Grim prospects

I recently wrote a letter (well, filled out an online petition) to Congressman Michael Grimm, protesting the President's recent birth control mandate. I just received a response from the Congressman, detailing his disapproval of the Administration's new rules, and describing his actions in opposition. To wit, he and other pro-life members of Congress got together and came up with the pathetically futile idea of writing a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urging her to "reconsider" the rule and "respectfully" requesting that she suspend the mandate. What a bold and resolute pro-life warrior we have in Congress!

Local priest put in jail by the aspiring Diocletian in the White House.

The Rev. Denis Wilde, Associate Director of our local Priests for Life, has been arrested for praying in front of the White House, in a protest against the Obama Administration's unconstitutional birth control diktat.God! What heroes walk among us! I encourage all to listen to the Rev. Wilde's sermons and interviews, which are available on the Priests for Life website.

PLanned Parenthood on Staten Island

In a recent church bulletin was an insert from the Respect Life Committee of the Staten Island Vicariate, warning us that Planned Parenthood has opened up a mobile clinic on Central Avenue and Slosson Terrace on Mondays from 10-4. They expect to be open three days a week next year, in the office space of Community Health Action on Hyatt Street. The Respect Life Committee, which is made up of Dolores Celentano, Joann Fitzgerald, Deacon James Stahlnecker and its chairman Rev. Peter Byrne, announces that they are holding prayer vigils at the clinic each Monday and want other people to join them.

Mysticism, gay Jesuits, and Catholic abortion providers

Just a few links that piqued my interest: The first is this very perceptive article from the NY Times, about the death of mysticism in contemporary religion, specifically Catholicism. The writer is absolutely correct. When was the last time you felt transcendence in a Catholic Church? When was the last time you felt the Spirit of God at Mass?? The last time I felt those things in Church, my priest was a man who took his vocation and our Faith seriously, whose attitude spread to the entire congregation. What I see now in my church-shopping travels are priests who seem to view themselves as bureacrats or administrators of some sort, who rush through Mass in 30 minutes, who would rather tell jokes than preach repentance, who would prefer to talk about the Yankees than the Gospel.

The other article was also from the Times. It was the obituary of a gay Jesuit who was one of the key figures in the gay rights movement for over 30 years. There's a picture of him marching in a gay rights parade with 3 other priests, all wearing their clerical collars. Can someone tell me how this man was permitted to remain in the priesthood for one second after "coming out"?

The 3rd article is about how the group which represents Catholic hospitals has come out in support of President Obama's health care bill, despite the fact that abortion supporters are telling their people that it will allow federal funding of abortion.