Pray for the souls of priests.

First, remember that you can gain indulgences on All Souls and the days following.

Secondly, November 5th is a first Thursday. You can gain a plenary indulgence during this year for Priests.

Third, would it not be a good idea in this Year for Priests, during the week after All Souls, for this 1st Thursday, to pray in a special way for the souls of deceased priests?

May I recommend that you bring this up with your parish priests, who might make pulpit announcements this Sunday?

If you are a blogger, would you post something on this?

Would you recommend this to your prayer groups, friends and family?

Who would have thought that the USCCB (otherwise known as the Democrat Party at Prayer) would take this step?

Extracted from the Creative Minority Report:

This is big news. For months the bishops have been threatening to oppose the healthcare legislation as long as it included abortion funding. But, who would have expected this?

Wonderful news. Catholic.org reports:

An E-mail directive has been sent from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Pro-Life Activities Secretariat mobilizing every parish in the United States of America. It contains an urgent message which is to be distributed in every parish this weekend and announced at every single Mass. This massive and urgent appeal may be unprecedented in our history as Catholics in America. It is an effort to mobilize the Catholic faithful on an urgent matter of public policy concerning the fundamental and foundational human right to life.

The E-Mail specifically asks that no parish opt out of this initiative.


The bishops are urging all parishes to insert a document into all parish bulletins across the country. The pdf of the file is here. Print it out. Give it to your pastor if it's not in the bulletin. Pass it out. Make it known!



The text reads:USCCB NATIONWIDE BULLETIN INSERT

Tell Congress: Remove Abortion Funding & Mandates from Needed Health Care Reform

Congress is preparing to debate health care reform legislation on the House and Senate floors.

Genuine health care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people from the moment of conception until natural death. The U.S. bishops’ conference has concluded that all committee approved bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them.

Our nation is at a crossroads. Policies adopted in health care reform will have an impact for good or ill for years to come. None of the bills retains longstanding current policies against abortion funding or abortion coverage mandates, and none fully protects conscience rights in health care.

As the U.S. bishops’ letter of October 8 states:

“No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. It is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new program longstanding and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and protections for rights of conscience.

No current bill meets this test…. If acceptable language in these areas cannot be found, we will have to oppose the health care bill vigorously.”

For the full text of this letter and more information on proposed legislation and the bishops’ advocacy for authentic health care reform, visit: www.usccb.org/healthcare.

Congressional leaders are attempting to put together final bills for floor consideration. Please contact your Representative and Senators today and urge them to fix these bills with the pro-life amendments noted below. Otherwise much needed health care reform will have to be opposed. Health care reform should be about saving lives, not destroying them.

ACTION: Contact Members through e-mail, phone calls or FAX letters.
-- To send a pre-written, instant e-mail to Congress go to www.usccb.org/action.
-- Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at: 202-224-3121, or call your Members’ local offices.
-- Full contact info can be found on Members’ web sites at www.house.gov & www.senate.gov.

MESSAGE to SENATE:
“During floor debate on the health care reform bill, please support an amendment to incorporate longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights.

If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”

MESSAGE to HOUSE: “Please support the Stupak Amendment that addresses essential pro-life concerns on abortion funding and conscience rights in the health care reform bill. Help ensure that the Rule for the bill allows a vote on this amendment. If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”

WHEN: Both House and Senate are preparing for floor votes now. Act today! Thank you!

There's a lot more at Catholic.org

Update: It'll be interesting to see how this might affect the vote of some Catholic Senators who ran on a pro-life platform like Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey Jr. I just called Senator Casey's D.C. office but nobody answered the phone. The message said it's due to "extremely high call volume." Ha. Good.

Update II: Jack Smith at Catholic Key has lots of info on this as well.

The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it [No surprise there, right?]. I thought you might be interested in reading it.


FOUL BALL!
By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York

October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!

Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:


* On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

* On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

* Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

* Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday. Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally?

The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.

I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

Archbishop Dolan of NY writes:

The Rosary's Power

Two courageous women of deep, heroic faith have recently inspired the Church and the world.

The first is Immaculée Ilibagiza, caught in the middle of the vicious genocide that slew her family and her country of Rwanda last decade.

Immaculée was one of seven other women hidden by her pastor in a cramped latrine for 91 days. Those eight women—almost all of whom, like Immaculée, had seen their families butchered—turned that toilet into a catacomb, and for three months they prayed, encouraged one another and kept hope alive.

Now she has devoted her life to speaking of the horror of genocide, but also urging reconciliation, forgiveness and peace. Her moving book, "Life to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust," has become a best-seller, and her personal apostolate of speaking about her ordeal is bringing her all over the world.

The second prophetic woman is Ingrid Betancourt. A senator and presidential candidate in Colombia, she spoke out against corruption and the drug trade. Tragically, she was captured by rebels and held for six years, only to be released a little over a year ago.

Both of these courageous women tenderly speak of their reliance upon another woman, who also knew trial, sorrow, exile and witnessed the torture and death of her son: Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

Both especially described their devotion to the Rosary, and how it kept them focused, hopeful and connected. Senator Betancourt was so grateful to our Blessed Mother that, soon after her release, she traveled to Lourdes to thank Our Lady personally at that renowned shrine.

October is the month of the Rosary.

We also have our trials. While nowhere near the tragedy of Immaculée's or Ingrid's, we do worry about tons of problems. Sometimes we're even tempted to wonder if Jesus has reneged on His promise to be with us "all days, even to the end of the world," but we of course know better. He never lets us down.

Like Ingrid and Immaculée, we turn to His Mother, our Mother, the Church's Mother.

Early on, it dawned on me that people I loved and respected very much were attached to the Rosary. I remember seeing the beads on the bedstand at both of my grandmas' homes; as dad would empty his pockets when he would come home from work, there it was again; the priests I looked up to would often be reciting the Rosary outside of church; and the Irish nuns would tell us how loyalty to the Rosary helped the faith in Ireland survive when Mass and the sacraments were outlawed. When I met Mother Teresa, she had a rosary in her hand; when I concelebrated Mass in the Holy Father's chapel, there it was in his kneeler. On almost every Communion call as a parish priest, I knew the sick person would have one close by; and, planning the wake of a kindergarten girl who was killed by a car while riding her bike, all the grieving parents requested was the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary; a few years ago, when my 11-year-old niece, Shannon—who had bone cancer—came back from Lourdes, she beamed as she told me she got to lead a decade at the grotto. So you see, from early on I got the message that the Rosary was a beloved, effective prayer. I would never let a day pass without saying it.

Think of the value of this prayer: it is simple, it is biblical, it is Jesus-centered, it can be prayed anywhere, it is communal in that at any given time thousands of others somewhere in the world are praying it, and, best of all, it is prayed in union with the Mother of Jesus.

Do yourself a favor: look in your drawers, your jewelry boxes, your storage closets, and find your old rosary. Teach it to your kids, start saying it again yourself. It never fails to bring us closer to Jesus and His Mother. It is indeed a source of "life, sweetness and hope."

From the Catholic News Agency via Fr. Z's Blog...with his comments in bold:

--
October 20, 2009
Fr. Rutler discusses Vatican’s Anglican provision
By Fr. George Rutler *

Editor’s Note: Fr. George Rutler, a convert from Anglicanism, was asked by CNA what his reaction is to the Vatican’s new Anglican provision. Fr. Rutler’s reply follows.

It is a dramatic slap-down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and [this is important] the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism. Indeed, it is a final rejection of Anglicanism. It basically interprets Anglicanism as a spiritual patrimony based on ethnic tradition rather than substantial doctrine and makes clear that it is not a historic "church" but rather an "ecclesial community” that strayed and now is invited to return to communion with the Pope as Successor of Peter.

The Vatican was careful to schedule simultaneously with the Vatican announcement, a press conference of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and the deeply humiliated Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to enable the Anglicans to save some face by saying that this recognizes the spiritual patrimony of Anglicanism and that ecumenical dialogue goes ahead. [Hopefully, with a difference.] That is like George Washington at Yorktown saying that he recognizes the cultural contributions of Britain and hopes diplomatic relations flourish. The Apostolic Constitution is not a retraction of ecumenical desires, but rather is the fulfillment of ecumenical aspirations, albeit not the way most Anglican leaders had envisioned it. [Right. They are not recognized as equal on the playing field. I wish this same approach would be taken with a certain non Christian group!]

The press, uninformed and always tabloid in matters of religion, will zoom in on the permission for married priests. They will miss the most important point: that this reiterates the Catholic Church’s insistence that Anglican Holy Orders are invalid, and perforce so is their Eucharist. [Right. All their clerics coming into the Church as clerics must be at least provisionally ordained.] These married Anglican priests have to be fully and validly ordained by a Catholic bishop. Following Orthodox custom, they are allowed to marry only before ordination and not after. And no married man may become a bishop. (Thus, any Anglican bishop joining one of these "ordinariates" would no longer be recognized as a bishop. Under special provision, Anglican bishops would have some right to pastoral authority, but would not be bishops.) [This is why the distinction was made about "ordinaries". Not all "ordinaries" are bishops.]

It remains to be seen how many Anglicans (Episcopalians in the USA) will be received into the Catholic Church under these provisions, but it is a final nail in the coffin of the rapidly disintegrating Anglicanism at least in the West [I hope we can get all their churches…. or at least swap some of ours for theirs.] and will radically challenge Anglicans in other parts of the world. Perhaps most importantly, it sets a precedent for reunion with Orthodox churches whose Holy Orders the Catholic Church already recognizes as valid. [And the SSPX.] I should not be surprised if the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury eventually is received into the Catholic Church, at least when he retires and gets a patent of nobility and a pension.

* Fr. George Rutler is pastor of The Church of Our Saviour in New York City and is a convert to Catholicism from the Anglican Communion.