….Last week California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition One, which legalized abortion up to the moment of birth. The abortion industry put a lot of money into promoting fear among Californians: “If Prop One doesn’t pass, women will die and our rights will be forfeit. We cannot let the fascists take over!” Again we voted for irrational fear over rational faith. Most people don’t know that we essentially legalized infanticide, certainly not the man I was talked with yesterday after Mass (“you mean a doctor can now abort a child even while the mother is having contractions?!?!”). Yup.
Church leaders led a pitiful political attempt to block Prop One. It was, in my opinion, an egregious waste of time and money. Do the bishops of California really think they can do better than the billionaires who have built and control our media culture? Church leaders should put our time and money, rather, into what we were ordained to do: education and worship, Word and Sacrament. In those two things, Church leadership has miserably failed over the last fifty years.
Gavin Newsom leads perhaps the most successful and aggressive political war against the Gospel in this country. He was baptized Catholic, attended Notre Dame des Victoires Catholic school here in San Francisco, and went to Santa Clara Jesuit University. He identifies himself as a “practicing Catholic” along with our President and Speaker of the House. It’s imperative that Church leaders ask themselves why our parishes and schools are failing to make disciples of Christ so badly.
Most Catholics have been worshipping backwards for fifty years in their parishes and have received a very poor education in their Catholic schools. What I mean by “backwards worship” is that most parishes celebrate the community more than they worship God, most obviously when the priest faces the people when he prays the Eucharistic prayer. What I mean by “very poor education” is that most Catholic schools and universities have adopted curricula almost indistinguishable from secular schools.
Rather than ineffective rearguard political activity, our bishops and priests should be reforming their parishes and schools. Until priests and bishops deliver God’s Word and Sacrament faithfully, we will continue to lose the culture war. We ordinary citizens cannot fix the archdiocese of San Francisco. We cannot restore the city of San Francisco, nor the state of California, nor the United States of America.
But we can teach our own children the truth; we can stop consuming anti-Catholic and fear-mongering propaganda; we can worship God rather than ourselves at Mass; we can pray the family rosary, read good books, and watch good movies. We can build truly Catholic families, and truly Catholic parishes, and truly Catholic schools. It’s not that complicated, and not even that hard. But it is crunch time, friends. Catholic parishes and schools are failing. Every Catholic bishop, priest, and layperson has to decide what god he will serve. As for me and my parish (and school), we will serve the Lord….
The above comes from a Nov. 13 posting on Father Illo’s Blog. Father Illo is pastor of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco.
Thank you Fr. Illo. Unfortunately, our California and nearly all other US Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals are useless, if not actually harmful to their flocks.
Many Catholic as well as non-catholic voters cast their votes in favor of this.
They have voted in their own damnation.
We are a small remnant. God will help us, but we will ALL pay for the sins of this country.
How will God help? When will he start? What difference will it make?
God helps every minute of every day. Stop judging Him.
Stop typing or saying platitudes that don’t help anyone. If you say God will help us, you’d better be prepared to provide a detailed answer about How, when, and what difference it will make. Otherwise your assertion conveys nothing meaningful except pious, empty hope.
So, you have asserted that God helps every minute of every day. That’s an answer to the “when”. Now please explain the how and the what difference it makes. Because it seems that if God is helping every minute of every day, things should be a lot better than they are.
If you say that we can’t detect the ways that God is helping us, that’s really not any different from saying that God is doing nothing to help us. What’s the difference between help you can’t experience and no help at all? There’s no difference.
I know a young Catholic woman, 23, newly married and now pregnant, whose brain is shrinking and has a poor prognosis. How is God helping her, her child and her husband?
Every minute of every day? You need to do better than that. Or maybe you’re afraid that you don’t have an answer to back up your claims.
You would not even exist if God was not holding you in existence.
Hope is a theological virtue. Piety is also a virtue.
Have you ever read the Book of Job?
Everything that exists depends on God. God is in all things.
You seem to not be able to handle disappointment.
And for all of you who worked and voted against Prop One, thank you.
God rewards for effort not results.
I am sorry to hear about your young friend.
God always hears every prayer but sometimes His answer is no.
We have all had loss and disappointment and experienced heartbreak.
People lose family members, even children. Adam and Eve lost a son. Remember?
This is the world of woe and the vale of tears. Bliss comes in the next world if you are faithful.
275. In the second chapter, we reflected on that lack of deep spirituality which turns into pessimism, fatalism, and mistrust. Some people do not commit themselves to mission because they think that nothing will change and that it is useless to make the effort. They think: “Why should I deny myself my comforts and pleasures if I won’t see any significant result?” This attitude makes it impossible to be a missionary. It is only a malicious excuse for remaining caught up in comfort, laziness, vague dissatisfaction and empty selfishness. It is a self-destructive attitude, for “man cannot live without hope: life would become meaningless and unbearable”. If we think that things are not going to change, we need to recall that Jesus Christ has triumphed over sin and death and is now almighty. Jesus Christ truly lives. Put another way, “ if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). The Gospel tells us that when the first disciples went forth to preach, “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message” (Mk 16:20). The same thing happens today. We are invited to discover this, to experience it. Christ, risen and glorified, is the wellspring of our hope, and he will not deprive us of the help we need to carry out the mission which he has entrusted to us.
276. Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.
277. At the same time, new difficulties are constantly surfacing: experiences of failure and the human weaknesses which bring so much pain. We all know from experience that sometimes a task does not bring the satisfaction we seek, results are few and changes are slow, and we are tempted to grow weary. Yet lowering our arms momentarily out of weariness is not the same as lowering them for good, overcome by chronic discontent and by a listlessness that parches the soul…
“It is crunch time, friends”
We’ve already blazed through Snap and Crackle.
Hold on tight.
The priest facing the people during Mass is not the problem.
And stop blaming the bishops.
I can’t believe there are that many trads who think ad orientem is that big a deal. Versus populum for me.
All true. When young, priests always used to say that ultimately, to have a good Church depends on who is Pope. That is most important. Since Vatican II, the Pope and clerical leaders say they want to cast aside strong clerical leadership, so that the laymen can have more of a voice. I say, this is a huge mistake. The Pope and top Catholic clerics must lead strongly, for Christ — that is their job. All for Him! Society will listen, if the Pope and clerical leaders really mean business– and a lot of immorality and nonsense will be stopped — or else will be curbed. Historically, that is the way things always work. Souls for Christ, in His Church, must be taught, guided, helped, encouraged, and led, for Him. That is the job of the Church and her clergy. Of course– people need to be led with truth, kindness, support, and Christian charity. Not with ignorant, cruel threats of hellfire. Well, so the Catholic Church sort of turned into a wild “zoo,” a wild “free for all”– a big, disordered mess! Maybe someday, they will decide to fix things. Wish the Vatican would get rid of all the “mess” in the current Synod on Synodality. Big waste of time.
Yes, it’s crunch time, but with Trump now running for president again in 2024 it looks like the Democrats will win. Please, GOP, let’s dump Trump.
Ask yourself this question:
Can you vote your way out of Crunch Time?
Anyone who supports Trump needs his head examined. Let’s move on. Desantis is the future of the Republicans or there’s no future Republican Party that will be able to win.
A Trump supporting trad would be someone I would never get along with in matters of politics or religion.
So diversity has its limits?
“most parishes celebrate the community more than they worship God.” Truer words have never been spoken.
It is easy and narcissistic to blame others for things that you don’t like.
We need a national network like Saint Vincent de Paul of TRAINED individuals that can do what SVDP does.
Home visits, of course, are not always possible because the woman may not want others to know that she is in the situation she is in.
“Our founding activity, still practiced today, is the Home Visit. Through these visits, Vincentian members establish personal relationships with our neighbors in need, not only providing material assistance such as rent, utilities, food, or clothing, but also offering friendship, understanding, and prayer.”
You need to have an organization that will become friends and supporters not just for the duration of the pregnancy but for life. Many of them will become volunteers as they have experienced the help they will want to help others.
Where I live, there is no Church that a pregnant woman or any woman would be denied help at. Most of the churches do more than the Catholic Church does but we do have some very generous Catholics that take on these cases personally and befriend them.
Yes, we do get those few people who go from church to church seeing what they can get but it is a small town and somebody always calls the office and rats them out.
Sin is a part of life. That is why the Catholic Church exists. Stop yearning for some utopia where people do not sin.
Jesus died so that sins could be forgiven.
Offering the Eucharist, praying the Rosary, making sacrifices for sinners, giving all to the Lord through His Mother…
this is our calling.
Spreading the Gospel so that those who have had abortions or committed other sins that they are sorry for will know that they are forgiven.
The Way, the Truth and the Life is All.
Fr. Illo is correct. Each parish must upgrade its schools to be Catholic schools, not just a better opportunity to have a “better” public school education. An old fashion Catholic education may not attract many families. Skip Mass one Sunday (horrors) and go from park to park in your town or neighborhood. You will learn why kids aren’t at Mass. They are on the soccer field, from 1st grade to high school age competitive teams. Soccer is the new Sunday religion. Parents will tell you that they can’t go to church because it is at the same time as the soccer match. The major decline in church attendance didn’t start in the ’60s, it started in 2000. Only 22% of US families go to church on a regular basis. It sounds like an oxymoron, but strong Catholics after strong catholic tell me they just don’t agree with the church on issues related to same-sex marriage, contraception, and abortion, and are willing to leave the church over it. The more people go to college the more they don’t find the church very meaningful. Too many of them are saying they don’t believe that “stuff.” Maybe we should reform the universities.
By making the claim that the Roman Rite is no longer the Roman Rite, and trying to stamp it out, the pope has made it clearer than ever that the Catholic Faith and the Novus Ordo cannot coëxist. The only question is: Which one simply must go?
Are you a sedevacantist?
The Roman Rite is the liturgy of the Catholic Church.
The Mass and the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Catholic Faith.
The pope didn’t claim what you attribute to him. Vatican II mandated the reform of the Roman Rite, which we now have. The Novus Ordo is the current iteration of the Roman Rite. Asserting what you did is heretical.
We have several different forms of the Mass that one can choose from. All are legitimate. Many priests are also bi-ritual priests of Eastern Orthodox churches in communion with Rome. And we now also have the new, lovely Anglican Rite Mass, for Roman Catholic converts from the Anglican faith. It is wonderful to attend many different forms of the Mass, and educate yourself. Ven. Abp. Sheen became a bi-ritual Byzantine Rite bishop in the 1950s, saying the Byzantine Rite Mass in Slavonic, with some English. His Byzantine Rite Masses were broadcasted via Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to suffering Christians behind the Iron Curtain. You can view recordings of this Mass on Youtube. One of them features Ven. Abp. Sheen explaining all about the Byzantine Mass. Sheen tirelessly fought Communism in every possible way, during his lifetime. He prayed for the conversion of Russia, and had a special Russian chalice that he often used for Mass.
Is he related to Charlie Sheen? Like a great uncle or something?
No. The name “Sheen” is a common Irish surname. Ven. Abp. Sheen was a great American Catholic prelate. His grandparents on both sides of the family were Irish immigrants to America. The actor, Martin Sheen, took his stage name from two people. He took his first name from the producer who gave him his first big break. And he requested of Ven. Abp. Fulton J. Sheen, to take “Sheen” as his surname, due to his admiration of Sheen. His real name was Ramon Estevez, and he thought that an Anglo-type name would also help him in his acting career. Martin Sheen was born in America to a Spanish father and an Irish mother.
Sheen was born in the United States. “America” refers to the entire Western Hemisphere and extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
No, Larry, you ought to know, that the United States of America is commonly called “America.” It is correct to say that actor Martin Sheen, or Ramon Estevez– was born in America.
Charlie Sheen was born Carlos Estevez. His father, who was born Ramon Estevez, was an admirer of Archbishop Sheen and changed his name to Martin Sheen.
No. Charlie Sheen’s real name is Carlos Estevez.
Jennifer (Gavin’s wife) looks deep in prayer. Gavin looks like he doesn’t know why he’s there, wherever they are.
“Gavin Newsom leads perhaps the most successful and aggressive political war against the Gospel in this country.”
No he isn’t.
the Gospel is that Jesus Christ died so that sins could be forgiven.
What Gavin Newsom is doing with Prop One is exhibiting a false compassion. His empathy is for the woman who is upset with her pregnancy for whatever reason and he might have an animosity toward Republicans or conservatives who want the government to intervene to save the life of the baby. He may be arrogant or self-righteous. I do not know.
He needs to be contacted by a faithful, kind person who genuinely cares about his soul..
There was a priest who wrote Carl Sagan (an atheist) and they began a dialogue. (I know that word is triggering for those who lived through the nineties. Sorry) Sagan did not change his mind but the priest continued to address his errors and they exchanged letters until Carl Sagan died.
Father Illo has now attacked Governor Newsome publicly so if he wanted to start a dialogue with him he would have to start by apologizing.
I hope someone who really cares will do this.
He was baptized Catholic, attended Notre Dame des Victoires Catholic school here in San Francisco, and went to Santa Clara Jesuit University. He identifies himself as a “practicing Catholic” along with our President and Speaker of the House. It’s imperative that Church leaders ask themselves why our parishes and schools are failing to make disciples of Christ so badly.
No. What is imperative is that someone talk with Governor Newsom to find out first hand what happened that he rejected parts of the faith. Politics is a great temptation. You are not going to be governor in California if you are pro-life, probably. Someone should be caring for this person’s spiritual life.
But if you cannot get his answer, we all know people that we can ask. Usually some boundary was violated. Or something or someone gave some bad information. Or you become attracted to other things and distracted from the faith. You take on the characteristics of the 5 people you spend the most time with. You can be misled by friends, family, celebrities etc.
I am the age where we were taught to be soldiers for Christ and that completely alienated me as a female child. As an adult I was able to re-process the concept.
You have to make the effort to educate yourself and also you have to make the decision that you will conform to the Will of the Lord as taught by the Church.
Gavin Newsom is not a baby, he is a corrupt politician. That is very different from just a scientist who doesn’t believe in God. Gavin Newsom probably does not “feel sorry” for a pregnant woman. He probably feels sorry for people (and himself) if they are told they cannot have unrestricted, sinful “free sex” with no consequences for sin. I think he is a very corrupt, worldly, wealthy, spoiled, immature, immoral, smart-aleck, egotistical, selfish, disrespectful, aggressive, hardened politician– a hardened sinner– in need of stern reprimands and punishment. He was born during the immoral, rebellious “hippie era” in 1967, to wealthy, prominent parents who divorced, leaving a broken home, with many problems. Spoiled-rotten kids, no discipline, poor training, rebellion, very poor post-Conciliar immoral, heretical Jesuit Catholic training at Santa Clara U. He uses the term “practicing Catholic” for political purposes only. Full of “political garbage,” nothing more– and he aggressively gets his way. The Church should be stern with such types of immoral, heretical, corrupt politicians– excommunicate them.
Gavin Newsom is not a little boy. He is a very smart, cunning, spoiled, rich, powerful, 55-year-old, middle-aged, liberal-leftist, corrupt politician, with no Moral Conscience. Newsom has a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science, from Jesuit-run Santa Clara U., which he attended also on a partial baseball scholarship.
Most Catholics have been worshipping backwards for fifty years in their parishes and have received a very poor education in their Catholic schools. What I mean by “backwards worship” is that most parishes celebrate the community more than they worship God, most obviously when the priest faces the people when he prays the Eucharistic prayer. What I mean by “very poor education” is that most Catholic schools and universities have adopted curricula almost indistinguishable from secular schools.
I don’t know that this is true in even the slightest however, it was best said by Archbishop Sheen: “We are not a community. We are a communion.”
I cringe every time I hear the word community.
This is caused by the pastors. Sometimes parishioners want a social club. I don’t like that but the best you can do is make your parish as much a place of prayer as you can by staying after Mass and praying, visiting the Blessed Sacrament daily or as often as you can, praying the Rosary with a group before each Mass or alone if you have to, having a Divine Mercy prayer group. Genuflect deeply.
As for the schools, that too is the pastor. And the remedy for all of this is to place your parish under the mantle of Our Lady. Pray daily to the titular Saint.
Prayer is answered. I have seen a parish completely turn around. And every time there is a backsliding someone complains.
All true!
I know that this will be unpopular but a large part of what hurts the Church is attending parishes that you are not geographically assigned to. I think use of “destination parishes” should be limited by the faithful.
It used to be taught in Catholic Missals that it was your duty to worship with your parish. You owed them your support and your prayers. That was something that was offered up to God, if you didn’t like the priest or the people.
It is self-indulgent and undisciplined to attend a different parish.
If your parish does not have a Latin Mass, you should get permission from your pastor to attend one elsewhere. If he denies permission, you do not go.
This is traditional Catholicism.
My local pastor understands why I drive my family over an hour to an FSSP parish rather than 8 minutes to his parish. We’ve discussed it. It’s a cross we bear on both sides.
We still engage his parish on occasion for confession, adoration, stations of the cross, processions, etc. … but not Holy Mass.
This faithful shepherd can’t unilaterally forbid communion in the hand, pray the Mass ad orientem, ban lay eucharistic ministers, stop the incessant piano and lounge music, construct communion rails, etc.. His hands are tied by his dwindling (but vocal) white-haired flock … and his bishop, who is utterly ignorant of (pre-1962) Tradition.
My local pastor knows I won’t permit my children to witness our Lord abused, or suffer the contradictions between what the Catechism teaches and the horrific abuses they witness at his Masses.