Catholic Culture Clash Links 1-20-11

Along with a lot of other great links, I came across a link to a letter of "Principles and Priorities' by the USCCB's president, Archbishop Dolan, on Christopher Apologies blog which I read, and encourage every Catholic citizen to read.  I disagree with much of their letter since it seems like the only two political issues the bishops *get* are abortion and traditional marriage.

Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, who served for over 40 years as director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, has made the charge that our Church music is in crisis.  "He was a child prodigy, having composed his first Mass at age 12; his best known Mass is the "Misa Jubilei," written in the Holy Year 1950."  Just because isn't used at Mass as often 50 years ago does that really mean that Church music is in crisis?  Especially when the Novus Ordo Mass was established by Vatican II?


 Then we have  Mexican producer and actor Eduardo Verastegui who announced that he is planning to build the largest pro-life women's clinic in the United States. He is truly doing the Lord's Work. God Bless him in his pro-life efforts. This is wonderful news! 


Pope Benedict recently spoke out against the violence being perpetrated against Christians in Egypt. Now Muslim academics are offended, and have called off dialogue with the Vatican. These Muslims are unbelievable!  They continually persecute Christians in the Middle East and then are offended when someone stands up against that persecution.  And, Islam is supposed to be the "religion of peace".   If they really were peaceful, then Muslims wouldn't be committing violence against persons of faiths. 


Christian genocide in Middle East.   


It looks like Obama is going to have a primary challenger in 2012.  This should be interesting. 


Deal W. Hudson has recently written an article where he asked "Do the USCCB understand subsidiarity?" received many responses, but one by Msgr. Pope  stood out.  Monsignor Pope asked, "Is it wise to apply the principle to a specific piece of legislation when the exact metric for subsidiarity isn't even clear?"  I agree with Deal Hudson when he states that "he {Msgr. Pope} is surely not unaware that USCCB support for this particular form of universal health care by federal mandate implies a virtual rejection of subsidiarity in the delivery of health goods and services."   This seems like the USCCB is abandoning a hallmark of Catholic social teaching, which is disgraceful in my opinion.  If we as faithful Catholics can't even rely on our bishops to follow the Faith in political matters correctly or in adherence with Church Teachings how can they honestly expect those who are struggling in the Faith to follow Catholic Social Teachings? 

Is Obama a Muslim?

Here is the transcript of Obama's interview with Cathleen Falsani discussing his faith:


FALSANI:

Have you always been a Christian?


OBAMA:

I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.


FALSANI:

Any particular flavor?


OBAMA:

No.


My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church.

So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a church lady.

As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn't particularly, he wasn't a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you'd hear the prayer call.

So I don't think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.

And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college. I probably didn't get started getting active in church activities until I moved to Chicago.

The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil Rights movement. And the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And there was a group of churches out on the South Side of Chicago that had come together to form an organization to try to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. And didn't have much money, but felt that if they formed an organization and hired somebody to organize them to work on issues that affected their community, that it would strengthen the church and also strengthen the community.

So they hired me, for $13,000 a year. The princely sum. And I drove out here and I didn't know anybody and started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job training programs, or afterschool programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communites.

This would be in Roseland, West Pullman, Altgeld Gardens, far South Side working class and lower income communities.

And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I'd be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.

I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it's importance in the community.

And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.

So that, one of the churches I met, or one of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church CONTINUED