Saturday, 17 May
Vigil of Holy Trinity
4:30 p.m. - LENA TRANQUILLO PICCIONI
by John Chiodo and Mary Chiodo

Sunday, 18 May
Holy Trinity Sunday
7:45 a.m. - PAUL and CAMILLE (Foti) TEGANO
by their son-in-law, Jack
10:45 a.m. - JOYCE CHRISTINE CHIPLONIA
by her cousin, Carol Kramer

Monday, 19 May
Weekday
12:05 p.m. - H. ROBERT PICCIONI Sr.
by Anthony and Joan Tranquillo and family

Tuesday, 20 May
St. Bernardine of Siena, priest (OptMem)
12:05 p.m. - JOSEPH A. FABIANI
by the Harron family
7:00 p.m. - ANTHONY J. LUPPINO (anniversary of birth)
by his wife, Mary, and family

Wednesday, 21 May
St. Christopher Magallanes, priest, martyr, and companions (OptMem)
12:05 p.m. - God's Blessings upon Rev. EDWARD B. CONNOLLY
(42nd anniversary of ordination to priesthood)
by his friends

Thursday, 22 May
St. Rita of Cascia, religious (OptMem)
12:05 p.m. - RYAN A. WALTERS
by his family
7:00 p.m. - LOUISE HOUSER
by Salvatore and Mary Modesto

Friday, 23 May
Weekday
12:05 p.m. - MARIE ELAINE LUPPINO
by Kate Davidock and Marie Davidock

Saturday, 24 May
Weekday
8:00 a.m. - ROSALIE YANNI GENNERELLA
by her husband, Bruno
Vigil of Corpus Christi
4:30 p.m. - KEN CURRAN
(anniversary of birth)
by Phyllis Kevy

" Sunday, 25 May
Corpus Christi: Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
7:45 a.m. - ANNA PILO MERLINO
by Jack and Flo McGovern
10:45 a.m. - JOYCE CHRISTINE CHIPLONIA
by her cousin, Carol Kramer

Saint Joseph Parish
$1,346.00 from the envelopes and $165.00 from the plate. Thank you.
When one deducts from the sum of these two figures, $1,511.00 the parish's weekly financial obligation to the Diocese, i.e. assessments, $410.08 plus the weekly premiums for property and liability insurance, $160.01, the sum of which is $570.09, plus its weekly obligation to All Saints School, $941.06 the sum total of which is $1,511.15, one sees that ($.15) of this collection is available for operating the parish. This is a deficit!

Saint Francis deSales Parish
$135.00 from the envelopes and $62.50 from the plate. Thank you.
When one deducts from the sum of these two figures, $197.50 the parish's weekly financial obligation to the Diocese, i.e. assessments, $46.15 plus the weekly premiums for property and liability insurance, $60.67, the sum of which is $106.82, plus its weekly obligation to All Saints School, $188.21, the sum total of which is $295.03, one sees that ($97.53) of this collection is available for operating the parish. This is a deficit!

xc - xc - xc - THE DAY OF THE TRIPLE NINETIES!
God willing, on Tuesday, 20 May 2008, three members of St. Joseph Parish will observe the completion of ninety years on the planet! (See page four.) Our heartiest good wishes to Mrs. Bertucci, Mrs. Cimino and Mrs. Stein. May God give them peaceful hearts and minds and the love of family and friends.
By the way, there might be someone who would like to know Mrs. Cimino's current address. It is as follows:

WE ACKNOWLEDGE WITH GRATITUDE the receipt of contributions to the StJosPar Memorial Fund as follows:

A QUESTION IN MORAL THEOLOGY

Which of the two is more grievously sinful?

a) A validly married couple having intercourse while using a condom or some other physical barrier to conception

b) A man and a woman, both of adult age and not married to one another (or to anyone else), having consensual intercourse that is left open to the possibility of conception.

The answer is clear and unambiguous.
The former (a) is much more grievously sinful than the latter (b) - although the latter is certainly sinful enough!
Why?
Because the former is a violation of the primary principles of the Natural Law, whereas the latter is not.
The former is "contra naturam", whereas the latter is not.
The former is "sodomy", whereas the latter is "fornication".
Fornication is wicked. Unrepentant fornicators go to hell.
Sodomy is beyond wicked. Sodomy is one of the four categories of "sins that cry out to heaven for revenge". Unrepentant sodomites go to hell.

If you are an adult Catholic and you find this hard to believe, it just goes to show you how lacking you are either in Catholic moral instruction or else in Catholic faith. I point this out to you with love. It is not meant as a put-down, but as an encouragement to salvation!

Read what Pope Benedict XVI said just last Saturday (10 May) in regard to artificial contraception. [See page 09 of this bulletin.]

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I got a telephone call from a gentleman who asked to make an appointment with me for himself and for his wife. He told me that they were living temporarily in Pottsville, that they represented an entity known as "The Genealogical Society of Utah" and that they wanted to discuss something with me.
I usually try to extend to people the courtesy of making myself available to listen to their story, even if I am already fairly certain that there is nothing I can do (or even wish to do) for them. So, I gave them a day and a time to come to speak with me.
Shortly thereafter, I found myself sitting in the Rectory with a man and a woman who gave me a business card - which I still have in my overstuffed wallet. They were an older couple, very gracious and courteous. They told me that their home was in Utah but that they were living temporarily in Pottsville while doing some volunteer work.
I put "Utah" and "genealogy" and "volunteer work" together in my head and asked them if, by any chance, they were working for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). They smiled and said that, well, yes, as a matter of fact - but only indirectly - they were.
They said that they were interested in our records of baptism from years past for purposes of adding to their data base for genealogical research. I told them that I was generally aware of the interest that the Mormon Church has in genealogy and I spoke in a complimentary way about it. They asked me if I would allow them to make photocopies of the entries in our baptism registers. I told them that I was not authorized to allow anyone to do this because it is "privileged information" but that, if they wanted to pursue the matter, they could always contact my Boss.

I told them that my Boss was the Boss of all of the Latin Rite Catholic parishes in a five-county area and that it would be efficient to deal directly with him, so as to eliminate the need to consult with each individual pastor.
They agreed that this made sense. So, I gave them Bishop Cullen's name and contact information. (No doubt he is very grateful to me for doing this!) They seemed pleased about this. We shook hands, wished one another well and they left. That was the end of that.
[Between you, me and the lamp post, I was entirely certain that Bishop Cullen would never approve of our handing over baptism records and would probably relegate to the exterior darkness any priest who did hand over the baptism registers. But I figured that the Bishop gets paid to be the mean guy! That frees me up to say: "Golly gee whiz, folks, I can't let you have the baptism records because the Bishop won't let me!"]
Suffice it to say that I never saw the couple again nor did I hear any more about the project.
Now, just this past week, I read that the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) has issued an edict prohibiting bishops from authorizing the handing over of baptism records to Mormons!
Apparently, the Vatican suspects that the Mormons want to use this information in order to carry out their ritual known as "baptism for the dead". This is a ritual whereby a Mormon goes to a Temple in order to be baptized by proxy for a deceased non-Mormon, so as to confer the "benefits" of Mormon baptism upon the deceased.
I am telling you this story so that you can be eternally grateful to me! By being on the ball and by not handing over the parish's baptism registers, I probably saved your pious Catholic Sicilian great grandmother the indignity of finding herself made into a Mormon in the next life!

I pray for all Mormons, that they might come to believe in the One True God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May they come to salvation in Jesus Christ and enter into the One True Church established by Him!

RESPECTING THE TIMES OF THE BELOVED

Is that not a beautiful phrase?
It stopped me dead in my tracks, when I read it.
I don't know if it originated with Pope Benedict himself or if he is echoing a phrase from some work of literature. Be that as it may, it is an apt phrase to express an aspect of the mystery of married love.
The Pope was speaking about Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the subject of artificial contraception. Pope Benedict said that "the truth expressed in Humanae Vitae does not change".

Listen with mind and heart to these words of the Holy Father:

"In a culture suffering from the prevalence of having over being, human life risks losing its value. If the practice of sexuality becomes a drug that seeks to enslave the partner to one's own desires and interests without respecting the times of the beloved, then what must be defended is no longer just the concept of love but, primarily, the dignity of the person."

We listen to this and we consider that the Supreme Court of California just decreed by a four-to-three vote that there is a constitutional right for the citizens of California to enter into sodomite same-sex unions and we wonder how we ever got to this point in human history.
Well, here is something the average person doesn't realize: Once you have established that a man and a woman have a right to perform artificially contraceptive sexual actions on one another, you have lost the moral ground to say that a man and a man or a woman and a woman do not have the right to perform naturally (obviously!) contraceptive sexual actions on one another.
If you don't understand what you just read, read it over a few times until you do. If you still don't understand it, feel free to give me a call.

Please note:
We depend on the BAA Office in Allentown for updates. We do not receive this information with maximum promptness. It is quite possible that your name is not on this list, even though it should be. If that be so, please let us know.

Saturday, 10 May --- page 11
Pottsville Republican & Herald

MY COMMENT

By the way, I am not responsible for the "Lake Wynonah quip". Credit (?) for that irreverent (but, admittedly, kind of funny) question goes to that Mysterious Person at the R&H who has come to be known as "The Commentator".
Be that as it may …. I suspect (but am not certain) that the priest referred to by the anonymous caller is yours truly. One reason I suspect this is the timing. This item appeared in T / E on 10 May, and I was the celebrant of a funeral Mass at St. Joseph's on 8 May, at which, as is my wont, I announced that only practicing Catholics ought come forward for Holy Communion.
This is something that I have been doing for many years and shall continue to do - and I think many other priests do the same. There is no strict requirement that we make such an announcement, but I think it is a good idea. It is a judgment call on the part of the priest celebrant. It prevents a few sacrilegious receptions of the Holy Eucharist, and that has to be worth something!
Now, let us honestly assess what the caller says.

#1 - The caller says that Jesus said, "I am here for the sinners. Come taste of me and drink of me." As mentioned in last weekend's bulletin, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but no one is entitled to his or her own facts! With this in mind, I hereby categorically deny that Jesus said, "I am here for the sinners. Come taste of me and drink of me." In fact, if the caller (or anyone else, for that matter) can locate that verse in the Bible, I shall make a public retraction and shall push a peanut up Centre Street with my nose, starting at the Mount Carbon arch and ending at the Schuylkill County Courthouse.

#2 - The caller also says that it is "no wonder the Catholic church is crumbling". I would like to inform the caller that the Catholic Church is NOT crumbling. True, we have our ups and downs, but we've been around for almost 2,000 years and you can bet your booties we'll be here to greet the Lord Jesus when He returns in unimaginable splendor. There is no doubt whatever about that.

#3 - The caller says, somewhat vaguely, that "it is all man-made rules". I presume the caller means that the rules that govern eligibility to receive the Holy Eucharist have no foundation in divine revelation. Is the caller not familiar with 1 Corinthians 23, 11-33? I suggest that he or she check it out. It's too long for me to quote in its entirety here, but let me give you just verse 27: "This means that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord."

#4 - The caller says that "no one is good enough to get into heaven, not even the pope". I presume the caller means that no one on his or her own and without God's grace is good enough to get into heaven. If that's what the caller means, I say, "right on!" But, still, I fail to see what that has to do with eligibility to receive the Holy Eucharist!

#5 - Then the caller says that "if it weren't for Jesus dying on the cross, we would all be in the lake of fire". Okay, I accept that too! But, once again, what in the world does that have to do with eligibility to receive the Holy Eucharist?
I think I know what is wrong with this person. His or her brain has been infected with a virulent strain of protestantismus. There are remedies. I urge this person to contact me as soon as possible. I'll prescribe some effective antibiotics: a Bible, a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a good Confession.