholic Church, or those baptized outside the Catholic Church who have converted and become full members of the same, has a commitment to uphold the full Catholic Faith that has been delievered to them through that baptism. That means we must fully adhere to the teachings of Christ as taught to us by the Catholic Church, if we truly want to be Catholic.

Sorry I haven't posted recently. Last week was fall break at the Atonement Academy and my family and I were at the beach in South Padre. Above is a picture my wife took while we were away. Now that I am back I am going to continue my commentary on Porta Fidei and possibly post something in regards to the coming election.

By Denise M. Burke, Esq.

Thomas Peters of CatholicVote.org has a thought-provoking post this morning, entitled “10 Reasons Why Obama’s Next 4 Years Would Be Worse Than the Past 4 Years.” He deftly summarizes the current
Administration’s unflinching support for abortion, Planned Parenthood, and same-sex marriage, and the threats it poses to religious freedom and our nation and families’ futures.  Two weeks
away from the election, his analysis is worthy of our consideration.

The 10 Reasons:

1) Barack Obama has been the most pro-abortion president in history. He has not signed a single piece of pro-life legislation since taking office. If given four more years, he will continue to veto pro-life legislation and nominate pro-abortion supreme court justices and judges.

 2) Barack Obama now supports same-sex marriage, despite promising in 2008 that he supported traditional marriage. Many of his top donors are radical pro-gay marriage activists. If given a second term, Obama will continue to unilaterally stop defending laws protecting marriage (like DOMA), will actively aid efforts to repeal laws protecting marriage at the state level (he has already opposed every effort to protect marriage at the state level since taking office) and will nominate supreme court justices and judges who are in favor of redefining marriage.

3) Barack Obama is an enemy of religious freedom. The view put forward by his administration in the courts (and all the way up to the Supreme Court) is that religious freedom is a purely private matter that has no right to exist in the public square. The HHS mandate forces religious individuals and institutions to violate their conscience. If given four more years, President Obama will oversee the implementation of the full set of Obamacare’s mandates, and we will witness even more violations of religious freedom and conscience.

4) Barack Obama’s foreign policy has supported taxpayer-funded abortions abroad, has done nothing to address China’s heinous one-child policy, has promoted LGBT rights abroad and has undermined religious liberty –particularly the religious liberty of Christians– around the world and in the Middle East.  The U.S. delegation at the United Nations will be emboldened to impose the Obama  administration’s position on abortion, religious freedom, and same-sex marriage on developing countries around the world.

5) Barack Obama is an enemy of the Catholic Church. Even beyond Obama’s flawed view of the First Amendment, the President has intentionally surrounded himself with Catholics who proudly tout their dissent from the Church’s teaching. He has employed truly anti-Catholic figures in his administration and has personally been disingenuous in his dealings with the Catholic Church and Cardinal Dolan. If he wins four more years he will attribute part of that victory to taking on the Catholic Church and (in his mind) beating it. He will
search out other ways to oppose it.

6) Barack Obama is an unflinching ally of Planned Parenthood. In addition to personally seeing to it that Planned Parenthood is funded with federal money whenever states have attempted to defund its millions of dollars in subsidies, Obamacare and other federal programs he has championed will collaborate with
Planned Parenthood towards an ultimate goal of making America’s largest abortion  provider synonymous with “women’s healthcare.” If Obama wins reelection he will attribute it in part to Planned Parenthood and massively expand its already significant influence and political footprint.

7) Barack Obama’s policies disproportionately hurt the underprivileged. Despite all the talk this cycle about the middle class and small businesses, the reality is that over the past four years America has witnessed a surge in poverty and unemployment, which has disproportionately affected the underprivileged. If Obama could do anything to fix this situation he would have already done so, instead he has massively expanded dysfunctional welfare programs which are not a solution to America’s poverty crisis, and has demonized Catholic and religious charities that do more on the ground to serve these communities. Four more years will only add to the hurt they are experiencing.

8) Barack Obama’s policies are impoverishing all Americans and reducing all of our prospects. The President has shown himself incapable of reigning in spendings and reducing our deficits. The trickle-down effect of this massive government waste is less opportunity and fewer resources for the private sector to invest and grow. Americans are already adapting to this “new normal” and four
more years will further entrench this growing sense that our best days are behind us. This is not the legacy our children and grandchildren deserve, and it is not why our parents and grandparents came to this land. We can do better and the President has shown that he does not know how to accomplish this.

9) Barack Obama’s rhetoric is aimed to divide and foster animosity. Remember “Occupy Wall Street” and how the President never condemned its excesses? Have you noticed that the centerpiece of Obama’s plan to tackle our debt and deficit is to soak the rich with more taxes and to promote envy among the rest of us?  Have you noticed how Obama’s reelection campaign has focused almost exclusively on painting Mitt Romney in as negative a light as possible? All of these decisions are deeply, deeply harmful to our public discourse and to our democratic compact. They are UnAmerican. If Obama wins reelection this way it will teach the dangerous lesson to future politicians that divide and conquer is the path to victory and power.

10) Obama will no longer care about being reelected. Obama has tempered his goals in his first term because he desperately wants to be reelected. If given four more years without having to be accountable to the American people, we can only imagine what’s in store for us. Obama clearly thinks a great deal about himself and wants to create a legacy for himself. He clearly believes he knows better than everyone else. He will also have his sense of inevitability restored if America gives him a second shot after having a close call in this election. Obama, like a good liberal, believes that some things are inevitable,
  including same-sex marriage, state-subsidized abortions, reduced religious freedom, a privatized and atomistic faith community, the rise of centralized government, a post-American world and forced equality — and he will see it as his confirmed mission to hasten the coming of these things if he is given four more years to deliver his version of hope and his idea of change like he promised four years ago.

You can read the entire post at "10 Reasons Why Obama's Next 4 Years Would Be Worse Than The Past 4 Years."

This last Friday I had to fill in for my pastor, Fr. Phillips, and give the final prayer and blessing at the Allied Women's Center Gala. It was a wonderful event and I was very honored to be able to be a part of it. The prayer below was what I offered. You are welcome to use it in your own prayers in the days leading up to the elections on November 6. Before I started the prayer at the event I asked our Blessed Mother to make this prayer her own and to place it at the feet of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. I ask that you do the same when saying this prayer.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, you are the Author and Creator of all life and in your infinite Wisdom you created mankind in your own image. We pray for the President, for the members of Congress and for the leaders of all nations that you would open their minds and hearts to acknowledge and accept the Truth: that the life and soul of each person is created by you and is therefore sacred. We beseech you also Lord that if those who bear the authority of government are not willing to accept this Truth that you would remove them from their positions of power and replace them with those who are willing to do your will. And we especially pray for your faithful followers who have for years tirelessly worked to protect the lives of the unborn. May the work they are doing for you be blessed by your Almighty hand so that the schemes of the devil cannot overcome them. Lastly, we pray for the lives of the unborn and all the innocent babies that have been wrongfully taken out of your hand through the evil of abortion; may they and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

Pope Benedict tells the bishops of the world that during this Year of Faith, "Reflection on the faith will have to be intensified, so as to help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to the Gospel." (§8)

But common sense tells us that the bishops could talk and reflect on the Faith until they are blue in the face and it would have no effect unless each individual Catholic takes as of utmost importance his own faith in Jesus Christ. And that is exactly his next point. The Pope goes on to say, "Not without reason, Christians in the early centuries were required to learn the creed from memory. It served them as a daily prayer not to forget the commitment they had undertaken in baptism." (§9.2)

The word commitment in this quote is very important. Each Catholic has received baptism as "an effective sign of entry into the people of believers in order to obtain salvation." (§10.4) Due to this fact, all Catholics have a commitment to the Catholic Faith. And just because most Catholics were baptized as infants and therefore don't remember their baptism taking place doesn't change the fact that this commitment still exists. We must treat this commitment to Christ and to the Catholic Faith in a serious manner, as if our lives depend upon it, because they do. The lives of our eternal souls are at stake. There is no more time to waste as nominal Catholics. We must realize who Christ is, what He has done for us, and live our lives accordingly in a completely committed manner.

The release of the Pope's letter Porta Fidei coincided with the beginnning of the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The theme for this particular Synod, as indicated in Porta Fidei, is "The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith." (§4)

And why is a new evangelization necessary? As I indicated yesterday, we can no longer take for granted that people in the world, or even those within the Church, have any real knowledge of the Faith. This is a very serious problem and it must be corrected.

But how is this new evangelization to take place? Pope Benedict explains, "The renewal of the Church is...achieved through the witness offered by the lives of believers: by their very existence in the world. Christians are called to radiate the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us." (§6.1) But for this to be possible then Catholics must know the Faith. And that is why the Pope has enacted this Year of Faith. He writes, "The Year of Faith...is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Saviour of the world." (§6.2) We are called by the Pope himself during this year to become so convinced of the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that our very presence in the world will lead to its evangelization. It may sound impossible, but this task is no more daunting than what the Apostles faced 2,000 years ago and in order to make it happen we will need the same courage and the same sincere belief in Jesus Christ that they possessed.

To make this happen I believe the first thing we need to do is contained here in Pope Benedict's own words,

We must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered as sustenance for his disciples (cf. Jn 6:51). Indeed, the teaching of Jesus still resounds in our day with the same power: “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6:27). The question posed by his listeners is the same that we ask today: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (Jn 6:28). We know Jesus’ reply: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6:29). Belief in Jesus Christ, then, is the way to arrive definitively at salvation. (§3)

We are called to belief in Jesus Christ. And this belief is strengthened by "feeding ourselves on the word of God." And it must be remembered that "word of God" does not only refer to the Sacred Scriptures but also to everything contained within Sacred Tradition, both of which make up the word of God and have been "faithfully handed down by the Church." But our belief is strengthened in a more magnificent, and yet mysterious way by feeding on "the bread of life" through receiving our Lord's  Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And with the strength we receive from the word of God and the Bread of Life we can go out and bring others to Christ by the witness of our lives in the world. 

In his Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei Pope Benedict wrote,

It often happens that Christians are more concerned for the social, cultural and political consequences of their commitment, continuing to think of the faith as a self-evident presupposition for life in society. In reality, not only can this presupposition no longer be taken for granted, but it is often openly denied. (Porta Fidei, §2)

To me it seems the Pope is telling us that we can no longer assume that people in the world understand anything at all of the Christian Faith. And with the many Catholics that have been affected by a worldly and secular mentality I think we could say the same about many people within the Church.

But there also seems to be a second meaning in regards to his reference to people who "are more concerned for the social, cultural and political consequences of their commitment." What I think this means is that some people put more emphasis on these consequences he has listed than on proclaiming the saving work of Christ. But these consequences are secondary and dependent upon a belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind. Therefore, the most important thing that any Catholic has to do is to first proclaim the Truth of the Gospel: that the Son of God became Man through the Blessed Virgin Mary, that He has revealed to all mankind who God is and that God wants all mankind to be saved from sin and eternal death, and that the death and Resurrection of Jesus was the only possible sacrifice that could save us from sin and eternal death. But because so many people of the world, and even within the Church, no longer understand this we need more than anything else at this time a Year of Faith. And during this year each member of the Catholic Church needs to learn his faith in a more perfect manner and proclaim it to the world.

Earlier today I read Pope Benedict's Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei. The release of this letter marks the beginning of the Year of Faith inaugurated by Pope Benedict. This letter is absolutely wonderful and I recommend that all Catholics read it. Doing so will help ensure that everyone is on the same page, so to speak, with what this Year of Faith is all about.

I know my posts have been sporadic lately. Due to that fact I am going to start posting various parts of this great document on my blog. I will try to comment on every post but some may not need any comment like the one for today. Today's post is from section 9 and I believe that it gives us the main purpose for both the letter and the Year of Faith.

We want this Year to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope. It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, which is "the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed; ...and also the source from which all its power flows." At the same time, we make it our prayer that believers'  witness of life may grow in credibility. To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed, and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.

I don't think this really needs any further comment. May we all grow deeper in our own faith during this Year of Faith, but let us realize that won't happen unless we put our own effort into it.