Governor Cuomo and the Church

Catholics back Cuomo in church tiff despite his 'living in sin' with girlfriend Sandra Lee

That's the headline from New York Daily News. It's no surprise. Take any issue of the day, and even though it violates Catholic teaching, you'll find many Catholics agreeing with it. Whether it's contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilization, gay marriage, pre-marital sex, etc, you'll find those who continue to say they are Catholic and probably even going to Mass on Sunday, agreeing with these things.

If Cuomo is living with his girlfriend and not married, then he is committing a sin according to the Church. He is choosing to be a follower of the Church and go to Mass. The bishop is withholding communion while Cuomo is in this situation, and once it has been regularlized, I'm sure the bishop will re-permit the governor to take communion. When a person is a member of a church, or any organization, they agree to follow the rules of the church.

The Church is not forbidding Cuomo from entering a church in general or from receiving communion. It is simply saying Cuomo should refrain from communion while he is in public sin.

Latest Episode of Catholic Answers Live

Catholic Answers Live airs weekdays from 6-8 ET. Great show! Check out the latest episodes below:

Hour 1
Hour 2

'I never thought there would be leftovers'

'I never thought there would be leftovers'

This article represents everything that's wrong with IVF.

1) Usually many embryos (young people) are killed in the process
2) Sometimes there are "leftover" embryos, and a difficult moral decision must be made.
3) The woman seems most concerned about if something happens to one of the baby's she is carrying. She wonders if she should keep some embryos just in case one of her children in the womb dies. The embryos have become nothing but a means to an end.
4) She wants to donate them to science. In other words, she wants 4 of her babies to be killed for research.

Mark Shea is a Catholic Blogging Maniac

Mark Shea has a VERY popular Catholic Blog with about 550 subscribers. One thing that makes his blog so amazing is the frequency at which he posts. Just today, he has posted 19 blog articles. Sure, some are quite short, or just link somewhere else, but this level of blogging is rather spectacular.

You can find his blog at markshea.blogspot.com

Taxpayers funding anti-family studies

Two psychologists at the University of Waterloo, Richard Eibach and Steven Mock, have produced a study which they claim shows parents are deluding themselves when they say there is joy in raising a family.

The researchers set up an experiment where they put parents in two groups. In one group, the researchers only presented financial information and showed it cost around $190,000 to raise a child up to age 18. They focused on the financial burden of raising children.

In the other group, they counteracted the cost of raising children with the financial rewards, such as children taking care of them when they are older.

Apparently the parents in the first group felt more uncomfortable. So we draw the conclusion that parents are just deluding themselves when they believe raising children has benefits.

The taxpayer has to fund this total bunk, and here's why it's completely useless at best and morally wrong at worst:

1) Not enough babies anyway
We don't need to have research to "prove" that having children won't make people happy. The total fertility rate in Canada is already dismally low, as it is in most of the Western World. It's only 1.6, but the replacement rate is 2.11. We have a long ways to go yet to achieve that.

2) Only measures financial information
This is one of the worst problems with this study and this attitude in general. The implication of this study is that money brings happiness, so any choice in life which reduces one's income is a bad decision. It is implied that people without children have more money and can therefore afford things like luxury cars, big screen TVs, and are thus happier. If someone decides not to have children because they would rather a larger television set, they were probably not fit to have kids anyway.

3) Me generation
Related to the last concept is the idea of the Me generation. When people make decisions nowadays, it usually revolves around how it will directly benefit themselves. Kids are no longer seen as gifts from God, but rather as accessories to one's lifestyle. I'll often hear women say they want one boy and one girl because that will represent the "perfect" family. It's not about accepting God's gift of life in our lives, but rather engineering a good family photo. This has also led to the increase in the use of IVF, because people are just demanding to have certain things, even if it involves getting them immorally.

4) Contraceptive mentality
A major problem in our society has been the widespread use of contraception and the subsequent mental separation of the ideas of sex and conception. The only reason we are having this discussion of whether or not a couple should have children is because the sexual union is no longer intrinsically linked to procreation. I'm sure if every sexually active couple were automatically consenting to the possibility of bringing new life into the world, the question of whether or not to choose to have children would not come up.

Conclusion
Raising children involves sacrifice, even though I myself do not have kids. A selfish attitude is incompatible with openness to life and children and the decision to have kids should not be a financial one. Taxpayer-funded universities should spend money to tackle real issues, not help Canada sink further into moral depravity.

Catholic Church in Germany ordains married man: So?

There have been a number of articles coming out recently about a priest in Germany who was ordained to the priesthood despite being the married father of two. It's as though this is big news or something. I find it hard to believe people have only just now heard of this. The problem I find with most articles is that they address non-existent issues or make this seem like some big change. Here's why it isn't.

1) Men from other religions
The only married men who are ever ordained are those from other religions, most commonly Anglican, Lutheran, and perhaps some others. It is never the case that Roman Catholic men who are married become priests. The exception is made because in non-Catholic religions, religious are not necessarily celibate.

2) Celibacy is not a necessary condition to ordination
Contrary to popular opinion, celibacy is not an inherent or necessary part of the priesthood. Rather, the Church only chooses for the priesthood men who have made a vow of celibacy. It is a discipline, not a doctrine or dogma.

Many cases can be shown in history or married priests and bishops. Peter, the first pope, was married, for example. This is also a discipline which did not appear from the very beginning. It was gradually made mandatory.

3) One can never marry after ordination
Once a man has been ordained to the priesthood validly, he cannot remain a priest and become married. This is also the case for deacons. A deacon can be married and then choose to become a deacon, however the reverse is not possible.

4) Some cradle Catholics are validly married and ordained
This occurs in the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome. This includes Greek Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Ruthenian Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, etc. However, bishops in these rites are only chosen from celibates.

5) The media get it wrong
Once again, the media sees this story as a novelty and wonders what it means for the "future of the Church". Always in these articles, it is suggested that the Church is changing, and that if we just wait long enough, the Catholic Church will allow priests to marry freely, divorce will be allowed, as well as gay marriage, contraception, and abortion. The slightest whiff of any change brings the media into a frenzy. However, they almost never get it right. Usually nothing has changed at all, despite what the article might suggest or state explicitly. Always take articles from the media with a grain of salt.

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"Booty" replaced in Catholic Bible

In a story which is getting a lot of media play, some Catholic Bibles are changing their wording from "booty" to "spoils". I heard one generally rather misinformed youtuber saying he wasn't aware that you could just change words in the Bible.

As usual with religion stories, there is much confusion. These types of changes are common when translating the Bible and are done to better reflect common usage of words. Booty has other connotations now so "spoils" is a better word to use.

The Bible wasn't written in English so any change like this will not affect the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture.

For more on this story, visit here.

Catholic Pakistani Politician Martyred

Shahbaz Bhatti, the first and only Christian member of the Cabinet of Pakistan, was assassinated today by Islamic extremists for simply speaking up for Christians and other minorities in the country. He is a true 21st century martyr.

Bhatti supported the revision of blasphemy laws in Pakistan which carry the death penalty. He also did things like seeking to have non-Muslim prayer areas in prisons, promoted interfaith harmony, and just basically sought to give minorities some rights in this Muslim country.

Never did he say or do anything which anyone could consider blasphemous. But he was murdered by Tehrik-i-Taliban. This is no small group, with an estimated 35,000 members.

The Vatican decried the killing as "unspeakable". Other world leaders joined together to denounce the attack and call for justice.

The murder happened near his mother's house. He was ambushed in his car, which was riddled with bullets. Those who murdered this innocent, defenseless man are cowards. They are spineless and evil. To think they did this to please God is truly astonishing. God is pleased, not by these savages, but by the witness of Shabaz Bhatti.

As some have said, Pakistani minorities are now left orphaned with the loss of this great man. These Muslim groups will continue to use intimidation to get their way. Let's keep Shabaz Bhatti and his family and friends in our prayers.

Here is a photo gallery of Shabaz Bhatti:

91% of Living Catholic Bishops can be traced back to...

Scipione Rebiba

I was looking through catholic-hierarchy.org and I started with my own archbishop and found out his episcopal consecrator was consecrated by Pope John Paul II. I kept going back through the episcopal lineage of Pope John Paul II until ultimately I hit upon Cardinal Scipione Rebiba, but there was no way to go any further. I then did a google/wikipedia search and found out that Pope Benedict XVI could trace his episcopal lineage back to this same Cardinal. I realized that JPII did not consecrate B16, so I got curious.

I searched for Scipione Rebiba, and apparently 91% of living Catholic Bishops can trace their episcopacy back to him. But my question is who consecrated Rebiba?

Many believe he was consecrated by Pope Paul IV, but supporting documentation does not exist. This is very unfortunate. I have not done much research on this, but it would be an interesting topic to look into more deeply.

Killing Newborns Is Not that Serious

This is something I did not know until now. Apparently in Ontario at least, and possibly elsewhere, there are specific Infanticide laws. Basically, if a person is charged with first-degree murder, the minimum sentence is 25 years in prison, after which they may possibly be paroled. However, there is a separate law for "Infanticide" which specifically applies to women who give birth and then soon after kill this baby. The sentence for this crime is a mere 5 years in prison.

Today in Ontario, this law was upheld. Controversy arose when a woman's defense team tried to use Infanticide as a defense in her murder trial of her not one but TWO children whom she killed on separate occasions. Basically if they could argue she didn't commit first degree murder, but rather "just" infanticide, her sentence would be reduced drastically.

There is actually an organization out there called LEAF, or the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, which applauded the ruling. They say some women are under tremendous stress and therefore should not be charged with murder if they kill their babies.

This once again goes to show that Canada is not embarking on a slippery slope, it has already descended to the bottom of the moral cesspool. Newborns and little babies don't need LESS protection from the courts, but far more! How can the Canadian Court not only approve abortion, but also infanticide, by essentially valuing the life of a baby at 20% the life of an adult.

The Canadian Court has become a Kangaroo Court that no longer represents even a whiff of morality. It has just become the plaything of social engineers bent on destroying any semblance of Christian ethics.

The basis behind the ruling is that a lot of mothers are under stress after giving birth so if they kill their baby, well there was probably a good reason for it! Yes, of course, that makes total sense! My question is, what murders are ever committed by completely rational, logical, unemotional people? NONE! Murders are always committed by people who are not fully there. They are under stress or anger or fear, etc. To distinguish this murder is absurd.

Imagine a man kills his wife, and his defense is he was feeling depressed or upset or uneasy or anything like that? Do you think the court would invent a new criminal charge called uxoricide (the technical word for wife-killing) and then have a sentence of only 5 years in prison?

I do believe that in any murder case, the possibility of insanity must be analyzed. If a person is truly insane and completely incapable of understanding their actions in any way, then a more lenient or possibly no sentence may apply. However, this should be thoroughly proven, and the mere fact of a woman giving birth would not prove her insanity.

Peter Singer is one of the most despicable philosophers out there. He believes that women should have the option of killing their baby up to 6 months after birth. He sees this as a sort of "return policy" and an extension of abortion. I was always horrified when I heard about his philosophy and the thought that anyone would ever take him seriously. Well, it doesn't seem like such an impossibility anymore. The Government of Canada has already made inroads toward the legalization of killing newborns.

I really hope Canada makes at least a couple of attempts to pull itself out of its moral cesspool and starts to implement True and Good values rather than cater to the demands of the most extreme and misanthropic groups in the world.

Anniversary of Pope Pius XII's Papacy and Birthday

March 2 marks the date when Pope Pius XII was elected as Bishop of Rome in 1939, and also the day he was born in 1876.

There has been much controversy over this pope for his alleged involvement in supporting Hitler. However, this has been thoroughly debunked. Check out my lengthier article here for further information.

The same old canards have re-emerged since Pope Benedict assigned him the status of Venerable, a step before Beatification and finally Canonization in the process of being declared a Saint.

Pope Pius XII reigned over the Church for almost 20 years until his death on October 9, 1958, at the age of 82.

Another article that is well worth reading is by a Jewish author who grew up hating the name Pius XII but later came to realize he may have been wrong. It can be found here.



Photos of Pope Pius XII:

Why Women Get Abortions

I wrote an article last week on why Planned Parenthood should not receive federal funding in the US. To read this article, click here. I received an interesting response to this article, part of which read:

Have you lost your damn mind???? A very, very small percentages of abortions are done because of a woman accidentally got pregnant and didn't want/couldn't support the baby. There are a lot done because of medical reasons too - because the mother will die, or because the baby has died or will die immediately after being born.

Maybe if this commenter knew the facts, she would not make such a claim. The reason for getting an abortion is divided into two sections:

1) Woman becomes pregnant "accidentally" and did not want to or could not support a baby

2) A woman's life is in jeopardy unless she has an abortion.

I could not find very many statistics on the reasons for which women choose to abort their babies. The only resource I could find was from Planned Parenthood's own statistics division, known as the Guttmacher Institute (named after Margaret Sanger's successor as President of Planned Parenthood Alan Guttmacher). Obviously, if any data were reported in favor of abortion, it would come from here.

The research from this organization reports the following reasons for a 10 year period:

• 25.5% Want to postpone childbearing
• 21.3% Cannot afford a baby
• 14.1% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy
• 12.2% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy
• 10.8% Having a child will disrupt education or job
• 7.9% Want no (more) children
• 3.3% Risk to fetal health
• 2.8% Risk to maternal health
• 2.1% Other

Remember the two categories first proposed? Here's how they would break down:

1) Woman becomes pregnant "accidentally" and did not want to or could not support a baby - 91.8%

2) A woman's life is in jeopardy unless she has an abortion. - 6.1%

3) Other - 2.1%

As we can clearly see, the vast majority of abortions have nothing to do with health considerations. Instead, innocent children are killed because their mothers want to further their education, would prefer not to have children, don't have enough money to raise them a certain way, etc.

Not to begrudge the tiny percentage that went to health reasons, but I think these statistics need to be sorted out as well. What does risk to fetal health mean? I'm assuming this would include mothers who abort their babies because the baby could have a birth defect or be hard to care for. It doesn't specify the severity of the health issue, so theoretically anything could be claimed as the reason.

In terms of the mother's health, it lists 2.8%, but again, what does this mean? Not all of this is for mothers whose lives are in imminent danger unless their child is killed. It could include smaller medical issues.

It's also worth noting that if there were a case where a mother's life was in danger, the life-threatening illness or disorder can be treated even if as an unintended side-effect, the child in the womb dies. This is permissible under Catholic morals.

It is also worth noting the case where the baby would be born dead. This one seems easy morally-speaking. If someone is going to die sometime in the future, that does not give us the right to terminate his or her life NOW. If the baby truly would die upon birth, why artificially speed up the process?

And on the last point of not telling a woman (or man) what to do with their body, I do not wish to do that. I am only advocating for another person, the unborn child.

New bishops for Grand Falls and Corner Brook, Newfoundland

Interestingly, this morning my article concerning my bishop's connection to the late Holy Father was published, and now the same day is news that there will be a new bishop for the Grand Falls diocese. This is a welcome relief for Archbishop Martin Currie who has been serving both St. John's and Grand Falls himself for some time now. This has required extensive travel on his part, and thus divided his time a lot. Now the archbishop is free to focus on the St. John's Archdiocese exclusively.

The new bishop for Grand Falls will be Rev. Robert Anthony Daniels. A new bishop will also be appointed for Corner Brook: Rev. Peter Joseph Hundt, who is currently serving in Toronto.

Papal nuncio for Canada, Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, will preside over the installation ceremony.

Archbishop Martin Currie

Bishop Robert Anthony Daniels

Bishop Peter Joseph Hundt

Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana

My bishop's connection with Pope John Paul II

I was just doing some research on catholic-hierarchy.org, a great website. I located my local Archbishop, Martin Currie, to see who consecrated him. He was consecrated by an Italian cardinal named Paolo Cardinal Romeo. Cardinal Romeo in turn was consecrated in 1984 by Pope John Paul II. This kind of reminds me of the 6 degrees of Bacon where people try to connect two actors via other actors. In this case, it would look like this:

Pope John Paul II consecrated Cardinal Romeo
Cardinal Romeo consecrated Archbishop Martin Currie

Just thought it was interesting!

Answer to Who Am I

Yesterday's Who Am I was...

John the Baptist

His father, Zechariah lost the ability to speak when he questioned how his wife could bear a child at her age. John the Baptist is known as the Forerunner, because he foretold Jesus' coming. He was known for speaking out when necessary, and he couldn't get ahead is meant to be a play-on-words indicating he was beheaded.

Man "euthanizes" wife

Stephan Bolton from Liverpool Nova Scotia gave his wife Barbara, 59, who was suffering with Stage 4 Breast Cancer, a lethal injection without her knowledge. Now, he has confessed his actions to the local RCMP.

The man, 56, says his motivation for going to the police is pure guilt, stemming from his actions. He said his wife only had a couple of months to live at most and that she was suffering from depression.

One of the more interesting things Stephan said was "It's been over a month. Over that month, I tried to live with it and I just can't — not without being told by (some) authority that what I did wasn't wrong," he said. "I am racked by guilt and have to somehow resolve it."

Does he believe that if someone tells him his actions were morally okay, then he will no longer feel guilty? Perhaps. I believe a lot of people seek guidance for the morality of their actions. If they are not religious, they may look to other people for information, such as the government. That's why I think it's important for immoral actions to be illegal. For example, abortion. Some say you cannot legislate morality, but I believe in the case of abortion, many people consider themselves "pro-choice" because they see it as a legitimate position since the government permits it.

The actions of this man were quite immoral. He took the life of another innocent human being. Although she was suffering from depression, she needed help and reassurance and love, not death. Instead of seeking someone to tell him he did the right thing, this man should seek forgiveness for his sins. I think this is also a natural tendency. People would rather be told they are doing the right thing than go to confession. In fact, because many do not believe in confession, the only option they have is to believe their actions are justified.

Having said this, I feel terrible for this man and his wife. He is suffering tremendously. In his own misguided way, he just wanted to end his wife's suffering. I will make a Pope Benedict-like comment here and say his intention to reduce the suffering of another could be the the first toward a sense of morality. I can say this without condoning his actions.

This man discovered the hard way that euthanasia is not the answer. All too often with moral decisions we make, many will try to persuade us to behave against our better judgment. Sadly, we often only realize our mistakes after they are irreversible. We are struck by guilt which cannot be explained away.

Keep this man and his wife who has passed away in your prayers. And pray for those facing difficult life situations.

Who Am I?

Dad was speechless when I was born
I'm called the Forerunner.
I told it like it was
but sometimes couldn't get ahead

Put your response for who you think this is as a comment.