The Bishop of Boise Speaks Out

The Bishop of the Diocese of Boise, +Michael Driscoll, has spoken out against the Obama administration's frontal assault on the Catholic Church and the First Amendment.  A letter from the bishop to the Catholics of Idaho was read from the pulpit on Sunday.

The bishop's letter starts out by stating the problem succinctly and forcefully (emphasis in original):

On January 20th, the United States Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule mandating that contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization be included at no cost to the insured in all health care plans.  This means that health insurers will be forced to include these immoral "services" in their health plans and that every employer, including Catholic parishes, schools, hospitals, charitable organizations, and and social service agencies, will be forced to provide and pay for this coverage that is a clear violation of Catholic teaching.

The bishop urges us to contact our legislators and ask them to work for the reversal of the mandate.  For the record, here is a list of Idaho's congressional delegates and how to reach them at both their D.C. and local offices (for an email form, click here):

Senator Mike Crapo (R)
U.S. Senate
239 Dirksen Senate Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-6142

251 East Front Street, Suite 205
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 334-1776

Senator James E. Risch (R)
U.S. Senate
483 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2752

350 North 9th Street, Suite 302
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 342-7985

Congressman Raul Labrador (R)
1st Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
1523 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-6611

33 Broadway Ave., Ste. 251
Meridian, ID 83642
(208) 888-3188

Congressman Mike Simpson (R)
2nd Congressional District
U.S. House of Representatives
2312 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5531

802 W. Bannock, Suite 600
Boise, ID 83702
(208) 334-1953

In his last paragraph, Bishop Driscoll states:

As Americans and as Catholics, we are blessed with religious liberty which safeguards our right to live our principles and moral convictions.  Our civil laws should fully recognize and protect our right, obligation, and opportunities to participate in society without being forced to abandon or ignore the central moral convictions of our Catholic faith.

This is why we have the First Amendment, folks: not to shield the delicate eyes and ears of atheists from crosses, creches, or Christian utterances, but to protect the province of religion against government invasions like this mandate.  The time has come -- indeed, it is long overdue -- for us to fight for our faith.

Pray for the bishop and the priests of the Diocese of Boise, and for all bishops and priests, who are in the front lines in this war.    

January 28th: St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (New Calendar)

Today is the Memorial of Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, on the new calendar.  His feast on the pre-conciliar calendar is March 8th.

I never had a particular devotion to the Angelical growing up.  But since I entered the Third Order of St. Dominic, I have had reason to believe that he, of whom I had thought so little throughout my life, loves me and has cared for me in a special and particular way that I do not fully comprehend, and probably never will in this life.  Such is the Communion of Saints: in the wild excesses of God's charity and mercy, it is not enough for Him to surround us with His own infinite love: He must also surround us with the love of His friends in heaven.   

Herewith the Litany of St. Thomas of Aquin, published in 1913 in The Dominican Manual: A Selection of Prayers and Devotions.

O THOU, the Most High, have mercy on us.

Mighty One of Jacob, have mercy on us.

Divine Spirit, have mercy on us.

Great Triune God, have mercy on us.

Glorious Mother of the King of kings, pray for us.
Saint Thomas of Aquin, pray for us.
Worthy child of the Queen of Virgins...
Aquinas most chaste...
Aquinas most patient...
Prodigy of science...
Silently eloquent...
Reproach of the ambitious...
Lover of that life which is hidden with Christ in God...
Fragrant flower in the parterre of St. Dominic...
Glory of Friars Preachers...
Illlumined from on high...
Angel of the Schools...
Oracle of the Church...
Incomparable scribe of the Man-God...
Satiated with the odour of His perfumes...
Perfect in the school of His Cross...
Intoxicated with the strong wine of His charity...
Glittering gem in the cabinet of the Lord...
Model of perfect obedience...
Endowed with the true spirit of holy poverty...

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Ant.— Oh, how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory, for the memory thereof is immortal, because it is known with God and man, and it triumpheth crowned for ever.
V. Oh! what have I in heaven, or what do I desire on earth?
R. Thou art the God of my heart, and my portion for ever.

Prayer:

O God, who hast ordained that blessed Thomas should enlighten Thy Church, grant that through his prayers we may practise what he taught, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This Is Why Mary Gave Us the Fatima Prayer

O my Jesus, forgive us our sins.  Save us from the fires of hell.  Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. 

Stephanie at Digital Hair Shirt took this picture of a pro-abortion protester who was demonstrating outside the Basilica after Mass on the day of the March for Life in D.C.  Her behavior showed that she was deeply disturbed, yet she claimed that the abortion she had 26 years ago was the best thing she had ever done.  The woman apparently worked hard to make this convincing -- especially to herself.  But her eyes tell a different story.  She looks like a damned soul experiencing its first few seconds in hell. 

There is a certain amount of disagreement within the pro-life movement about the propriety of using gruesome images of aborted babies to convince people of the evils of abortion.  I myself am undecided on the issue.  But the more I look at this image of a haunted woman, the more I think maybe we should use it instead.

This Is War

A week or so ago, I was asked to consider responding to an article by the purblind Doug Kmiec arguing that the Obama administration is not, in fact, at war with the Catholic Church.  At this point, I don't see the need.  As reported in the Washington Times, the administration itself has provided a decisive refutation of Kmiec's little delusion in the form of the new Health and Human Services mandate giving church-affiliated institutions one year to comply with the Obamacare requirement to provide free contraceptive coverage to employees.

What is the purpose of this HHS mandate?  To force employers to provide free contraceptives (including sterilization and the chemical abortion known as the "morning after" pill) to employees.  What is the one institution on earth that is known and ridiculed, even from within, for its consistent and unswerving opposition to contraceptives?  The Catholic Church.   How, then, can this blatantly unconstitutional mandate be understood except as a frontal assault on the Catholic Church?  We can only regard the lawless administration from which this outrage emanates as an implacable foe of the Church.

Once again, we see how Orwellian is the name "liberal" as applied to the pragmatic utilitarians to whom we have handed over our national affairs.  Tolerance and diversity are the last things "liberals" are for.  Once liberals achieve power, they ruthlessly persecute anyone who disagrees with them.  It is not enough for liberals that persons be free to harbor some vice; society must also tolerate it.  Then it will not be enough that society tolerate the vice; it must go on to accept it as a normal and perfectly viable alternative to traditional moral values.  Then it will not be enough that society accept the vice as normal; it must go on to condone it, promote it, and reject and deride the opposing virtue.  Then even this will not be enough, as long as the vice is not compulsory, and one single shred of opposition to it remains.

It does not end even here.  Having gotten the country to swallow the bar-bell-sized poison pill of one vice, the liberals proceed to force-feed another, and then another, and then another, each one more horrendous than the last.  This is all not only possible but inevitable in a world where Catholics are ignorant of their Faith, lead disordered lives and buy into the spirit of the age.  For the last half-century, we have been doing just that.  We have been lamps under bushel-baskets, and flavorless salt that is good for nothing except to be thrown down and trampled underfoot.  More than half the Catholics in the United States voted for a man who is probably the most pro-death, anti-Catholic President in the history of this nation.  Plenty of fallen Catholics -- including the one who heads the Department responsible for the abominable regulation in question -- have accepted accolades and high posts in his administration.  It is no wonder that this administration thinks itself secure enough to enter into open hostilities against the Church.

We need to take up our faith and start living it again if we are not to be engulfed.  The Washington Times reports that "the new regulation does not require coverage of abortions."  Under the Obama administration, that is a sentence that should end in the word "yet."

When the Abortion Lobby Tells the Truth

Warning: Graphic and disturbing descriptions

 "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."

-- The Hippocratic Oath, classical version (excised from the modern version)

Most of you know what it means to see 100 corpses lying together, or 500, or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written...

-- Excerpt of speech by Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler justifying the extermination of the Jews, spoken to senior SS officers in Poznan, Poland, October 4, 1943

 
It is morally and ethically wrong to do abortions without acknowledging what it means to do them. I performed abortions, I have had an abortion and I am in favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening."

-- Judith Arcana, abortion activist, at a London seminar, October 1999

"I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound. . . I think brain death would occur because the suctioning to remove contents is only two or three seconds, so somewhere in that period of time, obviously not when you penetrate the skull, because people get shot in the head and they don't die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will. . . My intent in every abortion I have ever done is to kill the fetus and terminate the pregnancy."

-- Leroy Carhart, testifying under oath in 1997 about what he does to commit abortion, Asheville Tribune

"[T]he abortion patient has a right not only to be rid of the growth, called a fetus, in her body, but also has a right to a dead fetus. . . [I] never have any intention of trying to protect the fetus, if it can be saved. . . as a general principle [t]here should not be a live fetus."

-- Robert Crist, abortion doctor, testifying in federal court in 1980

" 'Forceps, please,' Mr. Smith slaps into his hand what look like oversized ice-cube tongs. Holtzman pushes it into the vagina and tugs. He pulls out something, which he slaps on the instrument table. 'There,' he says, 'A leg. You can always tell fetal size best by the extremities. Fifteen weeks is right in this case.' I turn to Mr. Smith. 'What did he say?' 'He pulled a leg off,' Mr. Smith says. 'Right here.' He points to the instrument table, where there is a perfectly formed, slightly bent leg, about three inches long. It consists of a ripped thigh, a knee, a lower leg, a foot, and five toes. I start to shake very badly, but otherwise I feel nothing. Total shock is painless. 'I have the rib cage now,' Holtzman says, as he slams down another piece of the fetus. 'That's one thing you don't want to leave behind because it acts like a ball valve and infects everything.... There, I've got the head now. Also a piece of the placenta.' I look at the instrument table where next to the leg, and next to a mess he calls the rib cage but that I cannot recognize, there lies a head. It is the smallest human head I have ever seen, but it is unmistakably part of a person."

-- Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, In Necessity and Sorrow; Life and Death Inside an Abortion Clinic, 1978

"When you're a doctor who does these abortions and the leaders of your movement appear before Congress and go on network news and say these procedures are done in only the most tragic of circumstances, how do you think that makes you feel? You know they're primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirty little abortionist with a dirty little secret. I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on. In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else."

-- Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, in "An Abortion Rights Advocate Says He Lied About Procedure", New York Times (February 26, 1997)

"Is birth control an abortion? Definitely not; an abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

-- Planned Parenthood pamphlet (August 1963)

"The pro-life groups were right about one thing, the location of the baby inside or outside the womb cannot make much of a moral difference. We cannot coherently hold it is alright to kill a fetus a week before birth, but as soon as the baby is born everything must be done to keep it alive. The solution, however, is not to accept the pro-life view that the fetus is a human being with the same moral status as yours or mine. The solution is the very opposite, to abandon the idea that all human life is of equal worth."

-- Peter Singer, Princeton "ethicist" and death enthusiast, Practical Ethics, pp. 185-8, 1993

"It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the 'right' to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffey never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, 'Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible.' Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes."

-- Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade, testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights (January 21, 1998)

"We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years."

-- the late George Tiller, declaring his pro-abortion credentials in a speech to the National Abortion Federation, April 2-4, 1995, New Orleans, LA

"I do think abortion is murder—of a very special and necessary sort. What else would one call the deliberate stilling of a life? And no physician involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that...legalistic distinctions among 'homicide,' 'justified homicide,' 'self-defense,' and 'murder' appear to me a semantic game. What difference does it make what we call it? Those who do it and those who witness its doing know that abortion is the stilling of a life."

-- Magda Denes, abortion advocate, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, "Performing Abortions," Commentary Magazine (October, 1976)

January 17, 1994: The Northridge Earthquake

January 17, 1994 was a pivotal day for those of us who lived through the Northridge Earthquake, whose epicenter, by the way, was really in Reseda.  It was not a day that any of us are likely to forget.  "General devastation" is probably the most accurate description of the aftermath of those 20 dreadful seconds, the longest 20 seconds of my life.  For many months afterward, I woke up every single morning at 4:30.

Yet my family were among the lucky ones.  Although many personal possessions were destroyed, the house did not suffer any serious structural damage, and nobody in the family was hurt.  We were without gas for a week -- we shut off the gas right after the earthquake, and the gas company couldn't spare a man to come out right away and check for leaks and turn it back on.  So, we did a lot of barbecuing: all that meat in the freezer came in very handy.  We had water, but no hot water until the gas could be turned back on; and we had power restored that same evening.  I still remember the sound of transformers blowing when the juice started running back through them.  

As for the stuff in the house, even after everything was picked up, it was a long time before we could find anything again.  You remembered where things were before the earthquake; you would always reach for things in their former locations, and be unable to remember where they were afterward.  During the earthquake itself, things got thrown into the oddest places.  My grandmother's old (and quite heavy) meat grinder, which was stored in a cupboard over the refrigerator, ended up clear in the dining room.  And then there was all the broken glass.  For the longest time, slivers of broken glass kept turning up, like a deeply embedded splinter that eventually works its way to the surface of the skin.

One humorous thing about the earthquake.  It was only then that I learned that the San Fernando Valley, where I was born and raised, is the porn capital of the whole universe.  How did I learn this?  Because the porn people came out and announced to the media that this earthquake was not in fact divine retribution on their filthy industry.

As if they would know. 

"Easy" Street

America has now reached the point where our debt equals our GDP.  But we can't say we weren't warned.  From 63 years ago:

H/T Dr. Sanity.

Purification

The clergy sex abuse scandal seems always ready to vomit forth fresh headlines.  Today we have the news that Bishop Gabino Zavala, auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has resigned, a month after admitting to having fathered two children.  Bishop Zavala is known for espousing liberal-leftist causes and presiding over liturgical travesties.  The Church is once again humiliated, but the good news is that an unfaithful shepherd has been dismissed from service. 

Pope Benedict is on record as saying that the Church needs purification, and that it must be attained by penance and suffering.  Not unconnected with the Holy Father's thoughts on this subject is a passage from St. John Eudes' 17th-century work published under the title The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations.  A part of this passage appeared in this space eleven months ago:

The most evident mark of God's anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.  Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally.  Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train.  Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness....

When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them.  That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, "Return, O ye revolting children...and I will give you pastors according to my own heart" (Jer. 3:14-15).  Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin.

We have certainly suffered this scourge of bad shepherds, and all the shame and degradation that comes with them.  The tide is turning, but we still have a long way to go.  If we want good and faithful shepherds, then we ourselves need to straighten up and fly right.  

Hall Monitor Nation

LEX NON ORITUR EX INJURIA: The law does not arise from a mere injury.

LEX NON FAVET DELICATORUM VOTIS: The law does not favor the wishes of the dainty.

LEX NON CURAT DE MINIMIS: The law does not care about trifles. 

-- Ancient legal maxims

Many people -- even those who do not associate the Gem State exclusively with toothless, mulletted rednecks in pickup trucks with bird dogs and gun racks, nutty militiamen out in the back woods, and white supremacists -- think of Idaho as a "red" state.  Idaho certainly has a fairly reliable record of voting Republican, at least during the course of my lifetime.  It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that the capital of this reputedly conservative state -- whose city council members once passed a resolution supporting Obamacare -- aspires to compete with places like New York and San Francisco in the Nanny State Playoffs.  And it is well on its way there.

Exhibit A: the Boise City Smoke-Free Air Ordinance, which took effect on New Year's.  It is now illegal, in the city of Boise, to smoke, among other places: 

-- In any enclosed public place, including privately owned bars and restaurants; 

-- In common areas in apartment buildings, condos and trailer parks (!); 

-- In private clubs;

-- In sports arenas;

-- In any common use area;

-- At bus stops;

-- Outside city buildings;

-- At sidewalk cafes;

-- In outdoor service lines (i.e., people lining up outside to acquire some service);

-- Within Grove Plaza downtown, and on 8th Street downtown, between Main and Bannock;

which leaves smokers with about 2 square inches within the city of Boise.  This ordinance even reaches into private residences that serve as child or adult day care centers, health care facilities, or private businesses accessible to at least one employee.  It makes it illegal to permit smoking in "public places" as defined in the ordinance, even though the public place is privately owned.  It also specifically gives private persons the right to press charges against offenders. 

So much for the "land of the free and the home of the brave."  Now we are a nation of hall monitors. 

Fortunately, there are some business owners who are gearing up to file a lawsuit against the city to challenge this idiotic ordinance, to the extent it reaches into the affairs of private property owners.  But the dismaying thing is that a lot of people seem to like this sort of government overreaching.  After all, they say, we don't smoke; why should we be subjected to other people's smoke?

But the popularity of cigarette smoke is beside the point.  A bigger question for the pro-smoking-ban bunch is: why should you be allowed to harness the coercive police powers of the state for the purpose of sparing yourselves a mere inconvenience?  Why should scarce police resources be diverted to protecting your delicate sensibilities?  Why should you be allowed to deprive the owners of private property of the right to decide whether to allow smoking on their premises?  Why should you deprive other, tax-paying citizens of the full enjoyment of public property, especially outdoor public property, just because they smoke?  Do they somehow pay less taxes than you do?  I myself have never smoked, and do not care for the smell of cigarette smoke.  But the solution to my problem is very simple: I just don't patronize businesses that allow smoking on their premises.  No muss, no fuss!  And if somebody near me is smoking out in the open air, so what?  Within a second or two, the smoke will blow away. 

And by the way, this ordinance is bound to strike where least expected.  As bad as an assault on private property rights is, this smoking ban is a lot more than that.  Consider the following provision, which defines "smoking" (emphases added):

“Smoking” means inhaling, exhaling, burning, carrying, or possessing any combusting (heated, lit, or smoldering) tobacco or any other substance, whether contained in a cigar, cigarette, or pipe, or any other object. Smoking does not include possession of an unlit or unheated cigar, cigarette, or pipe. Smoking does not include use of an e-cigarette which creates only a vapor without any smoke.

Notice that this definition of "smoking" is broad enough to cover other burning substances besides tobacco, such as incense.  The only religious exemption to the smoking ban is American Indian ceremonies.  The anti-incense crowd already exerts a disproportionate influence at local churches.  How long will it be before somebody calls the cops on the Catholic Church for incense at Mass, or in a Eucharistic procession?  Worse yet (and heaven forfend): how many parishes will buckle and cut out incense altogether for fear of prosecution?  Would this not be unconstitutional prior restraint?  Have the enemies of the Church not got enough bludgeons to beat her down with?

Don't think it can't happen.  Look at what already has happened.

January 1st: Solemnity of the Mother of God

15th-century Byzantine icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in the care of the Redemptorist Fathers.  Notice how everything about her -- the inclination of her head, her hands, even the lines of her garments -- points to her divine Son.

According to the pre-conciliar calendar, today is the Octave of Christmas, wherein the Church honors the Circumcision of the Lord, the Holy Name of Jesus which He received at His Circumcision, and the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.  This feast celebrates obedience: the submission of Christ to the Mosaic Law, even though it did not apply to Him, so that He might fulfill it down to the last detail.  It also commemorates the first shedding of Christ's innocent Blood for sinful man.  The Collect of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form is the same as that in the Ordinary Form -- a fact not at all obvious in the English-speaking world until we got the new English translation at the beginning of Advent.

According to the post-conciliar calendar, the Feast of the Mother of God celebrates the fact that, though a creature, Mary is nevertheless truly the Mother of her Creator.  This was defined in A.D. 431 at the Council of Ephesus, when the Church condemned the errors of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople.  Nestorius held that Jesus is really two Persons: the human Jesus and the divine Jesus.  Thus, Mary is not really the Mother of God, but only the Mother of Christ.  In his Third Letter to Nestorius, which the Council approved, St. Cyril carefully explains that Jesus is one Person with two natures, human and divine, hypostatically united.  He then discusses the implications for the motherhood of Mary:

Therefore, because the Holy Virgin bore in the flesh God who was united hypostatically with the flesh, for that reason we call her Mother of God, not as though the nature of the Word had the beginning of Its existence from the flesh (for "the Word was in the beginning and the Word was God and the Word was with God", and He made the ages and is co-eternal with the Father and craftsman of all things), but because, as we have said, He united to Himself hypostatically the human and underwent a birth according to the flesh from her womb. This was not as though He needed necessarily or for His own nature a birth in time and in the last times of this age, but in order that He might bless the beginning of our existence, in order that seeing that it was a woman that had given birth to Him united to the flesh, the curse against the whole race should thereafter cease which was consigning all our earthy bodies to death, and in order that the removal through Him of the curse, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", should demonstrate the truth of the words of the prophet: "Strong death swallowed them up", and again, "God has wiped every tear away from all face". It is for this cause that we say that in His economy He blessed marriage and, when invited, went down to Cana in Galilee with His holy Apostles.

The Council confessed the following in regard to the Hypostatic Union and the Mother of God:

We confess, then, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body, begotten before all ages from the Father in His godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the Virgin, according to His humanity, one and the same consubstantial with the Father in godhead and consubstantial with us in humanity, for a union of two natures took place. Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the Holy Virgin to be the Mother of God because God the Word took flesh and became man and from His very conception united to Himself the temple he took from her. As to the evangelical and apostolic expressions about the Lord, we know that theologians treat some in common as of one person and distinguish others as of two natures, and interpret the God-befitting ones in connection with the godhead of Christ and the lowly ones with His humanity.

We can see in the story of Nestorius and the Council of Ephesus the justice of honoring Mary as the Destroyer of Heresies.  Nestorius rejected the title "Mother of God," and instead called Mary the "Mother of Christ."  This appears reasonable on its face: Jesus after all is the Christ, and Mary is His Mother; hence, she is the Mother of Christ.  But this is precisely the danger of heresy, which often contains a kernel of truth that lends plausibility.  Although the title "Mother of Christ" is true as far as it goes, it was nevertheless wrong in the mouth and from the pen of Nestorius and his followers, because it was based on a wrong understanding of the two natures of Jesus.  The Church, on the contrary, and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, upheld the title "Mother of God" as justified in view of the fact that Jesus is one Person with two natures, human and divine.  From this we can see that if we are wrong about Mary, we will be wrong about Jesus.  If, on the other hand, we get it right about Mary, we get it right about Jesus.  The truth about Mary dispels heresies and leads surely to the truth about her Son.

That is definitely worth celebrating.