Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1390

Prayer Requests and Praise reports

A reader writes to ask prayer:

(1) Pray for a family we're friends with. She's pregnant, near her due date, and her husband lost his job today due to his own issues.

(2) I'm involved in painful severance negotiations with my employer, whom I owe money. Pray we come to a resolution soon wherein I don't lose our family's collective shirt.

Another reader writes:

Father Ed Conway O.F.M., a priest at St. John's Church on West 31st Father had gone into the hospital for a routine hernia operation last Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital and was released on Sunday. He was found this morning on the floor of his room unconscious and was rushed to Saint Luke-Roosevelt. I just spoke with his sister Lynn, who flew in from Boston along w/their mother. She informed me of the situation. She said that his condition is grave with pneumonia and internal bleeding etc. and the doctors are saying that the next 24 hrs. are critical. They cannot find where the bleeding is coming from. Because of health issues in the past, the doctors believe he was released too soon. Furthermore, he must have been unconscious in his room for a long time. Lynn has asked for your prayers and I do as well. Fr Conway has been a great help to me here at St. Michael's in a number of ways. He is a great guy and a great priest! He is 42 years old. I am off to go see him now.
Thank you.

Father, hear our prayer for all these needs through Christ our Lord, Amen! Mother Mary, St. Joseph, and St. Luke, pray for these folks that their needs will all be met through Jesus Christ.

Another reader writes:

Last month I wrote to you in regard to my son who attended an orientation at Comunita Cenacolo in St. Augustine. Much to our relief, he decided to enter the community and moved in on Monday.

I want to thank you for your prayers and would ask that everyone would continue to pray that he will open his heart to the message of the gospel. I understand the first six months can be a very hard time for those who enter.

Thanks be to God for this answered prayer through Jesus Christ! Father, continue to guide and bless your son through Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, please keep praying for him!

Another reader writes:

At the beginning of December I had asked if your readers could pray for my brother Daniel who had a serious back injury. At that time his legs failed to work, and he was unable to walk. I am happy to report that he has recovered a great deal of mobility, and can now walk with the assistance of a cane and leg braces. Praise God, and thank you for your prayers!

Thanks be to God our Father through Jesus Christ! Father, please help your son continue to heal completely through Jesus Christ! Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for him!

MTV to America

Why don't they just broadcast a public service announcement saying, "We are here to remind you to kill your television."

We are very close to the reinstitution of gladiatorial combat for advertising fees.

Arturo Vasquez bait

A reader sends along this story on some study that was done in the late 60's on some Yucatec Indians in southern Mexico who had incorporated Trance Induction beats into their celebration of the Mass.

He then asks me two questions:

Assuming this story is true (or accurate?) may we assume this was a post-Vatican II thing?

BTW, does it work on you?

To the first question, my answer is "Why on earth would you assume that?" The notion that the liturgy was utterly immune from people doing odd things, or that Vatican II is the source of every bit of pagan oddity being incorporated into the life of Yucatan peasants just makes me grind my teeth. Consider the possibility that the problem of inculturation has been with the Church in the Yucatan (and a lot of other places) since the Church came there. The simplistic notion of a pre- and post-Vatican II Dual Church is one of the silliest myths in the world.

To the second question, what makes my reader suppose I have ever experienced this?

Speaking of Solidarity....

researchers discover that nastiness is bad for you. A climate steeped in contempt rather than politeness produces contemptuous people. This bulletin from the "Water Found to be Wet" department is only controversial when we are riled up by questions of corporate vs. individual guilt after something like a major crime or assassination and everybody feels like this is an attempt to impute the crime to themselves. When the waters are not roiled by such naked attempts to make political hay, everybody knows there is something to the fact that an uncivil society produces uncivil people and that some of them, out at the end of the bell curve, will be murderously uncivil.

Who bears the guilt for the shooting in Tucson?

We're living in a time of shift concerning the notion of free speech. That's partly because the State is increasingly in bed with the wealthy and the powerful, who have no obligation to honor the Bill of Right since they are not state actors but private citizens and corporations.

So, for instance, they can use their draconian power to crush free speech for the Manhattan Declaration. Then they can use it to promote mockery of the sacrament of reconciliation. The state can't do that (yet), but rich guys and corporations can. And if you want to complain, they can see to it that you have your access to their means of communication cut off.

As the US political culture becomes more and more fused with the demands of fewer and fewer extremely wealthy people, it will be harder and harder to protest when these rich men decide to tell us what we can and cannot say and think, since they are not bound by the Bill of Rights. You will be able (for the time being) to speak freely in private. But one by one, our access routes to speaking in the public square will be cut off while the thoughts we think will be subjected to more and more regulation from the state. That's why Obama and the Feds want to get their mitts on the Internet and reinstitute the "Fairness Doctrine". It will all be covered by "national security" and "hate speech" regulation, of course. Say and refrain from saying what the wealthy and powerful demand or the terrorists will have won.

This will, in turn, result in a reaction of irresponsible political speech from people who will overreact to the Thought Police. The mark of a culture that is no longer Christian is that it finds it increasingly difficult to maintain, not merely the theological virtues, but the cardinal ones too. So one excess leads to a reactionary excess and so forth.

That, in part, is the little drama being played out by the advocates of Thought Police on the Left (who are hypocritically exploiting the Tucson shooting to shout down their political opponents, despite the Left's bumper crop of crazy, violent discourse) and the paladins of irresponsible political discourse on the Right who are making their own excuses for glorifying violence, bringing guns to political rallies, and even recommending "second amendment remedies" to elections that don't go their way. The simple fact is, American culture is full of the glorification of violence on all sides.

So does that mean "we all shot those people in Tuscon"?

No. It mean something far worse: we all crucified Jesus Christ.

The good news of the Catholic faith is that Christ has chosen to take upon himself the guilt and sin, not only for his own murder, but for the murder and suffering of those poor folks in Tuscon. The lunatic who pulled the trigger in Tuscon bears his responsibility for his act of pounding the nails through the hands and feet of Christ. But rather than making cynical political capital out of his act by blaming Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, Lefties would be better employed contemplating their own contributions to the miasma of violent rhetoric they so swiftly blame on others. Likewise, rather than pretending that the doctrine of rugged individualism insulates them from the taint of participation in the fallen and violent race they too have helped to encourage, righties might rethink their own glorifications of violence.

Ultimately, the only person in this tragic affair who is without sin is Jesus Christ--and He became sin and chose to bear the guilt of Jared Loughner and the rest of us that we might become the righteousness of God.

Asking who bears the guilt for what happened on Tucson is another way of asking "What's Wrong with the World?" Answer: I am. My dismissive and abusive tongue helped hell here. My flippancy and contempt helped damage respect for other people and encourage people like Loughner to embrace complete contempt. My anger at people helped encourage the Loughners of the world in theirs. My sins against Christian liberty will make it easier for those who seek to destroy that liberty to do so.

The doctrine of solidarity means not, "let's be socialist" but that we are all in Adam (and Christians are in Christ) for good and for ill. My sins hurt you and your acts of obedience help me. For the love of God, may we stop the finger-pointing, forgive those who hypocritically accuse others, and pray.

531 Followers!

Today, my shuffling lickspittles, I command you to take the Our Sunday Visitor Religion Quiz.

That is all!

I be scribblin'

about the Creed, Chosenness, Moms who force their little boys to cross-dress, and our Glorious Multicultural Adventure in Afghanistan.

Back to scribblin'. More tomorrow!

Here's a lovely little video...

...about the conversion of Blessed John Henry Newman.

Please change your address books

I'm getting fretful emails wondering what's wrong with my email addy. Not to worry, delete my old verizon address and replace it with chez.ami -at- frontier.com

Prayer Requests

A reader writes:

Here I come again, hat in hand (so to speak - I have never actually worn a hat :-)), asking for prayer for another of my five children. Our youngest and her husband are engaged in serious marriage struggles, planning on divorce - and their three-year-old the potential victim of all this (at least in my son and his wife's marriage there is no child at stake). Our daughter has now, having separated from her husband, gone into a kind of emotional breakdown (possibly coupled also with physical issues as well - though she is only 28, there is talk of her having possibly had a stroke). They live in New Jersey.

Prayer would be so welcome. Our daughter has ceased to practise her faith and I must feel this is a matter at the heart of all this. Her husband is a non-religious Jew; our daughter is a Catholic. We are just praying for some moral compass and direction for them - they are both wonderful, but are lost without direction.

Father, hear our prayer for the conversion and restoration of faith in this family and for the renewal of love in the marriage and the family. Grant them healing in body and soul through Jesus Christ. Holy Family, pray for them.

Another reader writes:

I have an urgent prayer request I hope you're able to pass along to your readers.

Benjamin Solanus Stevens is only five days old, and is now on his way to Children's Hospital in Boston. He's very jaundiced, and apparently has bleeding in his brain. His parents and all his loved ones are absolutely terrified. We ask everyone (especially asking for the intercession of Solanus Casey, his namesake) to pray for his speedy recovery.

Father, grant complete healing to Benjamin through Jesus Christ by the intercession of your servant Solanus Casey. Mother Mary, pray for this boy, for his caregivers, and for all who love him.