Apparently the strong negative reaction these last several weeks by Catholic bishops, leaders in the Church and the Catholic faithful in regards to the Health & Human Services mandate requiring religious institutions to pay for abortion inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization, all in violation of Catholic Church teachings, has gotten the attention of the administration. There is capitulation, but according to Archbishop Dolan, president of the U.S. Bishops, the “capitulation” is nothing more than “manipulation.” Let me once again reiterate what this is really about. If you think this is about free birth control for those who “need it,” even if they are Catholic, you are wrong. The federal government through Planned Parenthood and other agencies already subsidizes free birth control so that it is readily available to anyone who wants it. No. To quote the Archbishop again (soon to be a Cardinal this week), this is about the federal government defining a religious individual’s or religious entity’s very identity. Not my Catholic doctrine, not the Gospel, not the Pope (the vicar of Christ on earth), not the bishops (successors of the Apostles), but the government, the government, is going to tell you and tell me, and tell those institutions who represent our faith how to “define” themselves. Religious freedom is the lifeblood, the cornerstone of the American way of life. When the Founding Fathers determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the “first” freedom above all the rest, and related to it, the freedom that no one can be forced to violate their conscience. Let us continue to pray that our President and our elected officials will come to their senses.

God Bless!

Fr. Morgan

It’s a great thing to know you’re loved. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of Christmas greetings and gifts from you, thank you very much. Also, thank you for your concern and prayers while I was convalescing from knee surgery. I have had quite the medical year. This is my fourth surgery since late September: cataract surgery on both eyes; some carcinoma removed from below my eye; and now a scoping on my left knee. It continues to humble me and remind me that youth is of the spirit and mind, and not necessarily corporal. In our Gospel for this weekend, John the Baptist, in his characteristic humility, is eager to point beyond himself to the Christ. He did not hesitate to direct his disciples to the Lord Jesus and not to himself. Our health serves us only if it leads to a way of humility and gratitude, so we might hear Jesus say to us: “What’s the goal of your life? Do you come to Me for something more than what this life can give you?”

Blessings as you begin 2012 with a healthy soul!
Fr. Morgan

To pray as a family is to share in the life of the Trinity, to share in the love that exists between God, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. When the family gathers together to share a meal and thank God for the food that they will consume, they join themselves together in the love they share with each other and with God. When the parents pray with their children before going to sleep, the entire family places itself under the protection and love of God. After praying, the parents can ask God to bless their children by praying:

May almighty God bless you For all the days of your life Both now and forever.

While the blessing is very short, the deep down desire of every father and mother is that someday their entire family will be reunited in Heaven where they will live forever in the love of God. To ask God to bless their children as they journey to Heaven is to fulfill the greatest desire that a father and mother have for their children. Praying the rosary with or for your children is also a good practice.

God’s Blessings,
Deacon Tom Bates

What’s the significance of a name? For the Jewish people the giving of a name had great importance. A person’s name expressed the reality of his or her being at its deepest level. A Jewish child was named at the time of circumcision, eight days after birth. This rite was instituted by God as an outward sign to single out those who belonged to the chosen people. It was a sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham and his posterity. In fulfillment of this precept, Mary’s newborn child is given the name Jesus on the eighth day according to the Jewish custom. Joseph and Mary gave the name Jesus because that is the name given by God’s messenger before Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb. This name signifies Jesus’ identity and His mission. The literal Hebrew means the Lord saves. Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus His eternal Son made man, will save His people from their sins (Mat. 1:21). In the birth and naming of this child we see the wondrous design and plan of God in giving us a Savior who would bring us grace, mercy, and freedom from the power of sin and the fear of death. The name Jesus signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of His Son who became man for our salvation. The name Jesus is at the heart of all Christian prayer. It is through and in Jesus that we pray to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Many Christians have died with one word on their lips…the name of Jesus. Today, as we recognize Mary as the “Mother of God” we exalt the name of her Son and pray with confidence in His name.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Fr. Morgan & Rudy (a.k.a. “the donkey”)

Each year, the JC Penney Christmas catalog would arrive at the Morgan house with great fanfare. It sometimes came as early as the end of August. Though it was meant for the living room magazine rack, it didn’t stay there long. It usually made its way first to the girls’ room for a few weeks, then to the boys’ room for more than a few weeks, and finally would end up in the bathroom…its cover gone; its pages torn, curled and frayed like an ancient crossword-puzzle dictionary. For hours, we would sit and drool over the latest colorful gizmos and toys, revising the Christmas list continuously from September through December. That catalog was the big book of hopes, dreams and desires. How our hopes, dreams and desires change over successive Christmases. How our lists include less and less “things” and the need for more and more “blessings.” What are frayed and worn are our lives, not our catalogs. For when one peeks into the Manger and sees the fulfillment of every hope and dream in the birth of “the God Who is with us,” everything pales in comparison. We long to have that serenity and peace which is connected with the eternal rather than with the fleeting. Let us never forget that we carry the very life of God within us, through sanctifying grace in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Mary gave birth to the Lord Jesus in a manger…we give birth to Him in the deepest recesses of our hearts when we do His will in our lives. May you and your family have a very Blessed Christmas, my Holy Spirit family; and may the birth of the Christ child answer all your hopes, dreams and desires.

Christmas blessings!

Fr. Morgan & Rudy

The understanding of a “Messiah” in the Hebrew religion developed over time, much like Christian doctrine has developed over time. This is how God works in His creation: He allows us to peel back the truths of the faith one layer at a time much like peeling back the skin of an onion one layer at a time in order to get to the core. For ancient Judaism, the general hope was that God would bring peace and justice for his people by a divine intervention, but “messianism” was not focused on a particular person until the prophecies made by King David: Your dynasty will last forever, says the prophet Samuel in today’s First Reading. This is the beginning of what Jews called “royal messianism,” the Messiah would be a descendent of David, a great King, and a powerful leader who would establish a vast earthly kingdom. His coming would resound around the world. Other Old Testament prophecies predicted that the Messiah would unite Jew and Gentile. The understanding was that the Gentiles would be merely “included” in the messianic kingdom, but not given any status or claim. The Messiah was never expected to be divine, but certainly he would have the blessing of the divine. It was blasphemy for Jews to even consider that the divine could be born of a woman. Then came the prophet Isaiah. He would write about another kind of Messiah, the “suffering servant,” a designation that Judaism rejected. What Messiah would come into the world to be a victim rather than a conqueror? So the identity of the Messiah was never really clear to the Jewish people. There was always the given expectation that the Messiah would come, but the “how” and “who” and “when” was never etched in stone. In our Gospel, Luke wants to show the connection between Jesus and all the Jewish prophecies made down through the ages. Jesus is the Messiah. Born of a woman. He is the Expected One. Yet, it takes everyone by surprise: The birth of a baby to a poor peasant woman (from the lineage of David though) was not how the Messiah was supposed to come; and He was certainly not supposed to be God. At any rate, we have been let in on the truth…thankfully. We know the rest of the story. May we ready ourselves this last week of Advent to expect the unexpected. Like Mary, let us proclaim that “His will” might be “our will.”

Advent Blessings



Fr. Morgan

In looking at the Sunday readings and seeing the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” I thought we might do well to reflect on the Catholic doctrine of merit. The following entries from the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church might be helpful:

426. What is merit? (See CCC 2006-2010, 2025- 2026)

In general merit refers to the right to recompense for a good deed. With regard to God,we of ourselves are not able to merit anything, having received everything freely from him. However, God gives us the possibility of acquiring merit through union with the love of Christ, who is the source of our merits before God. The merits for good works, therefore must be attributed in the first place to the grace of God and then to the free will of man.

427.What are the goods that we can merit?(See CCC 2010-2011, 2027)

Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods, suitable for us, can be merited in accordance with the plan of God. No one, however, can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion and justification.


Fr. Jonathan Venner

As we begin to recite the new translation of the Nicene Creed, it seems appropriate that we reflect a bit on this prayer. We might ask what a Creed is in the first place. The English word “Creed” comes from the Latin, “credo.” This word means “I believe” and is the first word in the Latin version of both the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed. According the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Creeds, also called symbols of faith or professions of faith, are “composite formulas…with which the Church from her very beginning has set forth synthetically and handed on her own faith in a language that is normative and common to all the faithful.” It is the Catholic Church who first possesses the true faith. In the Creed, the Church expresses that faith. When we pray the Creed, we profess that the Church’s faith is our faith also. The most ancient Creeds were baptismal Creeds. In the earliest days of the Church, as today, when a person came to be baptized, they first had to recite the Creed (parents do this now for their children, often in a question-answer format). The “Apostle’s Creed” is the ancient baptismal Creed of the Church of Rome. The Nicene Creed, or more precisely, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, was developed at the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople (325 and 381 AD). In the Nicene Creed we see special emphasis on the doctrines that were being clarified at those councils. One example was to oppose the heresy of Arianism. Arianism claimed that Jesus was not fully God, and so we see great emphasis on the full divinity of Christ, “born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.” The Creed has been included in the Holy Mass on Sundays and certain Feasts since the fourth century, precisely to combat heresies. When we profess our faith in the Creed, we are responding to the truth that we hear in the Scripture readings and the Homily by renewing our belief in the faith of the Church. In special reverence for the mystery of the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Trinity becoming a Human Being, we are all asked to bow from our waist during the words, “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became Man.” On the Solemnity of the Annunciation and on Christmas, instead of bowing, we are asked to genuflect during these words.

Fr. Venner