Real Catholic Blog

Great news! Many of our readers will remember the drummed up controversy by an atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation protesting the U.S. Postal Service issuing a stamp in honor of Mother Teresa. For a brief spell it looked like the USPS might reconsider. However, 138,000 people signed a national petition urging the Post Office to stick to its guns. Last week, it did! Thanks to all of you who signed the petition.

Roy Betts, a spokesman for the Postal Service, told CatholicVote.org last week (click here to read more from CV):

The stamp will be dedicated September 5 [at] the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Feel free to post information about the stamp, the image and the dedication ceremony on your website. Thanks!

The push to stop the stamp was nothing more than anti-religious and, specifically, anti-Catholic bigotry. So, it’s never too late to show support for a great cause like this. If you haven’t signed the petition, please do (by clicking here). CatholicVoteAction.org has done a great job with the Stamp Out Bigotry Web site. In fact, the more people sign in the days ahead, the better the chance of making this a forever stamp. Why not? As one commenter put it, Mother Teresa’s spirit and work are enduring.

Most importantly, be sure to buy and use the Mother Teresa stamp. The Postal Service is like any business — if you buy a certain product a lot, it will keep making it! Show your devotion to the Church through one of its modern servants, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Coming soon, on an envelope in your mail! Mother Teresa’s spirit endures in many forms including, in the very near future, a new U.S. post stamp.

Here is a message from Father Frank Pavone, national director of Father Frank Pavone, about this week’s March For Life events in Washington, D.C. (see Father Pavone’s Blog). Now, more than ever, it is important to let our elected leaders know what we think about the important issues of our day — especially the paramount issue of our age, Life. The politicians now are listening. Agreeing? Maybe not. But we are making progress, otherwise, how to explain the difficulties in passing such anti-life legislation such as the health care bill? Stay vigilant. Pray, then put your prayers into action with civic activism.

Father Frank Pavone calls us to our civic duty, to put our prayers into action. 

Father Frank Pavone (see Father Pavone’s Blog) and Priests for Life are hosting a Vote Pro-Life teleconference on Monday, January 25, 2010. The teleconference will focus on the 2010 elections and will have a panel of experts, including David Barton of Wallbuilders and Majorie Dannenfelser (see Weekly Standard interview on YouTube) of the Susan B. Anthony List (see The SOP.org).

The teleconference, which is designed to motivate, inspire and educate will be a great way to capitalize on the momentum of the March For Life later this week in Washington, D.C. (It’s not too late to attend. Ask your parish, diocese, a Knights of Columbus council, find here, or other Catholic or pro-life organization in your community if they are planning to charter a bus.) If you can’t attend the March For Life, the teleconference is a good way to learn how you can participate in the pro-life movement.

Sign up for the teleconference here, at Priest For Life. After you sign up, you will receive an e-mail with more details. You cannot receive the details on how to participate without an online RSVP. 

Father Pavone accurately notes that “A key part of putting our prayers into action is bringing them to the voting booth.” So, please, forward this link to friends you think are interested in getting more involved so they can learn about the teleconference. You can also join the Pro-Life Cause on Facebook by clicking here. Father Pavone asks that we “act for the unborn so that we may save Our Lord’s children.”

I’m sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I was knocked off my feet last week with something . . . still not sure what. Either food poisoning or some hit and run flu strain. However, I appear fully (or mostly) recovered and bare exciting news:

Real Catholic Blog will have a presence at this year’s March For Life, Friday, January 22, in Washington, D.C. Not an official presence, but Brother John will be in attendance and we are excited that he will relay his impressions of his experiences of this massive outpouring of pro-life sentiment. We hope to have pictures to post as well. Brother John will be on a bus chartered by Saint Anthony Maronite parish in Richmond, Va. If you see him, tell him hello. He’ll have a prayer card to give you.

For more information about this event, the largest and most significant event promoting the cause of the unborn in American each year (and maybe the world) visit MarchforLife.org. It is a three-day event, including the Rose Dinner, whose featured speaker this year is Robert George (see LifeSiteNews), author of the Manhattan Declaration, the groundbreaking document signed by thousands of religious and pro-life leaders, and hundreds of thousands of grassroots pro-life activists, committing themselves to the end of abortion in America. The March For Life site has information on chartering buses, how to participate and all the related events. We hope that all of our readers, if not their parishes and/or dioceses are not already making plans for March For Life, will take a leadership role in getting them involved. We will provide updates about March For Life until then and, as always, keep you up to date on all pro-life news.

Washington, D.C., Catholics in the legal profession celebrated the annual Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle last Sunday and heard a staunch defense of the unborn and a call for their protection from America’s newest cardinal, Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Attending were six members of the U.S. Supreme Court, including new Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Six members of the court are Catholic, but one, Justice Clarence Thomas, was away. The other five and Justice Steven Breyer, who is Jewish, attended.)

In speaking about the unborn, Cardinal DiNardo said in his homily (read its entirety, here):

A person can forget that the basis of that knowledge is something much more natural in the human condition, that the law and lawyers are around because justice among human beings is always an issue.

There are always smoldering wicks and bruised reeds needing our human attention, an attention that cries out and says that even sophisticated knowledgeable ‘human’ lawyers need reminding, need a purifying divine fire from the Lord, both in their personal lives and in their profession itself. It is that reality that brings us to praise, reflection, and prayer this day.

They are poor and wealthy, confused and lucid, polite and impolited. In some cases, the clients are voiceless, for they lack influence; in others they are literally voiceless, not yet with tongues and even without names, and require our most careful attention and radical support.

If the homily did not get the message across, those attending received a less subtle message. Randal Terry, one of America’s most vociferous pro-life advocates, and a convert to the Faith, led a rally outside the cathedral, in full earshot of those attending the Mass.

The name “Red Mass” is honor of the flame of the Holy Spirit and has been celebrated to bring blessings upon the Supreme Court and other legal officials in the U.S. since 1953. However, it has origins as far back as 13th century France.

For more on the Mass, read this article from Randy Sly, Associate Editor of Catholic Online. He is a former Archbishop himself — of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. He resigned that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

It’s no secret that marriage — God’s Word — is under assault in America and in many other places around the world. It almost seems as if once a tide starts like that, it’s hard to roll it back. It’s unfortunate, as well, that those who should gladly raise the banner to carry the fight are quick to despair and submit to what seems to be overwhelming “modern norms” — the “dictatorship of relativism” as a wise man (Pope Benedict XVI) put it a few years ago.

Take heart! The Church in New Jersey, Washington state and Washington, D.C. as well as Maine (all per CNA) are taking definitive action to roll back the tide and protect their states from the redefinition of marriage.

Of particular interest is Maine, where citizens there not only are trying to protect marriage preemptively, as about 30 states have done, it has to pull a California and reverse a decision that has legalized homosexual “marriage.” To undertake this task, the Diocese of Portland took up second collections last Sunday so that it could run television ads and other campaign communications to reach the electorate. It is expected that the 140 parishes of the diocese raised between $140,000 – $300,000.

In a disturbing occurrence, two former nuns protested the diocese’s involvement in front of Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. They claimed to represent the so-called group “Catholics for Marriage Equality.”

However, Fr. Louis Phillip, retorted that marriage . . . 

“pre-dates government. … Since the beginning of time, marriage has been understood by people of every faith and culture to be the union of a man and a woman.”

The referendum on restoring the definition of marriage in Maine is November 3. The umbrella coalition for the pro-marriage side is Stand for Marriage Maine.