First Crusade Victory Day

Today, August 12, back in 1099 was the day the forces of Christendom won the Battle of Ascalon, achieving victory in the First Crusade, thus reclaiming territory that had previously been conquered by Muslims who were still aggressively trying to conquer Christian civilization (and who later would get as far as Vienna before having their armies turned back).

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MORE ON THE FIRST CRUSADE.

Frances Quisling Is RightNot Wrong About Something!

Okay, Frances Quisling is still an Evil Abortion Queen, but she has come out on the right side of the nasty NARAL ad against Judge Roberts:

Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn’t be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don’t like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Others in the pro-baby killing camp have also objected to NARAL’s video thuggery.

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PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: NARAL WITHDRAWS THE AD!

Frances Quisling Is RightNot Wrong About Something!

Okay, Frances Quisling is still an Evil Abortion Queen, but she has come out on the right side of the nasty NARAL ad against Judge Roberts:

Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn’t be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don’t like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Others in the pro-baby killing camp have also objected to NARAL’s video thuggery.

GET THE STORY.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: NARAL WITHDRAWS THE AD!

Ex-Priest Communion Questions

Down yonder, a reader writes:

a) Could my wife, who is Catholic (I’m not) "legally" take communion at a church where the minister is a former Catholic priest?

She couldn’t as a matter of course. The Code of Canon Law provides:

Whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or of indifferentism is avoided, the Christian faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister are permitted to receive the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid (Canon 844 §2).

The first highlighted blue condition would prevent this from happening in most circumstances since your wife presumably has access to a Catholic minister on a regular basis most of the time.

What about the second blue condition, though? Would it allow your wife to do so if she didn’t have access to a Catholic minister (and there was spiritual advantage and there was no danger of error or indifferentism)?

It would not seem so, at least not the way the canon is drafted.

The canon seems to focus not just on the validity of the sacrament but on the church in which it is celebrated. The canon could have said "if the minister is validly ordained" (or something along these lines), but it doesn’t. It invokes the church of which the minister is a part. The minister having valid ordination by virtue of being a former Catholic priest, then, may not be enough. He may need to be part of a church that, as a general rule, has valid holy orders (like the Eastern Orthodox churches, the other eastern non-Catholic churches, or the Charismatic Episcopal Church).

If so, it may be because the legislator didn’t want to put the faithful in the position of having to decide the ordinational history of individual ministers and whether they are valid.

On the other hand, it might be that the legislator simply failed ot attend to this possibility and that, if Rome were to issue an authentic interpretation on this point (i.e., an official clarification of the law), it might say that as long as the sacraments will be valid then that’s enough.

There would seem to be at least one circumstance in which one likely could receive Communion from an ex-Catholic priest in a church which has not preserved holy orders. That circumstance would be danger of death. This circumstance is so grave that the Church’s law makes special provision for the faithful in danger of dying to be able to participate in the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession even if they ordinarily would not be able to otherwise. This suggests that, at least if someone is liable to die, they could receive these two sacraments from an ex-Catholic priest even if he could not normally give them to the person.

We’re in an area where the law is ambiguous and can be read different ways. However, if someone is about to die, I’m certainly not going to tell him, "Sorry, you can’t be absolved because this ex-Catholic priest isn’t part of a church that has valid holy orders as a matter of course." On the contrary, I’d encourage him to go to confession with all possible speed. The same would be true for his reception of Communion as Viaticum to prepare him to meet his Maker.

b) Since non-Catholics are barred (and rightfully so, I believe) from taking part in the Real Presence within a Catholic mass, should a non-Catholic trying to be respectful of Catholicism not take a Protestant communion when administered by a former Catholic priest?

Canon law doesn’t address this subject since it doesn’t pertain to non-Catholics except in certain circumstances. That means that the matter would need to be settled via moral theology. To make the matter simpler, let’s assume that the priest in question has the right intent and is using the right form and matter for the Eucharist so that his consecration of it will be valid.

The question then becomes what the Protestant’s own beliefs are regarding Communion: Does the he (the Protestant considering receiving Communion) believe in the Real Presence or not?

If he does not then for him to receive Communion administered by a former Catholic priest would result in a person who does not believe in the Real Presence receiving Our Lord in holy Communion.

That’s bad.

St. Paul specifically warned against that happening in 1 Corinthians 11:29-30. Unfortunately, those who need to refrain in this circumstance are unlikely to do so.

On the other hand, if the Protestant does believe in the Real Presence then the situation would result in a believer in the Real Presence receiving Our Lord in holy Communion.

In principle, that’s okay. If the Protestant is in a state of grace, is reverent, etc., then he would be a worthy recipient of Communion and so could receive.

If he wanted to refrain anyway, for example to avoid endorsing the fact that the priest had defected from the Catholic Church, then that would be amazingly decent of him, though it would be too much to ask or expect of a typical Protestant. I can only imagine someone already on well his way to becoming Catholic being likely to do that.

Hope this helps, and God bless!

 

The Conversion Of Shane Paul

From teenage terrorist, to married man, to a late-vocation seminarian, Shane Paul O’Doherty’s story shows that radical Pauline conversions are not merely biblical tales but still happen even in this day and age:

"Before [Shane Paul O’Doherty’s] arrest, he’d become the most wanted man in Britain, a hero for the Irish Republican Army whose letter-bomb campaign had maimed a dozen people and terrorized all of London. We had walked the streets of Derry, his hometown. At that time [of his previous interview with the journalist Kevin Cullen], we paused at the rooming house for British soldiers where he had planted his first bomb in 1970, when he was 15. We passed the spot in the Bogside where Barney McGuigan’s brains spilled out onto the pavement on Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British paratroopers shot and killed 14 civil rights demonstrators. We walked by the apartment in Crawford Square that O’Doherty used as a bomb factory, the one that blew up, killing Ethel Lynch, his 22-year-old assistant.

"He was given his middle name because he was born on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul [January 25], who was a zealous killer of Christians before his own conversion on the road to Damascus. But O’Doherty’s story is not about a miraculous religious conversion as much as a gradual spiritual evolution. He had a tug of war with God, and God won. His odyssey, from teenage revolutionary to middle-age seminarian, is a story of redemption.

"’Hell,’ he says, shrugging. ‘If I can be saved, anyone can.’"

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RESCATE Back On

So WYD officials have announced that the Argintinian band RESCATE will be performing at World Youth Day after all. According to them, they’ve investigated and the allegations against RESCATE were false. They say the cancellation of the band’s participation in the event was due to internal confusion among WYD organizers.

RESCATE, for its part, has issued a statement seeking to clarify matters.

In their clarification to WYD, RESCATE stated, “From Spain, where we are on tour at the time, we write with heavy hearts to communicate to you our deep consternation over the comments about certain phrases we used that were construed to seem to be against the Pope Benedict XVI”.

“We feel that the declarations that RESCATE is accused of making referring to the Pope, during an interview in Chile and that have been published in different websites, have been taken out of context”.

“It was never our intention to disqualify or ridicule the Pope, nor discredit his authority as the maximum authority of the Roman Catholic Church nor underestimate his influence as a world leader, and therefore we humbly request your forgiveness if we have unintentionally offended anyone in any way.”

“We respect Benedict XVI as the maximum spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, we have not meant to offend his person or office in any way. We are praying for him, that he will be greatly used by God everyday of his life and especially on this World Youth Day where so many young people will be gathered together awaiting his words,” the statement concludes.

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For my money, as someone who has been repeatedly misquoted by the press in an attempt to whip up controversy, if someone comes out and says that they were misquoted, that they don’t support the sentiments the press conveyed, and that they’re sorry that they became an occasion of offense then we owe them the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof at that point is on those would say that the press got ir right.

More Pro-Abort Slime

NARAL is currently seeking to run an ad (which CNN has approved!) against Judge Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court.

Take it away, FactCheck.Org! (a non-partisan group):


NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts

Attack ad says he supported an abortion-clinic bomber and excused violence. In fact, Roberts called clinic bombers “criminals” who should be prosecuted fully.

An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama .

The ad is false.

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