R. J. Grigaitis

How can a person be taken seriously on an issue when he is too afraid to say what he is actually taking a stand for or against? Compare these two ads:

If I was is favour of something evil, I wouldn’t want to tell anyone what that actual evil was either.

The story about the first ad can be found here:
http://www.lifenews.com/nat5961.html

The term pro-choice is misleading and inaccurate. Those that say they are pro-choice are not really pro-choice. It may sound good, but being totally pro-choice is absurd. There are some choices that should not be allowed. No one should be given the choice of driving 200 km/h or 30 km/h (remember, I’m Canadian) in a school zone, especially when kindergarten is letting out. No one should be given the choice of stealing a $40,000 car or paying for it. No one should be given the choice of killing a person, whether that person is an abortion practitioner  or a fetus (the word fetus, by the way, is Latin for “young one”).

Even more misleading is the use of the term anti-choice instead of pro-life. Those that say they are pro-life are not anti-choice. There are many choices that should be allowed. Everyone should have the choice of fair-trade chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla (even if you’re allergic, wouldn’t it be nice to have the choice?). Parents should have a choice of names for their children. Everyone should have a choice of religion.

Even when it comes to abortion, many of those that say they are pro-choice are not really pro-choice. It seems those in the abortion business are doing everything they can so women who have an unplanned pregnancy do not have an informed choice. They lie about the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. They lie about the pain that a fetus feels during an abortion. And, they lie about the psychological damage abortion does to the woman. As well, Canadians do not have a choice in financially supporting abortion with their tax money.

No one is pro-choice, so stop using the term. If you’re pro-abortion, call yourself “pro-abortion.” If you’re afraid to, it only goes to prove that there is something wrong with abortion.

There are some men that have “left” the priesthood so they could marry, only to be later confronted with news of married clergy from other churches entering the Roman Catholic Church and being ordained to the priesthood. They feel they have been done an injustice because they had to “give up” the priesthood to marry, and here married men have become priests without giving up their marriage. To some, this looks like a double standard.

The first mistake these men make is that they never left or gave up the priesthood. The Sacrament of Holy Orders, like Baptism and Confirmation, is unrepeatable and permanent. What they did leave or give up was their vow of celibacy. Being released from this vow came with the serious consequence of not being allowed to normally exercise their priesthood. I’ve explained this in a previous post (http://blog.grigaitis.net/2009/04/married-clergy/).

The second mistake these men make is in seeing a similarity between their situation and the situation of married men coming into the Roman Catholic Church and being ordained as priests. The main difference is that celibate clergy have taken a vow of celibacy, and married clergy have not. If the wife of a married priest dies, the priest must remain celibate. He would be in the same situation as a priest that took a vow of celibacy before ordination. A widowed priest can also petition the Church to release him from his vow of celibacy and allow him to remarry, in which case he would suffer the same consequence of not being allowed to normally exercise his priesthood.

This is not a matter of a double standard but an example of compassion on the part of the Church towards those coming from a different tradition in which mandatory clerical celibacy is not the norm. It must be remembered that it is a norm and not a doctrine. It is possible, although very unlikely, that the Church return to the original norm of clerical celibacy being optional. However, all bishops, priests, and deacons that took a vow of celibacy before ordination will be expected to keep that vow. As well, widowed clerics would also be expected to remain celibate.

Celibate priests that give up their vow of celibacy and marry are not allowed to normally exercise their priesthood. Married men that become priests and have not taken a vow of celibacy are obviously not in the same situation.

or if you’re Eastern Rite, Happy Theophany
or if you’re on the Julian calendar, Merry Christmas
or if your bishop thinks Epiphany shouldn’t be on a weekday, Happy Wednesday After Epiphany

I celebrated Epiphany twice this year, both times in the Roman Rite, and both times in my home diocese. On the 3rd I assisted at Sunday Epiphany Mass at my local parish, and today I assisted at an FSSP Epiphany Mass. FSSP is for Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri (Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter). If you want to know more about the FSSP, visit their website: http://fssp.org

Why do some Roman Catholics celebrate Epiphany on the Sunday between January 2nd and 8th, and some Roman Catholics celebrate Epiphany on the actual feast of Epiphany? I guess you’ll have to ask the men who made this option available to Roman bishops in 1969.

What if they did the same thing for Christmas? Would more people come to Christmas Eve Mass if it were on the Saturday night between December 20th and 26th? Would Santa Clause know which house to go to on the Sunday and which house to go to on the 25th? What if the family isn’t Catholic, or even Christian? Which day should Santa visit? What if a family does on Christmas what I did this Epiphany? Would Santa visit their house twice?

These are some deep theological questions that make my head hurt. I wonder if their heads hurt in 1969?

This video is an update on the Obama Admits He Is A Muslim blog entry.

Something inside me snapped a couple weeks ago. I saw this great big lit up sign in my hometown that said, “Season’s Greetings.” Immediately the design for the button to the left came into my mind. It’s not “Season’s Greetings,” but “Merry Christmas.” And, Christmas is short for “Christ’s Mass” or “Christ Mass.” We celebrate the coming of Christ with Mass. Click on the image to get your own “Merry Christ Mass” button.

Personally, I believe that Obama will go down in history as the president that did the most damage to America; however, other than bowing to a Muslim king, this video exposes none of the actual harm he has done. Not only does Obama not admit that he is a Muslim in this video, no evidence is given to prove that he is. Much is implied, but nothing is proven.

Being able to speak perfect Arabic does not make one a Muslim. I’ll give you four examples of prominent Catholics that speak Arabic: Jean Benjamin Sleiman, Roman Archbishop of Baghdad; Emmanuel Dabbaghian, Armenian Archbishop of Baghdad; Athanase Matti Shaba Matoka, Syrian Archbishop of Baghdad; and, Emmanuel III Delly, Chaldean Archbishop of Baghdad and Patriarch of Babylon. Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly was elevated to cardinal on November 24, 2007, so not only could he vote for our next pope, he could be our next pope.

Everything that Obama says to praise and glorify Islam is true. Much of what he says has also been said by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The people that deny the debt we have to Islamic culture are usually the same people that deny the debt we have to Catholic culture.

Visiting a mosque does not make one a Muslim. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have visited mosques. If Obama was a practicing Muslim, wouldn’t he be visiting a mosque every Friday? All practicing Catholics visit a church most, if not every, Sunday. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be practicing Catholics.

Obama may be a Muslim; however, it seems he hasn’t actually admitted to being one yet. He may also be right that America is not at war with Islam, but a large part of Islam is at war with America. If Obama decides that he is Muslim, will his loyalties lie with America, or the part of Islam that is at war with America?

November 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Supporters of Linda Gibbons are disseminating the following information to encourage support for the Canadian pro-life sidewalk counsellor:

Linda Gibbons has been a “common criminal” for many years now.  For fifteen years, since 1994, this grandmother has been in and out of Ontario prisons. Her totally accumulated jail time is seven years.  What is her crime?  Linda prayerfully and quietly witnesses in front of Ontario abortion clinics, in violation of an unjust “bubble zone” law.

This past session has been particularly onerous – she has been behind bars since last January, and this will be her second consecutive Christmas in jail.

Please consider sending Linda a Christmas card this year.  She will be encouraged and uplifted by your thoughtfulness. To maximize the effectiveness of this initiative, why not talk to your pastor and see if you can put this message in your church bulletin?  Why not pass this message along to family and friends?

Her address is:

Attention: Linda Gibbons
Vanier Center for Women
655 Martin Street, Box 1040
Milton, Ontario  L9T 5E6

There are some mailing guidelines because the Detention Centre mailing department reads everything sent to the inmates:

1. Don’t use stickers (address, return address, pro-life) on the envelope or card.
2. Don’t send any laminated cards, bookmarks, prayer cards, pro-life pamphlets. Non-laminated items will get to her.
3. Don’t ask direct questions about daily activity of the detention centre.
4. Put your address directly in the card or letter. (Sometimes the mail sorter keeps the envelope and Linda feels badly if she can’t write back.)
5. If you would like to send a little monetary gift to Linda it must be a money order made out to “Linda Gibbons.” The detention centre will deposit the money directly to her account. She uses any donations for envelopes and stamps.
6. Many people add a variety of Christian reading material in their mailings to her. She often shares articles with others in the Centre. She can receive pro-life material that show the development of the baby but not post abortion photos. She can’t receive books. Try to stick to one or two pages of reading materials or pamphlets.

I left a lengthy comment on Sr. Anne Flanagan’s blog for the Chicago Tribune concerning the morality of IVF. She wrote a very good article, and I simply answered a negative comment that was posted on it. You can read it here.

I find it a little strange that there was only one negative comment (unless I missed the other[s]), and that it happened to be the very first comment.

I’ve been running Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard for 10 days, and I’m really looking forward to OS X 10.6.2. I’ve noticed a couple of bug fixes since OS X 10.5  and there have been a few nice user interface changes; however, the bugs that have been introduced in this ‘upgrade’ are very disappointing, and, I’m sure, very embarrassing for Apple. As well, I had to do a lot of work to get everything working the way I like it once again.

Summary:

• All ‘VirtualHost’ entries get deleted in httpd-vhosts.conf. I believe this is because Apache was automatically upgraded, and the original conf files got overwritten.
• Automatic upgrade to PHP 5.3, which has deprecated some functions. If you use them, you now get a warning. This is a good thing, but it meant a little code rewriting.
• No longer have to copy mysql.sock from /tmp/ to /var/mysql/ to get MySQL to work.
• QuickTime Player 10.0 is nice, but has no Preferences, so you can’t set it to automatically play movies when opened. Have to use Terminal command or script (watch video below). Download and use the following scripts:
  • QuickTimeAutoOn.sh
  • QuickTimeAutoOff.sh
• Dictionary opens a new window for every word it looks up. Cannot change this inPreferences. Have to use Terminal command or script (watch video below). Download and use the following scripts:
  • DictOneWindow.sh
  • DictMultiWindow.sh
• iCal and Address Book don’t sync with old 30GB iPod. Must perform manual work around (watch video below). [FIXED]
• Sometimes iTune locks up entire computer while downloading. Have to do a cold boot. This is a very major BUG.
• Various application unexpectedly close for no apparent reason (Flow is the only one that used to do this, but it’s been fixed a number of months ago).
• ‘Stop Speaking’ now works.
• Can now print Address Book to Adobe Acrobat virtual printer.
• Things look a little cooler, but nothing really major. The computer may run faster, but I haven’t really noticed.
• 1Password 3 is really cool. Beta is really stable; more so than Snow Leopard.
• Plea to Mozilla: Have Firefox use Mac OS system Dictionary.

I spent $35 CAD for the Snow Leopard upgrade, $23 for the 1Password upgrade (worth it), and $45 for the Parallels upgrade (4.0) followed by another $58 Parallels upgrade (5.0) (It runs Windows a lot faster, and there’s a lot of really cool features, but the $45 for version 4.0 was a waste of money).  Other than the great 1Password improvements, I got a few minor bug fixes, very few improvement that affect me, difficulty configuring stuff, and some major bugs. I hope the next upgrade comes soon, and it better be free.

My verdict: this Snow Leopard is wounded.

Sync iCal and Address Book with old iPod and iTunes 9 [This has been FIXED]

Automatically play movies in QuickTime Player 10.0

• QuickTimeAutoOn.sh
• QuickTimeAutoOff.sh

Keep only one window open in Dictionary

• DictOneWindow.sh
• DictMultiWindow.sh