Attention Young Pro-Life Artists!

More great outreach to the young from the Walk for Life West Coast! From Friday's California Catholic Daily:

Walk for Life West Coast asks youth for help
Design-a-shirt contest

"From its inception, San Francisco’s Walk for Life West Coast has been notable for the presence of thousands of pro-life youth. The attraction of the pro-life cause to young people is pretty clear: in addition to the obvious moral objections, anyone born after Roe v. Wade understands that had they been killed through abortion it would have been perfectly legal. That attitude is well expressed though groups like the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. But it is also true that Walk for Life West Coast organizers have consciously reached out to the young, counting on them for important functions at the Walk, such as the distribution of signs and with college age students, helping with security.

For the 2015 Walk, organizers have provided the youth with another opportunity to contribute: a pro-life Design-a-Shirt contest. From the Walk’s website:

“As we prepare for the January 24, 2015 Walk, we are offering a great opportunity for all young artists to use their creative talents in the service of the littlest among us. We are sponsoring a new Walk for Life West Coast Design-a-Shirt Contest.

There will be two divisions: one for high school age artists and one for college-age artists. The winning graphic will adorn Walk for Life West Coast t-shirts, which will be offered through the Café Press website.

Winning entries in both age categories will receive a prize of $500; second place, a prize of $350; and third place, a prize of $150. What’s more, First Place winners who are attending the Walk will be interviewed live on EWTN’s January 24, 2015 Life on the Rock pre-walk television show.

Asked what inspired the idea, Walk co-chair Eva Muntean said “I remember about five years ago during San Francisco’s 40 Days For Life a bunch of young people from St. Peter’s Parish came out to join the vigil at Planned Parenthood. This one kid had this unbelievably cool hoodie. It was black with a violet silhouette of Padre Pio. It was so cool! I asked him where he got it and he said he and his friend had designed it and had it printed.”

Submissions are due on December 15, 2014 and winners will be notified on December 22.

For more information, visit www.walkforlifewc.com/event-info/design-a-shirt-contest/

And remember, the Walk for Life is on January 24, 2015!

Equality at the expense of sanity, epidemiology division part 3

Air travel from West African countries stricken by ebola must be stopped NOW. It won't solve everything, not by a long shot, but will allow the international community to at least attempt to get a handle on the epidemic, by restricting possible vectors.

Today's news--and it's not even from Africa, but from the US:

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/10/15/ebola-patient-traveled-day-before-diagnosis/

We saw how many people in Texas were required to take care of ONE ebola patient. Many more than one or two will be infected. Air flights WILL be restricted from the West African countries. It's just a question of how many people will die first.

2,000 Faithful--Bishops, Priests, Students, Novices, Laity--at SF Rosary Rally!

Great event! I'm sorry I missed it--we had the Columbus Day bazaar at Saints Peter and Paul the same day.

Below is Valerie Schmalz's article in this week's edition of Catholic San Francisco. You can see more photos at the "gallery" page of the Rosary Rally website.

Archbishop leads Eucharistic Procession

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone carried the exposed Eucharist in a monstrance through the streets of San Francisco, as more than 1,000 Catholics processed in a public display of faith from St. Mary’s Cathedral to United Nations Plaza for the fourth annual rosary rally Oct. 11. 

Procession down Van Ness Avenue (photo courtesy Dennis Callahan, Catholic San Francisco)

“Pope Francis prays three rosaries a day,” said keynote speaker Father Andrew Apostoli, co-founder with Father Benedict Groeschel in 1988 of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, urging the about 2,000 people gathered in the Indian summer sun at the noon rally to pray the rosary daily. 

“The key to world peace is to be praying the rosary,” said Father Apostoli, an expert on the 1916 revelations of the Blessed Mother to the three children at Fatima, Portugal. 

The day’s events begin with 10 a.m. Mass in Spanish for Hispanic Ministry Day at the cathedral, followed by a procession past City Hall to U.N. Plaza. The rally included reciting the luminous mysteries, speeches, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and benediction.

The Archbishop and the faithful in Adoration of Our Lord. (photo courtesy Dennis Callahan, Catholic San Francisco)

“Our Lady’s great concern was to save souls from being lost,” Father Apostoli told rally participants, repeatedly urging all to pray the rosary daily as the Blessed Mother told the children in each of her six appearances at Fatima. “She even let those three children see a vision of hell so that they could tell us hell was a real thing and we don’t want to go there.”

 The rosary rally, held near San Francisco’s City Hall, is a renewed tradition aimed at bringing public expressions of faith back to the Bay Area. In 1961, Father Patrick Peyton’s Rosary Crusade drew a half-million people to Golden Gate Park.

Fifty years later, in 2011 the Legion of Mary, Knights of Columbus, Immaculate Heart Radio, Ignatius Press and the Archdiocese of San Francisco began a new rosary rally tradition in downtown San Francisco. This year the Guadalupañas joined as official sponsors.

 In a letter to pastors urging participation, Archbishop Cordileone wrote, “Our rosary rally is a good example of what the Holy Father calls ‘the evangelizing power of popular piety.’”

 Jerick Rea, a St. Dominic parishioner and member of the parish’s young adult group, saw the flyer at church and came with friend Rose Aerubi. “I felt it would be great,” said Rea who noted that eight novices from the Dominican Priory who he sees at daily Mass were also present. “I came to support the archbishop and to pray the rosary.”

 As they have every year, administrators and students from San Francisco’s Archbishop Riordan High School volunteered to walk with the archbishop from the cathedral and took up a collection at the rally’s conclusion. 

“It’s important because our school is sponsored by the Society of Mary,” said Riordan president Joseph Conti, many of whose students present were football players who had competed late the night before. “We are very happy to support the archbishop in this endeavor to bring the rosary rally back to life in San Francisco.”

 “In this very biblical prayer we turn to Our Lady so that she may direct us to her son,” Archbishop Cordileone said in a talk that explained the Hail Marys in the original joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the rosary total 150, the same number as the number of Psalms. The luminous mysteries, instituted by St. John Paul II in his 2002 Apostolic Letter on the Rosary of the Virgin Mary, focus on five key parts of Jesus’ public ministry.

 St. John Paul II called the rosary a “school of Mary,” the archbishop said – “a school in which he says the Christian people are led to contemplate the beauty in the face of Christ and experience the depths of his love.”

 Father Apostoli told those gathered that even carrying a rosary brings a blessing. “The rosary is a prayer to bring God’s mercy for the salvation of souls,” he said. “I put a rosary in a little pocket in my pajamas.” 

Confessions were heard throughout the two-hour event, and even after the rally concluded at 2 p.m., there were lines of people waiting for confession administered by the four priests sitting on folding chairs on the tree-lined side of the plaza. 

Father Joseph Illo, administrator of Star of the Sea Parish in San Francisco, and co-founder of a new venture to institute an Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the archdiocese, emceed the event. Father Illo introduced the archbishop, leading the crowd in a chant “Viva” for the archbishop, adding in a nod to the city’s hopes for the National League playoffs against the St. Louis Cardinals, “I know some of you were secretly praying for the Giants during your rosary.” 

'Cohabitation?' Do you mean fornication, Eminences?

Interesting fact: the word 'cohabitation' appears in this week's relatio for the synod on the family 10 times, but the word 'fornication' not even once.

The word cohabitation refers to people living together. If the authors of the relatio are just referring to people living together, why is it there in a document of a synod purportedly about the family? I cohabited with my friend Kevin when we were in our early 20's. Our roommate situation would not belong in a synod on the family.

On the other hand, I know people who do not cohabit, yet have been having "regular, consummating sex" for years. There is a word for that: fornication, and it is absent from the relation. Are those people of any concern to you, Eminences?

The authors of the relatio are poisoning thought by political correctness--the unwillingness to call a thing by its true name, but the problem goes deeper. That's the narcissistic belief that we have a right to our own reality.

At Synod, divorce IS on the table--but whose?

Going into the current Synod on the Family one of the most publicized issues (rightly or wrongly) was whether or not to give communion to divorced and remarried Catholics. I have a disturbing sense that this is because some of the clergy at the synod are trying to divorce the Church, the Bride of Christ, from her groom, Jesus.

The big news yesterday was the bizarre paragraph 50, from the recently released relation, which asserting that the Church should accept sin.

"Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?"

A church document asserting that we should value sodomy. Only a Bishop or Cardinal who has divorced himself from Jesus Christ could have written that.

The authors are now scrambling for cover.

From Catholic News Agency earlier today:

1) First they report what the Holy See's Press office said:

"The General Secretariat of the Synod … reiterates that it is a working document, which summarizes the interventions and debate of the first week,” said an Oct. 14 declaration of the Holy See press office on behalf of the secretariat of the Synod of Bishops."

2) But the Synod declines responsibility:

"Cardinal Napier, a moderator of one of the small circles at the synod, openly dismissed the relatio during an Oct. 14 briefing with journalists, saying, 'that’s Cardinal Erdo’s text, not the synod text.'

The cardinal questioned whether 'some expectations of the synod are unrealistic,' and underscored that 'the synod is not called to discuss contraception, abortion, same-sex marriages. It was convoked to speak about the family.'

 'How it is written, the relatio conveys that there is an agreement on issues, on which there is not in fact an agreement' the Archbishop of Durban underscored.'

3) But Cardinal Erdo says:

"Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest and general rapporteur of the synod, said the relatio may not be completely attributed to him.

When asked about legislation regarding homosexual couples, Cardinal Erdo did not respond and instead gave the floor to Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, saying 'who has written the paragraph must respond.'
However, after Archbishop Forte’s response, Cardinal Erdo wanted to point out that the relatio lacks a mention of 'the disorder' of some behavior, even though synod fathers had stressed it."
Some Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests of course still respect their vows:

"In an Oct. 13 interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, told CNA the relatio 'is simply riven with very serious difficulties, and I'm deeply, deeply concerned and I'm not alone.'”

Indeed, he's not. Here's the comment of Cardinal Gerhard Muller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. From La Repubblica, via Rorate:

"Undignified, Shameful, Completely Wrong."

 Vatican Radio (again, via Rorate):
 
"The document summarizing the first week of the synod is not acceptable to many bishops - so says Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki." 

 Archbishop Gadecki is the President of the Polish Bishop's Conference.

Supreme Court justices wash hands over fate of family

What an abdication of responsibility. Our good Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, and Bishop Richard J. Malone, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth released this statement today.

Their Excellencies highlight the justices abdication of responsibility, and articulate the truth of what marriage is.

"Upholding the inviolable dignity of every human person is a duty for all, and this duty entails the defense of the unique meaning of marriage as between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up any of the cases striking down state laws reflecting the authentic meaning of marriage in five states is extremely disappointing and surprising. All of these state laws were democratically enacted, including most by the direct vote of large majorities within just the last decade. Millions of Americans had looked to the Court with hope that these unjust judicial decisions might be reversed. Instead, as a result of the Supreme Court’s action today, those decisions are allowed to take effect. Furthermore, marriage laws in six other states are now in jeopardy.

Marriage is and can only be between a man and a woman—a unique relationship in which the state has a vested interest. It is the only institution that unites a wife and a husband together for life and unites them to any children that come from their union. This truth presumes and supports the equal dignity of all people, especially of children whose right to a mother and a father deserves the utmost legal protection. The Supreme Court’s action fails to resolve immediately the injustice of marriage redefinition, and therefore should be of grave concern to our entire nation.

Globally, we are at a time of recognizing the decisive importance of marriage and the family when it comes to addressing challenges of poverty and serving the good of all. This is a time when marriage needs to be strengthened, not redefined. Our young people need encouragement to embrace the gift and responsibility of marriage as it truly is—a permanent, faithful, and fruitful gift of self between a man and a woman. May all of us continue to work to strengthen and protect marriage and stand for justice for all, especially children, who are the most vulnerable."

Hundreds of thousands march for marriage and family in France

Wow! Check out these pictures, as the French stand for the rights of children. Marches took place today in Paris and Bordeaux.

And very interesting commentary at English Manif.

Charming photos from the Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus

On a happier note, Father Z. passes along photos from a lovely Mass celebrated yesterday:

"In the Diocese of Lincoln, where it is still okay to be a faithful Catholic openly, there is a school where, on the Feast of St. Therese, the girls dress as the Little Flower for the day.  Bp. Conley celebrated Mass for the school.

(More) Photos HERE."

Equality at the expense of sanity, epidemiology division, part 2

Yesterday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said:

"There also are screening procedures in place at our border."

Our WHAT? Does the U.S. even have borders anymore? The southern border, which used to be the Rio Grande, is to a real border what counterfeit marriage is to marriage.

Today the New York Times reported:

"They said Wednesday that they believed 12 to 18 people had direct contact (with Liberian Ebola victim and carrier Thomas Duncan). On Thursday morning, a spokeswoman for Dallas County Health and Human Services said it was thought that 80 people had contact directly with Mr. Duncan or secondarily with his direct contacts. Then in an afternoon news conference, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that health workers were assessing 100 people — including hospital workers and emergency medical technicians — to determine whether they had been exposed. That number does not include secondary contacts, a spokesman for the agency said."