A Dog Gets Communion

The only thing good to say about this story is that it wasn't a Catholic priest.

The Toronto Star reports that according to those in attendance, it was a spontaneous gesture intended to make both the dog and its owner -- a first-timer at the church -- feel welcome.

"Welcome" all right.


Welcome to a nuthouse.




Maybe it's me but when I go to a Church, I'm not looking to feel welcome.   I'm looking to worship God, restore my soul, hear the Gospel and a reflection on it.


The Anglican Bishop is onto it:

"I think the reverend was overcome by what I consider a misguided gesture of welcoming."

And here we are complaining about the "kiss of peace".   

Church needs "clear" injunction denying proabort pols communion?

Boston Cardinal: Church Needs 'Clear' Injunction Denying Pro-Abortion Pols Communion

LifeSiteNews.com caught up with O’Malley in Washington, DC last month, where he was among the concelebrating bishops for the Vigil Mass for Life at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. LSN asked O’Malley what he considered the appropriate pastoral response to pro-abortion politicians receiving Communion.

"Well, I think that the only way that that solution [denying communion] should be invoked is if there were a large catechesis or if it was universal for the whole church," the cardinal responded. "You can’t have people doing things in one parish and another, you would only divide the Church hopelessly.”

Is this guy serious? 

O’Malley said an official papal directive or change in Canon Law would be “the only way it is really going to work.”

“That would be helpful if they did it,” he continued. “But if it is not done – to make it look like it’s an individual bishop sparring with the people of particular parties is only going to divide the Church in a very terrible way.  Then you’ll have some priest who will obey and others who won’t, other divisions of the Church, more scandal, and undermining the authority of the bishops.”

O’Malley revealed that he had been concerned about the issue for a long time, and asked Pope John Paul II for guidance when the pontiff was soliciting input from bishops for his pro-life encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

“I wrote to him and asked him to please give us very clear direction on how to deal with politicians who will be pro-abortion and will be Catholic,” related O’Malley.
“We have not had the kind of clear response that we need.”

 What is he talking about?

Canon 915 gives explicit instructions and the Vatican has supplemented the instructions with numerous other directives.

Here's one from Cardinal Ratzinger from 2004. 

Unfortunately, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) never received the letter as Ratzinger intended.  Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, chairman of the USCCB task force on the issue, only referenced the document as an afterthought in his 12-page report to that committee.

Later – in what may have been a Vatican end-run around McCarrick – Ratzinger's letter hit international headlines after being leaked to Roman media.

And, in another example of how the USCCB thwarts the Roman Catholic Church, they issued their own policy burying the Vatican's instructions.

In the end, the US Bishops task force put out more generalized guidelines in the document "Catholics in Political Life," which leaves the appropriate pastoral response towards pro-abortion politicians - including denial of Communion - to the prudential judgment of the individual bishop. Ratzinger would later affirm to the USCCB that the document was "very much in harmony" with his general principles.

Again, this is the same kind of dishonesty Cardinal O'Malley displayed as the ink was drying on the Caritas Abortion contracts and the money was changing hands.

Really, I cannot get over the depth and breadth of the deception. They rely upon the ignorance of the regular schlubs in the pews.

Frankly, I am not edified by the cover ups of the Catholic faithful.

Right now this is rumor and hearsay even by the admission of the blogger ("working on a lead"). I won't allow it to be promoted here especially since it concerns an Archbishop. When there is some type of substantial evidence which meets (my obviously subjective) bar of news, then we can talk about it here.

But when I posted the names and the remainder of the story, they won't give the people the information.

We're in tough shape.

Patrick Kennedy Trying to Put the Communion Dust Up "to Rest"

Is that right.

Well then, he ought to lay off the inaccurate statements.

“These are personal issues of faith for me,’’ he said after a forum about health care at Brown University.

Actually, no. The beauty of telling things to journalists is that they'll make private things public. Patrick used the journalists to represent himself as the arbiter of official positions in the Catholic Faith. Further, he gave the private letter from the Bishop about those "personal issues", to the journalist.

“I’m not going to indulge in this debate anymore. It’s really for me about what my constituents are most interested in now, and that is getting a health care bill passed that helps improve their lives.’’

But, it's clear the overwhelming majority of Patrick's constituents oppose handing the welfare of our health over to the government. It's also untruthful to say, it's going to improve any of our lives because the quality of medicine everyone is going to get will impair and threaten our lives - not to mention bankrupting hospitals and perhaps even financially imploding the American empire.

In fact, today, six Massachusetts hospitals have announced that they're suing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts because "healthcare reform" is threatening their solvency.

And, the poorest of the poor are the people being robbed of medical care.

Six Massachusetts hospitals are suing the state, saying they were shortchanged by the 2006 health care law.

The hospitals claim the state violated a law requiring health care providers be adequately reimbursed for caring for Medicaid and Medicare patients.

The six are known as "disproportionate share hospitals" because at least 63 percent of their patients are covered by public insurance.

Intellectual dishonesty has a way of metastasizing until it eventually robs you of everything. Patrick has consumed himself.

When a consumed soul starts to beckon the multitudes down into the hole with you,it becomes the responsibility of loving and caring people to make sure the errors are corrected in the public square.

It's too late to keep the issues "private". The horse is out of the barn.

Bishop Martino Issues No Communion Order

Bishop Martino got the message from the Pope and is taking the bull by it's horns in his own diocese.

Excellence. I like the way it's worded, i.e., stop throwing the match on a soul who has doused himself with gasoline.

What kind of a shepherd would knowingly feed your cancer?

I just don't get it.

Giving a defiant soul the Blessed Sacrament is a thousand times worse than bringing the watermelon twist vodka to the AA picnic or dropping by a pedophile's house with a handful of Penthouse.

Bishop Martino, like many others, has a politician who is calling himself prolife while being an accessory to thousands of abortions every year. Nonsense that's misled hundred of thousands, if not millions.

Therefore, His Excellency, the Most Reverend Joseph F. Martino, Bishop of Scranton, reminds all ministers of Holy Communion, ordinary and extraordinary, that:

1. To administer the Sacred Body and Blood of the Lord is a serious duty which they have received from the Church, and no one having accepted this responsibility has the right to ignore the Church’s law in this regard;

2. Those whose unworthiness to receive Holy Communion is known publicly to the Church must be refused Holy Communion in order to prevent sacrilege and to prevent the Catholic in question from committing further grave sin through unworthy reception.

The official notice does not mention any individual by name. However it is impossible to overlook the fact that on the same day, February 26, the Scranton diocese also posted an open letter from Bishop Martino of Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey, in which the bishop-- for the second time-- reminded the Catholic lawmaker of his moral obligation "to oppose abortion and other clear evils." [See today's separate CWN headline storyon the bishop's letter.]

Earlier in the month, in a first rebuke to Senator Casey, Bishop Martino had warned that the senator's vote against an extension of the Mexico City policy-- which prohibited US taxpayer funding of abortion advocacy abroad-- was a violation of the legislator's moral obligation. “Your failure to reverse this vote will regrettably mean that you persist formally in cooperating with the evil brought about by this hideous and unnecessary policy,” the bishop wrote.

The February 26 notice from the Scranton diocese notes that the #915 of the Code of Canon Law instructs Eucharistic ministers not to administer the Blessed Sacrament to Catholics "who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin." [emphasis added] The official notice goes on to quote then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in his 2004 message to the bishops of the United States:

Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.

Those whose unworthiness to receive Holy Communion is known publicly to the Church must be refused Holy Communion in order to prevent sacrilege and to prevent the Catholic in question from committing further grave sin through unworthy reception.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the games being played.

I don't know what must means.

Do you know what must means?

Let's form a Committee.

Where's McCarrick?

The fact that Cardinals, Priests and Bishops find passive/aggressive ways to do whatever they want when a teaching is so clear has personally caused me and many others grave scandal.

The scandal manifests in a myriad of ways, but ultimately, if a shepherd has total disregard for the word "must", I have zero confidence that priest gives a rat's patoot about Transubstantiation.

If he believed, he wouldn't cause further injury to a defiant soul by bolstering the spiritual rebellion with the highest form of sacrilege humanly possible. If he believes in the spiritual dimensions and the internal battle for the soul - he just wouldn't be an accessory to that kind sacrilege any more than he would empty the Ciborium into a sewer.

I'm supposed to believe a Cardinal, Bishop, Priest gives credence to the word "must" is when it's in the context of he must Transubstantiate as he's has lied and defied the word "must"?

They are not ignorant of the spiritual consequences that would rain down on their head if they walked out of the Sanctuary and emptied the Ciborium into a sewer. It would be their worst nightmare - but they willingly do it to another person.

No, someone who would do that is neither a believer in Transubstantiation, the Sacraments or Salvation and it's time to shake the dust off your shoes and find one who does. God has not left us orphaned.

We have a few handfuls of Bishops in the United States and a handful in each diocese, praise be to Jesus Christ now and forever.

Nancy Pelosi kerfuffle with US Bishops

Archbishop Niederauer released a statement today about Nancy Pelosi's "serious conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church about abortion". He asserts his authority to interpret the faith, to publicly correct erroneous, misleading and confusing positions when they are advanced, how it affects communion with the Church and has asked her to meet with him.


Since 2004, the number of Bishops who now put the price of a soul above their own popularity has multiplied like the loaves and fish. He's asked for prayers, God knows they're both going to need them.

What of Catholics who find themselves questioning the teachings of the Church, or experiencing uncertainties and questions about them? The bishops answer, "Some Catholics may not fully understand the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings on certain issues. They may have certain questions and even uncertainties. In situations of honest doubt and confusion, they are welcome to partake of Holy Communion, as long as they are striving to understand what the Church professes and to resolve confusion and doubt."

Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and my predecessor as Archbishop here in San Francisco, wrote in 2004: "No bishop is eager to forbid members of his flock from receiving the precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, who invites us into communion with Himself and his Body, the Church, as grace and salvation." In that same year, the U.S. bishops acknowledged that pastoral sensitivity, and they endorsed the following approach to this question of denying Holy Communion: "Given the wide range of circumstances involved in arriving at a prudential judgment on a matter of this seriousness, we recognize that such decisions rest with the individual bishop in accord with the established canonical and pastoral principles. Bishops can legitimately make different judgments on the most prudent course of pastoral action. Nevertheless, we all share an unequivocal commitment to protect human life and dignity and to preach the Gospel in difficult times." From that statement I conclude that it is my responsibility as Archbishop to discern and decide, prayerfully, how best to approach this question as it may arise in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

I regret the necessity of addressing these issues in so public a forum, but the widespread consternation among Catholics made it unavoidable. Speaker Pelosi has often said how highly she values her Catholic faith, and how much it is a source of joy for her. Accordingly, as her pastor, I am writing to invite her into a conversation with me about these matters. It is my obligation to teach forthrightly and to shepherd caringly, and that is my intent. Let us pray together that the Holy Spirit will guide us all toward a more profound understanding and appreciation for human life, and toward a resolution of these differences in truth and charity and peace.

September 5, 2008