Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1348

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

Please pray for a little girl named Regina. This past Tuesday Regina was a healthy, happy 11 year old playing in the yard with her new puppy. On Wednesday she developed a cough and by Wednesday evening she was rushed to the emergency room where she coded and was subsequently airlifted to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. Little Regina is on life support, has coded more than once and as of this morning the MDs do not know what is wrong with her.

If you would offer up prayers for Regina and her family I would very much appreciate it.

Father, hear our prayer for Regina's complete healing in body, soul, and spirit and that her family would be graced with peace and strength during this hard time. Mother Mary, pray for them. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen!

Prayer Requests

A reader writes:

We are currently in crisis. My nephew is missing. We have little information except he was on spring break in France and missing. We are in contact with the State Department, and the American Consulate in France. We have filed a missing persons report. Please keep us in your prayers.

Father, hear our prayer that he be found safe and unharmed. Give peace to all who love him. Mother Mary, pray for him and all who love him. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Another reader writes:

A family in Baltimore has adopted 5 girls from China, all with special needs that range(d) from a cleft palate to severe bone decay to a blood disorder requiring monthly transfusions. The youngest, named Teresa after Mother Teresa, needs a heart/lung transplant but is a poor candidate. Her mother is keeping a journal at http://ourplacecalledhome.blogspot.com; this is the request on the page:

"Teresa was born on December 25, 2006 in China . She was born with a very complex heart condition . In July 2010, GOD added Teresa to our family through adoption . We have been blessed with 9 wonderful children . Gods grace has woven us together as a family . Upon bringing Teresa home from China we unfortunately learned she not only needed a heart transplant but also a lung transplant. Her Doctors feel she would not survive this operation . Please help us to pray for a miracle for Teresa's heart and lungs to be healed . She is a very special little soul who has touched so many lives around the world ...
I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES !"

If you could post the request and website on your blog, it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Father, hear our prayer for Teresa's complete healing in body, soul, and spirit and for all who love her. Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for her and her family. We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Your tax dollars at work

Just what we need: Uncle Sam on Facebook, lying to us through sock puppets. Cuz that builds trust n' stuff.

If you liked lying for Jesus, you'll *love* lying for America.

Prayer Request

A friend of my family is 8 months pregnant and fleeing Japan as a result of the earthquake and tsunami. She will be arriving in California shortly (Oakland) and desperately needs medical care, but has no insurance. I am living in the UK now, so I've only been able to look on the internet for help and have only found centers that provide ultrasounds but none that can help her deliver her baby. Do you know of any centers that would help her with her delivery in California? Could you ask your readers if anyone knows where she can go to get medical help?

Also, could you please ask your readers to pray for her?

I don't know anything about California, but perhaps some readers do, so keep an eye on the combox.

Father, hear our prayer for this woman and for a safe delivery for her baby! Mother Mary, pray for them! We ask this through Christ our Lord! Amen!

A reader asks...

I wonder if you could ask your readers for their opinions about overseas volunteer opportunities that are either actually Catholic or at least groups where there won't be a conflict with Catholic morality? I would be especially interested in first or even second hand experience with the Peace Corps of the Jesuit Volunteers etc. BTW, since it gov't run, I can't imagine that there wouldn't be moral issues for a Catholic working with the Peace Corps. (i.e. passing out condoms).

Anyone? Bueller?

Means and Ends

In which we discover that Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin were all in pursuit of some good end--and that doesn't make them (or me and you) saints.

The Digory Kirke Solution to the Fr. Corapi Situation

Everybody is writing me about Fr. John Corapi being put on administrative leave. What do we do? How do we respond? Won't I join the Facebook page supporting him? Why is it our bishops are either sheep or wolves I am asked. Why would these "she devils" (yes I've seen people use the term) attack this godly champion of the Faith? How do we fight back against this satanic attack on this great man?

Ahem. I don't know Fr. Corapi at all. I also don't know his accusers. Nor do I know who has put him on administrative leave or why. I don't, in fact, know the first thing about anything other than that Fr. Corapi protests his innocence.

Naturally, I presume innocence until guilt is proven. But come on: If it were any other priest and these charges were brought we would be *screaming* at the bishop or superior in charge of the priest to pull the guy out of action until an investigation could be made and screaming hysterically at the preferential treatment of priests over victims if they didn't. So let's show some consistency here, okay? Amy Welborn noted way back during the Long Lent that even when priests had *gobs* of evidence against them (as Fr. Corapi does not at this point), their congregations would rally to them and say, "Oh, not *my* beloved priest! Other priests are bad, but *my* beloved priest is being treated meanly by the Church".

So we need to make up our minds. Are we going to demand rigorous investigations and accountability for clergy--except with Fr. Corapi because we happen to feel--on the basis of no actual knowledge of the man other than what we see on TV--that he is one of us? Or are we going to let the Church investigate, find out what's going on and so forth. I mean, it's all well and good to claim that some women we know absolutely nothing about are "she devils" because they are accusing a famous and b beloved priest. But here's the thing: that's *exactly*--exactly--what happened with accusers of the great and saintly and unquestionable Maciel. Turns out all the people who rallied to him without actually knowing a damn thing about him were disastrously and horribly wrong and his "evil, wicked" accusers were, in fact, his victims and were telling the truth.

Now I'm not saying I think Fr. Corapi is guilty of anything. I'm also not saying I think his accusers are guilty of anything. I'm saying that all the declarations of innocence and guilt by everybody on both sides of the issue are absolutely worthless and only serve to cloud the issue since we don't know a damn thing about the merits of the case. Not. One. Damn. Thing. All we know is that Fr. Corapi has chosen to protest his innocence on his web site which, with five bucks, will get you a Starbuck's but proves absolutely nothing about the facts of the case.

So what do we "do" about the question of Fr. Corapi vs. his accusers? I think the wisdom of Professer Digory Kirke should be our guiding light: How about if everybody minds their own business and lets the investigation proceed so that the facts, whatever they are, will be uncovered? By all means pray for him (and his accusers) that the light of Truth will shine on the situation with its disinfecting power. But don't claim to know ahead of time what the Truth is till you are in possession of some actual facts: something none of us has at present.

A reader asks...

"Is our Libya combat action 'Just War'?

I have a better question: Do we have any evidence--any evidence whatsoever--that King Obama bothered to deliberate the question of whether this met Just War criteria before his unilateral decision to commit the Empire to War Three? Given that he has given no clue what victory looks like, what the purpose of the war is, how it ends and when our exhausted and over-extended men and women (remember them?) come home from this exercise in nation-building, nor even which faction in the rebellion we are supporting should Gaddafi finally wind up at the end of a Tomahawk missile, it's hard to say that we have a reasonable prospect for success since we haven't defined what success is. Apparently, his majesty didn't feel that consulting Congress was necessary before heading out to Rio.

It is entertaining, however, to see Obama supporters suddenly registering shock that His Imperial Majesty behaves arrogantly and treats the hoi polloi with contempt in his supreme confidence that he knows what's best.

Anyway, I hope that now that we are in it (again), the McCain/Palin Obama Administration has a clue what it's doing, where it's going, and how to extract itself. But I have very little confidence they do. This is where we pray that the God who takes care of fools, drunks and American idealists with utopian dreams of fixing the world at gunpoint will intervene and keep us from disaster. What else is there to do?

While the world stands distracted...

by minor events in Japan, Libya and the Islamosphere, the menace of Canadian imperial aggression goes unchecked.

When will the United States strike back against the warlords of Ottawa and end this threat to our northern frontier? How long must the suffering subjects of the People's Republic of Maplegrad live under this regime of oppression and conquest?

A reader writes...

This morning, my dad woke up and when he tried to get out of bed, he lost consciousness and hit his head on the ground. We took him to the ER, but he will have to spend the night and we are still unsure of his status. He is awake and the doctors are fairly sure he will be fine, but it is still rather disconcerting as it is the first time this has ever happened. Please keep him in your prayers.

Father, hear our prayer that he make a full recovery through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, pray for him!