Pro-Life for Priests

This Just In: THE POPE BAPTIZES 13 INFANTS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL

New babies, new life, all born to Vatican employees were just baptized by the Pope. Beautiful. Could it get any more special than to be baptized in the Sistine Chapel in one of those georgiouso long lace baptismal gowns bought in a lace shop in Ireland or at the Piazza Navona? Babies-new life- a sign that God has not given up on the world. Never, Never, Never, Never Give Up, as Winston Churchill once said echoing God's covenantal promise to his creation to love us until we are embraced by him in heaven. He never gives up on us. We have no right then to give up on each other.
So now it is fair to wonder, indeed we are compelled to ask, are any of those infants the beloved children of Priests, and if not WHY NOT? Read below, see all the mystery and majesty that the act of baptism promises, and ask yourself WHY NOT. It is time, this Millenium that the Pope asked that question himself. Why should only Priests, God's most Loved, be so less loved they never see their own children manifest and baptized? I defy any Dominican that here defies God and gives me a "theologically sound" reason. Don't tell me it's because they are too busy being father to the world to be father to their own real family. Don't tell me they would rather have a maid than a wife. Don't tell me that they would rather be loved less intimately than the people who spill their hearts behind a confessional screen. And paaleeeeze don't tell me that Christ is so small and unloving that he couldn't possibly come in consecration to a priest who was so deeply in love with a woman that he honored her instead of torturing and teasing her and ten others with an unfulfilled false hope. And as for all those other old maids who would blow a gasket if they saw a Priest with a wife and baby (because they secretly harbor the illusion he was really their man because they thought that when he showed up at their event for the free food it was a date, and they get geriatrically orgasmic when he preaches homilies on the penetrating love of God) tell them to take up knitting-the kid will need mittens soon.


VATICAN CITY, 13 JAN 2008 (VIS) - At 10 a.m. today, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Pope presided at Mass in the Sistine Chapel, during which he administered the Sacrament of Baptism to 13 infants, children of Vatican employees.

"In Baptism", said the Holy Father in his homily, "young human beings receive new life, the life of grace that makes them capable of entering into a personal relationship with the Creator, and this lasts forever, for all eternity.

"Unfortunately", he added, "man is capable of extinguishing this new life through sin, reducing himself to a situation described by Holy Scripture as 'second death'".

He continued: "While for other creatures, who are not called to eternity, death means only the end of their earthly lives, in us sin creates an abyss which risks swallowing us up forever, if God in heaven does not stretch out His hand to us".

The Pope went on to explain the "mystery of Baptism" in these terms: "God wished to save us, and so He went Himself to the bottom of the abyss of death so that all mankind, even those who have fallen so low as no longer to be able to see heaven, may find the hand of God to which to cling, and so come out of the shadows and see the light for which they were created.

"We all feel, we all have an interior perception that our existence is a desire for a life [of] fullness and salvation. This fullness of life is given to us in Baptism".

"The aim of Christ's existence", the Pope said, "was precisely that of giving mankind the life of God and His spirit of love, in order to enable each human being to draw from this never-ending source of salvation. ... It is for this reason that Christian parents bring their children to the baptismal font as soon as possible, knowing that the life they have communicated to them invokes a fullness, a salvation, that only God can give. And in this way the parents become God's collaborators, transmitting to their children not only physical but also spiritual life".

Benedict XVI concluded his homily by addressing the parents of the new-born infants, saying: "Of course, to grow up strong and healthy, these boys and girls will have need of material care and a lot of attention, however what is most necessary, indeed indispensable, to them is to know, love and serve God faithfully, so as to have eternal life. Dear parents, be for them the first witnesses of authentic faith in God!"

A note issued by the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff explains that "the wooden platform with a special altar" usually brought in for the celebration of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord was not used for this year's ceremony in the Sistine Chapel. "It was deemed better to celebrate at the old altar so as not to disturb the beauty and harmony of this architectural masterpiece, maintaining the celebratory aspects of its structure and making use of a possibility contemplated by liturgical norms".

For this reason, at certain moments during the Mass, the Pope had "his back to the congregation and his gaze on the Cross". Nonetheless, the note explains, "the ordinary Missal was used".