Readings for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time are posted here.
The homily is accessible here, or at the link near the bottom of the parish website home page.
I have been doing some reading as the summer starts; the main theme of this homily is inspired by one title: Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church Matter. If you read the book, you will recognize the connection.
At its heart, though, this homily addresses a need that I believe every church experiences sometime in its life cycle: the need to basically figure out what’s Most Important for its people, and then to Do That Thing. I believe that, when a parish figures out what That Thing is, everything starts to come together. And I believe that Fr. White’s/Tom Corcoran’s book lays out a blueprint for finding That Thing. For what it’s worth.
Anyway, enjoy; comments are always welcome at the blog, or on Facebook/Twitter, or on the parish website. God bless!
The attached video is from LifeSiteNews.com. Powerful stuff, IMHO. So powerful, I had to get somewhere and post about it *right now*.
The reason pro-abortion folks refuse to follow the logic of the beginning of life is exactly this: If you acknowledge that life begins at conception (and when else would a human being come into being…implantation doesn’t add anything to the developing person at all; it just gives him/her the ability to grow (kind of like Mom serving breakfast and dinner to a five-year-old…), this is where you end up.
President Obama articulated the pro-life message more eloquently than most of us ever manage. and you don’t even have to substitute words! Just listen, and assume for a moment that those of us with science on our side are actually correct, and life really *does* begin at conception. But don’t think about it too long; you may find yourself suffering cognitive dissonance.
Black people, you’re particularly at risk. We trot off to the “clinic” to solve the racists’ problem *for* them. They don’t want y’all breeding, producing more inferior humans to be cared for by the State. There isn’t any need for them to do anything; all they have to do is convince you that a) sex is recreation, and b) a baby is a “choice”; you’ll kill the next generation off all by your lonesome.
W A K E U P, dang it!
…but I’m liking it now. With a h/t to Aggie Catholic, this is pretty cool.
Lies, @$&%ed lies, and statistics. Proof of the axiom, right here.
I am convinced, the older I get, that the reason so many things that are wrong are being taught as right is that we have lost our appreciation for the Natural Law. Now, don’t get me wrong: I didn’t learn it, either, and I was vapidly following the herd mentality of “If it feels good, do it!” like everyone else. But when compared to first principles of Natural Law, mainly, that good must be done, and evil must be avoided, that advice from the culture doesn’t hold up.
This article, however, from The Catholic Thing, does a great job of explaining those first principles. I thought this line was telling:
If we equate natural law merely with what Aquinas calls the “first principle” of natural law – i.e., good is to be done, evil is to be avoided – the world understandably. . .yawns, and goes on its merry way.
The author goes on to explain:
The three “precepts” of the natural law that follow from this basic principle are what give “teeth” and specificity to the natural law, and rescue it from being the merely vague and abstract idea of “conformity to nature,” which elicits dismissal by critics.
The article explains those three precepts in a way I, a mere mortal, found accessible. The Kantian Categorical Imperative, Jeremy Bentham’ utilitarianism, and other 19th century philosophical frameworks all fail in one way or another to take into account the special nature of Man, and thus fail to acknowledge what John Paul II termed the Personalistic Norm: a person’s a person, no matter how small (ok, that’s Dr. Seuss and Horton Hears a Who, but that’s the gist of it).
I think it’s interesting how our moving away from a strong basis in philosophy in our teaching methods has wounded our ability to think. I hope you find the article helpful!
I hate it when people get their knickers all in a knot about one grave insult made by some insensitive butthead (usually a Republican), who says something to prove that there’s a “War on Women”…then it turns out that maybe, just maybe, what he said wasn’t so stupid/reprehensible/insensitive/ignorant/unscientific. Maybe Todd Akin had a little science on his side (even if he was inarticulate).
Check this out. I found this gentleman’s statistical analysis enlightening. I won’t regurgitate the whole thing; don’t be lazy, and go read it.
I found that 0.2% pregnancy rate across over 26,000 pregnancies very interesting. Makes me even more certain that we should just give up the sexual assault exception, get rid of 99.8% of abortions, then go back and work on the hearts of the other 0.2%. Cuz I’m feelin’ like 52,000,000 dead kids is Plenty, Thank You.
Plenty.
P l e n t y.
Just sayin’.
Priest Challenges Homosexuals and Critics.
Heck yeah.
Get over the fact it rhymes. Sometimes the Truth comes out in iambic pentameter (h/t to Mrs. Jacquelyn Burke for the poetry reference).
Truth is Truth. And I think this priest states it as well as it could be stated. The Church doesn’t reject people with same-sex attraction. But neither does it LIE to them to tell them that everything’s OK…when it *isn’t*.
Just sayin’.
This is most excellent (not):
http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2012/09/back-to-back-alley-in-california.html
.
So, doctors are sick of performing abortions killing children in the womb, so now we expand the priviledge to non-physicians? The reason physicians are the folks performing abortions is that, sometimes, crap goes wrong. Do you want a nurse midwife handling *your* complication? Are we so desperate to not be “punished with a baby” that we are willing to risk our lives? Culture of Death, threatening to score…
Someone tell me, please, why having a non-physician perform what, in the end, is a surgical procedure, is a good idea. Are we so desperate to worship Molloch that we will let just anyone perform the ritual?
