LAST NIGHT WAS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DUKE OF YORK SHOWDOWN. HOW DID YOU COMMEMORATE THE EVENT?

LAST NIGHT WAS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DUKE OF YORK SHOWDOWN. HOW DID YOU COMMEMORATE THE EVENT?

US bishops approve Cause of nun who took on Billy the Kid

by Catholic News Service

posted Thursday, 17 Nov 2016

Pamphlets and prayer cards of Sister Blandina Segale sit on a table at the Catholic Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico (AP Photo/Russell Contreras, File)

Sister Blandina Segale was one of four candidates whose Cause, opened earlier this year, was approved by bishops

During the US bishops’ autumn general assembly in Baltimore this week, they approved by voice vote the Causes of four men and women as part of the episcopal consultation in the Catholic Church’s process for possible canonisation.
The four candidates are Julia Greeley, a former slave who lived in Colorado; Sister Blandina Segale, a Sister of Charity who served on the frontier; Fr Patrick Ryan, who ministered to those suffering yellow fever; and Mgr Bernard Quinn, who fought bigotry and established a black church and orphanage in Brooklyn, New York.
The four Causes were presented individually to the group of bishops prior to their vote.
Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver presented Greeley’s Cause to the bishops because she lived her adult life in Colorado and ministered there to those in poverty while she was poor too.
Greeley was born a slave in Hannibal, Missouri, some time between 1838-1848. She lost the use of her right eye from an assault by a slave owner. Freed from slavery by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, she went to Colorado, where she became Catholic a few years later.
As a lay Franciscan, closely affiliated with the Jesuits at her parish, she was actively involved in promoting the faith and devotion to the Sacred Heart. She died in 1918.
Sister Blandina was described to the bishops as anything but bland, and even had a run in with Billy the Kid during her work in the American frontier.
She was born in Italy in 1850 and immigrated to Cincinnati when she was four. She joined the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati when she was 16 and worked in schools, orphanages and hospitals in Ohio, New Mexico and Colorado.
She became a defender of the poor, the sick, the marginalised, Native Americans and Mexican and Italian immigrants. She often visited jails and became involved in issues such as human trafficking and juvenile delinquency. She died in 1941 aged 91. Her Cause was introduced by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee, told the bishops about Fr Patrick Ryan, an Irish immigrant, born in 1845 and ordained in 1869 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Fr Ryan was pastor of Ss Peter and Paul’s Parish for six years. In 1878, he died at 33 years old of yellow fever.
His community in Chattanooga was struck with the epidemic that killed hundreds and during the epidemic the priest went to the worst infected areas of the city to help the sick and the needy.
The other priest’s name submitted for the canonisation process is Mgr Bernard Quinn, born to Irish immigrants in 1888 in Newark, New Jersey.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn presented the priest’s cause to the bishops. Mgr Quinn was ordained to the priesthood in 1912, and served as a priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn where he particularly emphasised priestly and religious vocations for black Catholics.
In 1922, he established St Peter Claver Church for black Catholics in Brooklyn and years later built an orphanage for the African-American community that was twice burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan before it was successfully built the third time.
Five years must pass from the time of a candidate’s death before a Cause may begin. The bishop of the diocese or eparchy in which the person died is responsible for beginning the examination into his or her life and names a postulator to conduct the investigation. The local bishop consults bishops in his region on the advisability of pursuing the cause. A canonical consultation with the body of bishops is part of the process.
Materials and documentation supporting the cause must be gathered. Once that phase is completed, the documentation is sent to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Three major steps come next: first is the declaration of a person’s heroic virtues, after which the Church declares the person “Venerable.” Second is beatification, after which he or she is called “Blessed.” Third is canonisation, or the declaration of sainthood. In general, two miracles must be accepted by the Church as having occurred through the intercession of the prospective saint; one must occur before beatification, and the other after beatification.

Whatever you think of Trump, give thanks that the Church’s enemies have been defeated

by Gavin Rice

posted Saturday, 12 Nov 2016

President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office (PA)

   

Neither candidate was a model of integrity, but at least the progressives who hate the Church are out of power

Donald Trump is not the president that conservative Christian America wanted. However, with the defeat of candidates such as Cruz and Rubio, they were left with little choice. Nevertheless, Christian conservatives (like me) can still be thankful that Hillary Clinton was defeated.
Neither candidate was a model of integrity. Trump’s patent misogyny, distortion of facts, and grossly uncharitable statements about Mexicans have disturbed many practising Christians, and people of faith should not be deceived by Trump’s tactical exaggeration of his own Christian convictions. It must be said, though, that on balance the amoral Clinton is far worse: Hillary’s list of lies and corruption would take too long to recount, and Christopher Hitchens, himself of the Left, concluded that there is nothing that the Clintons will not do.
However, it’s Clinton’s ideological stances that should alarm Christians: she is a strong supporter of the HHS mandate which would have required Catholic employers to provide contraception and abortion as a part of health programmes, and she is also a supporter of the Obergefell decision and of judicial activism in the Supreme Court. Clinton is an extremist on abortion “rights”, supporting a liberalisation of the current heinous law, and a staunch backer of Planned Parenthood. For politically conservative Christians her platform had many other flaws, too: increasing taxation and the size of the state, some worrying statements on free speech and freedom of religion, and even a stated ultimate goal of open borders throughout the northern hemisphere.
Granted, some of Trump’s policies are also anathema to convicted conservatives, but I strongly suspect that these will be watered-down in practice. His promised trade tariffs may well be lower than he has proposed, and he has already backtracked on the deeply unconstitutional idea of a religious test for entry to the US. Building a wall would be enormously costly and raises serious moral questions about how we treat foreigners and outsiders. However, will it actually happen?
On the other hand, Trump has many policies that are of vital importance to traditional Republicans and to which Christians ought to be sympathetic. The most important of these is his promise to make conservative and pro-life Supreme Court appointments: this could be an enormous coup in the culture wars and would strike a blow at the socially progressive worldview propagated by elites in the West since the 1960s. The issue could go back to the states and to the democratic will of Americans, as should all moral and conscientious decisions.
Trump is also more likely to respect the First Amendment, even if he doesn’t understand it (the GOP establishment should ensure that). He is less hostile to Christianity than Hillary, who has suggested that traditional forms of religion must change to fit the mores of progressive America. Freedom of speech is under siege in the West due to political correctness and a Clinton administration would have seen this culture of censorship become worse rather than better, and social conservatives would have been on the losing end.
On foreign policy Clinton would have been far from a safe pair of hands: her aggressive and hawkish stance towards Russia would have escalated the new Cold War, while the Clinton Foundation remains uncomfortably close to the regimes of Saudi Arabia and other unsavoury Gulf states. Strangely, a Trump administration might make the world safer; he is certainly less likely to take us into a needless war with Putin.
There is the possibility, of course, that Trump may not actually do anything. This would be perfectly acceptable from a conservative point of view, as presidents who think they can fix the world like Obama are invariably wrong and disappoint the masses who voted for them. Mighty governments and planned societies don’t work according to the conservative worldview, and the state cannot perfect human society, as anyone who has read Augustine knows; perfection cannot exist in the earthly city.
America was founded by conscientious Christians trying to live according to the Gospel free from the interference of the state or other secular powers. Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton argues that intellectuals tend to favour planned societies, based on the assumption that they will be in charge of them. “Intellectuals” have been trying to plan post-Christian societies since Robespierre, and catastrophically from 1917 onwards, to the detriment of the Church’s liberty and influence. If the federal government ends up doing less, isn’t that what conservatives are aiming for anyway?
If a Trump administration turns out to be really intolerable, it must be remembered that there is always the impeachment process. Something genuinely atrocious would have to emerge in order to warrant this procedure, but although the GOP controls the House, I suspect that Trump would still have enough enemies who might turn against him and impeach him if necessary. The US system is well set up to prevent one branch of government from overreaching itself or compromising the Constitution.
Whatever happens over the course of the next presidency, Christians can at least rest easy knowing that the progressive Democrats who are deeply hostile to Christian values and the Gospel of Life are not in the White House, and cannot impinge upon their liberty to believe, teach, preach and practise for now. The defeat of those who really do hate the Church is at least on some level gratifying.

That Trump victory... Is schadenfreude a sin ?

That Trump victory... Is schadenfreude a sin?


Sorry but I'm grinning from ear to ear constantly. Just love to see those pinko liberals grinding their teeth in fury.


Remember... Gene predicted the Trump victory!

Donald Trump with dove of peace
Gene predicted the Trump victory!