Saving Our Parish: Question regarding collection envelope

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Question regarding collection envelope

Received the following anonymous comment on a post way down, so thought I would bring it up here. Does anyone know the answer?

I have a question about envelopes sent to parish members. I received mine last week and one envelope that is to be used in collection July 12th says "emerging churches", can someone clarify what this means? Thanks

5 comments:

AnonymousJune 27, 2011 at 7:22 PM
Emerge or emerging; To come forth into view or into existence - or - to rise as from an inferior or unfortunate state or condition. From that you can draw your own conclusions.
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AnonymousJune 28, 2011 at 1:56 AM
Yes I know the dictionary meaning but how does it comply with giving money. What is it going to be used for? Think before July 12th someone from Deacon Deans office needs to explain or is this also not the parishioners business?
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GretchenJune 28, 2011 at 12:46 PM
I've been doing a little digging here on the subject of emerging churches in the Catholic world. From what I can tell it is one of the attempts to transform the Catholic Church into a lay-run, Protestant model. Here is an article about it from the National Catholic Reporter (which has a spotted reputation according to some) and a study that was done in 2008 regarding pastoral planning models and so forth.

There are two very familiar names on page 31 in the Rochester column of the study. Copy and paste the addresses to access the sites. If you look at the comments in the National Catholic Reporter article, you can see what the results of embracing the emerging church model will look like. Not a pretty sight.

http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/outline-new-life

http://www.emergingmodels.org/doc/Deacon%20PLC%20Report-FINAL.pdf

And, I would certainly not describe what is happening, either in our parish or our diocese as "rising from an inferior or unfortunate state or condition." Rather, we have been descending into an inferior and unfortunate state.
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AnonymousJune 28, 2011 at 1:36 PM
Thanks Gretchen,

I would suggest that everyone hold out the July 12th envelope and not put it in collection basket.
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GretchenJune 29, 2011 at 5:29 PM
Note: At author's request I moved this comment to the proper post.

Bill B. says:

Has anyone thought to call your parish or neighboring parish, or parish you know to trust Rather than speculate? Why not call the envelope company as well, perhaps they know based on who ordered them added. This might eliminate so many blogsters saying they won't give; it could be for something completely worth while for you to donate to. Just an opinion
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Indeed, it is to [God] and his grace alone that we owe what we are as Christians. Since nothing and no one can replace him, it is necessary that we pay homage to nothing and no one else but him. No idol should pollute our spiritual universe or otherwise, instead of enjoying the freedom acquired, we will relapse into a humiliating form of slavery. -- Pope Benedict XVI, The Apostles

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count every tower.
Feel its strength,
visit its palaces,
so that you can tell the next generation –
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here he remains for ever;
and for ever he will lead us and guide us. -- Psalm 47

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We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials. -- St. Teresa of Avila

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Silence gives consent. --Pope Boniface VIII

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He who is afraid is half beaten. -- Aleksandr Suvorov

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. --Mother Teresa

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Your very silence shows you agree. --Euripides, on tyranny

This is the word of the LORD...."Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit," Says the LORD of hosts. --(Zech. 4:6)

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. --Thomas Jefferson

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Ora et labora (Pray and work). --St. Benedict

Always do right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest. --Mark Twain

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that. --Blessed Mother Teresa

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: "The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD's doing, And it is marvelous in our eyes'? Jesus Christ

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are ~ Niccolo Machiavelli (from The Prince).

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio. Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur. Tuque princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen. (St. Michael Prayer in Latin)

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

For a monumental struggle against the powers of darkness pervades the whole history of man. The battle was joined from the very origins of the whole world and will continue until the last day, as the Lord attested (cf. Matthew 24:23; 13:24-30, 36-43). Caught in this conflict man is obliged to wrestle constantly if he is to cling to what is good. Nor can he achieve his own integrity without valiant efforts and the help of God’s grace. -- VII Dogmatic Constitution, paragraph 37

Treachery, though at first very cautious, in the end betrays itself. -- Livy

We've had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence. -- St. Catherine of Siena

The sword of the Lord and of Gideon! -- Judges 7:18

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. -- George Orwell

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it. -- G. K. Chesterton

Do not move your neighbor's boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess. --Deut. 19:14

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Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito!

Your good Spirit will lead me to the land of justice... -- Psalm 142

Let the faithful celebrate his glory,
rejoice even in their beds,
the praise of God in their throats;
and swords ready in their hands,
to exact vengeance upon the nations,
impose punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings in fetters
and their nobles in manacles of iron,
to carry out the sentence that has been passed:
this is the glory prepared for all his faithful. -- Psalm 149

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day. -- Psalm 91:5

How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep-- So shall your poverty come on you like a prowler, And your need like an armed man. --Prov. 6:9-11

Take care, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to show forth the unity of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop, along with the priests and deacons, my fellow-servants. -- St. Ignatius of Antioch

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. --Elie Wiesel

Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness. -- Bl. Ildephonso Schuster, Archbishop of Milan

Don't be so blind or so thoughtless that you fail to 'go into' each tabernacle when you glimpse the walls or the steeple of each house of our Lord. He is waiting for you. -- St. Josemarie Escriva (The Way, #269)

As you make your usual way through the city streets, aren't you happy when you discover another tabernacle? -- St. Josemarie Escriva (The Way, #270)

When the exercise of religious liberty is not thwarted, Christians construct buildings for divine worship. These visible churches are not simply gathering places but signify and make visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with men reconciled and united in Christ. -- The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1180

A church, "a house of prayer in which the Eucharist is celebrated and reserved, where the faithful assemble, and where is worshipped the presence of the Son of God our Savior, offered for us on the sacrificial altar for the help and consolation of the faithful - this house ought to be in good taste and a worthy place for prayer and sacred ceremonial." In this "house of God" the truth and the harmony of the signs that make it up should show Christ to be present and active in this place. -- The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1181

Finally, the church has an eschatological significance. To enter into the house of God, we must cross a threshold, which symbolizes passing from the world wounded by sin to the world of the new Life to which all men are called. The visible church is a symbol of the Father's house toward which the People of God is journeying and where the Father "will wipe every tear from their eyes."6Also for this reason, the Church is the house of all God's children, open and welcoming. -- The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1186

I rejoiced when I heard them say 'Let us go to God's house' -- Psalm 122

Keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary. I am the LORD. --Leviticus 26:2

O God, you are my God, for you I long
For you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
Like a dry, weary land without water.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory. -- Psalm 63: 1-2

Open the gates of victory; I will enter and thank the LORD.
This is the LORD'S own gate, where the just may enter. -- Psalm 118

The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority, and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here, is infringing eternal laws, and taking upon himself superhuman authority, which will eventually crush him. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Most fraudulent are those Catholic leaders, or alliances of Catholics, that insist that the radically evil injustice of abortion need not be directly opposed, but rather, that somehow solving the dilemma of the poor in a sweeping act of charity will cause the foundation of this monstrous crime to crumble...the foundation and cause of abortion is not poverty but...an idolatrous worship of personal convenience." -- Bishop Robert W. Finn

Anyone who conceals the Truth for fear of some authority calls down the wrath of God upon himself, because he fears men more than God... Both are guilty: he who conceals the Truth and he who speaks falsehood, because the former does not wish to make the Truth known and the latter desires not to refute it. -- St. Augustine

“My birth is imminent. Forgive me, brethren. Do not prevent me from coming to life." ― St. Ignatius (as he faced the prospect of being devoured by wild beasts for his faith.)

Woe to the pastors, that destroy and tear the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord. Therefore thus saith the Lord the God of Israel to the pastors that feed my people: You have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold I will visit upon you for the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. -- Jeremiah 23

For everyone who does what is hateful, hates The Light and does not come to The Light, lest his works should be convicted. -- Jesus Christ, John 3:20 (Aramaic Bible in Plain English)

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H.L. Mencken

Like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked. -- Proverbs 25:26

To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. -- Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae

If, therefore, someone shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection and direction, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in matters that belong to Faith and Morals, but also in those that relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread through the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part and not all of the fullness of this supreme power; or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the churches and over each and all the Pastors and the faithful: let him be ANATHEMA. -- (Pius IX, Constitution Pastor Aeternus or De Ecclesia Christi of July 18, 1870

The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying -- "You are insane because you are not like us." -- St. Anthony the Great

Monks built Europe unintentionally. Their adventure is primarily, if not exclusively, interior. They are moved by thirst for the absolute, thirst for another world. Thus monasteries, pointing silently to heaven, are an obstinate reminder that there is another world of which this world is but the image, the herald, and the prefiguration. -- Dom Gerard, founder of St. Madeleine's Abbey, Le Barroux, France

"...if ever at any time it shall appear that any Bishop, even if he be acting as ... even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: (i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless; ... (vi) those thus promoted or elevated shall be deprived automatically, and without need for any further declaration, of all dignity, position, honour, title, authority, office and power." -- Pope Paul IV, Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio

“A Pope who is a manifest heretic automatically ceases to be a Pope and head, just as he ceases automatically to be a Christian and a member of the Church. Wherefore, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the ancient Fathers who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction.” -- St. Robert Bellarmine

“If ever a Pope, as a private person, should fall into heresy, he should at once fall from the Pontificate. If, however, God were to permit a pope to become a notorious and contumacious heretic, he would by such fact cease to be pope, and the apostolic chair would be vacant.” -- St. Alphonsus Liguori

“In the case in which the Pope would become a heretic, he would find himself, by that very fact alone and without any other sentence, separated from the Church. A head separated from a body cannot, as long as it remains separated, be head of the same body from which it was cut off.” -- St. Antoninus

The greatest obstacle in the apostolate of the Church is the timidity or rather the cowardice of the faithful.” -- Pope St. Pius X

“The Pope should not flatter himself about his power nor should he rashly glory in his honor and high estate, because the less he is judged by man, the more he is judged by God. Still the less can the Roman Pontiff glory because he can be judged by men, or rather, can be shown to be already judged, if for example he should wither away into heresy; because he who does not believe is already judged, In such a case it should be said of him: ‘If salt should lose its savor, it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trampled under foot by men.’” - -Pope Innocent III

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
Erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends —
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve
the same unfruitful course with changing of a name. -- (Mythopoeia, J.R.R. Tolkien)