Dear Friends,

Watching the news reports that the Russian attempt to land a vehicle on the moon’s surface ended badly, it called to mind the Apollo 11 moon landing. Watching Apollo 11 blast off from Planet Earth to head to the Moon, everybody’s first thought was, “will they make it to the surface of the Moon?” A few days later the spaceship entered the Moon’s orbit and then out popped the Lunar Module with the two astronauts aboard. We watched with great anticipation as the Module made its way down to the surface of the Moon and heard those immortal words: “the Eagle has landed”! It would be several hours before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would step out of the Lunar Module onto the surface of the moon, earning the right to the best bragging rights ever.

Dear Friends,

WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

A recent media headline read: “Boston doctor charged with masturbating in front of teen girl on Hawaii flight”. Where would an educated medical doctor get such an impulse? Most likely from watching pornography. A few years back, pornographers fought for the right to use girls who “looked” like they were under 18. And that spawned a whole new teen Pornography industry.

Dear Friends,

Experience has taught me that if you “buy a lie” the truth will forever kick your butt. Take for example the alcoholic who despite evidence to the contrary decides to buy that lie that she can find a way to manage her drinking. She’ll tell herself that if she just exerts enough will-power she can control her drinking or if other people would just get off her back, she wouldn’t have drunk so much. However, if she accepts the truth that she can never safely drink alcohol, then she has a chance to recover and live a sober and sane life.

Dear Friends,

When he came into the temple area the chief priests and elders of the people approached him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?” Matthew 21:23

Jesus was often asked this question. After all he had not been tutored under any of the great rabbis of his day. He was not from the high priestly clan, like his cousin John, nor was he in anyway linked to the official temple worship in Jerusalem. The only qualifications Jesus would claim were his works or signs and his relationship to the Father.

Dear Friends,

July 25, 1968, a day that will live in infamy? That of course was the date of the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. 55 years later what has the failure to heed its teaching wrought and what has acceptance of its teachings bought?

As Pope Paul VI (now Saint Paul VI) predicted the widespread and uncritical acceptance of contraception has led to marital breakdown. No-fault divorce for one. This means for the first time in our history you can be commanded by a judge to appear in court for having done nothing wrong. A spouse who does not want to divorce is hauled into court and a great part of their life (and bank account) now is controlled by a judge for no other reason than for continuing to love their spouse. We can add to this sky-high rates of cohabitation (which amounts to experimenting on one another). The effects of contraception also contribute to harm women’s health, including death (just read the warning label on the pill or IUD); the poisoning of our lakes and rivers and water supply, the deformation of many aquatic species exposed to high levels of hormones in the water, the unknown effects on humans drinking and bathing in the same water supply. Same-sex marriage, polygamy, children raised without one parent, artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, unknown fathers from sperm donation and the legal and psychological mess these have caused; the spread of venereal diseases, increases in extramarital affairs; the birth of internet pornography, human trafficking in the sex trade, embryo destruction and experimentation all were spurred along by separating out procreation from conjugal love. And of course, abortion gives the illusion that having no child is better than having an unexpected one.

Dear Friends,

I recently viewed the remake of the Film, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. And it is every bit as jarring as the original. I encourage you to view it. Those of us who only see War from a distance and get a sanitized version from media need to familiarize ourselves with the brutality, cruelty and inhumanity that are too often characteristic of wars. Maybe then we would push harder for our leaders to exhaust every form of diplomacy before engaging in hostilities.

Dear Friends,

I find it a bit amusing how Americans can figure out ways to make a profit off a Solar Eclipse! Hotels, restaurants, and businesses along the path of totality that takes place NEXT year (4/8/24) already are anticipating their business ledgers to turn as black as the eclipsed light of the sun. Hotel bookings in some places are as high as $748 a night and many hotels are already booked a year in advance. Still, it is good for us to look up for a change and not down at our phone screens and to consider a subject that we give so little thought to in our times: cosmology. With each new change in understanding of the world at large, from the Copernican revolution to Newtonian physics to Einstein’s theory of Relativity, comes a change in the way we understand ourselves as well. When it comes to faith and science, way too many people remember the Galileo affair, but few know that Einstein’s theory of Relativity was given its biggest boost by a Catholic priest: Fr. Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest and mathematician. (what follows is from a wonderful blog that I encourage you to read: These Stone Walls: http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/science-faith-big-bang-theory-creation/.

Dear Friends,

When the Enlightenment Period came along the Church found itself on its heels trying to defend the compatibility of faith with reason. And over the centuries that followed some outstanding intellectuals were able to do just that. Theologians to apologists to a few good Popes helped give faith a solid foundation that demonstrated that faith is compatible with reason. Perhaps the apex was Pope John Paul II (his landmark encyclical letter “Fides et Ratio”) and Benedict XVI, who both articulated a complete synthesis of faith and reason. Pope Benedict warned that there are “pathologies of faith and of reason”. Faith unhinged from reason becomes superstition and reason divorced from faith devolves into ideology. The unity of faith and reason give the most complete picture of humanity and the reality around us. (Though I admit we may have become too focused on reason and rationality at the expense of mystery and mysticism. Discussion for another day.) By the end of the Twentieth century, not even the “new atheists” like Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, were not able to mount a serious challenge to this synthesis.

Dear Friends,

We modern civilizations have learned to recognize that we are mortal like the others. We had heard tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires foundered with all their men and all their engines, sunk to the inexplorable depths of the centuries with their gods and laws, their academies and their pure and applied sciences, their grammars, dictionaries, classics, romantics, symbolists, their critics and the critics of their critics. We knew that all the apparent earth is made of ashes, and that ashes have a meaning. We perceived, through the misty bulk of history, the phantoms of huge vessels once laden with riches and learning.

Dear Friends,

Here is what a friend wrote to the LA Dodgers:

“Dear Dodger Organization: One of the great gifts of growing up in Southern California was the LA Dodgers. As a 67yr old man my life memories are filled with Dodger blue. Going to Chavez Ravine for a game and having a Dodger Dog were the highlights of my summer. Listening to Vin Scully was better than watching a game on TV as he could paint pictures with his words. I can hear him now: “2 on, 2 out, the count is 2 balls and 2 strikes. The deuces are wild!”

Dear Friends,

Whenever elections come around so do calls for revocation of the tax-exempt status of Churches. In fact some put it this way, “it’s time for the government to stop subsidizing the Churches”. Well tax exemption and subsidies are not the same thing by a long shot. And here is why.

For the founders of the US not taxing the property of the Church (remember income tax didn’t come along until the 20th century) was something that they brought with them from England. In many European countries there were official Churches, such as the Church of England, which gave the Church a quasi-governmental status. So why would the government tax itself? But beyond that as the Church and State became more and more disentangled the state saw the social impact of the Church as benefiting the common good. So things like education, hospitals, feeding the poor etc. that the Church did took the burden off the state. For governments to tax the Church would mean less of those services. So for government this was a win-win situation.

Dear Friends,

This time of year is when clerical assignments are given out. The main driver behind the new assignments is the addition of the newly ordained to the starting line-up. For us, here in the Diocese of Phoenix, two new priests were ordained. Though we are grateful for them, the addition of two doesn’t make up for the number of retirements and deaths and especially in our case, the amount of growth in our area. So, pray for vocations and encourage vocations to the priesthood.

Dear Friends,

Tommy Lasorda was Manager of the LA Dodgers for over twenty years. He was also a Catholic and made sure that a priest would come to offer Mass at Dodger Stadium for team members and staff on Sundays when his team played. So, I wonder what he would have thought about the Dodgers Organization “honoring” the so called ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’? Probably not much.

The ’Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ describe themselves as “queer and trans” who dress up as nuns, in a mocking fashion and indulge in lots of sacrilegious, profane, and disgusting displays. Some of those include mocking the Blessed Virgin, disrupting Mass, using a large crucifix to do a stripper’s pole dance, and a whole lot worse that I won’t scandalize you with. Basically, they are an anti-Catholic hate group engaging in belittling religious sisters, blasphemously using Catholic symbols, and trampling upon some of our most sacred beliefs.