Great news for DC-area Catholics: we are getting a Catholic radio station!

The Guadalupe Radio Network is bringing Catholic Radio to Washington D.C.

With great thanks and praise to almighty God as we want to announce that the nation’s capitol will soon be the home of another Guadalupe Radio Network station. On May 5th WMET 1160 AM will begin broadcasting Catholic Radio 24 hours a day. And what an amazing impact this station will have in bringing souls closer to our Lord and the holy Saints, an impact that has the potential to reach far beyond the immediate listening area.

WMET is a powerful 50,000 watt AM radio station which will blanket all of Washington D.C. and the surrounding area with the beautiful message of Christ’s Good News through His One, Holy Catholic Church. In fact, the signal covers Washington DC and stretches on into Baltimore, Anapolis and beyond Arlington VA, along with dozens other cities across the metroplex. Over five million people will soon have the opportunity to tune into Catholic radio on the Guadalupe Radio Network.

We need your help. We’ll be busy raising funds to ensure the long life of Catholic Radio in the nation’s capital and preparing for the official kickoff and blessing of the studio. We are very thankful to everyone who has prayed and worked tirelessly to make this vision a reality. We will need a local staff, many volunteers and countless ‘prayer warriors’ over these next few months. Please download the project plan, “Into the Deep” and about how you can help be a part of this incredible moment in the history of our nation’s capital and the local Catholic Church.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, please pray for us.

This is a cute video:

I admit that I am blissfully unaware of about half of her pop-culture references.

One of the remarkable features of the decade of the 1960’s was the wildly optimistic view people held for technology and its ability to make our life better. Commercials abounded that touted the latest technological product that would mean less work, more leisure for the suburban American. Artificial turf was seen as superior to natural grass for ballparks across the country. Children had to be bottle-fed rather than breast-fed because of the wonderful vitamins that man put into the bottles. And of course, The Pill would free women everywhere from nature’s “curse”: bearing children.

The epitome of this messianic view of technology was the television show Star Trek, created at the height of man’s love for artificiality. Much of science-fiction up until this time took a dark view of the future, with aliens invading and robots taking over the world. But Star Trek had a different view: technology would not only not be our downfall, it would be our savior. In the Star Trek world, the advent of faster-than-light warp travel led to the end of poverty, greed, war and apparently Original Sin.

Over the years it has become apparent to almost everyone that modern technology is not, in fact, the savior the 1960’s thought it would be. No one makes a baseball park with artificial turf anymore and no one argues that bottle-milk is superior for a baby over breast-milk. Commercials still tout the time-saving features of the latest gadgets, but no one actually believes that these devices will save any time – they in the end fill it with things we don’t really want to do.

But there is one artificial technology that we still cling to vociferously, refusing to examine any evidence that it might actually be harmful to man. That, of course, is The Pill. When technology impacts something of marginal interest, such as a baseball game, we have no problem analyzing it objectively to see if it is truly beneficial. When it impacts someone we love, such as our baby, we are willing to reject it if the evidence shows it is harmful. But when it impacts our own selfish needs, especially one so powerful as the sexual drive, we refuse to see the evidence right in front of our face.

This is the curse of Original Sin: we want to make ourselves gods, controlling the world around us to make it in our image. We think we can make our own Garden of Eden. But we have found that the artificial things that we make don’t hold a candle to God’s created universe. But we cling to our false, artificial world if it allows us to wallow in our sins. We need to remember that the salvation of this world comes not from technology, but instead through the work of a Carpenter’s son who was nailed to a wooden Cross for our sins, and makes that salvation available to us through such humble (and natural) things like water, bread, and wine.

I have written before about the new direction that Pope Benedict is taking the ecumenical movement. Gone are the days (so common in the 1970’s and 1980’s) of dialogue for dialogue’s sake. Now the Pope is directing the Church to take concrete steps to make Christ’s prayer that we might be one come true in our world. Fr. Andrew Apostoli notes this as well:

The Pontiff’s thoughts and prayers became expressed in actions. Like Pope John Paul before him, Pope Benedict has stressed the importance of charity in ecumenical dialogue for Christian unity. With the Orthodox, Pope Benedict made great strides. He met with the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox when he visited Istanbul (Constantinople). He has also had very favorable relations with the new Russian Patriarch of Moscow, whom the Pope knew when he was a cardinal.

A great step in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue was the so-called “Ravenna Document” issued by an international commission of Catholic and Orthodox theologians in October 2007. It reaffirmed the blessings we have in common, such as the holy Eucharist, the sacraments, and an ordained hierarchical priesthood. It also acknowledged some of the problems that needed to be dealt with, particularly viewing the Church on the universal level, where the primacy of the Pope will be a crucial question.

Pope Benedict XVI, responding to those Anglicans who desired full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage, issued a new apostolic constitution that would allow the Anglicans to have “personal ordinariates,” like personal dioceses, which would allow them to be in full communion with the Catholic Church while maintaining elements of their Anglican identity.

So favorable was the Pope’s constitution that many Anglicans are considering rejoining the Catholic Church after nearly 500 years of separation! Pope Benedict has also met with the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

The Holy Father has reached out to still other groups in attempts to draw them into the ecumenical dialogue and, God willing, eventually reunion in the one Church Christ founded. They include the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Reformed Churches as well as the World Council of Churches.

His efforts at reunion for other groups that have separated from the Catholic Church over time included lifting the excommunication of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X who were ordained without proper papal permission by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

There are no sheep that our German Shepherd does not want united within the visible flock of the Church. Let us pray that his efforts to unite all Christians might be fruitful!

Pope asks Bloggers to Give Internet a Soul

Every Catholic on the Internet needs to be a witness for Christ in a land filled with rudeness, anger and pornography. A few tips on how to follow the Pope’s request can be found here.

My favorite Anglican bishop and non-Catholic Biblical scholar, N.T. Wright, is retiring from his post as Anglican bishop of Durham, England. He plans to return to academic life, taking a position as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Andrew’s University.

In all honesty, I’m ecstatic about this development. I’m sure he was a positive force in the Anglican church as a bishop, but I think it is as a theologian that he has the most positive impact on Christianity as a whole. In the confused world of biblical studies, he is a giant who uses modern methods of scholarship to support traditional Christian doctrines. He is sorely needed.

May you have many years, Bishop Wright!

I just discovered that my book is now available for pre-order on Amazon! I’ll be selling signed copies online when it comes out in September, but if you just can’t wait to make the order, go to Amazon today!

As regular readers of this blog know, I have a passion for evangelization. I admit that this passion probably has its origins in my Evangelical Protestant background, but I truly believe that Catholics are called to evangelize. Sometimes, however, I will get resistance from Catholics on our need to evangelize: they will ask, in all sincerity, why do we need to evangelize since the Church teaches that it is possible to be saved even if one is not a baptized Catholic?

Fortunately for us, Mark Shea answers this question very well in this article.

I have tremendous sympathy for victims of sexual abuse, and I can’t imagine how abuse by a cleric affects a victim’s view of the Church. I also think the Church needs to look long and hard at the causes of the Scandal and should work to reform in every way possible to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. But I am nonetheless quite uncomfortable with any event that calls for “reformation” in the Church but is being held on October 31st, the date of Martin Luther’s 95 theses and the date that Protestants mark as “Reformation Day”:

Two survivors of clergy sexual abuse who met with Pope Benedict XVI during his 2008 visit to Washington are planning to take their pleas for greater recognition of the spiritual, pastoral and mental health needs of abuse victims to the doorstep of the Vatican Oct. 31.

Olan Horne of Westfield, Mass., and Bernie McDaid of Peabody, Mass., told Catholic News Service they are planning a gathering that they hope will bring thousands of abuse victims to St. Peter’s Square for a “Reformation Day.”

Both men said the effort stems from a building frustration in dealing with church officials on the needs of abuse victims.

The date is significant because, they said, the day is observed as a day of reformation in some cultures.

Perhaps these men don’t realize the reason October 31st is a “day of reformation in some cultures” (and evidently, the reporter of this article doesn’t either, because he doesn’t mention it). But calling for “reformation” and aligning it with Luther’s “Reformation” is not a way to true reformation. By its very definition, reformation means helping an institution to become more like it was originally intended to be. It does not mean leaving the institution and founding another one, like Luther did.

I hope and pray that true reformation comes to the Church and that all victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clerics will find reconciliation within the Church. But please change the date of this event so that it doesn’t have any attachment to those who left the Church in the 16th century when it was going through a scandalous time.

One of the unheralded aspects of Pope Benedict’s papacy (as well as his legacy before becoming pope) is his emphasis on Scripture. Yet those who follow him closely have seen how much he desires to bring Scripture to the forefront of Catholic theology as well as daily Catholic life. His committment to making the inspired Word of God a central focus of our Faith and a sure means of drawing closer to the incarnate Word of God was a main inspiration for my book Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew. And I am not the only one who has noticed this emphasis of our Holy Father. Scott Hahn writes,

As I write this, I’m looking at the cover of one of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s books, now reissued under his papal name. The book is titled God’s Word, and the cover shows a photograph of the Holy Father.

He’s slightly off-center because he’s holding up the book of the Gospels — covering himself, as it were, with the word of God.

For me, that cover is emblematic of his pontificate thus far. His hallmark is the centrality of the word of God. That’s where he has kept our focus — not on fads or scandals or the world’s alarms. Christ, the Word Incarnate, is the solution to every world crisis. Pope Benedict has invited us, insistently and consistently, to encounter Christ in the word inspired, the sacred Scriptures.

And he has done this through some very large labors.

In 2008 he summoned the world’s bishops to a Synod on “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”

From that synod, a post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Scriptures will soon be published — a major act of the Pope’s teaching office.

In 2007, he declared a Year of St. Paul, in which he dedicated himself and the Church to intensive study of the great apostle. But even before that, he had devoted his weekly audiences to close-up studies of the individual men and women of the New Testament. Afterward, he went on to the Church Fathers and the medieval teachers, considering them especially as biblical interpreters.

Meanwhile, he has spent every moment of his “spare time” writing his multivolume study Jesus of Nazareth.

These acts of Benedict’s papacy are certainly continuous with the labors of his pre-papal lifetime. It’s as if God’s grace has brought his life’s work as a theologian to a kind of completion, or perfection, with the gift of Petrine authority.

As a theologian, Joseph Ratzinger had proposed some astonishing and radical ways of looking at Scripture. He said “Catholic dogma … derives all its content from Scripture,” and “Dogma is by definition nothing other than an interpretation of Scripture.”

He taught that the “normative theologians” are not the tenured faculty at any Catholic institution, but rather “the authors of holy Scripture.”

One of the greatest gifts God has given the Church is the Holy Bible, and He wants us to use it to draw into a deeper relationship with His Son. Follow the Pope’s lead and spend some time today with the Sacred Scriptures.

An important – and disturbing – PSA. As they say, “the more you know…”

This month marks the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s election, as well as his 83rd birthday. He has been in the news a lot lately, and this has given me an opportunity to reflect on how much I admire our current Holy Father. As Catholics we are required to follow our popes, but we are not required to like them. In fact, there have been many popes throughout history who have been thoroughly unlikable fellows. Just because someone is the pope doesn’t mean that he is particularly intelligent, engaging, or even that he is not among the ranks of the scoundrels. But we are blessed that our current Holy Father is a brilliant theologian and sensitive pastor of souls.

I remember when I first was exposed to the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. I was taking a class at Franciscan University in the mid-90’s on Vatican II and we were required to read The Ratzinger Report, which is an book-length interview of Cardinal Ratzinger by Vittorio Messori. As a recent convert, I was unfamiliar with Cardinal Ratzinger, but after reading this book I immediately recognized that this man had a brilliant, incisive mind. He appeared able to analyze issues in the Church – even ones he was intimately involved in – from an objective viewpoint that took in all of the Catholic Tradition and Scripture and applied them to our modern problems.

After that first exposure I then began to read as much Ratzinger as I could. Dr. Hahn assigned a few of the Cardinal’s texts for a class I was taking, and I devoured them. Again, I was struck by his ability to integrate Catholic Tradition, Scripture and the needs of the modern world into a synthesis which enabled him to address our most pressing problems in a uniquely Catholic way.  He did not fall into any post-Vatican II “camp,” but instead pulled from past the greatest insights of our Tradition and applied them to our modern age. Those who have read Cardinal Ratzinger extensively know what a joke it is when the mainstream media calls him a “conservative” or a “traditionalist.” Likewise with the silly title of “God’s Rottweiler.” He is a man who is faithful to the Church, not to any particular subsection of it.

Over the years I have also been struck by Cardinal Ratzinger’s character. It recently came to light that he was one of the few Vatican officials who point-blank refused the bribes of the Legion of Christ, and frankly, this didn’t surprise me at all. And although he didn’t do much in regards to the abuse crisis before 2002, once the severity of the Scandal came to light he was the first curial official to really “get it” and he has been the most aggressive at combating it. Pope John Paul II, who was a mystic with his eyes pointed to heaven, sometimes could be criticized for not having his feet on the ground. The same cannot be said of Pope Benedict. True to his Augustinian leanings, he recognizes clearly the power of Original Sin and is therefore very cognizant of the danger of sin even in the highest levels of the Church.

Our age, like every age, has its own unique problems and difficulties to overcome in order to reach the world for Christ. I thank God every day that He has given us Pope Benedict XVI as our supreme pastor during this time, and I ask that God grant him many, many more years. May his reign be long and fruitful!

If you ever felt like you have insurmountable obstacles in the way of reaching your goals, take some inspiration from this video:

For those in the DC area, there will be a Pontifical Solemn Mass (Extraordinary Form) at the Basilica of the National Shrine tomorrow in honor of Pope Benedict’s 5th anniversary. Bishop Slattery of Tulsa will be celebrating. It should be amazing!

More details at www.pontificalmass.org.

Since 2002 Catholics have been living in the midst of The Scandal. The Catechism tells us that scandal is “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense” (CCC 2284). Jesus is more direct: “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). It is clear that scandal is a spiritual killer, both to those it leads to sin and those who cause it.

But there is a flip side to scandal: sometimes it allows us to recognize the gravity of serious sin. Recently I heard of a youth pastor at a nondenominational church who left his wife and took up with a former member of his youth group, whom he plans to marry soon. What was shocking to me was that he faced no negative consequences in his church. Divorce and remarriage have become so common that even one as horrible as this one barely caused a ripple in the church. In other words, it caused no scandal. Yet perhaps if it had caused scandal, it would have been a warning to those who might be tempted to leave their wives in the future.

Someone causing scandal is always a bad thing. But even worse is when scandalous actions cause no scandal. Let us pray that The Scandal that we Catholics have faced over the past eight years might lead many to repentance and keep others from the destructive path that those before us have followed.