Dear Friends,

Here is what a friend wrote to the LA Dodgers:

“Dear Dodger Organization: One of the great gifts of growing up in Southern California was the LA Dodgers. As a 67yr old man my life memories are filled with Dodger blue. Going to Chavez Ravine for a game and having a Dodger Dog were the highlights of my summer. Listening to Vin Scully was better than watching a game on TV as he could paint pictures with his words. I can hear him now: “2 on, 2 out, the count is 2 balls and 2 strikes. The deuces are wild!”

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Dear Friends,

Whenever elections come around so do calls for revocation of the tax-exempt status of Churches. In fact some put it this way, “it’s time for the government to stop subsidizing the Churches”. Well tax exemption and subsidies are not the same thing by a long shot. And here is why.

For the founders of the US not taxing the property of the Church (remember income tax didn’t come along until the 20th century) was something that they brought with them from England. In many European countries there were official Churches, such as the Church of England, which gave the Church a quasi-governmental status. So why would the government tax itself? But beyond that as the Church and State became more and more disentangled the state saw the social impact of the Church as benefiting the common good. So things like education, hospitals, feeding the poor etc. that the Church did took the burden off the state. For governments to tax the Church would mean less of those services. So for government this was a win-win situation.

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Dear Friends,

This time of year is when clerical assignments are given out. The main driver behind the new assignments is the addition of the newly ordained to the starting line-up. For us, here in the Diocese of Phoenix, two new priests were ordained. Though we are grateful for them, the addition of two doesn’t make up for the number of retirements and deaths and especially in our case, the amount of growth in our area. So, pray for vocations and encourage vocations to the priesthood.

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Dear Friends,

Tommy Lasorda was Manager of the LA Dodgers for over twenty years. He was also a Catholic and made sure that a priest would come to offer Mass at Dodger Stadium for team members and staff on Sundays when his team played. So, I wonder what he would have thought about the Dodgers Organization “honoring” the so called ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’? Probably not much.

The ’Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ describe themselves as “queer and trans” who dress up as nuns, in a mocking fashion and indulge in lots of sacrilegious, profane, and disgusting displays. Some of those include mocking the Blessed Virgin, disrupting Mass, using a large crucifix to do a stripper’s pole dance, and a whole lot worse that I won’t scandalize you with. Basically, they are an anti-Catholic hate group engaging in belittling religious sisters, blasphemously using Catholic symbols, and trampling upon some of our most sacred beliefs.

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