Prayers for Australia And Other News

***Australia's fires have caused horrible damage to a huge part of the country. Please keep them in your prayers as the mourn the dead, pick through the damage, and then start to plan for the future and rebuild. Many congregations of Christians will have to also rebuild their houses of worship.

***Please also pray for those who died in the plane crash in Buffalo and their families.

***Daniel Cardinal DiNardo is speaking at A&M tonight. Don't miss it if you live nearby.

***Microsoft is now offering a $250,000 bounty on the creator of a worm that is infecting many computers. I wonder if this will become more common in trying to track down programmers of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses?

***When a Catholic leader giving an interview says something stupid, it has repercussions. When a priest says that the teaching on abortion is not infallible, that will have repercussions. This is just wrong. The Church has always and everywhere taught that abortion is wrong in every case. This has been definitively held throughout the life of the Church and since it is a matter of faith and morals, the Church has taught infallibly on the subject. As the Catechism states on infallibility:

CCC 890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms:

CCC 892 Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a "definitive manner," they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals.

Then on abortion - stating the definitive nature of the teaching:

CCC 2271 - Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law
Infallible. No doubt.