Catholic bishops in Wisconsin urging not to bring guns into church

Roman Catholic bishops in Wisconsin are urging their parishioners not to bring weapons to church now that a new law permits state residents to carry concealed firearms.

"Intuitively, we understand that acts of violence, destruction, and murder are antithetical to the message and person of Jesus Christ and have no rightful place in our society, especially sacred places," the bishops said just before the law went into effect on Tuesday.

"We ask that all people seriously consider not carrying weapons into church buildings as a sign of reverence for these sacred spaces," they said.

The statement, issued by Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki and four other bishops, said a decision on whether to ban weapons was up to individual churches.

Residents with a valid permit are allowed to carry concealed handguns, electric weapons such as stun guns or tasers, knives other than switchblades, and billy clubs.

Machine guns, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns remain prohibited.

An employer may bar an employee from carrying concealed weapons at work, but cannot prohibit an employee from keeping concealed weapons in the employee's vehicle, even if it is parked on employer property.

The law mandates four hours of instructor-led training to carry a concealed weapon, or completion of a hunter safety course through the state.

Reuters

In other words, if you own a gun, you are a psycho murderer. 

Maybe I'm weird for not being afraid of guns.  I'm more afraid someone would go up to Communion in the state of mortal sin or that the priest is going to bring in the clowns than I am that someone has a gun on them. 

I hate to break it to everybody, but a person could bring in a gun prior to any law passed as well.  Bad people usually don't care what the law or the bishops say on the matter.

But I'm sure these ladies will happily oblige. 

Bishop Ricken on Wisconsin bishops' opposition to HHS mandate

Bishop Ricken, writing in this week's Green Bay Compass:

In this issue of The Compass you will find a press release about a letter the five bishops of Wisconsin sent to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this letter, we bishops of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference express our opposition to the "preventive services mandate" that demands that private health care plans cover "surgical sterilizations, prescription contraceptives approved by the FDA, and education and counseling for all women of reproductive capacity."

Why have the bishops expressed such a strong opposition? There are fundamental human and religious values at stake. This move narrows the possibility for a Catholic private institution or individual to have a conscience protection except of the narrowest kind. It could eventually even erode conscience protection rights of any kind.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), which drafted the recommendation to HHS, listed the medical benefit of birth control as "the ability to plan one's family and attain optimal birth spacing" and secondarily as treatment for "conditions including acne and menstrual abnormalities." This recommendation to the HHS was lobbied for over a period of months by Planned Parenthood and in the end places human fertility in the category of a disease. It is not a disease. As we have written in our letter, "it is a gift which, exercised responsibly, allows humanity to prosper."

The mandate contains a very narrow conscience provision that will not cover Catholic or private "universities, hospitals and charitable organizations that serve the general public." We are not called to serve only Catholics but anyone who comes to us for care. This kind of ruling could jeopardize the very existence of Catholic institutions to truly be Catholic, not just in our places of worship but in places such as hospitals and universities where we must teach and practice Catholic teaching in order to be faithful to what the church is and does.

Health care reform "should expand, not restrict, the ability of employers and providers to offer the best possible care. It should provide Americans with real health care options that support and do not undermine their most cherished values."

I urge you to direct your comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in one or more of the following ways:

• Electronically at www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=HHS-OS-2011-0023-0002.

• By mailing written comments to: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Attention: CMS-9992-IFC2, P.O. Box 8010, Baltimore, MD 21244-8010. (Please allow sufficient time for mailed comments to be received before the close of the comment period.)

• By express or overnight mail to: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Attention: CMS-9992-IFC2, Mail Stop C4-26-05, 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21244-1850.

• By hand or courier.

I should mention that the focus of this commentary is not to criticize Bishop Ricken's column but to discuss the letter sent to HHS.

First, props to the bishops for opposing the contraception mandate.

But the letter to the HHS is weak and lacking in ooomph. The very last paragraph of the letter:

For these reasons, we ask that the regulation be rescinded. If it is not rescinded, we urge that it be modified to expand the religious exemption to reflect a more inclusive understanding of religion and religious institutional arrangements.

This is akin to pro-life legislation that is written with exceptions already in. You have lost your bargaining chip before the battle has even begun and resigned yourself to going halfway.

Actions speak louder than words, and a strongly-worded statement, at the end of the day, will languish away on the internets somewhere, while pro-abort Catholics continue to erode authentic Catholicism.

Capuchin Brother, President of Messmer Catholic Schools, speaks on Walker protests

A great article. Fascinating. Kudos to Brother Bob for standing his ground and not being intimidated. Imagine if pro-lifers tried to pull this stunt [photo, left, of police officers preventing protesters from crossing onto Messmer property, which is private property].



Milwaukee Catholic Herald:

Messmer Preparatory Catholic School at 3027 N. Fratney St. was vandalized Thursday, Aug. 25, and parents were threatened by protesters surrounding the school Friday morning, Aug. 26, before Gov. Scott Walker’s scheduled visit, according to a press release from the school.

The release said school officials were informed Thursday night that the building alarms were set off, and discovered Friday morning that nine locks on exterior doors, including a parking gate, doors to the building and a church building door, were sealed with glue. Capuchin Br. Bob Smith, president and CEO of Messmer Catholic Schools, which include Messmer High School and the K4-8 St. Rose and St. Leo School, told your Catholic Herald Monday that opening the doors, whose locks that were filled with superglue, wood glue and wood, required staff from all three campuses.

People that surrounded the entire block of the school Friday held signs in protest and grew angrier as the police presence grew, said Br. Bob, who walked up and down Fratney Street asking protesters to stay off the school property and to remove signs and blankets they were hanging on the school’s fences.

“It was a certain segment of Milwaukee at its worst,” he said. “There were people telling me that they didn’t want to see me in the neighborhood again, and I said to them, ‘I didn’t ask you when I came here, and I’m not asking you for permission to come back. This neighborhood doesn’t belong to you.”

“I said to people that I spoke with then and I said earlier today that I’ve lived in Detroit, I’ve lived in Chicago, Atlanta, here, and I don’t run from bullies and thugs or threats,” said Br. Bob, who hopes someone will turn in the person or people responsible for the vandalism so that he, she or they can pay to replace the school’s key and fob systems that were destroyed. “And you’re going to have to go through me to get to the kids and the faculty and staff, and you better bet that if you cross that line, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

Read the rest here.



A number of unions participated in the Messmer protest, including the SEIU.



Also in this week's Milwaukee Catholic Herald was a tribute to the value of unions in society by John Huebscher of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (the Milwaukee Catholic Herald's title on the article was, "Credit unions for much of what you enjoy," but it's only online at the GB Compass). A tad ironic, no?

Labor Unions valdalize school locks hours before Gov. Walker visit

Custodial staff at Messmer Preparatory school were replacing locks Friday morning after the previous ones had been filled with metal and glue overnight, said the school's Development Director Jeffrey Robb.

"We're very disappointed," he said.

The vandalism came hours before Gov. Scott Walker was scheduled to visit the school to read to second- and third-graders. Walker plans to read, "Oh! The Places You'll Go," by Dr. Seuss.

"This visit is talking about education," Robb said, but there have been political elements brought into it. Robb said that cars lined the street by the school sporting anti-Walker signs Friday morning.

Protesters plan to be at the school during Walker's visit, according to Jacob Flom of the Milwaukee Students for a Democratic Society.

"We're not going to let him go anywhere, especially in our community, without him being protested," he said.

Flom said he doesn't know who's behind the vandalism[ROFL!], but acts such as that aren't effective for the protesters' cause. Instead, he said, a better way to be effective is for people to show up in support of the protest.

MJS

In related news, John Huebscher the WCC director wrote kind of a tribute to labor unions historically for The Compass(GB).  He is right.  Labor Unions did help defend rights of the working class.  In stark contrast, the behavior of the public sector unions of today is nothing short of shameful(unlike many good unions today and the their noble predecessors of the past).  Particularly when you look at the amount of vacation time the WEAC receives, they can in absolutely no way relate to the railroad unions of the past(referenced in the article).  It is important that despite the fact that these unions atrocious behavior recently, that moral labor unions are certainly something we should support and be grateful. 

NCReg: Unions and the Church: Lessons Learned From Wisconsin Battle

MADISON, Wis. — The recall contests in Wisconsin this summer set a national record — an indication of how deep feelings run in the state.

The last recall elections ended Aug. 16 with Republicans still holding the state Legislature. But the partisan battle over the fate of pensions, benefits and collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions created painful divisions even among Catholics — and that still needs pastoral and catechetical attention.

Wisconsin’s Catholic bishops say it’s time to set aside the political divisions that have divided parish communities and even some families.

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison has invited his flock to reconcile their differences. But he also suggested that the lingering tensions marked an unsettling truth: For many of the faithful, partisan loyalties trump Catholic teaching.

“This is a profound pastoral problem,” he said. “When the objective truth of faith is subordinated to political concerns, I am not free to teach the faith and instead get categorized as a Republican or a Democrat.”

While “the bishops of Wisconsin took a neutral position on the issue, Archbishop [Jerome] Listecki of Milwaukee rightly chose to emphasize workers’ rights in his own statement, while I chose to emphasize the principle of fairness. The media and local politicians decided he was pro-union and I was anti-union,” recalled Bishop Morlino. “In other words, politics wins the day.”

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/unions-and-the-church-lessons-learned-from-wisconsin-battle/#ixzz1VaW2VzaK

The divide amongst Catholic was there before the public union debate and it will be there afterwards as well.  It's too bad the left was unable to present a reasonable argument on the matter because I was listening. 

US Catholic: In defense of Wisconsin public sector unions

The question in Wisconsin was whether public employees should have the same right to collective bargaining as employees at private companies. The 1935 U.S. National Labor Relations Act officially recognized the right to collective bargaining for private-sector workers. Critics argue that public employees inherently have more leverage than employees of private businesses. Public employees can elect their own bosses. What’s more, public-sector workers won’t moderate their demands for fear that their employer—the government—will go bankrupt in the same way that private-sector employees must do.

“One has to make a distinction between unions as they were conceived in social teaching and unions that exist on the basis of taxpayer funding,” says Patrick Carey, professor of theology at Milwaukee’s Marquette University.

.....

The following day, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison issued a clarifying letter. Listecki and the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, Morlino wrote, had taken a neutral position, neither supporting the governor nor supporting the unions. He quoted Pope John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens: “Just efforts to secure the rights of workers who are united by the same profession should always take into account the limitations imposed by the general economic situation of the country.”

Right-wing bloggers praised Morlino for reining in the Wisconsin Catholic Conference’s support for the unions. The media cited his comments as evidence of divisions within the hierarchy.

“People may say the bishops cherry-picked from the encyclicals,” says John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference. “The answer is to urge people to go read the encyclicals for themselves.”  [Isn't the bishops' office a teaching office?]

“As Catholics have become more affluent, the church’s teachings sometimes bump up against a Catholic’s economic self-interest,” says Huebscher of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference. “So the church has a greater challenge in teaching.”

Huebscher thinks the church is teaching the social encyclicals, but the evidence is sketchy. “How many laypeople have ever been taught anything about the Catholic encyclicals?” asks Marquette’s Carey.[We know all Marquette grads have Humane Vitae memorized] “It doesn’t surprise me that Catholic laypeople don’t necessarily support unions. The culture can teach more easily by osmosis than the church can.”

“When I talk with priests around the country, they say the church’s social teaching is the subject they feel least comfortable addressing,” says Father Bryan Massingale, associate professor of theology at Marquette.[Less comfortable than gay marriage apparently] “They tell me their two weakest courses in seminary were homiletics and social justice.”

entire article at US Catholic

US Catholic = NC Reporter.  Liberalism is their religion.  It is very telling that they are still trying to spin Listecki as unconditionally supporting unlimited bargaining for public sector unions, despite the fact Listecki clarified his own statement as neutral.  Count how many times Rerum Novarum is referenced without ever quoting it. 

Want to "get" Catholic Social Teaching? Read Regnum Novum, and check out Mr. Gutierrez' section on Catholic Social Teaching at Discerning Hearts.

Not discussed in the article was the public sector union's firm support of abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception without parental consent, and pornographic sex education beginning at early as kindergarten.

You think politics in Washington is bad?  Try politics within the Church!