Category Archives: Tradition

The Family of a Saint-To-Be Celebrates St. Joseph’s Day

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March 19th is the Solemnity of St. Joseph.  It is the Saint that will once again be the center of attention for the Gallegos Family.  According to Senaida Kane, the sister of  Bishop Alphonse Gallego, this year’s celebration marks the 75th year that  the family will gather in his honor.  This tradition was established by Joseph and Caciana Gallegos as they called their family together  to pray the Rosary in veneration of the great St. Joseph.

One member of the family will be looking on from the heavenly heights, no doubt. He is Bishop Alphonse Gallegos Member of the Order of Augustinian Recollects and Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento, California, whose cause for beatification and canonization was introduced to the Vatican in Rome in November, 2006.

St. Joseph, pray for us!

The Light of the East – “Breathe With Both Lungs”

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Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Orientale Lumen, the Light of the East, asserted  that “the venerable and ancient tradition of the eastern churches is an integral part of the the heritage of the Catholic Church.”  The pope called upon all Catholics to become “fully acquainted with this treasure.”

I checked out ngchase’s recommendation Eastern Christian Media.  It looks beautiful and full of promise. Nelson says “there are some wonderful pieces on different aspects of the Eastern Christian faith! It also has a nice video of Fr Moses -of Holy Resurrection Monastery- cooking a nice meal. (I have had his cooking before and its great!)”

You Don’t Have To Be Irish To Be Irish

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Religion and Morality Are Indispensable Supports of Democracy

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The Left would like to place marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and quite possibly cloning, outside of religious proscriptions. They would like to forget, or rather, re-write history. It is the Church’s message that is the foundational structure of our liberty, our National conscience, our democracy and our human rights. In fact, it is the message of Christianity that is the bench-mark of Western Civilization.

George Washington’s in his Farewell Address emphatically states, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

John Adams, who followed Washington in the Presidency writes, “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand…. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”

Issues of marriage, decisions regarding life and end-of-life, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning are precisely where separation of church and state have meaning. Said another way, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” The Left would like to isolate the message of the Church, have us believe it speaks to practicing members alone. However, it is God who speaks through His Church, and God speaks from Eternity. He breaks into Time, all time, lighting up every Age. The Church’s commission obligates it to announce Truth to all peoples of all times. Their message is the stuff of a true humanity.

Obama’s ‘Science’ Fiction – Possible vs Permissible

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“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”

Although Charles Krauthammer is wrong on where to draw the line in stem cell research, I think you will find his stance against President Obama’s stance a must read.  Krauthammer is “not religious” and so to his mind sees no definitive guideline as to when person-hood is bestowed. To my mind the science of it tells the tale.  Peering into the beginning moments of life with powerful cameras records the change from ova and sperm entities to new being with all the where-with-all to command the hormones and functions of the mother’s body to make possible its continuance and growth. It has not only presence but power to command.

The Truth of the matter, and our relationship to the Creator from the instant of our becoming a unique individual at the conjoining of ovum and sperm,  is still hidden from Krauthammer.  It does help to have the Truth that is revealed by the Creator through the Scriptures, the Church and the Tradition of both Church and Man (Natural Law.) I leave this as another issue for another day.  Krauthammer does believe in Evil. He opposes Obama’s replacing Bush’s line with “no line at all.”

This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom. [My emphasis]

Though Krauthammer does not know when to confer person-hood, he says:

“I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

Krauthammer judges Obama as morally arrogant in the extreme, dismissing “his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.” Or so Obama expects us to believe.

Krauthammer says of President George W. Bush:

“Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.”

I am reminded of the recent movie, I Am Legion, a futuristic nightmare with basis in possibility if not history for a scenario of science run amok. Krauthammer concludes his dismembering of Obama’s so called reasoned logic:

Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Obama clearly has not.

“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.”

Who Holds Their History?

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In “Keepers of History,” Joanna Lotta  asks the question: Who holds your history?  Lotta describes the “griots” who have amazing memories and whose role it is within their West African society to recite long histories and genealogies as well as songs of praise.

We can ask this question of our own lives.  When we came into this world, we already possessed a history; one going back in time to all our fore-bearers.  We held recorded in our genes, if not our memories, our mother and our father, our grandparents and great grand-parents; add to that as many greats as it takes to take us back to the very beginning of human beginnings. Even for one so small as each of us was in our zygotic beginnings, that’s a weighty argument for the worth of our being.  From the beginning, you and I are not a nothing, nor a nobody, nor a blob of substance.  Each of us is one in the line of the order of Adam called into existence by the breathe of God and cooperation of our human nature.

So now, for the unborn, I ask, “Who holds their history?” Further, I ask, “Who holds their destiny?”  Will industries such as Planned Parenthood, abortion mills, research institutes, and unethical fertilization plants, manipulate the Present and the Future by abrogating our mortal and moral Past. Our souls, as well as our genes, tell a story; one that will be sung one day before our Creator as a song of praise or profanation. Eternity waits on an answer.