Thursday, January 14, 2010

Bishop Soto Declares Day of Penance: January 22nd

I was interested to see the headline "Bishop Soto Declares Day of Penance" when I arrived at CalCatholic.com this morning. The article is basically the bulletin insert for our diocese this week. It reads:

PLEASE INSERT THIS IN YOUR PARISH BULLETIN AND ANNOUNCE AT SUNDAY MASSES
The Sacramento Helpers of God’s Precious Infants invite the community to participate in our “Candlelight Prayer Vigil for Life” on Friday, January 22, 2010 from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. in reparation for the tragedy of abortion and the Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision. We will meet at the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood located at (201 29th Street) in Sacramento, California. We will pray the Angelus, Holy Rosary and sing Marian hymns. Bishop Jaime Soto has declared this a day of penance, so let us make a small sacrifice to come out and pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Please call Elizabeth Pierini at (916) 813-8269 for more information or visit: www.sacramentohelpers.org.
After looking around the diocese website I found this: January pro-life events planned in Sacramento, San Francisco.
The Mass in reparation for the sin of abortion is held annually to mark the date of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton which legalized abortion...

Bishop Soto has invited Catholics in the diocese as well as all people of good will to join together for fasting, abstinence, prayer and works of charity on Jan. 22 as day of reparation for “the sinful national scourge of abortion.”
I've been reading more and more positive things about our Bishop this week. I stumbled across quite a few people protesting a wonderfully courageous speech he made about Chastity a couple of years ago when I googled him. Maybe we will have a Bishop of the Week from California before too long.

Now if only he'd stand up to the California Bishops whose idea it was to make that "statement of support" for those ridiculous women religious who are attempting to rally against the Vatican a few weeks ago (as I learn more about him I'm really hoping he wasn't one of the Bishops that had that brilliant idea).

9 comments:

  1. Mahony has a stranglehold on the Bishops' in Ca...

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  2. You do know that the California Catholic Conference is a group of lay people?

    They mostly work at keeping tabs on whatever moral evil the wretched state legislature is hatching at any given time on behalf of the bishops of California. (You might also be interested in Archbishop Niederaur's statement that's up on their homepage at the moment: cacatholic.org .)

    Also, you do know that Apostolic Visitation of Women Religious (http://apostolicvisitation.org/en/news/resources/InstrumentumLaboris.pdf) is a separate enterprise from the doctrinal investigation of the LCWR (which is a particular leadership organization that only some orders belong to- here's something from Iggy Press on the LCWR investigation: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/09/pounding-the-table-lcwr-leadership-continues-opposition-to-the-vatican.html)?

    As the CA bishops statement is merely in support of "Women Religious", I think it is entirely innocuous... (after all, the Norbertine Sisters in southern CA are "Women Religious" as are the lovely Carmelites at Christo Rey in San Francisco...)

    This is not to say that I could defend much of anything that Cardinal Mahoney (for example) has done, but I don't think it's a good idea to be to quick to judge our bishops.

    I continue to make myself a popular person on your blog ;)

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  3. Sorry, I need to correct my earlier comment-

    I guess that the Norbertines and Carmelites are not affected by the Visitation because they are both cloistered.

    However, the Visitation is indeed separate from the doctrinal investigation of the LCWR (and has a different character.) Here's a better link clarifying the two: http://www.apostolicvisitation.org/en/other/faqs.html

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  4. We have a march that ends at a cemetary with prayer and things. I've never gone. They hold it every year.

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  5. Oh, side thought. How are you feeling? I know you said that you get morning sickness. You must be starting to get past that.

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  6. Hi Joe-

    I thought about your blog the other day when we were working in the office at our Church and the topic of the Bishops and the elimination of January 1st as a holy day in California came up and one of the first things I thought was "it could be much worse, at least Mahony isn't our Bishop..." I think you're right though... whenever I see things that upset me and they are labeled as being from the "California Bishops" they're usually followed by a statement or speech by Mahony. It must drive you crazy...

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  7. Hi Pereginator-
    I wish that it was a group of lay people that made the statement of support, but everything that I've read on it says that the California Catholic Bishops voted at the end of the last meeting to make a statement of support and that this was followed by a speech by Mahony. Here's one of the many articles about it:

    http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=b0572562-467d-4a9a-b0b5-8003982e5b4d

    I am sure that most of the women religious out there are wonderful and committed to the Church and their vows. But there's also a very vocal segment that is talking about the "violence" and "abuse" of the Church in this investigation and I feel like making a statement of support about the visitation validates that insanity.

    Thank you so much for the link! I went to their facebook group from the site and there are so many great comments from nuns who are excited and happy about the visitation! It's nice to hear the other side of it for a change and to hear a positive reaction to the visitation.

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  8. Hi Delta Flute-

    I've never gone either. I've wanted to the last two years, but I wouldn't want to bring the little one unless Paul was with me and he always starts school back up on that particular weekend following winter break.

    The morning sickness is almost totally gone. It lasted a little longer than I expected it to this time, but it was much less intense. And I'm so excited to finally have regained my appetite. For a while food just didn't sound good most of the time.

    Prayers for you and your family! You're almost there! You'll be holding your little one in your arms before you know it! How exciting!

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  9. There is a short video highlight of this candlelight prayer vigil that you can view on the Sacramento Helpers' website or by visiting YouTube and doing a search for sacramentohelpers.

    Thank you for your coverage of this event.

    Ed Pierini
    a Helper of God's Precious Infants

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