When I lived in Lawrence I would often walk along a street where the people had a great devotion to political yard signs. In many of the races, I knew who to vote for…and it was not the people being endorsed on this street. Yet, whenever I had a question about a race, I would go to this street and see who’s names were in their yards. This way I could always figure out who not to vote for. If a person’s name was popular on this street, I could be just about 100% certain that the other candidate was the one I wanted.

I was reminded of this street when I read today the rather silly article that boldly claims that the papacy of Pope Benedict is now officially a failure. If the mainstream media are declaring the Pope to be a failure, I can be just about 100% certain that he is succeeding overwhelmingly. Let us pray for an end to the lies and calumny against the Holy Father, but let us also take courage that all the right people hate him.

I wonder if there is a possibility that a culture given over to all kinds of immorality would have an ulterior motive in trying to undermine the world’s only remaining moral authority. I’m just wondering.

From Catholic Culture News with my comments

In an interview published in The Washington Post, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said that as a Cabinet official she supported PresidentBarack Obama’s pledge not to make abortion funding part of health care legislation but did not give her own opinion on the subject. She also refused to say whether she is heeding Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann’s admonition not to receive Holy Communion, according to the interview transcript.

MS. ROMANO: You are pro-choice.

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: Yes.

MS. ROMANO: Do you think that the federal government should do some federal funding of abortions, personally?

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: Well, the President has made it pretty clear that Congress and the new health insurance plan will not provide federal funds for abortions.

Despite what the President may have said, multiple independent groups point out that the actual details of each of the bills that have been proposed all do in fact fund abortion. Further, every time an amendment has been proposed to specifically exclude abortion from the bill, those amendments have been voted down. So, while Sebelius can say that the President has “made it pretty clear,” if he really wanted to be clear he would state plainly that he will veto any bill that does not explicitly exclude abortion funding. In the end, that is really the only legislative power the President has; until he promises a veto he’s really not promising anything.

MS. ROMANO: Well, I know that. I was asking you what you thought.

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: I am the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I will support the President’s proposal moving forward.

MS. ROMANO: You are also a pro-choice Catholic, and I was reading some stories out of your home state recently where one of the bishops took an action. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: Well, the Archbishop in the Kansas City area did not approve of my conduct as a public official and asked that I not present myself for communion.

It is not her conduct as a public official that gets her in trouble with the Church. It is her conduct as a Catholic who creates a public scandal to other Catholics that gets her in trouble.

MS. ROMANO: What did you think about that?

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: Well, it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced in my life, and I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I feel that my actions as a parishioner are different than my actions as a public official and that the people who elected me in Kansas had a right to expect me to uphold their rights and their beliefs even if they did not have the same religious beliefs that I had. And that’s what I did: I took an oath of office and I have taken an oath of office in this job and will uphold the law.

There are two key issues here. First, she uses the the excuse that public officials can behave immorally because they are just following orders. This is no different than if the leaders of Hitler’s Nazi party were to claim that they were personally opposed to slaughtering millions of innocent people but had taken an oath to separate this private belief from their public action. If the pro-abortion politicians of today can get away with the “just following orders” defense then we owe a huge apology to a lot of people we convicted of war crimes after WWII. An unjust law is no law at all. Further, the idea that Sebelius merely upheld the law is also false. She activelyvetoed pro-life legislation passed by both houses of congress duly elected to represent the will of the people to whom she claims she is beholden. Only 7% of the American people support abortion on demand as it is currently interpreted by our courts. Clearly it is not the will of the people that is being protected here.

Secondly, most dangerous is this attempt to turn abortion into a “religious” issue. Abortion has nothing to do with the “separation of Church and state” issue as Sebelius claims. Abortion is not merely a religious issue. This is an issue of civil rights. Can we continue to deny the rights of fellow members of the human race simply because of where they are located or what functions they are capable of performing? Any atheist can come to a logical conclusion that a baby growing inside its mother is a separate and unique human being that is alive. Every medical text book states this fact. The issue is whether we will continue to deny human rights to these human persons. That is a civil issue and separate from religion although religious people would no doubt fight for civil rights. 

MS. ROMANO: Do you continue to take communion?

SECRETARY SEBELIUS: I really would prefer not to discuss with you.That’s really a personal–thank you.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City/St. Joseph have released a joint pastoral statement on health care reform. See the full text of this letter here:

Principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care Reform

One of the key issues addressed is a principle of Catholic social justice teaching known as the principle of subsidiarity.

The statement summarizes as follows:

“Subsidiarity is that principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives. (See: Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, ## 185ff.; Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1883) The writings of recent Popes have warned that the neglect of subsidiarity can lead to an excessive centralization of human services, which in turn leads to excessive costs, and loss of personal responsibility and quality of care.”

The Catholic social justice principle of respect for the dignity of each human person rightly causes us to advocate for health care for all, as our bishops strongly support. However, the principle of subsidiarity not only allows but even encourages us to be very afraid of the idea of the government running our health care system. The entire Catholic hospital system was established under the principle of subsidiarity. Individual people and communities see a need and do something about it. You don’t wait for or expect that someone else, especially the government, will come in and do it for you.

Today, we not only expect that the government will fix all our problems, but we have the sad delusion that somehow only the government could really do the best job. It is too often the case that we have lost a sense of solidarity and community with those around us and no longer take personal responsibility for ourselves, yet alone our neighbor. We need health care reform, but more than that we need reform in personal responsibility.

There is no magic government money tree to fund stimulus packages, bailouts, cash for clunkers, or any other spending program. The government has no money; it has only your money and my money. Further, the government has no power other than what has been entrusted to it by the people through the constitution. The founding fathers were terrified of a large central government. Partly, they had pride in taking care of themselves and didn’t want to be dependent on anyone else. More importantly, they knew from experience that power ultimately corrupts. At best, they didn’t want some big central bureaucracy making decisions for them that were better made closer to home. Thus we find the principle of subsidiarity in the framework of our government.

Nowhere in constitution did we ever give the government the power to take over the health care industry. We all need to look for solutions to how we can have affordable health care for all, but the government is not the answer. You and I are the answer. That is the principle of subsidiarity.

This past weekend’s funeral Mass for Sen. Edward Kennedy has been the cause of scandal for many people, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

Many question whether or not Sen. Kennedy should have been given the “honor” of a Catholic funeral. Given that no lawmaker ever did more to champion the cause of abortion on demand than Sen. Kennedy, it is understandable that people would be concerned that he would not be eligible for a Catholic funeral. If he had not repented from his position this would in fact be the case. However, the Church allows that, if one repents at the end of one’s life, he or she is entitled to Christian burial. It appears that Sen. Kennedy did call for a priest at the end of his life and did receive the sacraments. While this is certainly not the public repentance demanded by the very public sins of his life, the Church is very lenient and errs on the side of mercy if there exists even minimal evidence of “repentance.” I therefore concur with notable canon lawyer Ed Peters that Sen. Kennedy was entitled to a Catholic funeral Mass (go here for detailed information why).

That having been said, I do believe that the funeral Mass was a huge scandal. The reason the Church is lenient in allowing Christian burial for even minimally repentant public sinners is precisely because the central purpose of the funeral Mass is to implore God’s mercy for the deceased. To a point, you could say the bigger the sinner, the more appropriate a funeral Mass would be. Having a funeral Mass is in not intended to “honor” the person. The sadness of this particular funeral was that someone who very much needed our prayers instead received only praise. Tragically, the uncharitable pretended ignorance of the man’s grave sins cost him the one thing that could have really helped him, the potential prayers of thousands.

Perhaps the most serious scandal of this funeral Mass was that all this praise being heaped upon Sen. Kennedy was really not for him at all. The real purpose of so much show and ceremony was to provide reassurance to all those Catholics who, like Kennedy, reject the teaching authority of the Church. Can you still be a “good Catholic” and be in favor of abortion? Apparently. To the average person, here was “the Church” heaping countless praises upon the champion of abortion, homosexual activity, and scores of other moral outrages that the Church is supposedly against. What clearer teaching could there be? Actions speak louder than words.

Again, I am not saying that there shouldn’t have been a funeral Mass. I even think it should have been every bit as big and public as it was. I just wish it would have actually been a Catholic funeral Mass. What took place in Boston this weekend was a secular funeral shoved into a Catholic church. I actually hoped that the Cardinal would in fact preach and would use well the “teachable moment.” So many so-called Catholic politicians are leading lives in the same disastrous state as Sen. Kennedy. Here was a perfect opportunity to truly exercise the “care of souls” in an urgently needed way. Instead, more fuel was added to the already blazing scandal of Catholics in political life.

Might I suggest that much of the scandal of this weekend would have been avoided if an actual Catholic funeral Mass would have been celebrated according to the instructions for such a Mass. As I said, the central focus of the Mass is to pray for mercy upon the deceased. This is done with time-honored prayers and chants. The one thing that is not at all characteristic of a Catholic funeral is a speech. The Mass is for prayer, not making speeches, eulogies, remembrances, or whatever else you want to throw in. The instructions for the funeral Mass are clear:

“At the funeral Mass there should, as a rule, be a short homily, but never a eulogy of any kind.” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal #382)

Why were there not just one, but three eulogies at this so-called “funeral Mass?” Why were the General Intercessions perverted into political statements quoted from political speeches? The list of abuses goes on and on. If you just follow the instructions for Mass, most of what took place this weekend would not have happened.

The ancient counsel of the Church is evident here; lex orandi, lex credendi- the way we pray reflects and shapes what we believe. The manner of prayer this weekend (if you could call it prayer) clearly states that we believe that the good deeds done in life are sufficient to outweigh any sins, no matter how great and, most tragically, that the dead do not need our prayers. That is obviously what the people assembled in Boston believed as evidenced by how they prayed. The final scandal is to think about how people might have been helped to believe correctly if they had just prayed correctly.

May the soul of Edward Kennedy and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

I recently had the honor of being invited to give the keynote address to the annual Kansas Legislative Pro-Life Prayer breakfast. This is a gathering of all the pro-life senators and representatives from Kansas as well as many other guests. There were several hundred people filling the Sunflower Ball Room at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Topeka, including Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts. I used some of my text from the homily I gave for the Mass for Life below, but here is the “live” video version of the address if you are interested. It really is amazing how God can place just a baby priest like me in this kind of situation. Praise the Holy Spirit!

Podcast: Play in new window - Download (Duration: 21:56 — 81.1MB)

Following is the text of the homily I gave at the annual Mass for Life held in Topeka on the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade. The Mass was held at Assumption Catholic Church across from the state capitol and judicial center where a large March for Life and rally had just concluded.

Mass for Life – January 22, 2009

My name is Fr. Shawn Tunink and I am the Associate Pastor at Most Pure Heart of Mary parish here in Topeka and also the chaplain at Hayden High School here. I’d like to welcome both those here from Topeka and especially those who have joined us from all across our great state of Kansas. Know that there are many others who would like to be here. Due to the limited space here, most of the students from Hayden and our grade schools have returned to school.

Although the walls of our church limit the numbers physically present, we gather here mindful that we do so in solidarity with many others. In parish churches and cathedrals all across the country today we gather to pray. Our thoughts and prayers are with our brothers and sisters who at this very moment are marching for life in Washington, D.C. The March for Life West Coast will soon be taking place in San Francisco. We join with those gathered in state capitols and government offices across the country.  In the face of evil, one of the most important things we can do is to gather together to pray. Today, we most certainly are aware that we are not alone.

Our gathering today is one of mixed emotions. In the yearly cycle of celebrations on our church calendar, surely this is a day that we wish we did not have to commemorate. Yet, the spirit of this day is one of hope, and not merely a worldly hope or wish that somehow things would be different. It is a hope informed by our faith and centered in the love of God.

I remember being in Washington eight years ago for a different presidential inauguration. On that day many people were saying that there was now a great hope for the pro-life movement. In the previous years we had gathered in front of the White House knowing that the man inside would veto any meager pro-life legislation we might try to pass. Then, on that day, we had hope that the newly inaugurated president was one of us. We felt a renewed sense of optimism that we had an ally in the White House. This largely proved to be true over the last 8 years.

Today, our new president is undoubtedly the most pro-abortion president in history, and people are tempted to lose hope. In the face of legislation that could wipe out all the modest advances in pro-life legislation we’ve passed over the last 36 years, we might be tempted to lose hope. The lesson here is that we must not judge our success by what legislation we are able to pass. We must not put our hope in whoever the latest president might be, and we can never hope for an earthly Supreme Court to render the justice only God can give. Despite all of the clouds that gather around us we most surely gather in great hope today, for our hope is centered not on the things of this earth, but in God, a God who is faithful and assures us the victory.

On this day especially the pro-abortion forces look at us and ask, “Why are you still here? Don’t you know that this issue has been decided? It’s been 36 years, when are you going to go away?” Yet as we look around our church today and at the rallies here and across the country, we are encouraged by so many young faces. There are many here that have been fighting this battle for 36 years now and I’m sure it brings them great joy to see all of you young people here today. No, we’re not going anywhere. For those who have carried the touch these many years and continue to do so, we are thankful. For those students here for the first time, this torch is being passed to you and you give us great hope.

Those who favor abortion are indeed eager to see us give up. They are puzzled by the fact that we continue to fight so strongly and think they can end the debate by telling us simply, “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.” We don’t have to go back too far in our nation’s history to arrive at the time when many people claimed “If you are opposed to owning slaves, then don’t own one.” That answer was not acceptable then, and it is not acceptable now. It was not hard to reason that if some people were only acknowledged to be 3/5ths of a person then our country could not last. Our Kansas “free state” ancestors knew the stakes were high and they were willing to go to war rather than quietly allow the country to self-destruct.

Today, we are met with claims that some people are even less than 3/5ths of a person; some people are not people at all. Or worse, maybe they really are people, but we should have the right to kill them anyway because they are inconvenient or unwanted…sadly oftentimes just…not useful. In the 1860’s they realized that, as sad as it was to think about the prospect of spilling American blood on our soil, it was worth going to war to save the nation. It was not enough to be personally opposed to slavery. The 3/5ths compromise did not bring peace then nor will compromise with evil bring peace now.

And so we must fight. Sadly, today we need not contemplate the future possibility of the shedding of American blood on American soil, for the blood of 50 million innocent children already stains our land and continues to flow. Rather than a future possibility, this is the sad present reality, and it is for this reason that we fight. We are at war to save our souls, the souls of our children and the soul of our nation. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We are now met on a great battlefield of that war, testing whether this nation or any other nation can long endure.” We are here because we love our country and it is worth fighting for.

Yet, it is impossible to love our country if we fail to love our brothers and sisters. For that reason we are here today to pray for the innocent children in danger of abortion. We are here today to stand up for women who have been victimized by the abortion industry. We are here today in solidarity with our elderly brothers and sisters who are suffering at the end of their lives and see no reason to live. We are here today to pray for inmates on death row. We are here today to appeal to scientists and doctors not to use their God-given talents to destroy the very lives they should be trying to save. We are here today to tell our elected officials that no legislation that removes the freedom of choice for people of conscience to object to abortion, or removes the freedom of choice for parents to be involved in the lives of their teenage daughters, or that forces tax payers to fund the murder of children…we are here today to say that no such legislation could ever be called a “freedom of choice act” and is not worthy to even be spoken of in the hallowed halls of our capitol.

Most importantly, we are here today because we love God and we know that this is a war that we cannot win on our own. This is a war whose first shots were fired when Satan chose to use his freedom to tell God, “I will not serve.” The battle over abortion is just the latest battle in the ongoing war of the kingdom of God verses the kingdom of Satan. St. Paul reminds us that our fight is not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers. Therefore our weapons must be those of prayer and fasting, humility, and most importantly…love. We fight with love. Only the God who is love can overcome the cycle of fear, hate, and death in which we are now trapped. If we fight through, with, and in his love, there is no doubt who wins this war in the end.

In scripture we read that our Israelite ancestors, in order to purge themselves of the collective sin of their community, would gather each year and symbolically lay the guilt of all onto a goat which they would then drive out into the desert, the so-called “scapegoat.” Today we gather in similar fashion to do penance for the sins of our nation and seek to drive the sin of abortion far away from our land. We may have no goat with us today on which to lay this guilt, but we have something better. We have the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of not just our nation, but the sins of the world.

The book of Revelation sings about this lamb and it is filled with hymns of victory. The lamb is victorious over sin and death. Today, although we are indeed met on a great battlefield of this ongoing war, we are also here to remind ourselves that we are the winners. We are here to claim victory! Although the final victory still awaits us, in the timelessness of the Eucharistic sacrifice which we are about to offer, we join the angels and saints as they sing their hymn of victory with the lamb. We join with St. Michael and all the holy angels as they celebrate their victory over the angels of darkness. And yes, we join with the souls of all the victims of abortion who stand around the throne and urge us on in the fight, that one day we might join them.

Often war seems to bring out the worst in people. But as we have said, this is a different kind of war. Whenever we in the pro-life movement gather you cannot help but notice that there you will find love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…as our 8th graders could probably tell you…all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. To confront the evil spirit that we must battle, we need the Holy Spirit.

To wherever there is darkness, confusion and death, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To wherever there is fear and doubt, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To wherever women are alone and feel they have no choice, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To homes and families broken by abortion, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the bedside of the suffering and dying, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the laboratories of scientists who would experiment with life, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the halls of justice near death row, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To Wichita and all cities stained with the blood of the abortion mills, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To doctors who have forgotten what it means to be instruments of healing, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the halls of our legislatures, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To our Supreme Court buildings, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the office of our governor and the oval office, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the hearts of all men and women whose hearts are hardened against life, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit
To the hearts of all who long to see the day when life will be victorious, we pray…Come, Holy Spirit

Almighty God, this battle is one that we cannot and do not fight alone. We need your help and healing. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth. May it be so. Amen

One of the most famous lines from the Declaration of Independence includes the following familiar words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In yesterday’s inaugural address, President Obama restated the text this way:

“The time has come to…carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

Though subtle, there are major differences between these two citations that I think tell us some very important things about our new President, but also about the spirit of the age in which we live.

1. In the Declaration the principles being affirmed are called self-evident truths. Notice that there is no mention of truth in the President’s restatement. Instead, we have a “noble idea.” Self-evident truth implies an objective reality that is clearly known by all. An “idea” exists in subjective reality. It is not self-evident and true in itself. Rather it must be “passed on from generation to generation” to be accepted or rejected as people see fit.
2. In the Declaration we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. In the rewrite there are no rights that are given by a higher power. Rather what is given is a “promise” that we already are equal, free etc. We need to really look hard at the differences between the two texts here because they show some very critical differences in world views.

   For one thing, notice that the idea of a Creator is removed from the rewrite. If we are created then this implies that we are inferior to and dependent upon the one who created us. It is much more comfortable for our modern independent mindset to reduce the Creator down to “God” who can remain as a distant and merely observing power.

   Look carefully also at the difference between a “right” and a “promise.” The Declaration says we have rights that are inherent in our creation. This is a statement of fact that does not depend on anyone’s opinion. What does it even mean to say that God would “promise” that “all are equal?” Notice the omission again of the notion of creation. Either people are inherently equal or they are not; either they have rites or they don’t. There is no such thing as a “promise” of truth.

3. Finally, let’s compare the lists of rights/promises:

   Declaration – “All men are created equal” / Obama - ”All are equal”
   Declaration – “Liberty” / Obama – “All are free”
   Declaration – “Pursuit of happiness” / Obama “…pursue their full measure of happiness”

   Let’s see…equality…liberty…pursuit of happiness…
   What’s missing?

   The right to LIFE!

Don’t think that the changes made in President Obama’s rewrite of the Declaration of Independence were done casually. Each change reflects a diliberate rejection of the world view espoused by the founders. Most especially, don’t think for one minute that the right to life was accidentally left off the list of “promises.”