Opinion Piece on the Pope

From Herman Goodden of the London Free Press:

"There is no compulsion in religion," Benedict quotes the emperor as saying. "God is not pleased by blood -- and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats . . . To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."

It is not the case that Benedict was only criticizing Islam for impeding constructive dialogue and tolerance between faiths. Protestantism, liberal theology, scientific rationalism and leftward fringes of Catholicism are also called on the carpet.

Some Western editorialists grumbled that the Pope's words had been "ill-considered" -- an absurd charge to lay at the feet of the major architect of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It was only in parts of the Islamic world that violence, including the cowardly murder of an elderly nun, erupted in a sometimes stage-managed response to Benedict's lecture.

Of course, such irrational bullying and intimidation only proved Benedict's point.

Fr. Joe Classen in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From Saint Louis Post Dispatch:

Telling the Rev. Joe Classen how much fun hunting and fishing are would be like preaching to the choir.

That's because Father Joe, 33, a Roman Catholic priest who serves as associate pastor at St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Parish in south St. Louis County, is both an avid hunter and an experienced angler. Classen is also a newly published author, one so eager to share the myriad ways in which faith has helped his love of the outdoors -- and vice versa -- that he's written a book about the topics.

Classen's book, "Hunting for God, Fishing for the Lord: Encountering the Sacred in the Great Outdoors," should be required reading for anyone who sometimes wonders about life and its meaning. The author has done a good job of articulating personal philosophy as well as outdoors anecdotes, a few fairly hilarious. Of course, what else would you expect from a person so dedicated to archery that he set up his own range on the parish rectory's second floor?

"I shoot through the (guest) room, down the hall, through my bedroom and into the storage attic where the target's been placed," Classen said. "That's a good 20 yards."

A Guardian Angel Story

From Dwight Longenecker:

For the celebration of our Guardian Angels here's a true story

Respect Life Message From Father Benedict

Found at the CFR site, including this interesting note:

During the past few weeks I’ve lived through a part of the terrible drama caused by that decision. A very fine young couple learned from a sonogram that there were difficulties, possibly major difficulties, in the development of their little baby. Without paying any attention to pro-abortion doctors—who are many—they went on with their determination to have the child who is now home with all signs of good health. The parents and family are elated. I also am elated, but more than that I am impressed by the courage and faith of the parents. Would we have known what to do if Pope John Paul II, along with many others, had not clearly condemned the process of abortion?

Father Benedict has a new book out on the virtues that is very interesting and unique. A real page turner:

Part of Ceiling Falls at Marytown Shrine

In Libertyville, IL (National Shrine of St. Maximillian Kolbe).
I've been here many times, beautiful shrine where perpetual adoration takes place around the clock and there always seems to be a good crowd of people praying. This is one of those places you can "sense" God's presence. The heat of the vigil candles burning in the foyer hits you in the face as you walk into the Church, preparing you for you encounter with the Divine.
Thanks to John H. from Kentucky for pointing this out to me, for some reason when I first looked at the story this morning I thought it had happened at another church. Although four people were injured, none were apparently serious. One person who might have taken a direct hit, left just before it fell--the fruit no doubt of her time in adoration. People who pray before the Blessed Sacrament are more able to deal with reality--in this case a stomach ache--perhaps a premonition--that kept her from suffering more seriously.

From the Chicago Tribune:

A group of about 50 women, who were visiting the chapel as thousands of pilgrims do annually, was scheduled to enter the chapel within minutes of the collapse, which occurred around 6:45 p.m.

"I shudder to think what it would have been like on a Sunday morning," said McKinley, the rector and guardian at Marytown, a 12-acre Conventual Franciscan friary and national shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

The group of parishioners was preparing for devotion at the chapel, which is the centerpiece of the Marytown complex.

McKinley said a parishioner who had been sitting in a pew where the ceiling section landed had left shortly before the collapse because she had a stomachache and wanted to lie down.

"Good thing she did," he said.

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, the site's main chapel, was modeled after St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of four patriarchal basilicas in Rome. It was built to memorialize the 1926 International Eucharistic Congress, the first held in the U.S.

Quoted by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

In an article on one of my favorite commentators--Frederick Dale Bruner, who I am happy to read is working on a new commentary on the Gospel of John.

From Frederick Dale Bruner: Moving from text to sermon:

You don’t have to write sermons to appreciate Bruner. Michael Dubruiel, an acquisitions editor for the Catholic publisher Our Sunday Visitor, draws on him
when writing books on practical Catholic living and speaking to Catholic groups
on how to live out their faith.
“Bruner gives such a complete overview of what others have said about a passage—as well as commenting on it himself—that you hardly need another reference book on Matthew,” Dubruiel says. He adds that Bruner leaves readers with “a renewed appreciation for Scripture…and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.”

Thanks to Joan Huyser-Honig for spelling my name right!

One volume of the two-volume series on Matthew by Bruner:

Feast of the Guardian Angels

Yours and mine...

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

That every individual soul has a guardian angel has never been defined by the Church, and is,
consequently, not an article of faith; but it
is the "mind of the Church", as St. Jerome expressed it:
"how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has
from his birth an angel
commissioned to guard it." (Comm. in Matt., xviii, lib. II).

The Day of Atonement--Yom Kippur

From St. Louis Today:

No one knows whether it happens with a satisfying "thump," but at sunset Monday, God will close the Book of Life, according to Jewish tradition, and the fate of every Jew will be sealed for another year.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, begins at sunset Sunday and ends at sunset Monday. It is a day dedicated to repentance and forgiveness, the end of the 10-day high holiday season that began with Rosh Hashanah, the festive Jewish New Year. Over those 10 days, Jews worldwide, including the 6,000 in the St. Louis area, seek forgiveness from those they've wronged over the last year, and forgive those who ask it of them.

But Yom Kippur is different. It is the day that Jews will also ask forgiveness for sins they've committed against God. Just before sunset Sunday, Jews will gather for the Kol Nidre prayer, a chant that releases the individual from promises made to God that won't be fulfilled.

The following 25 hours are spent in an intense individual examination of one's life - as it relates to other people, to God, to the Jewish faith and to the prospect of life's finality.

"All our lives we deny we're going to die, but on Yom Kippur we're forced to realize that we're not going to get out of this life alive," said Rabbi Mark L. Shook of Congregation Temple Israel in Creve Coeur. "Yom Kippur makes us think hard about the significance of our lives. What will be different about the world because we've entered and left it?"

Church Music: "Cultural Vandalism"

Scottish composer takes on the banality of modern music in the Catholic Church.

From Scottland on Sunday:

A devout Catholic, MacMillan uses an article in a religious magazine this weekend to confess his despair of the "screaming microphones" and "incompetently strummed guitars and cringe-making, smiley, cheesy foil groups" which fill churches every Sunday.

He reserves particular venom for two well-known modern hymns, 'Bind Us Together, Lord' and 'Make Me a Channel Of Your Peace', the latter having even been recorded to popular acclaim by Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell.

MacMillan says the hymns amount to "cultural vandalism" and that a backlash against such groups is growing, with more church-goers demanding a return to the traditional music which filled churches before reforms of the 1960s.

He declared: "The church has simply aped the secular West's obsession with 'accessibility', 'inclusiveness', 'democracy' and 'anti-elitism'. The effect of this on liturgy has been a triumph of bad taste and banality and an apparent vacating of the sacred spaces of any palpable sense of the presence of God."

Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus

Although not formally celebrated today, because it is a Sunday.
Therese imagined that in the spiritual life we are all like infants at the foot of the stairs being summoned by our Heavenly Father to climb the heights--which try as we might we cannot do. Finally the Heavenly Father will come down the stairs and pick us up and carry us up the stairs. Which of course is a beautiful child like summary of what the Trinity has done in the incarnation of Jesus.
Are you and I trying to climb the stairs? Is our Faith in Him? Abandon yourself to the God as a child abandons oneself to their parents.
St. Therese, pray for us!

Alabama Plays Gators Like it was 1966

I think the throwback uniforms almost did the Gators in, because in the first half they played like it was 1966. You would have thought that the Crimson Tide was being coached by Bear Bryant, not Mike Shula...but thankfully the time warp ended by half-time.

Pope Asks Faithful to Pray Rosary, for Missions, Iraq and to Follow Example of St. Therese

Whose Feast Day it is, from Asia News Italy:

The pope also cited the patroness of missions, the Carmelite St Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who John Paul II proclaimed as Doctor of the Church. “She, who indicated confident abandonment to the love of God as a ‘simple’ way to holiness, helps us to be credible witnesses of the Gospel of charity. Most Holy Mary, Virgin of the Rosary and Queen of missions, lead us all to Christ the Saviour.”

The Last of the LaSallettes

In New Hampshire. I made a youth retreat at the now closed school in the early 1970's, even then it was in decline--in some way I was surprised to hear that they still exist at all.

From The Concord Monitor:

The order was started after the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared before two young shepherds, a teenage boy and girl, in the tiny alpine village of La Salette, France, on Sept. 19, 1846. Mary, according to believers, came to the children weeping and lamenting that Christians had strayed from the word of God. She implored them to spread the message that believers had to return to the basic tenets and practices of Christianity, including daily prayer and worshipping on Sundays. After speaking to them, she walked up a narrow path and ascended to heaven.

After several years of investigation, the Catholic Church deemed the shepherds' claims to be true and in 1852 a bishop founded the order based on the message delivered to them. La Salette missionaries first arrived in the United States in 1892, settling in Hartford, Conn. In 1898, the order established a college seminary and, within a decade, had to build two additions to the Connecticut school.

In 1924, a center was opened in Altamont, N.Y., and three years later the order purchased Shaker land and buildings in Enfield. The shrine, a replica of the meeting between the shepherds and Mary, was built in 1951.

There are several centers and shrines across the country and many more around the world, including in Africa, India and Latin America, where the order continues to grow.

Father Leo Maxfield, who is 77 and came to the seminary high school in Enfield from Leominster, Mass., said that at one time there were about 100 boys enrolled in the high school and living in its dorm. There were about 15 priests who served as teachers and an additional 12 to 15 brothers - who take similar vows as priests but do not perform church rites and rituals - who worked on the order's farm and ran the household.

He said that shortly after he arrived in 1944, there were only two priests buried in the Enfield order's cemetery. There are now more than 80 La Salettes, as the members are known, buried at the site. He says he loves the Enfield shrine, which is bordered by Mascoma Lake on one side and thick forests on the other and is saddened by thoughts of its future.

Clintonesque Response of Bridgeport Diocese

Strange story as told by Joe Pisani:

Thinking our story was going to appear last Sunday, another pastor responded prematurely and put a column in the parish bulletin and on the Web site that said: "The recent article in the Stamford Advocate requires some response. While I can't answer every point in this brief piece, I would like to address some." But the points he chose to address were not even part of our story.

He wrote: "The paper's proposed solution to the present church crisis is that clerical celibacy be made optional or abolished." Where did he get that idea? Since the very beginning of our reporting, the issue of abolishing celibacy had never even been discussed.

The essay continued: "The Advocate article used this scandal as the springboard for marshaling every unhappy group or individual, whether ideologically Left or Right, Catholic or otherwise, to give vent to their vitriol against the Catholic Church and against the priesthood in general, and Bishop Lori in particular." Wrong again. This story was a result of the many calls, e-mail and letters we received from devout practicing Catholics who love the church. Clearly, it would have been wiser if he had waited to read the story before writing his impassioned response.

Contrary to the diocese's campaign of disinformation and demagoguery, the misrepresented and maligned story, which appears on Page One of today's paper, is not filled with "innuendo and gossip." It is not a "witch hunt." And it does not "name names." It is rather a story about concerned parishioners who are looking for answers and ecclesiastical accountability and who sincerely want every one of their priests to honor his vows. This is a fair story.

And just as it would be a tragic injustice for us, as a newspaper, to impugn the reputation of many priests because of the transgressions of a few, it would be an equally tragic injustice for the diocese to imperil the reputation of the many by ignoring the transgressions of a few.

Al-Qaida Weights in on Pope

From MSNBC:

“If Benedict attacked us, we will respond to his insults with good things. We will call upon him, and all of the Christians to become Muslims who do not recognize the Trinity or the crucifixion,” al-Zawahri said.

Feast of the Holy Archangels

Saint Michael being one of them, and the my patron as well as my son's.

End of an Era 2

I used to work for Fr. Skehan, liked him a lot and I think he was well loved by his parishioners. Having said that this latest news is not a shock, and I think if similar accounting and audits were done others would find themselves in the same kind of hot water he finds himself in...I also think if he gets a good lawyer he will be able to beat this charge...because quite frankly people often say..."this money is for you Father, do with it what you want"...now they may mean one thing when they say that, but you could certianly take it at face value--an old time pastors did run their parishes like a little kingdom.

Police: Former Delray priests stole $8.6M from church

End of an Era

Saint Meinrad alum will remember the Shady Inn, for many it was something to be passed by in a hurry, but for others it was a frequent haunt--I was one of the "others." From its shoot the duck game on the wall, to the local workers at the book plant that hung out there after work it provided a dose of "reality" to some. The night Lenny, the owner pulled out his shot gun and shot a round for the roof to run off someone barred from the joint is ingrained in my memory forever.
Now it is gone--tore down for the television show Extreme Makeover--so a lot of people will get to see its demise, where only a few ever enjoyed its respite.

From the Saint Meinrad Alumni Newsletter:

One of the first projects Monday night was to tear down The Shady Inn,
which has sat unused for several years, to provide a larger building site. Many
alumni will remember this "hangout," which was located across the street from
the post office.

Once when taking a friend there on our way to Chicago, the owner's wife was heard to say to a patron (about ten times while we were there) "They don't call it 'shady' for nothing."

Catholic Author and Soon to be Married Catholic Priest

Dwight Longenecker's blog I worked with Dwight on several of his early books (all excellent spiritual reading by the way) while he was still living in England. Then I put him in touch with a bishop friend of mine who will likely ordain him in the coming year(as soon as they receive final approval from the Vatican). Here are the books:

Pope on Saint Thomas the Apostle

From the Vatican:

The Pope explained that Thomas's personality is characterized by "his determination in following the Master" and gave as an example the Apostle's exhortation to his companions to accompany Jesus to Jerusalem, even knowing the dangers involved. This determination "reveals total availability in adhering to Jesus, to the point of identifying one's fate with His (...) Christian life is defined as a life with Jesus Christ, a life to be lived with Him".
Thomas also intervenes in the Last Supper when he asks Christ which is the way, because they do not know it, and Jesus responds "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life". The Holy Father said, "Every time we hear or read these words, we feel that our thoughts side with Thomas and imagine that the Lord speaks to us as He did to him. At the same time, the question also confers us the right, so to speak, to ask Jesus for explanations. This way we express the shallowness of our ability to understand, at the same time we set ourselves in an attitude of trust, like those who await the light and strength from the one able to give this to us".
The most well-known scene is the one when Thomas is doubtful, when the Apostle says to the Risen Jesus that he cannot recognize Him until he places his hand in the wound in His side. "In the end, these words demonstrate the conviction that by now Christ is recognized not as much by His face but by His wounds. Thomas believes that the qualifying signs of Jesus are above all, now, the wounds, which reveal to what point He loved us. As to this, the Apostle is correct".
Benedict XVI said: "The case of the Apostle Thomas is important for us for at least three reasons: first, because it comforts our insecurities; second, because it shows us that each doubt can achieve an enlightened result beyond any incertitude; and, finally, because the words said to him by Jesus remind us of the true meaning of mature faith and encourage us to follow, despite the difficulties, our path in adhering to Him".