The Most Anti-Catholic Political Ad You'll Ever See

From The National Catholic Register
By Matthew Archbold

A Democrat Party supporting independent non profit group has sent out perhaps THE most anti-Catholic political advertisement I’ve ever seen. Sometimes there’s a little subtlety to anti-Catholic political rhetoric but not this time. This is in your face anti-Catholicism. A postcard was sent out to voters with a photo shopped picture of a Catholic priest wearing a campaign button saying: “Ignore the Poor.”

As you can see the pic takes up nearly the entire length of the postcard. It’s anti-Catholicism is not one point of many. It’s the point.

According to its website “The Minnesota DFL supports and works to enact the ideals and principles of the Democratic Party and strives to sustain the foundations in our Party’s grassroots history.”

One of the more worrisome things about this is that this group must believe that there’s enough of an anti-Catholic vote that this would pay dividends. Could that be true?

Never mind the factual basis the charge that the Church ignores the poor is absolutely ridiculous because the Church is THE most charitable organization on the planet. But this postcard has nothing to do with the poor. What this is about is the fact that the Church stands strong against abortion and gay marriage. And that makes some very angry.

This election season has been a nasty one. And this may be its low point.

Obama's Aunt: "You Have The Obligation to Make Me a Citizen"

Gifts to Notre Dame Plunged $120M During Year of Obama’s Appearance

The perpetrators of this outrage will pay an even greater price in eternity.

From Catholic World News

Contributions to the University of Notre Dame fell by over $120 million during the fiscal year in which President Barack Obama was awarded an honorary degree. Several dozen bishops criticized the university’s decision during the months preceding the May 17, 2009, commencement ceremony, and an alumni group called for the withholding of donations.

During the July 2008 - June 2009 fiscal year, gifts to the university totaled $226,689,374, including $60,133,035 in government grants. During the July 2007 - June 2008 fiscal year, in contrast, gifts totaled $347,155,514, including $62,241,121 in government grants. Thus most of the decline in contributions was in private donations rather than government funding.

The decline in donations largely coincided with the late-2000s recession, which officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

During the July 2006 - June 2007 fiscal year, gifts to the university had totaled $309,743,862, including $61,218,074 in government grants.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• GuideStar
• Late-2000s recession (Wikipedia)
• $8.2M in donations withheld from Notre Dame, alumni group claims (CWN, 4/28/09)
• New Notre Dame alumni group calls for ouster of Father Jenkins (CWN, 4/20/09)

From the Pastor

A Weekly Column by Father George Rutler
Pope Gregory XV canonized a spectacular group on March 12, 1622: Philip Neri, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Isidore the Farmer. Relations between the Italians and the Spanish were not as happy as they are now, and a Roman wit said the Holy Father had canonized “four Spaniards and a Saint.” There were no boundaries last Sunday when Pope Benedict XVI canonized six vivid per­sonalities from Australia, Canada, Spain, Italy, and Poland.

Each was a hero of persistence in the face of obstacles. Stanislao Soltys (1433-1489) sustained faith in a time of special stress for long distressed Poland. Candida Maria de Jesus y Barriola (1845-1912) and Giulia Salzano (1846-1929) patiently abided the difficulties typically facing founders of religious orders. Battista da Varano, (1458-1524) born a princess, mourned the violent deaths of her father and brothers by the conspiracy of Cesare Borgia, and procedural problems thwarted her canoniza­tion since her beatification in 1843. Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) was excommunicated briefly for exposing corruption. André Bessette (1845-1937) endured ill health and threat of exile when his miraculous gifts elicited both doubts and envy. And yet, after a lifetime as a simple janitor, a million people attended his funeral rites.

The more media-created celebrities distance themselves from God, the more indistinguishable they become one from another. In contrast, the personalities of the saints become more vivid and distinct as they grow in grace. St. Thomas Aquinas said that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. The Greeks had a system by which they iden­­­t­i­­fied personality types with bodily fluids or “humours.” People tend to be sanguine (friendly), choleric (energetic), melancholic (thoughtful), or phlegmatic (self-content). Everyone is a combination of all these, and personalities develop by how they combine.

God’s grace develops and does not distort these quali­ties. Sanguine saints become friends of God and man, choleric saints become leaders, melancholic saints be­come mystics, and phlegmatic saints become peace­makers. Without grace, the sanguine easily becomes superficial, the choleric over­bearing, the melancholic depressive and the phlegmatic lazy.

However their personalities developed, they attained perfection through humble endurance. St. Paul told St. Timothy to “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient” (2 Timothy 4:2). No one could say that the Apostle to the Gentiles had a bland personality. “I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith” (ibid, 4:7).

The Mother of Our Lord left history very few recorded words, but by perfectly accepting God’s Word, her personality became what Wordsworth called “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” In her humility she became the masterpiece of art, mother of universities, and muse of highest culture. Last Sunday, the Pope prayed that through the intercession of Virgin Mary and the six new saints “our existence might become a canticle of praise for God.”


Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

King's College Choir - "In Paradisum" - Gabriel Fauré

In paradisum deducant te angeli,
in tuo adventu
suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te
in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise,
May the martyrs receive you
In your coming,
And may they guide you
Into the holy city, Jerusalem.
May the chorus of angels receive you
And with Lazarus once poor
May you have eternal rest.

Archbishop Dolan on the Bigotry of the New York Times

New York's valiant new Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, has had enough of the virulent anti-Catholicism served up daily by the New York Times. Many Catholics have come to accept that anti-Catholicism is the one socially acceptable bigotry in the United States, particularly among those who fancy themselves "intellectuals" and part of the "elite." But enough is enough. In his personal blog, Archbishop Dolan has called ignorance and hatred by their proper names. The Archbishop's column follows:

More from the Times

I know, I should drop it. “You just have to get used to it,” so many of you have counselled me. “It’s been that way forever, and it’s so ingrained they don’t even know they’re doing it. So, let it go.”

I’m talking about the common, casual way The New York Times offends Catholic sensitivity, something they would never think of doing — rightly so — to the Jewish, Black, Islamic, or gay communities.

Two simple yet telling examples from one edition, last Friday, October 15.

First there’s the insulting photograph of the nun on page C20, this for yet another tiresome production making fun of Catholic consecrated women. This “gleeful” tale is described as “fresh and funny” in the caption beneath the quarter-page photo (not an advertisement). Granted, prurient curiosity about the lives of Catholic sisters has been part of the nativist, “know-nothing” agenda since mobs burned the Ursuline convent in Boston in the 1840’s, and since the huckster Rebecca Reed’s Awful Disclosures made the rounds in the 19^th century. But still now cheap laughs at the expense of a bigoted view of the most noble women around?

Maybe I’m especially sensitive since I just came from the excellent exhibit on the contributions of Catholic nuns now out on Ellis Island. These are the women who tended to the homeless immigrants and refugees, who died nursing the abandoned in the cholera epidemic, who ran hospitals and universities decades before women did so in the non-Catholic sphere, who marched in Selma and today teach our poorest in our inner-city schools. These are the nuns mocked and held-up for snickering in our city’s newspaper.

Now turn to C29. This glowingly reviewed not-to-be missed “art” exhibit comes to us from Harvard, and is a display of posters from ACT UP. Remember them? They invaded of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to disrupt prayer, trampled on the Holy Eucharist, insulted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was here for a conference, and yelled four letter words while exposing themselves to families and children leaving Mass at the Cathedral. The man they most detested was Cardinal John O’Connor, who, by the way, spent many evenings caring quietly for AIDS patients, and, when everyone else ran from them, opened units for them at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and St. Clare’s Hospital. Too bad for him. One of the posters in this “must see” exhibit is of Cardinal O’Connor, in the form of a condom, referred to as a “scumbag,” the “art” there in full view in the photograph above the gushing review in our city’s daily.

Thanks for your patience with me. I guess I’m still new enough here in New York City that the insults of The New York Times against the Church still bother me. I know I should get over it. As we say in Missouri, it’s like “spitting into a tornado.”

Elvis Presley - Miracle of the Rosary

In this month dedicated to Our Lady and the Most Holy Rosary, an unlikely and beautiful tribute:

From CatholicCulture.org

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. According to an account by fifteenth-century Dominican, Alan de la Roch, Mary appeared to St. Dominic in 1206 after he had been praying and doing severe penances because of his lack of success in combating the Albigensian heresy. Mary praised him for his valiant fight against the heretics and then gave him the Rosary as a mighty weapon, explained its uses and efficacy, and told him to preach it to others.

"Since the prayers of the Rosary come from such excellent sources — from Our Lord Himself, from inspired Scripture, and from the Church — it is not surprising that the Rosary is so dear to our Blessed Mother and so powerful with heaven.

"If we consider the power of the Rosary as seen in its effects, we find a great abundance of proofs of its wonderful value. Many are the favors granted to private individuals through its devout recitation: there are few devoted users of the Rosary who cannot testify to experiencing its power in their own lives. If we turn to history, we see many great triumphs of the Rosary. Early tradition attributes the defeat of the Albigensians at the Battle of Muret in 1213 to the Rosary. But even those who do not accept this tradition will admit that St. Pius V attributed the great defeat of the Turkish fleet on the first Sunday of October, 1571, to the fact that at the same time the Rosary confraternities at Rome and elsewhere were holding their processions. Accordingly, he ordered a commemoration of the Rosary to be made on that day. Two years later, Gregory XIII allowed the celebration of a feast of the Rosary in churches having an altar dedicated to the Rosary. In 1671, Clement X extended the feast to all Spain. A second great victory over the Turks, who once, like the Russians, threatened the ruin of Christian civilization, occurred on August 5, 1716, when Prince Eugene defeated them at Peterwardein in Hungary. Thereupon Clement XI extended the feast of the Rosary to the whole Church.

"Today, when dangers far greater than those of the ancient Turks threaten not only Christianity but all civilization, we are urged by our Blessed Mother to turn again to the Rosary for help. If men in sufficient numbers do this, and at the same time carry out the other conditions that she has laid down, we have the greater reason for confidence that we will be delivered from our dangers." -- Mary in our Life by Fr. William G. Most

The Rosary and the Liturgical Year

The Rosary had its origin in the liturgical mentality of former ages. Even at the present time it is called "Mary's Psalter." There still are Catholics who consider the 150 Hail Marys a substitute for the 150 psalms for those persons who neither have the time, the education, nor the opportunity to pray the Hours of the Divine Office. Thus "Mary's Psalter" is a shortened, simplified "breviary" — alongside the common Hour-prayer of the Church. — The Church's Year of Grace, Dr. Pius Parsch

The Rosary is Christocentric setting forth the entire life of Jesus Christ, the passion, death, resurrection and glory. Of course, the Rosary honors and contemplates Mary too, and rightly so, for the same reason that the Liturgical Year does likewise: "Because of the mission she received from God, her life is most closely linked with the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and there is no one who has followed in the footsteps of the Incarnate Word more closely and with more merit than she"142 (Mediator Dei). Meditation on this cycle of Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries makes the Rosary not only "a breviary or summary of the Gospel and of Christian life,"(Ingravescentibus malis) but also a compendium of the Liturgical Year. Therewith the Rosary stands revealed as a dynamic teacher and nurturer of Christian faith, morality, and spiritual perfection, fostering in various ways faith, hope, charity, and the other virtues, and mediating special graces, all to the end that we may become more and more like unto Christ. — Mariology, Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.