UN sends condoms to starving people in Myanmar

Bangkok, May. 23, 2008 (CWNews.com) - In answer to the grave humanitarian crisis among cyclone victims in Myanmar, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is sending nearly 250,000 condoms.

"We don't want regular use of contraception disrupted," a spokesman for the UNFPA told reporters. The UN agency is also providing oral and injected contraceptives.

More than 2 million people in Myanmar face an urgent need for food, clothing, medication, and shelter.
via cwnews.com

Cardinal Mahony bars dissident Australian bishop

Los Angeles, May. 20, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has barred a controversial Australian bishop from speaking in his California archdiocese.

In a May 9 letter to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, a retired auxiliary of the Sydney, Australia archdiocese, Cardinal Mahony invoked the Code of Canon Law to explain that he had decided to "deny you permission to speak in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles."

Cardinal Mahony took action just as the Australian bishops' conference issued a public statement warning of "doctrinal difficulties" in Bishop Robinson's new book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. The Australian bishops noted problems with Bishop Robinson's treatment of "the nature of Tradition, the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the
infallibility of the Councils and the Pope, the authority of the Creeds, the nature of the ministerial priesthood and central elements of the Church’s moral teaching."

Bishop Robinson, who is in the US on a speaking tour to promote his book, is due to speak in Los Angeles on June 12. He is also scheduled to visit Boston, Seattle, and San Diego during his US visit. Cardinal Mahony urged the Australian bishop to cancel those appearances.

Bishop Robinson is likely to continue his speaking tour, defying the ban by Cardinal Mahony and challenging prelates in the other cities where he is scheduled to appear.

The liberal activist group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) has issued a statement denouncing Cardinal Mahony's ban and praising Bishop Robinson for "trying to help us heal from the abuses which he saw first-hand" in Australia as head of a committee responding to the sex-abuse scandal there.

The VOTF statement acknowledges that the Australian bishops have found that Bishop' Robinson's book calls into question "the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively." But VOTF adds: "Those who read Bishop Robinson’s book carefully may question such conclusions."

In his own response to the cautionary statement issued by the Australian bishops' conference, Bishop Robinson complained that "the bishops appear to be saying that, in seeking to respond to abuse, we may investigate all other factors contributing to abuse, but we may not ask questions concerning ways in which teachings, laws, and attitudes concerning power and sex within the church may have contributed."

Because of that attitude, he said, he had "broken with" the episcopal conference.

via CWNEWS.COM

Californian Marriage Ruling May 16 2008

From Zenit.

The marriage defense act has been overturned by the supreme court, even though, in a vote in 2000 61% of California's voted to deine marriage as the union between a man and a woman. So much for democracy.

http://decentfilms.com/

http://decentfilms.com/

Australian archbishop seeks recovery of sacred in liturgy

Canberra, May. 14, 2008 (CWNews.com) - An Australian archbishop has called for a greater sense of reverence in the liturgy, urging a frank appraisal of problems that have arisen since the Second Vatican Council.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra issued a letter on the liturgy for Pentecost Sunday, as the Australian bishops began full implementation of the new General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM).

As he laid out the changes required by the GIRM, Archbishop Coleridge commented that "the Church is moving into a new phase of the ongoing journey of liturgical renewal." That process is necessary, he said, in order to prune out undesirable elements that have become commonplace. He explained that since the reforms after Vatican II, "liturgical habits have taken hold, some of which have been beneficial, others detrimental to the celebration of the liturgy."

"Our worship generally has become very chatty, to the point where one of the challenges now is to allow silence to play its part in the liturgy," the archbishop said. He reported, too, that many of the faithful find "a loss of the sense of the sacred in the Mass-- a weakened sense of the presence of God and the deeper resonances of the liturgical words and actions that comes with silence."

Archbishop Coleridge said that special attention should be paid to translations of liturgical texts, noting that "the language of the liturgy was never everyday language." He added that the sense of reverence is undermined when celebrants use informal language and when they offer mundane greetings, such as beginning a liturgical ceremony by wishing the congregation a "Good morning." [The full text of the archbishop's letter is available on the web site of the Canberra archdiocese.]

Source: Zenit

Prayer of a Soldier in France

My shoulders ache beneath my pack
(Lie easier, Cross, upon His back).

I march with feet that burn and smart
(Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart).

Men shout at me who may not speak
(They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek).

I may not lift a hand to clear
My eyes of salty drops that sear.

(Then shall my fickle soul forget
Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat?)

My rifle hand is stiff and numb
(From Thy pierced palm red rivers come).

Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
Than all the hosts of land and sea.

So let me render back again
This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.

Joyce Kilmer
1918
( lifted from Ad Orientem )