Please know that I fully support you and all that you have stated so far in your blog. May God give you strength to persevere in a world of confusion and disorder.

Jane from Spfld, MA

I really enjoy reading your blog and I am thankful that you continue to post on a weekly bases. I was wondering if you ever thought about digitally recording some of your homilies and posting them somewhere on your website (probably in (the form of a podcast). There is a Paulist Priest Fr Dave Farnum CSP) at the University of Texas catholic center who is currently experimenting with this.

I’ve attached the website to the Catholic Center under “my website” if you wanted to check it out.

God Bless,
Nate

Your tribute and prayerful words of support for our military, their families, and the blessed priests who minister to them is moving and so right. I hope your words and prayers bring comfort and light, as I know they will. I would like to suggest that anyone who wants to “hands on” help our military (in addition to the hands of prayer) donate to The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation for their Wartime Prayer Book campaign. Fulton Sheen’s Wartime Prayer Book brings comfort to so many, and for only a few dollars one can be placed in the hands of someone who is protecting us. A personal story – I know of how much this means to our soldiers because I have here in front of me the Key of Heaven prayer book that my father, an American paratrooper, carried with him in World War II through the liberation of France, Belgium, and the invasion and occupation of Germany. This prayer book was with him in his first battle – the Battle of the Bulge. It is dated September 21, 1913 and was given to him by his grandmother on his confirmation that day! So I appeal to any who read this to donate to the very prayerful and worthy cause of putting the wartime prayer book in the hands of all who yearn for one.
Yours in Christ.

Wow ! Cannot believe I am the first commenter – everybody must be still shopping !
Your Thanksgiving message was very beautiful and important given all the families directly affected by war and other military action.

And the picture of the week , once again, was right on point.

In a previous message the children asked questions of you and I thought it might be nice if you also provided some of your replies to us as well – such as what do you do if in fact you have any spare time or your favorite scripture, saint, or holiday ? I also wondered if you had any favorite modern authors of Christian writing to share with us ?

God bless always

Elaine
Brookline

Thank you for having this blog. I wish more in your position in the Church had them. It’s a very simple way to open communication with those in your local flock and those in the universal flock of the Church.

I’m posting this to express my deep sorry for the document the U.S. Bishop’s recently published, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care. In your letter on Homosexuality (Nov 23, 2005) you stated,

The Church’s position is not based on an animus against people with a homosexual orientation. Each and every member of the Church is called to holiness regardless of their sexual orientation. The Church has often warned against defining people by their sexual orientation in a way that diminishes their humanity. Each person is a mystery, an irreplaceable treasure, precious in God’s eye. We are God’s creatures and in baptism we are His sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to one another.

I wholeheartedly agree, but must ask if you actually read the document? How can you not have an animus against people with a homosexual orientation based on the wording of the document? It repeatedly calls persons with a homosexual orientation ‘disordered’. How is a gay or lesbian person to read that? I’ve read the whole document over and over, I’ve prayed over it and tried to take in its spirit. But I cannot get past the thought of being disordered. How can we NOT feel unwelcome in a Church which teaches us that the deepest part of our beings as humans made in the image and likeness of the Creator is not correct, is not good in the eyes of God who created us as we are, and who has created all things good??? My question to you is, why didn’t the Bishops consult men and women living within healthy homosexual relationships to help them formulate this document? Why didn’t the Bishops consult with a vast array of psychological studies; which show that to cause individuals to deny their sexuality, to sublimate it, to keep it secret causes so much harm on the individual and on society as a whole. Why didn’t the Bishops consult the vast number of animal behavioral scientists who have studied the sexual behavior of the various species on this Earth and have found that same sex intimacy exists between all animal species, except cats? You yourself are trying to pick up the pieces and set aright the damage done to the Church in Boston after years of teaching the faithful to hide their sexual orientation.

I totally agree with the Church’s stance that sexual intimacy is to be bound within the marriage bonds. But I also believe that the primary purpose for marriage is to be an outward expression of love between two souls.

I don’t limit myself to the Church’s narrow-minded view that the primary purpose of married sexual intimacy is procreation. I teach a large class of economically disadvantaged preschool children, most of whom have a single mother with multiple children each from a different father. I see first hand how procreation cannot be the primary motive behind married love. The urge to have sex, I believe is based on our need for sexual gratification. Procreation is not even in the mind of most people having sex other than in the fear of getting pregnant. I don’t know where the bishops who wrote the documents have been, but people are having sex outside of marriage in an alarming rate, and, I believe, the motivation behind these acts is selfish sexual gratification.

I fully concur in your statement that our age is based on extreme individualism. That, I believe, is the reason behind all of our sexual immorality as a society, both locally and globally. What the Church needs to do is teach about the sacred union which occurs within the marriage bond and get away from an Augustinian focus on procreation. Didn’t St. Augustine formulate this justification for marriage because as a youth he was unable to control his animalistic need for sexual self-gratification? I know this departure is impossible under the current myopic, non-pastoral vision of the Church of Pope Benedict XVI. This marital union, however, I believe can exist just as fully between two people of the same gender as it can between two people of the opposite gender. I ask that the Church Universal or Local does not write or talk about the ‘complementarity of man and women as male and female’ when you all, hopefully, have never engaged in sexual intimacy with either women or men.

And about the issue as framed by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, what gays and lesbians were looking for in petitioning for the right to marry is the civil right of two people to form a contractual civil union in which both parties become, essential, one in a legal sense. It wasn’t a fight against the Church’s view of marriage. I would like to remind you that the United States Federal Government, together with the local State Governments, permits the Catholic Church, together with a multitude of other organization, religious and otherwise, to perform marriages. Don’t you say at the end of a Matrimonial Mass, “By the power invested in me, by the State of ___, I pronounce you husband and wife.”? What if the government took that right away from you? You would still perform marriages, but they would be sacramental only in the eyes of the government and individuals who were seeking marriage would have to go and have a civil ceremony either before or after the religious ceremony as is the case in the rest of the world.

I didn’t mean to go on and on, but as you might surmise this is an area of great passion to me. I’ve been in a loving same sex relationship with the same man for the last 13 years and where the existence or extent of our sexual intimacy is no one’s business but our own, I can tell you that we have formed a relationship which is probably stronger than most heterosexual marriages of individuals of our generation.

I’m an Oblate Novice of Saint Benedict and truly believe that the Benedictine Charism of Listening with the Ear of Your Heart is needed in both of these matters. Below is a prayer for unity among U.S. Catholics generated by the Benedictine Oblate Community of St. Bede in Peru, Illinois.

I understand that you are busy with your episcopal duties in the Archdiocese of Boston, but if you’d be willing to begin a dialogue I can be reached at adamzeny@speakeasy.net.

Peace to you! You and all of your brother bishops are in my prayers.

Adam

PRAYER FOR GROWING UNITY AMONG AMERICAN CATHOLICS

Most Blessed Trinity, we come to you seeking reconciliation among all brothers and sisters who share the Catholic faith. Show us how to love one another as you love us.

Almighty Father, source of everlasting light; inspire us to listen to each other.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember that even as you are God’s unselfish love to us, your living body the Church, is our guide.

Holy Spirit, grant us the grace to make a sincere effort to minimize and eventually resolve our discords. Amen

Holy Mother Mary, please spread your mantle of peace and love over us, as we offer these prayers to the Holy Trinity.
Amen

By the Oblates of St. Bede Abbey, Peru, Illinois

In spite of my research, I cannot find out what a “diocesan hermit” is. Can you explian?? thank you for the wonderful tribute to out brothers and sisters in uniform. Jane

One of the most endearing people I ever met was a Catholic Priest stationed in Pleiku, Vietnam in 1968. Diagnosed with Parkinsons, he refused to leave his men and remained with us until he simply could go no further. We got the word that he passed away three months after going Stateside.

Of particular note: our “church” was a tent, set up on a hillside overlooking the Ho Che Minh Trail. As we entered the tent, it was required that we unload our clips from our rifles and lay them on the ground next to us. The first Mass I attended litteraly blew my mind. But life being the way it is, it soon became second nature to us.

On September 12, 1968, we came under enemy attack. You could say our base looked like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina! On Sunday, I stood in line for hours waiting for Father to hear my confession (no athiests in foxholes?) !!! Then we went inside the tent for Mass. The entire tent looked like someone walked through it with a shotgun, spraying thousands of rounds into the canvas…except for one area over the altar where the Cross would have been…but the Cross had not been there at the time of the attack…yet there it was, outlined perfectly…the Cross…

May God continue to bless our men and women in uniform and especially those magnificent men in “Roman Collar Camo’s” !!!

God bless you and yours on this Thanksgiving Day!