Month: February 2012

The Church Year: Feb. 12, 2012

Today is the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Sexagesima Sunday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 12, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Seven Founders of the Servite Order, confessors, who died in A.D. 13th century. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about the Seven Founders of the Servite Order, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

53. In those instances where the liturgical actions have been superceeded by popular piety comments, such as the following, are often heard:

  • popular piety is sufficient for the free and spontaneous celebration of “Life” and its multiplicity of expressions; Liturgy, on the other hand, centered at it is on the “Mystery of Christ” is essentially anaemic, repetative, formalistic and inhibits spontaneity;
  • the Liturgy fails to involve the total being, both corporeal and spiritual, of each member of the faithful; popular piety, because it speaks directly to man, involves his body, heart and mind;
  • popular piety is an authentic and real locus for the life of prayer: through pious exercises the faifthful truly dialogue with the Lord, in terms which they fully understand and regard as their own; the Liturgy, however, places words on their lips that are not their own or alien to their level of culture, and thereby becomes a hindrance to prayer rather than a means;
  • the ritual with which popular piety is expressed is one which is received and accepted by the faithful because of its correspondence between their cultural expectations and ritual language; the ritual proper to the Liturgy is impenetrable because its various expressive forms derive from different cultural sources widely removed from those of the faithful.

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The Church Year: Feb. 11, 2012

Today is Saturday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 11, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate Our Lady of Lourdes and the apparition of in 1858. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about Our Lady of Lourdes, (the apparition of) in 1858, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

52. The laudable idea of making Christian worship more accessible to contemporary man, especially to those insufficiently catechized, should not lead to either a theoretical or practical underestimation of the primary and fundamental expression of liturgical worship, notwithstanding the acknowledged difficulties arising from specific cultures in assimilating certain elements and structures of the Liturgy. In some instances, rather than seeking to risolve such difficulties with patience and farsightedness, recourse is sometimes made to simplistic solutions.

QQEND

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Don’t Be Deceived! Evil Obama Policy Now Even MORE Evil!

Attention, Catholics, Protestants, and everyone who cares about the causes of life, religious freedom, and freedom of conscience!

Do not be suckered by the “accommodation” announced today by President Obama and evil spokeswoman Kathleen Sebelius!

Under the guise of making room for religious conscience, the President has actually made the policy worse—far worse.

Here’s how . . .

The new policy mandates that insurance companies offer free sterilization, contraception, and abortion-causing drugs as part of their policies. According to President Obama himself:

Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services — no matter where they work.  So that core principle remains.  But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company — not the hospital, not the charity — will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles.

Got that?

That’s worse than before.

Under the previous evil policy if you worked for an exempt organization—say, a church—then your employer could offer you an insurance plan that did not include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.

Now there will be no such plans.

Remember that “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” promise? It was a lie then, but it’s even more of a lie now. Whether you like it or not, your healthcare plan must be modified to include sterilization, contraception, and abortion drugs.

So the policy is actually worse than before. It’s expanding evil services under the guise of accommodating religious freedom.

That’s why abortion groups are cheering it.

It’s also deceptive, and here’s why . . .

The idea that it will be insurance companies that pay for such services is just a shell game. Where are insurance companies going to get the money to pay for these services? They aren’t the Federal Reserve. They aren’t empowered to create money out of nothing the way the Federal Reserve is.

If they’re going to pay doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to provide these things then they are going to pay for them with money they got from someone else.

Who else?

Why! The very same churches, church-related organizations, and individuals who are otherwise paying.

That’s right. That means that now the churches are being asked to pay for the very same services that they were not paying for under the previous policy, because previously they could offer their employees insurance plans that did not include these services. Now the plans will include these services, and the churches are paying for the policies with the legal fiction that the insurance company rather than they are paying for the evil services—unless the insurance company offers the organization a lower rate on the policy, in which case the burden of paying for the abortion drugs and other services is just sloshed around through different parts of their internal spreadsheets but is ultimately still borne by those paying for the policies.

It’s just a shell game.

And this is why this should be of concern not just to Catholics but to our Protestant brethren and our non-Christian friends who share a concern about the cause of life.

What this means is that we all will be forced to pay for these services, but with the payment trail hidden.

In effect President Obama is insisting that the entire American people must pay for abortion drugs, sterilizations, and contraception, only he is having the insurance companies “launder” the money so that we don’t feel like we’re being forced to pay for them.

So, even if you’re not a Catholic, even if you don’t oppose contraception, but if you do care about not funding abortion—or even if you just care about religious liberty and freedom of conscience—then you need to oppose this plan.

Do not be a sucker.

Don’t fall for this.

And don’t let it die over the weekend (notice it was part of the Friday news dump, so come Monday the Obama administration can try to dismiss it as “old news”).

TAKE ACTION HERE!

So what do you think? Will Obama be able to sucker enough people on this one?

The Church Year: Feb. 10, 2012

Today is Friday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 10, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Scholastica, virgin, who died in A.D. 543. In the Ordinary Form, it is a memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Scholastica, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

51. In the relationship between the Liturgy and popular piety, the opposite phenomenon is also encountered – the importance of popular piety is overestimated practically to the detriment of the Church’s Liturgy.

It has to be said that where such happens, either because of particular circumstances or of a theoretical choice, pastoral deviations emerge. The Liturgy is no longer the “summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed; [and]…the fount from which all her power flows.” Rather it becomes a [ritual] expression extraneous to the comprehension and sensibility of the people which is destined to be neglected, relegated to a secondary role or even become reserved to particular groups.

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Entering the Catholic Church with Doubts; Why the Filioque Is Important; The God-Man-Loaf?; and More!

On Catholic Answers Live (1/26/12) Jimmy Akin answers:

Why does Jesus talk about righteous people in Luke 15, if Romans 3 says that no one is righteous?

Can I enter the Catholic Church if I’m not sure if I believe in a teaching because I still have a lot to learn? Wouldn’t the Eucharist help me believe?

Why does the genealogy of Mary in the Bible differ from our teaching that Joachim was her father?

What are the earliest writings about the first successor of Peter?

What’s the problem with consubstantiation in the Eucharist?

Why was the filioque a big deal?

If we believe that the Eucharist is transformed into the body and blood of Christ, why doesn’t it taste like flesh and blood?

How do I defend the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin to my Protestant friends?

Can you discuss the document released by the Vatican in the early 2000s about how much leeway priests have in saying the words of the Mass?

Who, besides the priest and deacon, is allowed to add the water to the wine at Mass?

Click Play to listen . . .

or you can . . .

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CLICK HERE!

. . . or subscribe another way (one of many ways!) at JimmyAkinPodcast.Com.

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The Church Year: Feb. 9, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 9, in the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, confessor and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 444. It is a Class III day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Apollonia, virgin and martyr, who died in A.D. 259. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Cyril, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Apollonia, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

The Sacred Constitution on the Liturgy

50. The relationship between the Liturgy and popular piety, in our times, must be approached primarily from the perspective of the directives contained in the constitutionSacrosactum Concilium, which seek to establish an harmonious relationship between both of these expressions of piety, in which popular piety is objectively subordinated to, and directed towards, the Liturgy.

Thus, it is important that the question of the relationship between popular piety and the Liturgy not be posed in terms of contradiction, equality or, indeed, of substitution. A realization of the primordial importance of the Liturgy, and the quest for its most authentic expressions, should never lead to neglect of the reality of popular piety, or to a lack of appreciation for it, nor any position that would regard it as superfluous to the Church’s worship or even injurious to it.

Lack of consideration for popular piety, or disrespect for it, often betrays an inadequate understanding of certain ecclesial realities and is not infrequently the product not so much of the doctrine of the faith, but of some ideologically inspired prejudice. These give rise to attitudes which:

  • refuse to accept that popular piety itself is an ecclesial reality prompted and guided by the Holy Spirit;
  • do not take sufficient account of the fruits of grace and sanctity which popular piety has produced, and continues to produce, within the ecclesial body;
  • not infrequently reflect a quest for an illusory “pure Liturgy”, which, while not considering the subjective criteria used to determe purity, belongs more to the realm of ideal aspiration than to historical reality;
  • and confound, “sense”, that noble component of the soul that legitimitatly permeates many expressions of liturgical and popular piety, and its degenerate form which is “sentimantality.”

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