Thursday, July 11, 2024

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Newly ordained priests bow toward Archbishop Jerome Listecki near the end of their ordination service held at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.

America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservative

In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices and politics.

By Ruth Graham

Photographs by Nick Hagen

Ruth Graham, who covers religion, reported from the Milwaukee area.

July 10, 2024

On a sunny afternoon in May, Zachary Galante was sitting in a conference room in St. Francis de Sales Seminary with several other young men, talking about what it meant for them to choose the Catholic priesthood in the year 2024. The next morning, they would make lifelong promises of celibacy and obedience, and they were palpably elated by the prospect.

“It’s a beautiful life,” Deacon Galante, soon to become Father Galante, said.

There was a time where the church “maybe apologized for being Catholic,” he said later in the conversation. He and the other new priests agreed they were called to something different: advancing the Catholic faith, even the parts that could seem out of place in an increasingly hostile world. “The church is Catholic, and so we should announce that joyfully,” he said.

In an era of deep divisions in the American Catholic Church, and ongoing pain over the continuing revelations of sexual abuse by priests over decades, there is increasing unity among the men joining the priesthood: They are overwhelmingly conservative in their theology, their liturgical tastes and their politics.

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Friday, December 31, 2021

The Humanist's Prayer

Oh Lord, give me the strength of will

To swallow all the vapid swill

of those who beat their chests and claim

That they alone speak in Your Name.

Give me the strength to tolerate

The blindness, bigotry and hate

The murder, bullying and rage

They say came from a Bible page.

Oh Lord, when I must hear them preach

The violence they say You teach

Give me the strength to turn my head

And wish them well, instead of dead...

Give me the strength to stay my wrath

To walk upon a higher path

To be superior to fools

Who drag You into public schools.

Oh Lord, I know it gives You pain

To waste a treasure like a brain

Of human compass, human girth

On those who cannot see its worth...

But still, I pray that there's a hope

That even the most dauntless dope

Will someday see the ghastly blight

His "faith" must be, to block Your light.

The fact is, it's a tragic loss

When folks are beaten with a cross.

And nothing makes the angels weep

Like seeing men behave like sheep...

With all their sick, self-righteous ire

And blathering about Hell's fire

They only drive us from You, Lord,

And make us bitter, tired and bored.

Dear God, please make them stay at home

And leave the rest of us alone.

Teach them to love their human kin

Instead of counting every sin!

Of course, I know You'll heed this prayer,

That humanists say everywhere.

In this one irony we trust:

That Jesus Christ was one of us.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Soul Searching: From Roman Catholic to Secular Humanist

(Published by The Humane Society of the United States)

By Kevin Saldanha, DVM, BVSc&AH, MVSc Mississauga, Ontario

I have been a companion animal veterinarian for more than 20 years and a practicing Roman Catholic for most of my life until about five years ago.

My journey away from Catholicism and organized religion to atheism and now secular humanism was via a dietary change to vegetarianism coinciding with a quest to understand the after-lives of animals. It was through a discussion about having a 'Blessing of the Pets' at our local church that I started questioning my concept of 'soul' and how that applied to animals.

The parish priest was reluctant to allow a "St. Francis of Assisi" type blessing because of an incident at another church where a pet owner wanted her poodle to partake in the Eucharist and receive Holy Communion after the blessing. After acknowledging that it was inappropriate, I suggested that only a very passionate pet owner would want the similar blessings of communion for her closest companion.

He argued that the dog could not have benefited in any tangible way because it did not have a 'human' soul. A discussion ensued as to the difference of animal and human souls which left me more confused than before. Until that time, I had never questioned that animals had a similar after-life to humans, where we would all meet up once again, being whole and healthy as described in the comforting poem 'The Rainbow Bridge'

A few months before this conversation, I had chosen to follow a vegetarian diet while trying to follow a healthier lifestyle. Until then, I had not considered the after-lives of animals we breed, nurture and slaughter for food. Through my professional training, I learned humane animal husbandry techniques, but I never made the connection between the pets we treat with such love and compassion and the food on my plate.

I started becoming aware of the inconsistency of my attitudes towards different classes of animals based on their utility for humans. Two books which were instrumental in changing my attitude were 'Diet for a Small Planet' by Frances Moore Lappe and 'The Pig who Sang to the Moon' by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

While I had effectively compartmentalized my knowledge of evolution from my religious beliefs, I was now beginning to feel the need to reconcile the two and felt that there could only be one truth. Which was it? That all animals, including the ultimate primate, Homo sapiens, had souls which then made the assumption that all had equally significant afterlives, or that none did.

Two books by animal rights activist and lawyer, Steven M. Wise—"Rattling the Cage" and "Drawing the Line"—blurred the line on sentience and intelligence in primates and other species respectively. When exactly, during evolution or gestation, did the eternal human soul get infused into our bodies?

As that concept began to unravel, so did many others of the faith of my baptism, leaving me bewildered and lonely. I knew that I wasn't the only one to come up with this conundrum and went online to find like minded individuals. I had to bypass the angry atheist and Internet infidel sites, finally landing on the secular humanists, who put reason and intent to our lives without need for a supernatural deity.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Support the new orphanage in Kasese

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE GOFUNDME PAGE

BiZoHa Orphanage - Rwenzori, Uganda

OAKLAND, CA COMMUNITY

$1,030 of $4,605

Raised by 16 people in 7 hours

Donate Now

Created February 24, 2015

Hank Pellissier

BiZoHa Orphanage is seeking start-up funds of $4,506 - to construct a home for 15-20 orphans, to provide it with furniture, and to feed the orphans.

The orphanage will be in Kasese, Uganda, near the Rwenzori mountains and the Congo border.

Uganda has 3.5 million orphans, 9% of the population. Children are parentless due to AIDS, civil war, violence, accidents, and abandonment. Up to 70% of orphans become criminals as adults. Among girls, 60% end up in prostitution, where the HIV/AIDS rate is 37%.

Education for orphans is limited. When they “age out” of orphanages, many become “street kids” sniffing glue, stealing, scavenging in garbage dumps, begging. Many are subjected to illness, filth, malnutrition, sexual abuse, and child trafficking (slavery).

BiZoHa will provide orphans with an excellent opportunity, because they’ll be allowed to attend the highly-regarded, science-based Kasese Humanist Primary School (KHPS). Many graduates of KHPS advance to secondary schools and universities.

The director of KHPS - Bwambale M Robert - was orphaned himself at the age of five. He worked his way through high school as a barber, and subsequently received a university scholarship, where he matriculated in Biology. He is the author of the upcoming book, “Orphans of Rwenzori - a Humanist Perspective.”

BiZoHa Orphanage intends to be economically self-sufficient in 1 year. This goal will be achieved by selling corn, beans, cassava, peanuts, and lettuce grown on its 7-acre crop farm, and by selling drinks in their planned Coffee Shop / Restaurant & Craft Shop at a roadside along the popular Fort Portal Mponde Road, that leads to destinations like Bushenyi, Mbarra town, Queen Elizabeth National Park, and Bwera.

The name “BiZoHa” is an acronym of the three primary fundraisers for this campaign.

“Bi” is Biba Kavass - award-winning Economics teacher at Southwind High School in Memphis, Tennessee, where she encouraged her students to write the upcoming book, Microfinance in Action: A Guide for Teenagers . She founded Embrace Global Change, a non-profit that's writing grants for BiZoHa, plus it set up a clinic in nearby Nyakiyumbu. Biba is battling brain cancer and her ex-students have raised over $181,000 on KIVA in her honor.

“Zo” is Zoltan Istvan - author of The Transhumanist Wager and a popular feature writer and columnist at VICE Motherboard, National Geographic, Huffington Post, Slate, Psychology Today and other publications. He’s running for US President in 2016 as the Transhumanist Party candidate, as an atheist.

“Ha” is Hank Pellissier - is director of Brighter Brains Institute , a think-and-do tank in the SF Bay Area, plus he co-produced the world’s first Atheist Film Festival in 2009 with David Fitzgerald and Veronica Chater .

BiZoHa Orphanage will be the World’s First Atheist Orphanage. It’s parent institution - Kasese Humanist Primary School (KHPS) - notes on its website that it “does not embrace… god or gods: supernatural beings intervening in the world and taking an interest in human affairs.”

KHPS is aligned with godless groups like Foundation Beyond Belief andAtheist Alliance International (where a DONATE button to sponsor KHPS students is situated. ) KHPS also receives help from irreligious groups in Australia, the United Kingdom, USA, Germany, and Canada (the “Godless Poutine ”), plus individuals, like PZ Myers (see photo above.)

The school motto is “With Science, We Can Progress.”

Budget for BiZoHa Orphanage:

$3,122.31 to build the structure
786.70 to provide furniture
597.89 food for a month

GoFundMe Co-ordinators:

Hank Pellissier - brighterbrainsinstitute@gmail.com

Bwambale M. Robert - kasesehumanistschool@hotmail.com