A Word on Wednesday, Wednesday, February 22, 2012, St Therese of Lisieux

Image via Wikipedia

"Look at His adorable face.
Look at His glazed and sunken eyes.
Look at His wounds.
Look Jesus in the Face.
There, you will see how He loves us."

~ St. Therese of Lisieux

Weekly Lectio

I'd like to begin a new series of posts each week consisting of a text selected from the Mass readings for the following week. My hope is these will be useful to you in beginning, or continuing your own practice of daily prayer with the Scripture. I intend to use these texts myself. If this is helpful, or not, or if one text seems especially to touch your prayer, your comments will be welcome. The first text is Psalm 19, from Monday's readings.

PSALM 19
The Works and the Word of God.
For the choir director. A Psalm of David.

                The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

    2         Day to day pours forth speech,

And night to night reveals knowledge.

    3         There is no speech, nor are there words;

Their voice is not heard.

    4         Their line has gone out through all the earth,

And their utterances to the end of the world.

In them He has placed a tent for the sun,

    5         Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber;

It rejoices as a strong man to run his course.

    6         Its rising is from one end of the heavens,

And its circuit to the other end of them;

And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

    7         The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul;

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

    8         The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

    9         The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;

The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether.

  10         They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;

Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.

  11         Moreover, by them Your servant is warned;

In keeping them there is great reward.

  12         Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.

  13         Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;

Let them not rule over me;

Then I will be blameless,

And I shall be acquitted of great transgression.

  14         Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

Be acceptable in Your sight,

O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. ^[1]

---

^[1] New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Ps 19:1–14). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Early Church Fathers, Sunday, February 19, 2012, Origen

Image via Wikipedia (Note:  Below is a replace for the original for today, which was incomplete.)

If a man departs this life with lighter faults, he is condemned to fire which burns away the lighter materials, and prepares the soul for the kingdom of God, where nothing defiled may enter. For if on the foundation of Christ you have built not only gold and silver and precious stones (I Cor., 3); but also wood and hay and stubble, what do you expect when the soul shall be separated from the body? Would you enter into heaven with your wood and hay and stubble and thus defile the kingdom of God; or on account of these hindrances would you remain without and receive no reward for your gold and silver and precious stones? Neither is this just. It remains then that you be committed to the fire which will burn the light materials; for our God to those who can comprehend heavenly things is called a cleansing fire. But this fire consumes not the creature, but what the creature has himself built, wood, and hay and stubble. It is manifest that the fire destroys the wood of our transgressions and then returns to us the reward of our great works. (Patres Groeci. XIII, col. 445, 448 [A.D. 185-232]).

Intrinsic Evil

Fr. Richard writes on his blog, Catholic Morality, about the intrinsic evil of the HHS abortion mandate.  He describes the problem perfectly:  

We are going to hear all sorts of attempts to accommodate the President's Mandate "accommodation" within Catholic ranks. The chiefs of Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association were obviously given the advance notice they needed to be ready to give the President the shout out on this. There will be many more. They will all make their comments based upon convoluted, moralistic platitudes about the good of providing universal access to health care which, they say, trumps participation in moral evil. These positions will be mortally flawed. Will they be corrected? I would hope so.

 Willing cooperation in grave evil in order to secure a benefit for oneself makes the person who cooperates equally guilty of the grave evil. What is the goal, exactly, of agreeing with the President on this? Is it because those who go along with the President's mandate want people to have access to these so-called preventive services? If so, the cooperation in the program of contraception, sterilization, and chemical abortions is immoral and gravely sinful. Is it because they want to maintain government funding and the ability to "serve" the general public? The cooperation is still gravely sinful.

 In fact, it is quite clear that these agencies and their affiliated institutions cannot cooperate in this plan to provide abortion, sterilization, or contraceptives. Indeed, this plan of the President's is morally evil, in itself. It is what moral theology and Catholic doctrine refer to as "intrinsic evil." Yes, that's right. The plan itself, not just the acts of abortion, contraception and sterilization, is intrinsically evil.

 People are reluctant today to call an evil, evil.  I think it’s important to understand the gravity of this issue and what we are “accommodating” in the “accommodation.”  Please read Father’s post.

Early Church Fathers, Sunday, February 12, 2012 St Gregory of Sinai

He, therefore, who sets himself to act evilly and yet wishes others to be silent, is a witness against himself, for he wishes himself to be loved more than the truth, which he does not wish to be defended against himself. There is, of course, no man who so lives as not sometimes to sin, but he wishes truth to be loved more than himself, who wills to be spared by no one against the truth. Wherefore, Peter willingly accepted the rebuke of Paul; David willingly hearkened to the reproof of a subject. For good rulers who pay no regard to self-love, take as a homage to their humility the free and sincere words of subjects. But in this regard the office of ruling must be tempered with such great art of moderation, that the minds of subjects, when demonstrating themselves capable of taking right views in some matters, are given freedom of expression, but freedom that does not issue into pride, otherwise, when liberty of speech is granted too generously, the humility of their own lives will be lost.

B.O. Backs Down, Sort of . . .

The Wall Street Journal announced that B.O. is backing down on the HHS mandate.  Here’s part of the story:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama, hoping to quell an intensifying political backlash, on Friday will announce a new policy that no longer requires a broad swath of religious organizations to provide employees with contraception coverage in health-insurance plans.

Under the new policy, insurance companies will be required to offer free contraception for these workers, a subtle shift aimed at moving the onus from the employer to the insurer, a senior administration official said.

Catholic leaders had objected to the requirement, which exempted churches but not hospitals, charities and universities with religious affiliations.

Mr. Obama will announce the policy change Friday, a sign of how high-profile the issue has become. The new mandate will come from the Department of Health and Human Services via a regulation, people familiar with the decision said.

The policy will allow religious employers to opt out of the coverage mandate. If they do so, the employer's insurance company will be required to offer contraception for free in a separate arrangement with workers who want it. That is a variation of a system used in Hawaii, where a coverage mandate is already in place.

It seems to me, this isn’t a great compromise; contraceptives and abortifacients will still be provided through health insurance plans and, to make matters worse, it will raise the cost of insurance on all employers.  It means the Catholic organizations will still, in effect be providing these things under their health policies.

Miscellaneous Musings, Thursday, February 9, 2012

Image via Wikipedia

A quote from a column in the latest New Oxford Review by Frederick W. Marks, TheRush to Radical Informality.  Marks points out the connection between some of the worst of today’s cultural deviations, including, even, the break up of the family to this incessant wearing of jeans and t-shirts, no matter how inappropriate.   You might also include the case of the Missouri teenage girl who killed a 9 year old, “just to see what it felt like.”    Marks writes:

“In the final analysis, radical informality, intended or not, is an assault on form, and by “form” I refer not only to the kind of structure that governs a Shakes­pearean sonnet or a Haydn quartet, but to anything that sets limits. The censorship that shaped the classics and fostered the golden age of film (1937-1957), the glorious symmetry that we associate with Mother Nature — all of this is form and, clearly, it is something to be treasured.

Proper dress is not a matter of appearing “better” than another. There is such a thing as false humility. Was it not the insidious Uriah Heap, in Dickens’s David Cop­per­field, who claimed to be “an ’umble man”? But when one has to decide between casual and formal wear, whether it be sneakers vs. dress shoes at work or jeans and a T-shirt vs. a coat and tie at church, the choice is important. We are combatants in a culture war, and externals count in the battle for men’s minds.”