Is Corpus Christi Just Some Poverty Thing?

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Corpus Christi?

Corpus Christi?

La Stampa reports on last week’s Angelus address given by Pope Francis where he continued to incessantly impute some supra-doctrine about the poor.

Pope Francis has poignantly said that Christians have no right to refuse help to those who need it, saying that to partake in the commemoration of Christ’s death is to see him in the poor and suffering and to welcome them and offer them help.

First of all the Pope is not poignant.  Secondly, the Eucharist is not a commemoration of Christ’s death.  It is Christ himself.  At Mass it is being present at His own sacrifice.  Third, and most importantly, the Blessed Sacrament is not about seeing Christ in the poor and suffering, welcoming them, or offering them help.  That is something else entirely.

Speaking during his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the pope reflected on the meaning of the Catholic feast day celebrated this week, that of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

Known commonly by its Latin name of Corpus Christi, the feast commemorates Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, when he is said to have instituted the Eucharist by first holding a piece of bread and saying: “Take this, this is my body.”

Francis applied wide ranging social consequences to that action on Friday, saying those who participate in the Eucharist enter into a communion that requires them to give care for all.

“When we take and eat this bread, we become associated with the life of Jesus, we enter into communion with Him,” said the pontiff. “We commit ourselves to realize the communion between us, to transform our life into a gift, overall to the most poor.”

“Today’s feast evokes this integral message and pushes us to welcome the intimate invitation to conversion and to service, to love and to forgive,” the pope continued. “It stimulates us to become, with our lives, imitators of that which we celebrate in the liturgy.”

“The Christ who feeds us in the consecrated species of bread and wine is the same that we meet in daily occurrences,” said Francis. “It is the poor person who pulls our hand, it is the suffering person that implores our help, it is the brother that asks our availability and waits for our welcome.”

This kind of 1970’s propaganda is quite the blast from the past.  Why is it that liberals always go back to their tired old playbook?  Who decided that we would now be re-treated to the effeminate, suffocating nightmare that was hippie Catholicism?

When we receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament we do not commit ourselves to transform our life into a gift overall to the most poor.  Jesus in the Eucharist is not the people we meet in daily occurrences.  He is not the one who pulls our hand, implores our help or waits for our welcome.  He is Jesus.

Jesus tells us when we help the least of His brothers, we do it for Him, because he loves them so much.  He appreciates our love to them and expects it, but they are not actually Him.  If they are in states of grace Jesus lives within them, but nevertheless Jesus is Jesus and people are people, even in states of grace.

Why must the Pope twist and minimize the Blessed Sacrament, who is God Himself, by turning it all into one big worldly poverty program?  Can’t he just defend the faith and teach it?  Isn’t that worth doing on it’s own?

If you’re like many people you spend most of your time helping others.  But is that our faith?  Isn’t it so much more?

 

 

It’s Good They Hold USCCB Meetings in Hotels

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Not so much about Jesus or souls

Not so much about Jesus or souls

St. Louis Public Radio has a report on the recent U.S. Bishops’ Meeting entitled, “Earthly and heavenly concerns dominate meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops in St. Louis.”

My only question is, What’s so heavenly about it?

The formal 2015 spring General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops begins its hard work in committees, much like Congress does. On Monday at the Hyatt Regency downtown, some three dozen committees and sub-committees began candid discussions after hearing the views and research of experts and theologians. No sessions are open to the public; the Wednesday day-long and Thursday morning sessions will be open to news reporters.

Why candid discussions? Why not just hedge and obfuscate?  Gleaning through the report I found the following agenda topics:

  • Plans for Pope Francis’ visit to his city in September for the long-planned World Meeting of Families
  • The Synod on the Family
  • How botanical research gardens can work with development agencies
  • Partnerships that would educate people in the Third World about heating alternatives to the traditional, disastrous cutting and burning of their forests
  • Awakening nations to the devastating toll poverty-powered immigration has on children and family life
  • Plans to make the infamous “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” voter guide much more liberal and FrancisChurch-like
  • Sex abuse reporting
  • New translation of the Liturgy of the Hours
  • Chinese lanterns

Only two of these bulleted items touch upon prayer, faith or sacraments.  These are the two that are in the most peril.  Wait ’till we see what happens to that voter guide!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mass. Knights Back Off Pro-Gay St. Patrick Parade: Blast Catholic Group, Free Media

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knights march 2

Exposed for their collaboration with anti-Catholic and immoral groups in the Boston St. Patrick’s parade, the Knights of Columbus have backed down, but not without a complaint against those who exposed them.

The Massachusetts Knights of Columbus withdrew from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston on Sunday, saying that their motives for participating in the parade – which this year included a gay activist group – have been misrepresented.

The Knights asked people to pray during the march in honor of St. Patrick, who was famous for bringing Christianity to pagan Ireland.

A statement released by the Knights said that they had intended to march in the parade “as a Catholic witness, to honor this great Catholic saint, and in gratitude for the contributions of Irish Americans to our country.”

The organization said that it had wanted to run a float with both pro-life signs and other posters encouraging participation in charitable activities.

However, a source close to the situation told CNA that the Knights were ambushed by a campaign that smeared their motives and created confusion.

C.J. Doyle, executive director of Boston’s “Catholic Action League,” alleged that the Knights were acting “treacherously” and that their actions were actually “helping (the activist group) spread their message.”

Doyle said that the Knights were colluding to give cover to the parade’s organizers and Boston’s mayor for the parade’s inclusion of a homosexual advocacy group. He pointed to the fact that the mayor’s hometown of Dorchester was also the town in which the Massachusetts leader of the Knights of Columbus resided.

But CNA’s source said that the allegations were false and that the Knights had not been contacted about the situation or asked for clarification.

It’s an unnamed source’s word against Doyle.  The establishment can send out slurs anonymously?

“The fact is that Doyle and his group created a scandal,” the source said. “The Knights were marching in defense of the faith, and did not want to leave the parade because they wanted someone in the parade to continue to stand for Church teaching. They believed that pulling out of this parade would abandon it entirely to non-Catholic elements, and that this would not be helpful to the evangelization of the people of Boston.”

That’s the whole point.  Leave the parade to the non-Catholics.  Let them have their ‘victory’ and stop giving scandal by collaborating.

“But in the end, Doyle and his group generated so much misinformation and so many attacks that the good the Knights were trying to do was literally overwhelmed by his claims.”

Doyle had encouraged his followers to contact the Knights and complain, and according to one source, many did, with profanity-laced phone calls and social media posts.

I guess we’ll just have to take Mr. Anonymous’s word for that, but I don’t believe it.

“The lack of charity by these people who called themselves Catholics was stunning,” someone who knew several of the Knights receiving the calls told CNA. “And it didn’t help that groups like MassResistance and the Michael Voris’ Church Militant picked these allegations and ran them uncritically.”

That’s right.  We lack charity.  You know what else?  We’re un-merciful too.  I guess Michael Voris didn’t check enough anonymous sources before ‘running’ with the bogus story?

Every day we see more and more, it’s ‘c’atholics against Catholics in the new FrancisChurch.