6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Fr. Patrick Brennan
Who are the lepers, who are the outcasts in our own day? Well, religious leaders in our own Church have said that gay and lesbian people are seriously disordered. ... We have some bishops and priests — and please hear this well, I am anti-abortion — but we have some bishops and priests refusing Communion to politicians who sometimes speak out on women's rights, [by "women's rights", I think he means the "right" to abortion] while simultaneously the Pope is reconciling with a schismatic group of bishops of the Lefebvrist movement, who are Tridentine in their Church-culture [Fr. Brennan is under the impression that Vatican II radically redesigned the culture (and structure) of the Church; he is opposed to the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy, Latin in general, etc.] and who have announced publicly there was no such thing as the Holocaust. [I don't think Bishop Williamson or another SSPX priest denied the Holocaust as an event, just the scope of the Holocaust] ...
If a woman stands up and says "I feel called and gifted for the priesthood", she is silenced and declared unclean and unfit. [The Church believes and teaches that women are incapable of receiving priestly ordination. When a woman thinks otherwise, she is not "silenced", etc. If she attempts to go through with it, then there are repercussions. But the Church (though various means) is willing to have a dialogue with her so that she might better understand the Church's faith.] If people talk about the ordination of married men to the priesthood, they are silenced and declared unclean and unfit. [I don't think that's the case either. Married men are ordained in the Eastern Church, and sometimes in the Western Church (the "pastoral provision" for married ministers who convert to the Church). But many who advocate ordaining married men are doing so along with, or with the goal of, ordaining women.] Some divorced people have been looked on as unacceptable and unfit; [I don't have experience with that; it shouldn't be the case, though!] and if you're a divorced Catholic and you remarry without an annulment, you are not to receive Communion. [That's because divorce is a social construct, whereas marriage is a divine construct. A valid marriage in the eyes of God cannot be broken off by divorce; decrees of nullity are recognitions that there was no valid marriage to begin with. It is a sin to "divorce" and then have sexual relations with another person.] Religious people can be so harsh and so judgmental toward other people who don't fit the model. [St. Paul also listed behaviors which "don't fit the model" of Christian life: see Romans 1:28-31; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21]
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Fr. Patrick Brennan
The article was about the resurgence — the return [they never left... Vatican II didn't do anything to them] — of indulgences, first under the papacy John Paul II, and now under the papacy of Benedict XVI. [What about Pope Paul VI? He wrote X and Y shortly after the Second Vatican Council.] ... Indulgences said this: God forgives sin if we repent, God forgives sin through the sacrament of Reconciliation, but God is just and God must, in His justice, give us temporal punishment after death in an experience, in a place, called Purgatory. [The temporal punishment for sin can be undergone either in this life or in Purgatory. An easy way to understand temporal punishment (as opposed to eternal punishment, which is spiritual death and being in Hell) is that it is the "necessary" or "natural" consequence of sin.] Now there's partial indulgences, indulgences that burn off Purgatory time for days, months, years. [That is not true; the use of "time" associated with indulgences (and not in the way Fr. Brennan describes it) was abolished after Vatican II in Indulgentarium Doctrina 12.] And there are plenary indulgences that wipe the slate completely clean; though a person after receiving a plenary indulgence can go out and sin again. [Of course; indulgences don't prevent you from sinning, and a no indulgence is effective against future sins.] ...
I personally find this renewal of indulgences ecumenically insensitive. [Vatican II didn't get rid of them. Denying a truth of the Catholic faith is far more ecumenically insensitive than hiding said truth. See Vatican II's document on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio 11.] We know what a bitter pill this was to the Lutherans and to Protestant groups that have grown out of the whole Lutheran revolution. The New York Times article said "the Church leadership today seems more interested in pointing out what's different about the Roman Catholic Church than seeking unity with other Christian churches." [Why be Catholic if the Catholic Church is just like every other Christian community out there? The Catholic Church is different! Again, false unity (along a lowest common denominator) is not the goal of the ecumenical movement: true unity in the one Church of Christ is.] Indulgences in my estimation are a human device [while on the contrary, the Church believes that "the doctrine and practice of indulgences ... have a solid foundation in divine revelation"] that places the institutional Church in an area that it doesn't belong. Indulgences and Purgatory are pretending to know more than we can know about the afterlife. [Read about myths about indulgences.]
First Sunday of Lent, Fr. George Kane
The Jewish community of faith, [why so verbose? Why not "Jewish people" or "Jews" or "Israel"?] in honing the story through the centuries, put a spin [that crashing sound is divine inspiration is being thrown out the window] on the Flood story. They made it a drama [they changed the story, nothing divine about it I guess] of sin and punishment, of forgiveness and promise.
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