Ohhhhhhhh Nooooooooooo

My email is Down today... couldn't send out my Daily Connection. This is not good !

Help me, Lord.

Knights of Peter Claver Ladies Auxiliary St. Felicitas Court 223: Taste of Seasons: 2010

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It was raining outside but it was warm with fellowship and good eatin' on the inside:

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And the food was just too delicious !

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God Speaks to Us Through the Voice of Others:

"Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all; forgiving means to pardon that which is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all."

G.K. Chesterton
British writer
20th century

500,000 Attend Mass Today in Fatima with Pope Benedict XVI

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The Clinic Addition Grows

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Pope Benedict Continues His Visit to Fatima

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Pope Benedict XVI Visits Fatima

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I visited Fatima in the late 1980's after a visit to Lourdes. Fatima is distinctly different from most Marian shrines in the countryside that surrounds it. This is a place of deep reverence and hope.

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God Speaks to Us Through the Voice of Others:

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

Henry David Thoreau

You Are Peter: Part 7

Today Pope Benedict XVI begins his Pastoral visit to the country of Portugal. In an interview aboard the plane today he said:


"Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sins that exist inside the church. This we have always known but today we see it in a really terrifying way. The biggest weight on the church doesn't come from the enemies outside, but is born from sin inside the church. The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice."



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Happy Mother's Day - all Week Through

God took the fragrance of a flower,
The majesty of a tree,
The gentleness of morning dew,
The calm of a quiet sea,
The beauty of a twilight hour,
The soul of a starry night
The laughter of the rippling brook,
The grace of a bird in flight,
Then God fashioned from these things
A creation like no other,
And when His masterpiece was through,
He called it simply…MOTHER.




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The Feast of Saint Damien of Moloka'i

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Jesus never leaves us alone . . .

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For our beautiful Gulf waters and shoreline...and all its inhabitants

and the back waters of the Sound and the bay:

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St. Joseph's Clinic continues to expand:

We are blessed!

The new Handicapped approach to the Clinic is better placed for those who need to use it. Direct entrance to the front of the Clinic.



Footers, foundation ready for added space: treatment rooms, storage/office, consultation.


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The Parable of the Prodigal Son...in Music and Song....performed by Casting Crowns

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sin, repentance .... us, God ....



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This is not for the faint of heart:

May he rest in Peace



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Our Local Environment

Lord . . .



Inspire us to discern what is right and to do all we can to protect and preserve our endangered waters and coastline and all the creatures therein.


Amen

Pray the Rosary? This is worth watching . . .

In support of priests throughout the the world, every day since June 19, 2009, I have said a rosary for priests.



Pray for priests. Including this one.

The Year for Priests ends June 19, 2010.

Thank you.

Pope Benedict Visits Turin, Italy Last Sunday

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God Changes Lives

We Pray for God's Creatures. our Land, our Environment, our Gulf Waters

Loving Father and Creator of all we come to you today deeply grateful for your creation. As we look around us we are amazed at the greatness and majesty of all that you have made. Nature around us speaks of your greatness - the vast expanse of the sky, the mountains, trees, lakes and streams speak of your great design. You have given us such beauty in the colors of the rainbow, the beauty of flowers and fields, the waters of the oceans and especially of the Gulf waters at our shore.

During these days of deep concern, help us in our response to the danger that threatens our shores: our sister states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and of our own state of Florida.

Help us to protect our environment, especially mindful of all creatures great and small which inhabit our shoreline and waters, our bayous, bays, rivers and streams. May we use our talents, our intellect, our strength and Your grace – all that You have given us - to respond correctly that we may avert the threatening elements which are near.

We praise You always.

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Today is May 1: The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker

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For Catholics around the world today is the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, is the Patron Saint of workers.

Pope Pius XII decided in 1955 to add the optional feast day of Saint Joseph the Worker on May 1, to counteract the Communists’ May Day holiday by Christianizing this European Labor Day.

The Holy Father assured his audience and the working people of the world: “You have beside you a shepherd, a defender and a father in Saint Joseph, the carpenter whom God in His providence chose to be the virginal father of Jesus and the head of the Holy Family. He is silent but has excellent hearing, and his intercession is very powerful over the Heart of the Savior."



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St. Jospeh Clinic for the poor - indigent - uninsured ... for the Love of God

This past Wednesday ground was broken for the addition to our parish Clinic ... more doctor/patient consultation rooms ... storage ... staff work space ... etc.

The foundation has been carved out of the old Pensacola ground and today the cement for the new sidewalk is being poured. This will give our patients easier and safer access to our Clinic.


The delivery truck mixes the cement and prepares to pour: stand by

The workers finish their digging and now begin to transfer the cement by wheel barrow: at first this is tedious and heavy work.

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You Are Peter: Part 6

Secular Sex Abuse Gets a Look

Friday, April 30, 2010, 3:18 PM
Elizabeth Scalia

In New York, Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey routinely presents a bill which seeks to open a year-long “window” into the statute of limitations on child sex-abuse cases, allowing victims whose cases may go back as far as 40 years to bring suit for damages.

Because the bill has -until now- always been limited by Markey to impact the churches, exclusively, it always either failed or been shelved. It is difficult to pass a bill that essentially finds some sexual abuse victims to be more worthy of redress than others.

Markey seems to have figured that out; her new bill includes suits against secular institutions, and the previously silent civil authorities, among others, are reeling:
Should it be possible to sue the city of New York for sexual abuse by public school teachers that happened decades ago? How about doctors or hospital attendants? Police officers? Welfare workers? Playground attendants?

For nearly a year, the city has tiptoed around that question, but in the coming months, there may be no ducking it. Legislation in Albany would force public officials to answer for the crimes of earlier generations, just as Catholic bishops have.

What began as an effort by legislators to expand judicial accountability for sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has grown to cover people in every walk of life. One bill would temporarily suspend the statute of limitations, and allow people who say they were abused as children to file lawsuits up to age 58 — that is, 40 years after they turned 18.

It is a collision of powerful civic values: the need to provide justice to people who were outrageously injured as children and manipulated into silence, and the duty of courts to decide cases based on reliable evidence.

The Hermeneutic of Continuity has a very good response to the story
In this context, the NYT story is no longer one of cover-up and denial of responsibility but of “a collision of powerful civic values”.

The excuses are all now tumbling out. The New York City Mayor is concerned about the potential impact for taxpayers. Welcome to the real world, Mayor. Catholics in the pews have seen billions of dollars, donated by them over decades, paid out in compensation to victims of clerical abuse and episcopal failure. It is tough but we have to recognise responsibility.

The State Association of Counties has issued a memo of opposition citing the problem of “significantly aged and clouded” evidence. Well, as we have learnt in the Church, extending the statute of limitations is necessary because the nature of the crime means that it may take a long time before a person is ready to confront the abuse that they have suffered in the past.

The New York State School Boards Association has said that the revelation of past misdeeds would provide no extra protection for children. They should talk to Safeguarding Officials and good lay Catholics who know that the revelation of past crimes is a very strong motivation to provide robust safeguarding procedures.
So, the secular institutional world may soon find itself forced onto the same learning curve that has impacted and the Catholic Church over the past few years; that world too may find itself finally forced to confront the filth that too often stays hidden. The confrontation -painful as it may be- will ultimately be for the good.

There is much to think about. Talk about “crisis” and “opportunity!” For many, going back forty years may seem excessive, but others may feel that the time-frame is warranted.

As we begin to acknowledge that child sex abuse has long-infected the whole of society, and not just the churches, we will be forced to take a long and difficult look at ourselves. Church-sex stories may be sensational, but these others will quickly come to seem dreary, mostly because they will indict not just those oddball celibates and religious freaks, but our cops, our doctors, our teachers, our bureaucrats – you know, the “normal” people, all around us, in our families, attending our barbecues and graduations, healing our wounds and teaching our kids.
Extending the “open window” to include secular sex abuse cases will impact the whole of society. We will be invited to look in and-seeing the width and breadth of the problem-will be forced to ponder the human animal and the human soul in ways we have not, and would rather not. It may bring home some uncomfortable truths: that “safety” is relative; that human darkness is not limited to various “theys” but seeps into the whole of “us”; that the tendency to look at the guilt of others has, perhaps, a root in our wish not to look at ourselves; that human brokenness is a constant and human righteousness is always imperfect.

The Church has endured a painful and necessary purge, one that is ongoing. In recent weeks old stories have been resurrected with new (and not completely honest) spinning, predictable howls and some sad agendizing and self-promotion and game-playing. For all the pain, however, one can look at the positive and very effective policies which have developed from these boil-lancings and conclude that the treatment has been worth it; the Church will emerge healthier for this long detoxing.
If the sins of the secular world can endure a similar scrutiny and scab-scrapping, perhaps the society as a whole will emerge healthier, too.

Should the Markey bill pass, forcing secular and civic institutions (and taxpayers) to beat out the lumps under their own rugs, these institutions may find themselves turning to the Catholic Church in America for advice, to see how they may adapt her successful policies drawn under this pope and the current bishops, to their own organizations. That would be both profoundly ironic, and further evidence that sometimes excruciating episodes and injustices end up working for a broader good.

Which is one message of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

You Are Peter: Part 5

Clergy abuse wrongly explained
Posted: April 28, 2010 |
Patrick McIlheran

In the current dredge-up of old sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests, one feels sorriest for these men in their 50s who once were the prey.

Not so much because of the awfulness of what was done to them, though it was awful. Rather, it's that they're seeking a temporal justice they never can get.

"Somebody should be punished," said one of the victims of Father Lawrence Murphy, who molested some 200 deaf boys in St. Francis from the 1950s to the 1970s. It can't be Murphy, long since dead, as are the two archbishops who oversaw him. The district attorney who took a pass is retired, so the victims' recourse is to sue the current pope, whose only involvement, decades after Murphy molested anyone, was on the question of whether the monster would wear a Roman collar in his coffin.
One wishes the victims the peace that law cannot give them.

Then there are other players, all with causes to advance. This is where trouble lies. We're told the lawsuits are about forcing Catholicism to change. Yet the changes proposed grow out of flawed explanations.

We're told, for instance, that the abuse resulted from the Catholic Church's authoritarianism.
Wrong: Abuse flourished when no one would exert authority. Bishops did not expel molesters but shuffled them off. Tellingly, claims that Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, didn't do enough all date from the era before his Vatican office took control of the crisis away from dithering bishops.
Moreover, molestation peaked in precisely that era when the church shrank from the idea of authority. In the 1970s, priests put on jeans and became friends to the faithful rather than stern fathers. The era of shalt-not gave way to days of we-understand. In hindsight, this opened a path for predators.
We're told the church erred in seeing abuse as sin, not crime.
But facts belie this. The church didn't see it as sin but as a psychiatric disorder, which is why abusers were sent to ultimately ineffective treatment. Had bishops seen it as sin, the inescapable condition of man on Earth, they would have grasped that offenders, even if repentant, had to be kept away from the occasions of further sin, such as boys' dorms.
By the church's own understanding, sin tears the soul from God with eternal, hellish consequences. It is an emergency that one combats with moral rules. A psychiatric disorder, however, is treated and managed, which is what the church tried, disastrously.

We're told it's celibacy to blame - except that most of the abuse was of boys. Not that homosexuality causes pedophilia any more than priesthood does, but it's absurd to claim that the love of a wife would have made abusers switch sexual preferences.
Was the church too medieval? Only if you suppose the Middle Ages were sexually indulgent. This was a letting go of the medieval idea that man could, by reason and spiritual diligence, rise above his immoral nature. The bishops' toleration of abuse grew from seeing abusers as pawns of biology and genes. They traded St. Augustine for Freud, and disaster ensued.

Correct understanding is critical because the sexual abuse of children is a human failing, not a particularly Catholic one. If the crisis is blamed on parts of Catholicism that people want to change, the lessons won't translate to other risky venues.

The one authoritative study of sexual abuse in schools, for instance, warned that a tenth of children suffer some sort of sexual misconduct by staff. Six years later, a former teacher, Ryan Zellner, sits jailed in Manitowoc on 12 felony accusations of sex with students, while authorities at other districts that once employed him are re-examining accusations that earlier had been discounted. Plainly, celibacy and the papacy did not cause this.

Catholicism in America has changed its rules remarkably in response to its abuse crisis. This is why new accusations have plummeted and lawyers are fishing through the 1960s for work. That's not of much use to people harnessing the crisis to forward other causes, but for men seeking justice against abusers who are mainly now beyond the reach of earthly courts, it may, one hopes, bring some comfort.

Patrick McIlheran is a Journal Sentinel editorial columnist