extreme Catholic 

a wonderful October day in New York City

interior of the Church of Our Saviour

assembling in front of the Church of Our Savior

en route

more en route

at prayer

at prayer

Church of the Holy Innocents

arrival at Holy Innocents

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 8:23 PM   Permalink  

Heard on talk radio today in New York and I guess all over the country.

The Church has every right to declare that the unborn child has a right to life, and that abortion is a evil act that can never be moral or a civil right of its own.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 7:30 PM   Permalink  

It started with this story in Catholic World News

Kerry said to be excommunicated

Los Angeles, Oct. 18 (CWNews.com) - A consultant to the Vatican has said Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has incurred the penalty of excommunication from the Catholic Church.

The consultant made his statement in a highly unusual letter to Marc Balestrieri, a Los Angeles canon lawyer who formally sued John Kerry in ecclesiastical court for heresy.

This may have been noticed by the usual readers of CWN, but it was picked up by Drudge Report, and then WorldNet and then the AP and other wire services.

What I have done is compiled at St. Blog's index to the blogs which have mentioned Mr. Balestrieri at the St. Blogs Balestrieri Index.

The story quickly shifted from the discussion of Kerry to the discussion of Marc Balestrieri methods and motives. He was accused of having hoodwinked the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith into giving him an opinion that he sought and the CDF was unwilling to yield.

A thoughtful unnamed Vatican source was quoted by the thoughtful "official" Catholic News Service: "Kerry is not a heretic". This quote appeared in the first paragraph of the New York Times and other wire service accounts.

Marc Balestrieri apparently became more of the target than candidate Kerry.

Pat's Questions:

• How does Mr. Balestrieri stands to benefit personally from the excommunication of John Kerry?
• How does an American layman enter the front door of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and according to Fr. DiNoia essentially to get help with his homework ("[He] was a student wanting to understand the Church's teaching") and get a detailed letter from a delegate of the Congregation within 10 days?
• Why would a member of the CDF first say that Mr. Balestrieri had no contact with the Congregation, and then need to retract that statement by stating the he did request Fr. Cole to write to Mr. Balestrieri?
• Why after over 30 years of Catholic politicians advocating a civil right to abortion is the Church ducking the question of whether it is a sin, morally indifferent, or an act of merit? Why isn't this the page one scandal?
• For the sake of argument, if it were generally sinful, it would be sinful for anyone, why would it matter if Kerry, or Giuliani, or anyone Catholic politician be named in particular in order to clarify their political position and regard for the teaching of the Church?

Not in St. Blogs, but important discussions of this are taking place in

• Jimmy Akin's blog., where he is part of the "hoodwinked" chorus.
• The blog of Ed Peters where he is apparently his first concern is the process and not the substance of Kerry's claim to be Catholic and his seeking of Catholic votes on the basis of that claim.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 3:06 PM   Permalink  

Pope says fate of unbaptized babies touches important beliefs: Long Island Catholic

What the Catholic Church believes about the fate of babies who die without Baptism is not an “isolated theological problem,” but one that touches belief about original sin, the importance of Baptism and God’s desire to save all people, Pope John Paul II said.

A theological investigation and explanation of what the Church believes can help the Church have “a more coherent and enlightened pastoral practice” in situations surrounded by pain for the loss of a new life, the Pope said Oct. 7 during a meeting with members of the International Theological Commission.

Catholics used to speak about “limbo” as the hypothetical place of natural happiness where unbaptized babies spent eternity; while they were incapable of committing a sin that would merit hell or require reparation in purgatory, the stain of original sin was believed to keep them from enjoying full communion with God.

According to an Oct. 6 statement, the 30 members of the International Theological Commission took up the question of “the fate of children who have died without Baptism” during their Oct. 4-8 meeting at the Vatican.

The discussion, it said, was framed “in the context of the universal salvific plan of God, of the uniqueness of Christ’s mediation and of the sacramentality of the Church in the order of salvation.”

The president of the commission is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Limbo, never officially defined by the Church, was a theological concept developed in the Middle Ages.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists “limbo” in the index, but the word does not appear within the text.

The index refers readers to a paragraph (No. 1261) that says:

“As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them.”

“Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children, which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism,” the catechism says.

Long Island Mom Allegedly Suffocates Newborn In Plastic Bag: AP

An Elmont, Long Island, woman is being charged with suffocating her newborn baby by placing it in a plastic bag, moments after it was born Tuesday morning.

Nassau County police said 18-year-old Jamelia Allen was arrested at Nassau University Medical Center, where she was recovering from the delivery.

She was to be arraigned on second-degree murder charges Thursday.

Police said Allen gave birth in the bathroom of her home around 9 a.m. Tuesday. She allegedly placed the baby in a plastic bag and put the bag behind her bed. She then went to the hospital because she was bleeding. She told hospital staffers she had just given birth.

Police were sent to her house, where the baby's body was found in the bag.

Police said Allen lived in the house with her brother and several other housemates. Police said none of the others in the house knew Allen was pregnant.

A dead newborn baby was found, in a mix of sheets and other items, in a laundry room at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston Thursday, authorities said.

There was an initial report the infant was discovered inside a washing machine, but Evanston police say the child was in a laundry basket.

Pray for these helpless children, pray for the mothers who actively killed them or killed them by neglect, and pray for our culture will fails to instill the value of each human life.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 7:12 PM   Permalink  

Humorist P.J. O'Rourke had debating points for President Bush to make. One of them was:

You say I didn't have the answers in Iraq? Well, what were the questions? Was there this bad man? Was he running a bad country? That did bad things? Did it have a lot of oil money to do bad things with? Was it going to do more bad things? If those were the questions, was the answer "more time to let international sanctions and U.N. weapons inspections do their job"? No, the answer was blow the place to bits.

What are you going to do, Senator, give Saddam Hussein a mulligan and let him take his tee shot over?

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:51 PM   Permalink  

Where I work, I got a Christmas Card catalog for businesses last year and again this year.

Last year I sent an email back to one of these vendors that they lacked any cards whatsoever which had a religious theme for what the "holiday" is -- the depiction of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Maybe a lot of people sent them email. Maybe it was prayer. But they have religious cards for 2004.

The Gallery Collection has four cards which have a nativity scene.

This is a reminder to speak out and don't be discouraged. Be thankful for small gains like this.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:37 PM   Permalink  

These are the pictures I took on 10.25.2003. Captions and original blog entry

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:56 PM   Permalink  

I'm teaching with my wife 16 baptized children who have never been taught the Catholic faith and are preparing for first Holy Communion, first penance, and Confirmation.

I was delighted to learn that the students followed my instructions to look up the life of Mother Teresa on the Internet and they came to class with pictures of her life and we made up a poster to present to all the classes for our All Saints presentation.

I'm surprised how in the absence of any time in their young lives they really have not reflected on the words: faith, hope, love, grace, mercy, virtue, forgiveness, etc. They may have heard the words but can't explain them like they can photosynthesis or tectonic plates.

On the other hand, I'm taking an Old Testament course for adults on what's theoretically the college level and the instructor who has taught this for 20 years was tongue-tied when asked "Why did God pick Canaan as the land to send Abraham and his people?"

The answer of course is a little bit of irony on God's part: rather than a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3.8), it's physically a hard place to maintain life unlike the floodplains of the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates where it's a lot easier.

This was done to insure that the Chosen People would remain dependent on the God of Abraham, the one true God, and not turn to the Sun God, River God, etc. As these other peoples did. (They however did have a problem with a golden calf.)

The second reason is that the Canaan would never become a big empire to rival Egypt and Assyria-Babylon-Persia. God knows politics.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 8:50 AM   Permalink  

I've been meaning for sometime to do an auto-biographical blog on Vietnam and my aprehension about being in the war.

I grew up in a neighborhood when in the 1960's all the men in their 30's, 40's, and 50's were in World War II or Korea, or at least it appeared so to me. The local parades on Memorial Day and Veterans Day were well attended. The pastor, Fr. Edward Lodge Curran, was a protege of the most political of Catholic priests, Fr. Charles Coughlin.

The war was colored in terms of the Cold War: the advance of godless Communism against the Christian world and it had to be stopped in Vietnam.

As I turned 16 and the war was beginning to look impossible to win, I thought that Nixon's "peace with honor" was making the best of a bad situation.

I learned of young men who fled to Canada or Europe, or manipulated their weight or physical condition to obtain a physical deferment. I had resolved to volunteer if it came down to waiting to be called up in the draft, but the draft didn't come and my resolve wasn't tested.

I graduated from college and almost simultaneously entered the Peace Corps and was in Africa during the final collapse of the South Vietnamese goverment when Gerry Ford was president. In the end, my hometown zip code had the highest number of men killed in action of the entire United States.

Starting in 1976 I began to follow the stories a Sydney Schanberg filed from Cambodia and some stories of a blood bath taking place in Vietnam, and the plight of "boat people" who accepted an almost certain death on the seas in exchange for a small hope of reaching Hong Kong (then a British colony) or some other non-Communist territory.

I slowly came to realize that the war in Vietnam was the right war but fought the wrong way.

This takes us down the path of where Colin Powell, Norman Schwartzkopf, and Tommy Franks have trod not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam.

In hindsight, I think if I was 20 in 1941 or 2001, I would have volunteered, but I turned 20 in 1974 and the war of that time was over at least as far as the involvement of the United States was concerned.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:20 PM   Permalink  

The above link is formatted in a special way called XML/OPML for software that knows how to read these file like Blogrolling and Feed Demon. OPML is outline markup language.

The nice readable html format version of this file is St. Blogs in HTML format (that's 381 blogs as of today)

These files auto-generate from the bloggers which update their St. Blogs Ring information.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 6:34 PM   Permalink  

They have in their head that Bush's base is so prejudiced against homosexual persons that making a issue of the sexual orientation of the daughter of the vice president they will turn the base against Bush.

This makes Bush's base angry because of its transparent appeal to bigotry -- thereby revealing the bigotry of Kerry.

They angered the homosexual base for Kerry since it shows that when Kerry sees political advantage he can work against the agenda of homosexual acceptance.

On the other hand, I think this is done with a wink to homosexuals similar to Kerry's assertion that life begins at conception. That statement presented no alarm to the abortion advocates. They concede it's part of getting elected.

Likewise the outing of Mary Cheney is just part of getting elected in trying to keep voters at home who would otherwise vote for Cheney.

In the end, it turned out to be a total backfire.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:15 AM   Permalink  

All weekend long three stories seemed to be stuck in the news cycle:

• The reaction to the gratuitous mention of the sexual preference of Mary Cheney. CNN looks at wedge issues
• The quest for the flu vaccine and the blame game over why there is none for the people who want it.
• Kerry complains and goes to churches

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:36 PM   Permalink  

My wife took my seat and heard Cardinal Dulles on C.S. Lewis and Apologetics, while I was doing apologetics elsewhere in Manhattan.

I had dinner with my pastor and my fellow ushers.

On Sunday, I saw, heard, and greeted Father Groeschel CFR. Details to follow.

Reserve next Saturday October 23, for a prayer vigil at an abortion clinic if you live in a 50-mile radius of New York City.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:51 PM   Permalink