For my readers who don't know Father Z

I have a couple of readers who do not know who Father Z is.

You know that the MSM is clicking and smacking their spittle-flecked chops at the chance to bite at the Pope.

The Times and the NYT and AP are good examples of twisted coverage which aims at guiding the reader to their predetermined conclusion.

I love it when there is lots of red at Father Z's site.

A happy day in the life of our church

Today, our priest Father Peter Jardine announced from the pulpit that an official letter from our College of Bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) went out on Friday, March 12, the day we honored St. Gregory the Great, Apostle to the English, to ask "that the Apostolic Constitution be implemented in Canada."

This news was announced in ACCC churches across the country.

I can scarcely contain my joy. This is really happening. And to have us all find out about this on Mothering Sunday or Laetare Sunday. Christian Campbell writes over at The Anglo-Catholic:

Today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent, called Laetare Sunday from the first words of the Introit at Mass, “Laetare Jerusalem” — “Rejoice, O Jerusalem”. On this Sunday, the mid-point of the season of Lent, the Church permits certain special signs of joy to encourage the faithful in their course, a relaxation of the stark penitence of the Lenten fast and a foreshadowing of our joy in the Risen Lord at Easter. Flowers are permitted at the altar, the organ may be played at Mass and Vespers, the deacon and subdeacon wear dalmatics instead of folded chasubles as on other Sundays of Lent, and in place of penitential violet, rose-colored vestments are allowed.

I stuck a picture of Father Peter wearing pink, I mean rose, on Gaudete Sunday in Advent, since today Bishop Carl Reid celebrated the holy mass. Then you see Bishop Carl with Mary Wells, our "mother of the year" this year. Two of her four boys visited from Montreal today with their wife and girlfriend. Then you see Mary cutting off the marzipan balls off the Simnel cake that Bishop Carl was blessing on the altar in the photograph above. Barb Reid baked the cake using a traditional recipe passed along by one of our now deceased parishioners. Then we see Moreen, who organized the lovely tea (with china cups and saucers, and fancy tea services) giving Barb a hug in thank you for baking the cake.

Today the hymns were wonderful, too.

Anglican mobs gaining momemtum

Last night, Fr. Chris Phillips from Our Lady of the Atonement Anglican Use Parish in Texas was on Raymond Arroyo's program explaining Anglicanorum Coetibus. I live blogged the segment at The Angl0-Catholic here. Then Fr. Chris shared some thoughts afterwards.

Here's a funny comment someone made after Raymond had trouble pronouncing "Coetibus" and someone asked a question about married priests.

Dear Father,

I understand your wondering about whether or not this type of interview is worthwhile. I was recently contacted by the local newspaper about the “breaking news out of Orlando” (this almost two weeks since the news “broke”).

We all do our best to get the most information out in the short time we are allotted and within the sound bites that they want from us. I am sure you did an admirable job and am glad that you were chosen to be the spokesman for Anglican—ummm-or—-or—ummm, uh Cohabitibus—co-educate, er, ummm, well, you know.

A beautiful essay against divorce

This piece by Anthony Esolen is really powerful. Here's an excerpt to entice you to read the whole thing.

Esther too was dying, though nobody but my wife noticed it. "Something's wrong with Gram. She remembers things that never happened." Old age, I supposed. Esther did not look like she was about to depart. She still fought mercilessly with her husband. She still squandered her money, though it had been many years since illness had forced her to retire from the factory. She still raged against how badly everyone treated her. She still slammed the door to her room, to hide, to be miserable; and, at night, to open her Bible, though she never talked about it.

But she was suffering a series of small strokes, as we learned much later. These strokes compromised her memory and her ability to get things done around the house. Herb never complained. He'd always been handy, and now he began, unobtrusively, to take on chores she could no longer perform, sweeping and vacuuming, loading the washer, tending the garden, along with all his old chores and his hard work, post-retirement, at his auto junkyard. The strange thing was that as Esther's memory faded, so did her rumination upon all the wrongs she thought people had done to her. Weakness wore away the edges of her anger.

All this took more than ten years. It was punctuated by times of madness, when she would storm out in the dead of night and pound on a neighbor's door, because a "strange man" was in her house -- her husband; or when on a snowy Christmas night she forgot that she was visiting us 250 miles away, and insisted that she was going to walk home. I had to sleep in front of the door to bar her way. But in general she was softening, mellowing. When, after his open-heart surgery, Herb could no longer take care of her and she had to move to the county home, she was pleasant to the nurses and the beauticians, and would brighten up whenever anybody came to see her. Herb visited her three or four times every week, which was as often as her condition could bear, wheeling her down to the solarium where they would talk with other patients and visitors for the whole afternoon.

Esther could be most kind when she wanted to be, and could accept kindness too, but for much of her married life she would not accept it from her husband. Now, as she grew more helpless, she was glad to accept it from him, and he gave it without stint. She called him, in a moment of tenderness and lucidity, her "savior." She was not far wrong. His most important act of kindness he performed just before his operation and her entering the nursing home. He'd become friends with a local Presbyterian minister, a genuine believer in Christ. Now he knew that Esther was too ashamed to admit that she hadn't been baptized. He also knew that if he were to suggest a baptism, she would reject it in anger and hurt, and that would be the end of that. So he told everything to Pastor Forbes, and invited him to visit now and then, so that Esther would get to know him. Then the subject might come up unbidden, or certain suggestions might be made. So he did; and, not long before the time would pass when she could reasonably make any decisions she would remember, without any prompting she asked to be baptized. A few days later, Pastor Forbes baptized my mother-in-law, a frail old woman but at last a daughter of God, in her own kitchen, christening her in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

On requests for Ordinariates

On the Catholic Register's website:

OTTAWA - Anglican groups around the world are responding to Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to come into communion with the Catholic Church, with Canadian groups expected to make similar requests soon.

Anglican Church in America (ACA) bishops and Anglican Use Roman Catholic parish representatives announced March 3 they have jointly requested the establishment of a Personal Ordinariate in the United States. Requests have been sent from the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere.

In a statement, the ACA said representatives would “formally request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus.” The move followed a two-day meeting in Orlando, Florida, that included eight ACA bishops, Archbishop John Hepworth, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), and a representative from Forward in Faith in the UK, an Anglican group of priests and congregations still part of the Anglican Communion of Canterbury.

Read the rest here.

Cardinal Levada in Ottawa

Here's an excerpt of the story I filed about his Monday talk to Catholic Christian Outreach's Meet the Movement Fundraiser.

OTTAWA - A new relationship has been forged between one of the Vatican's most senior cardinals and Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO), a 21-year-old ministry evangelizing Canadian university campuses.

"I am overjoyed to be here," said Cardinal William Levada March 8 as he addressed his second CCO Meet the Movement fundraiser in two days. The talks were organized by Father Raymond de Souza, chaplain of Queen's University and a columnist in The National Post.

Levada, an American, is prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's top doctrinal official.

He told the hundreds of young people and benefactors packing a downtown hotel ballroom that de Souza had told him CCO is "the best thing happening in the Catholic Church in Canada."

The Catholic faith is worth passing on because it is true and offers something every young person seeks: authentic enduring friendship, Levada said.

"The truth of our faith is personal. It is personal in its object, Jesus Christ and all that he has taught; and it is personal in its subject, the human person."

He praised CCO for helping students "discover the truth of Jesus Christ and to see all their other endeavours in the light of that relationship, what CCO calls, I'm told, 'the ultimate relationship.'"

"The hearts of the young yearn for meaning, for some purpose towards which they can direct their energies and talents, for some cause to which they can devote their lives, he said. "The campus mind seeks knowledge; the campus heart seeks a great mission."

More pictures here.

Tune into EWTN tomorrow night

Fr. Chris Phillips, one of my fellow bloggers over at The Anglo-Catholic, and an Anglican Use Roman Catholic priest, will be on EWTN tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. talking about Anglicanorum coetibus and the request from the United States to set up a Personal Ordinariate.

Fr. Chris writes:

It’s been a week since the bishops’ meeting in Orlando, and I’ve had some time to think about what took place there. First, I have to say how gracious the bishops were in their welcome to me. I arrived as an outsider, but it didn’t take long for that feeling to dissipate. I had no doubt I was with brothers in Christ. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the few days we had together. Worshipping in the lovely Cathedral of the Incarnation was a treat. It’s such a gracious community, and the hospitality typified what is surely part of our patrimony.

For me, the best fruit produced by the meeting was the unanimous request from the bishops for the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. This was an authentic expression of collegiality, especially since a few of the bishops have sincere questions about it. We were all clear in our understanding that the unanimous request didn’t commit anyone to unanimous action, but the genuine charity exhibited by everyone agreeing to join in the request, I found to be quite magnificent.

A very clear press release was issued – and, of course, the media rode off as though on wild horses, and got much of it wrong. But that can be repaired. In fact, there will be an opportunity to clarify things in a more careful way tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern), when I’ll be Raymond Arroyo’s guest on EWTN’s The World Over. It’s always a risk to speak in such a public forum, but Raymond is an insightful interviewer, and has a genuine understanding of the consequential nature of this historic decision by the Holy Father.

Great definition of pluralism

I finally managed to get to the gym today and brought along the 20th anniversary issue of First Things. In it, I found a great definition of pluralism:

Pluralism is a much abused term. It is often suggested that, because we are a pluralistic society, we must play down our differences, pretending that our deepest differences make no difference. That, in our judgment, is not pluralism at all. It is the opposite of pluralism. It is the monism of indifference. Pluralism is not relativism, and it is the declared enemy of nihilism. Pluralism is the civil engagement of our differences and disagreements about what is most importantly true. Against the monism that denies the variety of truth, against the relativism that denies the importance of truth, and against the nihilism that denies the existence of truth, we intend to nurture a pluralism that revives and sustains the conversation about what really matters, which is the truth.

More +Hepworth on LifeSite

See the full story by Patrick B. Craine here.

See Part I and Part II of this LifeSiteNews exclusive interview.

-snip-

Archbishop Hepworth praised the treatment of homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is primarily dealt with in paragraphs 2357-2359. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church is absolutely perfect,” he said. “It teaches what the Church teaches, and it then goes on to teach us a pastoral approach.”

The Church has always taught that homosexuals “are blessed in other ways, are in fulfillment in other ways,” the Archbishop said. “We've got to be game to teach that. ... There are compensations that God gives for [disorder].”

“We just need to be much much more positive. If we simply condemn [homosexuality], we won't win, and we're not winning,” he continued. “But we've also been very reticent to teach exactly how God is present within marriage. In fact, most couples think God has little to do with marriage.”

“I think we need to teach more deeply about that,” he added.

The archbishop described the union of husband and wife as “God's pathway for the world, in which the Creative God is closest to us.” True marriage, he said, is “a relationship open to creation, open to love, which is the love of God, which is the Spirit. This, in fact, is where God has chosen to dwell - within the family.”

He praised the pope for allowing Anglicans who reunite with the Church to continue ordaining married men because, he said, this “means there's a family at the heart of the parish, in all its frailty.”

“The charism of a family at the heart of a parish is necessary at the moment for the Church,” he argued, “because the family is under attack in more ways than it's been since the Roman Empire, which is the last period in world history when homosexuality was rampant and blessed by society.”

“It's not a question of individual rights or fulfillment. It's a question of God's presence in the world,” he continued.

Genetic modification goes big time

From Spirit Daily, an alarm over this:

The Canadian government is on the verge of approving the introduction of extremely bizarre genetically modified pigs into the Canadian food supply. These new mouse/pig hybrids have been dubbed 'enviropigs' and are being touted as being much better for the environment. This new 'breed' of Yorkshire pigs was created by scientists in Ontario at the University of Guelph, who spliced in genes from mice to decrease the amount of phosphorus produced in the pigs' excrement. So soon millions of Canadians will be eating meat from mouse/pig hybrid creatures and most of them will not even realize it."

Our scientists -- many benefiting from tax dollars -- are doing increasingly bizarre things. They are blending spider genes with those of goats to produce a protein in goat milk that can be extracted, purified, and spun into an incredibly strong fiber.

They are taking an enzyme that they dubbed "Luciferase" (yes, this is true, because it relates to light) from sea anemones or fireflies and inserting it in dogs and cats to make them bioluminescent -- able to glow under a black light (the excuse: so we can study their organs without dissecting them, or in the case of tobacco, which also has been modified (tobacco-firefly hybrids), to study genetic interactions (see here).

Some even want to create a hybrid that is half human and half chimp (a "humanzee"; we'll wait to see the excuse for that; one atheist said it should be done if for no other reason than to offend Christians).

Human brain cells in mice? Human genes in pigs -- to grow spare organs?

This is not the stuff of science fiction. Google it. You'll find it in major scientific journals. Want to read about luciferase? See here. Or here.

Me? Even without going into the potential spiritual dangers of this, we could face huge physical dangers. For example, we have seen a huge rise in Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity here in North America from genetic modifications to wheat to increase the amount of gluten. And these are modifications that do not include adding the genes of another animal or being. We also have a skyrocketing rate of obesity and diabetes, probably related to the ubiquitous presence of high fructose corn syrup from genetically modified corn.

As someone who reacts adversely to both corn syrup and gluten, I speak from experience.

Just because we can do something with our technological abilities does not mean that we should.

I never heard this before . . .

From a story about Rome's chief exorcist Fr. Amorth:

He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. "Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals."

???!!!!

Archbishop Hepworth gives LifeSiteNews.com an interview

Go on over and read the whole thing. And goody! A part two is coming.

Here's an excerpt:

“If we get the life issues right, then we get the Incarnation right, the nature of God right, the nature of Christian worship right,” he explained. “This is actually an entrance issue, not a side moral issue. It's the issue on which Christianity actually defines itself against the others.”

LSN spoke with Archbishop Hepworth in Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, where he made an overnight stop to address the local TAC parish, St. Aidan's. The Australian native came to Halifax as part of a worldwide tour that he began four weeks ago to encourage TAC communities to accept the Vatican's offer to Anglicans, issued in October, to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church.

Hepworth told LSN that the TAC's commitment to life is “total.” “It's one of our founding premises,” he said.

-snip-

But he also explained that the TAC has needed to be clear on life issues as part of its efforts for unity with the Catholic Church. “Our position is not to fight the Catholic Church, it's to fully absorb its teachings,” he said.

In both his interview with LSN and his homily to the parishioners of St. Aidan's, Hepworth spoke out against the practice of embryonic stem cell research, comparing it with cannibalism. “Killing embryos in order to harvest stem cells to make drugs is simply our form of cannibalism, and it's just as wrong as cannibalism,” he told LSN.

He described the experience of a tribe in New Guinea, which can still remember when war canoes would come down the river and take a young person to eat for strength before a battle, a practice which only ended in the 1960s.

“Using stem cell drugs derived from killed human beings in order to wave off disease is no different in the human attitude,” he said. “Same temptations everywhere, we just think our temptations are more civilized.”

-snip-

“Rape is a profound evil, to be totally condemned, and I say that as somebody whose ministry is in Africa as much as anywhere else, and where rape is common and often leads to death because of AIDS,” he continued.

But, he said, “should there be a child born of that violence and evil, to kill that child is actually a worse crime than the rape.”

In this circumstance, he described the child as “a great good” and “a redeeming good.” “Christianity comes to Resurrection through the Cross, we must all pass that way. And so we must believe that God constantly weaves something beautiful out of something evil.”

-snip-

Archbishop Hepworth called the condemnation of the morning-after pill for rape victims “a very hard teaching,” noting that it was “the hard teachings of Jesus that people walked away from.” “The test of an apostle is whether he goes on teaching the hard teachings when people are walking away,” he said. “That for a bishop is the toughest thing he has to experience.”

He called on the Christian churches to confront rape and male dominance, which he said are still embedded in some cultures of the world. “We have been afraid to confront traditional behaviour, in just the same way as we've been afraid to confront traditional behaviour in countries like the United States and Canada and Australia within affluent middle class families, where contraception is the more thoughtless option and therefore the easier one.”

I love Catholic Christian Outreach

What an amazing night. I have to wind down so I won't be writing much, but the love for Jesus Christ these young Catholic missionaries have is contagious and inspiring.

Cardinal Levada on Anglicanorum Coetibus

The picture shows Cardinal William Levada after he celebrated the Eucharist at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa. I just got back from an excellent "Meet the Movement" fundraiser for Catholic Christian Outreach here in Canada's capital.

Here's an excerpt of the story I wrote about Cardinal Levada's talk at a Catholic Christian Outreach fundraiser Saturday night in Kingston, Ontario, picked up by the Catholic News Service in the United States:

KINGSTON, Ontario (CNS) -- Groups of Anglicans entering into communion with the Catholic Church will not absorbed the way "a teaspoon of sugar would be lost in a gallon of coffee," said Cardinal William Levada, prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Instead, Anglicans will provide a distinct sound within the church, the way the different instruments in an orchestra blend in a symphony, Cardinal Levada told a fundraising dinner for Catholic Christian Outreach and the Queen's University Newman Center March 6.

"People long for discordant tones to be harmonized, united," he said. "And when an individual or, indeed, a community, is ready for unity with the church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church, it would be a betrayal of Catholic ecumenical principles and goals to refuse to embrace them, and to embrace them with all the distinctive gifts that enrich the church, that help her approach the world symphonically, sounding together or united."

Pope Benedict XVI's historic offer for groups of Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church is "the logical outcome" of 45 years of ecumenical dialogue, Cardinal Levada.

The Vatican's offer came November 9 with the publication of Pope Benedict's apostolic constitution "Anglicanorum Coetibus" ("Groups of Anglicans") along with specific norms governing the establishment and governance of "personal ordinariates," structures similar to dioceses, for former Anglicans who become Catholic.

Cardinal Levada described the apostolic constitution as "one of the fruits" developing out of the statements issued by the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission -- commonly known as ARCIC -- on the Eucharist, ministry and ordination, and authority.

And the Salt and Light TV blog has posted an unofficial transcript of the talk by my friend Kris Dmytrenko here.

And Christian Campbell has commented on excerpts of that transcript at The Anglo-Catholic:

Cardinal Levada presents the Apostolic Constitution as the natural outgrowth of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) dialogue, of which he proceeds to provide a general outline. He recounts the several stages of the ARCIC process, set against the backdrop of the collapse of Catholic Faith and Apostolic Order in the Anglican Communion, of which women’s ordination and the homosexual movement are perhaps the most notable symptoms.

For Catholic Anglicans, he hits the nail squarely on the head.

The fundamental issue here, as many have noted, is the question of authority. This may be briefly summed up in the following two points. Does the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in Scripture intend to let us know God’s will in a way that requires our obedience (for example, the imitation of Christ, the Ten Commandments)? And secondly, has God, in Christ, left His Church, founded on the Apostles, an authority by which it can assure that can know the correct meaning of the revelation, amidst sometimes varying human interpretations (for example, the sensus fidei, the ecumenical councils, the Magisterium of the Pope and bishops)?

There's a lot more. Go on over and check it out.

Meeting Cardinal Levada

I have posted some photos over at The Anglo-Catholic. I hope to post some comments about his address at Queen's to a Catholic Christian Outreach fundraiser last night, but I probably won't until tomorrow.