Saint Peter's Point- The Catholic Blog of Saint Peter Parish, Stevens Point Wisconsin

12-16-08
The Knights of Columbus commissioned a poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion entitled “Moral Issues and Catholic Voters” conducted Sept. 24th-Oct. 3rd.

Some of the statistics reflect commonly accepted knowledge, that most Americans believe there should be some restrictions on abortion (92%) and most want parental notification laws in the case of a minor’s abortion.

This particular survey went a step further in contrasting the opinions of (1) Americans, (2) practicing Catholic Americans, and (3) non-practicing Catholic Americans. For purposes of the poll, “practicing” was defined as attending Mass at least once or twice a month. According to the survey, 48% of the population overall considers themselves “pro-life.” 59% of practicing Catholics consider themselves “pro-life”. Here’s the striking statistic, only 29% of non-practicing Catholics consider themselves pro-life. Conversely, while 50% of Americans consider themselves “pro-choice.” A whopping 65% of non-practicing Catholics label themselves “pro-choice.”

Meaning non-practicing Catholics, though still identifying themselves as Catholics are even more likely to support abortion then the average American. Why even bother calling yourself Catholic? On the flip-side the constant teaching of Christ and the Church regarding the dignity of all life from Conception to Natural Death, is making headway, at least to those who make it into the pews on Sunday!

More information can be found at www.kofc.org


Phil’s Tidbits:

Via the Catholic Educators Resource Center: Quote of the Week:
"You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you." - Flannery O'Connor


On Homeschooling and the State:
I was recently talking to a very intelligent college student. She’s still looking at her options for various majors, but indicated that she would be pursuing a teaching license on top of her other major. Her reason? She wants the freedom to homeschool her children—and figures this will help her should restrictions by the government concerning who can homeschool continue to be increased. The day after that conversation I came across this article from Switzerland:

Zurich Restricts Homeschooling to State-Licensed Teachers
By Ellen M. Rice
ZURICH, Switzerland, December 9,2008 (Lifesitenews.com) - The leading Swiss newspaper, Tages Anzeiger, reports that the by next summer the Canton of Zurich will restrict homeschooling rights to parents who are certified teachers.
“Parents will only be allowed to educate their children at home when they have a teacher’s certificate,” reported Tages Anzeiger on December 4. According to the paper there are fifty parents affected within the Canton of Zurich.
Eight of these families so far have announced that they are resisting the legislation, and face fines up to 5000 francs ($4100 USD) and possible citations for disobedience of official orders. Appeals of the Zurich decision are being filed, but so far the Education Director has rejected all compromise solutions.
Professor Georg Stöckli of the Education Institute of the University of Zürich says he agrees with the new restrictions: “Children from early on have an urge to separate themselves from their parents. One should not hinder them in this ... The family alone is not enough to satisfy the social needs of the children.”

(Phil's Note: Read those last 3 sentences again…it should send a chill down your spine. Do they really think the state is better at molding children then their parents…Hitler did—look up the infamous Hitler’s Youth Program. This is in stark contrast to the Christian view that has always held the family as the pre-eminent place of formation of children).

According to the Code Civile Suisse of December 10, 1907, parents are responsible for seeing to a child’s education and to his physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Each Swiss Canton, however, may interpret this law differently. Two cantons currently outlaw homeschooling outright, and Zurich now joins other cantons with severe restrictions. Before this restriction, home education was freely permitted, with Zurich authorities checking student progress once or twice per year.
A 2002 motion to require Zurich homeschoolers and private schools to teach “the same world view” as public schools, be staffed by certified teachers, and be evaluated by the Canton’s education board, failed.
Homeschoolers in Europe are in many cases up against increasingly hostile political forces. This holds true especially of Germany, where numerous homeschooling families have been persecuted in recent years, with children being removed from their homes in some cases.
In November of this year, a German homeschooling family whose children were removed forcibly in 2006 applied for political asylum in the United States. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike of Bissingen, Germany, and their five children arrived in the United States in August of this year. The family has settled in Eastern Tennessee where they were welcomed by local homeschool supporters and are being assisted by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).
Excerpts from the Tages Anzieger article are translated into English at the “Principled Discovery” homeschool blog “Principled Discovery.” http://principleddiscovery.com/homeschooling-network/



What About the Father?
Armstrong Williams relates the tale of a father’s helplessness in preventing his g/f from aborting their child—a child that was conceived willingly by both of them. Then the Mom changed her mind….
Not long ago, (John) Stachokus planned to have a child with his 23-year-old girlfriend. Together, they picked out the child's name and godparents. He proudly imagined what it would be like to start a family; this made him happy. Then one day, his girlfriend abruptly decided to terminate her pregnancy. She was reacting to pressure from her parents, Stachokus says. He responded by obtaining an injunction, temporarily prohibiting her from having an abortion, which a court rejected. And just that quickly, Stachokus's hopes and dreams for his child dissolved. It did not matter to the court that Stachokus was willing to take full responsibility for nurturing and providing for the child. His basic human rights did not factor into the court's decision. All that mattered was that his girlfriend suddenly changed her mind and decided to murder their unborn baby. As far as the court was concerned, Stachokus had no say in the life of his own child. The court regarded him as little more than a soulless contributor of DNA.
-From: InsideCatholic.com “Abortion and the Rights of Fathers” by Armstrong Williams. http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/images/insidedigest65.pdf


God Bless you!
Phil Lawson For the latest info on St. Peter’s, check out the parish website: www.saintpetercatholic.com (You can also find old editions of the Areopagus here)
The Areopagus is a regular email for adults that includes various reflections, tidbits, news and events. Hope you find it fruitful!
If you would like to be added to this list, send an email to lawsphil@gmail.com
On the other hand, if you would like to be removed, send an email to the same address indicating that.

12-10-08

When confronted by the shortage of priests here in the United States, we’re tempted toward despair and/or questioning whether God is still calling young men to serve Him at the altar.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things:

Talking about the priest shortage, Fr. Richard Neuhaus writes the following: “Any qualified Catholic young man who has not been invited to seriously consider a possible vocation to the priesthood has been cheated. The greater sadness is not the shortage of priests but the number of those who were called and did not answer.”-First Things, November 2008.

-Different way of looking at things isn’t it?

We can be confident that God did not suddenly stop calling young men to the priesthood. To say such a thing is to doubt God’s faithfulness to His promises. The crisis instead is one of openness to the calling on the part of people today. Some would argue that if priests could get married that would change things. Aside from the fact that the Anglicans have already tried it—and still have a shortage of clergy---you have to ask—how have men been celibate priests for the past 2000 years? Did they not have the desire to marry in the older days? Of course they did—but they understood sacrifice and service in a way that we perhaps don’t today.

And, as Fr. Neuhaus points out—there is a true peace and happiness that comes with doing God’s Will—a joy that can only be found in answering the Call, whatever it might be.

Phil’s Tidbits:

This is about a 15 minute video—very well done and moving. Tracing man’s inhumanity to man through the past 200 years called “Volition”

To watch Volition, go to: http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/film/?film=420351f1aefa2b42b1772fe9d5cc044a)




Doug Kmiec, a prominent legal mind made news prior to the election in saying that the battle against abortion was “lost”. Fr. Berg takes a closer look at that claim in the context of history:

In The Young Battle for Life,
Nikolas Nikas noted ever so cogently that the 35-year struggle against federal court-imposed abortion on demand is still a relatively young one. He points to the lessons of the long struggle for black civil rights as instructive:
· 246 years from the advent of American slavery to the end of the Civil War;
· 100 years from the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery to the passage of the Civil Rights Act;
· 58 years from the announcement by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" public accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional to the reversal of that decision by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.
So, after only 35 years, it would seem that the pro-life movement is only at the beginning of its battle, not at the (failed) end of it. I hope to continue this discussion next week, with further input from pro-life leaders who are nowhere near throwing in the towel.
***
Rev. Thomas V. Berg, L.C. is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.



Bishop Robert Vasa recently wrote a rather forthright article on the workings of the devil, and the resultant ministries of deliverance and exorcism. I say “forthright” because fewer and fewer people seem willing to acknowledge the existence of the devil. It’s a bit longer, but well worth the read.

Satan, while hidden, remains active in us and in society
By Bishop Robert Vasa

BEND — The Conference which I attended in Chicago this week dealt with the spiritual activity in the Church known as deliverance ministry and exorcism. I wrote about this last year after I had listened to a series of tapes from a conference on the same topic which was held in 2007. Many aspects of deliverance and exorcism were covered in the course of the four-day conference including the canonical, the theological, the psychological, the spiritual and the personal. At the very foundation of the conference stands the truth that we live in a world surrounded by spiritual beings and those spiritual beings, including angels, saints and demons, interact with us in a variety of ways. Some of that interaction is very helpful and supportive, some of it is not. Obviously any interaction with satanic or demonic spiritual beings is fraught with spiritual danger and we as Catholics need to be aware of the reality of Satan, aware of his wickedness and snares, and live in such a way that we do not fall under his sway or influence. Just as we were accustomed, perhaps more so as children than at present, to recite the Guardian Angel Prayer asking for our Angel’s light, guardianship, rulership and guidance so we should also pray to be protected from the “wickedness and snares of the devil.”
In the course of the conference I was pleased to engage in a conversation with a young priest who reminded me of a book on the activities of the devil which is very much a classic. The book, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, is a series of one-sided letters written by senior devil Screwtape to his nephew apprentice devil, Wormwood. Uncle Screwtape gives guidance and direction to a sometimes hapless and quasi incompetent Wormwood who repeatedly fails in one way or another to properly ensnare his assigned subject. It is a wondrously topsy-turvy world in which, from the devil’s perspective, blessedness is devilishness, success in resisting temptation is failure, and human causes of genuine joy are disastrous losses for Satan. Repeatedly the despicable (which is a high compliment) Screwtape chastises Wormwood, who is perhaps too good (what a horrible insult) for his failure to be devilish or shrewd enough in his assigned duty as junior tempter. Besides being quite entertaining, the book awakens the reader to the reality of the spiritual or supernatural world and very imaginatively portrays the machinations and strategizing of the evil one in “winning souls.”
While there is a great deal of interest in and curiosity about the devil in the realm of possession and exorcism, there is much less interest in him in the realm of one’s day-to-day life. Indeed, in the realm of our own lives. For the most part, people of America generally proceed with their daily lives as if Satan did not exist at all. An undue fascination with the details of possession is perhaps not spiritually healthy but neither is ignoring the existence of the devil and the reality of evil. We can be sure he is not ignoring us.
The devil is insanely jealous of us. He is jealous because God, bypassing the angelic spirits, chose to link His Divine nature with our human nature in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The singular purpose of Satan then, with a fervor which is fed by jealousy, is to sabotage as many of the individual relationships with God as possible. We are assured that those who maintain a strong relationship with the Lord in prayer and sacraments are extremely unlikely to fall prey to possession but we are all victims of ongoing temptation. It is this role of tempter which C.S. Lewis explores in The Screwtape Letters. A sensitivity in the spiritual life needs to include an awareness of the tactics of the devil and a firm resolve to avoid and resist the wickedness and snares of the devil. This is precisely the purpose of the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. In that prayer, we acknowledge that we are involved in a battle with the forces of evil, “Saint Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle” and we ask his specific intervention, “be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.” We then go one step further invoking God’s own direct assistance, “May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,” and then back to Saint Michael and all the angels, “and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits.” Then at the end of the prayer we take note of the reason why we have sought the intercession of the great Saint Michael in the first place. This is because those evil spirits are the ones “who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” These souls whom Satan and his evil minions prowl about the world seeking to destroy are not anonymous other souls but rather our own souls and those of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
It is certainly important that we not become excessively consumed or obsessed by the presence and activity of the evil one but it is also most important that we not be oblivious to his presence or activity, for it is real. All one needs to do is look at the state of moral confusion which reigns in our present society. The killing of the sick or elderly because they want it is being promoted as some kind of right or good but this can be so only in the topsy-turvy world of Screwtape and Wormwood. When taking the life of an innocent pre-born child is seen as right and a right and when the preservation of precisely that right becomes the object of a political campaign, I suspect the letter from Screwtape to the demon master of that campaign would be filled with praise. When a whole society begins to question whether marriage really requires one man and one woman, faithfully committed to each other in an exclusive and child-centered relationship, Satan must be very pleased indeed. Screwtape’s letters to the untiring tempters who pulled off that coup would have to be filled with devilish pride. For that kind of confusion and moral inversion to have made this kind of progress in our society, it was and is necessary for Satan to have been very active and at the same time to remain very hidden. When he is so subtly hidden, there is no limit to the wickedness and snares of the devil.
When we look at our society and see the depths of depravity to which it has already sunk we must, like in the parable of the wheat and the tares, come to the unmistakable conclusion that “an enemy has done this.”



God Bless you!
Phil Lawson For the latest info on St. Peter’s, check out the parish website: www.saintpetercatholic.com (You can also find old editions of the Areopagus here)
The Areopagus is a regular email for adults that includes various reflections, tidbits, news and events. Hope you find it fruitful!
If you would like to be added to this list, send an email to lawsphil@gmail.com
On the other hand, if you would like to be removed, send an email to the same address indicating that.