Roman Catholic Good News - StatuesInboxx - 10/7/2017

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,
 
      The above quote of the Sacred Scriptures is sometimes misunderstood to accuse Roman Catholics of idol worshiping when our Christian brothers and sisters come into a Catholic church and see statues on the walls and on the altars.
 
      But we must remember that God Himself commanded Moses to make graven cherubim to be placed above the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:18-20). God does not contradict Himself.  The cherubim represented God and help to make Him present to the people of Israel and are not gods themselves like other religions believed in the time of Moses.  So statues remind us and make visible those faithful followers of Jesus who intercede for us and show us how to live during ordinary and difficult times.
       Further, we have statues in our city parks and along our highways.  We have pictures of our loved ones in our homes and places of work.  These are not idols nor do we worship them.  They keep near to our hearts and our minds those who love us and whom we love.  Do you have statues in your parish or home of those in heaven who love you and long to help you?
 
Peace and prayers in Jesus through Mary, loved by Saint Joseph,
Father Robert
 
P.S.  This coming Sunday is the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time.  > > > Readings

“Helpful Hints of Life”

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POPE FRANCIS:
 
 POPE FRANCIS: RESPECT AND LISTEN TO YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis says God has given everybody a Guardian Angel to accompany us and offer advice and protection, an Angel to whom we should listen with meekness and respect. He was speaking during his homily at Mass on Friday (2nd October) celebrated in the Santa Marta Residence. 
   
Taking his cue from Friday’s feast of the Guardian Angels, the Pope’s homily reflected on this divine presence in our lives, describing the Angel as God’s ambassador who accompanies each one of us. He noted how the proof of this was illustrated when God chased Adam out of Paradise: He didn’t leave Adam on his own or say to him: “fend for yourself as best as you can.” The Pope stressed that every person has been given a Guardian Angel by God who stays by our side. 
    
God's Ambassador by our side
“He is always with us! And this is a reality. It’s like having God’s ambassador with us. And the Lord advises us: ‘Respect his presence!’ And when we, for example, commit a sin and believe that we’re on our own: No, he is there. Show respect for his presence. Listen to his voice because he gives us advice. When we hear that inspiration: ‘But do this … this is better … we should not do that.’ Listen! Do not go against him.”
 
Pope Francis explained how the Guardian Angel always protects us, especially from evil. Sometimes, he noted, “we believe that we can hide so many things,” “bad things” that in the end will always come to light. The Angel, he continued, is there to advise us and “cover for us” just a friend would do. “A friend who we don’t see but we hear.” “A friend who one day will be with us in the everlasting joy of Heaven.”
 
Respect him and listen to him
“All he asks is that we listen to him and respect him. That’s all: respect and listening (to him). And this respect and listening to this companion on our journey is called meekness. The Christian must be meek when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Meekness towards the Holy Spirit begins with this yielding to the advice given by this companion on our journey.”
 
The Pope went on to explain that in order to be meek, we need to become small like children and our Guardian Angel is a companion who teaches us this humility and just like children we should listen to him. 
 
“May we ask the Lord for the grace of this meekness, to listen to the voice of this companion, to this ambassador from God who accompanies us in His name and may we be supported by his help. (We must) always journey forward. And in this Mass where we praise the Lord, let us remember how good our Lord is, who straight after we lost His friendship, did not leave us alone, did not abandon us.”

 
 
 
 “By keeping the memorials of the saints - first of all the holy Mother of God, then the apostles, the martyrs, and other saints - on fixed days of the liturgical year, the Church on earth shows that she is united with the liturgy of heaven. She gives glory to Christ for having accomplished his salvation in his glorified members; their example encourages her on her way to the Father.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #1195

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​New Religious Freedom Protections Draw Praise from Experts
By Matt Hadro
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Washington D.C., Oct 6, 2017 / 05:38 pm (EWTN News/CNA) - 
After the Trump administration announced new exemptions to the contraceptive mandate and a religious freedom guidance, experts said both actions offered concrete protections of religious freedom.

“Today the Trump administration made two commendable decisions in support of the bedrock American principle of religious liberty,” Dr. Matthew Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute, told EWTN News, calling the actions “cause for much celebration.”

On Friday morning the administration followed through on two promises made in President Donald Trump’s May 4 executive order on religious liberty – relief from the HHS mandate for religious and conscientious objectors, and a Department of Justice guidance to federal agencies on implementing religious freedom protections found in existing federal law. 

The administration first announced on Friday an expansion of religious and moral exemptions to the HHS contraceptive mandate, over which many non-profit groups and some for-profit businesses had sued the federal government.

“Groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who dedicate their lives to the indigent elderly, can finally expect the restitution of their conscience-rights in court,” Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, policy advisor with The Catholic Association, stated on Friday. 

The HHS had interpreted the Affordable Care Act to include a mandate on cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and drugs that can cause early abortions in health plans. 

Although many religious groups were opposed to contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-causing drugs, the religious exemptions from the mandate were so narrow that only churches and their integrated auxiliaries were safe from having to comply. 

This meant that many religious charities and universities had to comply with the mandate’s demands. The Obama administration offered an “accommodation” to objecting non-profits to comply with the mandate, but charities like the Little Sisters of the Poor said this still forced them to be complicit in the provision of objectionable coverage.

Under the interim final rules released Friday, non-profits, small businesses, and even some publicly-traded companies can apply for a religious exemption to the mandate, if they establish that complying with the mandate would violate their religious beliefs. 

The new rules “substantially expand the scope of that religious exemption,” Greg Baylor, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said.

Large “publicly-traded” companies wouldn’t be eligible to claim a “moral” exemption from the mandate, but secular non-profits and small businesses would be – which benefits groups like the March for Life, which is a pro-life organization opposed to the mandate on conscience grounds, but a group that is “not inherently religious.” 

In establishing such broad new exemptions, the new rule “practically amounts to a revocation of the mandate,” Franck told EWTN News. 

And the “accommodation” offered to non-profits, where their insurer or third party administrator provided the objectionable coverage, is now voluntary, the Department of Health and Human Services announced. 

Prominent U.S. bishops praised the HHS announcement on Friday as a “return to common sense.”

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. bishops’ religious liberty committee, said in a statement that the new rule “recognizes that the full range of faith-based and mission-driven organizations, as well as the people who run them, have deeply held religious and moral beliefs that the law must respect.”

“We welcome the news that this particular threat to religious freedom has been lifted,” they stated.

The Becket Fund, a religious freedom law firm that defended the Little Sisters of the Poor in court against the mandate, praised the “common sense, balanced rule,” but added that the litigation is ongoing in mandate cases. 

In the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor against the mandate at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court in a rare move in the middle of the case ordered both the plaintiffs and the government to submit briefs detailing if, and how a solution could be crafted that provided for cost-free coverage outlined in the HHS mandate, while at the same time maintaining the religious freedom of the non-profits that sued the government. 

In May of 2016, the Court vacated the federal circuit court decisions on the mandate, ordered the federal government not to fine the plaintiffs, and instructed all parties to come to a solution that provided the contraception coverage while respecting the religious freedom of the plaintiffs. The cases are currently still at the federal circuit court level. 

“14 or 15 months later” after the Supreme Court asked for a solution, “what we see today is really the resolution of that process,” Rienzi said. 

With the HHS announcement, the government now “admits the prior version of the mandate broke the law,” Rienzi said, referring to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

Under the 1993 law, the federal government must not substantially burden one’s deeply-held religious beliefs unless it establishes that to do so is in its “compelling interest” and is the “least-restrictive means” of fulfilling that interest. 

The government essentially admitted on Friday that there were indeed less-restrictive means of ensuring cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-causing drugs than forcing the non-profits to comply with the mandate through the “accommodation,” Rienzi said. 

“I assume those lawyers at DOJ will cooperate and go into the courtrooms and admit that the federal government broke the law, and that the Little Sisters and other groups are entitled to a final injunction to give them lasting protection against this kind of treatment,” he said. 

Also on Friday, the Department of Justice announced a religious freedom guidance that was ordered by President Trump in his May 4 executive order on religious freedom. 

The 25-page guidance outlines religious freedom protections in existing federal law that federal departments and agencies are to incorporate into their functions. It states that “Religious liberty is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a sacred place. It also encompasses religious observance and practice.”

The guidance is significant and establishes solid protections for religious freedom at the federal level, Professor Robert Destro of the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law told EWTN News. 

“We’ve never had anything this far-reaching before,” he said, noting that the guidance puts religious freedom on the level of freedom of speech. 

It also takes principles of religious freedom and applies them to many federal levels, Destro said. 

For instance, U.S. attorneys at the Department of Justice in litigation must “conform all the arguments that the government is making across the country” to the religious freedom principles outlined in the guidance, he said. 

This would apply to ongoing court cases, including the DOJ’s position on the current religious freedom case before the Supreme Court of Masterpiece Cakeshop. It would also apply to “other cases where the arguments were already written,” Destro said.

The guidance also informs regulations, grants, contracts, and diversity training. Agencies like the State Department, where many employees have historically been reticent to talk about the role religion in international problems, could be affected by this, Destro said.

Regarding its application to federal contracts, the guidance could influence cases where religious charities are in danger of losing federal contracts due to their employment practices or their religious mission. 

“It really gives faith-based organizations and others with religious objections an argument to make when they’re in discussions with a federal agency about accepting a grant or a contract,” Baylor told EWTN News.

The guidance also reiterates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, in that it “does not permit the federal government to second-guess the reasonableness of religious beliefs,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of CatholicVote.org, told EWTN News. 

This is significant because certain Catholic colleges did not receive religious exemptions from the contraceptive mandate, Mercer said, yet the government should have honored their religious objections. “It’s up to our bishops to decide a university is sufficiently Catholic or not, not our federal government,” he said. 

It could apply to conscience protections for health care professionals, Baylor noted. The Obama administration, under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act mandated that doctors had to provide gender-transition procedures even if they conscientiously objected to doing so. 

“There has been a nationwide injunction against that rule, and the federal government has indicated that it plans to reconsider the rule,” Baylor noted. 

However, he added, “this guidance strengthens the hand of those who would argue that this sort of thing violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment.”

Ultimately, the guidance is “pretty far-reaching, and it’s going to take a good deal of time for the agencies to conform their practice to what’s being required,” Destro said. 

“This may have an impact that we don’t see” in informing federal agencies how they should operate, Baylor said. 

POPE FRANCIS: SINCERE CONFESSION ALLOWS ONE TO DISCOVER THE DEPTHS OF GOD'S FORGIVENESS
Vatican City -- The Holy Father reflected on the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the forgiveness of God during his homily at Casa Santa Marta this morning.
Pope Francis commented on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, a reading where Paul professes that “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” Paul’s acknowledgement of his condition as a “slave” to sin is the manifestation of all Christians’ struggle in “the life of faith.”


“This is the struggle of Christians,” Pope Francis said. “It is our struggle every day. And we do not always have the courage to speak as Paul spoke about this struggle.”


“We always seek a way of justification: ‘But yes, we are all sinners.’ But we say it like that, don’t we? This says it dramatically: it is our struggle. And if we don’t recognize this, we will never be able to have God’s forgiveness. Because if being a sinner is a word, a way of speaking, a manner of speaking, we have no need of God’s forgiveness. But if it is a reality that makes us slaves, we need this interior liberation of the Lord, of that force. But more important here is that, to find the way out, Paul confesses his sin to the community, his tendency to sin. He doesn’t hide it.”


The Holy Father stressed the importance of confessing one's sins with “concreteness”. Some prefer to “confess to God” so as to have no contact with anyone, while Paul confesses his weakness to his brothers face to face. Others, he continued, will go to confession but say “so many up-in-the-air things, that they don’t have anything concrete.” In confessing such a way, is the “same as not doing it.”


“Confessing our sins is not going to a psychiatrist, or to a torture chamber: it’s saying to the Lord, ‘Lord, I am a sinner,’ but saying it through the brother, because this says it concretely. ‘I am sinner because of this, that and the other thing’”, the Holy Father said.


The 76 year old Pontiff went on to say that through concreteness, honesty and the “sincere ability” to feel shame for one’s sins can bring one to discover the depth of God’s mercy and forgiveness. The approach to confessing one’s sins should be that of little children, who “have that wisdom.”


“When a child comes to confess, he never says something general. ‘But father, I did this and I did that to my aunt, another time I said this word’ and they say the word. But they are concrete, eh? They have that simplicity of the truth. And we always have the tendency to hide the reality of our failings,” the Pope said.


To feel shame in the moment of confessing one’s sins in the presence of God is a grace, he concluded. This “grace of shame” is the same grace exhibited by St. Peter.


“We think of Peter when, after the miracle of Jesus on the lake, [he said] ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinner.’ He is ashamed of his sins in the presence of the sanctity of Jesus,” the Pope said​



" The intercession of the saints. "Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness. . . . They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us, as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus. . . . So by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped." 
Do not weep, for I shall be more useful to you after my death and I shall help you then more effectively than during my life. I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth. –St. Therese of Child Jesus and the Holy Face, the Little Flower
Catechism of the Catholic Church #956

​A bit of humor…
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Homework - When Dad came home he was astonished to see Alec sitting on a horse, writing something. " What on earth are you doing there ?" he asked. "Well, the teacher told us to write an essay on our favourite animal. That's why I'm here and that's why Susie's sitting in the goldfish bowl !"


Going Out - A couple was going out for the evening. The last thing they did was to put the cat out.  The taxi arrived, and as the couple walked out of the house, the cat shoots back in. So the husband goes back inside to chase it out.  The wife, not wanting it known that the house would be empty, explained to the taxi driver "He's just going upstairs to say goodbye to my mother."  A few minutes later, the husband got into the taxi and said, "Sorry I took so long, the stupid thing was hiding under the bed and I had to poke her with a coat hanger to get her to come out!"