Thursday, September 30, 2021

October is also Respect Life Month

 

2021 Respect for Life Month Statement

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021 BY PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE

Statement of Respect for Life Month from Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann, Chairman U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities

The month of October brings with it our annual observance of Respect Life Month. As part of the Year of St. Joseph declared by Pope Francis, this year’s celebration highlights the example of that great saint.

As the faithful protector of both Jesus and Mary, we find in St. Joseph a profound reminder of our own call to welcome, safeguard, and defend God’s precious gift of human life.

Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mary’s pregnancy, St. Joseph took her into his home at the word of the angel. He guided their journey to Bethlehem, found shelter, and welcomed the infant Jesus as his son. When Herod threatened the life of the Christ Child, St. Joseph left his homeland behind and fled with Jesus and Mary to Egypt.

Like St. Joseph, we are also called to care for those God has entrusted to us–especially vulnerable mothers and children. We can follow in the footsteps of St. Joseph as protector by advocating against taxpayer-funded abortion, which targets the lives of millions of poor children and their mothers here in the United States. We can imitate his care and provision by helping to start Walking with Moms in Need at our parishes, "walking in the shoes" of mothers experiencing a difficult pregnancy, especially low-income mothers in our communities.

At times, we may feel uncertain of our ability to answer the Lord’s call. But He invites us to faithfully respond, despite our own fears or weaknesses: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

May we imitate St. Joseph’s faithful trust and courage as we work to uphold the dignity of every human life. St. Joseph, defender of life, pray for us!

To learn more about preventing taxpayer-funded abortion, visit www.notaxpayerabortion.com . To walk with moms in need through your local parish, go to www.walkingwithmoms.com.To join in prayer for the intercession of St. Joseph, defender of life, visit www.respectlife.org/prayer-to-st-joseph .

October is the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary

 

Month of the Holy Rosary

     
The Lord hath blessed thee by His power, because by thee He hath brought our enemies to nought.
Highlights
Prayer of the Month
Prayer of St. Louis de Montfort
O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in Your servants, in the spirit of Your holiness, in the fullness of Your might, in the perfection of Your ways, in the truth of Your virtues, in the communion of Your mysteries. Subdue every hostile power, the devil, the world and the flesh, in the strength of Your Spirit, for the glory of Your Father, Amen.

Joyful Mysteries
Annunciation
Visitation
Nativity of Christ
Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple
Finding of the Christ Child in the Temple
Sorrowful Mysteries
Agony in the Garden
Scourging at the Pillar
Crowning with Thorns
Carrying of the Cross
Crucifixion
Glorious Mysteries
Resurrection
Ascension
Descent of the Holy Spirit
Assumption
Coronation of Mary
Luminous Mysteries
Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan
Manifestation of Jesus at the Wedding at Cana
Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
Transfiguration of Jesus
Institution of the Eucharist

Documents

On the Most Holy Rosary — Rosarium Virginis Mariaei — Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II

For the Right Ordering and Development of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary — Encyclical of Paul VI

Encyclical on the Rosary — Encyclical of John XXIII

On Reciting the Rosary
— Encyclical of Pius XII

On the Rosary — Encyclical of Pius XI

On the Devotion of the Holy Rosary — Encyclical of Leo XIII

On the Rosary -- Encyclical of Saint Pius V

On the Rosary — by St. Louis de Montfort


Websites

Fear not, Mary, thou hast found grace with the Lord; behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a son, alleluia.

The month of October (Overview - Calendar) is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. According to an account by fifteenth-century Dominican, Alan de la Roch, Mary appeared to St. Dominic in 1206 after he had been praying and doing severe penances because of his lack of success in combating the Albigensian heresy. Mary praised him for his valiant fight against the heretics and then gave him the Rosary as a mighty weapon, explained its uses and efficacy, and told him to preach it to others.

"Since the prayers of the Rosary come from such excellent sources — from Our Lord Himself, from inspired Scripture, and from the Church — it is not surprising that the Rosary is so dear to our Blessed Mother and so powerful with heaven.

"If we consider the power of the Rosary as seen in its effects, we find a great abundance of proofs of its wonderful value. Many are the favors granted to private individuals through its devout recitation: there are few devoted users of the Rosary who cannot testify to experiencing its power in their own lives. If we turn to history, we see many great triumphs of the Rosary. Early tradition attributes the defeat of the Albigensians at the Battle of Muret in 1213 to the Rosary. But even those who do not accept this tradition will admit that St. Pius V attributed the great defeat of the Turkish fleet on the first Sunday of October, 1571, to the fact that at the same time the Rosary confraternities at Rome and elsewhere were holding their processions. Accordingly, he ordered a commemoration of the Rosary to be made on that day. Two years later, Gregory XIII allowed the celebration of a feast of the Rosary in churches having an altar dedicated to the Rosary. In 1671, Clement X extended the feast to all Spain. A second great victory over the Turks, who once, like the Russians, threatened the ruin of Christian civilization, occurred on August 5, 1716, when Prince Eugene defeated them at Peterwardein in Hungary. Thereupon Clement XI extended the feast of the Rosary to the whole Church.

"Today, when dangers far greater than those of the ancient Turks threaten not only Christianity but all civilization, we are urged by our Blessed Mother to turn again to the Rosary for help. If men in sufficient numbers do this, and at the same time carry out the other conditions that she has laid down, we have the greater reason for confidence that we will be delivered from our dangers." -- Mary in our Life by Fr. William G. Most

The Rosary and the Liturgical Year

The Rosary had its origin in the liturgical mentality of former ages. Even at the present time it is called "Mary's Psalter." There still are Catholics who consider the 150 Hail Marys a substitute for the 150 psalms for those persons who neither have the time, the education, nor the opportunity to pray the Hours of the Divine Office. Thus "Mary's Psalter" is a shortened, simplified "breviary" — alongside the common Hour-prayer of the Church. — The Church's Year of Grace, Dr. Pius Parsch

The Rosary is Christocentric setting forth the entire life of Jesus Christ, the passion, death, resurrection and glory. Of course, the Rosary honors and contemplates Mary too, and rightly so, for the same reason that the Liturgical Year does likewise: "Because of the mission she received from God, her life is most closely linked with the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and there is no one who has followed in the footsteps of the Incarnate Word more closely and with more merit than she"142 (Mediator Dei). Meditation on this cycle of Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries makes the Rosary not only "a breviary or summary of the Gospel and of Christian life,"(Ingravescentibus malis) but also a compendium of the Liturgical Year. Therewith the Rosary stands revealed as a dynamic teacher and nurturer of Christian faith, morality, and spiritual perfection, fostering in various ways faith, hope, charity, and the other virtues, and mediating special graces, all to the end that we may become more and more like unto Christ. — Mariology, Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.

The Rosary and the Popes

No form of extra-liturgical devotion to Mary is more widely practiced among the faithful or found by them to be more satisfyingly complete than the Rosary, which has come to be regarded as the very badge of Catholic piety. No form of extra-liturgical devotion to Mary has been recommended more warmly or frequently by the Popes. With perhaps two exceptions, all the Sovereign Pontiffs from Sixtus IV in 1478 down to John XXIII, especially Leo XIII (in 23 documents, ten of them encyclicals entirely on the Rosary) and his successors, have extolled this form of prayer, which has been the favorite, moreover, of such saints as Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales, Louis de Montfort, Alphonsus Liguori, Don Bosco, Bernadette, and many more.

The authentic Rosary is a happy combination of vocal and mental prayer, each of which is essential to the devotion. It is incorrect to say that meditation is "the very essence of the Rosary devotion," for vocal recitation of the prayers is also of the essence. Meditation is, of course, the nobler element, the "soul," while vocal prayer is the "body" of the devotion. The Rosary, Pope Leo XIII declared, "is composed of two parts, distinct but inseparable — the meditation on the mysteries and the recitation of the prayers. It is thus a kind of prayer that requires not only some raising of the soul to God, but also a particular and explicit attention" (Incunda semper). Hence, as Pope Pius XI stated, they err "who consider this devotion merely a boresome formula repeated with monotonous and singsong intonation" (Ingravescentibus malis). Moreover, as Pius XI put it, "both piety and love, although always breathing forth the same words, do not, however, repeat the same thing, but they fervently express something ever new which the loving heart always sends forth." And finally, in the words of Pius XII, "the recitation of identical formulas, repeated so many times, rather than rendering the prayer sterile and boring, has on the contrary the admirable quality of infusing confidence in him who prays, and brings to bear a gentle compulsion on the motherly heart of Mary (Ingravescentibus malis). — Mariology, Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M.

Pope Benedict XVI in an address at the Basilica of St. Mary Major where he prayed the rosary with the faithful said:

Today, together we confirm that the Holy Rosary is not a pious practice banished to the past, like prayers of other times thought of with nostalgia. Instead, the Rosary is experiencing a new Springtime. Without a doubt, this is one of the most eloquent signs of love that the young generation nourish for Jesus and his Mother, Mary. In the current world, so dispersive, this prayer helps to put Christ at the centre, as the Virgin did, who meditated within all that was said about her Son, and also what he did and said. When reciting the Rosary, the important and meaningful moments of salvation history are relived. The various steps of Christ's mission are traced. With Mary the heart is oriented toward the mystery of Jesus. Christ is put at the centre of our life, of our time, of our city, through the contemplation and meditation of his holy mysteries of joy, light, sorrow and glory. May Mary help us to welcome within ourselves the grace emanating from these mysteries, so that through us we can "water" society, beginning with our daily relationships, and purifying them from so many negative forces, thus opening them to the newness of God. The Rosary, when it is prayed in an authentic way, not mechanical and superficial but profoundly, it brings, in fact, peace and reconciliation. It contains within itself the healing power of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, invoked with faith and love at the centre of each "Hail Mary".

The Mysteries of the Rosary

Until about the 15th century hundreds of mysteries were part of the Rosary devotion then the 15 mysteries that we know today were definitively fixed as "the Mysteries of the Rosary." Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, in 2002 added the five Luminous Mysteries.

Through the meditations of the complete Rosary one recalls and has impressed on his mind, the Popes tell us, "the chief mysteries of the Christian religion," "the mysteries of our Redemption," "the great mysteries of Jesus and His Mother united in joys, sorrows, and triumphs." The twenty mysteries are divided into four equal groups, known as "The Joyful," "The Sorrowful," "The Glorious," and "The Luminous Mysteries."

Saint known as the Little Flower; Doctor of the Church and patron of the missions

 

St. Therese of Lisieux




Generations of Catholics have admired this young saint, called her the "Little Flower", and found in her short life more inspiration for their own lives than in volumes by theologians.

Yet Therese died when she was 24, after having lived as cloistered Carmelite for less than ten years. She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works. The only book of hers, published after her death, was an brief edited version of her journal called "Story of a Soul." (Collections of her letters and restored versions of her journals have been published recently.) But within 28 years of her death, the public demand was so great that she was canonized.

Over the years, some modern Catholics have turned away from her because they associate her with over- sentimentalized piety and yet the message she has for us is still as compelling and simple as it was almost a century ago.

Therese was born in France in 1873, the pampered daughter of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who had wanted to be monk. The two had gotten married but determined they would be celibate until a priest told them that was not how God wanted a marriage to work! They must have followed his advice very well because they had nine children. The five children who lived were all daughters who were close all their lives.


Tragedy and loss came quickly to Therese when her mother died of breast cancer when she was four and a half years old. Her sixteen year old sister Pauline became her second mother -- which made the second loss even worse when Pauline entered the Carmelite convent five years later. A few months later, Therese became so ill with a fever that people thought she was dying.

The worst part of it for Therese was all the people sitting around her bed staring at her like, she said, "a string of onions." When Therese saw her sisters praying to statue of Mary in her room, Therese also prayed. She saw Mary smile at her and suddenly she was cured. She tried to keep the grace of the cure secret but people found out and badgered her with questions about what Mary was wearing, what she looked like. When she refused to give in to their curiosity, they passed the story that she had made the whole thing up.

Without realizing it, by the time she was eleven years old she had developed the habit of mental prayer. She would find a place between her bed and the wall and in that solitude think about God, life, eternity.

When her other sisters, Marie and Leonie, left to join religious orders (the Carmelites and Poor Clares, respectively), Therese was left alone with her last sister Celine and her father. Therese tells us that she wanted to be good but that she had an odd way of going about. This spoiled little Queen of her father's wouldn't do housework. She thought if she made the beds she was doing a great favor!

Every time Therese even imagined that someone was criticizing her or didn't appreciate her, she burst into tears. Then she would cry because she had cried! Any inner wall she built to contain her wild emotions crumpled immediately before the tiniest comment.

Therese wanted to enter the Carmelite convent to join Pauline and Marie but how could she convince others that she could handle the rigors of Carmelite life, if she couldn't handle her own emotional outbursts? She had prayed that Jesus would help her but there was no sign of an answer.

On Christmas day in 1886, the fourteen-year-old hurried home from church. In France, young children left their shoes by the hearth at Christmas, and then parents would fill them with gifts. By fourteen, most children outgrew this custom. But her sister Celine didn't want Therese to grow up. So they continued to leave presents in "baby" Therese's shoes.

As she and Celine climbed the stairs to take off their hats, their father's voice rose up from the parlor below. Standing over the shoes, he sighed, "Thank goodness that's the last time we shall have this kind of thing!"

Therese froze, and her sister looked at her helplessly. Celine knew that in a few minutes Therese would be in tears over what her father had said.

But the tantrum never came. Something incredible had happened to Therese. Jesus had come into her heart and done what she could not do herself. He had made her more sensitive to her father's feelings than her own.

She swallowed her tears, walked slowly down the stairs, and exclaimed over the gifts in the shoes, as if she had never heard a word her father said. The following year she entered the convent. In her autobiography she referred to this Christmas as her "conversion."

Therese be known as the Little Flower but she had a will of steel. When the superior of the Carmelite convent refused to take Therese because she was so young, the formerly shy little girl went to the bishop. When the bishop also said no, she decided to go over his head, as well.

Her father and sister took her on a pilgrimage to Rome to try to get her mind off this crazy idea. Therese loved it. It was the one time when being little worked to her advantage! Because she was young and small she could run everywhere, touch relics and tombs without being yelled at. Finally they went for an audience with the Pope. They had been forbidden to speak to him but that didn't stop Therese. As soon as she got near him, she begged that he let her enter the Carmelite convent. She had to be carried out by two of the guards!

But the Vicar General who had seen her courage was impressed and soon Therese was admitted to the Carmelite convent that her sisters Pauline and Marie had already joined. Her romantic ideas of convent life and suffering soon met up with reality in a way she had never expected. Her father suffered a series of strokes that left him affected not only physically but mentally. When he began hallucinating and grabbed for a gun as if going into battle, he was taken to an asylum for the insane. Horrified, Therese learned of the humiliation of the father she adored and admired and of the gossip and pity of their so-called friends. As a cloistered nun she couldn't even visit her father.

This began a horrible time of suffering when she experienced such dryness in prayer that she stated "Jesus isn't doing much to keep the conversation going." She was so grief-stricken that she often fell asleep in prayer. She consoled herself by saying that mothers loved children when they lie asleep in their arms so that God must love her when she slept during prayer.

She knew as a Carmelite nun she would never be able to perform great deeds. " Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love." She took every chance to sacrifice, no matter how small it would seem. She smiled at the sisters she didn't like. She ate everything she was given without complaining -- so that she was often given the worst leftovers. One time she was accused of breaking a vase when she was not at fault. Instead of arguing she sank to her knees and begged forgiveness. These little sacrifices cost her more than bigger ones, for these went unrecognized by others. No one told her how wonderful she was for these little secret humiliations and good deeds.

When Pauline was elected prioress, she asked Therese for the ultimate sacrifice. Because of politics in the convent, many of the sisters feared that the family Martin would taken over the convent. Therefore Pauline asked Therese to remain a novice, in order to allay the fears of the others that the three sisters would push everyone else around. This meant she would never be a fully professed nun, that she would always have to ask permission for everything she did. This sacrifice was made a little sweeter when Celine entered the convent after her father's death. Four of the sisters were now together again.

Therese continued to worry about how she could achieve holiness in the life she led. She didn't want to just be good, she wanted to be a saint. She thought there must be a way for people living hidden, little lives like hers. " I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by. Instead of being discouraged, I told myself: God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new.

" We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs; in well-to-do houses there are lifts. And I was determined to find a lift to carry me to Jesus, for I was far too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in holy Scripture some idea of what this life I wanted would be, and I read these words: "Whosoever is a little one, come to me." It is your arms, Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up: I must stay little and become less and less."

She worried about her vocation: " I feel in me the vocation of the Priest. I have the vocation of the Apostle. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth and this dream has grown with me. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I desired to see myself in them all. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places...in a word, that it was eternal! Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it...My vocation is Love!"

When an antagonist was elected prioress, new political suspicions and plottings sprang up. The concern over the Martin sisters perhaps was not exaggerated. In this small convent they now made up one-fifth of the population. Despite this and the fact that Therese was a permanent novice they put her in charge of the other novices.

Then in 1896, she coughed up blood. She kept working without telling anyone until she became so sick a year later everyone knew it. Worst of all she had lost her joy and confidence and felt she would die young without leaving anything behind. Pauline had already had her writing down her memories for journal and now she wanted her to continue -- so they would have something to circulate on her life after her death.

Her pain was so great that she said that if she had not had faith she would have taken her own life without hesitation. But she tried to remain smiling and cheerful -- and succeeded so well that some thought she was only pretending to be ill. Her one dream as the work she would do after her death, helping those on earth. "I will return," she said. "My heaven will be spent on earth." She died on September 30, 1897 at the age of 24 years old. She herself felt it was a blessing God allowed her to die at exactly that age. she had always felt that she had a vocation to be a priest and felt God let her die at the age she would have been ordained if she had been a man so that she wouldn't have to suffer.

After she died, everything at the convent went back to normal. One nun commented that there was nothing to say about Therese. But Pauline put together Therese's writings (and heavily edited them, unfortunately) and sent 2000 copies to other convents. But Therese's "little way" of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds appealed to the thousands of Catholics and others who were trying to find holiness in ordinary lives. Within two years, the Martin family had to move because her notoriety was so great and by 1925 she had been canonized.

Therese of Lisieux is one of the patron saints of the missions, not because she ever went anywhere, but because of her special love of the missions, and the prayers and letters she gave in support of missionaries. This is reminder to all of us who feel we can do nothing, that it is the little things that keep God's kingdom growing.

The President will meet the Pope; should be interesting

 

President Biden Expected to Meet Pope Francis at End of October, Sources Say

According to the sources, Biden’s trip would be an official visit.

Pope Francis greets then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the Vatican, April 29, 2016.
Pope Francis greets then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the Vatican, April 29, 2016. (photo: Vatican Media / Vatican Media)

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is expected to receive Joe Biden on Oct. 29, in the U.S. president’s first official visit to the Vatican since his inauguration, according to sources at the Apostolic Palace. 

The sources told CNA on Sept. 25 that their information came directly from the Prefecture for the Pontifical Household. Though encounters with heads of state are diplomatic occasions, the Prefecture is responsible for the organization and protocol around the meetings. 

Another independent source told CNA that preparations were underway at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See and the first loads of trucks and equipment for the visit were already on their way to Rome.

The White House said on Sept. 22 that Biden would meet with the French President Emmanuel Macron in Europe at the end of October.

Asked if there were plans in the works for a papal meeting, a White House spokesperson told CNA on Sept. 28 that there was “nothing to announce.”

The Vatican does not usually give advance notice of visits by heads of state. Generally, information is provided just a few days before meetings take place. The Holy See tends to confirm the visit only after the head of state makes an official announcement. 

According to the sources, Biden’s trip would be an official visit. First, the president would have a meeting with Pope Francis. Then there would be bilateral talks in the Secretariat of State with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States and the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister.

Biden met Pope Francis for the first time in September 2015, when the Pope attended the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. At the time, Biden was vice-president of the Obama administration.

Biden visited the Vatican on April 29, 2016, to participate in a regenerative medicine summit.

Pray the Papal Prayer Intention for October all month long

 

October


Missionary Disciples


We pray that every baptized person may be engaged in evangelization, available to the mission, by being witnesses of a life that has the flavor of the Gospel.

Michael Voris and friends at it again

 

Baltimore cancels Church Militant protest at bishops' meeting, citing possible violence

 

20181113T1535-BISHOPS-MEETING-580860 resize.jpg

A protester carries a placard Nov. 13, 2018, for a rally sponsored by Church Militant in Baltimore during that year's fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (CNS/Tennessee Register/Rick Musacchio)
A protester carries a placard Nov. 13, 2018, for a rally sponsored by Church Militant in Baltimore during that year's fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (CNS/Tennessee Register/Rick Musacchio)

A federal court is set to hear arguments Sept. 30 over whether the extreme right-wing Catholic group Church Militant can stage a large downtown protest in Baltimore during the U.S. bishops' meeting there in November.

The group is expected to argue that the city of Baltimore violated its constitutional rights to free speech and religious freedom by canceling the planned event.

Lawyers representing Baltimore appear likely to counter that St. Michael's Media, the Michigan-based entity that operates Church Militant, had not yet signed a contract with the city to use a waterfront pavilion for its rally. The event had been scheduled for Nov. 16 and had advertised far-right political activists Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos as featured speakers.

According to Church Militant, Bannon and Yiannopoulos "have agreed to take the stand" during the Sept. 30 hearing in the U.S. District Court of Maryland to respond to the city's allegations that they engage in hate speech and provoke violence.

The hearing is for a preliminary injunction in which St. Michael's Media is seeking a judge's order to allow it to continue planning the protest, which it has advertised as the "Bishops: Enough is Enough Prayer Rally." The city and St. Michael's Media had been in negotiations for the rally, but the city pulled the plug in late July after learning more details of the event, including its speaker lineup, according to court documents.

In court filings, city attorneys cite public safety concerns as the chief reason for not allowing Church Militant's protest to proceed in downtown Baltimore. The filings note Bannon's and Yiannopoulos' histories of making incendiary statements, the expected large size of the crowd — more than 3,000 people were expected to attend — and Church Militant's sympathetic reporting of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

"In fact, Church Militant was an active propagandist for the claim that the November 2020 Presidential Election was stolen from Donald Trump," city lawyers wrote, arguing that the outlet "continued expressing and disseminating" the lie about the stolen election "up to and including their coverage" of the insurrection.









While St. Michael's Media may call two far-right provocateurs to the witness stand, attorneys for the city intend to call Daniel Linskey, a former superintendent-in-chief of the Boston Police Department, as an expert witness, according to court documents. Linskey was the incident commander at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and was the first commander on the scene a few days later during an early-morning shootout with the bombing suspects in Watertown, Massachusetts.

In court filings and on its website, Church Militant has pushed back against the city's stated concerns over the possibility of violence and the outlet's sympathy for the insurrection, instead framing the case as a matter of religious bigotry and conflicts of interest, even suggesting that one city attorney could be taking orders from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Besides arguing that the city is violating its constitutional rights to free speech, assembly and religion, attorneys for St. Michael's Media also write in court documents that the city of Baltimore is violating the Constitution's Establishment Clause by favoring "mainstream Catholic doctrine" over St. Michael's "more traditional view" of church teaching.

"Defendants, by canceling St. Michael's rally, have suppressed their religious expression, while allowing USCCB's Fall General Assembly to go forward unhindered," wrote the lawyers for St. Michael's Media.

The lawsuit, which St. Michael's Media filed on Sept. 13, identifies as defendants the city of Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott, City Solicitor James Shea and SMG, a business that operates the city-owned pavilion.

According to court documents, St. Michael's Media — which staged a similar though smaller event around the bishops' meeting in November 2018 — had been in talks with the city to organize the protest, and in June had wired $3,000 to the company that operates the pavilion to reserve the date while the negotiations were still ongoing. On July 14, a draft contract was sent to St. Michael's Media, but the contract was not signed or executed, according to court documents.

Later in July, the mayor's chief of staff contacted SMG and told the company to cease negotiations with St. Michael's Media. In early August, St. Michael's Media was informed that the pavilion would no longer be able to host the event.

On Aug. 27, St. Michael's Media sent a letter to the Baltimore City Law Department threatening legal consequences if St. Michael's Media was not permitted to use the pavilion for the protest, according to court documents.

Attorneys for St. Michael's Media said the outlet chose the date and location for its rally because it would take place at the same time and immediately adjacent to the U.S. bishops' Nov. 15-18 assembly.

"The entire purpose of the November 16 rally is to communicate the ideas of St. Michael's members and attending speakers to the USCCB in a format and in a venue that they cannot ignore," wrote attorneys for St. Michael's Media.