Fugghet about putting on a fake pregnant belly. This is what authentic compassion for women looks like.
Father Landry worries that other priests’ reticence keeps Catholics in the dark on church teachings on contraception. “In most places,” he said, “they don’t hear about it because there are a lot of priests who are conflict-averse, and when you preach in a way that people aren’t pleased, not only do you lose parishioners, but you lose their budget envelopes along with them, and you’ll also get some nasty e-mails and face-to-face conversations.”
Father Landry, 41, is balding, ruddy and blue-eyed, and he speaks quickly and confidently. He gives his parishioners the stiff, 80-proof doctrine: the church hierarchy bans all artificial contraception, and the withdrawal method. The only permissible forms of birth control are abstinence and “natural family planning,” using knowledge of a woman’s cycle to restrict intercourse to times when she is unlikely to conceive.
Take the time to read the article and witness God's grace in the vocation of this priest. We are so blessed to have him and the couple of handfuls of priests in Massachusetts who are equally gifted.
Ok - so that's the good news.
The not so good news?
Cardinal O'Malley has Bob Bowwow Bowers teaching pre cana at The Paulist Center.
I didn't even realize he was still a priest. I thought was defrocked or walked away from his vocation. He's been on a toot/leave of absence for close to ten years. He doesn't call himself "Fr." anymore.
Here's a few articles on Bowwow Bowers:
Here.
Here.
Here.
In your wildest delusions, can you imagine this individual on a list to teach young couples Pre-Cana?
I shouldn't be surprised, because Cardinal O'Malley has repeatedly demonstrated it's exactly what he really loves when it comes to teaching doctrine about marriage and human sexuality. But, even I was surprised the Cardinal would be so bold as to make Bowwow Bowers an official resource for young couples entering into the Sacrament of Marriage.
Quite a comparison between these two priests, eh?
4 comments:
See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/us/09priest.html
it's Mr Bowers
Father Landry was speaking in RI, Bishop Tobin seems very orthodox.
Indeed Fr. Landry sounds good. But what is the very final image that the NYT editor and publisher decided to leave the reader with in that article, the concluding paragraph. (I'm inclined to think this is an editorial decision, not a writerly one but I don't know.) It reads:
Father Landry aimed his cellphone camera at one of the men and “snapped a photo of his derriere,” he said. “Because it’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
Thanks NYT for taking the teachings of the Church, and the teachers of the Church, seriously.
Tom
Tom,
LOL. I was waiting for the kick in the pants from the NYT the entire article. Could be me - but I thought the article was extremely respectful.
I think the context of that sentence was Fr. Landry snapping a pic of the pamphlets hanging out of the crew's pockets. Getting the resources off of his rack and to the uncatechized. Seeing them hanging out of pockets of the crew was symbolism he wanted to capture. I actually liked it. Shows his sense of humor.
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