CATHOLIC KENTUCKY Western Kentucky Catholic, 600 Locust Street, Owensboro, Kentucky 42301
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WESTERN CATHOLIC KENTUCKY Western Kentucky Catholic, 600 Locust Street, Owensboro, Kentucky 42301 Volume 36, Number 3, March, 2009 Change Service Jesus Never Turns Anyone Away Who Comes To Him Requested OWENSBORO,Ky. - On January 22, est form of Catholic Church work, prayer, in government, prayer is the Church’s most 2009, the Diocesan Gospel of Life Com- and worship, the Mass. It is at Mass that effective way to correct the wrong. mittee sponsored a commemoration, a Catholics can be the most effective in bat- A highlight of the Jan. 22, 2009 dioc- marking of the passage of 36 years of the tling spiritual enemies such as those which esan commemoration of the Roe v Wade tempt expectant parents to abort the life decision legalizing abortion in the USA, U.S. Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Owensboro, KY Permit No. 111 Nonprofit Org. Wade. Though not a celebration of the Roe of the child they, with God, have created. Father Richard Meredith’s homily inspired U.S. Postage When humankind’s spiritual enemies suc- the assembly to continue the good fight to 42301 v. Wade decision, the commemoration was Paid contained within a celebration of the high- ceed at prompting bad laws to be executed end legalized abortion in this country: January 22, 2009 Homily by Rev. Richard Meredith, Pastor Saint Pius Tenth Church, Owensboro On this 36th anniversary of the U.S. are final, we are, each generation in turn, murder, one of history’s most continuous Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. enlisted in a spiritual battle for the very themes. The “one flesh” union of man and Our Bishops have mandated that “this heart and soul of the human race, with woman was the serpent’s point of attack day shall be observed in all dioceses of eternal consequences. to undermine and destroy that which as it had become hellishly horrible in our the United States as a particular day of Consider the treasure over which the was created in the image and likeness of hands. But in God’s hands it still became penance for violations to the dignity of the battle is waged. I am awed by the miracle God on earth. Death, the inherent conse- our cure as God raised the Son, one flesh human person committed through acts of of human life. In the first moments of quence of sin, was taken to be and was and one Spirit with us, making death work abortion, and a day of prayer for the full our personal existence, each of us was experienced as a punishment, but in the backwards now from the very source of restoration of the legal guarantee of the about the size of a period at the end of hands of God, who is love, was crafted to Life. right to life.” a sentence. Only with the advent of the be, however terrible, our cure. The very Before the Father’s throne Jesus We gather for Mass on this day of microscope was this wonder told. Each Son of God in divine freedom chose to Christ leads the spiritual battle against prayer and penance as a new political advance of embryological science has join us so as to take the cure himself, for the tyranny of sin and death by pleading crisis brews in our nation’s capital. Shift- only furthered my awe at such sophisti- the therapy would not be complete until mercy on our behalf. The Crucified and ing political alliances riding the wave cated complexity in such a small living Resurrection stepped through the door of Risen Lord, also always with us, calls us of historic aspirations threaten to erase parcel. And while I abhor the quest to cre- death. to his healing, to embrace the cross in his thirty-six years of hard-won progress ate and kill our tiniest embryonic siblings According to Scripture, the very image, for him to doctor us on this pass- to diminish the destruction wrought by to cannibalize their parts, i.e., their stem first human death was a murder. While ing earth. He teaches us to release our judicial fiat in 1973. Those who hold cells, I too appreciate the magnificent the serpent had disappeared from the grasping hands trained by lust and drop to the sacredness of every human life, potency of these tiniest structures of our scene, it sought to horrify the plan of our pretenses to be gods, false lords of especially the innocent life of the human earliest cellular bodies. I wonder that any God to redeem by placing death, as it life and death. Those who heed his voice embryo and the child in the womb, fear of us survive the hazards of our cellular had the forbidden fruit, in human hands. drop their vices and flock to him. He never a brutal reversal of all limitations on Roe origins. How terrible it has become! Lust always turns anyone away who comes to him. v. Wade. I am speechless before the divine de- becomes hungrier and thirstier as it feeds His word to us is “Courage.” The Many gather in Washington, DC, sign which bound the origin of human life and drinks. Vengeance waxes into war. Peace and the Joy of the Crucified and today to pray, to march, and to witness to to the sexual coupling of male and female, Death is the weapon of conquest and Risen Christ will sustain and guard our the human life and dignity of the unborn husband and wife, father and mother, a domination not only of geopolitics but hearts as we in our day wage the spiritual child, now mortally threatened by an as- coupling of immense biological complex- also of science’s, even medicine’s lust for battle to win ourselves and all our sisters sured attempt in Congress to codify a right ity meant nonetheless to be so rich in the power. Every human killing of another and brothers for God. The wiles and to abortion in nearly absolute terms. The gift of love as to exceed the capacity of human is a fratricide or sororicide, ulti- tactics of the Devil have been exposed. political foundations on which this contest poetry or music to express it. mately a suicide. Each would be a deadly The armor and weaponry of Christ have of life and death is being waged have once What a mystery and a miracle is the spark on a quest to reach a kindling point nothing to do with hatred or sophistry, again proven to be as shifting as sand. origin of human life! The “one flesh” at which humanity would combust into but everything to do with the Holy Spirit, While free citizens and self-governing union of man and woman divinely united extinction. Like that first forbidden fruit, faith, hope, and love. Chastity and Char- people must continually create coalitions with procreation bespeaks, as Pope John death too was forbidden to the human ity guard the door of the heart from the committed to the common good to craft Paul II described it, a primordial, sacra- hand but taken nonetheless. The wages attacks of lust. laws securing human rights and a culture mental imaging of the very love of our of sin is the culture of death. In the battle for human life, that of life, all gains must be considered tem- God who created us. The less than original The Son of God, incarnate in our wonder made in the image and likeness porary. but inaugural sin, “The Fall” of the human humanity, our own flesh and blood, was of God, the enemy is not flesh and blood, The fact is we are a fallen race, self- race, nearly sundered the relationship humanly perfected by being completely for these are the object of that redemption seeking and infected by sin, fascinated by of man and woman, inclining them to obedient to the Father, suffering our promised in Genesis and which is ours the power of death. The grace of a plen- shame and blame, alienating them from condition, being made sin though he was sealed in the Blood of Jesus Christ our teous redemption in Jesus Christ far sur- each other’s love, exposing them to each sinless, even to the point of accepting Lord. To whom is the Victory, the Power, passing this horror is absolutely offered other’s lusts, alienating their relationship murder at the hands of his siblings. He and the Glory, with the Father and the every one of us. But until the trumpet of to the earth, and disorienting their parental experienced death not as perhaps the Fa- Holy Spirit, One God, Reigning now and Judgment Day sounds and all decisions roles so as to set the stage for fratricidal ther would have applied it as a cure but for ever. Amen. 2 The Western Kentucky Catholic, March, 2009 KY Bishops Support Pope’s Act VATICAN LETTER Remembering the Holocaust: A of Paternal Mercy in Lifting Ban Roman Catholic Bishops of Kentucky Father recalled the deaths of “millions Catholic Conference of Kentucky of Jews” in the Nazi death camps and scientific fact, a religious obligation Statement Regarding the Lifting of the expressed his “full and indisputable soli- By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service die in order to ransom humanity, Father Personal Penalty of Excommunication darity” with the Jews. Today he called for VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Acknowl- Lombardi said. Incurred by Four Schismatic Bishops a public repudiation of any anti-Semitic edging and remembering the Holocaust Denying the Holocaust is a sign of Belonging to the Priestly Society of Saint statements.