Co-ordinator appointed for Baldwin Academy

STM, Toronto is pleased to announce that Betty Anne Siebert has agreed to act as Co-ordinator for STM - Baldwin Academy as we begin our second year.  

Betty Anne will work closely with Katharine Mahon the Director of STM Choristers.

Registration and contact information at:

 www.thomasmorechurch.ca

Richard Patrick Harris of Our Lady of the Sign, Fredericton, to be ordained for the POCSP in New Brunswick

God willing, the Most Rev. Robert Harris, Bishop of Saint John, New Brunswick, acting on behalf of Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, will ordain Richard Patrick Harris to the Sacred Order of Deacons, at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Fredericton, New Brunswick, on August 14, 2015, at 6:00 p.m..

The Most Rev. Robert Harris with Pope Benedict

At the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Saint John, New Brunswick, on September 11, 2015, at 3:00 p.m. the Most Rev. Robert Harris, Bishop of Saint John, New Brunswick, acting on behalf of Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, will, D.V., ordain the Rev. Deacon Richard Patrick Harris to the Sacred Order Priests 

The newly ordained Fr. Harris will D.V. celebrate his first Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Fredericton, the morning of September 15, according to the rites of the Personal Ordinariates. The time is yet to be determined.

The Culture of Death and its corrosion of America

Fr. George Rutler of NYC makes some profound remarks in a recent article in CRISIS magazine dealing with the Planned Parenthood exposé and much more about the corrosive liberalism that has seized America.  

Here are some excerpts:

Christ cannot be psychoanalyzed because he is perfect.  It would be like seeking flaws in pure crystal or long shadows at high noon. That is why he may seem from our fallen state in a singularly ill-contrived world as both severe and merciful, ethereal and common, rebellious and routine, rustic and royal, solitary and brotherly, young and ageless.  His perfection is a stubborn enigma to the imperfect, but if there is to be one hint of the art that moves his mind, it will be in his pity.  It will be in his pity for the whole world when he weeps over Jerusalem; but most wrenchingly it will be in his pity for each soul when he sees us scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd.

He warned about wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt.7:15) and that disguise was the cunning deceit and dark tragedy of the modern age.  The modern wolves, those seductive tyrants and demagogues, wandered freely and devoured as they did because they were given fertile pasture and friendly forests by a stranger creature in more subtle disguise. Churchill detected it when he called Clement Attlee a sheep in sheep’s clothing.  Here is the moral weakling who thinks the wolf is a sheep because he sees no difference between the two and if he did, he could not care less.  Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in “The Great Liberal Death Wish”:

Not Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks; not Nazism, which perished along with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism, which was left hanging upside down, along with Mussolini and his mistress, from a lamp-post—none of these, history will record, was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism. A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice, blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish.

[The alternative, of course, is deep and abiding commitment to the love of Christ for every human being from conception to natural death, as manifested in the saints.  Malcolm Muggeridge describes this kind of love in his book about the ministry of Mother Theresa and the Sisters of Charity: SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL for God.]

Now that Planned Parenthood has been exposed for those who have willfully been blind during these years of its atrocities, all that its CEO could sheepishly manage to say of a Senior Director of Medical Services sipping wine as she cited prices for infants’ body parts, was that her “tone” was “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.”  Cecile Richards, who employs Dr. Nucatola, draws a salary of half a million dollars from the $528 million dollars of taxpayers money which our government contributed last year to Planned Parenthood’s annual budget.  That same week, 94-year-old Oskar Gröning, who had been a functionary in Auschwitz, was convicted by a German court on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.  He admitted knowing something was wrong when a camp guard grabbed a crying baby and smashed its head against a wall.  With untutored diction and uncoordinated syntax, Dr. Nucatola blithely spoke of ways to crush a baby’s skull. Affecting Latinity with which we may assume she is otherwise unfamiliar, she called it a “calvarium.”  Has anyone heard of Calvary?  In terms of the number of inflicted deaths and consequent dismemberments and experiments, Dr. Nucatola makes Dr. Mengele seem like Florence Nightingale.

Yet Richards, a sheep in sheep’s clothing, could only manage to say that her “tone” was “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.”  

. . . .  At the time of the Planned Parenthood exposé, a young Muslim killed five armed forces personnel in Chatanooga and the White House issued no formal statement.   During a conversation on other matters, President Obama managed sheepishly to say that it was a “heartbreaking circumstance” and then he issued a statement wishing Muslims  “Eid Mubarak”—a blessed last day of Ramadan—and in New York, rather than dimming in grief, the Empire State Building was lit up in Islamic green lights. One remembered how Obama said in a United Nations speech in 2013: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” While he was quick to go into deep mourning for Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Freddie Gray, Obama neglected to grieve for Kathryn Steinle whose murder by an illegal immigrant was politically inconvenient.  Only after several days did he yield to public pressure and lower the White House flag to half mast for the soldiers.

In contrast, a mere few hours after the Supreme Court decision on same-sex unions, he had the White House, a national building, turned into a political billboard illuminated in rainbow colors.  

. . . . In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis called these sheep in sheep’s clothing “men without chests” because their perception of reality lacks objective moral reason.  Consequently, they really have no heart, if the heart is the seat of a righteous will, and thus they are ruled by whim, incapable of courage. 

. . . .  Varro did not wispily call the slaughter of his sixteen legions at Cannae “heartbreaking,” nor did Boudicca of her 80,000 lost men, nor did Lincoln when cannons fired on Fort Sumter, nor did Congress when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  For that matter, Jesus did not say that the collapse of the tower of Siloam was heartbreaking.  He said, Repent (Luke 13:4).  And we know what he said about those who harm the least of these little ones.  From the depths of the sea, they may find the “tone” of God’s judgment “inappropriate.”  And they will learn that Obama’s blasphemous prayer in Washington on April 26, 2013,  “God bless Planned Parenthood,” fell on deaf ears in the heavenly realms.

. . . . General Patton was thought by some not to have much pity.  But he had a chest.  When he entered Ohrdruf, the sub-camp of Buchenwald, his reaction to the corpses and crematoria surprised his soldiers.  He did not say the lurid scene was “inappropriate” or “unacceptable” or “heartbreaking.” He bent over and vomited.  And the medals on his chest rattled. 

When the people who lived outside the camps protested that they did not know what had been going on, General Eisenhower ordered them to walk through the fetid buildings and look at the corpses.  Perhaps there will be a day when remnants of our sheepish generation are dragged through the moral carnage of our land and feel some of the pity that Christ feels for us.

Fr. Rutler's full article is found here: Father Rutler seaks out.

Priesthood of Baal - Part 2

The US Senate will debate restricting funds to Planned Parenthood following the release of another video showing that  profits from the sale of foetal parts. 

The CATHOLIC HERALD reports:

The video also includes an interview with Holly O’Donnell, a phlebotomist (a clinical support worker who takes blood samples from patients) who works for a company that procured the tissue of aborted unborn babies from Planned Parenthood. 

“For whatever we could procure, (Planned Parenthood) would get a certain percentage. The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated,” she says. 

US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is now sponsoring a bill which would defund Planned Parenthood and it is expected to be voted on any day.

Following a meeting on Tuesday with the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Paul said: “The details are being sorted out right now. I think we’ll know in the next 24 hours exactly what the details are. But I think the big news of the day is that there will be a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.” 

Meanwhile Planned Parenthood have denied that they profit from the sale of foetal tissue. Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, told CNN: “I say that unequivocally. We do not make a profit on foetal tissue.”

PLANNED PARENTHOOD - THE PRIESTHOOD OF BAAL

A HOMILY FOR TRINITY 7  (16B)  July 19, 2015                                                   

“(Christ) is our peace, he who … broke down the dividing wall of enmity.”

Jeremiah denounced the pagan worship of the Israelites, and their faithlessness to the true God.  He was appalled at the worship of Baal, a false god whose adherents would engage in child sacrifice. He readily condemned this practice as evil and contrary to the will of God, the giver of all life.

As we have it today the abortion industry reflects this life-destroying evil that has plagued humanity.  The face of Planned Parenthood looms over the debate today with recent revelations of the unspeakable practice of selling the body parts of infants killed in the birth canal.

As we see in our First Reading, Jeremiah brought particular fire down upon the greed and corruption of the shepherds, the leaders, of God’s people. He charges that these shepherds: “ . . . have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them.”  Leadership in our nation and around the world has much to answer for in the holocaust of our young.

Under the guise of leading families with "planning" the abortion industry destroys hundreds of thousands of lives annually while enriching those who work in this industry fuelled by greed and selfishness.

Jeremiah was never well-liked. His life was marked by rejection, alienation, and abandonment because he chose to tell the truth about life and the sovereignty of God.

To his great horror, he witnessed the fall of the southern kingdom (Judah), the exile of God’s people to Babylonia, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. All hope seemed lost to the Chosen People. In exile, however, Jeremiah preached a message of restoration and hope. 

Jeremiah called the people back to God’s covenant, and to his household. The prophet’s cry was simple: follow the ways of God, and allow him to work, once again, among his people. The Lord promised through Jeremiah: “I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer to fear and tremble; and none shall be missing.”

True shepherds will lead us to respect for life and a way of life that reflects the glory of God.

In the Gospel Jesus calls his apostles to a moment of quiet and reflection. They had just returned from apostolic teaching in the way Jesus had shown them. They were tired.  Jesus called them to rest. The people, however, would not leave Jesus and the apostles alone. When the Lord Jesus saw the people, “his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” They looked like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, and the Lord Jesus was moved with compassion.

The good shepherd cares for the flock, and seeks to bring together those who have been scattered, especially those who have been marginalized.  The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of this: “For (Christ) is our peace, he who … broke down the dividing wall of enmity.” Jesus seeks to defend, heal, feed, encourage, affirm, and love the members of the flock. He is the good shepherd promised to us by God through Jeremiah. The one who values every single life and calls us to do the same.

As we see Jesus’ ministry among us, we can echo the Psalmist’s cry: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

In accepting the gentle yoke of this good shepherd, we must come to more deeply realize that we too are called, as members of the baptized, to be good shepherds to those around us and especially the most vulnerable.

We are summoned to be good shepherds to family members, friends, co-workers, neighbours, fellow parishioners, and to all members of our society, especially the weak and vulnerable, the forgotten, or who have no one to advocate for them!

Today, we repent and we ask: Where can we better reflect the Good Shepherd in our lives? Where is the Lord calling us? 

As we celebrate this Eucharist, we ask the Lord to be the Good Shepherd of our lives. And as we seek his guidance, we seek to reflect and be like him, a good shepherd in the midst of our world today.

The Twelve in their first missionary journey recorded in today's Gospel, reflect the authority and mission of the Church.

Jeremiah says that Israel's leaders, through godlessness and selfish teachings, had mislead and scattered God's people. He promises God will send a shepherd, a king and son of David, to gather the lost sheep and appoint for them new shepherds (Ezekiel 34:23).

The crowd gathering on the green grass (Mark 6:39) in today's Gospel is the remnant that Jeremiah promised would be brought back to the meadow of Israel. The people seem to sense that Jesus is the Lord, the good shepherd (see John 10:11), the king they've been waiting for (see Hosea 3:1-5).

Jesus is moved to pity, seeing us as sheep without a shepherd. This phrase was used by Moses to describe Israel's need for a shepherd to succeed him (Numbers 27:17). 

Moses appointed Joshua. Jesus appointed the Twelve to continue shepherding God’s people on earth. Jesus said there were other sheep who did not belong to Israel's fold, but would hear his voice and be joined to the one flock of the one shepherd (John 10:16). The Church was to seek out first the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and then to bring all nations into the fold (Acts 13:36; Romans 1:16).

St Paul portrays the Church as the new creation, in which those nations who were once far off from God are joined as "one new person" with the children of Israel.

The Lord is our good shepherd and leads people to the verdant pastures of the kingdom, to the restful waters of baptism; He anoints us with the oil of blessing, and spreads the Eucharistic table before his people, filling the cup of life to overflowing.

“(Christ) is our peace, he who … broke down the dividing wall of enmity.”

Monsignor Keith Newton of the U.K. to visit STM, Toronto for Solemn High Mass

MONSIGNOR KEITH NEWTON, Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (U.K.) is scheduled to celebrate and preach at Solemn High Mass on 

Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 4:00 p.m.

Ordinariate Parish of St. Thomas More, Toronto 

Pope Benedict greeted Msgr Newton after he
appointed him as head of the Ordinariate in the U.K.

Pope Francis greeted Msgr. Newton recently.

Monsignor Newton will be accompanied by his wife Gill. They will stay over as guests of STM parish for a couple of cool days in January before heading to warm up in Houston, TX at  international meetings of the Personal Ordinariates.

Msgr Newton with his wife, Gill