Sin is of many colours

Donal Dorr, a priest expert on the relationship between the spiritual life and social justice, draws attention to three different relationships which each of us has: with God, with people around us, and with society.

Dorr quotes the Prophet Micah who writes: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindly, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic 6,8).

Each of these relationships de­mands of us a conversion. “To walk humbly with our God” we need a religious conversion, accepting God as the Lord of our life and getting rid of all false gods which, often, include our very self. “Loving kindly” de­mands a moral conversion, not only respecting the dignity and rights of our neighbours but also being generous towards them in their needs.

Some are not sure about God. They feel that, even without God, they can still lovingly create a happy human community. This is the basis of secularism. History has shown otherwise. Rationalism promised to bring us happiness by doing away with God and simply letting the rational mind come to its own conclusions about right living.

As Romano Guardini remarked, Rationalism’s main contribution consisted of two world wars.

The third relationship is one we very rarely talk about. It is our relationship with society. We are not just a bunch of people who happen to be living at the same time; we are organised into a society that has rules, which depends on interdependence for its existence and which prescribes rights and duties.

This relationship demands of us a political conversion or a review of our relationship with society.

Unfortunately, this aspect is not being stressed enough in the moral teaching of the Church. The Church often speaks about our duty to be charitable towards those in need and, over the years, the Church itself has been committed to charity work through institutions and in other ways even long before governments began to assume their responsibilities in these matters.

However, when it comes to justice, there is shyness. It is true that during the past century the popes wrote great encyclicals on the subject but, in most cases, these deal with the principles of ownership, labour, capital and so on.

This is a very important aspect of justice and has contributed towards a culture that respects the dignity and rights of the weakest. Yet, even this teaching of the Church has not been promulgated enough to reach the grassroots. The authors of a book on the social teaching of the Church were so struck by the silence of the Church on this topic that they decided to call their book: The Church’s Best Kept Secret.

Society is more than capital and labour. It is like a family that will stand or fall depending on whether all are pulling the same rope. Especially in societies, like ours, where the welfare state is strong, the duties of each member of society towards the rest can hardly be stressed enough.

So, the nitty-gritty of everyday living, which includes the sacrosanct duty of giving a day’s work for a day’s pay, paying taxes, not wasting or destroying our resources, not claiming excessive salaries, not practising favours, also needs to be stressed.

Lately, we have all been following the economic difficulties of Greece. It has been said that those problems were of the Greeks’ own making because of their exaggeratedly high salaries and pensions and because the people avoided paying taxes.

I cannot tell whether this was the sole contributor to Greece’s economic disaster but, at least as far as paying taxes and not always earning our pay, we may not be far behind. Greece may not be the only place where the VAT receipt is becoming a collectors’ item.

And yet this is hardly ever denounced. Not many Sunday homilies confront this subject. Nor do we hear many official Church pronouncements on these duties.

This too is sin! The Church would acquire more credibility if it were less selective in its prophetic message.

alfred.j.micallef@um.edu.mt

House Blessing with Holy Water

House Blessing with Holy Water

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By John B. Monteiro

<!–Report By:By John B. Monteiro
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Bellevision Media Network

07 April 2012: Our Catholic community has entered a celebratory cycle and births, deaths, marriages, christening, first communions and anniversaries (death, birth and wedding) are celebrated with equal gusto with non-vegetarian dishes and alcohol. This has overshadowed and eclipsed some of the old liturgical practices such as sprinkling freshly blessed holy water on the Sunday congregation. – Fr. Cornelius, Ferangipet Monastery.

 
One of such practices, annual house blessing still survives, with changed time-frame, though in some large metro parishes have bid good-by to this ancient ritual. In the first two months of 2012, the parish priest and assistant parish priest of Bondel, for instance, finished blessing over 850 homes of parishioners, spending time from 7.30 AM to noon – six days a week. Earlier, blessing of houses used to be made in weeks following Holy Saturday when a fresh batch of holy water is blessed. Now, to avoid the April/May heat, the period is advanced to the start of the calendar year. It is notable that for various reasons visiting residences of parishioners by the parish priest for blessing homes is not a practice in Europe and North America. Even in India, , with joint families splitting into nuclear families, and the consequent increase in households, in some urban parishes, like Malad in Mumbai, the practice of visiting homes for annual blessing has been given up. Instead, families can take home the holy water from the church and bless their homes with standard prayers available in books of common prayers. In the case of Bondel, the number of Catholic households has increased from 350 in 1990 to over 850 now.

 
Does this mean that we can give up annual house blessing by parish priests and save for them the time and struggle of many hours of padayatra? The annual house blessing visits have some more collateral objectives that help the parish priest to better understand his flock and keep himself updated during the spot visit.  For instance, as Fr. Antony Serrao, Bondel’ last parish priest now transferred to Bendoor, explained, knowing the general living conditions of parishioners can help in tailoring the Sunday homilies so that they have relevance to the lifestyle of the parishioners, including their economic, educational and social status. The present parish priest, Fr. Andrew D’Sousa, in his remarks in the parish bulletin, Bondelche Bonder, post-house blessings padayatra, exhorts the parishioners to give a proper and prominent place to the altar in their homes. Also, during such visits, updating of the census register of parishioners takes place, accounting for those who leave the household to set up their separate nuclear set-up as also those who do not live in the parish – for reasons of employment in metro cities or abroad, specially the Gulf. Such visits provides an opportunity to improve interpersonal relationship and bonding between the parish priest and the parishioners.

 
Coming back to holy water, it is sanctified by a priest for the purpose of baptism, the blessing of persons, places and objects or as means of expelling evil. The first use of holy water for baptism and spiritual cleansing is common among several religions. The second use as sacramental protection against evil is almost exclusive to Catholics. The Apostolic constitutions which go back to 400AD attribute the precept of using holy water to Apostle Mathew. However, it is plausible that in earlier Christian times water was used for expiatory or purificatory purposes. In many cases the water used for the sacrament of baptism was flowing water, sea or river water, and could not receive the same blessing as that contained in the baptismals or the founts at the entrance of the churches, the latter being found as sources of bacterial or virus infections. Because of this danger, now there are holy water machines that work like automatic liquid soap dispensers. People used holy water while entering the church to make a sign of the cross to reflect the renewal of baptism, cleansing of venial sins as well as providing protection against evil. The related prayer is: “By this holy water and by your precious blood wash away my sins, O Lord”.

Old timers will recall that at the start of Sunday Mass the priest would breeze through the church sprinkling holy water on the congregation. This used to be freshly blessed before the Mass. But, in today’s rushed, pressure-cooker world, there is no time to spare for such rituals. The annual house blessings may also take the same route.
(There is a book by Henry Theiler titled Holy Water and its significance to Catholics.)

 
Holy water is blessed twice a year – on Holy Saturday and January 6 (Apphipany) or any time as needed. It is clean water in a container with a mixture of salt which has preservative qualities. While blessing the water, we remind ourselves of our baptism and to remain loyal to the baptismal vows. “Bless this water. When we use this with trust, pardon our sins, protect us from all evils and diseases. Lord, protect us from all difficulties of body and soul and make us worthy of joining you with purified soul. Protect us with this mixture of water and salt”.

These are core of the prayers on some occasions.

House Blessing: Food for hunger, clothes to wear and house to live are basic needs of the family. Our families mirror the Holy Trinity. Let the Holy Family be our example. Bless this house today. May the blessings of Holy Trinity and Holy Family be on us. Lord our father bestow your kind protection on this family. Be their refuge and hope. Guide their steps as they go in and out. Bless and protect them from illness and diseases.

Blessing of Tools: Lord our creator has made us his partners in his work of creation and has commanded that with our hands and legs to fulfill his creative work. So, let us ask his grace to give Him glory through our work.

Blessing Vehicles: While we thank God for the vehicle, those who travel in this vehicle may be safe. When we bless this new vehicle, let us thank god and pray that those who travel in this vehicle may be saved from all danger.

Coming back to house blessing, it is a case of mountain going to Mohammed, the priest leaving the comforts of his cozy parish residence and sweating it out to visit the rich and poor alike. His visit is also an incentive for spring-cleaning the homes and hiding the dirty linen for the day!

John B. Monteiro, author and journalist, is editor of his website www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) with provision for instant response. Try responding!

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New Memo from the Bishops Says HHS Mandate “Radically Flawed”

From the National Catholic Register yesterday, details of a March 29 memorandum addressing the problems with the HHS Mandate.

The U.S. bishops said that the government’s latest recommendations on its federal contraception mandate fail to address religious-freedom concerns.

In a March 29 memo, they said the mandate “still forces us to act against our conscience and teaching” and that the only real solution is to allow individuals and institutions to offer insurance plans that align with their moral convictions.
No matter what mechanisms are chosen to fund and administrate the mandate, religious individuals and institutions will be prohibited from providing health coverage that is “consistent with their values,” the bishops explained.

In the memo, the bishops commented on the latest development in an ongoing controversy surrounding a federal mandate that will require employers to provide health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their conscience.

The mandate, announced on Jan. 20, has come under fire from numerous groups and individuals for infringing upon the religious freedom of those who object to such coverage.

A new advance notice of proposed rulemaking published by the Obama administration on March 21 outlines various recommendations for different ways to implement the mandate as it will apply to religious organizations that oppose the required coverage.

The administration has requested public comment on the proposals until June 19.
The bishops acknowledged that the “tentative and complex” proposals are very detailed and “demand further study.”

However, they said that their initial analysis suggests that they “are still faced with the same fundamental issues” identified in their previous statement, “United for Religious Freedom.”

Go read the rest.

Have you given the Administration your own personal feedback on the HHS Mandate yet? You have until mid-June. Go here to find the link, and see what Joe Six-Pack wrote.

In my comment, I referenced Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Joan Frawley Desmond writes in another NC Register piece today that the battle against the HHS Mandate is a call to dust the cobwebs off of Pope Paul VI’s message, and proclaim the truth on artificial contraception unabashedly.

WASHINGTON — Could there possibly be a silver lining in the federal contraception-mandate controversy?

For all the institutional disruption, political spin and vitriol generated by the mandate’s supporters, who have mischaracterized the bishops’ stance as a “war on women,” the crisis has yielded some unexpected fruits. Not only has it aroused the “sleeping giant” of Catholicism in the United States, prompting an energetic defense of the free exercise of cherished institutions, it has provoked a fresh assessment of Church teaching on contraception.

“The main issue remains that of religious liberty. But this whole episode has provided a catechetical opportunity to speak about the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life in its origins,” observed Archbishop-designate William Lori of Baltimore, the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Contraception has been touted as the best possible thing for women and society, while our experience over the past 40-plus years suggests the opposite.”

“There is a new opening,” noted the outgoing bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. And while an increasingly toxic sexual culture has helped provoke a broader reassessment, young Catholics also have been inspired by Blessed John Paul II’s theology of the body, which offers a deeply hopeful vision of human life and love amid a culture that has witnessed declining rates of marriage and a rise in non-marital births.

Not only are priests, in their Sunday homilies, offering a defense of Humanae Vitae, but the controversy has forced the media to provide a forum for Church teaching that has been ridiculed throughout the globe.

This week, Politico posted commentary by Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life group Live Action. Rose affirmed the First Amendment rights of religious institutions to resist a federal mandate that forces them to cover health services that violate their moral teachings.

Then she countered partisan efforts to frame Catholic teaching as an attack on women’s fundamental rights, rejecting the suggestion that American women uniformly sought increased access to contraception.

Speaking for a new generation that has adopted a more skeptical view of feminist ideology, she stated, “We are women for whom the idea of artificial birth control as ‘preventive care’ is deeply insulting.”

“We don’t wish to take the country back in time; rather, we aspire to move it forward, beyond a time when women are treated as objects and pitted against their children and their religious institutions — and toward a time when truly emancipated women embrace their intrinsic dignity and, with it, their authentic womanhood,” said Rose.

Amen. That’s what Gloria Purvis was saying on the video that went viral.

It’s amazing how God works his will on Earth through our weak human natures, isn’t it?

HHS-Religious Freedom Battle Yields Unexpected Rewards

WASHINGTON — Could there possibly be a silver lining in the federal contraception-mandate controversy?

For all the institutional disruption, political spin and vitriol generated by the mandate’s supporters, who have mischaracterized the bishops’ stance as a “war on women,” the crisis has yielded some unexpected fruits. Not only has it aroused the “sleeping giant” of Catholicism in the United States, prompting an energetic defense of the free exercise of cherished institutions, it has provoked a fresh assessment of Church teaching on contraception.

“The main issue remains that of religious liberty. But this whole episode has provided a catechetical opportunity to speak about the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life in its origins,” observed Archbishop-designate William Lori of Baltimore, the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Contraception has been touted as the best possible thing for women and society, while our experience over the past 40-plus years suggests the opposite.”

“There is a new opening,” noted the outgoing bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. And while an increasingly toxic sexual culture has helped provoke a broader reassessment, young Catholics also have been inspired by Blessed John Paul II’s theology of the body, which offers a deeply hopeful vision of human life and love amid a culture that has witnessed declining rates of marriage and a rise in non-marital births.

Not only are priests, in their Sunday homilies, offering a defense of Humanae Vitae, but the controversy has forced the media to provide a forum for Church teaching that has been ridiculed throughout the globe.

This week, Politico posted commentary by Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life group Live Action. Rose affirmed the First Amendment rights of religious institutions to resist a federal mandate that forces them to cover health services that violate their moral teachings.

Then she countered partisan efforts to frame Catholic teaching as an attack on women’s fundamental rights, rejecting the suggestion that American women uniformly sought increased access to contraception.

Speaking for a new generation that has adopted a more skeptical view of feminist ideology, she stated, “We are women for whom the idea of artificial birth control as ‘preventive care’ is deeply insulting.”

“We don’t wish to take the country back in time; rather, we aspire to move it forward, beyond a time when women are treated as objects and pitted against their children and their religious institutions — and toward a time when truly emancipated women embrace their intrinsic dignity and, with it, their authentic womanhood,” said Rose.

Unexpectedly, the headlines have even prompted some self-identified Catholic institutions to reassess the inclusion of contraception in their health plans. This week, Ohio’s Xavier University announced that it would discontinue its coverage of birth control for employees; Xavier’s president cited the mandate debate as the catalyst for the policy shift.

Meanwhile, Catholic universities have begun sponsoring forums on the issue, drawing academics and activists like Lila Rose, and stirring a rich discussion about the Catholic vision of human love and sexuality among students.

During one recent Catholic University of America panel discussion, Margaret McCarthy, a theology professor at the university’s John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, linked the religious-freedom debate with modern efforts to characterize Catholic sexual ethics as an unreasonable body of teaching that could result in the repression of human freedom.

McCarthy suggested that the debate about the mandate provided a window into two competing visions of human flourishing. One understanding was shaped by Catholic moral theology, enriched by Blessed John Paul II’s theology of the body.

The second was a more modern, materialist understanding that equated human happiness with autonomy from relationships that bound the individual to a spouse and children. The human body, with its generative capacity, challenged this ethos of autonomy, and contraception was thus endorsed as a necessity for human flourishing.

Today, the demand for expanded access to birth control and sterilization underscores the power of this flawed, yet entrenched understanding of human fulfillment. However, McCarthy also noted a number of sociological studies that charted rising levels of unhappiness, especially among women who expressed feelings of “deprivation.”

“The Church, in its teaching on contraception, is making a claim to standing with our humanity and its happiness,” said McCarthy.

During the discussion following the panel presentations, students and young professionals asked for more detailed explanations of Humanae Vitae and natural family planning. Their questions signaled a surprising openness to Catholic teaching, in light of the undisputed cultural problem of alienation and sexual irresponsibility.

Helen Alvare, a pro-life leader and family law professor at George Mason University, said she has witnessed a similar shift in Catholic attitudes toward Church teaching in recent months.

“Women are ready to have this conversation. Who would guess that it would take over four decades of experience to get there?” she said. “The question of what they choose to do becomes very interesting when there are virtually no limits; and yet they still would like to be married at some point, or have some time to devote to their children.”

Alvare and Kim Daniels, a lawyer and mother of six, crafted a petition for women who endorsed the U.S. bishops’ stance on the HHS mandate. So far, 25,000 women have signed the petition.

“These women are living every kind of life imaginable. They have achieved freedom and equality, but it wasn’t divorcing sex from babies that gave it to them,” said Alvare, who believes the debate has already exposed the limits of ’70s-style feminist ideology.

Richard Doerflinger, the U.S. bishops’ chief lobbyist on life issues, agreed that younger Catholics’ appear more willing to set aside the received wisdom of previous generations and take a fresh look at Pope Paul VI’s encyclical.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, there was relatively little discussion about the merits of the teaching. It ended up as an argument about whether the Church could teach on this issue authoritatively — in the face of an irresistible new cultural wave promoting contraception.”

“Now, we have a whole new generation that doesn’t have that baggage and might be willing to look at the teaching on its merits,” said Doerflinger, who has served at the bishops’ conference for 31 years.

Has the HHS contraception mandate actually provided a new opportunity to promote a widely ridiculed but poorly misunderstood Church teaching?

Archbishop-designate Lori appeared to have reached this conclusion. And Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York recently signaled that the crisis has already resulted in a measure of soul searching at the highest levels of the Church leadership.

In a March 30 interview, Cardinal Dolan admitted that the “tsunami of dissent” greeting Humanae Vitae led many Church leaders to soft-pedal its teaching.  He confessed that he was among those who “forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day.”

Now, the HHS mandate has given Paul VI’s prescient teaching new life. The Obama administration didn’t anticipate this particular outcome, but the state of affairs calls to mind Blessed John Paul II’s oft-repeated observation: “There are no coincidences.”

Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.

‘What If the Sexual Revolution Didn’t Make Women Happy?’ Mary Eberstadt Asks …

WASHINGTON — While the U.S. bishops press for legal and legislative remedies to the federal contraception mandate, opinion surveys confirm that many practicing Catholics ignore Church teaching on birth control.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, in a published interview last week, acknowledged the failure of many bishops to defend and promote Humanae Vitae (“On the Regulation of Birth”), Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, which ignited a firestorm when it was issued in 1968.

The encyclical “brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the Church, that I think most of us — and I’m using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself — kind of subconsciously said, Whoa. We’d better never talk about that, because it’s just too hot to handle.

“We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day,” stated Cardinal Dolan in a March 30 interview published in the Wall Street Journal.

The candid remarks from the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops underscore one consequence of the HHS mandate controversy: Catholic leaders and the faithful have begun to reassess the sidelining of Humanae Vitae.

Enter Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill, a collection of the author’s wide-ranging essays just released by Ignatius Press. The contraception mandate looks like a publisher’s dream for Eberstadt’s book sales, as curious Catholics and other Americans investigate what all the fuss is about.

A timely chapter of Adam and Eve is the author’s 2008 essay, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae.” It links Paul VI’s grim prediction of the pill’s moral and cultural impact to the toxic sexual culture of 21st-century America.

“The encyclical warned of four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments,” Eberstadt writes, noting that most of the damning evidence has been collected by secular, but “honest,” academic researchers.

“In a well-known 1996 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, [Nobel Prize-winning economist George] Akerlof explained in the language of modern economics why the sexual revolution — contrary to common prediction, especially prediction by those in and out of the Church who wanted the teaching on birth control changed — had led to an increase in both illegitimacy and abortion.

“In another work published in the Economic Journal 10 years ago, he traced the empirical connections between the decrease in marriage and married fatherhood for men — both clear consequences of the contraceptive revolution—and the simultaneous increase in behaviors to which single men appear more prone: substance abuse, incarceration and arrests, to name just three,” writes Eberstadt in “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae.”

The essays in Adam and Eve” frame the author’s unique and perceptive take on a host of related topics. In one discussion, “What Is the Sexual Revolution Doing to Children? The ‘Pedophilia Chic’, Then and Now,” the author examines how the clergy abuse scandal forced Americans to grapple with the destructive impact of adult sexual predators. In “The Transvaluation of Values…: Is Pornography the New Tobacco?” she critiques the normalization of an Internet-fueled addiction.

During a recent interview, Eberstadt acknowledged that her reassessment of the ’60s was prompted by exposure to young people and their struggles to deal with a culture that has drifted away from a commonsense approach to human flourishing.

“I listen to the way they talk and what they talk about with extra sharp ears,” she said. “Part of what motivated me to write this book and a previous one, called Home Alone America, about the impact of day care, is that life is tougher during these times than it used to be, and our material progress over the past 50 years can’t trump that truth.”

“The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” was the fruit of her own systematic reassessment of a papal teaching that continues to be ridiculed by many self-identified Catholics who have never bothered to actually read it.

Several years ago, Eberstadt sat down and read Humanae Vitae for the first time, and was immediately struck by its prescience.

“I had heard it dismissed and mocked,” she recalled. “In fact, this document had done a better job of predicting what the world would be like after the pill than anything else of its time.”

“People think it is medieval that the Church banned contraception, even though recent surveys show the ‘paradox’ of declining female happiness over the past 40 years,” said Eberstadt.

“With all the gains they have made with increased freedom and financial independence and less discrimination, women are less happy now than 40 years ago. Sociologists can call it a ‘paradox,’ but it’s only a paradox if the sexual revolution makes you happy. What if it doesn’t? That’s the radical thought people should be ready to entertain,” she said.

The author echoed similar insights in her fictional, updated version of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters: The Loser Letters. A satirical response to the “new atheists” movement, the 2010 novel is a bestseller for Ignatius Press.

Mark Brumley, the president of Ignatius Press, describes The Loser Letters as “a kind of apologetics in the area of social morality,” while the data-driven criticism of Adam and Eve offers “a first-rate analysis of the culture that penetrates a lot of the confusion.”

“You don’t have to be a Catholic to find this book interesting, and bringing her on board is part of our strategy of engaging the culture,” Brumley added.

Eberstadt is the mother of four children, married to the demographer and political economist Nicholas Eberstadt, who has long challenged the Malthusian doctrine of population control enthusiasts in a slew of important works and has since converted to Catholicism. Mary Eberstadt is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

After graduating from Cornell, she worked for Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration, and Eberstadt was inspired with her boss’ ability to “balance an intellectual and domestic life.”

She began working at magazines like Policy Review and The Public Interest, the neoconservative journal produced by the late Irving Kristol, “dubbed the godfather of the neo-conservative movement,” which arose partly in response to social upheaval of the 1960s.

Neo-conservatives have been described as “liberals who were mugged by reality.” Asked if she is a “neo-conservative,” Eberstadt expresses admiration for Kristol, and defines the “neo-con” label as expressing “a healthy skepticism of government intentions, social engineering, and also offering the greatest critique of the welfare state ever made.”

However, the author’s abiding passion is not political activism, but studying and writing about the cultural mores that have reconfigured the world in which her children live.

“Since the ’60s, any kind of critical thinking went underground. At some point I made a conscious decision that I would use what I had to shed light on what needed light,” she said.

Her unique and unpredictable perspective caught the eye of Joseph Bottum, then the editor of First Things, the journal on religious and public life founded by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus. A number of the essays in Adam and Eve were first published in some form in First Things.

“Mary has an interesting way of looking at the world,” Bottum said. “She is not trapped by the categories of normal analysis. The result is that she provides insights I read in no one else’s work.”

Adam and Eve After the Pill raises painful questions for political leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has challenged the validity of Catholic moral teaching as she advocates for expanded access to birth control.

More importantly, the research packed into Eberstadt’s book could help stiffen the spines of Cardinal Dolan’s brother bishops. The devastating social research provides grist for somber reflection in Sunday homilies, pre-Cana presentations and CCD textbooks.

Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond writes from Chevy Chase, Maryland.

CNN Quickly Reported Liberal Backlash Against Komen, But Sat on Religious …

CNN’s blatant double-standard in covering religious and social issues was manifested in its lopsided coverage of two different stories over the past few weeks.

When prominent religious leaders condemned an Obama administration mandate as an attack on religious freedom, the network gave the controversy one brief mention in ten days. But when liberal outrage ensued over a cancer charity pulling its funding of leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood, CNN reported the story the next day and promptly followed it up with more coverage.

On January 20, the Obama administration required religious organizations to pay for birth control for employees, even if their religious beliefs objected to such a practice. Both liberals and conservatives were aghast at the decision, and the head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops condemned it as an assault on religious liberty. CNN gave the story one brief report in ten days before finally covering it in detail.

In contrast, when a leading cancer charity pulled its voluntary funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, CNN began covering the “controversial” decision the next afternoon.

Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, slammed CNN on Monday for failing to promptly report the HHS mandate requiring religious groups to pay for contraception. As Bozell noted, the rule affects no small sliver of the population since over 65 million Catholics reside in the U.S.

More than 7,000 Catholic schools operate in the U.S., as well as hundreds of Catholic hospitals serving one out of every six patients in the county. Many, if not all, of these institutions would be forced to close their doors or act against their faith in compliance with the HHS.

Yet only after Catholic priests read letters against the decision in their Sunday homilies did CNN pick up on the story – on January 30, ten days after the mandate was announced. During that time period, the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops, as well as other bishops, released scathing rebukes of the decision, but CNN failed to report their outrage.

CNN’s White House correspondent Dan Lothian even admitted that many were up in arms, when he finally reported on January 30 that “clearly, there are a lot of people out there who don’t agree with it [the mandate].”

Meanwhile, CNN’s treatment of Komen vs. Planned Parenthood was quite different. On January 31, the Susan G. Komen foundation – a leading cancer charity – announced that it would stop funding Planned Parenthood. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien gave the story a brief mention the next morning, and later in the afternoon correspondent Mary Snow aired a pretty one-sided story on the backlash against the decision, manifested in the spike in donations to Planned Parenthood.

On the morning after that, February 2, CNN aired two news briefs on the story, followed by Snow’s lengthier report on Newsroom later in the morning. Host Ashleigh Banfield declared that “this is a huge story.” Thus began CNN’s coverage of the outrage over Komen’s de-funding Planned Parenthood – only 24 hours after the story broke, and not ten days.

- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center

CNN Quickly Reported Liberal Backlash Against Komen, But Sat on Religious …

CNN’s blatant double-standard in covering religious and social issues was manifested in its lopsided coverage of two different stories over the past few weeks.

When prominent religious leaders condemned an Obama administration mandate as an attack on religious freedom, the network gave the controversy one brief mention in ten days. But when liberal outrage ensued over a cancer charity pulling its funding of leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood, CNN reported the story the next day and promptly followed it up with more coverage.

On January 20, the Obama administration required religious organizations to pay for birth control for employees, even if their religious beliefs objected to such a practice. Both liberals and conservatives were aghast at the decision, and the head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops condemned it as an assault on religious liberty. CNN gave the story one brief report in ten days before finally covering it in detail.

In contrast, when a leading cancer charity pulled its voluntary funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, CNN began covering the “controversial” decision the next afternoon.

Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, slammed CNN on Monday for failing to promptly report the HHS mandate requiring religious groups to pay for contraception. As Bozell noted, the rule affects no small sliver of the population since over 65 million Catholics reside in the U.S.

More than 7,000 Catholic schools operate in the U.S., as well as hundreds of Catholic hospitals serving one out of every six patients in the county. Many, if not all, of these institutions would be forced to close their doors or act against their faith in compliance with the HHS.

Yet only after Catholic priests read letters against the decision in their Sunday homilies did CNN pick up on the story – on January 30, ten days after the mandate was announced. During that time period, the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops, as well as other bishops, released scathing rebukes of the decision, but CNN failed to report their outrage.

CNN’s White House correspondent Dan Lothian even admitted that many were up in arms, when he finally reported on January 30 that “clearly, there are a lot of people out there who don’t agree with it [the mandate].”

Meanwhile, CNN’s treatment of Komen vs. Planned Parenthood was quite different. On January 31, the Susan G. Komen foundation – a leading cancer charity – announced that it would stop funding Planned Parenthood. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien gave the story a brief mention the next morning, and later in the afternoon correspondent Mary Snow aired a pretty one-sided story on the backlash against the decision, manifested in the spike in donations to Planned Parenthood.

On the morning after that, February 2, CNN aired two news briefs on the story, followed by Snow’s lengthier report on Newsroom later in the morning. Host Ashleigh Banfield declared that “this is a huge story.” Thus began CNN’s coverage of the outrage over Komen’s de-funding Planned Parenthood – only 24 hours after the story broke, and not ten days.
 

Priest formerly assigned to Island, publishes collection of homilies

Advance File PhotoFather Escobar was assigned to the St. Charles Mission Center in Dongan Hills, from 2005 to 2011.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — “Thorns and Thistles: Pathways to Discipleship” is the most recent collection of Sunday homilies published by the Rev. Mark A. Escobar.

Father Escobar, who also just published an autobiography, “Counting My Blessings,” is a member of the Missionaries of St. Charles, also known as the Scalabrinians.

The priest, who was ordained in the Philippines in 1995, is no stranger to Staten Island. He was assigned to the St. Charles Mission Center in Dongan Hills, working in its archives and provincial office from 2005 until August 2011. He is now an assistant priest at St. Bartholomew’s R.C. Church in Providence, Rhode Island.Of the new collection, Father Escobar said, “My homilies articulate relationships in a variety of settings and lifestyles of being in the world with others.”

Using historical and literary allusions, the priest connects marriage, family and other social issues with biblical teachings.

“Amidst the rush of today’s current trends and up-to-date technologies, people often forget to go back and seek comfort amongst the scriptures in times of difficulties, struggles and quagmires,” he writes on his web site, Markescobar.com, where the books are sold.

“While society has changed, propelled by globalized economy and modern technology, some biblical perspectives open up practical and creative challenges in any age,” Father Escobar said. “They address the integration of ideals, reflective ministry, and on-going conversation with cultures in the context of church.”

He believes that celebrating mass and giving homilies are effective ways of communicating God’s teaching.

“The homilies are offered to help us continue with confidence and enthusiasm to move on and, in every sense, be men and women of the gospel,” Father Escobar said.

Ordained in the Philippines in 1995, Father Escobar first was stationed in the US in 1999, in Chicago, Ill.
    

Priests take mission from pulpit to the depths

At least once a month, Fr. Tito Soquiño slips into a scuba diving suit and joins fellow priests as they take their mission from the pulpit to the sea.

Down there, they scoop out trash, feed the fish and do what they can to revive the country’s vanishing coral reefs.

Soquiño is the founder of Sea Knights, a faith-based group in Cebu who has been enlisting Catholic priests to become “scubasureros” (a play on scuba diving basureros or garbage collectors), one of its many initiatives aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change and pollution on the environment.

At least 10 priests mostly from the Visayas have signed up with Sea Knights since its founding in 2008. Before hitting the water, they take a two-day crash course in diving to better prepare them for what Soquiño calls “ecological evangelization.”

Formally known as Knight-Stewards of the Sea, the group has also attracted other volunteers—professionals, athletes, journalists, policemen and government officials—for its diving expeditions.

“We are taking seriously what Pope Benedict XVI is telling us and the fact that climate change is upon us. Being Christians, we are asked by our faith to take active participation in protecting our environment,” Soquiño said at a recent press conference in Intramuros, Manila.

Apart from ridding the sea of trash, the mission also involves setting up marine sanctuaries and promoting local ecotourism to wean fishing communities from illegal, destructive practices, Soquiño also told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The priest, the executive director of the Sto. Niño de Cebu Augustinian Social Development Foundation, flew to Manila early last month to promote the first out-of-town tour and fluvial procession of the centuries-old image of the Sto. Niño de Cebu.

Permanently housed at a minor basilica in Cebu, the icon was brought to Naval, Biliran province, and then to Calubian, Leyte. It was only the third time in its history that the image left its home province.

Soquiño explained that under the foundation’s “Duaw Sto. Nino” program, the image of the Child Jesus would be visiting 1,000 islands in the Philippines, particularly those considered vulnerable to climate change.

The scubasurero priests last went underwater when they joined environmental activities in connection with the 12th fiesta celebration of St. Theresa Diocesan Shrine in Calubian in early October, he said.

‘Crown of thorns’

According to Soquiño, he and his fellow Sea Knights go on a dive mainly to remove plastics and Styrofoam containers from the sea, and also to search for a certain type of starfish—the so-called “crown of thorns”—which are known coral killers.

“We consider these starfishes garbage because they feed on the corals, so we also remove them,” said Soquiño, who studied ecosystem management as part of a course he took at Asian Institute of Management more than a decade ago. The course introduced him to scuba diving, he said.

In the last three years, the Sea Knights have plunged into the relatively “unexplored waters” of Cebu and Bohol and have done their own assessment of the state of coral reefs in these areas.

Double barrier reef

Among the dive spots they have seen were the Danajon Bank, the only double barrier reef in the country, located off northern Bohol Island. The group has also explored coral reefs in Aloguinsan and Moalboal towns in Cebu, and in Biliran province, among others.

The scubasurero priests take videos and photos of the reefs and present these underwater shots to their respective congregations as part of their Sunday homilies.

“Part of our advocacy is to gather information. We take underwater footage, which is part of our protocol, and we present this to the community during Holy Mass to show them the situation underwater,” Soquiño said.

For the priest, one way of effectively educating the people about the country’s threatened marine life is providing them with hard facts rather than merely telling them “stories.”

During one dive, for example, the group discovered that a coal plant in Cebu was flushing out toxic wastes into the sea aside from dumping coal ashes on the soil, he recalled.

The group took footages of the conditions underwater near the plant and presented these to the community, he said.

The scubasureros’ task can be perilous at times: Soquiño’s group once had a close encounter with a shark off Maripipi Island in Biliran just a few months ago.

Pure bliss

“For a couple of minutes, no one moved and the shark even seemed to stop and had eye contact with us. There was an uneasy ‘silence,’ so to speak,” before the group was able to swim away to safety, he recalled.

It was such a close call, but the environmentalists were actually happy about the encounter. The presence of a  shark, a creature on the top of the food chain, was an indicator that a coral reef was healthy, Soquiño said.

Part of their procedures in reviving a dying reef was to bring along pieces of pandesal (bread) underwater to attract and feed the fishes. “We did this on a regular basis so that the fishes would get used to visiting the coral reef and eventually start dwelling there,” he said.

But in one memorable dive in Lagundi Reef off Talisay town in Cebu, the divers were already in the water and attracting a myriad of colorful fishes expecting a pandesal feast, when they realized that they forgot to bring any.

“We were signaling to each other with our hands and shoulders to check if somebody brought pandesal, and (eventually) the fishes went their way and disappeared,” he recounted.  “It was as if they understood and had this communication with us.”

Be prepared for Sunday, Homily 28th Ordinary Time