Our Lady of Guadalupe

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Plug-In: A $50 million shrine dedicated to honor Catholic farm boy who became a martyr

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Plug-In: A $50 million shrine dedicated to honor Catholic farm boy who became a martyr

Most weeks, I send out a “live” version of Weekend Plug-in.

This week, though, I expected to be on an airplane as this e-newsletter began arriving in readers’ inboxes. So if any UFOs got shot out of the sky this weekend, don’t look for the religion angle right here, right now.

But please do enjoy this prescheduled roundup of the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.

What To Know: The Big Story

Blessed Stanley: A dedication Mass for a $50 million shrine honoring the Catholic Church’s first U.S.-born martyr was held in Oklahoma City. I wrote about the life — and death — of slain missionary Stanley Francis Rother for The Associated Press.

My story notes:

The Spanish colonial-style structure incorporates a 2,000-seat sanctuary as well as a visitor center, gift shop, museum and smaller chapel that will serve as Rother’s final resting place.

The shrine grounds also will feature a re-creation of Tepeyac Hill, the Mexico City site where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. An artist created painted bronze statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego — each weighing thousands of pounds — for the Oklahoma site.

Life and ministry: For the best in-depth coverage of Rother and the shrine, be sure to follow The Oklahoman’s faith editor, Carla Hinton, who has covered this story for years.

Among her features this week: a detailed look at the shrine museum and an exploration of how “Rother’s heart has remained with his beloved Guatemalan parishioners.”

A final shrine note: I first wrote about Rother in 2001 during my time as religion editor for The Oklahoman. In 2017, I did a Religion News Service feature on the love for “Father Stan” in his hometown of Okarche, Oklahoma.


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Are the Sexual Revolution vs. religious liberty wars over at Supreme Court? Let's ask Bluto ...

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Want to hear a depressing question?

How many years, or even months, will it take for someone to pull the Little Sisters of the Poor back to the U.S. Supreme Court for another case linked to the status of Obamacare’s contraception mandate?

That’s right. The odds are good that we can brace ourselves for yet another Little Sisters of the Poor vs. the United States of America (or maybe the leaders of a blue-zip-code state or local government).

I predict that we will see Little Sisters of the Poor Round 4 in the headlines sooner or later, for reasons that host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

For starters, in this recent case the high court upheld an executive order from the Donald Trump White House, as opposed to grounding its decision in the defense of a specific piece of legislation — as in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. You may recall that this bill defending a liberal (in the old sense of that word) take on religious freedom passed with an impressive margin — 97-3.

One of the sponsors of that legislation — which was backed by a Clinton-Gore era coalition of liberals and conservatives — had this to say about its importance:

Today I am introducing legislation to restore the previous rule of law, which required the Government to justify restrictions on religious freedom. …

Making a religious practice a crime is a substantial burden on religious freedom. It forces a person to choose between abandoning religious principles or facing prosecution. Before we permit such a burden on religious freedom to stand, the Court should engage in a case-by-case analysis of such restrictions to determine if the Government’s prohibition is justified. …

This bill is needed because even neutral, general laws can unnecessarily restrict religious freedom.

That was U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, of course, during an era when he was considered a moderate who tended to stand with the U.S. Catholic Bishops on quite a few social and moral issues.

The question now is this: What are the odds that one of the first things President Joe Biden’s team will do is erase most, if not all, of the Trump-era executive orders linked to religious liberty and the First Amendment?


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New York Times (#saywhat) interrupts papal tour for a dash of 'Da Vinci Code'

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After a shallow and at times confusing dip into church history and the theological clout of Vladimir Putin -- coverage of the summit of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow -- the mainstream press has returned to its comfort zone with full-scale papal tour coverage.

As always, most journalists seem to think that the key to covering a papal tour, especially during the Francis era, is to stress whatever the pope says about social justice and politics, while ignoring almost everything he says about Christian faith on other topics. Thus, the papal tour is all about immigration and the need for Catholic bishops to face the real lives of the poor and these important and valid themes are not framed -- in Francis style -- with appeals for confession, repentance, mercy, evangelization and truly radical grace.

In other words, journalists tend to offer wall-to-wall social gospel with as little Gospel as possible. Pope Francis, of course, is a both-and kind of spiritual father.

However, in one of these stories -- "Francis Admonishes Bishops in Mexico to ‘Begin Anew’ " -- the news team at the New York Times decided to push beyond this kind of ordinary papal tour editing and add a dash of actual heresy.

First, ponder this question: What does the Catholic Church teach about Mary, the mother of Jesus? This is a huge subject and one that confuses many people, both inside and outside the church. When in doubt, check the Catechism.

Suffice it to say, there are people who -- hearing phrases such as "Mother of God" (a statement supporting the divinity and humanity of Jesus) -- accuse the ancient churches of trying to edit Mary into a new wing of the Holy Trinity, turning her into some kind of goddess. With that in mind, ponder this passage in that Times report:


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