Nashville Dominican Sisters Say NO to B.O. Anti-Catholic Mandate

A recently released statement from the Nashville Dominican Sisters:

Statement from Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation February 6, 2012

Health Insurance Mandate: Religious Freedom and Conscience Rights in United States 

Seriously Threatened

The United States, from its very beginnings, has been an example of true human freedom and religious liberty for all. During its history, in fact, our nation has sheltered countless people who came here from countries where their basic freedoms were either in danger or being denied altogether. Sadly, Americans now face a similar threat. At this moment, which is strange and new to us, our own religious freedom and rights of conscience are in jeopardy. Sharing the very serious concerns expressed by Pope Benedict XVI and by our U.S. bishops in recent weeks, the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia will set aside nine days of prayer and fasting during the month of February, asking Our Lady to intercede for our country.

Background

The Holy Father noted in a recent address to U.S. Bishops visiting Rome that Catholics in the United States face "grave threats to the Church's public witness" and "attempts to limit the most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion." He was responding to the American bishops' concerns about "concerted efforts...to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices" and the "tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship." Pope Benedict stressed that it is imperative that "the entire Catholic community in the United States" recognize and counter these threats.

While faced with multiple threats to religious liberty, the most immediate concern is a January 20, 2012 ruling by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), made in conjunction with the recently approved healthcare law. In identifying the "preventive services" that must be covered in most health insurance plans, this HHS mandate specifies "all FDA approved forms of contraception," including sterilization and some abortifacients. Although the ruling does allow an exemption for certain religious organizations, the exemption is so narrow that most religious institutions - including most Catholic schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, and charitable agencies - do not meet the criteria.

As a result of this ruling, religious employers will be required to pay for forms of health insurance coverage that violate both their religious beliefs and their rights of conscience. This would be the case with employers at both Catholic and many other religiously-affiliated institutions.

This decision was immediately denounced by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as numerous individual bishops and other religious leaders, both Christian and non-Christian. According to the terms of the mandate, most new and renewed health plans will be required to include the aforementioned services beginning August 1, 2012. Nonprofit employers who, because of their religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage, may have an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law; but they must certify that they qualify for delayed implementation. In the meantime, they must provide their employees with specific information about sites where "contraceptive services" can be obtained. Thus religious employers are obliged by law to cooperate in actions which they hold in conscience to be intrinsically evil.

Cardinal-Designate Timothy M. Dolan, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has termed the HHS decision "literally unconscionable." The Washington Post, in a January 22 editorial, noted that the final HHS ruling "fails to address the fundamental problem of requiring religiously affiliated entities to spend their own money in a way that contradicts the tenets of their faith."

Numerous bishops and other religious leaders have continued to issue public protests against the HHS decision. The bishops have vowed to continue fighting the mandate, urging their people to do the same.

The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation strongly share the concern of our bishops and other religious leaders who have expressed opposition to this decision of the HHS. We are providing in this newsletter links to statements and articles giving more complete information about the implications of this ruling, one which poses an unprecedented threat to freedom of religion and conscience in our country.

United in Prayer

We beg God for the preservation of our great and beautiful country, and of the freedom we have all enjoyed and been privileged to share with others. The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia invite you to join with us in a novena of prayer and fasting, asking Mary, Patroness of the United States of America, to implore God's loving mercy on us at this critical time. The novena will begin February 11 and end February 19, 2012. The sisters will be praying the following prayer each of the nine days.

Act of Consecration of the United States to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Most Holy Trinity: Our Father in heaven, who chose Mary as the fairest of your daughters; Holy Spirit, who chose Mary as your spouse; God the Son, who chose Mary as your Mother; in union with Mary, we adore your majesty and acknowledge your supreme, eternal dominion and authority.

Most Holy Trinity, we put the United States of America into the hands of Mary Immaculate in order that she may present the country to you. Through her we wish to thank you for the great resources of this land and for the freedom, which has been its heritage. Through the intercession of Mary, have mercy on the Catholic Church in America. Grant us peace. Have mercy on our president and on all the officers of our government. Grant us a fruitful economy born of justice and charity. Have mercy on capital and industry and labor. Protect the family life of the nation. Guard the precious gift of many religious vocations. Through the intercession of our Mother, have mercy on the sick, the poor, the tempted, sinners - on all who are in need.

Mary, Immaculate Virgin, our Mother, Patroness of our land, we praise you and honor you and give our country and ourselves to your sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. O Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pierced by the sword of sorrow prophesied by Simeon, save us from degeneration, disaster and war. Protect us from all harm. O Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, you who bore the sufferings of your Son in the depths of your heart, be our advocate. Pray for us, that acting always according to your will and the will of your divine Son, we may live and die pleasing to God. Amen.

(Imprimatur, Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, 1959, for public consecration of the United States to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; renewed by U.S. Bishops, November 11, 2006)

NB.  We eagerly await statements from other congregations of Dominican sisters and from the friars of the U.S. Dominican provinces.

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No, the Church has NOT vowed war on B.O.

This morning's headline on Drudge reads:

CHURCH VOWS WAR ON OBAMA 

'FIGHT IN STREETS'

Two points here: 1) No. . .and. . .hmmmmmm. . .2) No.

No.  The Church has not "vowed war on Obama."  A large majority of U.S. bishops have vowed to fight an Obama administration policy decision.  The headline above gives the distinct impression that this is some sort of personal, partisan battle. . .like rooting for one team over another at the Super Bowl. B.O. has attacked religious liberty by attacking Catholic conscience.  But the fight here is not against him as a partisan player.  

(Don't get me wrong:  I will be delighted to see him lose in November, but that's not because I am a die-hard Republican and I just want "my side" to win.  I'm looking forward to the campaign about as much as I am looking forward to my first colonoscopy.  If B.O. loses and his GOP replacement pursues anti-Catholic/anti-religious policies/anti-life similar to B.O.'s, I'll be just as happy to see him lose in 2016).

And. . .please note that the "fight in the streets" quote is not from a bishop or any official Church office.  It's from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.

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Touching the Ineffable

5th Week OT (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Just about every spiritual director I've ever had has asked me to describe my image of God. Do I see God as a distant father? A nurturing mother? An impersonal cosmic force? A cruel judge? Being a Christian, I always said, “I see Jesus.” The point of the exercise was to get an idea of my relationship with God. One's relationship with a petty and vengeful tyrant is very different than one's relationship with a benevolent cosmic force. Most of the directors we had available to us in seminary we of the Feel Good Religious Social Worker variety, so they were usually delighted when we described our image of God in gender-neutral, morally ambiguous terms. The more abstract our image of the divine, the happier they were. My answer—“I see Jesus”—usually got a blank stare or a longish pause. Yes, I see God as both human and divine, a divine person—the Son—given flesh and bone. But I see God Himself as ultimately unknowable in merely human terms, what St Gregory of Nyssa calls “Impenetrable Darkness.” This is not the darkness of an evil god but rather the darkness of human ignorance when confronted by the ineffable nature of the Divine. God is both unknowable in Himself and intimately known in Christ Jesus.

Our readings today bear this out. In 1 Kings we read that the glory of the Lord manifests as a cloud in the temple of Solomon, preventing the priests from ministering at the altars. Solomon proclaims, "The Lord intends to dwell in the dark cloud. . .” and he believes that his temple provides a place for that cloud to abide forever. In Mark's gospel, we read a radically differently description of God in the person of Jesus, “Whatever villages. . .he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.” From a dark cloud billowing in Solomon's temple to walking the hillsides Palestine, our God is at once presented in the glory of His untouchable divinity, and in the humility of his all-too-touchable humanity. The genius of our faith is that our God transcends His creation as its Father; and He abides with His creation as the Holy Spirit. He is with us and beyond us, always right here among us and always exceeding, surpassing everything He has created. 

Before and after the new Missal translation was approved for use in the U.S., several bishops, liturgists, and theologians objected to the reintroduction of the word “ineffable” into the prayer life of the Church. They argued that the word was arcane or too philosophical or too confusing for the poor average Catholic pew-sitter to understand. Try to describe the joy you felt at the birth of your child. Try to describe the pain you felt at the death of a loved one. When you find yourself at a loss for words, you have found an ineffable experience. The glory of God that clouds Solomon's temple is ineffable. The joy of those healed by touching the tassels of Jesus' cloak is ineffable. What's not ineffable, what's not beyond our words to describe is the mission and ministry of the man, Jesus Christ. He walked the hills of ancient Judea preaching, teaching, healing, casting out unclean spirits, and sometimes fleeing the needy crowds of those who hope to touch him! And that they could touch him—the Word made flesh—is the genius of our faith. They could lay hands on the Lord and receive his blessing. We can do that and more. We can receive him, body and blood. And we can go out to follow him by bringing others to him. Bring the sick to him. All they need do is touch Christ to know him and his healing.

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+1 Fat Monday Report

Up by 1 this week to 328. . .not as bad as I was thinking it was gonna be.

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Deacons' weekend. . .

No Sunday homily from me this week. . .our deacons are preaching.

See ya Monday!

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Pope Nope I

Maybe a little over the top. . .

. . .but not inaccurate.

Credit:  HotAir
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Anti-Catholic Bigtory: A Rant

Excellent article on the contemporary resurgence of American anti-Catholicism:

". . .the new anti-Catholicism does not adopt the posture of a humble and teachable critic seeking to engage the Church on matters over which reasonable citizens from differing theological and secular moral traditions disagree. Rather, it seeks to employ the coercive power of the state to force the Church’s institutions to violate the Church’s own moral theology, and thus compromise, and make less accessible, the Church’s mission of charity and hope."

Anti-Catholic bigotry is un-American.  Hell itself will not prevail against the Church, so I'm little worried that the mewlings and machinations of pampered academics and other assorted leftist bigots will hurt the Church in the long run.

However, anti-Catholic bigotry can cause permanent damage to our liberty as American citizens, permanent damage to our republican form of self-government and the divinely gifted rights of individuals to worship and believe as they choose. 

Recent attacks on the Church by the B.O. administration are not accidental nor are they coincidental.  B.O. and his allies are going right to the core of our religious freedom by taking on the only institution left in this country that stalwartly stands against their statist agenda of radical secularism.  

Having chipped away at the foundations of liberty through dependency on the largesse of the welfare state and created a generation or two of state wards, secularists (with B.O.'s generous help) are now reaching into the conscience of individuals and coercing compliance to rules and regulations that are diametrically opposed to the basic truths of the Christian faith. 

It is one thing for secularists to expect Catholics to respect the rule of law and tolerate the easy availability of contraception, abortion, and sterilization.  It is quite another to order us to pay for the privilege of helping others to commit mortal sin. 

B.O.'s spurious claim that his Big Government grasp at power is somehow akin to "what Jesus would do" is truly beyond ridicule.  Does he think that Jesus would also expect us to surgically and chemically render women infertile? Or use scissors and vacuum pumps to remove unborn children from their mother's womb?  Where in scripture does Jesus order his followers to surrender their charitable responsibilities to Caesar's bureaucrats and tax collectors? 

Jesus expects his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and heal the sick (Matt 25).  And that is exactly what billions of Catholic dollars and thousands of Catholics do in this country every year through Catholic Charities, Catholic hospitals and hospices, and hundreds of other service organizations operated by the Church.  Why is this a problem for statists?  Competition.  The Church provides free health care to millions but it also operates without the preferred ideological/sexual agenda of the secular Left.  With the Church out of the way, those millions join millions more as dependent wards of the state, their liberty as citizens defined and regulated by their Enlightened Betters.  

Keep in mind that B.O. and his allies cut funding to the bishops' efforts to stop human trafficking.  Why?  The bishops were having UnGood Thoughts. . .about issues that have nothing to do with their work against slavery.  

Keep in mind that this administration sued a Lutheran Church for firing one its ministers, claiming that the 1st Amendment does not exempt religious institutions from equal opportunity employment laws.  In other words, the gov't should be able to tell churches who can and can't be ministers.

Keep in mind that this administration is charging pro-life activists all over the country with civil rights violations for exercising their 1st Amendment rights to speak freely about the evils of abortion.  

Keep in mind that this administration consistently refuses to use the phrase "freedom of religion" in its domestic and foreign policy statements, preferring instead "freedom of worship."  This is an aggressive attempt to shrink the religious liberty of believers down to the sanctuary. 

Keep in mind, political power is given not taken. 

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Deserts & Gardens

4th Week OT (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Buzzing with life—plants, flowers, fruit, animals, insects—the garden is an ancient archetype of what the human soul looks and feels like when all is well between God and man. A lush and verdant garden calls to mind God's creative design, His will that creation “be fruitful and multiply,” and His loving provision for the needs of all the creatures He brought to life. We immediately call to mind the Garden of Eden, the Bible's idyllic setting for man's first encounter with the Creator. No disease, no corruption, no death. If asked to name an place that radically contrasts the image of a garden, we might be tempted to say the desert. Dry, barren, lonely. Though an understandable answer, it's not the biblical answer. In scripture, typically, both the fertile garden and the wild desert are places where we can go to meet God. In the garden, we work with and enjoy the divine abundance. In the desert, we empty ourselves to make room for that abundance. If the garden is the biblical image of the human person flourishing, growing, and producing abundant fruit with the blessings of God, what does the biblical desert say about our relationship with the divine? Jesus says to his disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” 

If you've ever planted and tended a garden, you know that even the smallest plot takes a lot of work. Planting, weeding, pruning, watering, harvesting. We had three large gardens when I was a kid, so I've spent many an hour bent over rows of butter beans, cucumbers, melons, and tomatoes, hoeing, pulling weeds, mulching, and picking. The work didn't kill us; we just sometimes wished that it would. God blessed us with more than we could can, freeze, and eat but those blessings—in all their excess—came about b/c we worked with the gifts God gave us. To put this into spiritual terms: God gifted us with His goodness; we received that goodness and worked with it to produce abundant fruit. If we had been less willing to acknowledge God's grace, we might've concluded that we had done all the work and that our gardens thrived on our labor alone. The desert is the biblical image that interrupts our descent into pride and reminds us that where there is abundant fruit, famine is only a lazy season away. So that we might not come to believe that we alone work for our spiritual good, we go into the desert and live with God alone, emptying ourselves of excess, indulgence, and readily satiated want. The desert is not a desolate place or a place of scarcity. Its dryness comes from our surrender, our abandonment to God of all our needs, wants, and demands. It's a place where nothing comes between you and your God.

The human soul is fed and nurtured in the garden, and it is freed from debilitating attachments in the desert. Moving back and forth between the two describes the normal course of our spiritual lives. There are times of hard work in prayer and works of mercy, work that produces abundant fruit. And there are times to flee into the wilderness, to scrape away the ties that bind, to purge all the excesses of pride. But whether we are in the verdant garden or the arid desert, we are constantly called to remember that our God is always with us. He was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He was with Moses and his people in the Sinai desert. He was with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And he was with John the Baptist in the deserts of Judea. His abundance is a blessing and so is His scarcity. Both teach us gratitude and gratitude teaches us humility. Perhaps the hardest lesson we can learn.

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Coffee Cup Browsing

It's a B.O. Economy!  NYC is on a hiring spree. . .to staff its welfare agencies.

Geez.  Now Starbucks needs boycottin' by Catholics.  Who's next?

No, the Komen Foundation did not back down on defunding the culture of death. . .not this time around, at least.  Though it remains to be seen whether or not your donations to KF will be funneled to PP in the future.

Eyeroll Alert!  Jesus made me support the socialist takeover of the American healthcare system. . .hmmmm. . .is Jesus also making him support the wholesale murder of our children in the womb and forcing the Church to pay for the privilege of helping with the slaughter?

BTW, has your bishop spoken out about B.O.'s decision to force Catholics to violate their conscience?

Occupy Drinking Water!  OWS thugs use a town's water supply as their toilet. 

Neve a Roma!

Been there, doing that.

"Somebody is gonna pay for this."

Denial.  River.  Egypt.  You know the drill.
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Catholic Military Chaplains Silenced

So, how far is too far?

This far?  Catholic military chaplains have been ordered not to read aloud to our troops their archbishop's letter on B.O.'s recent attack on religious liberty.  

I realize that in many ways the military is "different" when it comes to some basic rights and liberties, but I am also confident that our troops are capable of disagreeing with their Commander in Chief politically and still following his military orders. In fact, I would expect them to follow these orders as they have vowed to do.  

But by ordering Catholic chaplains to be silent on an issue that directly impacts the relationship btw a Catholic soldier's conscience and his/her pastor. . .that's too far.  If a Catholic military chaplain can be ordered not to read aloud a letter from his bishop, can he be legitimately ordered to read a letter aloud from the CIC attacking the Church? 

This President seems hell-bent on pushing the Church out of the public square.  Fortunately, we have the means of pushing him out of the White House.

Can November come fast enough?

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Being freely reconciled to the Father

NB.  I want to acknowledge the didactic tone of this homily.  I've found that this feast sometimes prompts preachers to talk too much about Baby Jesus in a sweet, cutey fashion; so I wanted to point out the deeper theological meaning of the feast.

Presentation of the Lord
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Jesus' presentation in the temple is yet another marker of his true nature and purpose; that is, along with his birth to the Virgin Mary; his epiphany as the Messiah before the Magi; his circumcision as a descendent of Abraham; and his presentation in the temple as the firstborn son, Jesus is revealed to be both human and divine, sent by God so “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, the Devil. . .and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.” The feasts of the Lord celebrated after Christmas are celebrated in order to reinforce for us the ancient truth that Jesus is one person with two natures—human and divine. His dual nature is not accidental or whimsical but purposeful and necessary in God's plan for our salvation. The writer of Hebrews notes that the Messiah is sent in order to help “the descendants of Abraham; therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.” So that he might offer us salvation through the forgiveness of our sins, he became one of us and died as one of us. When we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the temple, we celebrate both his humanity and his divinity. And we anticipate our own perfection as those baptized into his life and death.

The Catechism teaches us that “the Word became flesh for us in order to [1] save us by reconciling us with God. . .[2] so that thus we might know God's love. . .[3] to be our model of holiness. . .[4] to make us 'partakers of the divine nature'”(457-60). Let's break this down even further. Since we are alienated from God by our sin and God wills that we be reconciled with Him, our sins must be expunged, washed away. With the birth, death, and resurrection of the Christ, our sins are forgiven. For God's forgiveness to take hold in our lives, we must receive His forgiveness as a gift—an unmerited grace, freely given. When we receive His forgiveness as a gift, we come to know the Father's love; that is, His love is made manifest, given another body and soul—our own. With a body and soul brimming with the Father's love, we begin a life of holiness, a life set apart from the world while living in the world. A life of holiness looks, sounds, and feels like the life that Jesus himself led: a life of mercy, sacrifice, love, perseverance, and courage. Living such a life—steeping ourselves in God's enduring love—trains us to participate more fully in His divine nature, making us both human and divine, and perfectly so in His presence. 

It is vital that we understand that God wills two things for us: (1) that we return to Him reconciled and (2) that we do so freely. To accomplish this, He offers us an abundance of His goodness, truth, and beauty, everything we need to come to Him clean and pure of heart. But he only offers what we need. As co-redeemers in His plan for our salvation, we must freely receive all that He offers. The Son became flesh so that we might see—in a man like one of us—how to receive God's gifts. Jesus was baptized, anointed, and he broke bread with his disciples. When we worthily celebrate—that is, freely, freed of sin—these sacraments, we receive God's gifts and participate in the divine life. Then, taking our experience of the divine life out into the world, we become apostles, preachers and teachers of the Gospel. And more than apostles, we become Christ-like; we become Christs.

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The Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI

My thanks to Michele G. for visiting the Wish List and sending me a book by Pope Benedict XVI!

This will be part of my Lenten reading. . .along with two others from St Pius X Press that I am going to review soon.

God bless, Fr. Philip

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On not being stupid

4th Week OT (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

The crowds who witness Jesus' miracles recognize that he is preaching and teaching with a new authority. More than just another rabbi, just another prophet. He is something more than a local holy man or a snake oil salesman. Having been repeatedly surprised by the wisdom of his teaching, the crowds are frightened when he removes Legion of a man possessed and casts the unclean spirits into a herd of swine. Whoever this Jesus guy is, he's doing something entirely new, something entirely different. That is, until he makes a visit to his hometown. After he teaches in the synagogue, the local folks ask, “Where's he getting all this wisdom? He's done some mighty things! But isn't he just Mary's kid? Don't his brothers and sister live right here in town?” And b/c he is just a hometown boy to them, “they take offense at him” and show him no respect. What's interesting here is that they are at first astonished by his teaching, but then they talk themselves into being offended. What happens to them between leaving the synagogue and deciding that Jesus is just another Local Nobody? We don't have to stretch our imaginations too far to figure out that the sin of pride asserts itself and convinces them that no matter how astonishing his teaching might be, Jesus is just a local boy trying to show them up; thus, pride nurtures stupidity.

Because the people of Jesus' town will not receive him as a prophet, they cannot receive the gifts of wisdom and healing that he offers. Mark reports, “. . .he was not able to perform any mighty deed there. . .” Mark also notes that Jesus “was amazed at their lack of faith.” Why should he be amazed? Despite eye-witness testimony; despite their own astonishment at his teaching; despite the fact that they have the people Jesus healed living among them; despite every bit of evidence available to them, they refuse to give Jesus the honor due his words and deeds. They simply could not get past the fact that this amazing preacher, this wise teacher, this miracle worker was a hometown boy. In their pride-fogged minds, Jesus came home for no other reason than to show them up as rubes, and they are offended. But are they harmed? By neglect, yes. I mean, they were harmed b/c by taking offense they were unwilling to receive all that Jesus had to offer them. Their pride stood like a wall between disease and healing, between sin and salvation. That day, pride did its job well and the prideful suffered for it. 

The people of Jesus' hometown exhibit one of the deadliest symptoms of being infected with pride: thinking so highly of themselves that they refuse freely offered help. And not just any help but Divine Help! We might also say that pride serves as a cover for their own self-loathing. Isn't needing help a sign of weakness? Isn't asking for charity of any kind an admission of defeat? Jesus' offer of divine help sparks resentment: does he think we are children needing a father or mother to guide us? He's one of us! How dare he come in here and try to play the prophet of God! Pride is considered the worst of the cardinal sins precisely b/c it gives rise to all the other sins. Turning our faces from God and the Church and demanding to be left alone to live by our own wits is the height of stupidity. No one truly lives alone. No live lives at all without God. Faith, trust, like any good habit must be exercised or it becomes flabby. A spiritually flabby heart quickly becomes delusional, believing that it beats by human will alone. A truly faithful heart knows that it beats best when it follows the willful rhythm of the Lord's love and mercy. Do not let the Lord be amazed at your stupidity.

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Boycott Fat Monday!

Got on the scale this morning. . .didn't like that number, so I'm boycotting the Monday Fat Report until the number gets where I want it!

(Needless to say, the number was higher than 327 lbs. . .gggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . .)

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Why so fearful?

4th Week OT (M)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

While preaching, teaching, and casting out unclean spirits, Jesus has met with a number of predictable responses: astonishment from the crowds; jealousy from the Pharisees; confusion from his disciples. The crowds are astonished by his authority to command spirits. The Pharisees are jealous of his influence over the people. And the poor disciples are confused by his parables and his reluctance to act like a proper prophet. Of all the responses he's garnered—amazement, envy, puzzlement—one stands out as unusual: fear. Looking back over our gospel readings last week, we read that the unclean spirits fear Jesus b/c he has authority over them as the Son of God. They beg him not interfere in their business of tormenting souls. The Lord casts them out despite their pleas. So, why do I say that fear is an unusual response to Jesus' preaching? Well, we can expect unclean spirits to be afraid of the Christ. But in this morning's reading we hear that a man possessed by an unclean spirit is freed from possession. The local folks approach Jesus and see that the man is calm and “in his right mind.” Are they astonished? Jealous? Confused? No, “. . .they were seized with fear. . .Then they began to beg him to leave their district.” Seized with fear? Why? Why are they afraid of Jesus? Why would anyone be afraid of a man who can free them from the chains of an unclean spirit?

Let's put the question in more modern terms and see what we can come up with. Why would someone in love with their sin fear another who has been freed from that sin? I've spent many an hour sitting in various kinds of 12-Step groups with clients who report that their efforts at recovery often evoke fear among their friends who are still indulging their addictions. I know a couple of men and women who struggle with same-sex attractions who have found themselves friendless b/c they have chosen to live chastely. In my own experience, there is no quicker way to get offered lots of fried food and sugary pastries than to announce that I am on a diet! You've heard it said that misery loves company. We can amend that saying to read, “Misery loves company and so does sin.” When confronted by the power and authority of the Christ to cast out unclean spirits, the people around Jesus become afraid b/c he is a source of radical change, a whirlwind of upheaval and potential destruction. If he can command demons, what can he do to my comfortable life, my cozy life of sin? 

Now, of course, a big part of the peoples' fear is that Jesus is displaying what they think of as the power of a wizard—he casts demons into swine. But we can't discount the ability of their human minds to make a connection between the insanity of the possessed man and their own disobedience. Those possessed are possessed b/c of their sin. Jesus can handle Legion. He can certainly turn to me and radically alter my snug relationship with my favorite sin. That's scary. Especially if I'm not particularly inclined to think of my favorite sin as a sin. This raises another question: if being freed from my favorite sin is so terrifying, what does that say about the influence that sin has on how I see myself? In other words, am I more than just the sum total of my sins? If I am, then what's left over? Who am I w/o my sins? Seriously facing that question is terrifying for some of us. The Good News here is that w/o our sins we are all that much closer to being who and what we were created to be: Christs for one another. Fear may be a natural response to this truth, but fear is never the best response to being offered eternal life.

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