Mary Help of Christians...Pray for us!

Most Holy Virgin Mary, Help of Christians,

how sweet it is to come to your feet

imploring your perpetual help.

If earthly mothers cease not to remember their children, 

how can you, the most loving of all mothers forget me?

Grant then to me, I implore you, 

your perpetual help in all my necessities, 

in every sorrow, and especially in all my temptations.

I ask for your unceasing help for all who are now suffering.

Help the weak, cure the sick, convert sinners.

Grant through your intercessions many vocations to the religious life. 

Obtain for us, O Mary, Help of Christians,

that having invoked you on earth we may love and eternally thank you in heaven.

St. John Bosco

The Meaning of Legalized Abortion

John C. Londregan writes at Public Discourse:

Kermit Gosnell: Epiphany for Birthers?

The conviction of murderer Kermit Gosnell reminds us of the horror of cruelly mauling helpless young people to death, as Matt Franck argued here at Public Discourse last week. Yet the coverage of the event uncovered a revealing confusion on the part of the press—many accounts referred to the infants murdered by Gosnell as “fetuses,” unconsciously recognizing the continuity of life from one minute to the next, from the beginning to the end of the miracle of life.

Of course, in this second decade of the twenty-first century it is perfectly legal, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to kill a 168-day-old fetus, provided she has not yet emerged from her mother, but a moment after she does the legal panorama is transformed and snipping her neck to make her stop crying is defined as murder.

But how different is the child? What transformation has come over her in the half dozen or so sweeps of the second hand around the clock on the wall of the abortionist's abattoir that take her from unwanted appendage to little girl?

Read the whole thing.

Doc Hendershott Victim of IRS Audit

Some highlights from the article at the The Blaze, but be sure and read the whole thing.

 

‘Very Frightening’: Prominent Catholic Prof. Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out Against Obama and Demanded to Know Who Was Paying Her

 

In the midst of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, individuals and groups, alike, are continuing to come forward with ever-startling allegations. On Wednesday, Dr. Anne Hendershott, a devout Catholic and a noted sociologist, professor and author, exclusively told TheBlaze that she believes she may have been one of the IRS’s targets.

 

According to Hendershott, the IRS audited her in 2010 and demanded to know who was paying her and “what their politics were....

 

Hendershott was surprised she was being audited on business grounds considering she does not operate an entrepreneurial endeavor in the traditional sense. In addition to her academic work, she told TheBlaze that she occasionally freelances for Catholic outlets and for the Wall Street Journal. But can this really be considered “business” activity?

 

“I don’t make a lot of money from writing. In fact most years I don’t show a profit,” she told TheBlaze.

 

In fact, Hendershott said some of the outlets and organizations she has written for haven’t paid her a cent.

 

But the circumstances surrounding the irregular nature of the experience don’t end there, though. Hendershott noted it was particularly surprising that she, alone, was audited. Her husband, who brings in the vast majority of the family’s income, was not included in the IRS’s inquiry — even though the Hendershotts always files jointly....

“Every question had to do with bank deposits we made. Every single question,” she said. “What is this money? And I didn’t know a lot of it. We had to go to our bank and get deposits back. We had to get records showing where the money came from.”

While asking about the deposits, the agent wanted to know if the monies came from groups and, if so, what the organizations’ politics were."

Good for Cardinal O'Malley!

We  need more, more, and more of this. From the Boston Globe:

"Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese, said today he would not attend Boston College’s commencement because the scheduled speaker, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, supports controversial abortion-rights legislation in his country.

In a statement released this afternoon, O’Malley said the Catholic Bishops of the United States have urged Catholic institutions not to honor government officials whose views on the issue are inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic church....

“Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach [prime minister] has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation,’’ O’Malley said in a statement. “It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives.’’

He added, “although I shall not be present to impart the final benediction, I assure the graduates that they are in my prayers on this important day in their lives, and I pray that their studies will prepare them to be heralds of the Church’s Social Gospel and ‘men and women for others,’ especially for the most vulnerable in our midst.’’

Bless him!

NOW the Press is Worried About Obama and the First Amendment

(This follows our previous post of Saturday, where we noted the Obama administration's undercutting of the first amendment. It's good to be right).

Back on February 17, 2012 we covered the San Francisco protest against the HHS Mandate that coincided with Obama's visit to San Francisco. The post was titled "HHS Protest: 'What's going to be next? Will it be freedom of the Press?"

That title came from a question Dolores Meehan asked an ABC reporter who had asked Dolores why she was protesting Obama's unconscionable and unconstitutional HHS mandate.

"In one segment that aired on ABC7News, Meehan responded to a reporter’s question by asking the reporter a question of her own: 'Freedom of religion is the flavor of the day for him today, but what’s going to be next? Will it be freedom of the press? Are you going to be able to be out here and say what you want to say?'”

Well, she nailed it. The news that the Obama administration seized phone records of Associated Press reporters is all over the news--as it should be. Politico reports:

"Reporters across The Associated Press are outraged over the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of staff phone record....

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt described on Monday described the DOJ action as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”

You mean like the Obama administration's  massive and unprecedented intrusion into religious life, Mr. Pruitt?

"In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, Pruitt called the seizure of records “a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

You mean like the serious interference with the constitutional rights of the Catholic Church and other religious people to practice their religion as they see fit, Mr. Pruitt?
 

The Democrats' Deadly Fantasies: Benghazi

On November 16, 2012, we wrote about the utterly despicable behavior of President Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and their associates:

"Lying about the deaths of four Americans--including their own Ambassador. Why did they do it? Because Obama's crowning achievement was the killing of Usama Bin Laden, and by extension, the crippling of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda's participation in the Benghazi disaster proved that "narrative" to be false. So they came up with the fantasy of that stupid video being responsible--and continued to assert that long after the absurdity of that explanation became obvious."

The stupid and anti-American mainstream media was utterly complicit in the coverup of the four dead Americans. As Democratic pollster Patrick Cadell said at the time:

"[The MSM] has made themselves the enemy of the American people. It is a threat to the very future of the country..."

If that is true of the mainstream media, which it is, it is even more true of the Democratic Part: the party of legalized abortion, which undercuts the first of the unalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, the party that is in the process of undercutting the First Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees religious liberty, the party that is working toward the destruction of what's left of the American family through counterfeit "marriage."

Today Mark Steyn has a column on the Benghazi scandal that we think should be reproduced in its entirety. Emphasis added.

The Benghazi Lie
A failure of character of this magnitude corrodes the integrity of the state. 

By Mark Steyn

Shortly before last November’s election I took part in a Fox News documentary on Benghazi, whose other participants included the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu. Making chit-chat while the camera crew were setting up, Governor Sununu said to me that in his view Benghazi mattered because it was “a question of character.” That’s correct. On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.

That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’s testimony was so damning — not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic. In this space in January, I noted that Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all “Chris this” and “Chris that,” as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

Are murdered ambassadors like those 1.43 million cables she doesn’t read? Just too many of them to keep track of? No. Only six had been killed in the history of the republic — seven, if you include Arnold Raphel, who perished in General Zia’s somewhat mysterious plane crash in Pakistan in 1988. Before that you have to go back to Adolph Dubs, who died during a kidnapping attempt in Kabul in 1979. So we have here a once-in-a-third-of-a-century event. And at 3 a.m. Libyan time on September 12 it’s still unfolding, with its outcome unclear. Hicks is now America’s head man in the country, and the cabinet secretary to whom he reports says, “Leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you before the end of the week.” Just to underline the difference here: Libya’s head of government calls Hicks, but nobody who matters in his own government can be bothered to.

What was Secretary Clinton doing that was more important? What was the president doing? Aside, that is, from resting up for his big Vegas campaign event. A real government would be scrambling furiously to see what it could do to rescue its people. It’s easy, afterwards, to say that nothing would have made any difference. But, at the time Deputy Chief Hicks was calling 9-1-1 and getting executive-branch voicemail, nobody in Washington knew how long it would last. A terrorist attack isn’t like a soccer game, over in 90 minutes. If it is a sport, it’s more like a tennis match: Whether it’s all over in three sets or goes to five depends on how hard the other guy pushes back. The government of the United States took the extremely strange decision to lose in straight sets. Not only did they not deploy out-of-area assets, they ordered even those in Libya to stand down. Lieutenant Colonel Gibson had a small team in Tripoli that twice readied to go to Benghazi to assist and twice was denied authority to do so, the latter when they were already at the airport. There weren’t many of them, not compared to the estimated 150 men assailing the compound. But they were special forces, not bozo jihadists. Back in Benghazi, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty held off numerically superior forces for hours before dying on a rooftop waiting for back-up from a government that had switched the answering machine on and gone to Vegas.

Throughout the all-night firefight in Benghazi, Washington’s priority seems to have been to do everything possible to deny that what was actually happening was happening at all. To send “soldiers” on a “mission” to “fight” the “enemy” was at odds with the entire Obama narrative of the Arab Spring and the broader post-Bush Muslim world. And so the entire U.S. military was stood down in support of the commander-in-chief’s fiction.

As Mr. Hicks testified, his superiors in Washington knew early that night that a well-executed terrorist attack with the possible participation of al-Qaeda elements was under way. Instead of responding, the most powerful figures in the government decided that an unseen YouTube video better served their political needs. And, in the most revealing glimpse of the administration’s depravity, the president and secretary of state peddled the lie even in their mawkish eulogies to their buddy “Chris” and three other dead Americans. They lied to the victims’ coffins and then strolled over to lie to the bereaved, Hillary telling the Woods family that “we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.” And she did. The government dispatched more firepower to arrest Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in Los Angeles than it did to protect its mission in Benghazi. It was such a great act of misdirection Hillary should have worn spangled tights and sawn Stevens’s casket in half.

The dying Los Angeles Times reported this story on its homepage (as a sidebar to “Thirteen Great Tacos in Southern California”) under the following headline: “Partisan Politics Dominates House Benghazi Hearing.” In fact, everyone in this story is a Democrat or a career civil servant. Chris Stevens was the poster boy for Obama’s view of the Arab Spring; he agreed with the president on everything that mattered. The only difference is that he wasn’t in Vegas but out there on the front line, where Obama’s delusions meet reality. Stevens believed in those illusions enough to die for them. One cannot say the same about the hollow men and women in Washington who sent him out there unprotected, declined to lift a finger when he came under attack, and in the final indignity subordinated his sacrifice to their political needs by lying over his corpse. Where’s the “partisan politics”? Obama, Clinton, Panetta, Clapper, Rice, and the rest did this to one of their own. And fawning court eunuchs, like the ranking Democrat at the hearings, Elijah Cummings, must surely know that, if they needed, they’d do it to them, too. If you believe in politics über alles, it’s impressive, in the same way that Hillary’s cocksure dismissal — “What difference, at this point, does it make?” — is impressive.

But the embassy security chief, Eric Nordstrom, had the best answer to that: It matters because “the truth matters” — not least to the Libyan president, who ever since has held the U.S. government in utter contempt. Truth matters, and character matters. For the American people to accept the Obama-Clinton lie is to be complicit in it.

"A new and powerful intercessor"

We received a lovely note today from Lisa Hamrick, one of the co-founders of the Walk for Life West Coast, about the passing of Mother Mary Joseph Chavez, OCD.

I wanted to share with you someone who was very dear to me for most of my adult life, Mother Mary Joseph Chavez, OCD. She was a beloved and very saintly friend to so many, and she passed from this life on Sunday morning at 100 years young. She was truly the spiritual mother of the St. Ignatius Institute and Ignatius Press from the very beginning of their foundations. She often told me over the years, that her main work was to pray for the Institute and Press.

Her spirit and prayers and heart were always with all those who came to the Monastery to visit with her and receive her rich counsel, and everyone who came into contact with Mother was the richer for it! As one of the Fathers said in hearing of Mother’s passing – “don’t pray for her, pray to her.” She was truly a beautiful saint and will be an even greater intercessor before God for so many now!

She was also one of our tremendous prayer warriors for the Walk for Life West Coast since we first started. Since she herself could not attend the WFL, she would send a beautiful little painting that she had of the crucified face of Jesus (I was very touched when she gave me a copy of this picture years ago, as it meant much to her). She would say – “since I cannot go, I’ll send Jesus.” And that’s exactly what she did – each year, she would give her little painting of her beloved Jesus to someone who was participating in the WFL, and they would carry it for her to the WFL events. So simple a gesture yet truly profound in a way, as she united herself entirely in spirit and prayers each year to the WFL! And, we were so deeply grateful!

For anyone you know in the SF Bay Area who might like to attend the services for Mother Mary Joseph at Cristo Rey Monastery:

Thursday, May 9th: The viewing will be from Noon on, and the Rosary will be at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, May 10th: The Funeral Mass will be at 10:00 a.m.

What a homecoming it must have been in Heaven, as the Lord greeted her with the words -- "well done, good and faithful servant!" May Mother Joseph know all the joys of Heaven!

----------------------------------------------

The first picture was from a visit of Mother Joseph to Ignatius Press after she’d been out to the Doctor. The second picture was from the special Mass that was held at the Monastery for her 100th birthday last September – she greeted all of us individually afterwards. She’s seen here speaking with her great niece.

Dallas Auxiliary Bishop Mark Seitz to Lead El Paso Diocese

As always, Rocco has the story:

"Resolving the US' longest-standing vacancy after 17 long months, at Roman Noon this Monday Pope Francis named Bishop Mark Seitz, 59, an auxiliary of Dallas since 2010, as bishop of El Paso – in terms of diocesan population, the new pontiff's most significant Stateside choice to date.

At the helm of the 700,000-member fold along West Texas' border with Mexico, Seitz, who moved from his native Wisconsin to study as a seminarian in Texas, succeeds Bishop Armando Ochoa, who was returned to his native California as bishop of Fresno – now home to a million Catholics – in December 2011."

Read the whole thing. We add that His Excellency is a pro-life activist (photo below at 40 Days for Life) has served as a Chaplain for Courage, and donated a kidney to a parishioner.

Robert Lopez continues to make case against counterfeit "marriage" from child's perspective

Another insightful and powerful essay by Robert Oscar Lopez, himself raised in a same-sex household, on the dangers of same-sex "marriages" for children.

Justice Kennedy's 40,000 Children

"During the oral arguments about Proposition 8, Justice Anthony Kennedy referred to children being raised by same-sex couples. Since I was one of those children—from ages 2-19, I was raised by a lesbian mother with the help of her partner—I was curious to see what he would say.

I also eagerly anticipated what he would say because I had taken great professional and social risk to file an amicus brief with Doug Mainwaring (who is gay and opposes gay marriage), in which we explained that children deeply feel the loss of a father or mother, no matter how much we love our gay parents or how much they love us. Children feel the loss keenly because they are powerless to stop the decision to deprive them of a father or mother, and the absence of a male or female parent will likely be irreversible for them.
Over the last year I’ve been in frequent contact with adults who were raised by parents in same-sex partnerships. They are terrified of speaking publicly about their feelings, so several have asked me (since I am already out of the closet, so to speak) to give voice to their concerns."

Mr. Lopez sees that the contradiction is literally basic, fundamental:

"The richest and most successful same-sex couple still cannot provide a child something that the poorest and most struggling spouses can provide: a mom and a dad. Having spent forty years immersed in the gay community, I have seen how that reality triggers anger and vicious recrimination from same-sex couples, who are often tempted to bad-mouth so-called 'dysfunctional' or 'trashy' straight couples in order to say, 'We deserve to have kids more than they do!'

But I am here to say no, having a mom and a dad is a precious value in its own right and not something that can be overridden, even if a gay couple has lots of money, can send a kid to the best schools, and raises the kid to be an Eagle Scout."

This was the exact point of the "Marriage Matters to Kids" videos (right down to the name), created prior to the 2008 Proposition 8 election.

"Why France's gay marriage debate has started to look like a revolution"

Excellent article by John Laughland at the Spectator about the momentous events in France.

"Paris: Revolutions are often sparked by an unexpected shock to an already weakened regime. As commentators in France remark not only on the crisis engulfing François Hollande’s government but also on the apparent death-rattle of the country’s entire political system, it could be that his flagship policy of legalising gay marriage — or rather, the gigantic public reaction against it, unique in Europe — will be the last straw that breaks the Fifth -Republic’s back.

Opposition to the bill has electrified the middle classes, the young and much of provincial France. On Sunday 24 March, in the freezing cold, the 4km stretch from the Arche de la Défense to the Arc de Triomphe was full of people protesting against the bill. On 13 January, also chilly, the Champ de Mars was similarly crammed. When Johnny Hallyday or the World Cup got crowds like that, people talked of two million. But the police, evidently acting under political orders, have claimed that both demonstrations — which are without doubt the largest public movements in French history — garnered a few hundred thousand at most. Credible accusations surfaced in Le Figaro on Monday night that the film taken from police helicopters on 24 March and released by the Prefecture has been manipulated to reduce the apparent numbers of demonstrators.

Such lies are the sign of a rotten regime....

The immediate cause of the crisis lies in the dramatic alienation of sections of the electorate who voted for Hollande in May. The overseas populations of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, and regions like Brittany where the left is as deeply entrenched as in Scotland, are in revolt over gay marriage: the largest French daily, Ouest-France, based in Rennes, has turned against Hollande on the issue.

Read the whole thing.

The mainstream media is not covering this, as the author of the Telegraph piece notes. The reason is that the truth anywhere is a challenge to a lie everywhere. And because counterfeit "marriage" is a lie, it can't allow truth to have a voice.

As we've been saying "Vive la France!"

Fr. Michael Barber, SJ named as Bishop of Oakland

Dynamic, Learned, Devout, Young

If the appointment of bishops is, as some have said, where the Papal rubber meets the road, Pope Francis is continuing where Pope Benedict left off. The changing face of the California Episcopacy continues. On Friday, May 3 at noon Rome time, the Holy Father named Fr. Michael Barber, SJ as the new bishop of the Diocese of Oakland. The see had been vacant since the appointment of Salvatore Cordileone as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco in October of 2012. Bishop Barber will take the reins from Archbishop Alex J. Brunett, the Archbishop Emeritus of Seattle, who had been serving as the Apostolic Administrator until the bishop’s chair was filled.

Fr. Barber grew up in San Francisco and Sacramento. He studied philosophy at Gonzaga University, in Spokane, and Theology at Regis College, University of Toronto. He was ordained in 1985, and spent two years of missionary work in Western Samoa, Polynesia. He was then sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to study and teach Dogmatic Theology. Father Barber’s research centered on the unpublished sermon manuscripts of Blessed John Henry (Cardinal) Newman. Fr. Barber’s interest in the Blessed Cardinal Newman is ongoing. In 2010, Fr. Barber, joined by Franciscan University of Steubenville president Fr. Terrence Henry, served as spiritual director to a group of American pilgrims journeying to England for the Beatification of Cardinal Newman. The pilgrimage was sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Society. Fr. Barber also served at Oxford University as a research fellow at Campion Hall, the Jesuit college at Oxford. He subsequently was elected Bursar and tutor in theology there.

Fr. Barber was appointed by Archbishop (now Cardinal) William Levada as Director of the School of Pastoral Leadership in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, followed by eight years as Director of Spiritual Formation and assistant professor of theology at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California. Fr. Barber also served as a military chaplain. He was commissioned in 1991 as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and currently holds the rank of Commander. He was called up for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as Catholic chaplain to the 6,000 Marines in the 4th Marine Air Wing.

Fr. Barber also serves as a chaplain to Legatus, the association of Catholic business leaders. In a 2009 interview with Legatus magazine Fr. Barber gave interesting and straightforward responses to a number of questions. He did not sound like a mainstream California Jesuit. When asked how his Navy service had affected his priesthood, he responded:

“With the military you get a direct cross-section of America — a lot of the young people who wouldn’t have the tuition money to go to a Jesuit school. I like that. It’s a little more rough-and-tumble than you would encounter in a refined schoolroom atmosphere. You also meet many unchurched kids. I am their chaplain whether they like it or not. I go around the whole ship to all the Marines in the whole unit. I speak to them about moral issues or give them briefs about religious culture. I’ve also made friends with chaplains from other faiths. I’ve known one for 18 years, and I’m like an uncle to his kids. I would never be that close to a Southern Baptist in normal life.”

And when asked “What do you try to bring to the (Legatus) members every month?” the first sentence of his response was:

“I am concerned with their growth in holiness, and I want to support their Catholic faith and try to help them live it here in Northern California where the culture can be hostile to the faith.”

Vive la France! III: "Les veilleurs" (The Watchers)

More amazing video from France. Thousands of people, mostly young, continue to hold vigil against the imposition of counterfeit "marriage" upon their country. This bodes well for the future. Via The Thinking Housewife.

 
La nuit des Veilleurs au ministère de la Famille by ktvideo1