Confession: There's an app for that

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

Perhaps the one place you thought technology couldn't go was into the confessional. Guess again. Now there's an application -- complete with imprimatur -- that will let you use your iPhone or iPad to go to confession.

Confession: A Roman Catholic App by Little i Apps provides Catholics with a step-by-step guide to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a personalized Examination of Conscience, seven different Acts of Contrition, and settings that allow for multiple users with password protections to safeguard your sins. It will even track the last time you went to confession in days, weeks, months and years, perhaps more information than some users may want.

Click HERE to learn more about the $1.99 app.

Watch, and be uplifted

Bear with me while I post yet another pro-life video. We really can't see enough of this stuff, right? This is a great clip from the March for Life. If this doesn't make you want to get on a bus and join them next year, I don't know what will. Share it with your kids, your youth ministry group, your parish, your neighbors. They just may be inspired. (h/t Father Jim Martin, SJ)

Drum roll, please

According to OSV author and Net geek, Eric Sammons, who has written a script to calculate such things, osvdailytake.com is the No. 72 most popular Catholic blog out there.

Thanks for reading us! And be sure to tell your friends!

A shining pro-life moment on American Idol

Every once in a while, pop culture gives us a glimpse of humanity at its very best. Watch the clip above and you'll see a beautiful example of life, love and hope, an all-too-rare treat on "reality" TV. This single mom from Louisiana had her baby against her doctor's recommendation and is now raising her child on her own, reminding us of what it means to be truly pro-life in the face of the most difficult circumstances. Prayers for her and her daughter. (h/t Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner.)

The march the mainstream media missed

Photo by Matt K Cassens

By Mary DeTurris Poust

This morning I searched and searched the two daily newspapers that arrive on our doorstep each morning for print coverage of the March for Life. Nothing at all to be found in the newspaper that allegedly includes "all the news that's fit to print," and, in the local daily -- buried deep inside a national news roundup page -- a teensy tiny blurb that did not include the number of participants and focused more on Republican gains in the House than on the matter at hand. What number did it include? The second paragraph led with with the news that "more than three dozen lawmakers addressed the crowd." That's a lot of lawmakers, but, personally, I think the Associated Press put that tidbit of information there to mislead readers by making it seem as if the key figure in this story was three dozen, not hundreds of thousands, as was the reality.

As all of us know, what happens at the March for Life would stay at the March for Life were it not for pro-life bloggers and reporters who make sure the real story gets out there. Sometimes it's the print folks who miss the facts and the bloggers who get it right.

So, if you, like me, could not find one decent mainstream media story about the march, here's a link to prove to you that, once again, pro-lifers came out in magnificent and peaceful force to let the world know that, in the words of Dr. Seuss, "a person's a person, no matter how small."

Matt K Cassens over at St. Blogustine has a great post with loads of photos to give you a very clear picture of just what the March for Life looked like.

Here's a snippet from Matt's blog post:

There was great excitement in Washington DC today as over 250,000 people converged on the National Mall for a pro-life rally and the 38th annual March For Life. The atmosphere is super-charged every year as young and old alike show their support for overturning the infamous Roe v. Wade court case which legalized abortion-on-demand.

They came from all over the country and from distant lands overseas: from as far as Alaska, Texas, Maine, Florida, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, and Vietnam. There were mostly Catholics it seemed, but also Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, as well as some Jewish Rabbis on hand. And this is not merely a white man's battle. All races have a dog in this fight. And all were in good spirits as they celebrated life, and seemed filled with the Grace of God when explaining our pro-life position to the almost 10 so-called pro-choicers that showed up. Yes, whereas last year they numbered almost 60, this year they barely broke double digits.

Click HERE to read/see more. (Notice that Matt did not forget to include the number of marchers: 250,000! No wonder the secular press tries to hide that information.)

Shaw: Tracking news media's shift from focus on facts to opinion

By Russell Shaw

It was a slow Saturday afternoon in the newsroom of the Washington Daily News. This was the fall of 1956, and the News, a Scripps Howard tabloid, published six days a week but not Sunday. When the last Saturday edition was off our hands, the rest of the day could be mighty quiet.

A sub-editor on the city desk took a phone call. A man had driven onto Key Bridge, stopped his car, gotten out, leaped nearly 100 feet into the chilly Potomac, and drowned. Hanging up, the editor spotted me and told me to go see what was going on. I was only a copy boy, but what the heck — this was Saturday afternoon.

I caught a cab, rode out to Key Bridge, and talked to a policeman, picking up a few more scraps of information. Full of self-importance, I phoned the city desk and told the sub-editor what I’d learned. He stopped me with a question: “Did the guy leave his keys in the ignition or take them with him?”

That was one of the few lessons in journalism I ever got and one of the best. The Daily News, now long defunct, was no great shakes as a paper, but the people who worked there were professionals intensely concerned with getting the facts in the belief that even a seemingly trivial fact might shed light on the mysteries of human behavior. Facts were the coin of the journalist’s realm, cherished and indispensable.

The theme set for this year’s Vatican-sponsored World Communications Day, celebrated January 24, was “Truth, Proclamation, and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age.” That’s a mouthful, but at least the focus on digital media makes sense. Digital is where the action is these days, and the emphasis on truth is a reminder that, whatever else digital media may be, they’re not a realm of fact but opinion. You say your piece, I say mine. In much of this egalitarian media world, one version of truth is as good as another.

Perhaps the assault on the ancient elitism of print journalism is for the best, but what’s been gained in self-esteem has been lost in the all-important matter of putting people in touch with reality as only facts and the reporting of facts can do. This isn’t new — newspapers have been moving this direction for three decades or more — but now the bloggers have made it a matter of high principle.

And it comes at a price. A Gallup poll last year found 57 percent of Americans saying that they don’t trust journalists to report the news fairly. The shift away from facts and in favor of opinions surely has something to do with that.

The handling of the Tucson shooting tragedy in major sectors of the media was a case in point, offering as it did a worrisome glimpse into the fantasy world inhabited by some of our most prominent shapers of opinion, left and right.

Hard on the heels of the tragedy itself, we were treated — at inordinate length — to self-congratulating moralizing at the expense of certain conservatives who were said, without any evidence of a causal link, to share the blame for the behavior of a mentally disturbed man. This was followed by yet more media moralizing about a noble leader summoning us all back to the civility and rationality we’d supposedly abandoned en masse.

What we got, in short, was a deluge of opinion rather than fact. Opinions have their place in journalism, but they’re dangerous substitutes for facts.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

March for Life: A reminder of what's at stake

Mary DeTurris Poust

As thousands brave the cold to participate in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., today, here's a powerful column by Melinda Henneberger at Politics Daily that will remind you -- in stark and often-unsettling detail -- of the importance of this cause, as if you need reminding.

Prayers for all those who are marching today and representing those of us who cannot be there in person but are absolutely there in spirit. May their presence in Washington remind our country that we will not stay silent as long as anyone has the right to kill another -- no matter how young, how old, how disabled.

Here's Melinda's column:

"The ultimate non-partisan body – a criminal grand jury – has supplied us with the graphic, 261-page horror story of Kermit Gosnell, M.D., who stands accused of butchering seven babies – yes, after they were born alive -- and fatally doping a refugee from Nepal with Demerol in a clinic that smelled of cat urine, where the furniture was stained with blood and the doctor kept a collection of severed baby feet. As often as possible, the report says, Gosnell induced labor for women so pregnant that, as he joked on one occasion, the baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Then, hundreds of times over the years, he slit their little necks, according to the grand jury report:

[He] regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

"And the kicker? This nightmare facility had not been inspected in 17 years – other than by someone from the National Abortion Federation, whom he actually invited there. For whatever reason, Gosnell applied for NAF membership two days after the death of the 41-year-old Nepalese woman, Karnamaya Mongar. Even on a day when the place had been scrubbed and spiffed up for the visit, the NAF investigator found it disgusting and rejected Gosnell's application for membership...

Continue reading HERE.

Bono reflects on Sargent Shriver and faith

U2 frontman Bono offers a beautiful reflection on Sargent Shriver and how his life embodied our own Gospel call.

From Bono's NY Times op-ed piece, "What I Learned from Sargent Shriver":

In the background, but hardly in the shadows, was Robert Sargent Shriver. A diamond intelligence, too bright to keep in the darkness. He was not Robert or Bob, he was Sarge, and for all the love in him, he knew that love was a tough word. Easy to say, tough to see it through. Love, yes, and peace, too, in no small measure; this was the ’60s but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at him. No long hair in the Shriver house, or rock ’n’ roll. He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship. Love, yes, but love as a brave act, a bold act, requiring toughness and sacrifice.

His faith demanded action, from him, from all of us. For the Word to become flesh, we had to become the eyes, the ears, the hands of a just God. Injustice could, in the words of the old spiritual, “Be Overcome.” Robert Sargent sang, “Make me a channel of your peace,” and became the song.

Read the full column HERE.

Pennsylvania abortion doctor accused of killing seven babies with scissors

What a horrifying story. No words are adequate.

From YahooNews:

A doctor who provided abortions for minorities, immigrants and poor women in a "house of horrors" clinic has been charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell's employees also were charged.

Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.

Patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society, where Gosnell performed dozens of abortions a day, prosecutors said. He mostly worked overnight hours after his untrained staff administered drugs to induce labor during the day, they said.

Continue reading HERE.

Questioning the 'strange silence' on abortion stats

Retired New York State Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, in a N.Y. Post column, questions why recent statistics showing that 41 percent of all New York City pregnancies end in abortion have not provoked "citywide outrage." Benjamin, who is black, also highlights the staggering abortion statistics in the NYC African-American community, where 60 percent of all babies are aborted.

From Benjamin's Post column:

The local chapters of the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood reflexively defend this ugly disparity. Planned Parenthood says that if (Archbishop Timothy) Dolan, (Rev. Michael) Faulkner and their allies are really committed to lowering the city's abortion rate, they should support efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, like sex education and birth control.

Yet the statistics should be sobering. Dolan says, "We've been hearing for many years from pro-choice supporters that abortion should be 'safe, legal and rare.' Well, if that's the goal, we've clearly, abysmally failed -- especially here in New York City."

Sorry: The NOW/Planned Parenthood-endorsed regime of "comprehensive" sex education, condoms and birth control has been in place for decades in New York City -- yet the abortion rate stands at 48 percent in The Bronx. The city is in the pregnancy-prevention business as well, having distributed 40 million free condoms in 2009.

None of this seems to be having the intended effect. It may be time for a different approach.

The 87,000 abortions performed in 2009 have caused me to question my pro-choice votes in the state Assembly in support of Medicaid-funded abortions. Was I an enabler of abortion as a family-planning tool?

Read the full column HERE.

John Paul II beatification set for May 1 - UPDATED

Pope John Paul II will be beatified, taking the next step toward formal sainthood, during a ceremony in Rome on May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday. Millions are expected to flock to the Eternal City to celebrate the life of the beloved pope.

Click HERE for a video link on this latest development.

Click HERE for an EWTN report that John Paul II's tomb will be moved upstairs into St. Peter's Basilica.

UPDATED: For resources about Pope John Paul II, including a biography, timeline, and more, visit OSV4ME by clicking HERE.

Trappists make casket for youngest shooting victim

Trappist monks in Iowa are donating a handmade casket to bury Christina Green, the 9-year-old Arizona shooting victim who was killed along with five others.

From CNN BeliefBlog:

Sam Mulgrew, the general manager of Trappist Caskets in Peosta, Iowa, told CNN a family representative of the Greens reached out to the monks at New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque after her death. The custom-made casket arrived in Tucson, Arizona, Wednesday morning.

"We didn't want to send an adult coffin that would be too big, we wanted something just for her," said Mulgrew, who is not a monk but who manages the 11-year-old casket business that is part of the abbey.

The casket, crafted from red oak, was made especially for 9-year-old Christina, Mulgrew said. She died after a gunman opened fire at a constituents event held by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically wounded in the shooting.

Christina's funeral is scheduled for Thursday in Tucson.

The lid of the casket was inscribed with her name, date of birth and death, and a cross. The family also will receive five small keepsake crosses hewn from the same wood as the casket, Mulgrew said.

Before the casket was sent from the monastery in Iowa to Arizona, the monks gave the casket a special blessing inside their chapel on Tuesday.

Read the full story HERE.

Stretching toward God: Do yoga and Catholicism mix?

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Today, over at patheos.com, I tackle the subject of yoga -- something I love -- and how it benefits my Catholic prayer life -- something some people find impossible or frightening. I'll start the post here and take you to the full post at that site.

When I took my first yoga class more than twenty years ago, I was in a bit of a crisis in terms of the Catholic faith of my birth. My mother had recently died and I had moved out of my family home and across the country. I was searching in so many ways and came upon yoga through a friend who knew a teacher who held classes in her home. There, on a mat in an empty living room, I learned how to stretch and settle my body in new ways, ways that allowed me to more easily enter a spiritual realm that has always beckoned to me.

So began my odyssey into an Eastern world that some would have us believe is not only incompatible with Roman Catholic faith but dangerous to it. Of all the posts I put on Facebook, anything having to do with yoga is sure to stir up ominous warnings. I have been told, on more than one occasion, that it is the work of the devil. And yes, I have read what the Vatican has warned about "New Age" religions (FYI: Yoga isn't even remotely new). Quite frankly, someone who is inclined to make an idol of yoga, turning it into an obstacle rather than a pathway to God, is probably just as likely to turn certain devotions within the church into idols or superstitions—from obsessing over the trappings of the faith, to burying a statue to sell a house, to leaving slips of papers in pews as a guarantee that a prayer will be answered. Idolatry comes in all forms; it doesn't take yoga to make that happen.

Permit me, then, to take you into my world of yoga, a world where Amen and Om happily coexist...Continue reading HERE.

A 'reliable source' moves on

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

Over the years, Susan Gibbs, who has served as spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington for 13 years, has been a huge help to me on various OSV stories. She is one of those people you just know you can count on -- for whatever you need, even when the story might be a tough one for her folks. Gibbs has announced that she is leaving her post to start her own PR company. We wish her best of luck.

From a post on The Washington Post site:

Cardinal Donald Wuerl may be the official face of Washington Catholicism, but for anyone active behind the scenes, Gibbs has been the name to know, a fierce defender of the church, respected and feared by priests and journalists alike. The D.C. native, 46, is starting her own PR firm after stepping down Friday from what she called "the happiest job of my life." But "this is a job that is seven days a week," she told us. "I've been on call 24 hours a day for 13 years."

Known for writing super-detailed, theology-heavy e-mails, Gibbs shaped the local image of the church through the sexual abuse crisis and landmark events such as Pope Benedict XVI's 2008 visit. She spearheaded one of the archdiocese's most popular ad campaigns -- a back-to-confession movement whose "The Light Is On for You" catchphrase spread to other cities.

Read the full story HERE.

Shaw: Why pro-lifers vote for pro-choicers

By Russell Shaw

According to the polls, most Americans don’t much care for abortion. That being so, the mystery of why legalized abortion remains the law of the land 38 years after Roe v. Wade needs probing.

Based on the experience of these nearly four decades, two facts stand out. One is that a significant number of Americans have been and still are convinced that the Supreme Court decision of Jan. 22, 1973 was not just a technical mistake in constitutional interpretation but a grave injustice that will continue to poison national life unless and until it’s corrected.

The other is that a significant number who more or less agree that abortion isn’t a good thing, at least in most cases, nevertheless don’t care enough about it to take the necessary remedial action: putting committed prolife politicians in the White House and Congress as a required step toward correcting the injustice of Roe.

But, an ardent pro-lifer may object, didn’t voters last November choose a large number of new pro-life U.S. senators and representatives? Indeed they did—two years after they threw large numbers of pro-life members out of Congress.

The polling data show that a majority of Americans don’t support the virtually unlimited access to abortion that now exists. Yet people who are opposed to abortion, at least tepidly, regularly vote for pro-choice candidates. The result is this pro-life/pro-choice seesaw. Up and down—it’s been that way for 38 years. So let us return to our question: How come?

It appears to me that the only possible explanation for this voting behavior is that, no matter what many people say they believe about abortion, when push comes to shove the issue doesn’t carry all that much weight with quite a few. For them, clearly, it is not the great moral issue of our times that convinced pro-lifers—and not a few pro-choicers as well—consider it to be.

And the fact that it isn’t can only be understood as a reflection of the value such people assign to human life before birth. Not that it’s unimportant exactly, but that in the end it’s less important than something else.

Currently, it appears, quite a few things fall into the “something else” category. Last November, for example, the state of the economy was the overriding issue for a majority of voters. It is easy to understand why that was so and, practically speaking, hard to argue with it.

But some people rationalize their tepid support—or non-support—of the right to life of the unborn by appealing to more philosophical grounds. A cluster of issues and concerns then gets subsumed under the heading “the right to choose.” The bottom line is that freedom of choice is absolutized in preference to human life.

It’s unlikely that many of the people who do this really think the matter through. In verbalizing priority for the right to choose, they’re simply exhibiting some intellectual furniture that automatically comes with the position they hold on abortion and other issues. But, even so, for a mass of Americans who don’t particularly care for abortion, the “right to choose” serves as a convenient, and—they imagine—principled, reason for not doing much about it. Meanwhile the proponents of choice in academia and the media who call the shots for these less sophisticated souls relish the values of the individualistic libertarianism sustaining this entire can of worms.

All of which merely underlines the magnitude of the task of education and persuasion facing the prolife community after 38 years.

Russell Shaw is an OSV contributing editor.

'Chilling' abortion statistics out of NYC

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Sobering. Chilling. Horrifying. There's really no other way to describe the statistics just released by the Health Department: 41 percent of all pregnancies in New York City end in abortion. That's right. You didn't read it wrong. Forty. One. Percent. And, in the case of minorities, the figure jumps to 60 percent. More than half of all minority babies in New York City were aborted in 2009. If that doesn't make people stand up and take notice, I don't know what will.

At a press conference yesterday, religious leaders from the city banded together to demand answers. Here's some of what happened, according to a story in the N.Y. Sun:

“The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper,” declared the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan.

The press conference drew leaders of the Catholic archdiocese, which has traditionally played a leading role in the pro-life movement, and a range of oher leaders, including the executive president of the Agudath Israel of America, Rabbi David Zweibel, whose organization represents fervently orthodox Jews and is affiliated with the Council of Torah Sages; the Reverend Michael Faulkner, founder of the New Horizon Church in Harlem; and Leslie Diaz, spokeswoman of Democrats for Life.

The group noted that the abortion statistics point to a startling trend: older women utilize easily available abortion services as one of many birth control options open to them. Abortion, it seems, is no longer just the scourge of the frightened teenage mother. Just 10% of all pregnancies in New York City were with teen-age mothers. That age group accounted for 16% of abortions citywide in 2009. But more than half the abortions were with women in their 20s, with another 30% of abortions among women in their 30s and 40s. Nearly 15% of abortions were performed on married women.

New York City's abortion rate is nearly twice the national average. What's to account for it? Certainly not lack of reproductive services. Clearly city-mandated sex ed and free condoms in public schools haven't helped, as people have been led to believe they would. In fact, it would seem that abortion has become the birth control of choice for some.

More from the N.Y. Sun:

“We’ve been hearing for many years from pro-choice supporters that abortion should be made safe, legal, and rare. If that’s the goal, we’ve clearly, abysmally failed, especially here in New York City,” Rabbi Zwiebel said.

More alarming still, say the religious leaders, are the abortion rates among certain groups. In 2009, far more African-American women had abortions (40,798) than births (27,405) for an abortion rate of 60%. Among non-Hispanic black teen-agers, there were 2,791 abortions for every 1,000 live births in 2009 — a 74% abortion rate.

“The leading cause of death among African Americans is abortion, and … New York City has the highest abortion rates in the world,” Reverend Faulkner said.

For more, watch the video above, which features Archbishop Dolan, although you'll have to deal with the opposing side insisting that what's needed is more of the same. You've been warned.

So many ways to be a better you

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

As we hit day five of the new year and struggle, perhaps, with those resolutions (that's one reason I don't make any), here's some inspiration to feed your soul, motivate your mind, and jump start your body.

Check out 100 Simple Ways to Make Life Better by Marcel LeJeune over on Aggie Catholics for some great suggestions to get you thinking and, hopefully, doing.

Mike Hayes at Googling God has a beautiful post on How to Stay Married. A must-read for every husband and wife.

Nissa Gadbois puts her own (Catholic) spin on "Eat, Pray, Love" in her post Towards Beauty over on her blog, The Gadbois Family.

And Tim Muldoon gives us some deep (and video-accompanied) food for thought in his Aim Higher post about Victor Frankl on dotMagis over at IgnatianSpirituality.com.

Thank you to all of these bloggers for making my Wednesday a little more thoughtful and prayerful. I hope they do the same for you.

When is daily Mass like the U.S. mail?

By Mary DeTurris Poust

I am not (sad to say) a daily Mass-goer, but yesterday I decided to hit the 12:15 p.m. Mass at my parish, in part because I'd promised another Catholic writer I would offer my Communion for her intentions. I pulled on the door. Locked. I went around to the other side. Locked. I went back to my car to call my husband and ask him to look up our parish online and find out what was going on. While I waited, an old man pulled up beside me and looked confused. "I thought they have 12:15 Mass today," he said, adding, "I was here for Friday's 12:15 Mass and it was locked then, too."

Why was our church locked and Mass canceled on January 3, not a holiday on anyone's calendar? Because our diocesan offices were closed and so our parish closed not only its offices but our church as well. I'd like to say this is highly unusual, but the norm here is to cancel Mass on any holidays, especially federal holidays. Martin Luther King Day? No Mass. Columbus Day? No Mass. Memorial Day? No Mass. Since when do priests operate on the same schedule as mail carriers? Or worse. At least I got my mail on January 3.

To me this is a depressing and frustrating example of the secularization of our Church (because this situation, at least in this part of the northeast, is not limited to my parish but is common in many parishes throughout the area). Mass is Mass. It should be available every day where priests and facilities permit. It's not like our parish is priestless. We have a full-time pastor. We have a huge church and a small chapel. I realize the day will come when daily Mass is impossible due to the priest shortage, but in these parts it seems they're artificially creating a situation where we are forced to exist as if the priest shortage is where it will be five years from now.

My parish dropped daily Mass on Thursdays and Saturdays years ago. (It is offered at other parishes in our "cluster," but none of those are very close by so it's not a realistic option.) So, if you are a daily communicant and you wanted to attend as many Masses as possible during Advent and Christmas season, here is how things would have played out for you: No Mass the Thursday before Christmas, no daily Mass the morning of Christmas Eve, no Mass the Monday after Christmas, no Mass Thursday before New Year's, no Mass the morning of New Year's Eve, no Mass the Monday after New Year's. That's a lot of days without Mass or Communion in a parish that is one of the largest in my diocese.

Did anyone consider the possibility that more people might want to attend Mass on federal or other holidays because they don't have to go to work and so can get to daily Mass? Does anyone really have to look very far to see why we're losing numbers at record speed? My goodness, even the people who want to go to Mass can't get in.

To me, there is nothing quite so isolating as a locked church door. I realize in some parts of the country, that's a security issue. Not where I live. Even if I couldn't go to Mass yesterday, it would have been nice to at least go inside and sit in quiet prayer.

I kind of consider the priesthood to be a lot like parenthood. Much as I'd like a lot of days off -- especially on all those holidays when the kids are home and clamoring for snacks and another game of Sorry -- I can't disappear. I can't cancel dinner or lock the front door because this is my vocation. These are my children. And so it is with our parishes. When we have a day off and clamor to our church for nourishment and comfort, we don't want to be pushed away or shut out. Mass shouldn't be canceled on a whim as if the Church is any other business. It is not. And doors shouldn't be locked as if the parish is serving any other customers. We are God's children, and we want somebody to be home when we show up at the door.

Please, tell me how this works in your diocese? Is what's happening in my area happening where you live?

A must-read column about life, loss and MTV

Posted by Mary DeTurris Poust

Don't miss this powerful piece, "The Unborn Paradox," by Ross Douthat in today's New York Times. Here's the part that really got me, but, please, take the time to read the whole thing:

And lives are what they are. On the MTV special, the people around Durham swaddle abortion in euphemism. The being inside her is just “pregnancy tissue.” After the abortion, she recalls being warned not to humanize it: “If you think of it like [a person], you’re going to make yourself depressed.” Instead, “think of it as what it is: nothing but a little ball of cells.”

It’s left to Durham herself to cut through the evasion. Sitting with her boyfriend afterward, she begins to cry when he calls the embryo a “thing.” Gesturing to their infant daughter, she says, “A ‘thing’ can turn out like that. That’s what I remember ... ‘Nothing but a bunch of cells’ can be her.”

Please click HERE to read the full column.

Pope's message for World Day of Peace

Pope Benedict XVI announced plans for a "peace summit" during his World Day of Peace message before the Angelus today. The October meeting of world religious leaders will be held in Assisi.

From EWTN News:

The October gathering will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first World Day of Prayer for Peace, reported Vatican Radio.

The Pope's announcement came shortly after suicide bombers in Egypt killed 21 Coptic Christians leaving Mass on Jan. 1.

In addition to calling for the October meeting, Benedict XVI asked Catholics to pray “for peace throughout the world.”

“I invite all of you to join in heartfelt prayer to Christ the Prince of Peace for an end to violence and conflict wherever they are found.”

The Pontiff then prayed that those gathered receive “God’s abundant blessings” in 2011.

To read the full text of the pope's message, which addresses religious persecution and religious freedom, and calls for cooperation among the great religions of the world, click HERE.