CRAIGSLIST CHILDREN

A Catholic friend recently shared how proud she was of a niece who had agreed to be a surrogate mother for a couple who was unable to conceive. She saw her niece’s willingness to carry a child for another as an act of charity and selflessness.

Like many Catholics, she either has no clue that her niece’s act is “gravely immoral” (CCC 2376) or believes, as do many Catholics, that she is free, as regards Catholic teaching, to “take it or leave it”, and yet remain a Catholic in good standing.

While dissent from the church’s position on contraception is well known, dissent from its opposition to non-natural conception, though similarly pervasive, is not well known. In fact, because, human life is a good, and human life is what is sought, the laboratory construction of life outside the marital act is even more readily accepted than is contraception.

Until recently, access to reproductive technologies was expensive and thus rare, so it didn’t stir as much controversy as did the debate over contraception. However, cheap sperm can now be ordered off Craigslist and disposable artificial insemination kits picked up at a drug store.

In fact, this is what a lesbian couple in Kansas did recently. The couple had already adopted several children but wanted to have a child of “their” own. They placed an ad on Craigslist for sperm, found a donor, did the “do-it-yourself” insemination, and soon gave birth to a child.

The couple also did a “do-it-yourself” agreement with the sperm-donor which relieved him of any parental responsibilities. All was well until the couple split and the woman who bore the child became a “single mother”.

Upon losing her job, the mother sought state aid for the child. However, the state chose to sue the father for child support. Of course the father - or sperm donor (you see the problem) produced the document which he believed relieved him of any responsibilities. However, Kansas declared the the agreement invalid and the sperm donor is now on the hook for child support.

Of course, the donor is contesting this, and lawyers, judges, state officials, the media, and gay-rights folks have all hopped on to a finger-pointing merry-go-round which is reminiscent of the “much ado” in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, except that it’s NOT about “nothing”, it’s about a child.

This mess allows us to see the wisdom of the church, which centers its teaching NOT on the happiness and rights of adults, but on the well-being and rights of the CHILD who has a RIGHT to be “begotten”, not “made”; and “to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents.” (Donum Vitae)

In its insistence on the rights of the child, the church has a curious ally. Not known for aligning its views with Catholic teaching, the United Nations in its Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) declares in Article 6 that the child “shall, wherever possible, grow up in the care and under the responsibility of his parents.”  In 1959, the laboratory generation of human life was yet science fiction, so by “parents” the U.N. meant the obvious.

The Declaration further echoes Church teaching on the rights of parents to educate their child: “The best interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents.” (Article 7)

And Article 2 speaks directly to the Kansas situation: “The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities...to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially...in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”

Recently, our nation has demonstrated an infatuation with U.N directives on everything from climate protocols to gun control. Thus, our complete lapse as regards the U.N’s call for the “paramount consideration” of the “interests of the child” is telling.

In our wholesale stampede to claim a right TO a child, we have vacuously trampled on the rights OF a child, most especially the right OF a child to be treated as “gift”, and not a product.

And speaking of science fiction, the ability to forecast a person’s medical future, and even life-span, through the observance of genetic markers, was probably not even imagined in 1959, but is almost standard science today.

Such medical progress makes it all the more critical to protect the child’s right, “wherever possible”, to be “begotten” not “made”, “to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents”, AND NOT assembled with parts purchased off Craigslist.

QUESTIONS WORTH PONDERING - ON THE EVE OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V WADE

Tracy Marciniak, hold the body of her son,
Zacharia. Ms. Marciniak was seriously
injured, and Zachariah killed, by an assault
during her 9th month of pregnancy.

On the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Roe v Wade, a decision which created unimaginable rivers of blood, the media is reporting that more Americans than ever now either oppose abortion or support increased restrictions on it.

This support has led to a record number of new laws aimed at limiting abortions, from informed consent to increased licensing restrictions for abortion clinics, and even made TIME magazine take note in an unprecedented cover story entitled: “What Choice? Why Abortion-Rights Activists Have Been Losing Ever Since Roe v. Wade.”

Ironically, the media also reported that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, during the same period (2011), performed a record high 333,964 abortions, while also receiving a record high $542 million (45% of its revenue) in taxpayer funding.

It certainly makes for a curious picture: record high public opinion opposing abortion and  a record high number of pro-life laws, yet record high numbers of abortions, record high public funding of abortion, and the re-election of a blatantly pro-abortion president along with several new just as blatantly pro-abortion members of congress. What’s up with that?

Sadly, part of the answer can be found in the Catholic numbers. While the nation as a whole is growing in its opposition to abortion, Catholics as a whole are growing in support of it: 60% of U.S. Catholics now support legal abortion and 83% say church teaching does not influence their political choices (Belden-Rusonello Strategists, Oct. 2012).

However, we needn’t have to look to national polls to see this, we only need to look outside.

Guam has the largest Catholic per capita population in the nation. We also have the most liberal abortion laws in the nation and rank 17th in the world in abortions per capita.  According to Guam Medical Records, a child is aborted every 1.2 days, with one out of every ten pregnancies ending up in the clinic trash - 55% of whom are Chamorro.

Curiously, recent local legislative efforts to limit this silent genocide, this daily extermination of the Chamorro, have been mainly opposed by lawmakers who are both Catholic and Chamorro. Again, we must ask: “What’s up with that?”

This past November, a bill which would have criminalized the harming or killing of an unborn child in the event of a violent attack upon the mother was voted down.  The reason given was that the bill did not fully comport with Guam law - something a few simple amendments would have remedied.

However, lawmakers, probably still smarting from the very public brawl over the recent vote on another pro-life measure, quietly placed the bill in the voting file and voted it down without any discussion.

At least one senator was honest about her “no” vote, saying that passage of Bill 409, the UNBORN VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE ACT, would “harm a woman’s right to choose.” Her reason for saying so was because the bill defined the “child in-utero” as a legal victim, and in so doing, recognized the humanity of the unborn - and we can’t have that, can we.

The bill contained a provision which excluded any application of the terms and provisions of the bill from being applied to a legal abortion. Nevertheless, and even though Guam law already elsewhere defines the unborn child as a human being, and even though science has long since proved this fact, the majority of Guam lawmakers saw this bill as another chink in the armor of Roe v Wade and voted NO.

Ironically, while opponents argued that Bill 409 would harm women’s choice, the bill would have actually increased a woman’s choice: the choice for a woman to pursue an attacker for the damage done to her unborn child or at least see that justice was done.

Suppose the child survives the attack but is born with mental or physical disabilities due to it? If Bill 409 had passed, a woman could have at least sued her attacker for damages and perhaps realized some financial award which could have been used to seek help for her injured child.

Or, suppose the child dies and the mother chooses to bury the child instead of leaving it for the hospital incinerator. Had Bill 409 passed, she might have had legal recourse to at least sue for the cost of the delivery of the dead child, the funeral, and the burial plot.

However, even though federal law and 36 states have accorded women this right, Guam, “Catholic” Guam, said NO.

Why Catholic support for abortion is growing even while the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction, and why Guam continues to protect an industry which is exterminating the Chamorro population at an alarming rate, are questions worth pondering on this fortieth anniversary of Roe v Wade.

YOUR SPOUSE IS NOT YOUR ENEMEY. SATAN IS.

The following is a talk given by Tim Rohr at the Catholic Men's Conference, January 19, 2013, Santa Barbara Parish Church, Dededo Guam.

While I am not known for my lack of opinions on a variety of topics, the fact that I have been married nearly 28 years to the same woman and am the father of 11 children, ages 27 to 4, makes marriage and family probably the only topic on which I am actually authorized to speak.

However, by way of a disclaimer, I speak only for myself and do not represent the Catholic Church or this Archdiocese in any official capacity. Thus, if I say anything that does not comport with your views or your understanding of marriage and family, feel free to disagree or ignore.

I do hope however, that something I might share will give a few here the encouragement to keep at it, even if only for one more day, and then the next and the next, if you know what I mean.

The title of my talk is The Sacramentally Married Couple and the Call to Spiritual Warfare, and while it is not uncommon to think of warfare and marriage in the same thought, my talk is going to be about something a bit different than what those two words may first bring to mind.

In short, this whole talk can be boiled down to a single statement:

Your spouse is not your enemy. Satan is.

I came across this statement in a book entitled HOW TO ACT RIGHT WHEN YOUR SPOUSE ACTS WRONG, of which I will speak more about later. It probably would have had little effect on me had I not been immersed in John Paul II’s  Theology of the Body.

The whole beginning for John Paul’s theological presentation of sex and marriage, Theology of the Body, is Genesis 1:27-28, which reads:

God created man in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female* he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.

Let’s take that apart. But first, let’s look at the verse immediately preceding this where God says: “Let US make man in our image.” “Let US”. So who’s he talking to? .... Of course He’s speaking to the other persons of the Blessed Trinity.

John Paul II emphasizes that God is a “community of persons”, thus when God makes man in his image, he makes a community, a “them”, a male and female. But that’s only two. Where’s the third?

In the Nicene Creed we speak of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity as proceeding from the Father and the Son. John Paul II notes in TOB that it is the Father eternally loving the Son which eternally begets the Holy Spirit.

We are now getting into deep mystery and theology and we needn’t go further. But we can see that God, in making man in his image, in making them male and female, and right out of the box, commanding them to be fruitful, wherein the two beget the third, we can see that the fruitful married couple is God’s design and the earthy image of the Trinity.

As an aside, this is why the artificial negation of fertility in the marital act is wrong because in intending against the issuance of “a third person”, it offends against the image of God as Trinity.

A word needs to be said here about natural infertility. The marital act in which one or both partners are naturally sterile is still just as fertile by intent as a marital act between both partners who are naturally fertile.

The reason is this. The married couple, regardless of their ability to conceive, only have control over the pro-creative act, not - assuming there is no attempt to artificially prevent conception - over whether or not a sperm unites with an ovum. That part we leave to God - which is why the Church considers non-natural conception (artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization) just as morally wrong as artificial contraception, but that’s another topic.

God’s command to the couple to be fruitful and multiply is not an afterthought, it is part of a single creative act. He at once creates them, creates them married, and creates them fruitful. Their union and the fruitful nature of that union can no more be separated than can be the Trinity in whose image they were created.

But this being created in His image is precisely why, ever since the Fall, marriage has been ground zero for all the powers of hell. Satan hates God, but cannot attack him directly. Therefore Satan attacks the next closest thing: God’s image. And what is his image? Us, the sacramentally married couple.

Should we then be surprised when all hell breaks loose in a marriage? Marriage is a cosmic battleground. All the forces of heaven and hell are arrayed on either side of the marriage bed. And you thought you were alone.

But before we go on, I’d  like to establish one more thing. It is common for popular lecturers on this topic to speak of a married couple who is "open to life”. But this is an unnecessary and perhaps even misleading appendage.

As mentioned earlier, the fertility of the first married couple was not an afterthought but intrinsic to their creation, to their being made in the image of the Trinity. Thus, at least in my mind, it is incorrect to speak of a sacramentally married couples who is “open to life”, for not to be open to life is simply not to be married.

However, I do understand that its usage is today sometimes made necessary given the propensity of married couples to play God with their fertility.

Let’s review. We have established 1) that the sacramentally married couple is the very image of God in this world; 2) that Satan hates God but cannot attack him directly; and 3) unable to attack God directly, Satan attacks the next closest thing: the sacramentally married couple.

And these days he has more weapons than ever: government mandated contraception, gas station condoms, pornography on your phone, hundreds of channels channelling soul-enslaving smut into what should be the sanctuary of your home with but a touch of your tired thumb.

And he’s winning. Divorce, abandonment, abortion, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the normalization of homosexual acts, child abuse, the redefinition of the family.... And in case you think we are talking about somewhere else, think again.

Guam has the second highest divorce rate in the world, has an out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate that is 1.5 times higher than the rest of the nation, a child abuse rate 10 times higher than the rest of the nation, ranks 17th in the world in number of abortions per capita, aborts one child every 1.2 days, aborts one out of every 10 pregnancies - 75% of which are Chamorro and Filipino and thus probably Catholic.

And when we put those numbers up against the fact that Guam is host to the largest Catholic population per capita in the nation it is all the more evident that Satan is winning and winning where it really matters: with Catholics.

But of course Guam is not alone. The Catholic world everywhere is fast unravelling. Catholic Ireland is about to legalize abortion. Belgium, the home of St. Damien of Molokai and many other great missionaries, is at the forefront of normalizing euthanasia. Italy, once the most Catholic nation on earth, has the lowest birthrate in all Europe.

And the Philippines, the most populous Catholic nation in the world, has just accepted government mandated birth control - the measure being passed by a Catholic legislature and signed into law by a Catholic president.

Pope Benedict recognized that Satan would win - for a while - that there would be a winnowing of chaff - that the Church would be “sifted like wheat” -  when at the beginning of his pontificate he made reference to his belief that the Church would get smaller before it got bigger.

In saying this he was referring to something he had said thirty years earlier and only a few years after the close of Vatican II. While many at that time were looking towards the much promised “springtime of the Church”, the future Pope said this:

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death. (Faith and Future)

Of course, for the Pope, as for all faithful Catholics, our hope is in Christ and in his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail. And this is where we as married people come in.

The world has lost sight of God because the image of God on earth has been shattered.  It is up to us, sacramentally married couples, to restore that image that the world may once again look upon it and be healed.

And we will restore that image when we return to our original nuptial essence, when we embrace the original design of fruitful union wherein the image of the Trinity and the creative power of God is most concretely realized, in the begetting of a “third”.

But we cannot do that so long as Satan sits at our table and pokes us in our beds.

Once upon a time, Catholics were better equipped for spiritual warfare. Even the most basic children’s catechisms taught us of how to recognize the evil one, how to combat his evil design, and the dreadful consequences of not doing so.

Spiritual warfare was not just an art left to monks. The ordinary layman had access to this art through the examples of saints, through great manuals of the spiritual life such as the Imitation of Christ, and St. Francis De Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life, and warfare specific manuals such as Dom Scupoli’s Spiritual Combat, as well as the constant encouragement of clergy and religious to be ever vigilant against the Evil One as Christ had warned.

But somewhere along the line, we got soft. Sure, minus those constant reminders of sin and hell we may have a kinder, gentler, and more welcoming church. But let’s face it, there are a whole lot less people to welcome, and certainly a lot less children.

It’s not that the Church is not aware of this attack on marriage, it’s just that, in my view, most of our leadership does not know how to fight back. The USCCB website ForYourMarriage.org offers the typical relationship advice: improved communication skills, recommendations for date nights, sentimental marriage success stories, and the like. And most books on marriage do the same.

But apart from the magisterial teaching of our Popes, nothing addresses marriage as warfare. Nothing recognizes the sacramentally married couple as Satan’s target. Nothing arms the married couple for the cataclysm and satanic hatred that awaits them on the other side of their marriage vows.  

And then there’s the target within the target, the contraceptive manipulation of the marital act into an act of sexual fraud, a lie perpetrated by the father of lies. A lie which leaves married people old before their time, riddled with regrets, sick with loneliness, and, as science is now exposing, victims of chemically spawned cancers.

We cannot engage Satan’s attack on marriage by just learning new skills on how to be nice to each other. All of Hell is arrayed against our sacramental commitment and we’re reading books about how men and women come from different planets.

So what to do?

First we must recognize that Satan hates our marriage. Next, of course we must arm ourselves with sacramental grace and with prayer. But we must also become wise in the ways of spiritual combat so that we know when to run and when to stay and fight. And for this there is no better book than the classic SPIRITUAL COMBAT. At first, it may seem foreign, but you will soon be nodding your head.

Then we must become students of marriage, of God’s plan for marriage so that we don’t confuse it with our own. Two books I recommend here are COVENANTED HAPPINESS and SEX AND THE MARRIAGE COVENANT.

There’s more, but I’ll finish with this. We must understand the cost of unconditional love.  And most of us don’t.

One very overused story at most weddings is part of the problem. The pastor tells the story about the pig and the chicken who plan to have breakfast together with the chicken providing the eggs and the pig providing the bacon. The pig complains that he has to put in 100% while the chicken only contributes partially.

The story is used to illustrate that in order for marriage to succeed, the self-donation of the spouses cannot be 50/50 but 100/100. It sounds nice and everybody smiles, but in fact, it is not only incorrect, it may possibly set up expectations that will soon lead to disappointment and divorce.

The real success ratio is 100 to 0, because this in fact, is precisely what unconditional love is: the willingness to love fully and keep one’s commitment not only when there is nothing in return, but even when one’s giving is met with disdain, insults, and hostile rejection, and with no hope of that situation every changing.

And this is what the book HOW TO ACT RIGHT WHEN YOUR SPOUSE ACTS WRONG addresses. Almost every other marriage self-help book deals with restoring your relationship. HOW TO ACT RIGHT deals with the fact that you may never restore your relationship, you may never fix your marriage, you may never “be in love” again. But despite all that, you can and must act right anyway. And then the rest is up to God.

The vulnerability of marriage, in that it requires both emotional and physical nakedness, is a vulnerability like no other, which means that a spouse can wound you in a way that no one else can. And this is precisely why Satan likes to pick at us. A mere look or tone, that no one else would find offensive, will shoot through an offended spouse like a rifle shot and twist and wound your soul like few things can.

This is why it is critical that you see Satan as your enemy and not your spouse. It is Satan who hates you not your spouse. He or she is just the unwitting tool.

Lest you think that I’m a little too heavy on the dark side, here are a few reminders of what Scripture says:

Mark states that Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons" (Mark 1:39).

John warns: "the whole world is under the control of the evil one" (1 John 5:19)

Jesus referred to Satan as "the prince of this world" (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11)

And Paul called Satan: the god of this age" (2 Cor.4:4)

Th imagery of spiritual warfare is most especially displayed in the Book of Revelation when after the War in Heaven (Rev.12:7), the beasts and kings of the earth wage war against God's people (Rev.19:19), and a final battle ensues with Satan and the nations of the earth against God himself (Rev.20:8).

Thus the battle between heaven and hell rages on the earth with us caught in the crossfire.

The challenge for us is to engage the battle and win heaven for ourselves, our spouses, and our families. And we will do this when we stop warring with each other and together begin warring against hell by restoring our marriages to the image of the life-giving Triume God they were destined to be.

HERE IS WHY WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

The USCCB states in Catetchetical Formation for Chaste Living - Guidelines for Curriculum Design:

"Parents are particularly responsible for catechizing their children in faith and morals and thus have a special obligation to understand thoroughly and live the teachings of the Church. Assisting parents of adolescents and youth in the formation of their children for chaste living is essential to their formation in the Catholic faith..."

Everything so far is as it should be. The Church is to "assist the parents" in the education of their children. But after reaffirming that parents are the primary educators of their children, particularly in regards to the inculcation of faith and morals, and particularly in regards to sex, the bishops take a hard left turn and jerk the children away from the parents in mid-sentence:

"...and should be mandatory in Catholic schools and in parish religious education and youth ministry programs. This may be done in the form of a curriculum, a presentation for youth and/or parents, or the use of other educational materials."

Suddenly the bishops take sex education away from the home and make it mandatory in the schools and even make the assistance to parents optional ("for youth and/or parents...")

This is in total and complete opposition to what Pope John Paul II called for in his encyclical
FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO:

"Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents. (37)

According to the Pope, the ATTENTIVE GUIDANCE and TOTAL CONTROL of parents is NOT  an option and there is NO SUCH THING as "and/or parents."

Educators do not need to be talking to our children about sex. If they are going to talk to anyone then they are supposed to be talking to US, the parents. We will talk to our own kids. 

SHAME ON THE USCCB FOR GIVING EDUCATORS LICENSE TO TAKE OUR CHILDREN FROM US. 

THIS IS WHY I DO NOT SEND MY CHILDREN TO A CATHOLIC SCHOOL AND NEVER WILL...OR CCD OR PRE-CON OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT. STAY AWAY FROM MY CHILDREN. I'VE SEEN WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO YOURS.

THE STRANGE LIFE OF THE FOUR-HYMN-SANDWICH

In this Year of Faith, which is also the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the Holy Father has asked us to reflect especially on the texts “bequeathed to us by the Council”, to read them “correctly”, and take them to heart “as important and normative texts of the Magisterium, within the Church's Tradition.”

The first document to issue forth from the Council was Sacrosanctum Concilium: the Constitution on the Liturgy. A central issue addressed in this document was the role of sacred music, which the Council Fathers had declared to be “greater than any other art”.

The reason for the noble place of music as the highest of the arts is because sacred song embodies the sacred texts and, through music, elevates them to the highest possible human expression.

Thus the Council required that sacred song form an “integral part of the solemn liturgy”  and not merely ornament it. In other words sacred song was not to be “singing AT Mass”, but singing THE Mass! The Mass itself was the song.

As was the case with other Council documents, Sacrosanctum defined central principles but left the details of implementation to the appropriate administrations. In the case of liturgical music, this task fell to the Sacred Congregation of Rites which, in 1967, issued the instruction Musicam Sacram.

Musicam Sacram sought to implement exactly what the Council required: the integration of liturgy and sacred song and the elimination of the practice of merely ornamenting the liturgy, including the common use of what some church musicians called “the four-hymn-sandwich”.

The “sandwich”, the singing of hymns during the entrance, offertory, communion, and recessional, was a practice which grew out of the celebration of Low Mass in the Traditional Rite (Latin Mass).

As opposed to the High Mass, wherein all the audible parts of the Mass are sung, the Low Mass is only read. Ideally, every Mass, especially a Sunday Mass, should be a “Missa cantata”, a sung Mass. But since this was not always possible, a “Missa lecta”, or “read Mass”, was permitted.

And, as a way of sort of filling in the places in the Low Mass where “waiting” occurred (entrance, offertory, communion, exit), the singing of popular hymns during those “spaces” gradually came into practice. There was nothing wrong with this practice, but it was essentially a concession and not the ideal, the ideal being a sung Mass.

Recognizing the difficulty of doing a purely sung Mass on a regular basis and doing it well, the Sacred Congregation of Rites, in implementing the reforms called for by Sacrosanctum and looking to increase the “active participation” of the people, divided singing at Mass into three degrees which are as follows:

The following belong to the first degree: (a) In the entrance rites: the greeting of the priest together with the reply of the people; the prayer. (b) In the Liturgy of the Word: the acclamations at the Gospel. (c) In the Eucharistic Liturgy: the prayer over the offerings; the preface with its dialogue and the Sanctus; the final doxology of the Canon, the Lord's Prayer with its introduction and embolism; the Pax Domini; the prayer after the Communion; the formulas of dismissal.

The following belong to the second degree: (a) the Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei; (b) the Creed; (c) the prayer of the faithful.

The following belong to the third degree: (a) the songs at the Entrance and Communion processions; (b) the songs after the Lesson or Epistle; (c) the Alleluia before the Gospel; (d) the song at the Offertory; (e) the readings of Sacred Scripture, unless it seems more suitable to proclaim them without singing.

The instruction notes that the “three degrees are so arranged that the first may be used even by itself, but the second and third, wholly or partially, may NEVER (emphasis mine) be used without the first. In this way the faithful will be continually led toward an ever greater participation in the singing.”

Note that the first degree, and thus the most important parts which are to be sung, are between priest and people, NOT the choir, or even the choir and the congregation. Note also that the singing of an entrance, offertory, and communion hymn is not allowed until the third degree. (The recessional is not considered part of the Mass.)

The whole dynamism of the instruction is oriented so that the celebrant is at the center of the liturgical drama (which he should be), and the people respond in song to him and not to the choir or to a song leader.  In other words, our church is saying to us: “We want the people to actively participate and THIS is how you do it.”

However, as most of us are aware, nearly fifty years later, the vision of the Council for the liturgical integration of sacred song is widely ignored. And what is served up at most Masses is still the pre-Vatican II “four-hymn-sandwich” with a meditation or two thrown in as a side.

Some celebrants may object that they do not have a good enough voice to sing the liturgy. Musicam Sacram anticipated this and advises the priest with doubtful musical abilities to simply chant the desired parts on a single tone, something almost anyone can do, and to which, almost anyone can respond.

Given that so much else has changed relative to the celebration of the liturgy, the strange survival of the “four-hymn-sandwich” not only makes for a puzzling pre-Vatican II leftover, but given the central role of sacred song accorded it by the Council, our disregard for this key reform is a kind of metaphor for the “do-it-yourself” implementation of the Council which has occasioned the “crisis” the Holy Father, in this Year of Faith, now feels compelled to engage.

While Vatican II proposes much that requires a greater expertise and understanding for its proper implementation, there is nothing hard or difficult to understand about the requirements for sacred music. In fact, they are incredibly and beautifully simple and easy to implement. Shall we begin? The people might even sing.

LET US NOT GO BACK THE WAY WE CAME: CLASS WAR AND THE MAGI

The first two groups of humans to see the Christ Child - at least according to the scriptural account - couldn’t have been more opposite. 

Shepherds, in Jesus’ day, were a despised class. Only slaves and prisoners were lower.    

The Magi, though their occupation and origin isn’t clear, were certainly from an upper-class crowd, given the expensive gifts they bore, the distance they travelled, and their apparent advanced learning.

The presence of two ends of the social spectrum in the Christmas narrative is commonly accepted to demonstrate, as Peter would later say, that God “is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), and as Paul would elaborate, all are equal before him: “neither Gentile nor Jew, slave nor free, woman nor man. (Gal 3:28)

Fast forward, and today, at least in this nation, those roles appear to be reversing. The “poor” are an increasingly courted class and the wealthy (excluding movie stars, sports stars, and political liberals) are an increasingly despised class.

By “courted”, I mean the consolidation of political power through the cultivation of a dependent class which will act as a reliable stable of voters.

Historically, this has been most easily accomplished by vilifying the “haves” and inflaming the envy of the “have-nots”.

Seeding envy between the classes for the purposes of social division and the concentration of power is nothing new. Marx made a science of it.

And 20th century tyrants soon employed it to fertilize the earth with human blood. Earlier, it served the French Revolution - justifying the unending basketfuls of severed aristocratic heads.

Hitler’s use of it is perhaps history’s most profound demonstration of class war as a weapon of propaganda. Recall that Hitler’s “final solution” did not begin with boxcars and gas chambers, but with the objectification of the Jews as the cause of Germany’s economic woes.

Hitler’s class war gradually conditioned ordinary Germans to no longer see the Jewish people as “the Jewish people” but “the Jewish problem.”

Thus were the boxcars of Jews headed to death, able to rumble undisturbed through idyllic German villages, and Dachau’s neighbors, nonplussed, as they hoed the steady rain of human ash into their tidy gardens.

The 20th century death toll of class war is a thought we should keep in mind as our nation is further goaded into it through the persistent demagoguery of “the wealthiest Americans”, a campaign Christians sometimes unwittingly join because it looks and feels like social justice.

No, we need not fear the prospect of box cars and gas chambers. In contemporary America, the ends of concentrated political power can be more neatly accomplished through the direct cultivation of a dependent class, which in 2012 , is now “mission accomplished.” According to the Senate budget office, welfare spending is now at $168 per day, outpacing median “worker” income which is lagging at only $137 per day.  In other words, the dependent class is now larger, fiscally speaking, than the class upon which it depends.

The problem is that increased dependence wounds human dignity and foments its own revolution. Knowing this, the architects of class war, with the help of the media and much of academia, have, for decades, successfully oriented this foment towards the “haves”, or in today’s class war parlance, “the wealthiest Americans.”

However, even the most liberal experts admit that the president’s proposed increased tax on “the rich” won’t run our bloated government (which is borrowing at the rate of 188 million dollars per hour) for more than eleven days! Thus, we are left to assume that the rhetoric of fairness is a ruse, and “the rich” are simply convenient whipping boys.

But beyond that, and to the Christian point, the much overlooked fact is that class war is rooted in Envy, a capital sin.

And, as Christians, especially as preachers and teachers, we must be wary of the political machinery crafted to conscript our “preferential option for the poor” in the service of political ends, which, as the once-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has said, will end up “betraying the very poor we mean to help “(Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”, 1984).

The rhetoric of justice, equality, and fairness, in their current political concoction, may meld well with a Christian ethos, particularly a sentimentalized one. However, in the service of envy, they mask sin, a mortal one, and help no one.

It is clear from Luke’s account that the shepherds and magi probably didn’t run into each other at the manger. The magi are thought to have arrived a year or two later. However, the presence of both shepherds and Magi, in every nativity scene and story, speaks to the absence of caste and class in the presence of Christ. 

Like the Magi, let us not return the way we came.

A CRY IS HEARD IN RAMAH

Much has been said about Connecticut and I hesitate to add to the mountain of words. I have watched my own parents bury a son, and in the end, there are no words, only - as C.S. Lewis said in “A Grief Observed” - “the red-hot jab of memory”.

But apart from the incalculable pain suffered by those who lost a child or loved one - a pain no explanation will ever assuage, the ensuing culture war over who or what to blame is at once fascinating, repulsive, and perhaps, instructive.

From the Left, there is the predictable war on guns. From the Right there is the attack on a fallen culture and the media which glorifies it. In the middle there is the debate over what to do about the mentally ill. A bit above the fray, amongst religious leaders there are calls for prayer and homiletic revisits to the ancient problem of pain.

Personally, I was tempted to blame the wicked incident on our nation’s mad embrace of the Culture of Death, and initially summed up the shooting with Mother Teresa’s biting condemnation: “If abortion isn’t wrong, nothing is.”

And of course, that’s true. In a nation which chops up children in the womb at the rate of 4000 a day, what’s the big deal over twenty more - other than the fact that they were apparently wanted and could audibly cry as they died?

But abortion is not unique to our time and neither is child slaughter. This past week, only a few days distant from Christmas, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Innocents and were reminded that children were the first martyrs, and parents, from whose arms they were ripped, have always suffered loss like no other.

The response to the massacre at Sandy Hook from many Catholics was uniquely colored by the fact that the horrific news was revealed as the Church prepared for Gaudete (Rejoice) Sunday, a fact which made for many attempts to liturgically contextualize the tragedy.

My own thought was less about how to reconcile Connecticut with Gaudete, and more about how profoundly the shooting anticipated the Feast of the Holy Innocents wherein we once again hear the Jeremiah-an lament: “A cry is heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.”

Meanwhile, in the news, the battle raged: gun control, mental illness, the desensitizing impact of relentless media violence, the shooter’s broken home, survivalist mother, and absent father, the need for better school security and greater community vigilance, and so on.

There is much to say about each of these, but in the midst of a lemming-like rush to “get the government to do something”, we need remind ourselves that the greatest threat to human life is not madmen, but sane men. In the 20th century, “death by government” (democide), surpassed war as the number one cause of non-natural death.

There are the usual suspects: Hitler (10 million), Stalin (62 million), Chang Kai-shek and Mao (50 million). But there are also 204 other documented cases in the 20th century of genocide, politicide, massacres, extrajudicial executions, and other forms of systematic democidal murder perpetrated by state and quasi-state regimes upon their own peoples.

It is important to recall that each of these monsters began, not as monsters, but as social reformers, as promisers of jobs and a “chicken in every pot”: the Thousand Year Reich (Hitler), the Five Year Plan (Stalin), and the Cultural Revolution (Mao).

Their eventual purges were not motivated by the bloodlust of madmen, but, like Herod, by seemingly sane political policies which necessitated the elimination of opposition and undesirables as an inevitable step in the march to their imagined utopias.

It is also important to recall that prior to the mechanized slaughter of its own citizenry, each seemingly sane government instituted a seemingly sane policy to disarm its citizens, and for good reason. As Mao said: “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.”

One would think that with the brazen attack on the First Amendment by our current government, religious leaders would be wary of ceding even more constitutional ground by caving on the Second. However, the USCCB, in joining the clamor for gun control, has done exactly that.

But gun control aside, there is the more ominous question of the wisdom of granting ever more power to a government which has already shown that it is willing to crush religious freedom and rule by diktat.

Before inviting more governmental control of guns, health care, or anything else, the USCCB, and religious leaders in general, may want to recall that increasingly centralized and empowered governments eventually turn on their own people, beginning with religious leaders.