Moving to LiveJournal

I thought I’d shake things up a bit, combining a blog/journal with some networking.  It’ll be the same old crap you’ve come to know and love.

SO come on over to http://ssacatholic.livejournal.com and join the FUN!!

New Consigliere for Catholic Bishops

Well if former Oklahoma governor and sex abuse panel chairman Frank Keating likens the bishops to the Mafia, why not have a consigliere, right?

From the blog of the D.C.-based Legal Times, comes word of a new counsel to the U.S. bishops’ conference, Anthony Picarello, Jr.  My favorite line in the story is this:

He will replace Mark Chopko, who is heading off to a psychiatric facility after two decades with the bishops.

OK, I made the last part up.  It really says he’s joining the private sector.  But imagine spending twenty years working with people like Cardinal Mahony and Bishops Trautman and Gumbleton, and then trying to run interference after the sex abuse excrement hit the fan.  I think I’d need heavy doses of Depakote and Xanax to quiet me down.

Yes, we’re still the one, true church

Catholic News Service reports on a document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (of which the current Benedict XVI was the prefect), which reiterates the main points of its 2000 document Dominus Iesus.  That is,

Christ “established here on earth” only one Church and instituted it as a “visible and spiritual community”, that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted.  “This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]. This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him”.

The document is in a readable Q&A format.  You can read it here.

St. Maria Goretti

Tomorrow is the memorial of St. Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old girl who on July 5, 1902 was murdered by a sexually obsessed neighbor when she did not give in to his advances. She was canonized in 1950. I was watching the tail end of a documentary on EWTN which stressed perhaps the most miraculous part of the story: the conversion and penitence of Maria’s murderer, Alessandro Serenelli. Maria appeared to him in his cell, and he was brought home to Christ.

After serving his prison sentence, Serenelli lived out his days as a tertiary in a Capuchin monastery. On his deathbed in 1970, he penned this note:

I ask pardon of the world of the outrage done to the martyr Maria Goretti and to purity . . . I exhort everyone to keep away from immoral shows, from dangers, from occasions that can lead to sin.

If you Google the man’s name, you’ll come across the site of an apostolate called the Serenellians, who work and pray to heal those addicted to pornography and other disordered sexual activity. I’m going to look into this some more and report back.

Robert T. Miller on “The Ten Commandments of . . . What?”

Over at the “On the Square” blog on the First Things web site comes a needed skewering of the silly document from the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, “Guidelines for Pastoral Care of the Road.”  Miller concludes his entry:

Now, about two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, assumed human nature and was born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, and on the third day he rose again in glory, redeeming the human race from sin, opening the gates of heaven, and completely transforming human history. In his final words to his apostles, he commanded them to go forth and teach all nations and to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In thus sending forth the apostles, our Blessed Lord saw no need to add, “Drive safely!”

Ortho-dixie!!

Was young G.K. Chesterton a Confederate sympathizer?!!

Diogenes strikes again!

From his Off The Record blog:

Pope Benedict the XVI will soon release a motu proprio permitting the celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass without liturgical abuses, CWN has learned. The 1-page document, accompanied by a 50-page explanatory letter, will allow individual priests to celebrate the Mass of 1969 according to the revised General Instruction for the Roman Missal. Bishop Ronald Mackerelperson criticized the relaxed rules that will permit the lawful celebration of the Novus Ordo. In a prepared statement, Mackerelperson said that the Holy See is overlooking the pastoral benefits of liturgical abuse. “When I see Mother Superior of the Erie Benedictine nuns in a polyester leotard performing a liturgical dance, I ask myself what could make the liturgy more relevant to Dick and Jane in the pews,” he said.

Mackerelperson said that as a result of this kind of liturgical expertise on the part of the Benedictine nuns, he has appointed nuns as permanent administrators of most of the parishes in his diocese. The bishop predicted “pastoral chaos” if the liturgical abuse is outlawed. “Liturgy must be accessible to the young people and giving unregulated permission to priests to celebrate Mass according to the rubrics should not be tolerated,” he complained.

Bishop Mackerelperson added the proposed motu proprio, if it is issued in the form being discussed by Vatican-watchers, would “disrupt years of careful liturgical training of priests and laity.”

ENOUGH!!!!!

BASTA!

I can no longer tolerate the saturation coverage of the 1962 Mass motu proprio, as if it were the most important thing to happen to the Catholic Church since Pentecost.

Don’t get me wrong:  if there were a Latin Mass within a reasonable distance from my home, I would certainly try to be there on a regular basis.

Forgive me, however, for being a wet blanket, but I just don’t see this having much immediate impact, certainly not in the Metuchen diocese where I live, and probably not in America.  I don’t see the now-aging “Spirit of Vatican II”  presbyterate, most of whom were ordained after 1965, are going to jump at the chance to learn the rubrics and the language of the 1962 Mass.  The interest just isn’t there.  I guess this why B16 is referring to the 1962 Mass as the Extraordinary Rite.  There will be pockets of interest in the 1962 Mass, but not much more.

I do pray that over time, this will spark renewed reverence in the Novus Ordo, and help to bring about the reforms about which the Holy Father has so often and so eloquently written.

But, please, ladies and gentleman, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Wow, what a cool brithday present this would be for Quoheleth (b. 7/7/1968)

Motu proprio due July 7, sez Catholic World News:

Vatican, Jun. 27, 2007 (Kath.net/CWNews.com) – The long-awaited motu proprio in which Pope Benedict XVI liberalizes access to the traditional Latin Mass will be released on July 7, according to the German-language Kath.net news service. Kath.net reports that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, introduced the text of the motu proprio to a group of 30 bishops at the Vatican on June 27. Pope Benedict made a brief appearance at the meeting, the Kath.net story indicates.

The June 27 meeting drew bishops from all around the world, who had been invited to the Vatican for an advance briefing on the papal document. Pope Benedict has taken special pains to ensure that the world’s bishops are well prepared for the motu proprio, hoping to minimize opposition to the move. The Pontiff also wanted to inform the bishops personally rather than having them learn about the document through the media.

The motu proprio itself is a 3-page document. It will be made public along with an explanatory letter from Pope Benedict to the world’s bishops; that letter is somewhat longer, at 4 pages.

The document emphasizes the unity of the Roman rite, and the Pope explains that he hopes the two forms of the Mass will enrich each other. The ordinary form of the Roman rite will continue to be the Novus Ordo Mass; the extraordinary form will be the Latin Mass, using the 1962 Missal.

Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts – New York Times

Why am I not surprised?

WASHINGTON, June 26 — As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty.

How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.

Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program.

Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the state said.

The number most likely represents a small fraction of drug makers’ total marketing expenditures to doctors since it does not include the costs of free drug samples or the salaries of sales representatives and their staff members. According to their income statements, drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.

“For the fourth year in a row, our analysis shows that there is a great deal of money being spent in our small state on marketing pharmaceutical products,” said William H. Sorrell, the Vermont attorney general.

Endocrinologists received the second largest amount, according to the Vermont analysis, earning an average of $33,730. Since the state identified the specialties of only the top 100 earners, these averages represent the money earned by only some of the state’s specialists. There were 11 psychiatrists and 5 endocrinologists in that top group of 100.

Still, a similar pattern was evident in a Minnesota database that was the subject of a series of articles in The New York Times this year. As in Vermont, psychiatrists earned on aggregate the most in Minnesota, with payments ranging from $51 to $689,000. The Times found that psychiatrists who took the most money from makers of antipsychotic drugs tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often.

These and other stories have helped to fuel a growing interest among state and federal officials to document and restrict payments to doctors from drug makers. At a gathering last month at Columbia Law School in New York, state attorneys general from across the country discussed ways to get similar data for their states.

And today, the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which is led by Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, will hold the first of a series of hearings on the issue, which could lead to legislative proposals to restrict and require disclosure of payments and gifts to doctors from drug companies nationwide.

Several lawmakers on Capitol Hill have expressed interest in such legislation, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “A federal law requiring public disclosure of payments to doctors could be very effective if it was carefully monitored and consistently applied,” Mr. Grassley said.

Efforts to require disclosure of payments to doctors began almost by happenstance in 1993, when The Minnesota Legislature passed a law that restricts drug companies from giving doctors gifts valued at more than $100 in any given year. The legislation also required companies to report and make public any consulting fees paid to doctors.

Lee Greenfield, a former state representative in Minnesota and one of the law’s authors, said it passed with little fanfare or debate after legislators heard stories about doctors accepting gifts of great value from drug makers.

“Why do we want them bribing doctors to use what may not be the best or most cost-effective drug for the patient purely to get some hand-held TV, we all asked,” Mr. Greenfield said.

Still, compliance with the law has been spotty. Some companies never responded to the board’s requests for disclosures. Others did so fitfully. A few sent letters saying they did not collect that information and thus could not provide it.

Minnesota officials never cracked down. Such reports were put in file drawers and largely forgotten until this past year, said Cody Wiberg, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. Mr. Wiberg said he planned this year to pursue companies that fail to report.

Besides Vermont and Maine, more than a dozen other states have or are now considering similar legislation, said Sharon Anglin Treat, executive director of the National Legislative Association on Prescription Drug Prices.

Officials in Maine and Vermont said they would try to compare reports of payments to doctors with Medicaid records to explore how marketing practices might influence prescribing by doctors in ways that increased costs to taxpayers.

“What we want to be able to do is overlay the prescribing information that we have with the drug detailing information,” said Jude Walsh, special assistant to the governor of Maine, John E. Baldacci. “If we see that doctors in a certain southern county in the state are prescribing a lot of a drug and getting a lot of detailing for that drug, that could lead to some record reviews to see what’s happening.”