It's been over a month

I apologize to all those who read my blog including the 40 followers. I haven't posted anything new here in over a month. Just a quick update. I went to the Chrism Mass yesterday at the Basilica. Lots of priests, but maybe not as many people as before. It was very nice. I'm sort of wondering why it was so early this year. Holy Week is next week. Usually they have this 2 days before Holy Week. Even that is an exception since Chrism Mass is technically supposed to happen the morning of Holy Thursday. But it was very nice.

Lenten bulletin more about Greenpeace than Catholic spirituality

The picture I've attached here on the blog is the latest bulletin that came out on the first sunday of lent. I think it's totally ridiculous and inappropriate. it looks more like a manifesto from greenpeace or wwf than it does about Catholic spirituality. instead of talking about the corporal works of mercy or the spiritual works of mercy this bulletin focuses on very modern environmental concerns. some people may be attracted to environmental issues like the ones presented in this bulletin but these are not issues of faith and morals. Catholicism is about faith and morals and whether or not we use styrofoam cups has nothing to do with it.

There is not a single suggestion on this 32 suggestion list that has anything to do with something a church father or saint wrote about. we have 20 centuries of catholic teaching and yet not a single thing on this list has anything to do with catholic teaching.

if you read the entire catechism, out of the hundreds of paragraphs you may find 1 that relates to the environment and how we have to treat the environment with respect but this represents only a very tiny and insignificant part of Catholic spirituality.

Catholic spirituality is about saving souls not about saving mother earth. If somebody wants to have a compost in their backyard or if somebody wants to recycle bottles that's their decision but that is not the focus of catholic theology and spirituality.

For an item which appears on the first sunday of lent this is absolutely ridiculous. there's nothing here about obeying the 10 commandments or avoiding the 7 deadly sins or going to mass more often during lent or giving up some sort of sinful behavior during these 40 days which are the true reasons for Lent. Jesus did not go into the desert for 40 days so that he could recycle a plastic bottle.

Somehow I do not recall saint paul speaking about the need to turn your thermostat down to 20 degrees or to bring your own bags to the grocery store. I don't remember saint alphonsus telling us to eat more meat substitutes like tofu. or maybe somebody could tell me where james in his letter tells people to use phosphate-free detergents.

The Catholic Church has over 2000 years of helping people overcome their temptations, their trials, and their sinful behaviors. tens of thousands of books have been written by canonized saints, church fathers and other holy people. why then do we ignore this invaluable tradition and instead focus on modern fads?

that this article appears on the first sunday of lent in a Catholic bulletin is disgraceful. when someone asked Jesus how to get to heaven Jesus never once said use phosphate-free detergents or recycle or have a compost heap. these things are very much secondary and they have nothing to do with Catholic spirituality.

the church is a place were people go for the salvation of their souls, not a place to hear the platform of green peace. by putting these articles front and center in a Catholic bulletin not only does injustice to the parishioners but it does an injustice to Jesus Christ who died for our sins.

the Church was established by Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls not to promote the new fangled environmental movement. let's hope from here on in St. Teresa's can focus on Lent and not on these fads.

Happy Ash Wednesday and beginning of Lent everyone.

Pope Benedict XVI on redistributing wealth

Much has been made about Pope Benedict's alleged call for wealth redistribution in the world. However, he clearly does not advocate such a policy. Here is a quote from the Holy Father:

"The illusion that a policy of mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively resolve the problem must be set aside. In a modern economy, the value of assets is utterly dependent on the capacity to generate revenue in the present and the future. Wealth creation therefore becomes an inescapable duty, which must be kept in mind if the fight against material poverty is to be effective in the long term," Pope Benedict XVI said in his Jan. 1, 2009, message for the World Day of Peace.

22 men become cardinals in the catholic church

1 of the 22 is archbishop thomas collins from toronto. 

Watch "Benedict XVI welcomes 22 new cardinals" on YouTube

happy valentines day and remember next tuesday is the day before ash wednesday which of course is the first day of lent

I'm glad there has been a huge backlash against Barack Obama as he tried to override religious freedom by forcing religious groups to cover contraception as part of their "health plan" even if this violated their morality. No other president would think of doing something like this.

The Church is opposed to artificial contraception because it takes something healthy and turns it into something non-functioning. Contraception is the only "medical intervention" which does something like this. Everything else is meant to restore health, not destroy it.

People, on the other hand, can understand their bodies and decide to refrain from sexual relations in order to avoid pregnancy. This is no different than understanding that eating right before bed is a bad idea and refraining from doing so to avoid gaining weight. It would be immoral though to eat a pile of food, then cause yourself to vomit it all up. They both accomplish the same goal, but one does it in a morally licit way.

Anyway, Obama was trying to force Catholic organizations to do this, but they fought back hard. Now he has had to reverse his big-brother autocratic decision in favor of religious freedom. Obama also wants to remove conscience rights which people enjoy which allows them to refrain from performing immoral actions.

Obama needs to leave. He does not respect religious freedom.

Gay marriage

On my facebook, every second post seems to be about people advocating gay marriage or homosexuality in general. They say how dare society try to restrict the definition of marriage. They say people who oppose gay marriage are bigots. But here is my question. Obviously, every word has a definition, and every word includes and excludes certain things. Marriage MEANS something. So how would a gay-marriage advocate define marriage. They might say something like marriage is the union of two people who love each other. But that definition is also bigoted because you are excluding unions of more than two people. How dare you say that polygamists don't love each other! Maybe polygamists should make some slick internet photo / caption showing three unions of people, two of heterosexual couples and one of a polygamist group with the caption: "Love. There is no difference." or "Do you spot the difference? If yes, then you're a bigot!" Or something along those lines.

Are gay marriage advocates willing to admit that they too are bigots by restricting marriage to just two people? Perhaps some of these advocates would say sure, let polygamists marry, why not? Ok, so now our definition must change again. Now it must be any size group of people who love each other. Sounds pretty watered down right?

But now we must go still further. We must define "love". Is love an emotion, a fleeting feeling? What is it? That's how a lot of people view love. According to this view of love, what if there is a couple who may not have these "feelings" all the time? If there is a time when they do not have these feelings, are they considered no longer married?

What about close relatives? Why can't they marry? What if a father and daughter wanted to marry? Would you try to stop this? Would you restrict the definition of marriage to exclude such unions? If so, you are again being a bigot and intolerant, two big no-nos.

Hmm, does marriage even have a definition any more? If so, what is it?

How about: "The union of any number of people which may or may not be based on the feelings they have for each other".

As you can see, if marriage can be anything, then marriage is nothing.

Also, why would the state have any interest in protecting such a nebulous concept? There is no practical reason for the state to have any interest in this.

I don't blame gay rights activists exclusively for this issue. It's the fault of the general population in my opinion. We already redefined marriage when people started getting easy divorces, when people decided from the outset that they would have no children, etc. We need to reclaim a Catholic understanding of marriage.

Perhaps it would be best for the state to just get out of the whole marriage thing altogether. It sometimes seems like a losing battle anyway. Well, it was already lost in Canada unfortunately.

Religion causing war

Very few wars are caused by religion. In fact, some argue that religion has stopped war for a number of reasons. One is that it often unites a large group of people who would otherwise have nothing in common. These people are less likely to wage war on one another. There is however no statistics that I'm aware of showing how many wars have been stopped because of religion.

In any event, I realized just a few moments ago how silly the argument is that religion is bad because it causes war. The reason is war can be caused by anything. Think about the cause of wars. Many are fought over resources, some are race-based, others stem from xenophobia. However, we wouldn't say natural resources cause war, so we shouldn't have natural resources. Or that races cause war, therefore we should not have other races. And so on. In fact, these statements don't even make sense.

So, war can be caused by virtually any reason, and when it comes to religion it's usually people misusing religion as an excuse to take up arms. But just because we can identify a cause, this does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the cause must be eliminated.

These are really funny

Catholic Jokes

THE PLAIN TRUTH on Abortion by Judge Napolitano 1/23/12

New gay marriage quarter

So Canada is releasing new quarters ie 25 cent pieces. I think there are six. The artist is a guy named Gary Taxali. Anyway he was being interviewed about his coin for marriage and he said he made the two joined rings identical because he thought having different ones would imply straight marriage but he thought it was necessary to make it about gay marriage. Apparently everything has to be used as a platform to promote the gay agenda. A coin cannot feature traditional rings because it implies heterosexuality... Gimme a break!

Abortion: You're a man, how dare you have an opinion!

So the common rebuttal you hear from pro-choice people is that if you're a man you have no right to an opinion on abortion, but that mostly applies if you're against it. So if a pro-life mother presents the same arguments, do pro-choicers have to find new arguments?

Why I Love Jesus But Hate Religion - A Catholic Response

Remember Jesus said "You are Peter and upon this Rock I will BUILD MY CHURCH".

Circus trapezists perform for Pope Benedict XVI in the general audience

I just happened upon this, you gotta see it!

Pope Benedict XVI names new Cardinals

This is the video of the pope naming Archbishop Thomas Collins as Cardinal. I cued it up if you click the link below.

Pope names Toronto archbishop as cardinal - Canada - CBC News

Great News - Canada has another Cardinal!


Pope names Toronto archbishop as cardinal - Canada - CBC News:

'via Blog this'

Some thoughts on our Midnight Mass this year

I just wanted to take a few minutes to give my thoughts on Midnight Mass this year at St. Teresa's. There were 3, but I went to the one at 8pm. We got in through the side door around 7pm. There were few people there, but when they opened the doors, people swarmed in like it was a boxing day sale!

It was great to see so many people around, many of whom only show up to Mass once or twice a year. Fr. Tony at the beginning explained that since Advent of this year, we've been using a new translation for the Mass and people should look at the cue cards provided to say the right things. Most people were caught off guard when we read the new translations. There was also a fair bit of confusion over when to kneel and at one point my family and I were the only only people in our "area" doing so.

The Mass had some very nice music, and was celebrated well by Fr. Bidgood. (Wow, that's weird, just as I'm typing this I heard what sounded to be church music coming from my computer, but I cannot ascertain the source and it's gone now. Anyway, back to the blog post). We actually read out the entire Nicene Creed, which is a little unusual at our parish. I then proceeded to take up the collection from a corner of the church. It was extraordinary how much money people gave. My basket was overflowing and people were dropping in twenties all over the place. It was great.

I did, though, have some criticisms. First of all, several times during Mass people applauded. A couple of times it was for the performances by the choir, another time was when the priest specifically recognized certain people or groups. This violates the intention of the Mass. The Mass is not about a "performance" and our focus should not be on the choir no matter how good they are. Yes, they add to the celebration of the Eucharist, but they are not the focal point of it.

As Cardinal Ratzinger said:

"Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. " (Spirit of the Liturgy p. 198)

I think part of the blame lies with the parishioners who decide to clap, especially weekly churchgoers. They should know the difference. But a lot of the responsibility lies with how the Mass is set up. It's hard not to expect applause if a solo piece is performed, after which there is a period of silence. You can rest assured that in that circumstance, applause will break out.

Another issue I had was the choir director invited children to sit in the sanctuary during the Mass to sing a Christmas song. Again, we are taking the focus away from Christ and his sacrifice and placing it on children singing a song. I have no problem with children singing, but there is a proper time and place for everything. People may think I am being a big scrooge, but they wouldn't say that if they understood the Mass. If someone said they didn't want a special children's choir singing at a funeral, would they be a scrooge? The focus of the Mass should always be on Jesus Christ and his sacrifice.

I guess these things were my main concern. The priest also plays into these ideas when, at the end of the Mass, he specifically points out the efforts of the choir and asks everyone to thank them. This is before the Mass is officially ended. An analogy I thought of to describe this is to imagine being at the crucifixion of Christ and then instead of focusing on Christ and the great sacrifice he is making, people are asked to focus on someone playing a musical instrument in the background.

I finished the preceding sentence after I wrote what was before that. In between those two times, I heard someone, I think on Catholic Answers Live, making a similar analogy. He asked if you would clap at the crucifixion of Christ. He asked how people reacted to Jesus, once they knew he was the Son of God. He said they would fall on their face or kneel before him. It was not a party, especially at the crucifixion.

Even Christmas Eve Mass is about Christ's sacrifice on the cross to save humanity from our sins so that we can be with God in the next life. Every day has a different feast, but they are all the sacrifice of the Mass.

Overall there were many great things about this Mass, but I think we sometimes need to remember that Mass is not a form of entertainment, but a very solemn and holy time to focus on Jesus.