PERFECTION AND IMMORTALITY: Mary's Fidelity to God

by Sally Govea

Aug. 15, 2010 --When God created man he was perfect and when something is perfect it does not corrupt. Therefore, man was immortal in body and soul. When Eve came along she was perfect as well, that is, before sin came into the picture and everything changed. Perfection is a perfect blending of our will with God’s We abuse our free will when we pull away from God’s will to do our own will; thus our free will is corrupted and this deterioration seeps into our life and our body is no longer immortal.

When Christ took on a human body, though He is perfect, He allowed His Body to die so it could live in a most mysterious manner in the Holy Eucharist.

Next to Christ, Mary was the most perfect in body and soul. She lived on earth, not in an earthly paradise, but in a spiritual paradise. Even before the Annunciation her soul welcomed the life of God within it and her soul never lost that Life—God’s will was Mary’s will. Because of this, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven by his infallible pronouncement in these words: “After frequently praying to God and invoking the light of the Spirit of truth, to the glory of Almighty God Who enriched the Virgin Mary with special favor, to the honor of her Son, the immortal King of ages and victor over death and sin, to the increase of the glory of His august Mother, to the joy and exultation of the whole Church, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and by Our own authority, We declare and define as a revealed dogma that the immaculate Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, when she had finished the course of her earthly life, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”

By Mary’s fidelity to God she remained perfect and therefore, God granted her, according to His creation of the perfect man, immortality of both body and soul.

The Loss of Hope in an Obama Era

by Lawrence Fox
Hope is the Theological Virtue of Expectation; an expectation rooted in a Promise. For the Christian, Hope is rooted in the Promises of Christ, such as the promises found within the Sermon on the Mount. Hope as a virtue is like a muscle, and the exercise for this muscle is fidelity to one's calling in life. Hope brings about the freedom from self. The opposite of Hope is despair which is rooted in self and self desecration and self destruction.
Despair (spiritual not chemical) is the opposite of Hope, and is the fruit of presumption and lack of fidelity. Lucifer exists in absolute despair...something to be grasped. A person of Hope gives of themselves. A person in despair demands things for themselves, like entitlement on steroids or like pundits who demand and call people bigots for seeing the wisdom and natural and created reality of male-female marriage for which there is the potential of real giving.
Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher) wrote a gifted essay titled: "Sickness unto Death." In this essay he describes hope and despair in relation with promise and fidelity. Pagan society (before Christianity) lived in a form of despair as evidenced by the practice of suicide so often clothed under a cultural virtue of dignity, and abhorrence for suffering.
But pagan society was searching for a promise.
With the Gospel and the promise of Redemption and Resurrection, the culture changed and Hope entered the vocabulary as a Theological Virtue. 400 years after the confusion stemming from the "Reformation" things have reversed. Society is in a worse state; now advocating for a culture of bareness, a promise of wealth without children, and commitments which cannot produce children naturally, and of course the promise of a safer planet which will be populated by people living in despair and demanding entitlement provided by the STATE which will be a tyrant run by leaders in greater despair.
Despair inflames fear which so often leads to violence. Violence let it be known is the modern cultural method for preventing and spacing the birth of children.
Sounds like HELL.

From Ground Zero to the Supreme Court Bench

By Lawrence Fox
America got hit with three (3) punches this week from New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. NYC leadership demonstrated no sense of remorse over 9/11 by supporting the building of a Mosque to near Ground Zero – which was made possible by multiplicity of persons who attended Mosques; A Fellow Practicing Judge in San Francisco rules that 7 million people who supported Proposition 8 in CA did so solely upon “Moral and Religious Sentiments” and therefore their actions were Unconstitutional even if the process was Constitutional; and the U.S. Senate gave a pass to an unqualified professor, who will now sit on the Supreme Court for Life and shows every sentiment to Rule with the Judge in SF Against Prop 8.

NY Mayor Bloomberg - who know for certain that a Tea Party Member upset with Obama Care was responsible for leaving a car loaded with explosives in a car in Times Square - is in desperate need of jobs and money and for sure the money will come pouring in from Saudi Arabia.

Oh yes Saudi Arabia that bastion of religious freedom unless of course if you are a jew, christian, bahia, sufi,and shiite muslim.

This Mosque has nothing to do with Mayor Bloomberg’s sense of religious freedom, the 1st Amendment and the sentiments of religious. No! the ever shameless Mayor Bloomberg attempted to legislate (maybe successfully)in NY the law that persons of moral pro-life faith who want to practice OBGYN in NY must first be educated in the finer practice of fetal removal from a woman’s womb. How the fetal (“Latin for little person”) got into the woman's womb no one knows. Yes, so much for religious and moral sentiments.

On the other side of the Country, the CA Court legislated the same sort of Bloomberg-ian sentiments (did I say legislate) when the court ruled that a doctor and pharmacist could not refuse to provide contraception to a minor nor refuse to perform in-vitro on non-married couples based upon their moral and religious sentiments. The one thing the CA Court did do right was identify “Catholic Charities” as a Secular Institution. To bad the CA Court has not ruled that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) is a Secular Institution. Can someone please tear up those worthless “Faithful Citizenship” pamphlets!

Image someone deciding something based upon moral and religious grounds? Not surprised by this decay of logic since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun while deciding “Roe vs. Wade”, pontificated that since previous cultures - which were not impeded by moral and religious convictions - allowed abortion, there was room under the penumbra of the 14 Amendment to strike down State Laws which addressed moral issues based upon moral and religious sentiments. And besides, as he muses in his memoirs: “It was regrettable that my daughter while in College did not have the freedom to abort my grandchild [sic].”

Elana Kagan, who never sat on a Bench – except a park bench while eating Chinese Food on Christmas Eve will work hand and hand with U.S. Federal District Judge Vaughn R. Walker on the demise of Prop 8 and the 20+ states who have amended their State Constitutions and DOMA. Why? They are based upon "moral and religious sentiments."

I have been asked to FAST and make reparation for the things in my life which contributed to this demise of common sense and sensibilities.

Hope and Change or Expedited Terror?

by Lawrence Fox

When viewing the 1973 thriller Soylent Green (in which the sick and elderly are killed and turned into food), I asked myself, "What steps would a country have to take in order for a country to slip into mandatory euthanasia for the sick and elderly?"

Answer: Redefinition of the human person (defined as less than a whale), utilitarian definition of quality-of-life versus a God-centered definition, the legalization of abortion and infanticide, increased government control of medicine, legalization of assisted suicide, redefinition of the family, advocacy of population control, indoctrination that human's are the cause of climate change, governments increasing national and global debt, media demonization of people who resist these trends, and a lack of vigilance on the part of the free and the religious. There are others but for certain we have been seeing these incremental "hope and changes" locally and globally for sometime.

EYE HAS NOT SEEN, EAR HAS NOT HEARD . . .

The Work of Divine Mercy 

by Susan Fox

March 3, 2010 --- Today I emptied the dishwasher and loaded it.

I doubt my accomplishment impresses you. But two weeks ago, I was looking down a barrel of a gun, facing open heart surgery or certain death.

Such an experience is certainly frightening, but very beneficial. I had to face the fact that the timing of my potential death was disconcerting because I was not good enough to go -- yet. I guess I thought I had some benchmark to reach and I’d failed to get there. I was conscious of all my sins of omission.

What one has failed to do -- I discovered -- is very important when facing a deadline like death.

It was a very sudden and unexpected deadline as I’ve struggled with illness for 15 years, but I thought it was my mundane stomach that troubled me, and I never realized that it was really a silent killer -- my heart.

Thankfully, I poured out my fears to the Lord and He reassured me. Though my sins were indeed scarlet, He Himself would make up

what I lacked. I could trust Him. So I went into surgery in that frame of mind after receiving the Catholic sacraments of Eucharist, Confession and Sacrament of the Sick. 

And here I am recovering my health, with the sole desire to just live and experience life in whatever form it takes – spending time with my family and friends, doing dishes, daily walks, eating and resting. 

But don’t imagine that grace of trust came out of the blue without years of preparation.

Eight years ago, I joined a group called the Eucharistic Apostles of The Divine Mercy. We study the Diary of St. Faustina, the Catholic Catechism and the Scripture. St. Faustina was the first saint canonized in this millennium, and Our Lord called her the Secretary of His Mercy. Our Lord said that His Mercy was His greatest attribute. He said the greater the sinner the more he had the right to God’s Mercy. Now I can attest to that. But until two weeks ago it was just intellectual knowledge.

I remember when I first joined the group, I was not much attracted to the concept of God’s Mercy, St. Faustina, her diary or the picture that was painted based on her visions. It shows the resurrected Christ coming out of the dark with two rays of light coming from his side, one red and one white for the waters of Baptism and the Sacraments of Eucharist and Penance.

The Church is a bride conceived on the cross from the blood and water that poured from the side of Christ. “But one of the soldiers pierced

His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.” (John 19.34) And such a bride has to resemble her husband in suffering. That’s why children are baptized to be priest, prophet and king. Priest means victim. Christ is the Suffering Servant and so is His Bride, the Church. The triumph of each Christian life is the cross.

Now while I am part of that Church, and that does make me a bride of Christ, that part about suffering and dying, I just wanted to leave that job entirely to Jesus Christ. I wanted to be comfortable. But two weeks ago, that state definitely eluded me. The cross has a way of sneaking up on you.

And so it was with Divine Mercy. Eight years ago I was not attracted to it. But I joined the Eucharistic Apostles anyway because when I looked at my daily experiences and asked God, “What are you teaching me?” the word mercy came up repeatedly.

In fact, it seemed like His plan of Mercy would play a big role in my life – whether I liked it or not.

So for eight years I went to a weekly meeting to discuss God’s mercy. I read St. Faustina’s Diary multiple times, all the Scripture passages about God’s Mercy and the Pope’s encyclical on Divine Mercy. Like Jacob wrestling with God all night, I struggled with His Mercy up until two weeks ago.

Suddenly, facing death I understood His Mercy. Yes, I wasn’t ready. In fact, NOTHING I could ever do could prepare me for death or suffering. But He would take care of everything.

I stood at the foot of the cross as the soldier pieced his side and blood and water came out. And I caught the grace of that blessed moment. “Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

The Lamb for the Sacrifice

By Susan Fox

What Child is this who, laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? (William Chatterton Dix, 1865)

Dec. 24, 2009, Gold Canyon, Arizona -- At Christmas time, I recall fondly Abraham’s prophesy. “God Himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice.” (Gen. 22:8)

In obedience to God, dear Father Abraham with much grief took his son, Isaac, to a height in Moriah to sacrifice him. Isaac, who was conceived in Abraham’s old age, was his only son by his wife Sarah – also well past her child bearing years. God had promised them that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

But God tested Abraham, telling him to take his only son Isaac, whom he loved, and offer him up as a holocaust. (Gen. 22:2) This seemed to be the end of all Abraham’s hopes and dreams.But he obeyed. He put the wood for the fire on his son’s back and proceeded to Moriah.

On the way, Isaac suddenly realized they had wood and fire, but no animal for the holocaust, so he asked his father, “Where is the sacrifice?”

“God Himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice,” Abraham responded.

God did stop Abraham from offering Isaac. And He substituted His own Beloved Son, Jesus Christ -- Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

We celebrate the birth of the Father’s Beloved Son in Bethlehem on Dec. 25.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Son.”(John 3:16)

“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

“My daddy gave me a name, then he walked away.” (“Father of Mine” by Everclear)

The sad lyrics of “Father of Mine” show us how our current generation views fathers. Many broken families and a high divorce rate have made people afraid of the commitment of marriage. Thus children are born out of wedlock. And more unhappy people are raised in single parent homes.

There are those who believe that God created the world and then abandoned it -- sort of like a Powerful Watchmaker, who wound up the clock and then left it alone on the mantle.

But the Incarnation speaks of a very different kind of Father. He is not an impersonal, “leave-Me-alone” Father, but a Father very passionately involved in the lives of His children -- so involved He sent His Son to become man, live with us, and then die for us on the cross that we may be freed from the slavery sin, that we might be happy. Jesus gave us the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount to show us how to live happily (Matthew, chapter 5). Blessed means happy. Blessed/happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for goodness, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, and yes, the persecuted.

Who was present at the Birth of the God-man Jesus is also very telling.

God was so excited about what He’d done, He sent a host of angels to announce the birth of His Son to a group of lowly shepherds. The angels brought “good news.” “For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. . . . Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:10-14)

The shepherds got excited also, and decided to go see this wondrous thing that took place in Bethlehem, and when they saw Mary, Joseph and the child, they became the first evangelists. They revealed the message they had received about the child. All who heard were awed.

From this story, some may conclude God only cares about the poor.

But the rich also came and worshiped the little God man child.

Three kings from out of the East came to worship Jesus. How did they know that a great ruler had been born among them? They were awake. They were looking for the signs. And they saw His star at its rising. “Where is the newborn King of the Jews?” they asked.

So we may also ask the same question this Christmas, and find ourselves standing at the feet of Mary and Joseph, marveling with the shepherds and asking, “What Child is This?”

But just as today, millions of unborn children and many elderly are crushed beneath the “pro-choice” philosophy of convenience and I-have-the-power-so-I-can-kill-who-I-want, so also the Birth of the Savior of the world unleashed a terrible persecution. King Herod knew he was not the rightful heir to the throne of David, and he feared that the child born in Bethlehem was this king. So when the Magi failed to return and tell him where to find Jesus, he ordered the death of all boys in Bethlehem age two and under. Jesus escaped into Egypt when his faithful father Joseph received a warning in a dream. But all the other baby boys in Bethlehem – the Holy Innocents -- were slaughtered: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children and she would not be consoled since they were no more.” (Matt. 2:18)

So many women, who have been deceived by the mores of our culture and made to have an abortion, bitterly weep for their children once they realize what they have done.

So we stand on the eve of Christmas about to make a terrible mistake in passing a health care reform bill that will again unleash a murderous attack on our children and our elderly. The Democrats who stood against this bill and proclaimed their firm resolve to stand for human life are apparently abandoning our children and elderly for the price of some trifling benefits for their states.

But we know that such people -- like King Herod -- have lived side by side with the faithful many times before throughout history. And yet in the midst of persecution and terror, the shepherds and the kings managed to find their happiness in the tiny arms of the Infant Jesus Christ.

And perhaps there, some of us may be called to help supply the lamb for the sacrifice.

A Global Warning Meeting in the Garden

by Lawrence Fox
I recently discussed with my diverse array of garden plants: Tomatoes, Basil, Lettuce, and Bok Choy (which do understand a little English) that I had to limit sharing my carbon dioxide (C02) with them since the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday December 5th, 2009 designated Carbon Dioxide as a dangerous pollutant.

I knew I had their collective attention, when the Bok Choy (which do understand a little English) bellowed a very long sigh of OXYGEN (O2). I am assuming they were sharing with me a very important teaching moment: NO CO2, NO PLANTS, AND THEN NO OXYGEN.

As I left the garden, the tomatoes were giggling and sharing with their peers: “Humans categorize us as FRUITS and treat us like VEGETABLES and they LEGISLATE like FOOLS.”

“To see at last, to see at last, oh Lord I can see at last!”

by Lawrence Fox

I am not sure why I was heading down the road with my Uncle Jack to the Optometrist but I think it had something to do my second grade teacher Sr. Nicholas telling my mother her 2^nd grade son was squinting and making faces when looking at the front black board while sitting 10 rows back behind Algae Lynch and Bobby DiMartino and 8 other more interesting characters.

I can remember a number of similar excursions with my Uncle Jack - who was the legendary singer in the family, something of an untamed Caruso – and while sitting in the passenger seat he would sing and whistle the classic, “Ghost Riders in the Night”. And on that day, the ambience was no different as we drove into the West Baltimore Sunset in his 4-Door Black Rambler.

I had never been to an Optometrist’s Office and I never took an Eye (I) exam. The only I (eye) exam I got at home was when my mother asked “Who made this mess” and I would reply “Not I (EYE).”

I was told to sit in a high back chair which faced a white chart with a jigsaw of consonants and vowels A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Well I learned something in the 2^nd Grade.

The Optometrist instructed me to identify each letter by going from left and right and then row by row. First with the left eye and the right eye covered and then vice versa. “A Piece of cake, these eye exams are not so bad,” I thought.

I then wondered to myself, “Maybe people who did not learn these scrambled letters in the 2^nd grade were the ones who ended up wearing glasses.” Then the Optometrist asked me to READ what was on the exam chart with both eyes.

Now at this point in the story you may ask, “What could possibly go wrong? “

Well a lot.

You see I remember when I was young taking a flight of stairs down into the basement of the grammar school and sitting in Sr. Ascension's music class - a very diminutive nun and the school’s music teacher. She would start her class the same way by having the students warm up their throat muscles by singing a series of words up and down the scales and NOT the standard “Do, Re, Mi Fa, So La Te,” but instead “new, New, NeW, & NEW”

I can not tell you how many times I sat in that class and wondered why she would ask us students to annunciate - in rising scale no less - that her classroom was NEW. It was NOT new it was OLD, and the walls were painted robin’s egg blue, and there were big fat insulated steam pipes, waxed smelling tile floors, and in the front of the room another one of those black boards - which made a 2^nd grade boy squint while he sat in his chair behind Algae Lynch and Bobby DiMartino and 8 other more interesting characters.

Well now you can imagine the rest of the story.

When then Optometrist asked me to READ the chart with both eyes open, I thought the real exam was starting and all those letters made up words and sentences, and well, I could not READ them.

“I can not read them, I said.”

I am not sure what if any logic reasoning went on inside the head of the Optometrist after my response; for he was soon dropping fluids in my eyes to make my pupils dilate, and was fitting me for glasses. I was then given shades and then told to go home and to NOT look into the sun for I could go blind.

Oh boy was I confused. I was now one of those people who needed to wear glasses until he learned to READ those scramble letters. This was going to be rough since my dad and uncle – both geniuses – were not able to figure them out since they still wore glasses.

Well I had glasses and some dark shades and my eyes hurt and my head hurt, and I was driving back to East Baltimore with Uncle Jack in his 4-Door Black Rambler away from the “OK DONT GO BLIND CORRAL.”

Uncle Jack –who paid $20 for the glasses was not singing “Ghost Riders”, but instead something like “Get out the way oh Dan Tucker, your too late to eat your supper.”

Well a week later while still blurry eyed, I lost the glasses in some bushes. My mother and uncle were not pleased with my carelessness but for myself all I could say was:

“I can read at last, read at last, oh Lord I can read at last!”

Praying Near the Holocaust with Moses

by Susan Fox

Then a new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his subjects, “Look how numerous and powerful the Israelite people are growing, more so than we ourselves! Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase; otherwise, in time of war they to may join our enemies to fight against us, and so leave our country.” (Ex 1:8-10)

And so the new king of Egypt reduced the Israelites to slavery and ordered the midwives to kill all Hebrew boys born to Jacob’s descendants.

Thus it came about that Moses – like many unborn children today -- was marked for death at his conception. But his mother hid him for three months and then placed him in a basket on the river bank. Pharaoh’s daughter found him, and was moved with pity. She saved the life of the man who would someday save his people from slavery in Egypt, through the great Exodus.

So I stood Friday praying at an abortion death camp in Tempe, AZ. And I asked Moses to pray for the children intended to die that day and their parents.

How ironic that the Hebrew people, who were supposed to see their race exterminated, should instead see their descendants become more numerous than the stars in heaven. In fact, without a physical country for almost 2000 years and despite a new holocaust in Nazi Germany in the 1900s, the Jews have retained their cultural and religious identity to this day. Can you name any other ancient civilization that has done the same?

Then in the early 1900s, there appeared another great murderer. She had the same agenda as the Egyptian King. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and a proponent of forced eugenics, segregation, abortion and birth control, had the goal to eliminate the poor, the feeble and the mentally disabled members of our population – as if they were responsible for their own suffering. This took the form of encouraging abortion and birth control centers among the poor Irish Catholic and the black populations as well as sterilization of the mentally ill and retarded.

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…"
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood

And so I stood Friday at an office of Planned Parenthood in Tempe, AZ, on the day that the abortions are performed.

Ironically, the once-enslaved black population remains as 12.9 percent of the American population in 2000, compared to 10 percent in 1920 when Margaret Sanger began to spread her disastrous ideals. But white populations in Europe are gradually disappearing as families reproduce at less than replacement level due to abortion, birth control and the ideals espoused by Margaret Sanger.

“Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all living things that move on the earth.” (Gen 1:28) I admire the Muslims for this one thing: they are obeying God. They are raising large families. And the populations that are disobeying God in this commandment are disappearing. Germans, French, Spanish, Italians, English and Norwegians are going the way of the dinosaur. As one friend of mine, said, “Kiss your white hiney goodbye.” But it’s worse than that. Kiss goodbye to the whole of Judeo-Christian civilization in its birthplace. Islam and its populations are slowly and inexorably overtaking Europe. What they couldn’t get by war in the Middle Ages, they are taking now by family planning and immigration.

"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood

And so, with such a “progressive” goal, Margaret Sanger ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and gave birth to an abomination – a disastrous population implosion wherever her ideas take root. It is said that Hitler and Stalin killed millions, but Margaret Sanger has killed billions and the toll is still rising. Who would believe that the world would be destroyed not by global warming or an asteroid hitting the earth, but instead by the “choice” of its own miserable population, the choice to kill, the choice to die. Why doesn’t the Sci Fi Channel create this disaster movie for Saturday night television audiences?

Recently, we had little ants all over our vegetable garden in the back yard. So the guy who takes care of my bugs came by and gave me a birth control spray. I only had to spray a few ants from the colony, and within a day or two the whole population ceased to exist because they couldn’t reproduce. This is what is taking place in decades instead of days on the world scene with the widespread use of birth control. And the people disappearing aren’t just poor, ill-educated and black. They are white, well-to-do and very well educated.

And so I stood Friday at an abortion mill in Tempe, AZ, and prayed.

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn 1:14) God took on the humanity of man and was born into the world He Himself created. Yet His own people did not accept Him. Learning from the Magi where and when the Messiah had been born, King Herod “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under.” (Matt. 2:16) “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled since they were no more.” (Matt. 2:18)

50.9 million children have been killed by abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973

But behold, God sent an angel to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” (Matt. 2:13) Joseph rose and took the child and his mother that very night and departed for Egypt.

And so I stood Friday at an abortion mill started by Margaret Sanger, and prayed to St. Joseph to protect the innocents for whom Christ’s life was threatened. Jesus so closely allied Himself with these children by His conception in the womb of a human mother and His birth to a poor family. Jesus Christ was exactly the kind of child that Margaret Sanger was trying to eliminate from our population when she started Planned Parenthood.

And so on Good Friday, Jesus Christ mounted the cross and allied Himself with all innocent victims of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

Yet Jesus Christ did not mount the tree of life just to save the innocent. He came for the guilty as well. He loved them while they were still in their sins. He came like Moses to lead His people out of the slavery of sin. He came to cancel the debt of murderers like Margaret Sanger -- should they repent.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:43)

That was the voice of Our Lord and Savior interceding as He died for the abortionist and all who participate in the sin of abortion be they grandparents, father, mother or legislator.

And so on Friday, I walked and prayed on a sidewalk near an abortion mill in Tempe, AZ, with a sign that said, “His mercy is to generations and generations to them that fear him.” (Lk1:50) And I am happy to read there are only 730 abortion clinics left in the United States. There used to be 2,000. Source: Life Dynamics

A Somewhat True STory

by Lawrence Fox
Okay so I have been a little slothful lately dealing with my garden in the back yard. I excused the bare limbs and stripped leaves to the hot weather and soil neglect.
But all wishful thinking comes to an end; which brings me to the following life and death event of EXODUS proportions.
You see, one night I heard from the back yard a whispering sound – nothing mind you like the perturbations of air that Moses and Joshua heard while up on Mount Zion and upon closer scrutiny (coming down the mountain that is) found their tribal family dancing gleefully around a golden calf.
No it was a sneaky tinny song something like:
“Vegetables in the moonlight, they don’t run and so we bite….”
As I moved closer to the back door and then outdoors the words of the song became more distinct:
“Vegetables in the moonlight, they don’t run and so we bite...”
“Vegetables in the moonlight, they don’t run and so we bite..”
“Vegetables in the moonlight, they don’t run and so we bite…”
With a crescendo from 100+ SNAILS!!
“Vegetables in the ..Belch.. moonlight, they don’t .. Belch…run and so we ...Belch… bite.”
Hey these critters are singing gleefully about the denuding of my vegetable garden!
Eggplant and basil have become the golden calf for a WIGGLY TRIBE which just had their EXODUS from the Gold Canyon common area into my back yard.
Okay maybe my tribe was related to them a millions years ago but who needs new in-laws and out-laws eating for FREEE!.
Well if anyone remembers the story from Exodus, Moses ground up the golden calf and mixed it with water and made his tribe drink the contents – giving them pretty upset stomachs.
I was not so merciful and instead pulled out thee (3) full containers of MORTON SALT and sang gleefully:
“Dancing in the Moonlight, were there’s salt, snails don’t bite…”
After a couple of minutes of salting the little vermin; I heard a sound from inside the house.
It was my wife singing a different tune: “LARRY WHERE IS ALL THE SALT.”

The Lunchtime Perils of Lawrence Fox

This is a light note from Lawrence Fox:

Another Not so Embellished Lunch Story

"Names have been changed to protect the sensitive."

From time to time Mr. Ed and I have been alternately picking up the tab for lunch.

These lunch time socials have been an opportunity to first briefly exchange the formalities of life: "How is you family?", "How are you feeling?", "What did you do this weekend?" and so forth and secondly to discuss work.

In all honesty no one really shares everything about what they do during the week, let alone the weekend, but the general intent is prudently understood and responded to.

After the very brief formalities (a digression), we then regress into the issue of work; or should I say what does not work at work when there is work for which your are responsible for the work even though you did not scope the work.

Another digression is my lack of local restaurant selections - it is always the Claim Jumper since with their menus you can go pretend you at a different restaurant without having to travel to them.

But not today by golly!! We are going to do something different.

Mr. Ed says "How about Thai Food?"

I say okay but where?

We then drive off - Mr. Ed knows the way.

We head down Broadway and turn into a parking lot and park right in front of the TAILGATE BAR AND GRILL.

"Mr. Ed," I retort, "this it not THAI but TAIL -- GATE. Maybe they serve good Bumpers and Headlights?"

Mr. Ed recognizes that of yes wrong parking lot.

We head further down Broadway and pull into another Parking Lot.

There she is, the THAI LEMON TREE Restaurant.

We go in and sit down.

Mr. ED says; "The Service is VERY SLOW here."

"That is okay", I said. "it gives me more time to complain about something."

Old age and I am really trying to overcome this habit.

We get the menus from a very petite person.

Mr. Ed asks "What would you order here?"

"I have never been here (HERE) but at other Thai places I order the MASAMON (curry chicken, coconut milk, potatoes, peanuts, basil, hot peppers, onions all stewed together)."

"did I mention you can get rice." a little joke!!

Mr. Ed asks; "What should I order."

I suggest the Phad Thai. "It seems to be a staple Thai fixin'," - staple like fried chicken and french fries in the Baltimore, so I tell Mr. Ed.

We get our order, we eat and then I ask Mr. Ed what does he think about the Phad Thai?

"TOO SWEET, ALL THAI FOOD TOO SWEET AND OR TOO HOT."

"Oh I am sorry to hear that, I thought you wanted to go to a Thai Restaurant and now you say you do not like the food?"

"NO, MY WIFE TOOK ME TO THIS THAI RESTAURANT."

Moral of the story

So you see ladies, men do not even communicate well with each other.

Catholics were arrested for praying the Rosary . . . on a Catholic Campus

By Susan Fox

“I couldn't believe what was happening. Catholics were being arrested for praying the Rosary and holding Silent No More signs on a Catholic campus. It was surreal. Had my adrenaline not been pumping I would have burst into tears at the sight of it. It was then that Jane and I decided we could not leave the campus. We could not possibly leave knowing this was happening. It was necessary to stay and witness to the absurdity of it all.” (Laura Rohling, Catholic wife, mother and pro-life protester at Notre Dame University on May 17, who was among those faithful arrested that fateful day.)

My little son looked admiringly at Seattle University, a Jesuit-run “Catholic” University. “Is that where you went to college Mom?”

“Yes, James.”

“I want to go there too.”

Without thinking, I said, “Oh dear God, no James. It’s not Catholic anymore.”

He was really too young at the time to remember the incident, I could have just said something like “Oh?”

But I was tempted by the truth. Now I have read a similar testament from Laura Rohling. She is a Catholic wife and mother, who grew up with and loved the “Catholic” Notre Dame University. She hoped someday her children would go there. Then she went to pray at the school on May 17, the day the most pro-abortion American president in U.S. history, Barack Obama, received an award from the school and spoke at its commencement.

It was also the day that Laura was arrested at Notre Dame University for praying the Rosary. God bless her. You can read her story at Catholic Online http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=33713

My husband says I should explain to you that the horror of allowing Barack Obama to speak at Notre Dame was not because we wish to demonize the man. In fact, I pray for him and sincerely hope for his conversion. But 80 U.S. bishops opposed his appearance at this so-called “Catholic” University because he is using taxpayer money to pay for the killing of innocent human beings both here and abroad. He has reversed the Mexico City Policy of President Reagan and President Bush, which prevented U.S. taxpayer money from being used for abortion abroad. I know this policy worked because when I was lobbying for the pro-life cause at the United Nations during the Bush Administration, the representative from Jordan complained to me personally that his country wasn’t getting any more money from the U.S. for contraception like they did under President Clinton. You can bet they are getting it now.

Why should we pay for Jordan’s contraception? I explained to the representative from Jordan that Natural Planning was free. “No money, no doctor, just couples teaching other couples the method,” I said. And, yes, I can attest first hand that it works. That was his first shocked question.

Barach Obama also has supported embryonic stem cell research. He also wants to change President Bush’s conscience clauses, which protect American doctors and pharmacists from having to take action to end a human life. It is getting to the point that in order to practice medicine or be a pharmacist, one will have to flush his conscience down the toilet.

This means as a Catholic, I will be unable to get medical care except from people who are willing to commit murder thanks to Barack Obama. And I’m sure some day I will be one of the people they mercifully try to terminate as I am chronically ill.

Shades of Soylent Green! This is the 1973 science fiction movie about a time in the future when food is scarce and people are encouraged to commit suicide. Then they are turned into Soylent Green – the processed food that everybody eats. The secret is announced at the end of the film by one hysterical character: “Soylent Green is people! We've got to stop them somehow!”

Too late! Already two states – Washington and Oregon – have legalized euthanasia. Also the Stimulus Package signed by President Obama creates a government bureaucracy, whose job will be collect all our medical records into one vast warehouse, and then make decisions about who shall receive medical care and who shall not. Doctors who don’t go along with the government will be penalized financially. Barack Obama is the only U.S. Senator out of 100 who said he regrets his decision to vote to save the handicapped Terry Schiavo from a painful death by starvation. The courts murdered her anyway. But at least the Congress and Senate tried to stop it. Barack Obama regrets his efforts to save her.

So inviting Barack Obama to speak at Notre Dame University was a very un-Catholic thing to do. I read in the National Catholic Register that an infant cried during the president’s speech, and this was the only witness for the unborn allowed to stay for the commencement ceremony. May God forgive the University’s leaders.

I went to Seattle University in the early 1970s. I went there because they had daily Mass and I could see Christ walking its halls. But already in 1971, some of my more devout lay professors were leaving because of the change in the school’s policies.

I remember my history professor, Dr. Olsen, teaching me about the similarity between the fall of Rome and the fall of the United States. He could see it coming even in 1971. Funny, homeschooling James with Warren H. Carroll’s “The Founding of Christendom” in 2005, I taught my son the same thing. Roman citizenship was so highly valued because of the rights it bestowed on people that whole populations fought for the right to be Roman. I remembered that last week, when Chinese and Korean students at my naturopath’s office came in to treat me for mercury poisoning. These beautiful young people didn’t plan to return to China or Korea after their education. Why? U.S. laws based on natural law have been fairly enforced for two centuries. We've had the right to life, free speech, worship, the right to carry guns and if needed a trial by a jury of our peers. Marriage has been between one man and one woman. This has created one of the most prosperous nations in the world. It's no coincidence that that much vaunted prosperity is deserting us now.

But Rome fell because gradually over time the guarantees of its rule of law were eroded into dictatorship. I made James think about how the same thing was happening here. The examples are too numerous to go into here, but just think: Roe v. Wade violates the U.S. Constitution’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all. And after that, numerous Supreme Court decisions cite European law -- not the American Constitution. And in fact, the difference between a Democrat appointing a Supreme Court Judge and a Republican doing the same thing is the difference between a justice who thinks the law should be whatever he or she feels it should be and a justice who wants to fundamentally uphold the rule of law, the American Constitution, regardless of what he thinks. The American Constitution guarantees our unborn children the right to life. Have your children even read that document? Do they know the safety created by that very Constitution?

When people were arrested for peacefully saying the Rosary at Notre Dame, their rights were clearly abrogated.

So I learned that in the 1970s at Seattle University. But in the 1990s when I tried to start the Legion of Mary in the same University, we were informed by Campus ministry that the only way we could have a room to meet was if we promised never to speak about the Catholic faith on the “Catholic” campus outside the room we were to meet! The Legion of Mary is an excellent Catholic organization faithful to the Church with the charisma of evangelization.

Attention Catholic parents and alumni, it’s time to rethink where we are sending our kids for college and where we are putting our charitable donations. There may be a secular glamor associated with degrees from Notre Dame University, but if you win the world and lose your child’s soul, is it worth it?

The Shame of Notre Dame University

By Susan Fox
I am the Catholic mother of a college age son, a brilliant college age son majoring in math at Ave Maria University. He will be a senior next year.

His SAT scores could have gotten him into MIT, Harvard, Cal Tech or Notre Dame University. But he did not apply for any of those schools. And are we ever glad!

I know Catholic home-schooling mothers who sent their sons and daughters to Notre Dame University, saying that they would find a good Catholic mentor, a professor, who could tell their child what professors to trust and which ones to avoid. Therefore, by this means their children would not be wrongly educated on their faith, natural law or basic human rights.

I’m sure that many of these mothers did God’s will in this matter, and many of their children have received excellent educations, and found wonderful Catholic communities within Notre Dame. I’m sure that some of these mothers are the martyrs that we are witnessing on U Tube arrested on Sunday for attempting to pray the Rosary on the Notre Dame campus while the most pro-abortion American president in U.S. history gave the commencement address.

However, now that Notre Dame President John I. Jenkins has chosen to invite this president (Barack Obama) and give him an honorary degree, I think it’s time for Catholics to demand that Fr. Jenkins be fired immediately. And if that doesn’t take place, cease all financial support for the college. And to the Catholic Bishop of South Bend, Indiana, John D'Arcy, please take the name of the Mother of God off that school! (Notre Dame means Our Lady) Thank you, bishop, for skipping the commencement address, but frankly I think more needs to be done.
Why am I so angry? I have been watching the arrests of innocent Catholics who attempted to walk onto a private so-called “Catholic” school saying the Rosary. The worst video was watching the arrest of the 80-year-old priest, Fr. Norman Weslin. He was carrying the cross! Imagine an 80-year-old priest carrying the cross and he didn’t fight the police when they came to get them, but they still tied the poor man up and carried him away! Shame, shame, shame on Notre Dame University.

See the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiz4tfjSuPc

He sang Immaculate Mary while he was being arrested. God bless this holy witness for Jesus Christ.
On Sunday, the people arrested for trying to pray the Rosary on campus include a Who’s Who of pro-life Catholic martyrs, including Dr. Alan Keyes, an honorable pro-life black Catholic who ran against Obama for the Chicago Senate Seat and lost. Dr. Keyes also ran for U.S. president on more than one occasion, and Americans rejected the best option we’ve had for president for some time. So God has given us what we want in Barack Obama. May God help our nation.

This is the video of Dr. Keyes’s trespass warning in which he gives his reasons for wanting to enter campus during the commencement address. He rightly demands that the name Notre Dame (Our Lady) be taken from the university. Look at the face of the guy who is issuing the trespass warning. He looks miserable as he is forced to listen to Dr. Keyes instruct him in the Catholic faith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhJEkU66Z7I&NR=1


Here Dr. Alan Keyes is being arrested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc2W705UBM8&feature=related

Among those arrested was also Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973. She went through a dramatic conversion in 1995, became pro-life and joined the Catholic Church. It goes to show that prayer works as many Catholics prayed for “Jane Roe” and her conversion.

But the video that really irritated me showed that these so-called “protestors” were merely marching peacefully on the sidewalks praying the Rosary, although they did intend to enter the campus. This link will take you to a page on Obama's speech at Notre Dame But you have to look in the article and click on "Watch Police arrest anti-Obama demonstrators."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/16/obama.notre.dame/index.html

Please pray for our nation.

Ave Maria University: A hopeful alternative to Notre Dame

 By Susan Fox

Feb. 16, 2006 -- Last year, I attended a healing service at my parish. I was asked to pray for the person sitting next to me.

This happened to be my home-schooled, 17-year-old son,

who had decided to go to college and major in Mathematics. So I said to the Lord, “Please, God, help us find a good Catholic college with a Math degree.”

The next night on the internet I found Ave Maria University of Naples, Florida.

And last weekend, I visited this university at their open house. Today, I am simply marveling that such a wonderful Catholic education is available to our sons and daughters. You probably know the horror stories at other universities. One of my friends overheard a mother bragging that her husband didn’t have to send their daughter any condoms at college because the university issued 50 to each student every semester. This university happened to have an excellent Math program.

But my husband and I took our son, James, out of Catholic school when he was 9 for the very same reasons we don’t want to send him to Condom University. It’s not that we don’t trust him. But we see that James’s emotional and spiritual growth is not finished. He needs a community that will nurture him both as a unique individual and as a Catholic individual.

I think Ave Maria is such a school.

One of the AMU students told us he had the ability to play the ukulele, and people used to make fun of him for it. But when he came to Ave Maria University, they said, “Ahh, you have a talent.” That summed up the attitude I saw in every adult involved in that school.

The school’s provost, Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J. is a stunning example. The founder of Ignatius Press and a former student of Pope Benedict XVI, with whom he maintains a warm and cordial relationship, Fr. Fessio lives in a little yellow house next to the campus pool and cafeteria, a central meeting place on the temporary campus. And when he turns the light on at his house, all are welcome to knock, although we found it more likely to see him running around campus or sitting in a group with students. The other priests on campus also can be interrupted at any time in order to ask for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The temporary campus is new and small, but beautiful. The permanent campus – to be built in the center of a 10,000-acre housing and commercial development in the midst of a rural preserve -- will be ready in 2007-2008. Masses were said in the multipurpose room, but a gorgeous copper bas-relief of the crucifixion graced the wall behind the altar. And similar works of art, showing Sts. Peter and Paul, were on each side of the altar.

With regard to the liturgy, they cater to every taste, including those of charismatics, but on Sunday we attended the “festive Latin Mass.” Fr. Fessio celebrated the Mass. He explained in the sermon why all of the students at Ave Maria – even the Math majors -- are required to take Latin by reading the opening prayer of the Mass in English, and then giving us a true translation from the Latin.

The banal English of the prayer, easily ignored as irrelevant, suddenly was transformed into something quite lovely. The English translation read, “God Our Father, you have promised to remain forever with those who do what is just and right. Help us to live in your presence.” But by our own power, we don’t do “what is just and right.” And the Latin reflected this. It showed that God’s work is to help us live in holiness so that we can live in His presence. Obviously, to be Catholic in the future means to be able to read our Latin heritage.

Fr. Fessio faced the congregation during the Liturgy of the Word, but he turned his back to the congregation and directed his attention toward the East -- the rising Christ -- during the second half of the Mass. This posture is called Ad Orientum. With this posture, the priest is no longer the center of attention. God is.

Meanwhile, a group of students sitting in the back conducted the music portion of the Mass. They sang Gregorian chant and other Latin and English songs from our Catholic heritage. Everything they performed was reverent and lovely – never boring. The music actually led me to prayer instead of distracting me. Ave Maria is building a strong music curriculum. They hope they are training the future liturgists for all the parishes in the United States. If they are successful, we will see our Holy Mass in English restored to its original loveliness. They require all students to take chorus, even the Math majors. Music is part of being Catholic.

The multipurpose room on Saturday night was transformed into an Irish Festival. A curtain covered the altar, and white cloth was placed over the pictures of Peter and Paul, and the Stations of the Cross. Green shamrock lights were everywhere, and tables were set up like a dinner theatre. The University’s Irish dance club performed. Admissions Director Richard Dittus with his six home-schooled children and wife performed some of the loveliest Irish music I’ve ever heard. Priests and sisters mingled with Ave Maria students, enjoying the festivities, eating cookies and drinking punch. There was no alcohol. All were able to get up later in the evening and learn the Irish dance. It was enormous fun.



Such entertainment was not just for the open house weekend. They recently held an 19th century ball in full costume, and one of the young men told me he had enjoyed learning formal dance! The story is that Fr. Fessio ran into some of the Ave Maria students crammed into a small car on a Saturday night, and he asked them where they were going. They said, “To the movies.” He thought that was a pitiful source of entertainment. Now the university has intramural sports, drama clubs, swing dancing, a barbershop quartet, Frisbee tournaments at midnight and lots of other things for the youth to do. I asked one student if he had EWTN on the dorm television. He said, “I don’t know.” I looked at him, and said, “You don’t watch TV, do you?” No, he didn’t.

A number of young men are discerning a vocation to the priesthood. They live on the second floor of the men’s dorm with a priest in residence. They are given spiritual direction, have their own chapel and say the liturgy in common. If they decide not to become a priest, Fr. Fessio says the formation will make them excellent husbands. We met one of these, a senior at Ave Maria, who told us he had the vocation to be a friar. He said this would be an active vocation with contemplation as its basis. He was looking for a discalced (shoeless) order of Franciscans. I said, “You want to live barefoot? In an active vocation?” And he nodded.

I suddenly remembered the first 12 Franciscan missionaries, who landed at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1524 in order to convert the Aztecs to Christianity. They walked barefoot 125 miles from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, as did all their Franciscan successors for the next 250 years -- Fr. Junipero Serra among them. In fact that is how the great saint of California’s evangelization became lame. He received a poisonous bite on his foot on that first journey to Mexico City in 1749. Now in 2006, I was sitting in Florida with a young man who wanted to make the same sacrifice. “What kind of love must have pierced this young heart?” I wondered.

My husband recognized the source. Just before we came to Ave Maria, he had a dream of trees planted near water with roots growing all down their sides. These were naturally very healthy trees. The psalms and the Book of Revelation discuss such trees as an allegory for the soul who puts his roots deep into the Life of God. Nothing can disturb or harm such a tree. The trees my husband saw in his dream actually exist near the hotel we stayed at in North Naples within three miles of the temporary campus. Neither of us had ever seen such trees before, but they must be common in the Everglades – just as Eucharistic Adoration is common at AMU.

On campus, they have formed households -- smaller groups that support one another within the larger dormitory living. Joining is optional. The households’ names read like the Litany of the Saints. I could pray my way through the list. They also have the Knights of Columbus, a Philosophy Club, AMU Chastity Team, Students for Life and an outreach to the poor, and many others. And if they don’t have your favorite Catholic organization, you can start one.

James enjoyed meeting his future Math and Physics teachers. As I look over the faculty listing for Ave Maria, it seems like almost all have PhD’s from excellent universities. Both the Math and Physics teachers probably gave up good positions to come to an unaccredited new school. The Math professor said he took the job because he believed in Catholic education. My son is going to major in Math and minor in Physics, which is the basic preparation for an engineer. The teachers said by having a strong science background in his degree, he will actually have a better preparation for engineering than if he had an engineering degree. Currently, they have degrees in Economics, Politics, Biology, the Classics, History, Literature, Philosophy, Theology, Music and Mathematics. A pre-law program is formed by combining Politics, Economics and History. Pre-med is done similarly, and there is an Economics degree with a Business emphasis. Fr. Fessio said he plans to add the following bachelor’s degrees to the university: Physics and Computer Science.

But what about accreditation? Ave Maria is pre-accredited with the American Academy of Liberal Education with full accreditation expected next year. That means if you are eligible for a federal grant you can receive it now while attending AMU. The regional accreditation is expected by 2010. Last year, all 20 plus grads of the school got the jobs they wanted or got into their preferred graduate school, according to Fr. Fessio, minus one that is still undecided.

One gutsy young woman told us she had just transferred from another Catholic university in the middle of her sophomore year because she didn’t like wondering if her teachers were giving her Catholic truth or their own agenda. She was a pre-Med student. The basic courses required for Medical school are Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Math. All are offered at Ave Maria. But on top of that, this co-ed is getting a beautiful core curriculum with all the basics of our Catholic heritage: Western and American Civilization, philosophy, theology, Fine Arts and Music, natural sciences, mathematics, Sacred Doctrine, Scripture, Literature of Western Civilization and Latin. Ave Maria is unique in that it requires half of their degree credits be in liberal arts.

Asked to describe Ave Maria in just one word, a panel of students came up with this partial list: “truth,” “balanced,” “faith.” Ah, faith. That word resonated with me. It took faith for my family to apply to a university that costs $22,000 a year. Academic scholarships are available based on GPA and SAT scores. It pays to take the SAT more than once. They use your highest score regardless of whether you took it first or last. Last year, they gave out 28 academic scholarships ranging from full to partial tuition out of a Freshman class of 125. But there is no fixed number of academic scholarships. They are based solely on the individual student’s performance.

I myself went to a Catholic university in the 1970s, and I loved the daily availability of the Mass – even if it was celebrated hippie-like with our arms around each other in a circle around the altar while we sang meaningless songs about love. But nothing ever happened on that campus like what I experienced at noon on Sunday Feb. 12 in the noisy student cafeteria at Ave Maria University. A bell rang, and every single person in the room stood, faced the crucifix and with great reverence prayed the Angelus. “And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. . . And the Word was made Flesh. And dwelt among us.” Ave Maria!