Dear All,

Along with writing our representatives, here is a quick and easy link to sign a petition to the president directly, as well as an excellent newscast to listen to in order to help inform you. Visit www.stophhs.com to learn more and sign a petition.

You can watch Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan’s video response to the mandate here.

You can also listen to Al Kreska of Ave Maria Radio talk with Archbishop Vigneron of the Archdiocese of Detroit about the HHS decision.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Blessings,
Fr. Libby

Dear All,

Below is a link to a site to get ourselves educated on the Heath Care Crisis as our bishop requested. It also has further links to easily write in online to our congressmen/women. Along with the prayer and fasting that our bishop has requested, (I’ve designated Friday for our parish for fasting and asked everyone to attempt at least one holy hour a week in front of the Blessed Sacrament to honor our Bishop’s expectations), he also asked us to get ourselves informed on the issue and write to congress. It takes only a few minutes and might make the difference to us having a Church or Catholic school in our area in the years to come, so please take the time.

Yours in Christ,
Fr. Libby

www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/conscience-protection/

Here is an update from the cookbook committee! Please remember to turn in your recipes for our Parish cookbook by Jan. 31st! We still need recipes for each category. If you need help in writing your recipe onto a form, please contact one of our committee members and we would be happy to help you. I have included all of our names and numbers at the end of the e-mail. You may always just make a copy of the recipe too and be sure to put your name and number on it and we can copy it onto a form for you. Someone suggested that it would be nice if each parishioner might turn in a recipe from each category by way of an entire meal–cocktails, appetizers, salad, entree, vegetable, side dish, and dessert. What a great cookbook this would be if each of us did that one time for a Polish meal, a gluten free meal, and an everyday cooking meal! Keep this suggestion in mind when choosing recipes. It would be nice to include recipes from our famous Chicken dinner menu too–if any of you have them and could submit them, that would be great! And if your children have recipes, please include those as well. Think of creative recipes too such as, the recipe for a happy home, a good Catholic, a Nun, a Priest, a Mother, a Father, and so on…We will also be asking our dear Fr. Libby for a recipe or two, our dear Bishop for a suggestion of his favorite recipe, as well as that of our Holy Father. Together, we can make this a wonderful cookbook that is sought after by many and Shine Forth to the entire community and beyond in our cooking talents as well as many others–and the benefit to the Capital Campaign will be a testimony to each of us and our love for this Parish.

Also, please keep in mind and start thinking of ideas for the two contests for the cookbook–The Title and The Cover! This is open to parishioners of all ages. Spread the word about this! The committee will pick the winners and each winner will be awarded a cookbook when they come in! Be creative! If you submit a Polish title be sure to include the correct English translation as we will want to print that in the books. For the cover, suggestions would be, paintings, drawings, photographs, sketch works, and other works of art of the Church, a Rosary, The Blessed Mother, St. Isadore, one of our stained glass windows, food items and so on. The deadline for the title is Feb. 29th and for the cover is March 15th. Happy recipe writing and art working to each of us and may God bless our efforts and make them pleasing to Him.

God Bless and Take Care.
Caroline Bardenhagen

Cookbook Committee
Caroline Bardenhagen
Joan Garvin
Kate Bolton
Sandy Miller
Candice Stringer
Becky Belanger

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 13, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is encouraging the daily recitation of the rosary, emphasizing that it is a tool to grow in the theological virtues and a path for cooperating in the plan of salvation.

The Pope said this Wednesday at the end of the general audience when he gave multilingual greetings to various groups gathered with him in St. Peter’s Square.

In Slovakian, he referred to the rosary as a “school of prayer for us,” and he expressed his wish that the month of October, which is dedicated to the rosary, would assist in discovering “the beauty of this simple but efficacious prayer.”

Oct. 7 is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

The Holy Father invited Portuguese-speakers to “persist in the daily recitation of the rosary.”

He reflected that through this prayer, families can be united with Our Lady, and “fully cooperate in the plans of salvation God has for you.”

A similar message went to Hungarians, when the Pontiff presented the rosary as a prayer to “strengthen you ever more in faith, in hope and in love.”

On the Net: http://www.zenit.org/article-33654?l=english

In implementing the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the new health care reform law), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued a rule requiring almost all private health plans to cover contraception and sterilization as “preventive services” for women. The mandate even forces individuals and groups with religious or moral objections to purchase and provide such coverage if they are to receive or provide health coverage at all. This poses an unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom.

The rule includes a religious exemption so extremely narrow that it protects almost no one. It covers only a “religious employer” that has the “inculcation of religious values” as its purpose, primarily employs and serves persons who share its religious tenets, and is a church organization under two narrow provisions of the tax code. A great many religious organizations — including Catholic colleges and universities, as well as hospitals and charitable institutions that serve the public — will be ineligible. Individuals and religiously affiliated health insurers will not qualify for the exemption.

The new rule would force insurance plans to cover “all Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.” Never before has the federal government required private health plans to include such coverage. The FDA-approved “emergency contraception” (EC) drugs that are covered by this mandate can work by interfering with implantation of a newly conceived human being. Also, the drug the FDA most recently approved for EC, “Ella,” a close analogue to the abortion drug RU-486, has been shown in animal tests to cause abortion. Thus, the mandate includes drugs that may cause an abortion both before and after implantation.

The public comment period on this interim final rule ends September 30.

ACTION: Please send an e-mail message to HHS by visiting www.usccb.org/conscience. Once you send your comments to HHS, you will be automatically invited to send a message to your elected representatives in Congress, urging them to support the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179/S. 1467) to ensure that such federal mandates do not violate Americans’ moral and religious convictions.

MESSAGE TO HHS: “Pregnancy is not a disease, and drugs and surgeries to prevent it are not basic health care that the government should require all Americans to purchase. Please remove sterilization and prescription contraceptives from the list of ‘preventive services’ the federal government is mandating in private health plans. It is especially important to exclude any drug that may cause an early abortion, and to fully respect religious freedom as other federal laws do. The narrow religious exemption in HHS’s new rule protects almost no one. I urge you to allow all organizations and individuals to offer, sponsor and obtain health coverage that does not violate their moral and religious convictions.”

WHEN: Please send your comments to HHS by the September 30 deadline. Thanks!

VATICAN CITY, AUG. 24, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is stressing the need for further reflection on the link between catechesis and liturgy, yet rejecting every form of undue instrumentalization of the liturgy for “catechetical” ends.

The theme “God Educates His People: The Liturgy, Inexhaustible Source of Catechesis,” comes in the context of the Italian bishops’ emphasis on education in their pastoral priorities of this decade.

In regard to the educational dimension of the liturgy, the message pointed out that the liturgy can be called the “permanent catechesis of the Church, the inexhaustible source of catechesis, precious catechesis in act.”

The papal note referred to the liturgy as an experience of “catechesis, celebration and life,” and added that it also expresses “the maternal support of the Church, thus helping to develop the growth of the believer’s Christian life and the maturation of his conscience.”

“In this connection, God is the great educator of his people, the loving, wise, tireless guide in and through the liturgy, the action of God in the today of the Church,” the message adds.

“The liturgy is not what man does, but what God does with his admirable and gratuitous condescendence,” the Bishop of Rome reminded.

The Holy Father expressed his hopes that the conference would increasingly foster “the genuine meaning of the liturgy, favoring a solid theological-pastoral formation in full consonance with the magisterium and the tradition of the Church.”

On the Net: http://www.zenit.org/article-33281?l=english

Lima, Peru, Jul 28, 2011 / 01:56 pm (CNA).- Spanish Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera recently recommended that Catholics receive Communion on the tongue, while kneeling.

“It is to simply know that we are before God himself and that He came to us and that we are undeserving,” the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said in an interview with CNA during his visit to Lima, Peru.

The cardinal’s remarks came in response to a question on whether Catholics should receive Communion in the hand or on the tongue.

He recommended that Catholics ‘receive Communion on the tongue and while kneeling.”

Receiving Communion in this way, the cardinal continued, “is the sign of adoration that needs to be recovered. I think the entire Church needs to receive Communion while kneeling.”

“In fact,” he added, “if one receives while standing, a genuflection or profound bow should be made, and this is not happening.”

“If we trivialize Communion, we trivialize everything, and we cannot lose a moment as important as that of receiving Communion, of recognizing the real presence of Christ there, of the God who is the love above all loves, as we sing in a hymn in Spanish.”

In response to a question about the liturgical abuses that often occur, Cardinal Canizares said they must be “corrected, especially through proper formation: formation for seminarians, for priests, for catechists, for all the Christian faithful.”

Such a formation should ensure that liturgical celebrations take place “in accord with the demands and dignity of the celebration, in accord with the norms of the Church, which is the only way we can authentically celebrate the Eucharist,” he added.

“Bishops have a unique responsibility” in the task of liturgical formation and the correction of abuses, the cardinal said, “and we must not fail to fulfill it, because everything we do to ensure that the Eucharist is celebrated properly will ensure proper participation in the Eucharist.”

Read the article and over 100 comments here.