Pope Emeritus Benedict did NOT criticize Pope Francis

Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict

Recently, several Conservative sources quoted Pope Emeritus Benedict as saying that the Catholic church was close to "capsizing".  

This was a partial quote out of context in an attempt to change the meaning.  Not surprisingly, Pope Emeritus Benedict was upset about the misrepresentation and through his secretary, released an article clarifying things.

"Almost capsizing" was a phrase Benedict used often but never without the other part of it, assuring his listeners that even though the church rode in difficult waters, the Lord is always with His Church.  He was upset that he had been misquoted and portrayed as if he was criticizing Pope Francis. 

The article his secretary released can be found at the following link:

Benedict did not criticize Pope Francis

Pope Francis - much loved by the poor and lowly and hated by the media

Pope Francis reaching out to people

It seems that the Media hates Papa Francis - they are doing the "Sarah Palin" thing with him, ranting and raving and taking his speeches out of context etc. I would hope that Catholics would educate themselves so they can defend - sadly many believe the media more than they do the Gospel.

The following quote was taken from the article a friend on a "social networking site" provided.... The author of this article in a newspaper called "the federalist" wrote:  "The encyclical tells us much about the man who delivers it. Straightaway, it certifies the depth and span of this pope’s megalomania. A breathtaking strut into absolutism, it is addressed not simply to Catholics but, like the “Communist Manifesto,” to the whole world. "

Megalomania.... the humble character who until he was Pope, rode the city bus to work... really? "Communist Manifesto"? Notice the "author" of this article discounts Pope Francis' strong statements about how what is ruining the ecology is the widespread immorality and millions of humans aborted. That's the real bottom line - they hate his strong stand on abortion. Good going, Papa Francis... you are walking in the Footsteps of our Blessed Savior with your unpopularity with the media - afterall, we follow a man who was crucified for similar views...  I just hope people are smart enough to realize what the media is doing or trying to do - and therein lies my worry, because I know several Catholics who believe the media like it's gospel and question the Gospel like it's the media...

My wise husband's comment about this all,  was "You can imagine what CNN would have done to Jesus!" ;)  (He also, added that CNN would have had Jesus on the cross quicker than those who crucified Him did!)

Sue

Blessed Bartolo Longo

Blessed Bartolo Longo, (1841-1926) is very inspiring!  

He was a tertiary Dominican. Born on Feb 11, 1841 of wealthy parents, he was raised in a devout Catholic home and practiced his Faith until he attended the University of Naples. There, studying for a law degree, he fell in with others practicing the occult and attended many seances and the like. He became so confused, he left the Faith and was "ordained" as a "priest of Satan".  This after a long period of preparation, fasting and mortification.  When he was "ordained", he heard thunder strike.... but despite his bad experiences, he continued to talk others into leaving the Faith.  Finally, he heard a voice which told him "Return to the Church" and he went to confession and returned to the Lord.  His good friend, Vicente Pepes who helped him to return to the church, placed Bartoto in the care of a holy Dominican Friar, Alberto Radente, who helped Bartolo with the final stages of withdrawing from the occult sect.  This Friar also introduced him to a group of pious people who cared for the poor, the sick and the needy.  A member of this group was a widow, Countess Mariana de Fusco who owned a large tract of land near the ancient city of Pompeii which had been destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in the year, 79 AD and remained buried in ash for almost 2000 years.  Blessed Bartolo began helping the poor farmers who worked the fields around there.  Realizing his former error and how he had led people away from God's Truth in the church, Longo despaired and became extremely depressed and he almost committed suicide but then he was consoled by the reminder of the Friar Alberto saying that anyone who perpetuated the Devotion of the Holy Rosary will be saved so he began perpetuating devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary and this devotion, distributing Rosaries and teaching people how to pray the Rosary. He also founded a home for orphans.  He and the countess eventually got married but lived in celibacy because both had taken vows of celibacy previously.  

From his fasting and illness, Bartolo suffered with poor health and digestive problems for the rest of his life. He died in 1926 at the age of 85... and was Beatified by St John Paul II.  Blessed Bartolo was not only an attorney and talented writer but also a talented musician who played the flute!

Here are some videos about Blessed Bartolo Longo:

http://youtu.be/kLi9V9oO6ew

http://youtu.be/vAemzQDLVxo

The Sisterhood show on Lifetime TV - true Convent life?

A recent OP-ED remarked that TLC (the "learning  channel") had long deleted "Learning" from its TV shows.

I thought that was a good comment and a nice way to begin this blog. That is, TV is primarily entertainment although some shows try to disguise themselves as learning tools.

The Sisterhood is a show offered, not on the Learning Channel but rather on Lifetime TV.  Therefore, when I first watched it, I didn't expect much (to put it mildly).  Imagine my surprise when it actually seems to be not only a decent show but not anti Catholic! Perhaps that's because they involved a real Sister Order in the making of the show and some of those seen in the show are Sisters in real life.

The scenario is 5 young ladies trying to discern whether they have a vocation or not by "sampling" life in several convents.  Since they don't appear to be praying with the Sisters, I don't think I would call them "Aspirants" which usually is what they term non Postulants, living in a convent.

Additionally, the young ladies selected, while glamorous and "cute", would, I think, not pass the first interview for convent life.  Most of the young ladies seem to have little understanding of what convent life would entail for them or the commitment involved.

A bit - shall we say - unusual, is that they are sampling not only life in the convent, but participating in the ministry of the Sister Orders they are visiting.  They all, being fundamentally nice people, enjoyed that part but of course, having been in the convent myself, I can say, convent life is a lot more complex than being a volunteer in a soup kitchen.

Despite the foregoing, I must say, I find the show, entertaining enough to hold my interest and a relief from the usual hate and discontent seen in TV shows concerning Catholicism.  Watch (as is good advice with all TV) with a grain of salt i.e. if you are interested in convent life, this show is not going to tell you much about convent life.

Convent life includes a lot of praying.  The day starts in with "morning prayers" and then, the Sisters go to daily Mass.  Sometime in the late afternoon is usually time for a Rosary with the group and then, of course, evening prayers.  That is, if you don't enjoy prayer, you might not enjoy convent life.

Then too, again where the show differs from reality, having a Vocation to the Sisterhood, is a call from God and therefore, even if a young lady loves convent life and praying a lot as I certainly did, that doesn't necessarily mean she has a Vocation.  In my case, God had other plans for me - a life partner husband, a son, four grandchildren and a great granddaughter.

I saw the great granddaughter in a dream, repeatedly over a 2 week period before I was pregnant with our son... the brief message I was given was "She needs you", which alerted me to the fact that God had a child to place in my womb.

Later on, we used Natural Family Planning which I hoped God would override (I was hesitant to get pregnant again as I had developed some serious health issues over the years) but God only had planned the one son for us.

I recently heard a wonderful homily given by a local priest which included this - "Joy is conforming with the Will of God" so regardless of what a person may think he or she has planned for his or her life, God drew up that Plan long before we were born.  "I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb."  Jeremiah 1:5 tells us.  (the Photo is of the convent I was in, in the 1960's)

Catholic church becoming liberal? Don't hold your breath!

A blog on CNN suggested that the Pope would be changing the church toward more liberalism but this was not confirmed by anything he said, nor any of his homilies.

The video I am sending said the Pope called for "great changes" in the church but the vatican "expert" interviewed said nothing of the sort and if feeding the poor is what they mean, the Catholic church already feeds 3/4 of the world's poor and hungry, a fact conveniently "forgotten" by the secular media.

The Holy Father simply said that the church needs to reach out to people - be more Evangelistic -  his remark about not getting caught up in "unimportant details" which I feel was grossly misinterpreted by the liberal media, did not mean lowering Eucharistic standards or making the Catholic church into "Catholic lite" as in more tolerant of sin.  The CNN blogger actually referred to the church asking pro abortion politicians to refrain from receiving Holy Communion as "wafer wars"  (** sigh **) and said he thought the Pope might, in the future, allow politicians supporting abortion to receive the Eucharist - my reaction to this would be, don't hold your breath for this to happen. 
So bottom line, I would not waste much time with his blog however, the news video at this site seems a bit more accurate and it's good to be aware of what the media is saying about our church so we can provide corrections to it.

Of course, the Holy Father is very evangelistic as we also should be, but he is also very strong on good doctrine and upholding Catholic teachings!

Seems in the media, they are either dissing him or perpetuating - shall we say to be nice - inaccuracies (hmmm) about him.

Here's the link: and it's CNN but think of it this way, people probably won't bother reading the article and just seeing the photo or watching the video will remind them of church, especially those who have been lax in their Sunday attendance.

God works all good for those who love Him!

I believe the link below will take you right to the video....

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2013/11/26/seg-pope-changes.cnn.html

Resignation of the Pope - Open season on the church?

On the occasion of the resignation of the Pope, the blog-o-sphere and the news media have been vibrating with verbiage and much of it seems to be taking the opportunity to suggest that the 85 year old, sickly Pope's resignation is somehow a criticism of the Catholic church.

I get that the media does not like us but I've seen one of Benedict's old old treatises being quoted by several Catholics and this is a bit strange IMO.  That is, instead of quoting his very eloquent Encyclicals or his homilies while in the Papacy, or his scholarly 3 volume work about the life of Jesus, they appear to prefer dredging up something he wrote in the 1960's to a church in total turmoil.  And naturally, it was a bit critical of the church because back then, many Catholics, even priests and religious folks seemed to have been extremely confused and somewhat lost with the changes in the liturgy of Vatican II.  What I don't understand is why Benedict's recent and very important works are being bypassed in favor of this 40 plus year old treatise written to a church in transition (in 1969).

What Josef Ratzinger said about the church in 1969, in the middle of the turmoil of the aftermath of Vatican II (which was extremely poorly launched) is not true now.  The so called "modernizing" of the church was being done then, and because it was so poorly explained and got a lot of complaint from the pew, he likely was trying to educate the public and clergy about the changes.

In retrospect, they should have never promulgated the changes until they had a new "code of Canon law" in place.  The changes themselves were not bad but Catholics seem to lose their minds for several years as far as liturgy and we had the "Kumbaya" every Sunday mentality. Because many Catholics had not even listened to the Mass for years (they showed up and fingered their Rosaries), they knew little about what was going on, on the altar at Mass.

I remember as a Protestant, when I inquired about the Catholic Church from my Catholic friends, I found they all seemed to only know 3 things about their doctrine:  1. If you eat meat on Fridays and don't get to confession soon, and you die, you will go to h*ll, 2. Babies have to be baptized soon after birth or they go to a place called "Limbo" (no one could tell me what exactly limbo was) and 3. If you don't go to Mass on Sunday, you are in mortal sin and could go to h*ll if you don't get to confession.

So naturally, when Vatican II came along, the combination of the poorly planned promulgation of the changes and the ignorance of the average Catholic in the pew, caused the huge liturgical abuse and general turmoil we saw for several years after Vatican II.  We ignored centuries of wonderful liturgical music and sang trashy pop songs in church, priests ripped up Rosaries in the pulpit and told the people "we don't do this anymore", church members danced in skanky garb and called it "liturgical dance" and most folks seemed totally confused.

We all know horror stories from those days like the priest who told the people that the Precious Blood was just wine and poured the excess into a plant during his homily at Mass!

Many of us wondered if the church would ever stop the insanity and many left the church - not due to the changes but due to the chaos abounding after the changes.  I even tried to leave the church back then (I missed the Blessed Sacrament too much so I returned soon after I left) - as year after year, things seemed to be totally messed up with no signs of improvement.

And this was the state of the church that Josef Ratzinger was talking about in the quotes from 1969, in the article now being dredged up.  He was not talking about the church today which has greatly matured from the "sick sixties".

The hierarchal structure of the church, which is often criticized by outsiders and Catholics also, is part of what ensures that the church is "one".  Before being Catholic, I was a member of a congregationalist concept church (which Protestant denominations tend to be even if they have a central president) and thus, there was no uniformity in the churches, even within the same denomination.

Cardinal Ratzinger's resignation as Pope has everything to do with his health state and nothing to do with a criticism of the Catholic Church, despite what we are hearing from  the mass media and/or reading in blogs even from Catholics.... He's blind in one eye and going deaf and described as cadaverously thin - he's 85 years old and just unable to keep up with the vigorous life as the Holy Father.  When his last trip just about did him in (those trips are very tiring, and would be even for a younger person), his doctors told him he was not well enough to travel by plane anymore and so he knew he would not be able to go to the upcoming Youth Conference.  He makes his choices - remaining the Pope and dying in a couple of months at which time, we will still have to select another Pope or resigning now and maybe living on a few more years, focusing on prayer and contemplation. I think most of us would make the same choice he did.

As a former outsider, it has always seemed to me that Catholics trust their church less than Protestants trust us.  There are times the blog-o-sphere (and the media) should either get their facts straight or consider embracing the virtue of silence.  (the photo is of Pope Benedict XVI several years ago when he visited the USA)

Priest Scandal - what is the truth here?

There are two sides of the story of the so priest scandal but we only hear one side. The media emphasizes the cases (most of which happened years ago) of priests, statistically less than 1 percent of Catholic priests have been accused of this) ignoring that as high as 50% of abortionists may have also abused those who trusted them as well as the 20% of public school teachers and countless coaches also accused. Govt statistics tell us that most se/xual abuse happens in the home (75% percent of it) by step fathers and uncles etc.

Se/xual molestation is a definite problem in our society and will continue to be a problem if we only address the 1% of those priests thusly accused, closing our eyes to the overwhelming majority of abuse which has nothing to do with priests. (I also was se/xually molested, 4 times. By my violin teacher when I was 12 years old, by a guy my mother matched me up with when I was 19 who only didn't ra/pe me by the Grace of God and my own quick thinking, by a sports coach when I was in my 30's and by a doctor I had met socially who examined my sore leg in the swimming pool and proceeded to "cop a feel"!)

That being said, when this all came up, being a Roman Catholic myself, I was curious to do some investigating to see how bad things were or were not.

I first started with the town I live in, one of the 10 largest cities in the USA.

In my area, there are 5 priests accused over the past 30 years (this was before another one recently got accused - he quit the priesthood and the Catholic church, and started his own congregation before they could prosecute him). Ok, 2 of them were defrocked, 1 of them had fled to Ireland, 1 of them was dead and 1 was currently in prison. The Bishop had acted quickly on all the cases.

Conclusion, it was not true in my diocese that anything had been "covered up". On the contrary.

But what about the priest in Boston who started the firestorm? Curious about this, I researched him on the S.N.A.P. website. They have all the PDFs of the case there and SNAP is a group of victims who are very antiCatholic. I thought it was a good place to start the research - certainly no one can accuse them of covering anything up or being biased in favor of the Catholic church.

Where I expected to find something awful, I was actually quite surprised at what I uncovered on the SNAP site!

The priest in Boston had had complaints against him for a handful of boys but when the Cardinal went to investigate, he found that the priest was well liked in his parish and that even the parents of the kids who had complained, did not uphold the testimonies of their own kids! The cardinal's hands were tied. The priest, of course, lied through his teeth but the sad thing was, the people of his parish UPHELD HIM.

Ironically, the way the cardinal ended up discovering the truth, was that he was doing a "one on one" with all priests and when he got to this priest and had lunch with him, he realized immediately, that the priest was likely guilty! The Cardinal went home from that luncheon and started proceedings to defrock the priest! It should be noted that when he fired that priest from his parish, the people of the parish staged a major demonstration against the Cardinal! None of this made the news of course. :(

Quite different from the way the media or movies like "Our Fathers" portray it, isn't it?

Bottom line, He who started our church, Jesus, was crucified as a common criminal and He was perfect. Certainly our priests and cardinals and even strong Christians cannot expect otherwise.

That is, if Jesus rode to Heaven on a cross, should we expect to ride there in a plush lined Cadillac? Can we expect to be "popular" in a society which was capable of crucifying God incarnate?

And - please understand - the media does (as Stephen King put it) go for the "gross-out" even if it means um...bending the truth. Media information should not what anyone should be making decisions based on - it should carry a disclaimer of "for entertainment only - any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental!"

Details on the Bishop's decision about St Josephs Hospital

This video is the best I've seen for details - it should answer any questions:

News Conference at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, Dec. 21, 2010 from Diocese of Phoenix on Vimeo.

The Diocese of Phoenix held a news conference today announcing that St. Joseph's Hospital can no longer identify itself as Catholic.