Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 306

New Media Company

I have said it before. I'll say it again; Greenville, South Carolina is a cool place to be a Catholic. Two of our young guys--Will Bernhard and Brent Hohman, have started Momentum Studios. They made a video about confession which won  second place in the World Youth Day Video competition. They're working on a series of videos on the sacraments.



I got them to do the capital campaign video for our new church, and they've done some other cool work. Visit their website here to see their show reel, our Capital Campaign video and a video from the Solemn High Mass at Prince of Peace Catholic Church where Father Chris Smith is the new pastor. Enjoy!




If you have enjoyed it, and you need a communication video for your church contact them. They'll do a good job. They're faithful young Catholics passionate about the faith and the new evangelization.

Priests and Politics

Should religion and politics mix? Should priests speak on politics? Let's be clear. Priests are not permitted to run for public office, and clergy are not permitted to endorse a particular candidate or seek to influence people's votes for particular parties.



However, it is part of the duty of the clergy to inform the faithful on the moral issues the populace are facing. It is the duty of the clergy to warn the faithful not to support immoral causes. It seems strange to me when I hear people tell me to shut up and not speak out on politics. The church should stay out of politics period.



When the Nazis came to take away the Jews and gypsies and homosexuals was it okay then for the Catholic clergy to speak out or would it have been better for the church to 'stay out of politics'? When the Catholic people, with the encouragement of their clergy rose up to overthrow the corrupt Marcos regime in the Philippines should the clergy have stayed out of politics? When the Catholic clergy along with the people rose up to overthrow the Communist regime in Poland should the clergy have stayed out of politics? No. All Catholics, including clergy are to be involved in the fight for justice, peace and life.



What we are not to do is to get involved in the ways of this world. We stand outside the political process. We stand outside the ways of force, revolution and military struggle. We stand outside the political system, but we must speak up and stay involved.



What are my own politics? It doesn't matter. As a Catholic priest I stand up first of all for life. I defend human life from womb to tomb. I stand up for love and marriage and children and I defend the family and the home. I insist on a preferential option for the poor. I am against greed and injustice and servitude. I believe the rich have a responsibility to help the poor and that all men and women have a responsibility (due to their own innate dignity) to help themselves and to help one another. I am against killing. I am against war. I am against the rape and pillage of our beautiful natural resources.



This is simply the Catholic faith, and it means that I am disappointed with all the politicians and all their parties. Too often those on the right support an economic system that encourages greed and irresponsibility and neglect of the poor. Too often they are bellicose, warlike and frighteningly nationalistic. Too often those on the left support an economic system that encourages complacency, envy, greed and a sense of entitlement. Too often the left, in the name of freedom encourages license, immorality and depravity.



Republican or Democrat? A plague on both your houses. I'm not for politics. I'm for morality. I'm don't think government has the answer. I think individuals have the answer. I don't think the solutions are in power and politics and prosperity, but in prayer and sacrifice and personal virtue.

Was Voting for Obama a Sin?

Fr Jay Scott  Newman

After the election of 2008, Fr. Jay Scott Newman, the pastor of St Mary's, Greenville wrote a letter to his parishioners stating that if they had voted for Obama knowing fully that abortion was a grave sin, and knowing fully that Obama was going to be the most pro abortion president ever, then they had better get themselves to confession for they had committed a serious sin.



The letter made the national headlines. Fr. Newman was portrayed in the MSM as "South Carolina Pastor"--shorthand for "nose pickin' hick who don't know no better". The hate mail thundered into the parish, jamming the email boxes. I was on the parish staff at the time and the overflow came to me. They wrote their letters spewing hatred and bigotry and ignorance to whomever they could find who's name was associated with the parish.



Some letters were simply full of hatred and blasphemy for Jesus Christ, his Blessed Mother and his holy church. Others were long rants about how wonderful Obama was. The vast majority were crude, violent and some of them so irrationally hateful as to be virtually demonic.



The storm raged. Some of Fr. Newman's friends threw him under the bus and tried to smooth things over. The left wing Catholics who were making obsequious chortling noises to the Obama administration--defending his election and giving him honors at Catholic colleges were tut tutting about priests like Fr. Newman who were obviously "right wing Bible belt extremists". We were called "fundamentalists with incense." Didn't we know that Obama was the president who was going to work for peace and justice and do everything he could for the poor, the immigrants, the blacks the disenfranchised?



Now Catholics from both sides of the political spectrum are united in their condemnation of Obama's blatant attack on religious freedom. The new HHS mandate has done us all a great service in clarifying the situation. The Obama administration are not only the most pro-abortion group of politicians, but they are also the most anti-Catholic. I suspect an increasing number of Catholics who were opposed to Father Newman's statement may now be having second thoughts.



The implications for this country are immense, and it had better be not just Catholics who wake up to reality, but every Christian believer, for once the first step is taken against religious freedom in the name of political correctness, the assault will continue. The feminist abortionists are only the first pack of wolves waiting to attack. The rest of the atheistic, hedonists who hate Christ and his church will sweep down on the fold, and no Christian group will be exempt.

Stretchy Anglicans

From the scholarly William Tighe:




Walton Hannah (1912 – 1966) was a Church of England clergyman who wrote a famous exposé of freemasonry called Darkness Visible. He became a Roman Catholic and left England for Canada (I think because of masonic harassment). In 1957 he wrote a pamphlet explaining the crisis which was current in the Church of England at the time, known as the "Church of South India Crisis". It was caused by the amalgamation of clergy from nonconformist denominations with Anglican clergy into the Church of South India without doctrinal agreement on key points. At the time Anglo-Catholics questioned the validity of the sacraments in these conditions. 

This is what Hannah wrote at the time:

South India provoked a crisis, and crises in the Church of England follow a well-defined pattern. A situation arises which is hopelessly compromising to the Anglo-Catholic position, but which has the support of the vast bulk of the Church of England. Anglo-Catholics protest against it without avail; some leave the Establishment and become Catholics, but the majority hang on, apparently under the impression that by protesting they clear themselves from complicity. Eventually they get used to it and forget all about it, and start talking excitedly about the next crisis, which they say really will split the Church of England. For the Anglo-Catholic conscience is an elastic which will stretch to almost any lengths if it is stretched sufficiently gradually – and no one understands this better than the Bishops.

(Walton Hannah, The Anglican Crisis: The Church of South India, London: CTS, 1957, pp.18-19)  

The Real Battle of the HHS

The battle now enjoined between Barack Obama and the Catholic Church will not be about health care, or women's rights or contraception or abortion for very long. It will not even be about freedom of religion or the defense of personal conscience or freedom of choice.





It has already become what it always was: a battle for power. Once the Obama administration realizes what sleeping dog they have kicked, will they back down? Will they compromise? Do they dare? To do so will be an admission not only to their colleagues, but to the whole country that the Catholic Church has been able to dictate public policy. Will the Obama administration dare to allow such a precedent to be set? The secularist state and the atheists behind it fear this more than anything else.




"How could it be?" the chattering classes will ask, "that those Catholics those superstitious, backward, homophobic, misogynistic, narrow minded, child molesting hypocrites could dare to challenge the American government???" Therefore the godless establishment dare not back down. If they yield to the pressure from Catholic bishops on this one-- what next? What if the Catholics flex their muscles over gay marriage? What if Catholics flex their muscles over abortion? What if Catholics flex their muscles over contraception?




They will look further: two potential Republican presidential candidates are outspoken Catholics. What would happen if the Catholics of the United States actually forgot their liberal-conservative divisions (and it looks like they are) and get behind one particular presidential candidate? 




The secular, godless ruling class must be facing this showdown with trepidation. Furthermore, if any of them are even a little bit awake they will have seen the growth of the annual March for Life. They will have seen the youth, the vigor, the joy and the power of the Catholic Church in this country. 




Even the most sluggish observer of the religious cultural scene will know that the Protestants are hopelessly divided. There is no national spokesman for the Protestants. The Evangelicals can be portrayed as pick up driving, nose picking fundamentalist hicks. The mainstream Protestants are on the side of the abortion loving liberals. Apart from a few intellectuals, the rest of the Protestants can be written off. They are not a threat.




But despite their best efforts, the secular elite cannot write off the Catholic Church. Only the Catholics put forward leaders on the national stage who are courageous, articulate and ready to take a stand. Only the Catholics have a nationwide infrastructure and communication system. Only the Catholics have the numbers who could be rallied to take a stand.




The question is whether Catholics will take a stand or not. You can learn more by going to the USCCB website to learn how to get involved. Go here to sign the White House petition.




If you don't who will?

Anglo Presbyterians?

Jump over to the Anglo Catholic to see a blog post I've written on whether there is such a thing as an Anglo-Presbyterian and if so, whether they are eligible for entry into the new Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.

The Domestic Monastery

I'm guest blogging for the Anchoress this week, and writing on monasticism. Jump over here for a short post on the application of monastic wisdom in family life.

Auntie Joanna

Joanna Bogle is home after her trek to the wilds of the West...that is the USA. She reports here on her visit to Alabama, Ohio, South Carolina, the March for Life and then back across the Atlantic.

Gone to Ground

I'm being a hermit for a week. That is to say, an Anchorite. I'm guest blogger over at The Anchoress and will take the opportunity to blog for a week on things monastical. I'll be posting links here, and blogging here and posting links there, so you can hop, skip and jump around if you like. My fellow guest bloggers are Kathy Schiffer and Elizabeth Duffy.



I know it's not very hermit like to be blogging with two females, but they are holed up in their study doing their blogging and I'm here in mine doing my blogging, so we could imagine that we're a community of hermits like at Camodoli or the Carthusians.



See you over there!

The New Radicals

Some time ago I read a piece by an aging former hippie complaining that the younger generation have no passion of political protest. This old guy was remembering his glory days of sit ins and peace protests and riots in the streets and anti war protests and rock concerts.



He's blind to the fact that young people are just as radical as they've ever been. They're just as idealistic and fed up with the complacent status quo. What the aging hippie didn't see is that the complacent status quo is the brave new world he and his generation have created.



The new radicals aren't really the unwashed and angry young people occupying Wall Street, they are the well scrubbed and happy young people marching up Constitution Hill. What the sour old hippie didn't realize is that you don't have to be angry to protest injustice. You can have a peaceful, well organized and legal protest and still be radical.



The new radicals are the hundreds of thousands of college aged and high school students who thronged into Washington yesterday for the March for Life. All statistics show the future belongs to them. Anti abortion sentiment is strongest among the young, and the young people who marched on Washington yesterday are not only young and joyful. They're smart.



The new radicals won't drop out. They'll get involved in life and they'll change the world. They will do so because they not have faith, but they come from solid families, good communities and from a people who know how to work hard, achieve solid results and do so with a positive, upbeat and can do attitude.



They know how to use the new technologies and overcome the MSM bias. They know how to get involved and stay involved--not just launch a few noisy protests. They know how to work together with others and communicate their message. They will do so with intelligence, shrewd new ideas, hard work--and most of all--joy!



Then I thought of another reason why the aging hippie isn't seeing any of his grandchildren espousing his radical causes....he probably doesn't have any.