Pro-Life Advocates Beware

From AveWatch.com: Ave Maria Loses Catholic Moral Authority, Moves Focus to Pro-Life Crowd.

Everyone who frequents this blog should by now know of my fascination with all things Ave Maria and Tom Monaghan. AveWatch.com is the premiere watchdog site that keeps track of the pizza baron and his great boondoggle down in Florida. In an article posted on Tuesday, Ave Watcher analyzed recent data points and draws the conclusion that with large segments of orthodox Catholicism onto his MO, Tom and his co-conspirators are moving to woo the pro-life movement at large in a bid to further the brand of Ave Maria.

Read it all, it's pretty damning.

No More Crucifixes

Reuters/Yahoo!: Italy, Vatican in uproar over court crucifix ruling

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

"The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness," said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was "wrong and myopic" to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

Read the whole thing for various responses, etc. Will Italy tell the EU courts to stick it or will it knuckle under? Only time will tell.

EDIT; Zenit's in my inbox, so here are more links...

Vatican "Regrets" European Court Ruling on Crucifix

and

Crucifix Ruling Seen as Severing Italy From Roots

"It ignores or neglects the multiple meaning of the crucifix, which not only is a religious symbol, but also a cultural sign," a communiqué from the conference stated. "It does not take into account the fact that, in reality, in the Italian experience, the display of the crucifix in public places is in harmony with the recognition of the principles of Catholicism as part of the historical patrimony of the Italian people, confirmed by the Concordat of 1984."

Notes on All Saints Day

I've read through the clarification from the Press Office on married men being ordained and I've read reaction and analysis to it around the blogosphere both saying that it both clarifies and muddies the issue. We'll wait for the apostolic constitution.

For those of you who have come upon this blog looking for information on papal appearances, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I do not have the fluency in Italian to serve as the Holy Father's social diary. I wish you well though in finding what you're looking for.

Rorate always has good posts compiling relevant excerpts from Catholic history and tradition: this is one of them.

A Disgusting Case

Dr. Edward Peters, the esteemed canon law expert, has posted this morning on the case of Sister Donna Quinn of Sinsinawa Dominicans who is known for serving as an escort at abortion clinics.

You can read more about the Sinsinawa Dominicans at the left under the Father Mazzuchelli link (yes, those sisters).

Dr. Peters suggests a few canons under which Sister Donna could fall, but he is not enthusiastic as to if any consequences will come from her actions. I wonder though if this lack of action on the part of the community could be brought before those undertaking the current examination of women religious here in the US?

Homeless Widows and Orphans

From the Belfast Telegraph care of Kendall Harmon:

At the moment when a Catholic priest retires, the church only has responsibility towards him.

But what if the priest was married, has a wife and family?

Where would they go if they had to vacate their parochial home? What would they live on? What would happen to clerical widows or, even more distressingly, orphaned children?

Secondly, how could the Catholic Church maintain its stance on clerical celibacy?

It cannot argue logically that it is permissible for married Anglican clergy to convert to full communion with the Catholic Church and yet deny Catholic clergy the right to marriage.

Bolding mine. I don't bring all these questions up in my posts because I'm opposed to this move by the Pope. On the contrary, I am all for it. The Anglican Communion has been a mess for years now and it's about time Rome stepped in in an authoritative way, especially with the TAC petitioning for entrance. However, these are all questions that are going to need to be answered in the Apostolic Constitution or any companion documents before people start coming over or else Rome is going to have a real mess on its hands as the usual circumstances of human life rear their ugly heads.

Kudos to Kendall Harmon for bringing together so many good links on all of this.

Contraception

From a Commonweal blog post linked to by Kendall Harmon:

A friend of mine, a former Anglican actually, brought up an issue that I hadn’t thought about with respect to the new Anglican rite: contraception. In 1930, the Lambeth Conference declared that contraception was not always immoral, and could be used (for serious reason) to regulate the number of children that a married couple had. That declaration prompted a negative response from the Roman Catholic Church–the encyclical Casti Connubii, which declared that the use of contraception was never morally permissible. As most people know, that stance was reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the prohibition against contraception is not a matter of “rite” or religious practice–it is a matter of natural law, binding not only upon Catholics, but upon all persons. So Anglicans who join the Catholic Church will be expected to conform to the prohibition There is no such thing as a dispensation from the strictures of negative moral absolutes. It’s true, of course, that many Roman Catholics make their own decisions about this matter, and come to their own private peace with God in the “internal forum” of their conscience. But the new influx of Anglicans will include people who will not be able to come to a purely private peace–the married members of the clergy, who will be required to follow Humanae Vitae no less than other married persons.

As far as I am aware, however, the morality of contraception under certain circumstances has been more or less a settled issue among Anglicans–even traditionally minded Anglicans. How will this change work out?

As we know, the leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion have already signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and they and their followers must be prepared to accept Catholic dogma and doctrine and all that it requires.

But for other Anglicans who may have issues with the Anglican Communion, but are not so interested in all that comes with Rome, one hopes Rome is prepared with its requirements for ordaining married Anglicans that this is singled out as a primary point.

Marriage

From Rorate, a quote by John Hepworth in an interview:

JH: Bishops in the new Anglican structure will be unmarried. This is out of respect for the tradition of Eastern and Western Christianity. But priests who come from Anglicanism will be able to serve as priests in the new structure, whether married or not, after satisfying certain requirements. The truly radical element is that married men will be able to be ordained priests in the Anglican structure indefinitely into the future. It is anticipated that Anglican bishops who are married when they joined the new structure will still be able to serve as priestly ordinaries, exercising some of the responsibilities of bishops.

Yeah...

...I was afraid of this. Ruth Gledhill yesterday:

A source in Rome tells me that the African bishops have been watching the Anglican developments with interest, in some cases with amazement. Even though England, Wales and the US have been quietly receiving married former Anglican priests to work as Catholic priests for decades, it seems that until this new Apostolic Constitution with its juridical implications was announced, the African bishops had no idea this had been going on.

Now that it is to get canonical standing, some of these bishops are asking, understandably, 'If they can, why can't we......?'

Maybe those who are suggesting the Anglican annexe about to be built onto Rome may be better described as a Trojan horse are on to something. Even the superbly-informed Francis Rocca is writing about the new light this throws on the celibacy issue, so you never know.

Ruth certainly represents a specific constituency (above the passage cited here, she was giving praise to NCReporter for its reporting on the Anglican ordinariate announcement), but if her source is reliable, then certainly such rumblings will have to be headed off immediately. Hard and fast rules are needed now to both clarify the situation for possibly incoming Anglicans and answer those Catholic clerics who are less attached to celibacy than the Pope, especially with Archbishop Milingo still in recent memory.

Anglican Ordinaries

I don't have all the links to the statements and responses just now as I've been off to the dentist this morning. As it has been noted by various people, there are several key points that await clarification when the apostolic constitution is made public:

-There there be one uniform 'Anglican' liturgy?

-Will married clergy be permitted past the first generation?

-What are the differences between the new structure and existing ones?

And so on. Past posts at this blog do much to lay out the background of today's announcements.

Quinceanera Season?

One of the top images provided by a search for the term 'quinceanera' at Google is found at this blog, specifically this post.